From Night in Lisbon

“We drove on. It was a strange day. Reality seemed to have sunk into an abyss. We drove along a high narrow ridge beneath low-lying clouds, as in the cabin of a funicular. The closest likeness I could think of was one of those old Chinese ink drawings, showing travelers moving along monotonously amid mountain peaks, clouds, and waterfalls. The boy huddled in the back seat and barely moved. All he had learned in the course of his short life was to distrust everybody and everything. He remembered nothing else. When the guardians of National Socialist culture bashed in his grandfather’s skull, he had been three years old; he had been seven when his father was hanged, and nine when his mother was gassed—a true child of the twentieth century.