The Heart's Invisible Furies

by John Boyne

“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.” “Yeah,” I said. “I’m not so sure about that.” “I am.

“That’s because you’re a fucking coward, Cyril,” he said. “And a liar. You always were and I bet you still are.” “No,” I insisted. “I’m not anymore. I don’t have to be now. Because I don’t live in Ireland. I can be exactly who I want to be now that I’m not part of that country anymore.”

And so she’d borne the shame of it in Ireland in 1973, when an unmarried pregnant girl was considered little better than a whore and was treated by everyone accordingly. I’d always assumed that my own mother, my birth mother, had been unwed and given me up because of how difficult it would have been to rear a child alone in the forties. But things hadn’t changed that much since then. Had I done to Alice what my own father had done to my mother?

“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.”

“He came into the library the other day,” I said. “I’d never seen him in there before. He looked around in amazement and said, I think I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere.” “Somebody should save that line,” said Anna. “They could put it on his gravestone.”

I married up several times. And then across once or twice. And then beneath me. I never quite found the right level somehow. Perhaps I should have married diagonally or in a slightly curved direction.

“But I’m glad we adopted you,” he added. “You’re a good boy. A kind boy. You always were.” I felt a curious sensation inside myself and was unable to identify it until, on further examination, I realized that I was a little moved. This was probably the nicest thing he had ever said to me in the forty-nine years that we’d known each other.

I ordered another drink and sat quietly in the corner of the bar watching the couples and the groups of friends enjoying their evenings. And nothing changes, I thought. Nothing ever changes. Not in Ireland.

“Come closer.” “I can’t come any closer. We’re practically kissing as it is.” He pulled himself up a little in the bed and looked around the room with a horrified expression on his pale face before grabbing me by the back of the head and pulling my face close to him. “You were never a real Avery,” he hissed. “You know that, don’t you?” “I do,” I said. “But Christ on a bike, you came close. You came damned close.”

The Church was never a friend to me. I’ve always felt that the Catholic Church has the same relationship to God as a fish has to a bicycle.” I smiled. “I feel the same way,” I said.