This was what inspired him: his passion was brought on by torment. So between the two of them, Jude and Marek, they had made quiet Christmas offerings of self-abuse, cruel words spoken carefully in their minds: ‘I am bad. I am shameful. I am a waste of life. I have done no good.’ And then they abused one another: a punch in the gut and on the jaw, vicious words of contempt and disapproval. It was the one time each year Marek struck his father, an intimacy that he now missed.
