John Boyne - The Absolutist

Determined not to be left out of whatever they’re discussing, I pick up the pace a little until I am alongside them both, falling into line next to Will, looking anxiously across at him as Wolf leans forward and smiles at me. I get the impression that he has been in the middle of a speech about something—it’s never a conversation with Wolf, it’s always a speech—but he grows silent now and Will turns to look at me, offering an expression which suggests that although he’s surprised to see me he’s pleased nonetheless.

Of course, one of the things that I like most about Will is the notion—completely real, at least in my head—that he genuinely enjoys my company. He laughs at my jokes, which come more freely and wittily whenever I am around him than they do in anyone else’s company. He makes me feel as if I am just as good as him, just as clever, just as relaxed with other people, and the truth is that I feel anything but. And there is the sense, the ongoing sense, that he feels something for me.

“Tristan,” he says cheerfully, “I wondered what had happened to you. I thought perhaps you’d gone back to bed. Arthur and I got talking. He was telling me about his plans for the future.”

“Oh yes?” I ask, looking across at Wolf. “And what are they? Planning on making a run for the papacy, are you?”

“Steady on, Tristan,” says Will, a note of criticism in his tone. “You know the pater’s a vicar. Nothing wrong with the Church, you know, if it’s the right thing for you. Couldn’t manage it myself, of course, but still.”

“No, of course not,” I say, having momentarily forgotten the sainted Reverend Bancroft, preaching his sermons back in Norwich. “I only meant that Wolf sees the good in everyone, that’s all.” It’s a pitiful response, designed to imply that I hold Wolf in high esteem, which I don’t, for no other reason than that I suspect that Will does.

“Not the priesthood, no,” says Wolf, apparently enjoying my discomfort. “I thought politics.”

“Politics,” I reply, laughing. “But there’s no chance of that, surely?”

“And why not?” he asks, turning to me and, as ever, giving nothing away in his expression.

“Look, Wolf,” I say. “I don’t know whether you’re right or wrong in your convictions. I won’t presume to judge you on that.”

“Really? Why not? You do most days. I thought you agreed with all those other fellows that I was a feather man.”

“It’s just that even if you are right,” I continue, ignoring this, “you’ll have a difficult job convincing anyone of it after the war. I mean to say, if a fellow were to stand for Parliament in my constituency and told the voters that he objected to the war and refused to fight in it, well, he’d have a tricky job making it off the platform intact, let alone garnering enough votes to win a seat.”

“But Arthur isn’t refusing to fight,” says Will. “He’s here, isn’t he?”

“I’m here training,” insists Wolf. “I’ve told you, Will, that once we’re shipped out, I’ll refuse to fight. I’ve told them that. They know it. But they don’t listen, that’s the problem. The military tribunal was supposed to make a decision on my case weeks ago, and still nothing. It’s extremely frustrating.”

“Look, what exactly are you objecting to?” I ask, not entirely sure that I understand his motivations. “You don’t like war, is that it?”

“Nobody should like war, Sadler,” says Wolf. “And I can’t imagine that anyone really does, except for Sergeant Clayton, perhaps. He seems to relish the experience. No, I simply don’t believe that it is right to take another man’s life in cold blood. I’m not a religious man, not much anyway, but I think it’s up to God to take us or leave us as he pleases. And anyway, what do I have against some German boy who’s been dragged away from Berlin or Frankfurt or Dusseldorf to fight for his country? What does he have against me? Yes, there are issues at stake, political issues, territorial issues, over which this war is being fought, and there are legitimate grounds for complaint, I dare say, but there is also such a thing as diplomacy, there is such a thing as the concept of right-thinking men gathering around a table and sorting their problems out. And I don’t believe those avenues have been exhausted yet. Instead we’re all simply killing each other day after day after day. And I object to that , Sadler, if you really want to know. And I refuse to be a part of it.”

“But, my dear fellow,” says Will, a note of exasperation in his tone, “then it’ll be the stretcher-bearer’s job for you. You can’t want that, surely?”

“Of course not. But if it’s the only alternative.”

“Small use to politics you’ll be if you’re picked off by a sniper in ten minutes flat,” I say, and Will turns on me then, frowning, and I feel ashamed of what I’ve said. We make a point, all of us, of never talking about the consequences of the war, the fact that few of us, if any, are likely to live to see the other side of it, and it’s against our code of conduct for me to make such a vulgar remark. I look away, unable to bear my friend’s disapprobation, my boots stamping loudly on the stone beneath my feet.

“Something the matter, Sadler?” asks Wolf a few minutes later when Will has advanced again, this time laughing with Henley about something.

“No,” I grunt, not even turning to look at him, my eyes focused firmly ahead at yet another prospective friendship that might push my nose even further out of joint. “Any reason why it should be?”

“You seem a little… irritated, that’s all,” says Wolf. “A little preoccupied.”

“You don’t know me,” I say.

“There’s really nothing to worry about,” he replies in such a casual tone that it infuriates me. “We were just talking, that’s all. I’m not going to steal him away from you. You can have him back now if you want.”

I turn and stare at him, unable to find any words to express my indignation, and he bursts out laughing, shaking his head as he marches away.

Later, as punishment for my insensitivity, Will pairs off with Wolf again when we begin to train with the Short Magazine Lee-Enfield rifles—the Smilers, as we call them—and I find myself stuck with Rich, who has an answer for everything and considers himself the great wit of our group, but is known as something of a dunderhead when it comes to learning anything. He holds a rather curious position among us, for although he drives Wells and Moody to distraction with his idiocy and incurs the wrath of Sergeant Clayton almost every day, there’s something pathetic about him, something likeable, and no one can ever be angry with him for long.

We each receive a rifle, and complaints that we are still wearing our civilian clothes, which are washed every third day to rid them of the caked mud and the stench of sweat that they bear, fall on deaf ears.

“They just want us to kill as many of the enemy as possible,” remarks Rich. “They don’t care what we look like. We could go over in our birthday suits for all Lord Kitchener would care.”

I agree with him but think the whole thing is a bit much and say so. Still, it’s something of a sobering moment for all of us when at last we are handed our Smilers, and an uneasy silence falls among us, terror that we might be called upon to use them, and soon.

“Gentlemen,” says Sergeant Clayton, standing before us and stroking his own rifle in a perfectly obscene fashion, “what you hold before you is the means by which we will win this war. The Short Magazine Lee-Enfield rifles have a ten-round magazine, a bolt mechanism which is the envy of armies around the world and, for a short-range attack, a seventeen-inch bayonet attached to the end for the moment when you leap forward and want to spear the enemy in the face to let them know who is who and what is what and why the price of cabbage is the price of cabbage. These are not toys, gentlemen, and the chap that I see acting as if they are is the chap who will be sent on a ten-mile march with a dozen of these fine instruments tied to his back. Do I make myself clear?”