Query: How does the never to be differ from what never was?

Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all.

The cooler days have brought a wistful mood upon him. The smell of coalsmoke in the air at night. Old times, dead years. For him such memories are bitter ones.

I yearn for the darkness. I pray for death. Real death. If I thought that in death I would meet the people I've known in life I don't know what I'd do. That would be the ultimate horror. The ultimate despair. If I had to meet my mother again and start all of that all over, only this time without the prospect of death to look forward to? Well. That would be the final nightmare. Kafka on wheels.

From daydreams on the road there was no waking. He plodded on. He could remember everything of her save her scent. Seated in a theatre with her beside him leaning forward listening to the music. Gold scrollwork and sconces and the tall columnar folds of the drapes at either side of the stage. She held his hand in her lap and he could feel the tops of her stockings through the thin stuff of her summer dress. Freeze this frame. Now call down your dark and your cold and be damned.

Acts have their being in the witness. Without him who can speak of it? In the end one could even say that the act is nothing, the witness all.

This country was filled with violent children orphaned by war.