“Recently, I dreamed that I was telling a story to my brother, who was three or four. We were sitting on the green-carpeted floor of a house that no longer exists. He wore red shorts, no shirt. His skin was deeply tanned, as always in summer. He kept glancing through the windows at the bright afternoon. I couldn’t hear my own voice; the story was silence to me. Then I realized I was dreaming, and that he was not present beyond the dream. I needed to hold him there. Despite his curiosity about outside’s pleasures, he would keep listening as long as I kept the tale going. So I talked and talked, still silent to myself. I felt fear—that I would run out of words—and a wonder that billowed like the gauzy curtains in the breeze. This is the best story I will ever tell, I thought, and I wished, even more upon waking, that I could hear this, my masterpiece.”