The Absolutist

by John Boyne

I think it’s up to God to take us or leave us as he pleases. And anyway, what do I have against some German boy who’s been dragged away from Berlin or Frankfurt or Dusseldorf to fight for his country? What does he have against me? Yes, there are issues at stake, political issues, territorial issues, over which this war is being fought, and there are legitimate grounds for complaint, I dare say, but there is also such a thing as diplomacy, there is such a thing as the concept of right-thinking men gathering around a table and sorting their problems out.

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. The barracks were filled with ghosts, Marian. Does that make sense? It was as if we died before we left England.

I would lie in bed at night, curled into a tight ball, half encouraging the most lurid fantasies to energize the dark hours, half desperate to dismiss them out of pure fear of what they implied.

It was as if I had walked onstage into the middle of a dramatic play, where the other characters are already engaged in a battle that has been going on for some years but which only now, upon my arrival, is allowed to reach a climax.

said, as if he were confirming the fact for me; as if I had asked the question in order to reassure myself because of some ongoing dementia, an uncertainty about my continued existence.

I stared at him. He was rather beautiful and, of course, the fires never go out.