The Sisters Brothers

He went away with the eye and came back without it. He did not tell me what he had done with the thing and I did not ask.

‘Little victories,’ my mother used to say, and which I then said aloud, to myself.

I was not thinking but waiting for a thought, or a feeling.

Charlie poured me a drink, when normally we pour our own, so I was prepared for bad news when he said it:

He opened his eyes to slits. ‘What’s the matter with you? You’re acting differently.’

My flesh and scalp started to ring and tingle and I became someone other than myself, or I became my second self, and this person was highly pleased to be stepping from the murk and into the living world where he might do just as he wished.

I decided the table was the stupidest piece of furniture I had ever laid eyes on.

He was an unattractive creature with his clothes on; in the nude I thought he looked something like a goat.

I explained we were in no position to care for children, that our way was a swift and dangerous one, a speech likely made for nothing, the boy being so engrossed with his own sadness I do not think he heard my words.