Free Anatomy of a Disappearance by Hisham Matar

tailor who made all of our pajamas and bedding and towels. I pictured her going to his shop and selecting the fabric, discussing the cut. But, then again, for all I knew she might have telephoned her order in at the last minute. It was just before lights-out and several boys were already queuing outside the toilets with toothbrushes in their hands, the paste spread on.
    Alexei was in bed but full of questions.
    “Is it true today is your birthday? How come you didn’t tell me? Was that your father driving off? Where did he take you? Why didn’t you introduce us?”
    It was nearly 10:30 p.m., and I could hear Mr. Galebraith’s heavy footsteps coming up the long corridor. I put on my old pajamas and quickly got into bed. I could not wait to start another letter to Mona, but then Mr. Galebraith put his head through the door and said what he said every night—“Good night, girls”—and switched off the light.

CHAPTER 15
    That night I blamed the same God I had countless times thanked for her: You should have made us the same age. Then my thoughts turned to Mother, and I panicked because I could not remember where I had last put her photograph. Before Father remarried I used to keep her always in my pocket.
    “What are you looking for?” Alexei whispered.
    “Nothing. Go back to sleep.”
    But I could see him in the black light, sitting up. He did not lie down until I returned to my bed. I pulled the blanket over myself and turned my back to him. When the tears came I did not sniffle, but then a succession of deep breaths gave me away. He did not say anything. I was relieved and cried openly now until the hardness passed. Long into the silence he spoke.
    “You know what is the best thing about turning fourteen?”
    Alexei was one year older, and I was in no mood for advice.
    “Wet dreams. I got my first last year. They are fantastic. I don’t know if girls have them. I think they probably don’t. You see the woman of your dreams, the woman you will marry one day. That’s what my father told me, and it’s true.”
    I could not sleep after that. And long after Alexei stopped talking, I had to wake him to borrow his pen-size flashlight, which he and I called the James Bond pen, so that I could write my letter from beneath the covers. I had to be careful because at this time Mr. Galebraith took his dog, Jackson, walking in the fields around the house.
    I missed her so severely that I had to stop writing and shelter the hurt I felt for her in my chest. I shut my eyes and tried to see her eyes, hear her voice, smell that place on her neck that she said was mine and only mine. And that was how I slept.

    At 6:40 a.m. I lay fully dressed in my uniform but under the covers, having a second go at that letter. It seemed even colder now that it was morning. The blue sky, if it was there, was entirely sealed behind rough clouds. The trees were leafless and black. When she had come here with Father, two weeks after I started at Daleswick, she said how she loved the English countryside, how romantic she foundwinter, how much she missed England. And when I had said it was gloomy, she said it was exactly that gloominess that made it romantic and asked me to read
Wuthering Heights
. Now that I had read that book, I still could not understand what she meant. There were boys as old as eighteen at Daleswick; was that how long Father intended on keeping me here? I began by thanking her for the pajamas, and then I asked whether she knew about wet dreams and whether she, too, thought them fantastic. I asked whom she had seen in her dream, whether it was my father. Then I had to stop writing and rush to breakfast.

    Alexei’s world was completely new to me. Even though he had a tendency to boast, when he talked I rarely wanted him to stop. I would lie on my bed, hands clasped behind my head, and watch him like you would a film.
    “Papa is now in Hamburg.”
    “What is he doing in Hamburg?”
    “He’s principal conductor of the symphony