The Other Side of You [antikvár]

i She was a slight woman, pale, with two wings of dark hair which framed her face and gave it the faintly bird-like quality that characterised her person. Even at this distance of time, which has clarified much that was obscure to me, I find her essence hard to capture. She was youthful in appearance but there was also an air of something ambiguous about her which was both intriguing and daunting. When we met she must have been in her forties, but in a certain light she could have been fourteen or four hundred - though when I say 'light' I perhaps mean that subtle light of the mind, which casts as many shadows as it illuminates but in the right conditions can reveal a person's being more accurately than the most powerful beam. Once I would have known her age to the day, since it would have been part of the bald list of information on her medical file: name, sex, date of birth. Of the last detail I have a hazy recollection that her birthday was in September. She spoke of it once in connection with the commencement of the school year and a feeling that, in the coincidence of the month of her birth and a new term, she might begin some new life. 'You see, Doctor,' - when she used my title she did so in a tone that located it at a fine point between irony and intimacy - 'even as a child I must have been looking for a fresh start.'