A Ladder to the Sky

by John Boyne

  After Daniel’s death, there had, quite naturally, been an out-pouring of sympathy towards me within the publishing industry, but it hadn’t provoked quite the interest in my work that I had hoped. It was something that my editor had the gall to bring up when he rejected the book I wrote immediately after the accident.

  ‘Considering everything that you’ve been through, Maurice,’ he told me that day as we sat in his office, ‘there’s nothing I’d like more than to publish a new novel by you. And certainly, from a publicity standpoint – well, I hope you don’t take this the wrong way but there is an enormous amount of goodwill out there towards you and the media would fall over itself to interview you. But it has to be with the right book and this … well, I hate to say it but this just isn’t it. It’s well written, of course, but the story …’

  I could feel the fury building inside me as I recalled that afternoon, the suppression of my pitiless ambition, and returned to Theo’s letter one final time, smiling to myself as I read it.

  I opened my laptop and began to type, taking great care with my reply. Indeed, it could be said that I worked harder on this one sentence than I had on anything in years, both in terms of the words that I used and the words that I didn’t.

  Dear Theo [ I wrote],

  I would be happy to meet you on Tuesday 8 May at 3 p.m. in the Queen’s Head, Denman Street.

  Yours,

  Maurice Swift

  As I went to bed that night, I tried not to think about my aspiring biographer or my lost son, but they both lingered in my thoughts, two sides of a single coin that could be thrown in the air and land on either side, and I found my emotions torn between excitement and grief, that terrible agony within my soul that lingered regardless of whether I was awake or asleep, sober or drunk, writing or not writing. And thinking of Daniel, I asked myself whether he would approve of what I was about to do but insisted to myself that he would, despite his irritating and adolescent belief in moral absolutes. For he had loved me and I had been a good if imperfect father, almost to the end. What else would he want for me than that I be happy? Otherwise, what had it all been for?

  2. The Queen’s Head, Denman Street

  The Queen’s Head has always been my favourite of my weekly pubs. I like the dark wood panelling, the ornate chandelier, the mirrors that have reflected the lives of its patrons for so long. It was the perfect place for Theo and me to have our first encounter and, eight days after receiving his letter and having received a positive reply to my own, I sat within its walls, eagerly anticipating the start of the next stage of my writing life.

  I left home early that day, wanting to steady myself with a couple of drinks before he arrived. I’d spent much of the last week thinking about the book I would soon begin and felt a sense of excitement that I’d only experienced twice before in my life. The first was on that afternoon in Rome many years earlier when that fool, Erich Ackermann, had begun to tell me the story of his one-sided love affair with the unfortunate Oskar Gött. I knew that there was a story there, if only I could figure out how to drag it from his terrified memory. Ultimately, it hadn’t proved that difficult. All I had to do was smile, stretch back in my seat a few times so he could catch a glimpse of my flat, muscular stomach, and the ridiculous old queer was putty in my hands. Not my finest moment, I know, but it hardly compares in malevolence to the things that he had done.

  The second occasion was on that rainy afternoon in Norwich when, out of sheer boredom, I switched on Edith’s computer and opened the file marked ‘BOOK 2’ and began to read the document contained within, sensing immediately that she’d written something extraordinary. It was a novel worthy of me, I knew, not of her. She didn’t care for glory or immortality, which is just as well, as neither was to be her destiny. I remember the horror I felt when she suggested that we stay in Norwich after the publication of her second novel rather than returning to London and re-entering the literary world there. It seemed bizarre to me that she would even suggest such a thing. A strange woman, in retrospect. Still, one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, I suppose. She had many fine qualities, but ambition wasn’t one of them.

  Nothing since then, not even the novels I’d cobbled together from rejected work at Storī, had sparked my interest in the same way until the arrival of Theo Field’s letter. All I needed was for him to write about me, to finish his thesis, publish his book, and I would have breathing room for a few more years until I found a story to tell.

  He arrived at three o’clock precisely and I wondered whether he’d been pacing up and down the street outside anxiously until his watch struck the hour, not wanting to arrive too early. I’d had these sorts of encounters with young aspirants before, each of whom had their eye on the main chance and didn’t want to say or do anything that might destroy their opportunity.

  As soon as I saw him, however – and it was obvious that it was him by his age and the manner in which he looked around the bar before locating me – it was I who felt disconcerted for, to my surprise and alarm, he bore a striking resemblance to Daniel. The same thick blond hair, although his was quite clearly dyed, and the same frameless glasses. Pale skin that looked as if it would bruise easily. Good-looking, certainly. Yes, he was seven or eight years older than my son had been when he died but it was as if I were looking at the boy that Daniel might have become if he hadn’t been such a meddler. As he made his way over to my table, it was all that I could do to drag myself back to the present moment and away from a past that I preferred not to think about.

  ‘Mr Swift,’ he said, standing before me and extending a hand. ‘I’m Theo. Theo Field.’

  I stood up and greeted him uneasily. He wore a ring on the fourth finger of his right hand, a thin silver band, an affectation that my son had taken to as well during the last months of his life. He’d bought it at a street market and, although I thought it looked ridiculous on a boy of his age, I took it as a sign of his incipient development from child to teenager and would never have mocked his first attempt at individuality. After all, I prided myself on being an indulgent father.

  ‘Theo,’ I said, trying to collect my thoughts. ‘Of course. It’s nice to meet you. And please, there’s no need for such formality. Call me Maurice.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he replied, sitting down. ‘It’s very generous of you to make the time for me. I really appreciate it.’

  He ordered the same as me, a pint of lager, and I made my way across the room, where, as I waited for the drinks to be poured, I had an opportunity to collect my thoughts. It was stupid, I told myself, to feel so unsettled. After all, his was a standard look among boys his age and, if he put me in mind of my dead son, then perhaps that would help to build a connection between us. Maybe, at the right moment, I would even tell him.

  ‘Cheers,’ I said, as I sat back down and we clinked glasses.

  ‘I can’t believe I’m sitting having a beer with Maurice Swift,’ he replied, shaking his head and smiling.

  ‘I’m just surprised that someone as young as you even knows who I am,’ I said. ‘Or that you’d recognize me. I’ve kept a fairly low profile in recent years.’

  ‘Of course I’d recognize you,’ he replied. ‘I’m a reader. A voracious reader. I always have been.’

  ‘Very few people are.’

  ‘Very few people are interested in art,’ he replied, triggering a memory in me, an almost forgotten conversation from many years before. I had said something like that to Erich once, hadn’t I? Or he had said it to me. The past had begun to grow a little muddled with age and it wasn’t always easy to separate the voices across the years.

  ‘That’s true,’ I told him, drawing the years back. ‘But the lack of an audience should never be a deterrent to the artist.’

  ‘Books have been my passion since I was a kid. My father’s uncle used to write a little and my dad has always worked in publishing. I suppose it must be in the blood somewhere.’

  ‘Yes, you mentioned him in your letter,’ I said. ‘Random Hous
e, was it? He’s an editor there?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Fiction or non-fiction?’

  ‘Fiction.’

  I smiled. Perfect.

  ‘That’s probably why I wanted to study English at university. I discovered your books when I was only thirteen or fourteen and they made a huge impression on me.’

  ‘That’s quite young to read my work,’ I said.

  ‘Well, I grew out of children’s books very early,’ he replied. ‘I was reading Dickens at ten. The orphan books, mostly.’

  ‘Any particular reason?’ I asked.

  ‘No, I had a very happy childhood. I just enjoyed books about children on their own in the world. I still do.’

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘And are you enjoying your course?’

  ‘Very much,’ he replied enthusiastically. ‘I like exploring the lives of writers. Trying to make connections between their work and what was going on in the world at the time. Sometimes there’s very little but more often than not there’s an enormous amount, whether or not they intend there to be. It’s one of the things that’s always fascinated me about your novels.’

  ‘How so?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, you’re not present at all in Two Germans but then, of course, that’s pretty much based on Erich Ackermann and—’

  ‘Only partly,’ I said, the old wound reopening a little. I hated it when people looked at my debut in such basic terms. I had written it, after all. Every word on every page was mine. ‘I simply took what he told me and—’

  ‘No, I know that,’ he replied, interrupting me. ‘But it takes a lot of skill to take a person’s story and build something from it. What I mean is that there’s nothing in there that reflects your life at all, only his. There is in The Treehouse, I think, but not in The Tribesman. Or either of the subsequent novels.’

  ‘I’d agree with that,’ I said, impressed by how perceptive he was. After all, The Treehouse was the only novel I’d published that was essentially mine so it made sense that he could see something of the personal in there.

  ‘And then, with The Breach and The Broken Ones—’

  ‘You’re writing a thesis?’ I asked, interrupting him. ‘On me? Is that right?’

  ‘That’s the plan,’ he said, nodding.

  ‘I’ve been working on it for a while now. Analysing each of the novels and trying to build connections between them.’

  ‘I’m flattered,’ I said. ‘I didn’t think I’d be on the curriculum at universities quite yet.’

  ‘Well, you’re not,’ he said, a little sharply, I thought. ‘It’s an area of private study.’

  ‘Oh,’ I replied, amused by my own egotism. ‘I don’t suppose anyone of my generation is yet.’

  ‘One or two,’ he said.

  I paused and took a long drink of my beer. ‘Oh yes?’ I asked. ‘Who?’

  He named a few people, most of whom weren’t that much older or younger than me. Douglas Sherman, who had beaten me to The Prize on the year that The Tribesman was shortlisted, was mentioned and I felt a slight kick at the pit of my stomach.

  ‘I know her,’ I said, when he mentioned one novelist I particularly despised for making a terrific career over the last decade or so, writing some really interesting novels. ‘Or I knew her, at least.’

  ‘Really?’ he said, his eyes opening wide.

  ‘Yes, we’ve read together many times. On the festival circuit, you know.’ Not true. We had read together only once but for some reason I felt an inexplicable desire to impress the boy.

  ‘What’s she like?’

  ‘Oh, she’s awful,’ I said, inventing a story on the spot about how she had been rude to some young volunteers at a festival and left one boy, barely out of short pants, in tears after he brought her red wine instead of white.

  ‘How disappointing,’ said Theo. ‘I used to really like her work.’

  ‘Well, you still can,’ I pointed out, uncertain why I felt such a need to denigrate a writer who had never said or done anything unkind to me. ‘Just because she’s not a very nice person doesn’t negate the value of her books.’

  ‘Maybe,’ he said, pulling a face. ‘But when I hear stories like that they just make me never want to read the person again. You shouldn’t meet your heroes, should you? Not that I’ve met her, but you know what I mean. They’ll always let you down.’

  ‘I hope I won’t,’ I said. ‘And student life suits you?’

  ‘It does for now,’ he said, nodding as he drank his beer. ‘I like studying. I like the discussions we have. And I get on pretty well with the others on my course.’

  ‘Do they all want to be writers?’ I asked.

  ‘Some do,’ he told me. ‘Some are just filling in a few years until they can figure out what to do with their lives.’

  ‘And you?’ I asked. ‘I know you said that you don’t want to be a novelist, but I suppose I’m a little sceptical.’

  ‘I really don’t,’ he said. ‘I never have. I love fiction but I don’t have the sort of brain that could create my own. I mean, I can write pretty well, I think. But only essays and things like that. Non-fiction. I could never write a short story or a novel. I wouldn’t be able to think up a plot, you know? It’s just not a gift that I’ve been given.’

  ‘Well, there are ways around that, of course,’ I said quietly, looking around as the girl behind the bar dropped a glass and it smashed on the floor, leading to the inevitable jeers and rounds of applause from those seated nearby.

  ‘I mean, it would be great to be a writer,’ he continued, ignoring my comment, and I was surprised that he hadn’t looked towards the bar too. I always thought it was a Pavlovian response to turn one’s head at a loud noise, but no, he seemed more interested in our conversation than in what was going on around him. ‘But if you’ve got no imagination, then there’s no point even trying, is there? And, quite honestly, I’ve never had much of an imagination.’

  ‘Many modern novels are plotless,’ I told him, not entirely sure as I said this that it was actually the case. ‘In fact, I was in a bookshop recently where I saw a shelf-talker that referred to “Plotless Fiction”.’

  ‘That sort of thing doesn’t interest me,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t like experimentation?’

  ‘I suppose I feel that those books don’t age very well,’ he said, considering it. ‘What feels quirky or unusual today can often seem ridiculous, even embarrassing, a few years later. Endless streams of consciousness. Pages and pages of nonsense designed to fool people into thinking you’re some sort of genius because you don’t put words in their proper order or spell them correctly. It’s just not for me. I don’t mind admitting that I like traditional novel-writing. You know, with a plot. And characters. And good writing.’

  ‘But biography is where you hope to make your career?’

  ‘It is,’ he replied, grinning. He had a nice smile. Perfectly even white teeth. I imagined there were many girls, and boys, who would like to kiss him.

  ‘What age are you, anyway?’ I asked.

  ‘Twenty,’ he said, and then, without asking whether I wanted another, he stood up, went to the bar, purchased two more pints and brought them back to the table. I finished my first quickly and started on the second. It tasted wonderful. My body was waking up as the alcohol entered my bloodstream, a glorious sense of well-being that always kicks in around then.

  ‘When I was about your age,’ I told him, leaning forward, nearer to him, and no matter how close I got I noticed that he didn’t pull back, ‘there were only two things that I wanted out of life. First, to be a published novelist and, second, to be a father. And, of course, I had to leave home if it was ever going to happen. My parents had no interest in books at all. There was no encouragement there, nothing to excite my imagination.’

  ‘And where did you go?’ he asked, pulling a notebook from his bag and starting to scribble down some notes. So, you’ve begun, I thought, smiling to myself. Well, so have I.


  ‘Germany,’ I said. ‘Berlin, to be precise. Well, it was still called West Berlin at the time. This was before the wall came down, of course. I got a job as a waiter at the Savoy Hotel on the Fasanenstraße. And when I wasn’t working, I was writing.’

  ‘Is that where you wrote Two Germans?’ he asked.

  ‘Some of it,’ I said. ‘It’s certainly where the novel had its genesis.’

  ‘It’s such an interesting book.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘The love story is heartbreaking. Did someone break your heart when you were that age? Is that where the story came from?’

  ‘No one has ever broken my heart,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘No one ever could. You must remember, this is what a writer does. Uses his or her imagination. Tries to understand how it feels to be alive in a moment that never existed with a person who never lived, saying words that were never spoken aloud.’

  ‘Well, you did it with such empathy,’ he said. ‘The funny thing is, and maybe this is wrong of me, but it always left me feeling a little sorry for Erich Ackermann.’

  ‘Really?’ I asked. ‘Why so?’

  ‘Because he was just a boy,’ he replied. ‘And in love for the first time. Not to mention in love with a guy, which only complicated matters. Particularly back then. And no one knew at that time what the Nazis would become. That’s what makes the book so interesting, though. Trying to decide whether he was evil or just young and confused.’

  I nodded and tried not to look too bored. I’d spent so much of my life talking about Two Germans that I was justifiably tired of it. It didn’t even seem like something that had come from my pen any more. After publication, it had taken on its own life so quickly. I remained proud of the book, of course, but it seemed to exist at a certain distance from me these days. I barely recognized myself in it any more, even though it had given me the life I’d always wanted.