John Boyne - The Absolutist

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 school, 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?”