The war had ended. He was
eighteen. The shock was
stupendous..
No one had warned him he
might after all find him-
self with his life to
live out: with sixty
years still to spend,
perhaps, instead of
the bare six months
he thought was all
he had in his
pocket.
Peace was a condition un-
known to him and scarce-
ly imaginable.
The whole real-seeming
world in which he had
grown to manhood had
melted round him.
Perhaps then the key
to much that seems
strange about that
generation is just
this: their night-
mare had been so
vivid. They might
think they had now
forgotten it, but
the harmless orig-
inals of many of
its worst metamor-
phoses were still
charged for them
with a nameless
horror.
Richard Hughes
The Fox in the Attic
1961
New York Review Books, 2000©
Brenn Diephuis
Kevin Rijnders, photograph
