The Absolutist

by John Boyne

‘The truth is, Tristan,’ my father said that day as he steered me carefully out on to the street, his thick fingers pressing tightly on my shoulder blades, ‘it would be best for all of us if the Germans shoot you dead on sight.’

At Aldershot, they weren’t teaching us how to fight, they were training us how to extend our lives for as long as possible. As if we were already dead, but if we learned to shoot straight and to use a bayonet with care and precision then we might at least have a few more days or weeks in us.

Twenty boys. And only two came back. One who went mad, and myself. But that doesn’t mean we survived it. I don’t think I did survive it. I may not be buried in a French field but I linger there. My spirit does, anyway. I think I’m just breathing, that’s all. And there’s a difference between breathing and being alive.

we forget that we have very nearly died today as we wait to die again tomorrow.

It is your generation who understands the inhumanity of man, not ours. It’s boys like you who have to live with what you have seen and what you have done. You’ve become the generation of response. While your elders can only look in your direction and wonder.’

‘Do you see the irony at all, Tristan?’ I stare at him and shake my head. He seems determined not to speak again until I do. ‘What irony?’ I ask eventually, the words tumbling out in a hurried heap. ‘That I am to be shot as a coward while you get to live as one.’