John Boyne - The Absolutist

“But that’s not why you’re doing it, is it?”

“No, of course not. What do you take me for, anyway?”

“Is it because of the German boy?”

“He’s part of it,” he says, looking down at his boots. “But there’s Wolf, too. What happened to him. His murder, I mean. It just feels like we’ve all become immune to the violence. I’m of the opinion that Sergeant Clayton would fall to his knees and burst into tears if he heard that the war had come to an end. He loves it. You realize that, Tristan, don’t you?”

“He doesn’t love it,” I say, shaking my head.

“The man’s half mad. Anyone can see that. Babbling half the day. Great rages, then weeping fits. He needs to be carted off to the funny farm. But look, I haven’t asked how you are.”

“I’m fine,” I say, not willing to turn the conversation to me.

“You were ill.”

“Yes.”

“I thought you were a goner at one point. The doctor didn’t give you much chance, anyway. Bloody fool. I told him you’d pull through. Said you were made of stronger stuff than he realized.”

I laugh abruptly, flattered by this, then look back at him in surprise. “You talked to the doctor?” I ask.

“Briefly, yes.”

“When?”

“Well, when I came to visit you, of course.”

“But they told me no one came to visit,” I tell him. “I asked and they seemed to think I was mad even to imagine it.”

He shrugs his shoulders. “Well, I came.”

Three soldiers appear from around the corner, new recruits I haven’t seen before, and they hesitate when they see Will sitting there. They stare at him for a moment before one of them spits in the mud and the others follow suit. They don’t say anything, not to his face, anyway, but I can hear the mutters of “Fucking coward” under their breath as they pass by. Following them with my eyes I wait until they’re out of sight before turning back to Will.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says quietly.

I tell him to shove up and take a seat beside him. I can’t stop thinking about the fact that he visited me in the medical tent, about what that means.

“Don’t you think you could just put it all aside for now?” I ask. “These concerns of yours, I mean. Just until it’s all over?”

“But what good would that do?” he asks. “The point must be made while the fighting is still going on. Otherwise it’s entirely worthless. You must see that.”

“Yes, but if you’re not shot here for cowardice then they’ll ship you off back to England. I’ve heard what happens to feather men in jails back home. You’ll be lucky if you survive it. And after that, how do you think the rest of your life will turn out? You won’t be welcome in polite society, that’s for sure.”

“I couldn’t give two figs for polite society,” he replies with a bitter laugh. “Why would I, if this is what it represents? And I’m not a feather man, Tristan,” he insists. “This is not an act of cowardice.”

“No, you’re an absolutist,” I reply. “And I’m sure that you think it justifies everything if you can ascribe a clean word to it. But it doesn’t.”

Will turns and stares at me, taking the cigarette from his mouth and using his thumb and index finger to remove a flake of tobacco that’s trapped between his front teeth. He glances at it for a moment before flicking it into the dirt at our feet. “Why do you care so much, anyway?” he asks. “What good do you think it does talking to me here?”

“I care for the same reason that you visited me in hospital,” I say. “I don’t want to see you making a terrible mistake that you will regret for the rest of your life.”

“And you don’t think that you’ll regret it?” he asks. “When this is all over and you’re safely back home in London, you don’t think that you’ll wake up with the pictures of all the men you’ve killed haunting your dreams? Do you actually mean to tell me that you’ll be able to move past it all? I don’t think you’ve given it any thought at all,” he adds, his voice growing colder now. “You talk of cowardice, you talk of feather men, and yet you direct your contempt at everyone but yourself. You can’t see that, can you? How it’s you who is the coward and not I? I can’t sleep at night, Tristan, for thinking of that boy pissing his pants just before Milton put the gun to his head. Every time I close my eyes I see his brains being splattered over the trench wall. If I could go back, I’d have put a bullet in Milton myself before he could kill the boy.”

“You’d have been shot for it if you had.”

“I’ll be shot anyway. What do you think they’re discussing back there? The lack of decent tea in the mess tent? They’re figuring out when’s the best time to be rid of me.”

“They won’t shoot you,” I insist. “They can’t. They have to hear your case.”

“Not out here they don’t,” he says. “Not in the field of battle. And who’d have turned me in if I had shot Milton? You?”

Before I can answer this there’s a cry of “Bancroft!” from my left and I turn to see Harding, the new corporal sent over from GHQ as a replacement for Moody. “What do you think you’re doing? And who the hell are you?” he asks as I jump to my feet.

“Private Sadler,” I say.

“And why the devil are you talking to the prisoner?”

“Well, he was just sitting here, sir,” I say, uncertain of what crime I might have committed. “And I was passing by, that’s all. I didn’t know that he was in isolation.”

Harding narrows his eyes and looks me up and down for a moment as if he’s attempting to decide whether or not I am cheeking him. “Get back to the trench, Sadler,” he says. “I’m sure someone there must be looking for you.”

“Yes, sir,” I say, turning around and nodding at Will before I leave. He doesn’t acknowledge my farewell, just stares at me with a curious expression as I walk away.

Evening time.

A bomb falls somewhere to my left and knocks me off my feet. I hit the ground and lie there for a moment, gasping, wondering whether that’s the end of me. Have my legs been blown away? My arms dismembered? Are my intestines slipping out of my body and melting into the mud? But the seconds pass and I feel no pain. I press my hands to the soil and lift myself up.

I am fine. I am uninjured. I am alive.

I throw myself forward in the trench, looking left and right quickly to apprise myself of the situation. Soldiers are rushing past, filling positions three men deep along the front defence line, and Corporal Wells is at the end, shouting instructions at us. His arm rises and falls in the air as if he is chopping something, and as the first group steps back, the second takes a movement forward as the third, myself among them, lines up behind the second.

It’s impossible to hear what is being said over the noise of shelling and gunfire, but I watch, breathing in quick gasps, and I can see that Wells is giving quick instructions to the run of fifteen men in the front line who look at each other for a moment before ascending the ladder and, heads held firmly down, throwing themselves over the sandbags and into no-man’s-land, which is dark and lit up sporadically like a carnival.

Wells pulls a box-periscope down and stares through it, and I study his face, noticing the moments when he sees someone’s been hit, the quick expression of pain that spreads across his features, then he pushes it to one side as the next line steps forward.

Sergeant Clayton is among us now and he stands on the opposite side of the line to Wells and shouts instructions at the troops. I close my eyes for a moment. How long will it be, I wonder, two minutes, three, before I am over the sandbags, too? Is my life to end tonight? I’ve been over before and survived, but tonight… tonight feels different and I don’t know why.