A Ladder to the Sky

by John Boyne

“Everyone has secrets. There’s something in all our pasts that we wouldn’t want to be revealed.

We had seen the effect the last war had had on our fathers—those of us who still had fathers, that is—and did not relish the idea of our lives following a similar pattern. And so perhaps it is not so strange that the first thought I had upon laying eyes on Oskar in the Böttcher was that war must be avoided at all costs lest someone as beautiful as him fall to the indiscriminate brutality of the battlefield.

“Well, I won’t push you on it,” you said, standing up and coming over, raising my chin with your index finger and kissing me gently on the lips but holding the kiss for a long time, so long that I felt the need to pull away before you suffocated me.

“And you’ve heard the old proverb about ambition, haven’t you?” He shook his head. “That it’s like setting a ladder to the sky. A pointless waste of energy.