Here follows the text of the last page of a book :

The wind has dropped, and now the snowflakes come floating down, the first fall of the year, flecking the rooftiles with white. All morning I stand at my window watching the snow fall. When I cross the barracks yard it is already inches deep and my footsteps crunch with an eerie lightness.In the middle of the square there are children at play building a snowman. Anxious not to alarm them, but inexplicably joyful, I approach them across the snow.They are not alarmed, they are too busy to cast me a glance. They have completed the great round body, now they are rolling a ball for the head.'Someone fetch things for the mouth and nose and eyes', says the child who is their leader.It strikes me that the snowman will need arms too, but i do not want to interfere. They settle the head on the shoulders and fill it out with pebbles for eyes, nose and mouth. One of them crowns it with his cap.It is not a bad snowman. This is not the scene I dreamed of. Like much else nowadays I leave it feeling stupid, like a man who lost his way long ago but presses on along a road that may lead nowhere.

J.M.Coetzee - Waiting for the Barbarians - 1980