The Heart's Invisible Furies

by John Boyne

“If I have to tell you to speak up again, I’ll hit you a slap across this altar and there’s not a soul in the church that would blame me for it.”

‘I do.’ That will be the only time you ever utter those words in a church, do you realize that, little girl? There’ll never be a wedding day for you. Your hands are going to your fat belly, I see. Is there a secret that you’re hiding?”

Give me the pup’s name right now, Catherine Goggin, give me his name so we can cast you out and not have to look at your filthy face anymore. Or do you not know his name, is that it? Were there too many of them for you to be certain?”

And with that she took her leave of Goleen, the place of her birth, which she would not see again for more than sixty years, when she would stand in that same graveyard with me and search among the gravestones for the remains of the family that had cast her out.

I was just a living creature who shared a house with two adults who rarely acknowledged each other. I was fed, clothed and schooled, and to complain would have shown a level of ingratitude that probably would have baffled them both.

“I’m going to be a pervert when I grow up,” he continued. “So am I,” I said, eager to please. “Perhaps we could be perverts together.”

Had I been a little older I would have realized that she was flirting with him and he was flirting right back. Which, of course, is a little disturbing in retrospect considering the fact that he was just a child and she was thirty-four by then.

“Why don’t you want people to read your books, Maude?” I asked, a question that I had never put to her before. “For the same reason that I don’t walk into strangers’ houses and tell them how many bowel movements I’ve enjoyed since breakfast,” she said. “It’s none of their business.”

can you think of another word for fluorescent?” she asked. “Glowing?” I suggested. “Luminous? Incandescent?” “Incandescent, that’s the one,” she said. “You’re a clever boy for eleven, aren’t you?” “I’m seven,” I told her, struck once again by the question of whether my adoptive

“Who are they anyway?” asked Maude, lighting a fresh cigarette as the one she was smoking was coming perilously close to the end. “Are they our sort of people?” “I’m afraid not,” replied Charles. “A teacher, a dockworker, a bus driver and a woman who works in the tearoom at Dáil Éireann.” “Good Lord,” she said. “They let anyone on to juries these days, don’t they?”

knew almost nothing of homosexuality, except for the fact that to act on such urges was a criminal act in Ireland that could result in a jail sentence, unless of course you were a priest, in which case it was a perk of the job.

“You’re like a wall of glass. I can see right into the depths of your soul and it is a dark cave filled with indecent thoughts and immoral fantasies. Good man yourself.”

I had tried to hug him only once, at Maude’s funeral, and he had recoiled from me as if I had leprosy.

There are no homosexuals in Ireland. You might have got it into your head that you are one but you’re just wrong, it’s as simple as that. You’re wrong.”

“What makes you think that you’re one of them anyway? A dirty queer, I mean.”

“At least I don’t blow little boys in motorcars.” “I didn’t blow anyone!” he roared. “If anyone was getting blown it was me. Although, of course, it wasn’t me anyway, as it never happened.” “That’s a great quote,” said Mr. Denby-Denby. “We should definitely put that into the press release. I don’t blow teenage boys. They blow me.”

“And as he did so,” said Mr. Denby-Denby, “your belt fell open, your trousers fell down, his did too, and somehow your cock landed halfway down his throat. Makes perfect sense. I can’t see how anyone would question an explanation like that.”

Do you know what I’d do with all the queers if I could catch them? I’d do what Hitler did. You can say what you like about the man but he had a few good ideas. Round them up, arrest them, then gas the lot of them.”

I imagine that everyone around that table assumed that I was a virgin when the fact was I had probably had more sex than any of them, even Julian, albeit in far less romantic settings. But they had experienced things that I never had, pleasures that I felt certain were superior to the ephemeral thrill of a quickly forgotten climax.

imagine that everyone around that table assumed that I was a virgin when the fact was I had probably had more sex than any of them, even Julian, albeit in far less romantic settings. But they had experienced things that I never had, pleasures that I felt certain were superior to the ephemeral thrill of a quickly forgotten climax.

walker. I had no idea what it would be like to wrap my arms around a lover beneath the sheets as we fell asleep, whispering words of gentle affection that drifted carelessly into sleepy tenderness. I had never woken with another person or been able to satisfy my tenacious early-morning desire with an unapologetic partner. I could number more sexual partners in my history than anyone I knew but the difference between love and sex could be summed up for me in eight words: I loved Julian; I had sex with strangers.

I could number more sexual partners in my history than anyone I knew but the difference between love and sex could be summed up for me in eight words: I loved Julian; I had sex with strangers.

“We’re trying to have a nice dinner and all we can hear from you people is a lot of talk about that queer disease. If one of you has it, then you shouldn’t be in a restaurant anyway.”

Turning back, I looked toward the patient and our eyes met in a moment of recognition that sent a shiver through my body so deeply that I was forced to reach a hand out to the windowsill to steady myself. He was no older than me but almost completely bald, a few wisps of hair clinging pathetically to the top of his head. His cheeks were sunken, as were his eyes, and a dark oval of purple-red sent a hideous bruise along his chin and down his neckline. A line came into my mind, something that Hannah Arendt had once said about the poet Auden: that life had manifested the heart’s invisible furies on his face. He looked a hundred years old. He looked like a man who had died several months earlier. He looked like a soul in pure torment. But still I knew him. All the changes that the disease had made to his once-beautiful face and body and still I would have known him anywhere. “Julian,” I said.

It had been fourteen years since he realized that our friendship was based on a simple deceit on my part, and this was to be the cruel circumstances of our reunion. In New York City. In a hospital room. Where my oldest friend was dying of AIDS.

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. I had allowed a crush to become an obsession. I’d been infatuated with the idea of his friendship, with the awareness of his beauty, and by his unique ability to transfix all those around him. But Julian had never loved me in return. He may have liked me, he may have cared about me like a brother, but he had never loved me romantically.

“You found a boyfriend in the end then?” “Of course I did. It turns out I wasn’t so unlovable after all.” “No one ever said that you were. If I remember correctly, you were very much loved when you left Dublin. By a lot of people, myself included.”

I sat down on the chair next to the bed, watching him as his breath came in short bursts. He was so skinny that he was almost frightening to look at but somewhere beneath that scarred face lay the boy that I had once known, the boy that I had loved, the boy in the ornamental chair in Dartmouth Square, the boy whose friendship I had betrayed. I reached out to him, taking his hand in mine, and the sensation of his paper-thin skin, clammy and tender against my palm, unsettled me. He mumbled something and, after a moment, he opened his eyes and smiled.

“I loved you,” I said, leaning in to him. “You were my best friend.” “I loved you too,” he whispered and then, a startled expression on his face, he said, “I can’t see you.” “I’m here.” “I can’t see you. It’s just darkness.” “I’m here, Julian. I’m here. Can you hear me?” “I hear you. But I can’t see you. Will you hold me?” I was already holding his hand and squeezed it a little to make sure he knew that I was there. “No,” he said. “Hold me. I want to be held again. Just one more time.” I hesitated, uncertain what he meant, and then released his hand and walked around to the other side of the bed, lying down next to him, my arms wrapping themselves around his thin, trembling frame. How many times throughout my youth had I dreamed of such a moment and now all I could do was bury my face in his back and weep. “Cyril…” whispered Julian. “Just let go,” I whispered back. “Alice…”

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, six years since the trial, five since I had left the States forever after half a dozen operations on my leg, four since I had returned to mainland Europe, three since I’d come back to Dublin, two since Charles’s arrest for fraud and tax evasion and one since he found himself back in jail and had finally reached out to me in the hope of a little filial assistance.

“The vulgarity of popularity?”

And she told me that if I was going to let men do that to me, then she would be in charge of it from then on. And the money would be hers.”

“The Phantom Pain, they call it,” I said. “Like amputees get when they can still feel their missing limbs.”

“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 program 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.

“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.”

What I would not have given to be that young at this time and to be able to experience such unashamed honesty.

“But all it did was remind me how unkind people can be. And how ugly.”

Death was coming for me, I knew that. But I didn’t want to think about it today.

“Father Monroe. He said I’d never have a wedding day. He said that no man would ever want me. But here that day is. He was wrong.”

“I know, but it’s nearly over. And you haven’t done a bad job of it at the same time, given the mess you made of the first thirty.