And that baby be the best thing that ever happened to Fonny. He needs that baby. It going to give him a whole lot of courage.’

‘This is where my life is,’ he said, ‘my real life.’ He picked up a small piece of wood, it was about the size of two fists. There was the hope of an eye gouged into it, the suggestion of a nose – the rest was simply a lump of somehow breathing wood.

‘Man, I know what you’re saying. And I appreciate it. But you don’t know – the worst thing, man, the worst thing – is that they can make you so fucking scared. Scared, man. Scared.’

They don’t tell us because, if things go wrong, we can’t be accused of being accomplices. We cannot penetrate their silence, we must not try. Each of these men (and these men multiply with every hour) would gladly go to jail, blow away a pig, or blow up a city, to save their progeny from the jaws of this democratic hell.

One of the most terrible, most mysterious things about a life is that a warning can be heeded only in retrospect: too late.