Onyx reviews: Warlight by Michael Ondaatje

Reviewed by Bev Vincent, 05/15/2018

History books say World War II ended with the Armistice of August 1945, or with the formal surrender of Japan that September. However, in many parts of Europe old animosities among partisans were still being resolved long after then, often violently, and the onset of the Cold War was well underway.

While fourteen-year-old Nathaniel Williams and his older sister Rachel may be surprised, the news that their father has been transferred to Singapore and their parents are going without them is just another example of the way the war continues to disrupt normal life. Nathaniel and Rachel, who suffers from epilepsy, are left in the care of the boarder who lives upstairs and his colleagues, who "may have been criminals," Nathaniel, the narrator of Warlight, observes in the novel's opening.

Their father leaves first, while their mother remains behind to pack a steamer trunk for the voyage, making sure the children observe this ritual. When Nathaniel and Rachel find the trunk in the basement some time later, they realize their mother hasn't gone to Singapore at all. So where is she, and why did she abandon her children?

For the next year, Nathaniel and Rachel's existence is reminiscent of—albeit not as dire as—Oliver Twist. They are sent to boarding school, although the "boarding" part isn't strictly adhered to, and after a while the "school" part isn't, either. The shady men—together with their associates and companions—who take over their house, acting as if it is theirs, have names, but they are better known by the nicknames Nathaniel gives them: The Moth (previously their lodger) and a former boxer called the Pimlico Darter are the most prominent figures. They are surprisingly kind and considerate, considering the company they keep.

As the target of German bombs during the war—some of the streets are still rubble—London was under blackout conditions for much of that period. Only "warlights"—dim lights used to guide emergency traffic that would not be noticeable at a distance—were permitted. The Darter is involved in some dubious night-time activities, maneuvering the Thames' canals and tributaries by the dimmest of lights. Nathaniel is enlisted to join him on these missions because the presence of a teenager provides the Darter some protective cover: they look like a father and son. At first, they smuggle greyhounds, which are not allowed to be imported to maintain the breed's bloodlines. Later, Nathaniel isn't quite sure exactly what was in the crates they ferried through the city. His sister and his girlfriend join these nocturnal expeditions occasionally, and Nathaniel muses that they feel almost like a family. He doesn't speak about Rachel much "because we have separate memories."

Over time, the teenagers come to learn that they knew little about their parents' lives, especially their activities during the war. They've been kept in the dark, and even now, by the illumination of metaphorical warlights, what they learn is more confusing than edifying. It will be years before either of them learns something approaching the truth, including their own unsuspected but important part in the post-war effort. The Moth often repeats the word "schwer," which he says Mahler used to annotate heavy or difficult parts of his musical scores. The war may be over, but nothing is safe.

Nathaniel isn't interested in exploring his own thoughts and experiences, although he has many, including a romance with a young woman called Agnes, with frequent assignations taking place in houses her brother, an estate agent, is selling. Their relationship progress from lust to friendship to love.

One night, when he's out dancing with Agnes, he thinks he sees his mother. He can't understand how she could be in London without communicating with them. He learns from another of their rotating set of minders that his mother is "away doing something important." He had been led to believe that her wartime activities were benign and innocent. Now he has to readjust his thinking. "Is this how we discover the truth, evolve?" he muses. "By gathering together such unconfirmed fragments?"

After a violent and climactic incident at the book's midpoint, where the true meaning of "schwer" is illustrated for Nathaniel and his sister, the novel jumps ahead over a dozen years. Nathaniel is now 28, living in Suffolk in a house that seems vaguely familiar for reasons he can't recall. He has reconnected with Rose, his mother (his father has essentially disappeared from the story, an irrelevance to it), but he can't trust her completely because she is so secretive, still, and for good reason. The story of Rose's recruitment by a man with the dubious name Marsh Felon, who she once cared for as a girl when he fell off a roof, is related.

In a section labeled "inheritance," Nathaniel is recruited by British Intelligence to work in their archives. His job is to unearth and expunge whatever evidence might still remain of actions during and after the war that history might consider untoward. Atrocities and other unseemly interventions conducted by British agents. Within these records there may be information about Rose's activities, but most of it has already been removed or destroyed in the files he's reviewing. He uses skills he learned from his caregivers years earlier to pick locks and access files not meant for his eyes, where he learns she was a radio operator on the roof of a prominent hotel during the war, where she intercepted German signals, altered and resent them to deceive. Her name also comes up in various post-war activities across the continent. Because of this, she is still a target for reprisal, which is why she remains low profile all these years later. Also, perhaps, why she has scars on her arms.

Nathaniel tries to assemble these "unconfirmed fragments" into a larger picture of his mother's life. His obsession, though, prevents him from living life to its fullest potential. Often, people don't interrogate their parents' lives until they are much older, by which time they've already established an identity. Rachel has no interest in Nathaniel's quest for knowledge, preferring to live her own life. By the end of the novel, perhaps Nathaniel has satisfied his curiosity to the point where he can leave Rose's story alone and embark on his own.