The Absolutist

by John Boyne

  “Wilton, Wilcox, whatever she calls herself. She betrays her sex with such a statement.”

  “Then you wouldn’t like what she says next.”

  “Go on, then. Scandalize me.”

  “I won’t be able to remember it exactly right. But it’s something to the effect that there are strong arguments against the suffrage. She remarks that she is only too thankful not to have the vote herself.”

  “Extraordinary,” said Marian, shaking her head. “I’m appalled, Tristan. I’m frankly appalled.”

  “Well, she dies shortly after this speech so her views go to the grave with her.”

  “What does she die of?”

  “Unpopular opinions, I suppose.”

  “Like my brother.”

  I remained silent, refusing to acknowledge the remark, and she held my gaze for a long time before turning away and allowing her face to relax.

  “I was involved in the suffrage movement myself, you know,” she said after a while.

  “I can’t say I’m surprised,” I replied, smiling at her. “What did you do?”

  “Oh, nothing very substantial. Went on marches, posted leaflets through letter boxes, that sort of thing. I never tied myself to the railings of the Houses of Parliament or stood outside Asquith’s house, crying for equality. My father would never have allowed it, for one thing. Although he believed in the movement, he believed in it very strongly. But he has a great conviction that one must retain one’s dignity, too.”

  “Well, you got your way in the end,” I said. “The vote has been granted.”

  “The vote has not been granted, Tristan,” she replied tartly. “I don’t have a vote. And I won’t have until I’m thirty. And even then only if I’m a householder. Or am married to one. Or possess a university degree. But you do already and you’re younger than I am. Now, does that strike you as fair?”

  “Of course it doesn’t,” I said. “In fact, I wanted to publish a treatise on that very thing, written by a man, if you can believe it, pointing out the inequality of the suffrage. It was remarkably salient and would have a caused a stir, I’m sure of it.”

  “And did you publish it?”

  “No,” I admitted. “Mr. Pynton would have nothing to do with it. He’s not modern, you see.”

  “Well, there we are, then. You have your rights, ours are still to be won. Astonishing how everyone is willing to go abroad to fight for the rights of foreigners while having such little concern for those of their own countrymen at home. But look, I’d better shut up about all this. If I get started on the inequalities that we simply accept without question in this country then we could be here all afternoon.”

  “I’m in no hurry,” I said, and she appeared to appreciate the sentiment, for she smiled at me and reached across to pat my hand, leaving hers atop mine for longer than necessary.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked me a moment later.

  “No,” I said, taking my hand away. “Why do you ask?”

  “You looked suddenly upset, that’s all.”

  I shook my head and turned to look out of the window. The truth was that the touch of her hand on mine put me so much in mind of Will that it was a little overwhelming. I could see a lot of him in her face, of course. Particularly in her expressions, the way she turned her head at times and smiled, the dimples that suddenly rose in her cheeks, but I had never realized that touch could be a common thread in families, too. Or was I fooling myself? Was it simply something that I was ascribing to her out of my sheer desire to feel close to Will again and atone for my actions?

  “It must be very rewarding,” I said finally, facing her again.

  “What must be?”

  “Helping the soldiers. The ones who are suffering.”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” she replied, considering it. “Look, this is an awful thing to say, but I feel such resentment towards so many of them. Does that make sense? When they talk of what they’ve been through or when they speak of loyalty in the ranks and their sense of comradeship, it makes me want to scream so loudly that sometimes I have to leave the room.”

  “But there was loyalty,” I said, protesting. “Why would you think otherwise? And there was, at times, an almost overwhelming sense of comradeship. It could be quite suffocating.”

  “And where was comradeship when they did what they did to my brother?” she snapped, her eyes filling with the same rage that provoked her, I imagined, to march out of those nursing wards or consulting rooms, controlling her fury. “Where was comradeship when they lined him up against a wall and turned their rifles on him?”

  “Don’t,” I begged, placing a hand across my eyes, hoping that to close them would banish the images from my mind. “Please, Marian.” The sudden rush of words produced terrible memories that sliced through my body.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quietly, surprised perhaps by how violently I had reacted against this. “But you can’t blame me for feeling that there are double standards in those supposed bands of brothers. Anyway, there’s no point in pursuing this. You stood by him to the very end, I know. I can see how upset you become whenever I mention his death. Of course, you were close. Tell me, did you hit it off immediately, the two of you?”

  “Yes,” I said, smiling now at the memory. “Yes, we had the same sense of humour, I think. And we had the bunks next to each other, so naturally we formed an alliance.”

  “Poor you,” she replied, smiling, too.

  “Why so?”

  “Because my brother was many things,” she said, “but clean was not one of them. I remember before he went over there going into his room in the mornings to wake him and nearly fainting from the stench. What is it with you boys and your terrible smells?”

  I laughed. “I don’t know about that,” I said. “There were twenty of us in the barracks so I can’t imagine it was particularly sanitary. Although Left and Right, as you put it, as he put it, saw to it that we kept our beds and reports in good order. But yes, we became friends quickly.”

  “And how was he?” she asked. “In those early days, I mean. Did he seem glad to be there?”

  “I’m not sure he thought about things in those terms,” I told her, considering her question carefully. “It was more that this was simply the next part of life that had to be got through. Some of the older men, I think they found it more difficult than we did. For us, as stupid as it sounds in retrospect, it seemed like a great adventure, at least at the start.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard others use those exact words,” said Marian. “Some of the men I’ve worked with, the younger ones, I mean, they’ve spoken of it as if they never really understood what lay in front of them until they got over there.”

  “But that’s it, you see,” I agreed. “We were training but it didn’t feel any different from practising football or rugby at school. Perhaps we believed that if we learned everything on offer to us, then sooner or later we would be sent out on to the pitch for a jolly good skirmish and when it was all over we’d shake hands and retire to the changing rooms for slices of orange and a hot shower.”

  “You know better now, of course,” she muttered.

  “Yes.”

  One of the bar staff came over and took our plates away and Marian tapped the table for a moment before looking up at me. “Shall we get out of here, Tristan?” she asked. “It’s terribly warm, don’t you think? I feel as if I might pass out.”

  “Yes, of course,” I said, and this time she settled our account, and when we stepped out into the street I followed as she led the way, assuming that she had an idea in her mind of where we were going next.

  “How soon was it before his tendencies began to show themselves?” she asked me as we walked along.

  I turned to her in surprise, uncertain what she might be getting at. “I beg your pardon?” I said.

  “My brother,” she replied. “I don’t remember him being much of a pacifist before he went away. He used to get into the most frightful scrapes at sc
hool, if I remember correctly. But then, once he decided not to fight any more, I had the most terrifying letters from him, full of anger and disappointment at what was going on over there. He became so disillusioned with things.”

  “It’s hard to know exactly when it began,” I said, thinking about it. “The truth is that, contrary to what the newspapers and the politicians would have you believe, not every soldier out there wanted to fight at all. Each of us fell at a different point on a spectrum from pacifism to unremitting sadism. Bloodthirsty fellows, saturated in some overzealous sense of patriotism, who would still be over there even now, killing Germans, if they were given the chance. Introspective chaps who did their duty, anything that was asked of them, but didn’t care for it at all. We spoke before about Wolf—”

  “The murdered boy?”

  “Well, yes, perhaps,” I said, still, for whatever reason, unwilling to cede this point. “I mean, he certainly had an influence on Will’s way of thinking.”

  “They were close friends, too, then?”

  “No, not close,” I said. “But he intrigued Will, that’s for sure.”

  “And you, Tristan, did he intrigue you, too?”

  “Wolf?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, not in the slightest. I thought he was something of a poseur, if I’m honest. The very worst kind of feather man.”

  “It surprises me to hear you say that.”

  “Why?” I asked, looking at her with a frown.

  “Well, from the way you talk, it sounds to me as if you would have agreed with everything this man Wolf said. Look, I know we’ve only just met but you don’t strike me as a great antagonist. You didn’t even go after Leonard when he hit you earlier. What kept you from being as interested in Wolf as my brother was?”

  “Well, he was … I mean, if you’d known him …” I was struggling now. The truth was that I had no answer to her question. I rubbed my eyes and wondered whether I really believed what I had said about Wolf, that he was a poseur, or whether it was simply the fact that he and Will had got along so well that had made me despise him so much. Was I that unjust? Was it nothing more than jealousy on my part that made me condemn a decent and thoughtful man? “Look, we might have held similar opinions in our hearts,” I said finally, “but we just rubbed each other up the wrong way, that’s all. And of course he died, he was killed, whatever is the correct form of words. Which certainly affected your brother in a very deep way.”

  “And that’s how it began?” she asked me.

  “Yes. But you must remember that all that took place here in England. Things didn’t really come to a head until France. There was an incident, you see, one that precipitated Will’s decision to lay down his arms. Although, in retrospect, I don’t think it’s right to put it all down to that single event either. There were other things that happened, I’m sure of it. Some that I witnessed, many that I didn’t. It was a confluence of events over a long period of time and sustained months of unremitting strain. Does that make sense?”

  “A little,” she replied. “Only I feel there must have been one particular thing. To make him so aggressively anti-war, I mean. You said there was an incident that precipitated things?”

  “Yes, it took place just after we took one of the German trenches,” I said. “It’s not a pleasant story, Marian. I’m not sure you want to hear it.”

  “Tell me, please,” she said, turning to look at me. “It might help to explain things.”

  “There were four of us, you see,” I said, nervous about recounting it. “We captured a German boy who’d been left alive, the last of his regiment.” I told her the story of Milton and Attling, and how Will had found the boy in hiding and brought him to our attention. I left nothing out, from Will’s determination to bring him back to HQ as a prisoner of war to the boy pissing his pants and igniting Milton’s anger.

  “You’ll have to excuse my language,” I said as I finished the story. “Only you wanted to hear it as it happened.”

  She nodded and looked away, troubled by this. “Do you think he blamed himself?” she asked.

  “For the boy’s death?”

  “For the boy’s murder,” she said, correcting me.

  “No, I don’t think it was as simple as that,” I replied. “He wasn’t responsible for it, after all. He didn’t shoot the boy. In fact, he did everything he could to save his life. No, I think he just hated the idea of it, the sheer bloody cruelty of it, and would have liked to have blown Milton’s brains out immediately afterwards, if you want the truth. He told me as much.”

  “But he found the boy,” she insisted. “He captured him. If he hadn’t done that, then it never would have happened.”

  “Yes, but he didn’t expect that it would have the result that it did.”

  “I think he must have blamed himself,” she said in a determined voice, irritating me a little, for she hadn’t been there and didn’t know what had taken place. She hadn’t seen the expression on Will’s face as the German boy’s brains splattered across Attling’s uniform. She had only my rough attempts to describe the horror of it to draw upon. “I think it must have been that,” she added.

  “But it wasn’t, Marian,” I insisted. “You can’t put it down to one thing. It’s too simplistic.”

  “Well, what about you, Tristan?” she asked, turning to me, her tone growing aggressive now. “Weren’t you upset by what you’d witnessed?”

  “Of course I was,” I said. “I wanted to pick up a rock and hammer Milton’s brains in. What right-thinking man wouldn’t? That boy was terrified out of his wits. He lived his last minutes in a state of pure fear. You’d have to be a sadist to take any pleasure in that. But then we were all terrified, Marian. Every one of us. It was a war, for pity’s sake.”

  “But you didn’t feel moved to join Will?” she asked. “You didn’t feel as strongly about it as he did. You kept a hold of your rifle. You continued to fight.”

  I hesitated and thought about it. “I suppose you’re right,” I admitted. “The truth is I simply didn’t feel the same way about that incident as your brother did. I don’t know what that says about me, whether it means that I’m a callous person, or an inhuman one, or a man incapable of compassion. Yes, I felt it was unjust and unwarranted, but also I believed it was just another one of those things that happened every day over there. The fact is that I was constantly witnessing men dying in the most horrific ways. I was on edge every day and night for fear that I was going to be picked off by a sniper. It’s an awful thing to say but I allowed myself to become immune to the random acts of violence. My God, if I hadn’t become immune to it I would never have been able to—” I pulled myself up short and stopped in the street, astonished by the sentence that I had been about to utter.

  “You’d never have been able to what, Tristan?” she asked.

  “To … to carry on, I suppose,” I said, trying to salvage the situation, and she looked at me, narrowing her eyes, as if suspecting that that was not what I had been planning to say. But for whatever reason she decided not to press me on it. “Where are we, anyway?” I asked, looking around, for we were no longer in the town centre but making our way back towards Tombland and the cathedral, where I had begun my day. “Should we turn back now, do you think?”

  “I mentioned earlier that there was something I wanted you to do for me,” she said quietly. “Do you remember that?”

  “Yes,” I said, for she had said it as we left the café but I hadn’t thought much of it at the time. “That’s why I’m here, after all. If there’s something I can do to make things any easier for you—”

  “It’s not my well-being I’m concerned with,” she said. “It’s my parents’.”

  “Your parents’?” I asked, and then, looking around, I realized what she was getting at. “You don’t live near here, do you?” I asked nervously.

  “The vicarage is just down there,” she said, nodding towards the curve at the end of the road, where a small lane led to a cul-de
-sac. “It’s the house where I grew up. Where Will grew up. And where my parents still live.”

  I stopped, feeling as if I had walked directly into a stone wall. “My daughter has arranged something,” her father had said when I had inadvertently met him at Nurse Cavell’s grave. “I’m sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “No, I can’t do that.”

  “But you don’t know what I want you to do yet.”

  “You want me to visit your mother and father. To talk to them about the things that happened. I’m sorry, Marian, but no. It’s out of the question.”

  She stared at me, her forehead wrinkling into a series of confused lines. “But why ever not?” she asked. “If you can talk to me about it, then why not them?”

  “That’s completely different,” I said, not entirely sure why it would be. “You were Will’s sister. Your mother gave birth to him. Your father … No, I’m sorry, Marian. I simply don’t have the strength for it. Please, you’ll have to take me away from here. Let me go home. Please.”

  Her expression softened now. She could see how difficult this was for me and she reached out and placed a hand on both my arms, just above the elbows. “Tristan,” she said quietly. “You don’t know what it means to me to be with someone who speaks as highly of my brother as you do. People around here”—she nodded her head up and down the street—“they don’t talk of him at all, I told you that. They’re ashamed of him. It would help my parents enormously if they were to meet you. If they could just hear how much you cared for Will.”

  “Please don’t ask me to do this,” I said, beseeching her, panic rising inside me as I realized that there was almost no way out of this other than to run away. “I wouldn’t know what to say to them.”

  “Then don’t say anything,” she said. “You don’t even have to talk about Will if you don’t want to. But let them meet you and give you tea and know that there is a boy sitting in their front room who was friends with their son. They died over there, too, Tristan. Can you understand that? They were shot up against that wall just as my brother was. Think of your own family, your own father and mother. If, God forbid, something had happened to you over there, don’t you think they would have wanted their minds to be set at ease? They must love you as much as my parents loved Will. Please, just for a little while. Half an hour, no longer. Say you’ll come.”