The Heart's Invisible Furies

by John Boyne

But for all that we had, for all the luxury to which we were accustomed, we were both denied love, and this deficiency would be scorched into our future lives like an ill-considered tattoo inscribed on the buttocks after a drunken night out, leading each of us inevitably toward isolation and disaster.

“The most important thing,” he told us, “is that we put on a united front. We need to give the impression that we are a happy, loving family.” “We are a happy, loving family,” said Maude, sounding offended by any suggestion to the contrary. “That’s the spirit,” said Charles.

I left a list of things that we do as father and son on your bed. Did you memorize it?” “I did,” I said. “Repeat them back to me.” “We fish the great lakes of Connemara together. We attend GAA matches in Croke Park. We have an ongoing game of chess where we only make one move per day. We braid each other’s hair.” “I told you, no jokes.” “Sorry.”

I wish I’d never married again. My first wife was a lovely girl. The new one…well, she has a mouth on her, that’s all I’m saying.” “A mouth on her?” asked Mrs. Hennessy. “Isn’t that a normal thing? How would the poor woman breathe without a mouth?”

“You’ll be on the tea towel one of these days,” said Turpin. “The tea towel?” asked Maude, frowning. “You know, the one that all the tourists buy,” he explained. “With the pictures of the Irish writers on them.” “That will never happen,” said Maude. “They don’t put women on that. Only men. Although they do let us use it to dry the dishes.”

“Of all the women in Ireland, you had to fuck the wife of the one man who’s trying to keep you out of prison,” said Maude after the guests had left.

“Can I help you?” asked Maude, turning to her with all the warmth of Lizzie Borden dropping in to say goodnight to her parents.

as with most generations we were solely concerned with when we would next eat, how we could improve our social standing among our peers and whether anyone might do to us the things that we were doing to ourselves several times a day.

Turning around, he looked at me without any particular interest and although it had been a long time since we’d last seen each other I would have known him anywhere. He was around the same height as me but had a more muscular frame, with blond hair that fell over his forehead with as much languor as it had when he was a child. And he was ridiculously handsome, with clear blue eyes and skin that, unlike most of our classmates, had not been tarnished by acne.

He closed the drawers and looked me up and down before raising his right hand in simulation of a pistol and using his index finger to point to a spot just to the right of my heart. “You’ve missed a button on your shirt,” he said. I looked down and, sure enough, one of the buttons was undone, the two sides of my shirt falling open like the mouth of a tiny hatchling, exposing the pale skin beneath. How had I missed that during my rigorous preparations? “Sorry,” I said, fastening it quickly.

As infatuated as I was with Julian, I found his tendency to talk constantly about girls frustrating. It was an obsession for him, as much as it is for most fourteen-year-old boys I suppose, but he seemed excessively preoccupied with sex and wasn’t shy about telling me all the things that he would do to any girl who would let him have his way with her, fantasies that both aroused and distressed me with the certain knowledge that he would never want to do any of those things with me.

It was 1959, after all. I 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.

I turned away and my mind flitted to an image of Julian in our room every night, undressing for bed. The casual way he discarded his clothes, the complete lack of inhibition he showed as he stripped naked and slowly, casually, provocatively put on his pajamas while I pretended to read and tried not to make it obvious that I was watching from over the top of my book to capture another part of his body in my memory. A vision of him coming over to my bed to give me a blowie filled my mind and I struggled not to whimper in longing.

This was the type of back-and-forth which seemed to annoy most of our classmates, turning Julian into a rather unpopular figure, but the way he challenged Father Squires delighted me. He was arrogant, certainly, and had no respect for authority but he made his pronouncements with such insouciance that I found it impossible not to be charmed by him.

I felt my stomach slowly dip and realized that for all of our escapes from Belvedere College together, sometimes Julian escaped alone, or—worse by far—escaped with someone who was his sexual peer and with whom he could go in search of girls. The notion that he had a life outside our life, outside our friendship, was deeply hurtful to me. And the realization, as it slowly dawned, that Bridget had seen his thing, whether this meant she had simply touched it or looked at it or given him a blowie or gone all the way with him was almost too much for me to bear. For the first time since I was a child, I felt like a child.

“Any strange men on the school grounds at all?” “Only the priests.”

On the nights when I was left alone in our room, one hand behind my head, the other down the front of my pajamas bottoms, as I lay in Julian’s bed staring up at the ceiling, I began to come to terms with who I was. I had known from as far back as I could recall that I was different from other boys.

Kneeling on the hard floor, I said a prayer, a thing I had never done with any solemnity before. Please don’t let Julian die, I asked God. And please stop me from being a homosexual. Only

Had I been a person of more religious scruple, I might have believed that God had answered my prayers, but the fact was, before going to sleep that night I’d already committed a few more sins, so instead I put it down to good detective work on the part of An Garda Síochána. It seemed like the most convenient explanation to me.

“Anything is possible,” I said. “But most things are unlikely.”

It was a difficult time to be Irish, a difficult time to be twenty-one years of age and a difficult time to be a man who was attracted to other men. To be all three simultaneously required a level of subterfuge and guile that felt contrary to my nature.

I had few friends and even when I considered my relationship with Julian I had to admit that our bond was built on little more than my obsessive and undeclared love. I had guarded and nurtured that alliance jealously over the years, ignoring the fact that were it not for my determination to stay in touch he might have moved on years ago. I had no family to speak of, no siblings, no cousins, no idea as to the identities of my birth parents.

“Yes, it’s true,” he continued, “that there are homosexuals all over the world. England has lots of them. France is full of them. And I’ve never been to America but I imagine they have more than their share too. I wouldn’t think it’s all that common in Russia or Australia but they probably have some other repulsive thing to compensate. But here’s what you have to remember: 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.”

He thought I was one of them, you know.” “One of who?” “A queer.” “And are you?” she asked in so casual a tone that she might have been asking me what the weather was like outside. “Yes,” I said, the first time I had ever admitted this aloud to another person, the word out of my mouth before I could even try to drag it back. “Well, it happens,” she said.

“I remember a friend of mine once telling me that we hate what we fear in ourselves,” she said with a shrug. “Perhaps that has something to do with it.”

Mrs. Goggin’s eyes had filled with tears and she had taken her handkerchief from her pocket to wipe them away. “Don’t mind me,” she said, attempting a smile. “It’s just that I find this kind of violence very upsetting. I’ve seen it before and I know where it can lead.” “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.”

There was no point staying there. I knew one thing for sure: that this was the end of it. There would be no more men, no more boys. It would just be women from now on. I would be like everyone else. I would be normal if it killed me.

I stared at him, astonished and devastated at the same time. Julian Woodbead, the one boy with whom I’d been in love all my life and who had never shown the slightest romantic interest in me, had gone lips to lips with Jasper Timson, a boy whose greatest passion in life was playing the piano fucking accordion! In fact, I could remember walking in once to find the pair of them giggling away. It must have happened only a few minutes earlier. I sat down, anxious to hide the massive erection that had built in my trousers.

Over the years, I had created two fundamentally dishonest portraits of myself, one for my oldest friend and another for my newest ones, and they had only a few brushstrokes in common. Revelations from either side could see the whole artifice fall apart and with it the plans I had made for my future.

Perhaps it was his clothes, or the way he talked, or the way he looked. Perhaps it was the aura of sex that always emanated from him, as if he’d just risen from the bed of a model and left the house without even bothering to take a shower. Whatever it was, men, women, straight or gay, everyone wanted Julian to like them.

“I think they’re what are commonly referred to as socialites,” she said, her voice dripping with disdain. “The dictionary definition would be a bunch of self-regarding, narcissistic, physically attractive but intellectually hollow individuals whose parents have so much money that they don’t need to do a day’s work themselves. Instead, they go from party to party, desperate to be seen, while gradually corroding from the inside out, like a spent battery, due to their lack of ambition, insight or wit.”

“I sometimes feel as if I wasn’t supposed to live among people at all. As if I would be happier on a little island somewhere, all alone with my books and some writing material for company. I could grow my own food and never have to speak to a soul. I look at him sometimes,” she added, nodding toward her brother, “and it’s as if we were born with two life-forces between us but he got all of his share and half of mine too.”

“You’ll miss him, I suppose?” said Alice when I returned with two large glasses of wine. “Six months is a long time.” “I will,” I said. “He’s my best friend.” “Mine too,” she said. “So what does that make us?” “Rivals?” I suggested, and she laughed.

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’m not in love with her,” I insisted. “I’m in love with you. I’ve been in love with you for as long as I can remember. Since that first moment I came downstairs in Dartmouth Square and saw you sitting in the hallway. All the way through our school days. And every day since.”

“Make sure you comb your hair before you come out here,” he said, the last words he would speak to me for many years. “Remember where you are. And what you’ve come here to do.”

There was nothing I could say that would make him forgive me, nothing that could possibly excuse my actions. Our friendship, such as it had been, was over.

There was something faintly erotic about being alone in Bastiaan’s childhood bedroom and I couldn’t stop myself from lying down on the single bed that had been his for eighteen years before he left for university. I tried to imagine him falling asleep there as a teenager, fantasizing about bare-chested swimmers or floppy-haired Dutch pop stars as he embraced his sexuality instead of running from it.

It was in this bed that he had lost his virginity at the age of fifteen to a boy from his local football team when he spent the night there after a cup final match. When he told me that story, a softness in his expression, a dampness in his eyes at the blissful memory, I had been torn between grudging respect and overwhelming jealousy, for I simply couldn’t compare my own early experiences with his. The fact that the boy, Gregor, remained a vague presence in his life still was astonishing to me, for until meeting Bastiaan himself I had never encountered a lover twice.

Listening in amazement, torn between horror and hilarity, he finally shook his head in disbelief, unable to understand why I would have put myself and Alice through such incredible deceit. “What’s wrong with you people?” he asked, looking at me as if I was clinically insane. “What’s wrong with Ireland? Are you all just fucking nuts over there, is that it? Don’t you want each other to be happy?” “No,” I said, finding my country a difficult one to explain. “No, I don’t think we do.”

“I know all about your country,” she said. “I’ve read about it. I’ve heard about it. It sounds like a backward place. A people with no empathy for anyone. Why do you let your priests decide everything for you?” “Because they always have, I suppose.” “What a ridiculous answer,” she said with an irritated laugh. “Still, at least you abandoned it. I think you were clever to do that.” “I didn’t abandon it,” I said, surprised to feel unexpected stirrings of patriotism in a soul that I had always thought devoid of such parochial bullshit. “I left it, that’s all.” “Is there a difference?” “I think so.” “You’ll go back someday, I expect. All Irish boys go home to their mothers in the end, don’t they?” “If they know who their mothers are, perhaps.”

“I came back hoping you might be here,” he told me by way of introduction. “I did too,” I said. “I thought if you weren’t going to speak to me, then I should speak to you.” 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. More important than Charles Avery. More important than Julian Woodbead. The only one whom I would ever love and who would ever love me in return. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m a little shy, that’s all.” “You can’t be shy in Amsterdam,” he said, echoing Smoot’s words of the previous night. “It’s against the law. You can get locked up for less.”

“So how long have you wanted to be a father?” I asked, and Bastiaan looked across at me in surprise. “What do you mean?” “Well, all the effort you’ve put in with him since he came to Weesperplein. You’re good at it, you really are. Better than me.” “Neither of us are his father,” said Bastiaan. “We mustn’t forget that.” “I know. But it’s starting to feel as if we are, isn’t it?

Normal people don’t like fags, he said, grinning at me as if he couldn’t understand what I was getting so worked up about. So what does that mean? I asked him. That they should all die because they’re not popular? The majority of members of the House of Representatives aren’t popular either, but no one’s suggesting that they should all be killed off.”

“There are three types of lies,” said Alex, looking at me. “Lies, damn lies, and statistics.”

“So why didn’t he go home to die?” I asked. “Why stay in America?” “He said he didn’t want his family to know. That he’d rather die alone here than tell them the truth.” “You see?” I said. “That country never fucking changes. Better to cover it all up than to face up to the realities of life.”

I had never fallen in love with this city—even after almost seven years my head was still in Amsterdam and my heart was still in Dublin—but there were moments, like this one, when I understood why others did.

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 wondered whether you’d come back,” he whispered eventually, his voice croaky from lack of use. “I figured you would. You never could stay away from me for long.”

“Oh, Julian,” I said, giving in to my emotions now as I buried my face in my hands to stop him from seeing the grief on my face. “What happened to you? How did you end up here?”