The Finale Romance

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 wide river of rain, or are these images the ones that choose me? It is undoubtedly convenient, according to the rules of the trade, to begin just at this moment, but if I had believed then in some God, I could also have believed in a hand taking my elbow roughly and in a voice

suggesting to me: "Talk to him; he hasn't seen you."