Джон Бойн - A Ladder to the Sky

‘I’m not?’

‘No.’

‘Then who is?’

‘You can’t guess?’

I thought about it but, no, I couldn’t. ‘Who?’ I asked again.

‘Don’t you remember when we first met? I told you that books had been my passion since I was a kid? And that my father worked in publishing but that his uncle used to write a little?’

I looked away. Did I remember this? Yes, I did, but I had focussed only on the fact that his father was an editor.

‘My great-uncle, that would be,’ he said. ‘He’s the subject. I’m writing about him.’

‘And not me?’

‘No.’

‘But I don’t understand,’ I said, placing both hands on the edge of the table before me, for I was beginning to feel faint. ‘I feel like I’m in a daze.’

‘How’s your German, Maurice?’ he asked.

‘Average, I suppose,’ I said. ‘Enough to get by on. Why?’

‘Theo Field,’ he said, very slowly, enunciating each syllable as he smiled at me.

‘I don’t…’ And then, like a door opening beneath my feet and sending me falling to the rocks below, I felt a sensation that I was no longer part of this world. ‘Field,’ I said. ‘ Acker .’

‘ Acker ,’ he agreed with a nod.

‘Ackermann. You’re…’

‘My father is Georg Ackermann’s son. He was killed in a tram crash, remember? You told me so yourself. Erich’s younger brother.’

‘Erich was your uncle.’

‘Well, my great-uncle.’

I leaned forward and peered into his face. Did he look like Erich Ackermann? No, he looked like Daniel. He looked like my son.

‘I thought you would be more willing to confide in me if I shared some things in common with him,’ he said, sensing what I was thinking. ‘It wasn’t very difficult. There’s lots of pictures of him online, so I changed my hair colour to look like his. And he posted pictures on his Instagram account of his bedroom and I saw that band poster on the wall. So I bought a T-shirt to match.’

‘No,’ I said quietly.

‘And he wore a ring on the fourth finger of his right hand. So I got one of those too.’

‘Your glasses?’

‘There’s no prescription,’ he said, taking them off and handing them across to me. ‘Just frames with glass. The same ones that he wore.’

I put them on. I could see through them without any difficulty.

‘He posted videos on Facebook too. That’s where I noticed this.’ He started to tap his index finger against his thumb rapidly. ‘A nervous affliction, was it?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He’d had it all his life. And your asthma?’ I asked.

He burst out laughing, reached into his satchel and removed his blue inhaler, handing it across.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘Try it.’

I put it in my mouth, pushed the button and breathed in quickly. Nothing. Just air. It was empty.

‘I don’t have asthma,’ he said. ‘I’ve never had asthma.’

‘The picture of Erich and me in Montmartre,’ I said. ‘You said that you were looking at old photos. I thought you had found it in a newspaper or a book.’

‘I never said that,’ he replied with a shrug. ‘I simply said that I was looking at it. You know that he was dead a week before they discovered the body?’

‘I heard that, yes,’ I said, looking down at the table. ‘Dash told me.’

‘He was holding the photograph in his hands when he was found. I suppose he still loved you, despite what you did to him. The coroner passed it on to my father.’

I stared at him. I said nothing for a very long time.

‘But why?’ I asked finally, when I found my voice again. ‘Why would you do this?’

‘Why did you do what you did to my great-uncle?’

‘Because I wanted to succeed,’ I replied, beginning to feel the shame of my actions at last.

‘For what it’s worth, you’ve given me more than I ever dreamed of,’ he said. ‘I don’t even know whether the book will be about him now or about you. Or about both of you. But I have a feeling that it’s going to be the best start to a literary career since…’ He broke into a wide smile. ‘Well, since yours, I suppose!’

‘But what have I given you?’ I asked, trying to recall each of the conversations we’d had and all the confidences I’d entrusted him with. Happy to oblige me, he counted them off on his fingers.

‘First, Dash. Then Erich. Storī , of course. The Tribesman , which you didn’t even write.’

‘I tidied it up.’

‘But you didn’t write it! Although all of that pales into insignificance compared to what you did to Edith and Daniel. Two murders, Maurice. Two murders. Four, if you count your responsibility for both Erich’s death and Dash’s.’

‘Edith fell,’ I said.

‘You pushed her.’

‘Daniel had an asthma attack.’

‘And you withheld his inhaler.’ He looked down at his phone, tapped it for a moment, and put it in his pocket before standing up. ‘It’s all here, Maurice. Every word.’

‘No,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘No, wait. Let’s have another drink.’

‘I’ve drunk enough with you. I’ll be happy if I never have another pint in my life.’

‘Please,’ I said, standing up, but he shook his head, lifted his drink from the table and swallowed what was left in one go.

‘I’ll be in touch, Maurice,’ he said.

‘Sit down, let me order you another one. Please.’

‘No.’

‘Surely after everything I’ve done for you—’

‘You haven’t done anything for me,’ he said, laughing. ‘You’ve bought me a few drinks, that’s all. Tried to use me to get what you want. You hoped my father would use his connections to get you a new book deal, right? Well, that’s not going to happen. I don’t owe you anything, Maurice.’

‘No, but—’

‘I’m leaving,’ he said, walking away.

‘Wait!’ I shouted, but he was already halfway towards the door. ‘Daniel!’ I roared at the top of my voice, a desperate cry from the depths of my soul. He stopped as the pub fell silent, every head turning in my direction, eyes staring at me as if I were about to deliver the final monologue in a wonderful tragedy. But it wasn’t me who spoke, for I had nothing left to say.

‘It’s Theo,’ he said, looking at me with a mixture of contempt and boredom. ‘How many times, Maurice? My name is Theo, not Daniel.’

And with that, he turned his back on me and was gone.

Many years ago, at the end of our acquaintance, I suggested to Erich Ackermann that perhaps he had seen me as he wanted me to be and not as who I actually was. I was right then, but the truth is that I made a similar mistake with Theo. Was it an absurd mixture of grief, guilt and alcoholism that allowed me to believe I was confessing everything to Daniel and that he would somehow forgive me and make my world clean again? Or had I always planned on telling Theo the truth? It’s difficult to know. I was always in control of everything and it’s a curious sensation when that’s no longer the case.

But, despite my downfall and disgrace, life has actually been a lot happier since my incarceration. For one thing, I’m able to read more than I have in years. Always new fiction, of course. Young writers on their first, second or third books. I’ve been making notes of my favourite ones and would love to publicly comment on their work but, sadly, prisoners are not allowed use of the Internet, which seems a little unfair to me. How else are we to get our online law degrees and convince ourselves that we can argue our way out of this place? I’m being facetious, of course. Prison humour.

Recently, I even tortured myself by trawling through Garrett Colby’s new novel, which was about an unrequited love affair between a man and a raccoon. What is his issue with animals? Did his puppy get run over when he was a child and he’s never got over it since? The whole thing is beyond me. Anyway, the book was awful. True, I’ve made some questionable choices in my life, but I can honestly say that I’ve never written or stolen anything as bad as that book. To my astonishment, however, the reviews were ecstatic, and somehow it soared to victory on the night of The Prize this year. That’s twice now that his name appears on the honour roll while mine is still absent. It’s enough to make one want to throw in the towel, it really is.