Boy on the Edge

I didn’t know that I would ever tell this story. Not because I thought people wouldn’t be interested in reading it, but because it was too close to my heart to write it. The years went by and the distance between the memories and myself grew wider, until they had at last all but vanished.

I hadn’t visited my native country for almost two decades. I had immersed myself in work, moving from one university to the next, giving lectures, studying, writing books, becoming known in a small circle of history professors, sometimes even appearing on television, talking about Emperor Henry IV and the Investiture Controversy, William the Conqueror, Richard the Lionheart or Charlemagne and the Saxon Wars. I knew everything about them that there was to know. They were my closest friends. That’s how lost and lonely I was. My closest companions in life were people long since dead and gone.

I had but one real friend, who wrote me several letters every year. They were always addressed to the university where I had begun my studies, and the office took great care to find my new location and send them onward. After a while I stopped reading them, and placed them unopened in a drawer.

His letters stirred up the guilt I was trying so hard to forget, guilt for moving away. His handwriting, the large clumsy letters, written with a crude pencil, were curiously connected to his voice somehow, so I could almost hear the deep growl in his throat while reading them.

And I never wrote back. What was I to write? I didn’t understand what he was telling me, or why: the letters were like solitary pieces of a puzzle, abstract and disconnected.

Strangely enough, his name was Henry William Richard Charles: he was the very namesake of my dead friends, the ancient heroes I admired so much. But the truth is that he was a greater hero than any of them, although I hadn’t realized that at the time. He was noble, brave, and loyal.

I spoke my native language, Icelandic, but once a year, when I called Emily, our foster mother. Her tender voice made me feel like the little boy I once was. Cuddled in her warm embrace, I’d felt secure from all the evils of this world. She always asked if I wanted to have a word or two with Henry. But I always replied: Not now, I’ll call again soon. But I never did.

I thought he would always be there, just as he always had been.

I had become an empty shell in the present, desperately seeking fulfillment in the long-gone, past stories of dead heroes. But fate had decided to give me one last chance to save my life; or rather Henry came to my rescue. His final heroic deed was to tell me a truly fulfilling story: our own.

I received a message from Emily informing me that Henry had passed away in his sleep. The funeral would take place in a week’s time.

I canceled everything and took a plane home to Iceland.

The funeral was held in a small country church, close to the farm where he and Emily lived, the farm she had bought when the three of us had become a family. It was a solemn ritual, simple and to the point, just as Henry would have liked it. It was the first time I met his mother. She was in a wheelchair, crumbling with age, and the young nurse who accompanied her told me she hadn’t spoken a word for more than fifteen years. I squeezed her hand lightly: she didn’t react. But when the coffin sank slowly into the grave she moved her hand to wipe away the tears. She must have remembered the little child she’d once held in her arms, before the cruel world tore their lives apart.

It was early spring, Henry’s favorite time of the year. I stayed with Emily the whole summer, helping her out during lambing season, milking the cows and then herding them, mowing the field on the old tractor, like Henry and I used to do before I moved away. I had forgotten how the Icelandic summer is like a never-ending day, for at night the sun barely goes below the horizon. It’s a very different world from the dark and cold winter months; it’s a world full of hope and ethereal beauty. I rode Henry’s graceful mare in the bright summer night, following the river to the ocean, and then along the beach that stretched far into the distance.

Henry’s room was the same as it had always been, except for one thing: it was full of books. There were stacks on the floor, and every shelf was crammed right up to the ceiling. There was a double row of books on the windowsill, and twice as many on the table. Under his bed were more boxes full of books. It was like entering a tiny library or a monk’s cell, fortified with the finest literature in the world.

Emily smiled when she saw my wonder. “Henry loved to read,” she said. Then she patted me on the shoulder and added, “All thanks to you.”

I didn’t know what she meant by that. “I believe he told you the story in one of his letters,” she said.

“When? Which one?” I asked, trying to hide my guilt over the unopened letters. “Some might have gone astray,” I tried to explain. “I’ve been moving a lot, you know.”

Then Emily showed me a box full of black notebooks. They were Henry’s. He had written a little every day, Emily told me, drafting his letters to me by filling each book with his thoughts and memories, working hard to find the right words to describe his feelings, pouring his heart out, page after page. I felt ashamed for having left so many of his letters unopened. But whatever he had wanted to tell me I would now find in the notebooks.

Autumn came and I began to read, trying to get to know my friend Henry William Richard Charles, my only brother in the world. And reading, I began to put the pieces of the puzzle together, to know and understand. I heard to his deep growling voice whispering to me through his clumsy handwriting and memories started flowing, bursting forth in my mind like vivid scenes in a movie, some bright and happy, others dark and fearful.

Henry had lovingly preserved the past, not for himself, but for me.

Once I finished reading all of his notebooks, my heart knew what to do. It was not a decision made in my mind, not something I brooded over for a long time before I came to a conclusion. It was just something I knew I had to do, not for any reward, not for myself or anyone else, but for Henry alone. I would write his story.

I knew I would have to stay in my home country, gather more information, search through the files of all the institutions, as well as the files of the police. Emily was happy that I had decided to stay, and we had long talks during the dark winter nights that followed. She told me about her past and I began, at last, to untangle the strange web of events that had brought the three of us together all those years ago.

My research revealed more than I could have imagined: newspaper clippings, reports, and the like, but also some unexpected pieces of information, especially when I traveled through the bleak countryside where the Home of Lesser Brethren had once stood in the midst of the lava field. The people in the district were more than willing to tell their stories about the home, where troubled boys from the city were sent. The home run by the neurotic Reverend Oswald and his charming wife, Emily. A home on the edge of the world, where the massive cliffs at Lands End were battered relentlessly by the furious waves of the North Atlantic.

The information gave me a good overview of the period, as well as the background for many of the things that happened. But the bulk and the heart of the story come from Henry. All I’ve done, really, is put everything together in a continuous narrative.

Henry would never have dreamed that anyone would find his life worthy of becoming a story in a book; on a shelf in a “proper home” read by “proper people,” as he would have put it. But here it is, Henry.

Wherever you are now, dear brother, I hope you enjoy this. The boy who was once lost and alone at the edge of the world is now in the center, in a proper book, telling his own story.

Once again, a book open in front of him, a sea of letters floating before his eyes, the sweat forming on his brow, the pain in his stomach like he’s being punched from the inside. And the whole class around him, holding their breath, waiting for him to read out loud, waiting to burst out laughing. But he’s not going to read. Not now or ever. He’s going to wait, like the last time and the time before that, like in the last school and the school before that. He’s going to stay silent.

“Henry, we’re waiting,” the teacher says impatiently, a hint of threat in his voice.