Джон Бойн - A Ladder to the Sky

Later that evening, as was our custom, we spent an hour in the hotel bar, where I tried not to allow my dark mood to overshadow our time together, although perhaps it was obvious that I was annoyed for he asked whether anything was wrong.

‘Why should it be?’ I said. ‘It’s been a perfectly pleasant day.’

‘You just seem a little out of sorts, that’s all.’

‘It’s tiredness, nothing more. You enjoyed yourself, though? You seemed to be having a wonderful time at lunch.’

‘I loved it,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘All those writers! I felt like I was one myself.’

‘You are one,’ I insisted, despite the fact that he had given me nothing new to read in some time.

‘I’m not,’ he said. ‘Not until I finish my novel. Actually, not until I publish my novel.’

‘Well, you have to start one to finish one,’ I said.

‘Oh, but I have!’ he told me. ‘Didn’t I mention it? An idea came at last. A plot. And I just sat down and began writing.’

‘I see,’ I replied. ‘And are you going to tell me what it’s about?’

‘Not just yet,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘The thing is, I’m superstitious about things like that. Do you mind if I just keep going and don’t say too much about it for now?’

‘I don’t mind at all,’ I said, even though I minded a great deal. ‘Do whatever makes you happy. And your companion at lunch, the Spanish novelist. Did he offer you any advice?’

‘We weren’t really talking about books,’ he said.

‘Then what were you talking about?’

‘His wife, mostly. And his mistresses. He has a number of them.’

‘I’m surprised you could bear to listen to all of that.’

‘He gave me his card and told me to look him up if I’m ever back here.’

‘You certainly know how to collect us, don’t you?’ I asked. ‘Writers, I mean. Don’t you ever long for someone a little less accomplished? A friend your own age, perhaps? Although I suppose it would be unwise to let yourself be distracted from your work.’

‘I’m happiest on my own,’ he told me. ‘And if I wanted companionship—’ He broke off and pointed over my shoulder towards the foyer. ‘Oh!’ he said. ‘Look who’s just walked in.’

I turned around and saw Dash Hardy standing in the lobby, looking around in search of someone who might recognize him and pay him the requisite adoration. He must have been staying in the same hotel as us and my heart sank, sure that he would notice us too and spoil our evening by insisting on joining our table, then flirting shamelessly with Maurice while making the offensive double entendres that seemed specifically designed to discomfit me. Indeed, I was certain that he did see us for he smiled in our direction, raising a hand in a half-wave, but then, to my surprise and relief, he turned away and walked towards the elevators.

‘Thank God for that,’ I said. ‘I can’t bear that man.’

‘You said my attention should be solely devoted to my work,’ said Maurice, ignoring this remark. ‘But you allowed yourself to get distracted at the start of your career, didn’t you? By Oskar, I mean. So perhaps a little distraction is a good thing.’

‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

‘When we were in Rome you told me how you two met. You weren’t focussed on your writing then but on your desires, right? How did they develop after that, anyway?’

They developed as these things do, I told him. Two teenage boys with much in common, living in dread of war, feigning a loyalty to a Fatherland towards which we felt no particular attachment. Something struck between Oskar and me that evening in the Böttcher Tavern, perhaps because we got so drunk, perhaps because we both had artistic ambitions, but whatever the reason, we very quickly became fast friends. Outside those times when he was in his father’s café, at home painting or we were attending meetings of the Hitlerjugend we were mostly together, sharing ideas with each other, discussing novels and painters, planning what we hoped would be our extraordinary futures. His own work developed considerably during this period and he trusted me now with studies of the girl I had seen in his sketchbook on that first evening. In his drawings, she was always looking away from him and always nude, but there was nothing prurient about the manner in which he drew or talked about her. Certain that I could not bear for him to tell me whether she was real or imagined, I never asked her name, nor did he offer it, but it was obvious that if she was real, then whatever intimacy he shared with her had been recreated in his work, which just got better and better. Mine, on the other hand, was suffering, as I found myself unable to concentrate on fiction when my thoughts were devoted to him. Perhaps it seems unusual, I told Maurice, that we never talked of romance, either of us, but boys were different in those days than they are today. I did not pry into his affaires de cœur and he did not enquire into mine. To do so would have served only to embarrass us both.

A few months after we met, to coincide with Oskar’s seventeenth birthday, we decided to take a bicycling holiday over a weekend towards the Havel Lakes and travel on from there towards Potsdam, a distance of some forty kilometres. We left on a Saturday morning, displaying our papers to the soldiers on guard at the gates of the city, and cycled westward in the direction of the Olympic Stadium, arriving at the mouth of the Scharfe Lanke around lunchtime, where we sat at the lake’s edge, eating our sandwiches and drinking warm bottles of beer that spilled over the sides when we uncorked them, causing us to rush to lick our fingers to capture every drop. It was a warm day and, soaked in perspiration from our exercise, Oskar suggested a swim.

‘But we have no costumes,’ I said.

‘Oh, we don’t need any.’ He laughed, standing up and slipping the braces from his shoulders as he started to unbutton his shirt. ‘There’s no one around for miles. We won’t get caught.’

He was stripping so quickly, his boots and socks already thrown to one side, his trousers pulled off in a moment, that there seemed to be no point in arguing with him, but if I were to follow his lead I knew that my desire would be all too visible.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, turning to me with a frown on his face as he slipped out of his shorts and threw them on the pile of discarded clothes by his feet. He was fully revealed to me now at last, all my imaginings brought to life in a matter of moments, and it stunned me how casual he could be in his nakedness. I tried not to look at his sex, which lay dormant, hanging shamelessly from a thick patch of dark pubic hair. ‘You’re not shy, are you, Erich? There’s no reason to be.’

‘It’s not that,’ I said, uncertain whether to look directly at him or turn away. ‘The truth is that I can’t swim.’ A lie that felt to me like a satisfactory excuse.

‘Can’t swim?’ he said, bursting out laughing as he pulled one foot behind him, bringing it up to his backside and stretching the muscles of the leg with a satisfied groan before performing the same operation on the other. ‘Whoever heard of such a thing? Swimming’s easy. Anyway, the water is quite shallow here, I think. You don’t need to go out any further than feels safe. Just keep the sand beneath your feet and splash around. It will cool you off.’

‘No,’ I said, and he simply shrugged his shoulders and made his way down towards the water. I watched his retreating back, my entire body pulsating with lust. His revealed shape was so overwhelming that I might have groaned aloud as he waded into the water and submerged himself quickly before jumping up again with a roar of delight. I longed to be in there with him so turned away, focussing on other things until my ardour had subsided a little, then quickly threw off my clothes and ran in, caring little for the coldness of the water as I plunged down in order to hide myself as soon as possible. In the distance, Oskar waved in my direction and I waved back.