One day in London, in the thick of a smog, when you could not see your hand in front of your face, a man was summoned by phone to a hospital at the other end of town where his child was seriously ill. The man opened his front door and stood in the murky darkness, calling out for help, but there were no cars, no passers-by. Suddenly a hand landed on his shoulder and a voice said, ‘I'll take you.’ And the stranger did indeed lead the anxious father right across London, unfalteringly, saying confidently from time to time ‘turn left here’, ‘mind the steps’, ‘careful, there's a ramp’. When they reached the hospital the man asked the stranger how he could possibly find his way through such a dense fog. ‘Darkness and fog do not bother me,’ the other replied, ‘because I am blind.’

The connection between the world of events and the world of words in books is so subtle as to defy definition, and that is why I try to approach it through parables. A writer sometimes has dual loyalties, and sometimes he has to operate like an undercover agent. He is a more-or-less respectable citizen of the kingdom of events, conscientious and law-abiding, paying his taxes and expressing opinions, doing occasional good deeds and so forth. And yet his mind is on the words that could be used to talk about the events, rather than on the events themselves.

The two kingdoms are governed by different and even conflicting laws. In the kingdom of events one is supposed to prefer good to evil, the helpful to the harmful.