Rob Doyle - Here Are the Young Men

Rez was exhilarated. Everything was humming with life and chaos and thrilling destructiveness. The ecstasy triggered cascades of insight and revelation. He knew, like he had never known before, that the vastness of the universe, the hopelessness he felt, the void of heaven — all of these need not be oppressive, as they usually were for him. Or they need not only be that; they were also cause for elation; rapture, even. Rez was alone in truth. He had nothing to live up to and felt profoundly free, a godless orphan, master of his own fate.

He found he had walked out to where the throb of techno was a low, distant rumble. He clambered over rocks that rose up where the stones of the beach ended, nearly slipping into pools of black water. It was windy out here, darker and colder. But Rez was thrilled by everything, he was happy to be in this place. He followed the rocky outcropping around a bend in the coast and reached a headland. Sparse lights twinkled along the coast. He couldn’t hear the music at all from here, nor could he see the rave if he looked behind him — it was obscured by the dark matter of jutting rocks. He sat on the headland with the wind on his face and the crash of the sea against the rocks below. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply.

He had been a fool, he decided, to have ever wanted to kill himself. It wasn’t that it had been untrue, all the terrible things he’d become obsessed by: the end of reality, the impossibility of love, the brutal and pitiless character of existence. It was all true — but that wasn’t reason enough for suicide. The challenge was to live in this weird, catastrophic, haywire world and ride it out, create your own pride and meaning within it, to face up to the nihilism and not be crushed by it. You had to keep yourself alive: through hate, through loving whatever there was left to love, through music and art and inspiration, through passion and intensity and feeling.

Out there on the headland, Rez felt like he was perched on the edge of the world, before a great abyss. There were no laws and no limits, everything was possible. He tilted his head back and the stars dived in his eyes. He laughed out loud and assented to all the whims of the chaotic, hurtling planet. If there was nothing to hope for, then there was nothing to fear, either. His life from here on in would be a reckless experiment in discipline, negation and vehemence. He vowed never to try to kill himself again, even after the euphoria faded, no matter how bad things became. He swore he wouldn’t.

Then his smile wilted and he became very still. He had just remembered.

We kissed in front of the DJ rig as dancers whirled all around. Then we walked out past the rave, towards the sea. I felt like I’d known her for a long time, like this kind of thing was easy to do.

‘What’s Berlin like?’ I asked. ‘Tell me, tell me all about Berlin.’

‘It’s amazing, the best city in the world. You can do anything you want there, it’s completely free. Everyone is making art, or the music, or doing something interesting. You can go out to the party every night until the afternoon if you want to. We say Berlin is poor, but sexy.’

‘It sounds incredible. I think I want to live there.’

‘You should. I think you would like it.’

‘I will. That’s it, I’ll leave tomorrow. I’ll leave tonight.’

We made our way to where the beach frayed into raised, uneven rocks. Laughing, we climbed up and sat together, our fingers entwined. Elena — her name was Elena — leaned over and kissed me, running her fingers through my hair. I touched her face. Her tongue tasted of Red Bull. We drew apart and looked into each other’s eyes.

‘You’re so gorgeous,’ I said. We kissed and the whole world vanished. I was nothing; I wasn’t there.

But then a voice was saying my name. It sounded urgent. I drew apart from Elena, confused.

It was Rez. He was coming towards us slowly, careful not to trip and fall on to the rocks and into the sea. He came not from the direction of the lights and music, but from the other side, out where it was forbiddingly dark.

‘Matthew,’ he was saying. ‘Is that you?’

‘Yeah, Rez. Are ye alright?’

He slowed as he stepped over the final rock to arrive at where we sat, cross-legged and facing one another.

‘Matthew, listen, I’ve to talk to ye for a second.’

‘Em, yeah, okay. Hang on a sec. This is Elena, by the way.’

‘Heya,’ he said, not even looking at her.

I turned to Elena and said, ‘Sorry about this, but I think it’s something important. Just hang on here, okay? I’ll be back in just a minute or two.’

She smiled. ‘Okay, sure.’

‘I’ll just be a sec.’

‘Don’t worry.’

I clambered down from the rocks ahead of Rez and waited for him on the shingle. He hopped down and came over.

‘What’s up, man?’ I said.

I expected him to launch into one of his rants about the technoapocalypse, how he couldn’t live with his mind any more, how it distressed him too much to be a non-voice in a dead world. But instead he said, ‘Matthew, listen to me. Kearney is really messed up.’

I laughed. ‘Ye mean you’re only thinkin of that now? I hope ye didn’t walk all the way out there to ponder things on the rocks and then only realize that Kearney is fucked up. He’s —’

‘No, I don’t mean just like normal fucked up. He’s —’

‘Ye mean the pills? Has he taken too much or something?’

‘No! Will ye be quiet for a moment and listen to me: Kearney killed that handicapped boy, the one on the news and in all the papers.’

I stared at him. My reaction must have come across as blank incomprehension, because Rez added, ‘That one, James Appleton. Remember? It was Kearney who killed him, the handicapped boy in the Garden of Remembrance, he was pushed down the steps and had his head cracked open.’

I recovered enough to act astonished: ‘Rez, what are ye talkin about? What makes ye think that?’ I paused, a crazy new possibility emerging: ‘Did he tell ye that himself?’

‘No, no he didn’t. I just, I don’t know. I just know he did it. It’s the clothes he was wearin, some of the things he said, and there are other reasons, little things, stuff he said to me when I was in hospital. I think I knew it was him the moment I saw it on the news, but … I don’t know, I couldn’t be sure, or I didn’t trust myself. But I know it now, I’m absolutely certain it was him.’

The wind picked up and a cheer rose from behind me — a new DJ must have come on. I tried to meet Rez’s gaze and continue to act amazed. But I started to sense that he could see right into me.

I looked down. ‘I know. I already knew it was him. I mean, I suspected it. I didn’t want to believe it. I think I … I convinced myself it couldn’t be true.’

‘What!’ Rez was astonished. So I’d been wrong: he hadn’t suspected me at all. ‘Ye mean ye knew all along?’

I nodded, looking down again. ‘I think I knew. He didn’t tell me but I knew, I put it all together.’

Rez fell silent, considering this. Some time passed. Anything was possible now: Rez could go to the police, tell them that I had known about the killing and hadn’t done anything. We were all going to be famous and on the news.

But Rez started speaking, saying words that made no sense at all.

He was saying, ‘Matthew, give me the rest of the pills.’

I shook my head in bewilderment. ‘What do ye mean?’

‘Give me the pills,’ he repeated, louder and more firmly.

‘What do ye want them for?’

He didn’t reply. He stared into my eyes. Then I knew. I took the pills from my pocket and handed them to him.