When I was a child I couldn’t sleep for fear of what would happen to her; as an adult I can’t sleep for fear of what has happened to her. Those who make it their primary purpose in life to attack me—and their ranks have swelled in the past twenty-four hours—would probably say that I sleep badly because I have lived badly. But popular language gets sleep backwards. The indifferent and the evil find it easy to sleep at night, while the sleep of the just is fitful at best. An infant’s loving father, a dissident intellectual in a totalitarian state: these are not men likely to claim a comfortable eight hours. To be moral is to be an insomniac. Comparing myself to a dissident or even to a father might come across as grandstanding. What I’m trying to say is that I would have slept much more and much more soundly had I not always loved my sister. At any rate it is not a normal thing for me to be awoken, since I am usually already awake.
