by John Boyne
‘I’m sorry,’ you told him, steering him away from my room. ‘But look, until this whole mess is cleared up, I’d prefer if you didn’t visit again.’
And that was that. I haven’t seen or heard from him since.
There was another visitor, an unexpected one, and he arrived quite late one evening, long past the time when visitors are usually admitted. I expect he simply came up in the lift – assuming I’m not on the ground floor, which I might be – and waited until the nurses’ station was empty before wandering in.
Nicholas sat by my bed for more than an hour, reading sections from The Go-Between in a quiet voice. I’d told him once that this was my favourite novel and he’d remembered, which was sweet of him. Whenever he took a break from reading he held my hand. He told me that I’d helped him enormously with his work and he hoped that I would recover. He said that the afternoon we’d spent together remained very special to him, that he’d never spoken about it with anyone including, he pointed out, me.
Still, it touched me that he visited. None of the other students did. I wonder what they were doing, what they were writing, who they were reading. I wonder whether any more of them have secured agents or publishers. I won’t be there to read my name in their acknowledgements, will I, Maurice? I bet you take a few of them under your wing, though. That would be just like you. You’ll identify which ones are the most likely to make it and attach yourself to them as a mentor. And they’ll love you for it.
Which brings me to my last visitor, my agent, Adele. She came to see me and cried a little before talking.
‘You were such a wonderful writer,’ she told me. ‘I think you would have been magnificent if you’d had the chance to live longer. I knew when I first read Fear that I’d found someone special, the kind of young novelist that every agent hopes to find. I only wish we’d received something more from you. You told me that you were writing in Norwich—’
I was, Adele.
‘You said you’d been working on a novel for the last two years—’
I was, Adele.
‘But it seems that you weren’t being honest with me, were you, dear? You could have told me the truth. That you were blocked. Frightened about being unable to repeat the success of Fear. Maurice told me everything. How you’d been struggling and felt that a year being around creative young people might help you. But it only made you worse.’
And you believed him, Adele?
‘I hope you don’t mind, dear, but we went through your laptop, looking for something, anything that might be salvageable. But there was nothing. Just notes for stories and all the old drafts of Fear. And a blank Word document titled NOVEL 2. I opened that file with such hope and when I saw that it was empty, that’s when Maurice told me the truth. He was very upset about it, poor man. But at least we have one novel from you, and I’m going to make sure that it stays in print for as long as possible. And, my dear, I don’t know if you can hear me or not, but I think you’d be pleased to know that Maurice himself is about to have a great success. I read a proof copy of The Tribesman last week and it’s simply magnificent. Easily the best novel I’ve read since … well, since yours, in fact. It actually has a little of you in there, I think he must have picked up on some of your style, which is a lovely epitaph.’
If it sounds like me, it’s because I wrote the fucking thing!
‘He’s dedicated it to you as well, did you know that? The first words you see after the title page: To my darling wife, Edith. Without you, this novel would never have existed. Isn’t that lovely? I know I’m not his agent – Peter Wills-Bouche is so lucky to have him on his list – but I’m going to do everything I can to see that the book is a success. It will be his success, of course, but at least it will be a testament to you. For ever.’
Things feel very different today, and I’m not sure why. There have been more nurses coming in and out, and a lot more doctors. Mum was in again earlier, crying, and this time when she left she kept telling me over and over how much she loved me and how she always would. There was a lot of talk between unfamiliar voices, and various checklists were being attended to.
And now you’ve arrived. You’re standing over me, looking down, holding my hand. I can see you, Maurice. Handsome as ever. More handsome, perhaps. Almost everyone else is leaving and now there’s just you and one doctor left and he’s asking whether you’d like a moment alone with me and you say yes.
What is it, Maurice? What do you want to tell me? That you’re sorry? That you love me? That if you could go back in time, none of this would ever have happened?
You lean down and whisper in my ear:
I’m going to be the greatest novelist of my generation.
That’s it? That’s what you wanted to say, you fucking idiot? Jesus Christ! Did you ever love me, even for a moment? You must have, once, because when we met you were the famous one and I had barely started out. There was nothing in it for you then. You must have loved me once. You must have.
You’re calling the doctor back in now and nodding at him. But why? He hasn’t asked you anything. I can’t see him, he’s disappeared to the left of the bed, where the machines are. Where everything becomes too blurry for me to focus.
I can hear switches being turned and the wheezing of an artificial breather as it starts to slow down, and that’s when I realize. You’re turning me off, aren’t you, Maurice? You’re turning me off. You’re killing me. To protect yourself and, more importantly, to protect your novel. My novel. Your novel.
I see you.
You’re reaching down and taking my
that thing at the end of my arm
holding it now
your fingers
ginfers
nifris
I can’t see you any more
there’s no light
no sound
no more words.
Interlude
The Threatened Animal
Although the phone call brought unwelcome news, it could not have arrived at a more opportune moment.
Maurice was seated behind his desk on the seventh floor of an office building next to Union Square Park, while Henrietta James, a twenty-eight-year-old writer who had tried and failed to seduce him at the New Yorker Christmas party the previous December, sat opposite, incandescent with rage.
Henrietta, who went by the name Henry Etta James in print, had first come to Maurice’s attention a little over a year before, when his then assistant, Jarrod Swanson, had turned down one of her short stories. He was well aware that submissions to Storī went through a less than rigorous screening process before they landed on his desk, but so many unsolicited manuscripts arrived each month that he simply didn’t have the time to read them all personally, even if he wanted to, which he didn’t. But this led to a singular problem: since most of the magazine’s interns, those who did the bulk of the reading, were graduates of creative-writing programmes, each one was single-minded in pursuit of his or her own publishing deal. They attended literary salons and book launches, and mixed with editors, agents and publicists, identifying their competition through a shared network of covetous hostility. In recent years, several writers who’d been discovered through the pages of Storī had seen their debuts signed up by publishing houses while a couple had even gone on to win prestigious awards, building the reputation of the quarterly magazine considerably. The pie, however, was only so big, and the interns knew that. When a manuscript arrived from someone whose talent they envied or feared, there was always the risk of their rejecting it in order to damage their rival’s chances of claiming a slice. Which meant that the stories that found their way to Maurice were not always the very best ones. But there was little he could do about that.
Occasionally, he wandered into the Trash Can – which was what he called the room in which they kept a copy of every story that had ever been submitted to the magazine – and had a look through the rejection pile, casting his eye over a few pieces there, and that was how he had discovered Henrietta’s story. A little inv
estigative work on his part revealed that Jarrod and Henrietta had been classmates at the New School, where they’d enjoyed an ill-fated romance, and he had turned down her work as revenge for her decision to break up with him on his birthday. Maurice had published the story, which had gone on to feature in that year’s Best American Short Stories anthology, and Jarrod, as far as he knew, was now working in a Foot Locker on East 86th Street.
Henrietta’s debut novel, I Am Dissatisfied with My Boyfriend, My Body and My Career, was due to be published by FSG later that year and was already being touted as a significant work, ‘Bridget Jones meets A Clockwork Orange’. A few weeks earlier, she had submitted a new story directly to Maurice, who had passed on it, a rebuff that precipitated her unscheduled appearance in his office that morning, just when he’d been hoping to relax while watching Rafael Nadal play Andy Murray in the Wimbledon semi-final.
‘Sorry to burst in unannounced,’ she said, charging in and hurling a large carpet bag that even Mary Poppins would have rejected as being unwieldy to the floor, where it landed with a considerable thump. She peeled herself from her coat, scarf and gloves, a curious combination, considering it was July and, outside, New York was melting. The room filled with an unmistakably stale scent of musty body odour. Henrietta, Maurice knew, only bathed on Saturdays, in order to help preserve the planet’s natural resources and today, unfortunately, was a Friday. ‘But I think we need to talk, don’t you?’
‘How lovely to see you,’ he lied, moving his laptop a little to the left so he could keep an eye on the match – Murray had won the first set, but Nadal was leading comfortably in the second – while listening to whatever she was here to complain about. ‘Just passing, were you?’
‘No, I came deliberately, and the journey was horrendous.’ Despite growing up in Milwaukee, Henrietta modelled her speech on Merchant Ivory period films starring Emma Thompson or Helena Bonham-Carter. ‘First, I stood in some frightful dog poo on the pavement and had to return home to change my shoes, which was a terrible bore. Then, while travelling on the 4 train, I was forced to switch carriages as a woman nearby was, quite literally, going into labour and her screams were giving me one of my headaches. Upon changing, I found myself seated next to an Indian gentleman who proposed marriage on the basis of what he called my childbearing hips.’
‘That’s nice,’ said Maurice. ‘Did you accept?’
‘Of course not.’
‘And how did he take it?’
‘No one likes rejection, Maurice. But we’ll get back to that in a minute. Anyway, he seemed to get over it quickly enough. By 28th Street, he had proposed to a young African-American man who did not take his advances with good grace and, by 23rd, to a border collie, who seemed much more interested.’
‘Excellent.’
‘I hate coming into the city. I really do.’
‘Then you should have stayed at home.’
‘No, it was important that we confront this situation face to face.’
‘And what situation is that?’ he asked.
‘Don’t play silly beggars, Maurice. You know exactly why I’m here.’
‘I assume you’ve brought something new for me to read?’
‘Ha! As if I would. After the way I’ve been treated by your magazine? Not a cat’s chance in hell!’ She leaned forward and rearranged the letter opener, stapler and hole-punch on Maurice’s desk so they were perfectly aligned. ‘I don’t give my work to people who despise me.’
‘I don’t despise you, Henrietta,’ replied Maurice. ‘Why on earth would you think such a thing?’
‘Well, you don’t respect me, that’s for sure.’
She reached into her carpet bag and shuffled around for a bit in it before removing a sheet of A4 paper folded into eighths. ‘Dear Henrietta,’ she read aloud as she unravelled it. ‘Thank you so much for allowing me to read your latest story—’
‘If I may,’ he interrupted.
‘THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALLOWING ME TO READ YOUR LATEST STORY,’ she repeated, raising her voice now, ‘a wonderfully quirky fable that illustrates just why FSG were so keen to sign you up! Unfortunately, space in Storī is rather limited at the moment and I don’t think I’ll be able to publish it, although I daresay I’ll regret that when the New Yorker snaps it up! Keep sending me your stuff, though, I can’t get enough of your particular brand of whimsy. Much love, Maurice Swift. Editor-in-chief.’
‘You’re upset,’ said Maurice.
‘Upset? Why would I be upset? It’s only “stuff”, after all. It’s not as if I pour my very lifeblood into every sentence, paragraph and chapter. Stuff! Fuck you, Maurice. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.’
‘That might have been an unfortunate choice of word,’ he admitted.
‘You think? I never would have imagined that you would treat me with such contempt. You’ve let me down, Maurice, you really have.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t take it personally,’ he replied. ‘I’ve done that to quite a few people over the years. There’s an army of them out there, both living and dead, who don’t look at me with any particular benevolence.’
‘Anyway,’ she continued with a sigh, looking around the office, which was filled with books, manuscripts and multiple back issues of Storī. Several shelves were taken up with various foreign-language editions of Two Germans, The Treehouse, The Tribesman, The Breach and The Broken Ones. ‘I wouldn’t normally do this, but since we have so much history together I thought I’d come in and offer you a second chance.’
‘A second chance?’ he asked, raising an eyebrow. ‘At what exactly?’
‘At publishing my story,’ she replied, rolling her eyes. ‘Because if you don’t want it, I’ll take it across the street and find someone who does.’
Maurice tried not to laugh. Across the street? Did she think she was a character in a David Mamet play? There was nothing across the street except a vintage-clothes store, a coffee shop that reeked of marijuana and an elderly homeless man who sang the chorus of ‘American Pie’ whenever anyone handed him money. If she wanted to take it across to any of them, then she was perfectly welcome.
‘Of course, I hate to pass up such an opportunity,’ said Maurice. ‘But I read the story several times and I just didn’t think it was the right fit for our upcoming issues. I don’t like turning people down but—’
‘And I don’t like being shitted upon from a great height!’ shouted Henrietta. ‘Particularly by someone I respect and admire.’
He frowned. Weren’t respect and admire essentially the same thing? She’d made similar blunders in the story he’d rejected. The opening line, for example, had gone:
Every evening as he took the train home from work, Jasper Martin began to feel both anxious and apprehensive.
The same thing. And there was another on page four:
Lauren glanced up towards the light, which was flickering and quivering, and wondered whether she should put off hanging herself until the connections were secure.
The same thing.
‘I don’t think I’ve shitted on you, Henrietta,’ said Maurice. ‘Not from any height, great or small. I just didn’t feel the story was right for us, that’s all. And I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can be persuaded otherwise.’
‘What was wrong with it?’
‘There was nothing wrong with it, per se,’ replied Maurice, glancing back towards the screen, where Nadal was celebrating taking the second set. ‘I suppose I just didn’t feel that it had your usual je ne sais quoi.’
‘And what is that supposed to mean?’
‘It’s French.’
‘I know it’s French. And I know what it means. I’m asking what you mean by it.’
‘Do you want the truth?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘It’s just that, usually, when I ask writers whether they want the truth, they say that they do but actually they want anything but. They want me to lavish praise on them and tell them to dust off their dinner jackets for the Nobel Pr
ize ceremony.’
‘I don’t own a dinner jacket,’ said Henrietta, narrowing her eyes. ‘Now, are you going to—’
‘I just thought the story was a little boring, that’s all,’ he said. ‘It didn’t seem to go anywhere. There were some interesting moments, of course, and your writing is as strong as ever, but the overall effect was—’
‘You’re just insulting me now,’ she said.
‘I don’t believe I am. I certainly don’t mean to.’
‘Two can play that game. I read the last issue of Storī cover to cover and, if you ask me, it was entirely pedestrian and utterly unexciting.’
Which is the same thing, thought Maurice.
‘It’s like you don’t want to take risks or chances.’
‘And now you’re insulting me,’ he replied.
‘I’m not insulting you. I’m insulting the magazine.’
‘A magazine that I founded.’
‘Why don’t you just admit that my story was too challenging for you and your readers? That you didn’t fully understand it?’
‘If I didn’t understand it, then how would I know it was too challenging?’
‘Don’t play games with me.’
‘I’m not. But your interpretation of why I said no to the story is simply incorrect. I understood it perfectly well, I’m not an idiot. I can read, even the big words. Look, it’s not a bad story, it’s just not your best, that’s all. And you wouldn’t thank me if I published something that went on to be criticized by others, particularly with your novel coming out soon. You need to keep your reputation as high as possible during these next few months. It’s critical. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about here. I’m not new to this industry and I know how easily one can turn from being flavour of the month to a sour taste in some publisher’s mouth. I’ve seen it. I’ve been it.’
‘I just feel hurt, that’s all,’ she said after a lengthy pause, softening her tone a little. ‘It’s been a very stressful time for me recently. Did you know that my grandmother died in January?’
