Back Across the Rubicon: Eight From the Land of No Return II

Not half so remarkable as a human chameleon. Human chameleons surpass their namesake in power. For human chameleons are the hardest of all chameleons to spot. They don’t change colours in their environment, they change personalities. After which these changes are virtually undetectable to those who don’t know the human chameleon intimately, those who have not witnessed his transformation. The change of a human chameleon is sudden but complete. And shocking to observe. But of course, the human chameleon only ever shows the side of himself that he wants his observer to see, and he never lets anyone know him intimately.

When among one set of people, the human chameleon acts a certain way, and in another, completely different group, he suddenly stops being like the first and shifts himself to act precisely like the second group. The first Roman chameleons or their provincial chameleons must have figured this out a long time ago, about what to do when in Rome.

Wait a minute, I never said the human chameleon was a deceitful thing. He can’t help being the creature that he is. While it’s true that the chameleon may deceive others, that is not his main intent. His intent is only to survive. And the chameleon only uses his own gifts, his own multi-faceted nature, to survive. How can that be wrong? This is, after all, normal behaviour for a chameleon. But what happens when the human chameleon gets too good at his art? What happens when the human chameleon begins to forget what his natural personality originally was?

I guess it doesn’t matter, because by then the habit has already set in. What habit? I call it situational modification of the identity. Like the chameleon, I was either or born or soon became a natural at the art of survival. Sometimes I think, though, that I would rather live in my native environment. Away from all ordinary human contact, safe in the shadow where no one can see what I am at all, where a long stretch of peace might return me to my normal state. But I suppose I do not fully trust even the peace, that it can last.. And it is a barren place, the cool shadows. A lonely cage---and every freedom-loving chameleon hates to be cornered.

So instead I throw myself into the blazing sun.

I like it there better.

* * * * *

Human chameleons have ordinary names. Mine is Karl Schiller, and I was born in the GDR, Western Germany at the time, in September, 1972. Yes, yes, during the Munich Olympic Games, not far away from the Sports Arena. My elder sister Monika had red felt ribbons tied in pigtails in her hair when she came to visit me at the hospital. Mother said Monika wanted to look like Olga Korbut, the world’s most famous gymnast at the time, even if Olga Korbut was a dreaded Soviet.

Everyone in Germany hated the Soviets back then. They had spilt our country in two and poisoned every inch of ground they got hold of-literally. The Soviets weren’t known for making squeaky clean factories, and they had riddled East Germany with factories. Remember Magnetogorsk in Russia? I used to think that East Germany was a giant Magnetogorsk. I remember taking a trip to West Berlin when I was six years old. This was before the Wall came down, and there were wire fences and checkpoints and riflemen to keep everyone in East Berlin suitably terrorized and docile in their giant cage.