Warlight

by Michael Ondaatje

If I do not speak of my sister in this story so much, it is because we have separate memories. Each of us witnessed clues about the other we did not pursue. Her secret lipstick, a boy on a motorcycle once, her crawling home late giddy with laughter, or how she’d become surprisingly fond of talking with The Moth. I suppose she must have found a confessor in him, but I held on to my secrets, kept my distance. In any case, Rachel’s version of our time at Ruvigny Gardens, though it might nestle with mine in certain ways, would be spoken of in a different tone, with an emphasis on different things. It turned out we would be close only during that early period when we shared a double life. But now, these years later, there is a separateness towards the other, and we fend for ourselves. —

Even though married, even though a linguist skilled in argument, she felt she had no vista of importance, that she was no more than a girl threading a needle by candlelight.