The red light of the ansaphone pulses in the corner. It's Axel. I am getting older here, he drawls, as if he has nothing else in life but to wait in a dressing gown for me to write his books. What chapter are you on? If nothing else, at least he would negotiate. I would insist on the Chorier. Truth is, my problem with writing a book about Walter's Secret Life was that I didn't care if the book was fact or fiction. It's painful to associate myself with a rather modern malaise but the truth or otherwise of events, the objective realities of existence,  held no interest for me. In fact, I find history, like his pale cousin, truth, I find them somewhat retarded relatives. They tend to have dull, reedy voices, a somewhat tragic dress sense and they rarely ever look you in the eye. Sure, I am happy to shake hands with them now and again, at quarterly gatherings or in administrative buildings, but I don't want to live with them. I care only for the phenomenological working of life on consciousness, and consciousness upon life, and very often I don't care for that, either. Only soul. When we are with soul then we require no refuge. So what did I care if My Secret Life was God's honest sexual truth or if it was eleven volumes of unbridled fantasy from the demented Victorian brain of , most likely, Sir Henry Spencer Ashbee? I did not care. It's a ripping yarn, I said to myself, like life. And with that, I put the phone down, his message still pulsing. Axel could wait a while longer.