The impostor and his farce (from the collection "the bloody migrant")

(Translated by Stella Heath)

Original Spanish version here

Cutting grapes many years later, I still remember that July afternoon as I left the office, completely convinced that my farse would be out over that weekend. What I hadn't dreamt of was the kind of mess I would be in, and to what extent. I imagined the obvious then, that I would be found out. I had lied to get the job, and now I would be forced to pay with the greatest of humiliations:  disgrace. That afternoon, which I remember as if it were yesterday, I was walking along with my mind elsewhere, reflecting on how I had come to this. I get anxious about anything, even watching a film where the innocent hero might be misunderstood and face a row with his beloved wife. I get l flustered and turn the set off to avoid the anguish. I hate it. And that July afternoon, when I felt that the lie with which I'd got the job would at last come to light, my breast choked up in the middle of the road, leaving me almost breathless. First I felt the throbbing, then I felt the heart attack looming as it has done since I became a hypochondriac, and finally I felt my heart would leap out of my chest, and I almost suffocated. I thought that -to calm down- I needed to assume that the farce would wind itself down, and all I had to do was to think it over. 'When did I become a fraud?' I thought. I know very well what day it was- it was when I listened to the adviser, the Chinaman, that refugee adviser who spoke as if he had all the answers.

Yes, it was that Chinaman who convinced me that a farce was the only way to go. In short, that I had no choice but to be an impostor, a bit of an impostor at least, but a fraud after all. I was thinking and thinking and I didn't even notice whether the sun was shining, unusual in England, or whether it was just another of those days of never-ending English rain. How could I notice anything! I was so rapt in my waking nightmare that I forgot which side of the road cars go on in England and on crossing the street I was almost run down by a van which was driving perfectly normally, and of course on its own side of the road. I heard his British insults, nothing to do with the crudeness and mother-related slurs of Venezuela, but I just walked on because the driver didn't manage to come up with an insult strong enough to drag me out of my thoughts and fears, and neither did he threaten to kill me, which might have been a solution. For the record, I'm not naturally freakish. My circumstances are, and I adapt. Anyone who knows me knows that I've always been basically a decent person, other than an oddity here or there, nothing major. And it all started when I spoke to the Chinaman, well, not actually a Chinaman, but that's another story, he was another fraud, he told me himself, but I'll tell that one some other time. The Chinaman, who wasn't really Chinese, told me that here in England it doesn't matter what you're capable of, what you've done or what you've studied in your own country. That's what he said, and it's something that I'd somehow already got an inkling of. Not an understanding as I understand it nowadays, because getting to know a country is a long process. But I'd got over that initial phase, when you get to know the place as a tourist, that is to say, as someone who thinks he understands everything, and everything is more or less fine.

The way from work to the railway station wasn't very far, but somehow it felt like a long way, what with the hypochodriac heart attack, actually being run over, British insults, the waking nightmare, memories of the conversation with the Chinaman, and the inquisitive looks of passers-by who were totally above suspicion but who seemed to be accusing me of being the great fraud. I put myhands in my pocket to feel the cellphone, because the office cellphone was the means of my destruction, to see if by any chance I didn't have it and I'd made the whole thing up, but there it was, in my pocket. And it might ring at any moment. And my inability to solve the problem would give me away. And the truth would be out. Who ever told me to accept a job I hadn't the competence to do. Who else would get into this mess. Me and my freakish life. What would my Venezuelan mates say if they knew what I'd got myself into here in England. It's just as well they don't know.

And the Chinaman was right, but I had not as yet lived long enough in this country to grasp the full meaning of his claims. But I had suffered enough to know that he was right and that I had to live the farce, the great fraud, if I wanted carry on and get ahead. Otherwise I would be stuck in unskilled zero-hours jobs, on minimum wage and what have you, so I had to do it. I had to lie. My skills from Venezuela were useless, so I had to reinvent myself. And I did.

The truth is, if you think about it, anybody could accept a little white lie, if there was at least a grain of truth in it. Something like saying you have experience in working with a computer programme, when in fact you're experienced in a similar programme and you know the one in question. So, a little white lie. But the lie I had to tell was the biggest whopper you can tell in England. I had to say that I understood English. Well, what could be worse? But of course I managed to make it worse.


To be clear, I did understand some English, but the slow, cultivated, deliberate English of foreigners, not lively, everyday English in local accents. I could also halfway understand written English, scientific and Latinized. But how was I supposed to understand the dialect of Yorkshire, Lancaster or Liverpool? That English I didn't understand at all, that is to say, I didn't understand real English. Or rather, I only understood the English from the intermediate English course. Not much more than Venezuelan secondary school English, two hours a week, and what's more they slotted it in as a rest from the serious, demanding, boring courses like Physics, Chemistry and the rest. I cursed my Venezuelan education a thousand times. The thing is, in Venezuela we learn to pass English exams, a little grammar, a little spelling. A couple of months in the American Venezuelan Institute made me a little more fluent and we all challenge ourselves to learn a little of something some time, if only by watching subtitled films. In my postgraduate course I learned a bit when we were given biographies in English. I did the readings dictionary in hand, without bothering to find out how things were pronounced.

So I could read, write a bit, say a few phrases. I could even understand the Chinaman who wasn't Chinese, it turns out he was Vietnamese, I could understand a German or a Russian, but not an Englishman. Every two sentences in real English contained a word which flummoxed me, precisely the magic word I needed to understand the whole. When luck was against me, I couldn't understand a single thing. I didn't even understand where one word ended and another began.

This was how I got the form to join the Refugee Council, in the Languages section, I barefacedly put in Spanish as well as English. How was I going to fill in a job application and write something like by the way, I don't understand the language of this country but it's worth your while to hire me anyway. It made me laugh to think that the panel evaluating the applications, if there was a panel, would be splitting their sides with laughter at such a note. I imagined them yelling: this guy wants to be an engineer but he can't even subtract and doesn't understand equations. What an asshole.

I carefully studied the job description and the type of candidate they were looking for. I wrote down all possible questions they might ask. And I learned the key words, not in order to understand the questions, which would have been impossible, but to keep an eye out for possible answers to the theme of the questions, without actually aspiring to answer them. I could get by with a few key words, I thought. All this I did, not because I am particularly daring, but because the Chinaman had recommended me to do it. Not to get the job, of course, but to start learning to use the vocabulary of interviews. Then bit by bit I'd learn to decipher English and I might even get a job as a porter in an institution of the prestige and reputation of the British Refugee Council. Quite a plan.

And so I sent in my job application and vied for the post of a porter, which seemed a reasonable step. How I was supposed to be a porter without understanding one word, that was to be seen. I imagined someone asking where the post box was, and me answering on Saturday afternoons, what
a disaster. But for now I just needed to understand the people doing the interview. After that I'd learn little by little. I went to the interview, I answered what might have been the questions, and I didn't get the job. And I began to get used to the reply “...unfortunately on this occasion your application was not successful...” Of course, no way was anything going to be “successful”-

But persistence is one of the keys of success, so following the Chinaman's recommendation, I asked for feedback. And it turns out that it wasn't because I didn't understand a jot of what they asked me, because they weren't surprised by the answers, but because I had no experience as a porter in England. Well, then. I needed to have been a porter in England for two years. That's all. As if all the rest didn't matter.

A few months later, another advertisement appeared from the Refugee Council. They were looking for Project Workers, written like that, with capitals, and when I read the description of the post, it was more than obvious that I couldn't do that job, because I would have to give assistance and support to asylum seekers in England. The description of the post was quite specific, nothing like what they tell us in Venezuela, and I started fantasising how I would carry out the task if I could understand English properly. One day. Well, I decided to put in my application. My intention was to get through the interview, to get some practice, and that way I might be successful in my job as a porter if it came up again.

To my surprise I was selected for an interview. An interview for a post where I'd have to advise people and stand up for them. Scary! After a lot of dithering I decided to go, and of course I was scared to death of making a fool of myself, but I did my homework. Well and truly. I went to talk to the Chinaman and he congratulated me. I learnt a new word in English: bold. The world belongs to the bold, it'll be a couple of years yet before you can work in a place like that, but it's a start. I'd filled in all the forms, written each answer in full detail and of course, I lied again about the language. And I added another lie, that is, that I had experience with asylum seekers in England. Not that it was a downright lie, but it was certainly an astronomical exaggeration, because yes, I did have a very dubious experience, I was a volunteer in an organisation for refugees, partly to practise my English, but all I did there was wash dirty dishes, and only for a couple of months, and only once a week, and only for half an hour. But after a little ethical and philosophical reflection, I decided it didn't matter if I lied a bit, as I wasn't going to get the job. The interviewer was an Arab, what luck, one I could understand. Not the other two. They asked me 9 questions, I only understood three. The others I worked out a bit thanks to the key words and my studying of the job description and the profile of the candidates, all on the Internet, which was still quite a novelty.

When I got to the interview I put into practice all the histrionic abilities I'd only ever used in school drama club. I actually came to the interview saying I had earache because I was in recovery fro a tropical condition. The interviewers looked worried, but I immediately added that it was nothing serious, that I only needed them to speak slowly because my hearing was fuzzy, but it would only last three weeks. Well, I got them to speak ridiculously slowly, almost with subtitles, and I somehow managed to justify getting them to repeat the questions several times over without feeling stupid.

The interview came to an end, I went home and I forgot about it, My first interview for a serious, professional job. A complete con, but I'd achieved my goal. I went home on the same train I would have to take months later, on that July afternoon when I was going back over the whole story in my mind. I remembered that when I got home I burst out laughing, Laughing and laughing. The thought of how crazy I'd been to turn up to a job interview without understanding the language had me in stitches.

A few hours later somebody phoned me. I wasn't sure who. They said they were from the Refugee
Council. How terrifying. I realised it was the Arab interviewer. I couldn't understand him. But it seemed like he'd told me that they were offering me the job. Obviously that couldn't be true. And he was still talking. There was no doubt that I had understood, that they were offering me the job, which was impossible. I told him that I would go in, because I couldn't understand what he was saying due to my earache.

I went in. And yes. They offered me the job. If I'd understood what he was saying on the phone, I could have said that I couldn't accept for personal reasons and that would have been that. But I didn't understand a word and like a fool I agreed to go in to understand what he was saying. And yes, he offered me the job. I immediately said I couldn't do it because my understanding of English was limited. I tried to come clean but my attempt at honesty was in vain because he said it didn't matter, that I'd get over my ear problem and I tried honesty again and told him that the pain wasn't that bad, that the problem was that I couldn't understand and he said that if I had answered well without understanding too much I was qualified for the job. I had no choice, either I was brutally specific about the farse or I had to take the job. The alternative was to yell no, no, no and run out of there pulling my hair out and be taken for a madman. I couldn't do that either, so I decided to accept my fate. And so I started working as a counselor in a country where I couldn't understand what people were saying. I skipped the stage as a porter.

Two weeks went by from the day I was made a Project Worker to the day I was to start work. In order to assist the asylum seekers, I had to identify the problems they were facing, and following the regulations of the British system of attention to refugees, recommend a solution and, with the permission of the asylum seeker, act on his behalf before the governmental, private or charity organisation that might help him. So in those weeks I learned almost by heart the manual of rules and regulations and the list of organisations I would have to interact with. The task was not impossible if I could understand what people said, of course. But I could barely understand a thing and was not even good enough to be a porter or to answer the phone. Or, as I've said, I could only understand people who spoke English as badly as I did or worse. And that was how I became a professional impostor.

I I made my earache and hearing difficulties last as many days as I possibly could. The Arab interviewer, who turned out to be my boss, gave me a training plan which basically consisted in watching an expert at work. I went to the sessions, I listened to the refugee speaking in his language, at that time usually Kurdish or Lingala, a Congolese language, an interpreter translated into English and I half understood. From there on I had no idea what was going on. The project worker answered something I couldn't understand, which was translated into Kurdish, a language I also began to learn, and then there were some phone calls where the project worker talked the problem over with someone from some government office, Heaven knows which. I had no idea. With luck, nothing was explained to me. When I was very unlucky, the project worker would explain, and I nodded as if I understood, just to keep up my pretence. What a disaster.

The days went by, and by studying in the evenings what might have gone on during the day, I began little by little to unravel a bit, not much, of what I was supposed to do. But then came the first day I had to go it alone. And on the phone. And from home. And that was the afternoon I was walking to the station.

It was a really simple task. If a policeman in Leeds or some other town in the region came across an undocumented person who might need to apply for political asylum, the police would call the office telephone which I was now carrying in my pocket. All I had to do was answer the phone, call a taxi from a list of available taxis, and give them the address where the person was, and the taxi would pick the person up and take them to the city of Liverpool to seek asylum. And when I went to work on Monday I would report the event so that the taxi could be paid. A trifle, then. A trifle for
someone who understands, of course.

So as I was walking towards the station after the heart attacks and being run over and everything, I was trying to convince myself that calling for a taxi wasn't such a titanic task for someone who could speak English even if he couldn't understand a thing. After all, I only had to give an address, no problem. And at the end wait for a yes or a no, which isn't always easy with the English sense of humour, but I could survive that. The difficulty was in understanding the address the police gave me at that time in prehistory, a few years ago when GPS didn't exist. How would I do it?

Friday went by, and I was in luck. Saturday went by, and I was in luck, and I was beginning to feel that luck was on my side. A lot of luck, actually, because I was being paid for every hour I spent with that telephone. Wow.

And the telephone rang in the wee hours on Sunday morning. I answered fearfully. I'd hardly uttered the dreaded “good afternoon” when someone let loose a string of phrases which I knew were in English, but if it had been a film I'd have thought were in Norwegian, Danish or something. I only understood one thing, which was a well entoned “good morning” in response to my early-morning “good afternoon”, as if to remind me that sometimes everything goes wrong. Calm down, I told myself, and ask for the address. I did so and the guy raised his voice, as was to be expected, but always within the limits dictated by English politeness. He produced some sounds which I imagined to mean the same, with the same words, but I still couldn't understand anything. I had prepared for this possibility. I'd investigated how to say that it was a bad line and that he should speak more slowly. I started the English phrase several times, but it took a bit to end it, because the guy had something to say, Heaven knows what. He hung up and I'd completely forgotten the story of my damaged ears.

I breathed. He'll call back. When it rang I answered again and once more he said something I couldn't understand. No doubt he was asking if I could hear him now. And I forgot about my earache again. He said something in an annoyed tone and hung up. Third attempt, same thing. Fourth. The same. At the umpteenth try, with my self-esteem on the floor, something different happened. And it wasn't that ir occured to me to bring up the story of my ears destroyed by leprosy again, but that I'd thought of something less practical. Maybe it wasn't the police, I thought, it could be an insurance or funeral plan salesman, so I asked if it was the police. The policeman lost it, of course, after all those phone calls I asked him if it was the police and, of course, for the first time in my life I heard a British policeman let loose the equivalent of a mother insult, in his own way, and then, as I found out later, he told me that he was from the Hull police, a town on the far east of England. I didn't know that the place existed and I understood that he was from the wool police. I didn't ask him why there should be a police for wool, because no doubt he'd tell me they took care of the sheep, or some other sarcastic quip, and I was at the point where my suicidometer would have been in red if such a gadget existed, but I had no choice but to scourge myself with my guilt and make my ignorance out as stupidity, what else could I do, who told me to become an impostor anyway, I'd better get out of the country, and on and on.

But my misfortune hadn't reached rock bottom yet. When I asked him who I had to get a taxi for he told me there were eighteen, yes, eighteen people. So I had to sort out several taxis. He gave me the address and it was then, as he was spelling out letter by letter, that I realised there was a place called Hull. When the call ended, I looked at the map. Google maps didn't exist yet, so it was a feat. And yes, Hull wasn't anywhere nearby. It was another town, on the far east of the country. And the alleged refugees had to be brought to the far west. Not that England is very large, it isn't, but a caravan of taxis is too expensive to be crossing from one side of the country to the other. If I hired all those taxis I'd use up the Refugee Council's annual budget, I thought. So I'd have to improvise a solution. My Latin ancestry would help. None of your British stiffness, as the Chinaman would say,
now I'm really going to show my creativity and my problem-solving ability.

And that was when it occurred to me that rather than a taxi, I could hire a bus even though I didn't have the money or the official credentials. Just with my telephone and my art of persuasion. Anyone who knows England knows that that's impossible. Nowadays I wouldn't even try. But ignorance is bold so I tried and succeeded. The whole story of how I managed it would be as long as a story by Tolstoy. I'd love to write the novel of how I got a bus, but I'm writing another novel, about a Venezuelan refugee, and this short story is just a diversion. But when I finally managed to hire the minibus, well into the small hours, I finally felt proud of myself. All the bitter pills that had gone before became sweet and now my life tasted like the sugary dregs of a bitter coffee.And that was when I remembered the Chinaman with all my gratitude.

The bus had been hired and early the following morning'I'd sort out the paperwork. The bus cost less than two taxis. Not only had I saved the organisation the price of a flotilla of taxis, but I'd made the Hull police's job easier as they didn't have to send a flotilla of patrol cars to follow the taxis. So I left home early because I couldn't wait to tell my boss about my triumph. Quite a triumph then.

On my way back from the station to the office, I was especially careful when crossing the road, this time it was worth it to stay alive. My farse about understanding English was compensated for by my negotiaing ability. Friday's nightmares had turned into fantasies telling the tale of my success. The Chinaman was right, pretending worked well until you could make good with your audacity and professionalism. In time I'd learn to understand better. The weekend had been an intensive English course, but I'd saved the organisation a month of my salary.

I felt so proud of myself I became arrogant and, with no more heart attacks or breathlessness, it occurred to me that the poor Chinaman had taken longer than I had to get somewhere in England, but my situation had no comparison. I'm privileged. I thought how lucky I was to come from a cultured Italian family, with business acumen, and to have studied at the Catholic University and to have high standards in life. At last I no longer felt like the poor migrant who could barely understand the language, but rather the custodian of an ancient culture, was taking my place in this new society. The same path I'd taken filled with anguish on the Friday, I now retraced with pride and fulfillment.

When the boss arrived, on the hour, I told him the story and it made him laugh, but from his expression I could see that he was not pleased. I was rather confused. I thought maybe his experience in an Arab country with no expectation to excel might have clouded his ability to grasp my success. Mulling it over now, I realise I was being racist, and I'm ashamed of myself. My boss told me that I was going to be in trouble with his boss, Margot Cooper, who usually arrived late at the office, in her gym kit.

Indeed, the boss arrived around ten in the morning. She stormed out of her office towards me waving the proof of my offence like a flag, the page with all the telephone numbers of the taxi ranks which I was supposed to have called. She said, “Weren't you told to send a taxi from the list?” I understood her from her gestures, the piece of paper and, as usual, a few key words.

That was how I began to understand that the mess I was in was not because I was a fraud, but that the organisation I was in was the fraud, where what was important was not to do things well, but to do them following the rules. What mattered was not what one understood but what one said. It was the process, not the outcome that mattered. And the only way for me to integrate was to become corrupt, which I only managed half way, until I stopped doing so, but that's a theme for other stories. For now I'll go back to Sofía, the refugee of my novel.