A story has no beginning and no end: one arbitrarily chooses the moment of experience from which to look back or forward. I say "one chooses" with the inaccurate pride of the professional writer who - when he has achieved some noteworthy notoriety - was praised for his technical prowess; but actually,
Do I choose of my own free will that dark and humid night of January 1946, in the communal meadow, the figure of Henry Miles, skewed across the...