The Heart's Invisible Furies

by John Boyne

‘You won’t tell anyone, will you?’ I asked. ‘Tell them what?’ ‘What I just told you. That I’m not normal.’ ‘Ah Jesus,’ she said, laughing as she stood up. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. We’re none of us normal. Not in this fucking country.’

Had I been lucky enough to find a person with whom I wanted to have regular sex while still being able to walk hand in hand with him on the streets of Dublin without being arrested, I would never have let him go.

Jealousy is an utterly futile emotion.’

But it was impossible to shake the knowledge that whenever he looked at me he understood me better than anyone else alive.

‘Well, it was his loss,’ I said. ‘Oh don’t patronize me,’ she snapped, turning serious again. ‘People always say that, you see, but they’re wrong. It wasn’t his loss. It was mine. I loved him.’ She hesitated for a moment and then repeated the phrase, with added emphasis on the crucial word. ‘And I still miss him, despite everything. I just wish he’d been honest with me, that’s all. If he’d told me a few days before that he didn’t love me enough to marry me, if we could have just sat down and discussed things, then even if he’d still wanted to call it all off, it would have been difficult but at least I could have been part of the decision. I wouldn’t have had to suffer such deep humiliation. But the manner in which he left me? Simply telephoning when I was already in my dress to tell me about his ridiculous “cold feet”? What sort of man does that?

Apt

I don’t know how I survived what Fergus did to me. I’m telling you right now that I couldn’t go through that twice. It would be the end of me.’

‘It happens,’ he said with a shrug. ‘We all fall in the shit many times during our lives. The trick is pulling ourselves out again.’

for here were two people who had gone through the worst of all possible experiences and survived it, and I was in love with their son and he, to my utter astonishment, appeared to be in love with me too.

turning and smiling at me in a way that said there was no one else in the world he wanted to see more at that moment than me.

I looked directly into his eyes and somehow already knew that seated across from me was the most important man I would ever know in my life.

I had thought of him many times over the last decade and a half, sometimes with love and sometimes with anger, but the truth was that since I had met Bastiaan he had started to fade from my memory, a thing that I had never previously imagined could happen. I had grown to realize that although I had once loved him – and I had loved him – it was nothing like the love I had experienced with Bastiaan.

‘You found a boyfriend in the end then?’ ‘Of course I did. It turns out I wasn’t so unlovable after all.’

I don’t think I’ve ever stayed with the same girl for even twelve weeks. How can you stand it?’ ‘It’s not difficult,’ I said, ‘since I love him. And he loves me.’ ‘But don’t you get bored of him?’ ‘No. Is that such a strange concept for you?’

It’s a strange thing to know that you’re living your last hour on earth.’

Seven years had passed since that terrible night in New York when I had lost the only two men I had ever loved within an hour of each other,

‘Who’s Bastiaan?’ ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said, shaking my head, even though it did matter. It mattered a great deal.

A selfish, arrogant, conceited shit who thinks the world has done you such a bad turn that you can do whatever you like to get back at it. No matter who you hurt.

Are you saying that’s a wasted life?’ ‘It is if the person you’re with doesn’t love you.’

It’s those of us who are left behind who’ll have to suffer now.’

‘I’ve lost people before. I’ve known violence, I’ve known bigotry, I’ve known shame and I’ve known love. And somehow, I always survive.

and what kind of God was it who would allow her to lose one son, let alone two?

‘What’s seldom is wonderful.’

‘Does it ever get any easier?’ she asked. I nodded. ‘It does,’ I said. ‘You reach a point where you realize that your life must go on regardless. You choose to live or you choose to die. But then there are moments, things that you see, something funny on the street or a good joke that you hear, a television programme that you want to share, and it makes you miss the person who’s gone terribly and then it’s not grief at all, it’s more a sort of bitterness at the world for taking them away from you.

‘All these people,’ she said sorrowfully. ‘And all of that trouble. And look, they’re all dead now. So what did it all matter in the end?’

Argh god

‘Will there be someone up there for me?’ I asked hopefully. ‘One person,’ he said. ‘Where is he?’ I asked. ‘I never see him.’ ‘He doesn’t visit you?’ ‘He hasn’t so far.’ ‘Be patient.’

I can't

‘I have to go, Bastiaan,’ I said. ‘Will I see you later?’ ‘No. But I’ll be there in November when you arrive.’