by John Boyne
“Yes,” he said, leaning in and peering at it. “What about it?”
“Look behind them,” I told him. “I used to live in that building in the mid sixties. It’s on Chatham Street. You can just about see my bedroom window up there if you squint.”
Bastiaan and Ignac looked closer at it but neither seemed particularly impressed.
“Well, I thought it was interesting,” I said, sitting back in my seat. “All this time that I’ve been sitting here looking at it and I never even noticed.” Ignac was still standing there and I looked up at him. “What?” I said.
“Aren’t you going to tip your waiter?” he asked.
“How about we tip you by not evicting you?” said Bastiaan, and he snorted as Ignac made his way back behind the bar and started to wipe down the counter. I watched him for a few moments before turning to my food. The bad bleach job was gone, he’d shaved his hair down to a buzz-cut and put on a little weight. All told, he looked a lot healthier than he had when we’d taken him in.
“So how long have you wanted to be a father?” I asked, and Bastiaan looked across at me in surprise.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, all the effort you’ve put in with him since he came to Weesperplein. You’re good at it, you really are. Better than me.”
“Neither of us are his father,” said Bastiaan. “We mustn’t forget that.”
“I know. But it’s starting to feel as if we are, isn’t it? Or surrogate father figures anyway. It’s been three months now, after all.”
“Three months and two weeks.”
“And look how much he’s changed. No more drugs, no more selling himself to strangers, he’s eating healthy food, he’s got a job. And most of that is down to you. So tell me, how long have you wanted to be a father? Don’t you think it’s strange that we’ve never talked about this before?”
“Always, I suppose,” he said after a lengthy pause. “I never minded being gay, it never really bothered me, even when I was a teenager.”
“Well, that’s because you were fucking all the local footballers,” I said. “I wouldn’t have minded it either if I’d been having your experiences.”
“One footballer, Cyril,” he said. “One. And he was the goalkeeper.”
“That still counts. Quick with his hands.”
“Well, anyway, I didn’t mind being gay but it always bothered me that I probably wouldn’t have kids. If I’d been a woman, I’m sure I would have had a few by now. What about you?”
“Honestly?” I said. “I’ve barely given it a thought my whole life. My childhood was fucked up. I had such peculiar experiences of parenthood when I was actually being parented that it put me off. And yet, the funny thing is, now that we have one, or are pretending to have one, I find that I’m quite enjoying it.”
Of course, when the idea of Ignac moving in was first brought up I had been deeply uncertain about it. I was sure that he would either steal from us again or return some night in a drug-induced frenzy and commit some irrevocable act of violence against one or the other of us, but Bastiaan had persuaded me that we should help him for no other reason than he had asked for our help. That in itself seemed a logical equation to him. And then, what started out as an agreement that he might sleep in our spare room for a few days while he hid from his pimp turned into a few weeks and eventually the three of us sat down and decided to make things permanent. Jack Smoot agreed to give him a part-time job in MacIntyre’s and the rest of the time he stayed home, reading and scribbling in a notebook that he kept locked away in his room.
“You don’t want to be a writer, do you?” I asked him once.
“No,” he said. “I just like writing stories, that’s all.”
“So that’s a yes then,” I said.
“It’s a maybe.”
“You know my adoptive mother was a writer,” I told him.
“Was she any good?”
“She was very good. Maude Avery? Maybe you’ve heard of her?” He shook his head. “Well, you will if you go on reading at the rate you have been.”
“Did she like it?” he asked me. “Did it make her happy?”
And that, I realized, was a question I found impossible to answer.
The more Bastiaan and I got to know Ignac, the more he revealed about his past. He was shy at first, uncertain whether or not he could trust us but, as with his writing, the words eventually came. He told us that he had arrived in Amsterdam from Slovenia a few weeks after his mother died, when his paternal grandmother, in whose care he had been left, handed him a train ticket and told him that she wasn’t prepared to take care of him anymore. She had no money, she told him, and even less interest in bringing up another teenager, having failed spectacularly with her own son, Ignac’s father. When we asked about him, he made it clear that was a subject closed to us. The train ticket took him to Amsterdam and he’d been in the city less than a week when he turned his first trick. He told us that he wasn’t gay, that he was, in fact, attracted to girls, although he had never slept with one and didn’t particularly want to, not after all the things he had done with his body since leaving Ljubljana. He didn’t seem embarrassed by his experiences, nor did we make him feel there was anything wrong with them, but it was obvious that he hated the life that he had fallen into. We asked about his friends and he said that although he knew many boys in the city he did not think of them as friends; they were simply runaways, refugees or orphans from many different countries who’d come to Amsterdam in order to make money and in whose company he found himself on a daily basis.
“I needed to eat,” he said with a shrug, avoiding our eyes as he explained it. “And I made money doing it.”
He’d started to take drugs for no other reason than it helped to pass the long mornings and afternoons before the men came calling in the bars at night. With nothing to do, he spent his days in the coffee shops where the other rent boys gathered, sitting around talking rubbish and smoking weed before graduating on to more serious substances. Bastiaan took this in hand from the day he moved in, bringing him to one of his colleagues at the hospital, who helped him to wean his body back to health. Clean and sober now, his skin had begun to glow and his disposition had definitely improved.
I had only seen his deerstalker pimp once since Ignac had come to live with us and that was a week or two earlier when I’d arranged to meet the boy after leaving work for the evening. We were due to meet Bastiaan for dinner and as we made our way along Singel, it made me happy to see that the boy had a noticeable bounce in his step.
“Tell me about Ireland,” he said, the first time he’d shown any interest in my home country.
“What do you want to know?”
“What’s it like there? You’re not going to go back anytime soon, are you?”
“Oh God no,” I said, shivering at the idea, partly out of fear of confronting the mess I’d left behind, even if it had been seven years before. “I doubt I’ll ever go back.”
“When you do, will you take me with you? I’d like to see it.”
“Ignac, I just said that I don’t want to return. Ever.”
“Yes, but you’re lying. I can tell from your voice. You’d love to go back.”
“There’s nothing there for me anyway now,” I said. “My friends, my family…none of them would have anything to do with me.”
“Why? What did you do that was so terrible?”
I saw no reason not to come clean. “I lied to my best friend for twenty years, never telling him that I was in love with him, then married his sister and left her during the wedding reception without so much as saying goodbye.”
“Shit,” he said, biting his lip and trying not to laugh. “That’s not good.”
“No. And anyway, Bastiaan would never find a hospital interested in his kind of research in Dublin.”
“Don’t they have sex diseases in Ireland then?” he asked with a snigger, and despite his own past it was easy to see how young he really was.
; “Lots,” I told him. “But we pretend they don’t exist and no one ever talks about them. That’s how we do things in Ireland. If you catch something, you go to the doctor and he gives you a shot of penicillin, and on the way home you go to confession and tell the priest your sins.”
“It can’t be as bad as you say,” he said, and I was about to give him more details when he stopped short in the street so abruptly that I had already walked on about fifteen feet before I noticed he wasn’t there and had to double back to find him again.
“What?” I asked. “What’s wrong?” I looked ahead and saw that familiar giant in his fur-trimmed overcoat walking toward us, deerstalker firmly in place on his head. I would have pulled Ignac into the nearest doorway but at that same moment the man looked up and saw us and broke into a wide smile. A moment later, he was standing in front of us, his arms open wide as he embraced his former charge, who froze in his master’s arms.
“And there was me thinking that you’d drowned in the Amstel,” said the man. “I thought you’d gotten so stoned you’d fallen in before I could push you. Either that or you’d run off with some Russian oil tycoon and forgotten who’d taken care of you all this time.”
Ignac opened his mouth to answer, but I could tell that he was terrified. I took him by the arm and pulled him back a few steps.
“We have to go,” I said.
“And who’s this?” asked the man, looking me up and down, a mixture of good humor and menace. “I don’t think we’ve met, have we? I’m Damir.”
He extended an enormous hand toward me and despite myself I shook it briefly, so as not to cause any trouble.
“We have to be somewhere,” I said.
“We all have to be somewhere,” he replied with a smile. “Tell me your name. I told you mine. Have some manners, my friend.”
“Cyril,” I said. “Cyril Avery.”
“Well, Cyril. Let me ask you a question. Are you a capitalist or a communist?”
I frowned, uncertain what he was getting at. “I don’t think I’m either,” I said.
“Then you’re a capitalist,” he replied. “Most people are if they’re honest with themselves. And the nature of capitalism is that we look after ourselves first but when we buy a service or a product we pay money to the shopkeeper who provided the goods. You know this, yes?”
“I didn’t buy Ignac,” I said, not even bothering to pretend that I didn’t understand where he was going with this. “And he’s not yours to sell anyway. We don’t live in a time of slaves.”
“Don’t we?” asked Damir, laughing. “I wish I could agree with you on that.” He stared at me for a moment before turning back to the boy. “Where have you been these last months anyway?” he asked, his tone growing a little colder now. “Do you know how much money you’ve cost me?”
“I don’t owe you anything,” said Ignac.
“Just because you’ve found your own tricks doesn’t mean—”
“I haven’t turned any. Not in months. I don’t do that anymore.”
The man frowned. “Who told you that?” he asked.
“What?”
“That you don’t do that anymore. You make it sound as if it’s a decision you can make for yourself.”
“It is,” said Ignac, and Damir burst into a beatific smile. Anyone passing us on the street might have thought we were the best of friends. “I paid you for everything that I did. I want to stop now.”
“And I want a house in the Bahamas and Bo Derek on my arm,” said Damir with a shrug. “And instead I have a grotty flat near Erasmuspark and a woman who only makes me hard when the lights are off and I don’t have to look at her ugly face. You still work for me, Ignac. I say when that’s over.”
“It’s over now,” I said, and his smile faded as he turned back to me.
“And you can shut the fuck up, faggot,” he said, poking me hard in the shoulder with one of his fat fingers. “This is between me and my—”
“Whatever he did for you,” I said, raising my voice and feeling my heart start to pound in my chest. “I’m sure you got your money’s worth. He doesn’t want to do it anymore, all right? There must be plenty of other boys you can exploit instead.” I paused and softened my tone, hoping to appeal to his good nature, if he had one. “Can’t you just leave him be? He wants a different life, that’s all.”
“There are hundreds of other boys,” said the man, reaching down and running a finger across Ignac’s cheek. “But none quite as pretty as this one. Well, you must understand that, Cyril. You’ve been fucking him for three months, after all. So you owe me…” He looked toward the canal and his lips moved silently as if he was trying to calculate. “I’d need a paper and pen to be accurate,” he said. “I’ve never been very good at mental arithmetic. But I tell you what, I’ll work out a figure and send it your way. I don’t want to overcharge you.”
“There’s nothing like that between us,” said Ignac. “I just live at his place, that’s all.”
“And you expect me to believe that, do you?” asked Damir, laughing. “Let’s not play each other for fools. Tell me, do you like living with this man?”
“Yes,” said Ignac.
“And you want to continue doing so?”
“Yes,” he repeated.
“All right then. That’s not a problem at all. I have no objections to such a happy arrangement. But he will have to pay for the privilege. You belong to me, after all. Not to him. And you, Cyril Avery,” he said, turning back to me, “you have a debt toward me. And all debts must be settled. Such is the nature of capitalism.”
“I’m not giving you any money,” I said.
“Of course you will. Ask Ignac what I do to people who don’t pay me what they owe. It’s not pleasant. Now.” He glanced at his watch and shook his head. “I’m afraid I have another appointment. But I’ll be in touch. Goodbye, Cyril. And you, Ignac. Stay out of trouble!”
And with that he pushed between us and kept on his way. We watched as he disappeared around a corner and Ignac turned to me with a terrified expression on his face.
“I knew it couldn’t last,” he said. “Nothing ever does.”
“If you mean living with me and Bastiaan,” I said, “then trust me, Ignac, that’s not going to change.”
“Yes, it will. He won’t stop until he’s taken every penny from you. And even when you’re broke, he’ll still ask for more. He’ll never leave me alone.”
“How many boys does he have on his payroll?” I asked.
“A couple of dozen. Maybe more. The number changes all the time.”
“Then he’ll be busy with other people. He’ll forget about you. He’s just angry with you for walking out on him, that’s all. I doubt we’ll ever hear from him again. Anyway, he doesn’t even know where to find you.”
“Amsterdam is a small city,” said Ignac. “And you gave him your name.”
“You’ve got nothing to worry about,” I said, not believing a word of this.
Two Towers and a Ship Sailing Between Them
It was growing dark as Bastiaan and I made our way to MacIntrye’s a fortnight later. The woman whom Smoot had described as his best friend was visiting him from Dublin, and a plan had been made for us all to go for a late dinner together, an idea that made me a little nervous. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to hear stories about how the city had either changed or stayed the same, even if it was from a stranger. She’d hired a car for a day’s expedition outside the city but was due back to her hotel shortly, from where we were planning on collecting her. Turning the corner onto Herengracht, however, I noticed a figure walking unsteadily from the other direction.
“That’s him,” I said, feeling my heart sink as I tugged on Bastiaan’s sleeve.
“Who?” he asked.
“Ignac’s pimp. The one I told you about.”
Bastiaan said nothing, but I could feel him increasing our pace slightly and within a minute or two we were all standing outside the pub. The doors were closed and locked,
which meant that Smoot and Ignac were probably upstairs, lodging the day’s takings in the safe.
“My old friend Cyril,” said Damir as he recognized me, the stench of whiskey so strong on his breath that I took a step back. “They told me I might find you here.”
“Who did?” I asked.
“The very kind people at the Anne Frank House. It wasn’t difficult to track you down. The Irish fag with his teenage boy. All your friends at the museum know about him, don’t they? You must be very much in love if you talk about him so much.”
“Why don’t you just fuck off?” said Bastiaan quietly.
“And who’s this?” asked Damir, glancing at him, and I could tell that he felt a little more intimidated by my boyfriend than he did by me.
“It doesn’t matter who I am,” he replied. “Just fuck off, OK? Ignac’s not going anywhere with you.”
Damir shrugged and lit a cigarette. “Calm down, the pair of you,” he said. “I haven’t come to cause any trouble. In fact, I come with good news. In my generosity, I’ve decided not to charge you for all the time you kept Ignac away from me, even though it left me seriously out of pocket. But I’m good-natured that way, so I’ve decided to let you off. However, I have a client who has met with Ignac before and has some very specific and, I must say, imaginative plans for him. There’s a lot of money in it for me. And so he simply has to come with me. He’s had his holiday, but that’s over now. He works in here, doesn’t he?” he added, nodding toward the bar. “That’s what I’ve been told anyway.”
“No,” I said.
“Of course he does,” he said, rolling his eyes. “There’s no point lying. I’m a well-informed man.” He reached out now and tried to open the door but to no avail. “Open it,” he said.
“We don’t have a key,” said Bastiaan. “It’s not our bar.”
Damir ignored him and banged on the door a few times, calling out for someone on the inside, and I looked up and saw Smoot pulling the curtains back in the flat above and glancing down, probably expecting to see a group of late-night drinkers and instead finding two familiar faces and a stranger.