The strange case of Martin Guerre
Imposter syndrome
The vanishing man
Ludwig Wittgenstein once wrote:
Give a fish ears and it will come to your net when you call it; give a fish legs and it will chase you home and kick your face off.
Never has a philosopher’s warning about ichthyological appendages been more applicable than to the harrowing incident I’m about to relate.
In southwestern France, 1548, Martin Guerre disappeared, vanished, kapoofed, leaving his wife, Bertrande, and their son, 7 (not sure I’ve got his name right), all alone in their big, fancy château (Bertrande’s family were very well-to-do on account of being rich because of all their money).
Martin had always been a bit annoying—his favourite pastimes were obstructing doorways (not fire exits, he had his limits) and telling people they had something on their face when they didn’t—so, when he went missing, no one was particularly bothered. They just presumed he’d been eaten by wolves or had his head stuck in a bucket somewhere (sadly, nearly 30% of all premature deaths in 16th century France were caused by wolves and/or buckets).
Bertrande happily busied herself with her own favourite pastime—climbing trees—and all across the Aquitaine region, folk passed in and out of buildings unimpeded. Now and then, someone would remember Martin, but only fleetingly, as if he were a dream so distant it no longer made sense.
“Who was that man who always used to come around here, acting like he owned the place? What was his name?”
“That was your husband, Bertrande. Martin. He owned the place. Now, for the love of God, come down from that tree. Your son, 7, is starting to think you’re a bird.”
“I can’t. I’m stuck. In my nest.”
The un-vanishing man
In 1554, then, when Martin miraculously returned there was no welcoming committee to greet him, no fanfare or celebration, just the odd Gallic shrug*.
*A physical gesture, unique to the French, that can be interpreted in a myriad of ways, all of which are invariably wrong.
“I have come home! It is me, Martin Guerre. The one and only. Ah, there you are my son, 7. You haven’t aged a bit! And where’s your mother? What on earth is she doing up there?”
“You smell funny.”
No one asked Martin where he’d been. No one cared. Life, for all intents and purposes, carried on as normal, notwithstanding a few barbed remarks from Bertrande:
“Don’t look at me. Your dinner wasn’t cold when I made it… six years ago.”
“I don’t need a bath. You do. I just had a bath… six years ago.”
“Fine… I’ll stop saying six years ago… six years ago.”
With time, Bertrande and Martin’s marriage returned to how it’d been before.
No, it was better than before. Martin was more charming now. He didn’t exhibit any interest in his old, annoying pastimes. And he’d stopped complaining all the time about the leg he’d lost in the Italian wars because it had grown back.
The years passed and the reunited couple had two more children, 1 and 3. They discovered a shared interest in timekeeping and talked for hours about how long they’d been talking for. They laughed and danced, and sometimes—just sometimes—Bertrande even came down from her tree (only to climb up a different one though).
Yes, Martin smelled funny. Yes, he sometimes said things that didn’t make sense. Yes, he burned their neighbour’s house down for no reason and clubbed a village beggar half to death. But these were teething problems. He was settling back in. Cut the man some slack!
The second coming
15th August 1560 was an ordinary day of humdrum domesticity in the Guerre household.
“Have you done a shit in the sink again?” Bertrande wagged her scrubbing brush at Martin, angrily.
“You said not to shit where we eat. Nothing about the sink.”
“I meant that figuratively!”
“So I can shit where we eat?”
Suddenly—because these things are always sudden—there was a knock at the door. Setting down the brush, Bertrande wiped her hands on the white bib of her apron and answered it.
She gasped.
The whole village had come to pay her a visit. In the crowd, she saw the faces of her brother and four sisters, the local provost, her homeless neighbour and even the half-dead village beggar.
The crowd parted and a crooked, hoary little man hobbled forward.
“Wife,” the little man announced, “it is me, Martin. I have returned. Do you not recognise me? My one leg? My unfunny smell? All these years, I have been watching you from the village yonder. It was a test, you see? I wanted to know if you’d be true to me the way you promised you would… and you have failed miserably, Bertrande. The moment I turned my back, you had two children with this imposter. In hindsight, I should’ve come back to tell you that you’d failed after your first child, but I wanted to be sure. I don’t know why I wasn’t sure after one child. It seems pretty definitive now that I’m saying it out loud. I’m not the one on trial here!”
The provost ordered Bertrande to decide once and for all which man was her real husband—the one-legged Martin or the two-legged imposter. In truth, Bertrande much preferred her two-legged imposter, but not wishing to appear ableist in front of everyone, she hung her head and, mournfully, pointed to the hoary little man who was by now taking great pleasure in obstructing the doorway.
The imposter was arrested, the crowd dispersed and Martin Guerre made himself at home once more.
He forgave Bertrande eventually—the couple even chuckled about the whole absurd affair from time to time—and everyone lived happily ever after… apart from the imposter, who was executed, his body left to dangle from a lamppost outside the Guerre house for four years. And the imposter’s children, 1 and 3, of course, who were utterly traumatised every time they looked out of the window.
Here’s what people are saying about BAD HISTORY:
“It was fine. Yes, of course I’ve read it. It was fine” (Bad History’s mum)
“If I say I liked it, can I have my shoes back?” (Man at bus stop)
“I don’t care if you’re a historian. You need to give this gentleman his shoes back” (Police officer at bus stop)