He [Hwesu] approached the conviction that all men came to, soon, or late: that why is an unanswerable word: that there are no solutions to anything in life. And having almost reached that immense, empty horizon-stretching, utterly barren plateau of always unacceptable truth, he was silent, making of his no answer perhaps the answer. For silence at least has dignity.

The Dahomean (1971), last lines