“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I suppose I am.”
She sighed and looked away, her expression suggesting that she might scream if she wasn’t careful. “I don’t know why I came here,” she said. “But it’s late now. I have to go. Goodbye, Tristan,” she said, standing up. “We shan’t meet again.”
“No.”
And with that she was gone.
She was right, of course. I have been a coward. I should have delivered this manuscript years ago. Perhaps I was waiting for the story to find a conclusion of sorts, sure that it would come sooner or later. And it has finally come tonight.
I returned to my room shortly after she left. Holding my right hand out before me I noticed that my spasmodic index finger was perfectly still now; the finger that had pulled the trigger that sent the bullet into my lover’s heart, satisfied at last. I removed the manuscript from my briefcase; I take it with me whenever I travel, you see. I like it to be close at hand. And I write now of our conversation, that short, final encounter between Marian and me, and I hope that it has given her some satisfaction, even though I am sure that wherever she is right now she is unable to sleep, and if she does then she will be haunted by nightmares from the past.
And then I reach into my case for something else, something I also keep close to hand, for the moment when it feels right to use it.
Soon they will find me here, in this bedroom, in an unfamiliar hotel, and the police will be called, and the ambulance service, and I will be carried away to some cold morgue in the heart of London city. And tomorrow, the newspapers will run my obituary and say that I was the last of that generation to go and what a shame, another link with the past gone, but look what he left us, my Lord, look at the legacy he has left behind to honour his memory. And soon afterwards this manuscript will appear, my final book, published between hard covers, edited by Leavitt. There will be outrage and disgust and people will turn on me at the last, they will hate me, my reputation will forever be destroyed, my punishment earned, self-inflicted like this gunshot wound, and the world will finally know that I was the greatest feather man of them all.
About the Author
John Boyne was born in Ireland in 1971 and is the author of six previous novels and two novels for younger readers, including the international best sellers The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, which won two Irish Book Awards and was made into an award-winning feature film, and The House of Special Purpose. His novels are published in more than forty languages. He lives in Dublin.
Visit his Web site at www.johnboyne.com
ALSO BY JOHN BOYNE
The Thief of Time
The Congress of Rough Riders
Crippen
Next of Kin
Mutiny: A Novel of the Bounty
The House of Special Purpose
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
Noah Barleywater Runs Away
The Second Child
The Dare
Copyright
Copyright © John Boyne 2011
Originally published in Great Britain in 2011 by Doubleday, an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Production Editor: Yvonne E. Cárdenas
Design revisions for this edition by Cassandra J. Pappas
This book was set in 11.5 pt Giovanni Book by Falcon Oast Graphic Art Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from Other Press LLC, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. For information write to Other Press LLC, 2 Park Avenue, 24th Floor, New York, NY 10016. Or visit our Web site: www.otherpress.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Boyne, John, 1971–
The absolutist / John Boyne.
p. cm.
“Originally published in Great Britain in 2011 by Doubleday.”
eISBN: 978-1-59051-553-2
1. Soldiers—Fiction. 2. Gay men—Fiction. 3. World War, 1914-1918—Campaigns—Western Front—Fiction. 4. World War, 1914-1918—Conscientious objectors—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6102.O96A27 2012
823′.92—dc22
2012000433
Publisher’s Note:
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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