[what they weren't]

[door, wall—these were the things that were real. These were lasting, tangible realities devoid of the kind of interference that could somehow make them something else, that could, through conversation and connivance, mould them into what they weren't.

Things had become clear at last, and simple. There was no need to deliberate, or even to question. Finally it was as plain as the snow that kept falling, flake after freezing flake beyond the glass, as inevitable as death, as tangible as grief.

This just was.]