Moon Tiger

In 1945, Claudia visits a camp for displaced persons on the German-Polish border. She’s writing a story for a newspaper and is amazed by the wealth of languages spoken by the residents in the camp.

Claudia’s thoughts move from the displaced persons camp to Victoria train station, where Gordon met her when she first got home from Egypt. Their experiences during the war, and their time apart, are like a weight between them. Gordon almost feels like a stranger for a moment, and then Claudia embraces him. Next, the scene is described from Gordon’s perspective.

The siblings catch up on the past five years. Claudia is jealous when she hears that Gordon had an American girlfriend while he was in India. She notes that she never felt jealous of Gordon’s wife, Sylvia, but that the “unknown” American made her envious.

Claudia muses that she was in her twenties before she was attracted to any other man more than she was attracted to her brother. She calls incest a form of narcissism, theorizing that what she and Gordon see in each other is a sexualized reflection of themselves.

In her memories, Claudia and Gordon are learning the foxtrot together.