The Heart's Invisible Furies

by John Boyne

“Soft day all the same,” said the boy next to her. “What was that?” she asked, turning to look at him. “I said it was a soft day,” he repeated. “Not bad for this time of year.” “I suppose so.” “Yesterday it was raining and the sky this morning looked heavy with showers. But look, there’s been no spillage at all. It’s grand out.” “You take an interest in the weather, do you?” she asked, hearing the sarcastic tone in her voice but not caring.

“Can I ask you your name?” asked the boy, and my mother hesitated. “Is there a reason you want to know it?” “So I can call you by it,” he said.

“My daddy likes a Guinness,” said my mother, recalling the bitter taste of the yellow-labeled bottles that my grandfather occasionally brought into the house and that she had tried herself once when his back was turned. “He goes down to the pub every Wednesday and Friday night, as regular as clockwork. On Wednesdays he limits himself to three pints with his pals and comes home at a respectable time but on Friday nights he gets polluted. He’ll often come in at two o’clock in the morning and rouse my mother from her bed to cook him a plate of sausages and a ring of black pudding and if she says no, then he raises his fists to her.”

“Yes, the Church doesn’t let girls be naked until they’re married. But the Americans do and they take their clothes off all the time and let their pictures go into magazines and then men go into shops and buy them with copies of History Today or Stamps Monthly so they don’t look like perverts.” “What’s a pervert?” I asked. “It’s someone who’s a sex maniac,” he explained. “Oh.” “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.”

“What?” I asked, appalled. “Who?” This was the first time I had heard this. “Oh I can’t remember. Some…man, I think. Or possibly a woman. A person, shall we say. It was all such a long time ago.”

“Do you enjoy being a writer, Mrs. Avery?” asked Julian. “No, of course not,” she said. “It’s a hideous profession. Entered into by narcissists who think their pathetic little imaginations will be of interest to people they’ve never met.” “But are you successful?” “It depends on how you define the word success.” “Well, do you have a lot of readers?” “Oh no. Heaven forefend. There’s something terribly crude about a popular book, don’t you think?” “I don’t know,” said Julian. “I’m afraid I don’t read very much.”

“Don’t prisoners use cigarettes as currency?” “And to fend off potential attacks by homosexuals,” said Julian.

“It’s just that you never come home at this hour,” I said, picking up where I’d left off. “You realize that it’s still daylight out and the pubs are still open?” “Don’t be cheeky,” he said. “I’m not being cheeky,” I told him. “I’m concerned, that’s all.” “Oh. In that case, thank you. Your concern is noted. You know, it’s remarkable how much easier it is to unlock the door when it’s bright outside,” he added. “Usually I’m stuck on the porch for a few minutes at least before I can get in. I always thought it was a problem with the key but perhaps it was me all along.”

The anxiety that had marked my childhood had begun to lessen and, while I was still not the most outgoing of pupils, I didn’t walk down populated corridors in fear of assault or insult. I was one of that fortunate cadre of boys who, for the most part, is left to his own devices, neither popular nor disliked, not interesting enough to befriend but not fragile enough to bully.

“I don’t think fame was what Maude was looking for,” I said, interrupting him. “Actually, I think the idea of literary approbation would have appalled her.” “Why? What’s the point of writing if no one reads you?” “Well, if the work has some value, then there’s merit in that alone, surely?” “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s like having a wonderful voice but only singing to an audience of deaf people.”

“So,” I said, and we walked on, keen to put as much distance between us and the public toilet as possible while trying not to think about how awful it must be to have to go to such places to find anything approaching affection. “What shall we do today?”

“Can we go see the ducks first?” I asked. “No, Cyril,” he said, torn between frustration and amusement. “Fuck the ducks. We’re going to the pub.” I said nothing—it was rare that the F word was employed by any of us and when it was, it signaled absolute authority. There was simply no going against the F word.

A narrow corridor faced a long and colorful bar where a half-dozen men were seated at stools, smoking and staring at their pints of Guinness as if within that dark liquid the meaning of life could be discovered.

“Grand job. How do I look?” “You look like a Greek god sent down by the immortal Zeus from Mount Olympus to taunt the rest of us inferior beings with your astonishing beauty,” I said, which somehow, in translation, came out as “You look fine, why?”

“Stop it, Julian,” said Bridget. “You’re embarrassing Mary-Margaret.” “I’m not embarrassed,” she insisted, her face turning puce now. “I’m repulsed. There’s a difference.”

Ransom While the number of spelling and punctuation errors in the ransom note suggested a degree of illiteracy on the part of Julian’s kidnappers, it was to their credit that it was unfailingly polite: Hello. We have the boy. And we know his daddies a rich man and a traytor to the cause of a united Ireland so we want £100,000 or well put a bullet in his head. Await further instructions. Thank you & best wishes.

“Have you ever seen Julian associating with strangers?” the sergeant asked me, ignoring my adoptive father’s latest interruption. “No,” I said. “Any strange men on the school grounds at all?” “Only the priests.”

“He doesn’t like women who read either,” said Miss Ambrosia. “He told me that reading gives women ideas.” “It does,” said Miss Joyce, nodding her head fiercely. “I’m in full agreement with the Minister on that. My life would have been a lot easier if I had been allowed to stay illiterate but Daddy insisted that I learn to read. He was a very modern man, was Daddy.”

I flushed and stepped outside again to wash my hands and there was Mr. Denby-Denby standing by one of the sinks, arms folded, giving me one of those smiles that suggested he could see right through to the depths of my soul, a place even I did not like to visit very often.

“But they do make a good cup of coffee,” I said. “I don’t drink coffee,” she said, taking a sip from her tea. “Coffee is for Americans and Protestants. Irish people should drink tea.

I went to her funeral, of course, and lit a candle for her. I told her poor mother that she should take comfort in the fact that Bridget had taught us all a great lesson. That if you live a dissolute life, then you can expect to meet a horrible death.” “And how did she take that?” “The poor woman was so grief-stricken she couldn’t say a word. She just stared at me in shock.

Father gives a wonderful sermon. He’s a real fire-and-brimstone type, which I think is just what Ireland needs right now. There’s all sorts out there these days. I see them in the bank all the time. Students coming in from Trinity College wearing next to nothing, their hands in the backs of their boyfriends’ denim jeans. You don’t own any denim jeans, do you, Cyril?” “I have one pair,” I said. “But they’re a bit long on me. I don’t wear them very often.” “Throw them away. No man should be seen in a pair of denim jeans.

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

“We will train your brain to associate feelings of lust toward men with the most intense pain. That way you will not allow yourself to feel these disgusting thoughts. Think of Pavlov’s dog. It’s a similar principle.” “I don’t know Pavlov and I don’t know his dog,” I said, “but unless either of them has been stabbed in the balls with a syringe I don’t think they can have any idea what I’m feeling right now.”

“But sure what kind of person would I be if I didn’t worry?” she asked in a rare moment of empathy. “I’m very fond of you, Cyril. You should know that by now.” “I do,” I said. “And I’m very fond of you too.” “You’re supposed to say that you love me.” “All right,” I replied. “I love you. How are your chops?” “Undercooked. And the potatoes are very salty.” “You put the salt on yourself. I saw you.” “I know, but still. I’d say something to the waiter but, as you know, I don’t like to cause a fuss.”

“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.

“My mother likes to play the innocent victim in that story,” she told me. “But she was equally culpable. No woman is ever truly seduced. It’s a mutual decision on the part of the seducer and the seduced.

“No, go on, tell me!” “Just that I’m going to miss you when you’re gone, that’s all.” “Well, I should think so too! Best friends are hard to come by, after all.

“Cyril Avery,” I said when I lifted the receiver. “Oh good,” said a voice. A female voice. “I was hoping I had the right number.” I frowned. “Who’s this?” I asked. “It’s the voice of your conscience. You and I need to have a little talk. You’ve been a very bad boy, haven’t you?” I said nothing but pulled the receiver away from my ear for a moment and stared at it in bewilderment before slowly bringing it back. “Who is this?” I repeated. “It’s me, silly.

“We should go to London sometime,” she continued. “I daresay we’ll have plenty of holidays to look forward to after we’re married,” I said. “We could go to Spain someday. That’s very popular. Or Portugal.” “Portugal?” she said, raising an eyebrow in mock-excitement. “Do you really think so? I never imagined I could be the kind of girl who would grow up and get to go to Portugal!” “All right then, America,” I said, laughing.

It wasn’t as if he had any interest in re-igniting things with Elizabeth. He’d told me once, after all, that he thought it was a mistake for any man to marry a woman old enough to be his wife.

Where I had fallen in love, before I even knew what those words meant.

And once I left that house to begin the deeply private and depressingly fraudulent existence that would characterize my third decade I intentionally ignored anything that might draw me back to the complicated years of my childhood.

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 blinked a few times and looked back at me with a little more awareness in his eyes. “What was I just saying?” he asked me. “Was I talking nonsense?” “You’re confused, that’s all.” “I seem to have moments of clarity and moments when I don’t know what’s happening. It’s a strange thing to know that you’re living your last hour on earth.”

“It’s not easy losing someone,” she said. “It never goes away, does it?” “The Phantom Pain, they call it,” I said. “Like amputees get when they can still feel their missing limbs.”

Will you be all right, Mrs. Goggin?” I asked. “I will, in time,” she said carefully. “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.

She gave in and when she looked up at the Departures board I could tell that her eyesight was better than mine. “On time, I see,” she said. “What’s seldom is wonderful.”

friend of mine from the Silver Surfers went to Australia last year,” she said. “He has a daughter in Perth.” “Did he have a good time?” “No, he had a heart attack on the plane and had to be shipped back from Dubai in a coffin.” “Great story,” I said. “Encouraging.”

“Well, Cyril,” she said, leaning forward and surprising me by her choice of words. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in more than seven decades of life, it’s that the world is a completely fucked-up place. You never know what’s around the corner and it’s often something unpleasant.”

The women are always the whores; the priests are always the good men who were led astray.”

“You’re praying,” I said a few minutes later as I entered the church to find my mother on her knees on the padded rest before one of the pews, her head bowed to the back of the seat in front of her. “I’m not praying,” she said. “I’m remembering. Sometimes the two things look alike, that’s all.

“Fucking fantastic,” insisted George, pulling Marcus close to him and giving him a quick peck on the lips. I couldn’t help but notice how both his parents looked away instinctively, while his younger brother and sister stared and giggled, but it felt very good to watch the moment as he pulled away and they looked into each other’s eyes, a couple of teenagers who had found each other—and would surely lose each other again for someone else soon but were happy right at that moment. It was something that never could have happened when I was that age. And yet for all my happiness at seeing my grandson happy and secure in who he was, there was something terribly painful about it too. What I would not have given to be that young at this time and to be able to experience such unashamed honesty.

It’s a little bit late for me, he said, once he knew that it was a yes and that the country had changed forever. I’ve spent so much time pushing the boat out that I forgot to jump on and now it’s out beyond the harbor on the high seas, but it’s very nice to look at. And that’s how I feel. Standing on the shore, looking out at the boat. Why couldn’t Ireland have been like this when I was a boy?