by John Boyne
“You have Bastiaan to thank for that,” I told him, taking a sip from my beer and feeling the ache that built inside me whenever I recalled happy times between the two of us, times that seemed so long ago now. He had been dead for fourteen years by now; it was hard to believe it. “I thought he was crazy when he suggested it.”
“But still, you said yes.”
“He persuaded me.”
“I’m glad he did. I don’t know what would have become of me if he hadn’t.”
“Don’t underestimate your own strength,” I told him. “I think you would have been fine in the end.”
“Maybe,” he said.
“I wish he was here,” I said after a pause.
“I do too,” said Ignac. “The world is a fucked-up place.”
“It is.”
“Don’t you ever miss having someone in your life, though?” he asked.
“Of course I do.”
“No, I don’t mean Bastiaan. I mean someone else.”
I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I’m part of that generation of gay men who were lucky if they met someone once. I don’t have any interest in starting something new. For me, it was Bastiaan or no one.”
“Not even Julian?”
“Julian was different,” I said. “Julian was always an impossibility. But Bastiaan was reality. Bastiaan was the love of my life, not Julian. Julian was just an obsession, although I did love him and I still miss him. We had some resolution at the end but not enough.” I shook my head and sighed. “Honestly, Ignac, I look back at my life and I don’t understand very much of it. It seems like it would have been so simple now to have been honest with everyone, especially Julian. But it didn’t feel like that at the time. Everything was different then, of course.”
“Liam says that Julian felt the same way. That he didn’t know why you didn’t tell him how you felt when you were teenagers.”
I turned to him in surprise. “You’ve talked to Liam about us?” I asked.
“The subject has come up,” he said carefully. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“No,” I said. “I suppose not. I’m glad you two are friends.”
“Of course we’re friends,” he said. “He’s my brother.”
“The two things don’t always follow.”
“They do in our case.”
“Well, I’m glad,” I said. Liam was, in fact, godfather to Ignac and Rebecca’s first set of twins, but there was a part of me that sometimes felt envious of their relationship. They were the older and younger brother that both had always sought, connected by a father of sorts who had been there for one and not for the other.
“And if someone showed up now?” he asked.
“Someone…?”
“Someone to love.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe? Probably not.”
“OK.”
“Can I ask you something?” I said, ready to broach a subject that we had never, in more than twenty years, discussed.
“Of course.”
“It’s just because we’re here,” I said. “In Slovenia. And it makes me realize that we’ve never talked about Amsterdam, have we? Not about the city. But about what happened there.”
“No,” he said. “No, we haven’t.”
“Sometimes I think there’s something wrong with me,” I said, lowering my voice even though there was no one sitting outside to overhear us. “Because I feel no remorse at all. No guilt.”
“Why would you?”
“Because I killed a man.”
“You didn’t kill him,” he said, shaking his head. “Jack Smoot did.”
“No, we all did it,” I said. “We were all there. And I was a part of it as much as anyone.”
“My father got everything that was coming to him,” insisted Ignac. “If Jack Smoot hadn’t stabbed him, then God only knows what would have happened. Remember, I knew him. You didn’t. He would have never let me go. Never.”
“I know that,” I said. “And I don’t regret any of it.”
“Do you think about it a lot?”
“Not a lot, no. But sometimes. Why, don’t you?”
“No, never.”
“OK.”
“I’m not sorry, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I’m not sorry either,” I said. “He’d never have left you in peace, that much was obvious. But I must admit, I often wondered what Smoot did with the body. I’ve spent twenty years wondering whether the police might catch up with us.”
“They won’t. The body is long gone.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I just am.”
I looked across at him in surprise. “Do you know what happened to it?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Smoot told me.”
“I didn’t realize you were still in touch,” I said.
“Only occasionally.”
“I was always nervous about contacting him. I thought I should keep as much distance between us as possible just in case. But as it happens I heard from him after Bastiaan died. He wrote me a letter. I always wondered how he knew. I thought perhaps Arjan or Edda had come into the bar and told him.”
“And did you write back?”
“I did,” I said. “But that was the end of it. Maybe I should write again sometime. Assuming he’s still alive.”
“Oh he’s still alive all right,” said Ignac. “I saw him the last time that I was in Amsterdam.”
“You went to MacIntyre’s?” I asked in surprise.
“Of course I did. I go whenever I’m there, which is pretty often, because my Dutch publisher brings me over for every book. Nothing’s changed. He’s older, of course. But the bar is still making money. And he seems happy enough. The last time I was there I even met the woman from the photograph.”
“What photograph?”
“Remember the picture on the wall next to your favorite seat? Where you and Bastiaan always used to sit?”
“The one of Smoot and his boyfriend from all those years ago?”
“Yes, but there was a young woman standing next to them, half cut off by the frame.”
“Oh yes,” I said, recalling it. “It was taken on Chatham Street.”
“We were supposed to meet her that night, remember? She was on holiday in Amsterdam. Turns out that she helped dispose of the body. So we have her to thank too.”
I thought about it, recalling Smoot putting the body in the trunk of a rental car before stepping into the passenger seat next to a woman and driving away. His visitor from Dublin. His old friend. The woman who’d saved his life when his lover was killed.
“And did you talk about it?” I asked, hoping that they hadn’t. Years might have gone by but I still thought it was foolish to discuss the events of that night with strangers.
“No,” he said. “Not a word. Smoot told me later, that’s all.”
“So what did he do?” I asked again. “How did he get rid of it?”
He smiled and shook his head. “Like I said. You don’t want to know.”
“I do.”
He sighed and shrugged his shoulders. “All right,” he said. “You remember how the people of Amsterdam, during the seventeenth century, would tie millstones around the necks of convicted homosexuals before throwing them into the canals and leaving them to drown?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s what he did. He would have sunk right to the bottom and never resurfaced.”
“Jesus,” I said, feeling a shiver run through me. “I don’t know what to say.”
“It feels like justice to me. It feels like—”
He stopped suddenly in mid speech and I watched as his face grew a little pale in the afternoon sunlight. Following the direction of his eyes, I noticed an elderly woman making her way along the road, dragging a shopping trolley behind her, followed by a dark-gray dog of no specific breed. The woman was so small, with a face so deeply lined that a portr
ait photographer would have had a field day with her. Ignac put his glass down on the table beside him and when she reached the bar she stopped by the side door and called out something in a language I didn’t understand. A moment later, the waiter came out and handed her a glass of beer, placing a bowl of water on the ground for the dog, and as she sat down, she looked around and her eyes landed on us for a moment before she turned away and gave a deep sigh, as if the weight of the world was on her shoulders.
“The famous writer,” she said, her English underpinned with a thick Slovene accent.
“I suppose so,” said Ignac.
“I saw your picture in the newspaper. I wondered when you’d show up here.”
Ignac said nothing but the expression on his face was one that I had never seen before, a mixture of distress, contempt and fear.
“And who are you?” she asked, leaning over to look me up and down derisively.
“I’m his father,” I said, an answer that I had given people before when it seemed easier than the technical truth.
“You’re not his father,” she said, shaking her head, and when she laughed at my presumption I could see how many teeth were missing from her mouth. “Why would you say that?”
“His adoptive father then,” I said, a phrase I never used in relation to Ignac, whom I thought of as my son, more so than I did even my own son.
“You’re not his father,” she repeated.
“And how would you know that?” I asked irritably.
“Because his father was my son. And I would know my own son if he was seated next to me.”
Ignac closed his eyes and I could see his hands trembling as he reached for his drink. I looked back and forth between the pair and although there was no family resemblance that I could decipher I assumed from Ignac’s lack of protest that she was telling the truth.
“You had a dog just like him when I was a boy,” he said, nodding toward the mutt who was lying on the ground now, having a snooze.
“It’s his pup,” she said. “Or his pup’s pup. I can’t remember anymore.”
“Ignac,” I said. “Do you want me to leave you alone? If you want to talk.”
“No,” he said quickly, turning to me with a panicked look on his face. How strange, I thought; he’s in his mid thirties, married with four children, a successful man, and yet he’s still frightened to be left alone with this old woman.
“I’ll stay then,” I said quietly.
“So you took him on?” said the woman, looking at me as she drank her beer.
“I did,” I said.
“Poor you.”
“I’m glad I did.”
“But he’s so disgusting,” she said, spitting on the ground. “So dirty.”
Ignac turned and glared at her and she looked back at him, reaching out a hand to touch his face, but he pulled away, as if she was holding a flame to his skin.
“All that money and he never sends a penny to his grandmother,” she said now, putting her head in her hands and beginning to cry so suddenly that it seemed to be a completely fake and futile gesture.
“The grandmother who sent him away, you mean?” I asked.
Ignac shook his head and reached into his back pocket, removed his wallet and emptied it of all its notes—about twenty or thirty thousand tolars—before handing them across. She snatched the cash from him as if it was her right and secreted the bundle beneath her coat.
“All that money,” she said. “And this is all I get.”
And with that she stood up, the dog leaped immediately to his feet, and she continued on her way, dragging the shopping trolley behind her, my eyes on her all the way as Ignac looked in the opposite direction.
“Well, that was unexpected,” I said finally. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” he said.
“Did you know you’d run into her?”
“I thought I might. She’s a woman of routine. She passes by here every day. She always did anyway.” He paused for a moment. “I never told you why I left Slovenia, did I?” he asked.
“You said that after your mother died, your grandmother didn’t want to look after you.”
“That was only partly true. My grandmother kept me with her for a few months.”
“So why didn’t you stay?”
“Because she was just like my father. She wanted to make money off me.”
“How?”
“The same way. There were a lot of men here, bored of their wives and looking for something different. My grandmother found out. She walked in on me with one of them one afternoon. I was just a kid at the time, and when she saw what was going on she closed the door and went back to the kitchen, banging pots and pans around, and that was the extent of her anger. That’s what she did to save me. Afterward, she whipped me and told me that I was disgusting, a worthless piece of shit. But maybe she saw what an asset I could be. I was a good-looking boy. I was pretty. And she told me that if I was going to let men do that to me, then she would be in charge of it from then on. And the money would be hers.”
“Jesus,” I said, putting my glass down.
“It wasn’t just me. There were others too. One of my friends from school, she rented him out too, but he ran away and drowned himself in the Drava. His body was brought back and at the funeral all the men who had fucked us sat in the church and wept for his lost soul, making their way to the front row at the end of the service to offer their sympathies to his mother as if they held no responsibility for any of it. It wasn’t long after that that I decided to run away too, only I knew I was not going to throw myself in the river. Instead, I stole enough money for a train ticket. It got me as far as Prague and from there I did the only thing I knew how to do in order to survive. But at least then the money was mine. After a while, I moved on to Amsterdam. I wasn’t even planning on stopping there. I had no ultimate destination in mind. But I knew my father lived in the city and somehow I thought that he might take care of me. That he’d turn my life around. But he was no different from my grandmother. Then all I wanted was to keep moving, to keep traveling, to get as far away from Maribor as I could. And I did in the end. I left it all behind. And look at me now. That’s all thanks to you and Bastiaan.”
We sat there for a long time, saying nothing, drinking, and finally we stood up and made our way back to Ljubljana and the plane for Dublin.
The Planes
Back in Dublin a month later, a Fianna Fáil TD approached me in the tearoom at the Dáil one afternoon while I was eating lunch. A rather inconsequential public servant, she had never spoken to me before and took me by surprise, sitting down with a wide smile on her face as if we were old friends and placing her pager on the table, glancing at it occasionally in the desperate hope that it might buzz and make her feel important.
“How are you, Cecil?” she asked.
“It’s Cyril,” I said.
“I thought your name was Cecil?”
“No,” I said.
“You’re not just being difficult, are you?”
“I can show you my ID badge if you like.”
“No, you’re all right. I believe you,” she said, waving my offer away. “Cyril then, if you prefer. What’s that you’re reading?”
I turned the book over to reveal a copy of Colm Toibín’s The Story of the Night. I’d owned it for years but had never got around to reading it until now.
“Now, I haven’t read that one,” she said, picking it up and reading the back. “Is it any good?”
“It is,” I said.
“Should I read it?”
“Well, that’s up to you, really.”
“Maybe I’ll give it a go. Have you ever read Jeffrey Archer?”
“I haven’t,” I admitted.
“Oh, he’s wonderful,” she said. “He tells a story, and that’s what I like. Does this fella tell a story? He doesn’t spend twenty pages describing the color of the sky?”
“He hasn’t so far.”
“Good. Jeffrey A
rcher never talks about the color of the sky and I like that in a writer. I’d say Jeffrey Archer has never even looked up at the sky in his entire life.”
“Especially now that he’s in prison,” I suggested.
“The sky is blue,” she declared. “And there it is.”
“Well, it’s not always blue,” I said.
“It is,” she said. “Don’t be silly.”
“It’s not blue at night.”
“Stop it now.”
“All right,” I said. I was beginning to think that she thought I was someone else entirely: one of her junior party colleagues perhaps. If she started to talk about votes or internal coups, I’d have to set her straight.
“Now, Cyril,” she said. “Put the book down like a good man while I’m talking to you. I’m glad I caught up with you. I have good news for you: this is your lucky day.”
“It is?” I said. “How so?”
“Would you like me to change your life for the better?”
I sat back and folded my arms, wondering whether she was going to ask whether I had accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior.
“My life isn’t all that bad as it is,” I said.
“But it could be better, couldn’t it? All our lives could be better. Mine could be better. I could be less of a workaholic than I am! I could care less about my constituents!”
“I suppose my hair could stop receding,” I told her. “That’d be something. And I never used to need reading glasses until a couple of years ago.”
“I can’t do anything about either of those things. Have you spoken to the Minister for Health?”
“No,” I said. “I was only joking, to be honest.”
“Well, that’s more his department than mine. No, I’m thinking about something a bit more intimate.”
And Oh Christ, I thought. She’s making a pass at me.
“When you say intimate,” I said, “I hope you don’t mean—”
“Hold on there now, like a good man,” she said, turning around and looking for one of the waitresses. “I’m only gasping.” When no one appeared immediately, she started clicking her fingers in the air and I looked around as the TDs from different parties stared at us in contempt.
