A Ladder to the Sky

by John Boyne

  ‘You’re really making me feel very good about myself,’ I said.

  ‘I’m not trying to upset you.’

  ‘And yet I feel upset.’

  ‘I just wondered whether, you know, you might have a problem. And, if so, whether you should do something about it.’

  I sat back in the chair and found myself, quite unexpectedly, laughing. I was aware that I was coming across as a little hysterical so it was no great surprise when he began to look at me nervously and shift uncomfortably in his seat.

  ‘Oh, Theo,’ I said, reaching across and patting his hand a few times. ‘Bless you. But of course I have a problem. Do you think that’s news to me? I drink a minimum of seven pints of beer, two double whiskies, a single malt and a glass of Baileys every day, seven days a week. Does that seem like the actions of a rational, uncomplicated, sober man to you?’

  ‘No, but …’ He frowned. ‘I mean, if you know you have a problem, then why don’t you look for help?’

  ‘Because I don’t want any.’

  ‘Everybody needs some—’

  ‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘I’m not trying to be funny, but let me get another drink first. I feel like I’m going to need it. And I’m sure you need a cigarette if you’re going to keep impersonating the Archbishop of Canterbury on the first day of Lent.’

  I stood up and he looked annoyed that I was interrupting this particular conversation to return to the bar and, a moment later, he marched past me towards the door, his cigarette pack and lighter in hand, his notepad sticking reliably out of his pocket. I watched him go and couldn’t help but laugh. There was something adorably guileless about the poor boy, I thought. He’d always been like that, of course, ever since he was a child. He’d believed in the tooth fairy a lot longer than other children.

  ‘I’ll take a whisky too,’ I told the barman when he took my usual order and when it arrived I knocked it back in one go, leaving the empty glass on the counter as I carried the beers to the table.

  ‘We’ve talked about Dash, about Edith and about The Tribesman,’ said Theo, when he returned. ‘And I think I’ve got everything I need on them. Since his name has come up, perhaps we should finally talk about Erich.’

  ‘There’s nothing I’d enjoy more,’ I said with a wide smile.

  ‘You told me that you felt badly about how you treated Dash Hardy but, of course, he doesn’t figure in your work very much. Erich Ackermann does, though. He’s where everything begins for you.’

  ‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘But it was all such a long time ago. Quite honestly, I barely think of him at all any more.’

  ‘But you must on occasion. And he’s a central part of my thesis, obviously.’

  ‘On occasion,’ I agreed. ‘What would you like to know?’

  ‘I’d like to know,’ he said, laying an unexpected stress on the verb, ‘what you feel when you look back at those days. And whether you feel that you treated him fairly?’

  ‘Well,’ I replied, taking a draught of my pint and considering this, ‘I suppose if you want the absolute truth, I can see that I didn’t treat him quite as well as I might have. I’ll admit that I cultivated his friendship from the start, but I don’t think there’s any great harm in that. Artists have been doing that since the dawn of time. And, let’s face it, you’ve cultivated mine, after all, haven’t you? To get ahead.’

  ‘Well,’ he replied, blushing a little, and it seemed as if he was about to say something to justify himself, but I didn’t let him.

  ‘Look, on the night that we met I could see how drawn he was to me. It was so obvious it was almost pitiable. Erich had shut down that part of his soul for decades after the death of Oskar Gött and, for whatever reason, I had reawoken him. He was utterly reinvigorated by my presence, as if he’d taken a deep breath after staying underwater for too long. That’s why he invited me to visit all those cities with him; it wasn’t to help him, it wasn’t to be an assistant, it was because he fancied me. And why not? I was a good-looking boy and I brought him back to life. I may have taken advantage of his good nature, but why not? I flirted with him, made sure that I remained sexually ambiguous at all times. Always a possibility but never a certainty. I led him on to the point where he was so overwhelmed with desire that I think there was literally nothing he wouldn’t have done for me, had I asked. And then, when I got everything I needed from him, I wrote Two Germans.’

  ‘And your friendship ended there?’

  ‘This might seem callous to you, Daniel,’ I said. ‘Theo, I mean. But once I had what I needed, why would I have stuck around? Are you planning a lifelong relationship with me after you complete your thesis?’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘I didn’t consider him a friend, anyway, and it’s impossible to define how he saw me. He was paying me, remember, and you don’t pay your friends to travel with you, do you? You pay an assistant. And also, other than a love of books, we had very little in common. Think about it: he was old; I was young. He wanted a lover; I didn’t. His career was almost behind him; mine was yet to begin. You could say that I actually did him a favour when I severed the umbilical cord that connected us, even if the cut did produce more blood than either of us had anticipated. No, the time had come to say goodbye. Anything else would have just made Erich look foolish. If he could only have seen that, then he might have thanked me.’

  ‘So you dropped him.’

  I shrugged. ‘If you want to put it that way, yes.’

  ‘Would it be fair to say that you took his friendship, his mentoring, and all his belief in you and simply threw it back in his face?’

  I considered this for a moment. ‘Try to look at it from my point of view,’ I said. ‘What you’re describing is a young man utterly calculating and dishonest in his actions. But was Erich honest with me? Let’s face it, if I had been two hundred pounds overweight and looked like something that had been washed in on the tides after a particularly brutal storm, do you think he would have asked me to join him for a drink that night in West Berlin? I wasn’t the only waiter working that night, you know, but I was the one he chose. It’s easy to look at me as the villain of the piece but, really, Erich’s actions weren’t entirely honourable either.’

  ‘I suppose it comes down to motivation,’ said Theo. ‘Whatever Erich did was done out of love. And confusion. And regret for a wasted life. While you were just using him. And, really, did he deserve it? An elderly man who, many decades before, while he was still a teenager, had made a single terrible mistake, one that he’d had to live with ever since. How many young men in Germany at that time did something to send people to their death? Oh, it doesn’t make it right, of course it doesn’t, but he wasn’t a monster. Just a bewildered boy who acted without thinking. He spent his entire life punishing himself for that. Did he need that extra suffering at the end?’

  I lowered my head, closed my eyes and tried to control my temper. It seemed a little rich to me that, with all the help I was giving this boy, he had the audacity to be so judgemental towards me. I looked up again, ready to say as much, but he was doing that thing again, tapping his index finger quickly against his thumb, just as Daniel had done, and I softened. I needed his forgiveness, not his condemnation.

  ‘Like I said,’ I continued quietly, ‘it’s all a long time ago. And if you don’t mind, I’d prefer not to talk about Erich any more. Sometimes it feels as if I’ve spent half of my life discussing that man and, sooner or later, it has to stop.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No, Daniel,’ I said, placing a hand flat on the table. ‘It has to stop.’

  He nodded. ‘All right.’

  The notepad reappeared and he turned to a blank page and started scribbling away, a curious smile on his face. He didn’t talk for a long time and I found myself fixated on his hands.

  ‘Do you remember when Miss Willow tried to get you to write with your right hand?’ I asked, smiling at the memory.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ he said, looking up.

&nb
sp; ‘When you were seven or eight. And Miss Willow said that it would be better if you stopped writing with your left hand. She tried to force you to write with your right and I had to go in to the head, Mrs Lane, and lodge a complaint.’

  He said nothing, shook his head, and began scribbling in his notebook again. I ordered some more drinks and drank another neat whisky at the bar, which wasn’t like me. I had my strict drinking routine and preferred not to alter it. Somehow, though, I just felt like I needed more. I wanted to fade away.

  ‘Let’s move on to something else,’ he said, when I sat back down again. He moved his beer to one side, barely glancing at it, while I took a long draught from mine. ‘I’d like to ask you about your time in New York. You wrote two books there, am I right?’

  ‘That’s right. The Breach and The Broken Ones. Will they play a big part in your thesis?’

  ‘Of course, but I’m more interested in how you developed the ideas for those books. I’ve established how you worked on the first three.’

  ‘You’re not still angry at what I told you about The Tribesman, are you?’ I asked with a sigh. ‘Really, I think you’re making a mountain out of a molehill.’

  ‘You were working for Storī at the time?’ he asked, ignoring my question.

  ‘Not working for, no. I owned Storī. I founded the magazine from scratch. I was the editor. The whole operation was under my control.’

  ‘Of course. Sorry. And what made you set it up in the first place?’

  ‘Well, when I left England I had an idea that it would be worthwhile to do something to help further the careers of new writers. I liked the idea of literary philanthropy. No one had ever helped me, after all, and—’

  ‘Except Erich.’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘And Dash.’

  ‘And Dash, that’s true.’

  ‘And Edith.’

  ‘Yes, of course. You see, I wanted the magazine to become a place where writers longed to see their work in print, which is why I only published four editions a year, each with a dozen or so stories. It kept the quality very high. To be published in Storī, I felt, should be an honour. An aspiration. Like being published in the New Yorker.’

  ‘I’ve gone through all the old issues.’

  ‘Of the New Yorker?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ he said, rolling his eyes, and I sat back, astonished that he could behave so disrespectfully towards me. Perhaps he’d had too much to drink. ‘Of Storī.’

  ‘Oh, of course. What, all of them?’

  ‘Yes. It’s important for my thesis to identify where your tastes lay.’

  ‘You’re very diligent. You really do want to be a biographer, don’t you?’

  ‘There’s some pretty brilliant writing in there. Some really wonderful work.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And you discovered some great talents. Henry Etta James, for one.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said, laughing a little. ‘Not that she ever gives me any credit for launching her career. You know, when she won the Pulitzer for I Am Dissatisfied with My Boyfriend, My Body and My Career, I sent her a floral bouquet and she didn’t even have the good manners to thank me. She’s held a grudge against me for a ridiculously long time.’

  ‘Over that story you refused to publish?’

  I stared at him in astonishment.

  ‘How on earth do you know about that?’ I asked, trying to control the slight quiver in my voice.

  ‘She told me.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘Henry Etta.’

  ‘Henrietta James?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I couldn’t have been more surprised if he had pulled his face away to reveal hers lying beneath. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘You’ll have to explain. Are you … How on earth do you know Henrietta? She can’t be a friend of yours, surely?’

  ‘Oh no,’ he replied. ‘We’re not friends as such. I wouldn’t even presume. But I went to New York earlier in the year, while I was doing some research for my thesis. I thought it was important to get some idea of where Storī fitted into your life. You were there for a long time, after all.’

  ‘All right,’ I said doubtfully. ‘But how on earth did you find yourself crossing paths with her?’

  ‘I contacted a few of the writers who had begun their careers by being published in your magazine. It wasn’t difficult; they’re all on social media. Most of them didn’t reply, but she did. She was very generous with her time, actually. She took me out for cocktails at the Russian Tea Rooms, which was pretty exciting. She even introduced me to her editor.’

  ‘Did she indeed?’ I asked, raising an eyebrow in surprise. ‘That was good of her.’

  ‘She was very encouraging.’

  ‘And I suppose she had nothing but bad things to say about me?’

  ‘Not at all. She was very complimentary. She did say that you’d had a small dispute about a story that the Atlantic had gone on to publish—’

  ‘She’d completely rewritten it by then,’ I protested. ‘It wasn’t even remotely the same story that she gave me.’

  ‘She wasn’t negative, Maurice,’ he insisted. ‘Settle down.’

  ‘Please don’t …’ I breathed in through my nose again, trying to control my temper. ‘Please don’t tell me to settle down, all right?’

  ‘Okay. But I promise she wasn’t rude about you in any way.’

  ‘Well, all right,’ I said, feeling disgruntled anyway.

  ‘I’m sorry if I’ve upset you.’

  ‘Oh, please,’ I said, waving away his concern. ‘I have about as much interest in Henrietta’s opinion of me as I do the Queen’s.’

  ‘Would you like another drink? You look like you could use one.’

  ‘But you’ve barely touched yours,’ I said, seeing how his glass was still three-quarters full while mine was almost empty. ‘Have I been drinking quickly or are you drinking slowly?’

  ‘Does it matter? Anyway, I’ll get you one if you like.’

  ‘Yes, please,’ I said, and he made his way to the bar. It was hard not to feel a little under siege but, when I analysed everything he’d said so far, there seemed no reason for me to feel so.

  ‘She got married last year,’ he said when he returned, placing a fresh pint on the table for me, and I took a long draught from it. It irritated me to see that he’d got himself a glass of water. I didn’t like drinking alone any more.

  ‘Who did?’ I asked.

  ‘Henrietta.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, not caring very much. ‘Good for her.’

  ‘I think you know her husband.’

  ‘He’s not another writer, is he?’ I asked, rolling my eyes. ‘What is it with these New Yorkers and their—’

  ‘No, an editor, actually,’ said Theo. ‘Jarrod Swanson.’

  I thought about it, but the name meant nothing to me. ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t ring a bell.’

  ‘He was an assistant at Storī for a time. He was your assistant.’

  ‘Jarrod Swanson,’ I repeated, racking my memory to recall him and, eventually, I remembered. Jarrod had been classmates with Henrietta at the New School but they’d broken up and, angry with her, he’d rejected one of her stories, the very story that I discovered and went on to publish as her first work. So they’d got back together in the end? And now they were married! Well, good for them, I supposed. It was no skin off my nose.

  ‘Jarrod is actually back working at Storī these days,’ said Theo. ‘He’s no longer interested in being a writer, though. He says he got to the point where he realized that he just wasn’t good enough and that his calling lay in working with other writers. He has your old job there. Editor. He’s making a go of it too. I’m surprised you didn’t know any of this.’

  I shrugged. ‘I haven’t paid any attention to the magazine since I sold it,’ I said. ‘I knew it was still in existence, of course, but other than that …’ I turned away and checked my watch. The afternoon was turning into a c
ross-examination and I wasn’t enjoying it.

  ‘I’m going to make it a central chapter in my thesis,’ said Theo. ‘I’m calling it Storītime.’

  ‘How inventive.’

  ‘Yes, I thought so. And, if you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you about something I discovered while I was over there.’

  ‘Fire away,’ I said. ‘I get the sense that our foreplay is over at last and, finally, you’re about to fuck me.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ he said, sitting back but looking utterly nonplussed by my choice of words.

  ‘Just ask what you want to ask,’ I said with a sigh. ‘I can see you’re itching to do so.’

  ‘All right then,’ he said, flicking through his notes. ‘The thing is, when Jarrod heard that you were to be the subject of my thesis, he asked whether I’d like to have a look through the Storī archives.’

  ‘I sincerely hope that you found more interesting things to do in New York than read through all of them.’

  ‘Actually, I jumped at the opportunity. The magazine’s been going a long time now. I thought there was a chance that I might stumble across a lost story by someone who went on to be famous.’

  ‘Famous!’ I said, bursting out laughing. ‘These are writers we’re talking about, Daniel, not movie stars.’

  ‘Maurice, you keep—’

  ‘I keep what?’

  He shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘Anyway, of course I couldn’t possibly have read everything there. There are thousands of stories in that room.’

  ‘I think you’d abandon reading for ever if you even tried.’

  ‘So instead I decided to focus my attention on two particular periods.’

  ‘Oh yes? Which ones?’

  ‘Spring 2009 and winter 2013.’

  ‘All right,’ I said, thinking back, trying to remember what was happening in my life then. ‘You were, what, about six years old in 2009 and ten years old in 2013?’

  ‘No, I would have been …’ He seemed surprised by what I had said. ‘I was born in 1996 so I would have been thirteen and then seventeen.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘My mistake. So what was so special about those particular periods? Are you going to tell me or do I have to guess?’