Astonishing that a court which sets itself up as an interrogatory of belief should refuse to pass her. They must have heard other writers before, other disbelieving believers or believing disbelievers. Writers are not lawyers, surely they must allow for that, allow for eccentricities of presentation. But of course this is not a court of law. Not even a court of logic. Her first impression was right: a court out of Kafka or Alice in Wonderland, a court of paradox. The first shall be last and the last first. Or contrariwise. If it were guaranteed in advance that one could breeze through one's hearing with anecdotes from one's childhood, skipping with laden head from one belief to another, from frogs to stones to flying machines, as often as a woman changes her hat (now where does that line come from?), then every petitioner would take up autobiography, and the court stenographer would be washed away in streams of free association.

She is before the gate again, before what is evidently her gate and hers alone, though it must be visible to anyone who cares to give it a glance. It is, as ever, closed, but the door to the lodge is open, and inside she can see the gatekeeper, the custodian, busy as usual with his papers, which ripple lightly in the air from the fan.

'Another hot day,' she remarks.

'Mm,' he mumbles, not interrupting his work.

'Every time I pass by I see you writing,' she continues, trying not to be deterred. 'You are a writer too, in a sense. What are you writing?'

'Records. Keeping the records up to date.'

'I've just had my second hearing.'

'That's good.'

'I sang for my judges. I was today's singing-bird. Do you use that expression: singing-bird?'

He shakes his head abstractedly: no.

'It did not go well, I'm afraid, my song.'

'Mm.'

'I know you are not a judge,' she says. 'Nevertheless, in your judgement, do I stand any chance of passing through? And if I do not pass through, if I am deemed not good enough to pass, will I stop here for ever, in this place?'

He shrugs. 'We all stand a chance.' He has not looked up, not once. Does that mean something? Does it mean that he has not the courage to look her in the eye?

'But as a writer,' she persists – 'what chance do I stand as a writer, with the special problems of a writer, the special fidelities?'

Fidelities. Now that she has brought it out, she recognizes it as the word on which all hinges.

He shrugs again. 'Who can say,' he says. 'It is a matter for the boards.'

'But you keep the records – who passes through, who does not. You must, in a sense, know.'

He does not answer.

'Do you see many people like me, people in my situation?' she continues urgently, out of control now, hearing herself out of control, disliking herself for it. In my situation: what does that mean? What is her situation? The situation of someone who does not know her own mind?

She has a vision of the gate, the far side of the gate, the side she is denied. At the foot of the gate, blocking the way, lies stretched out a dog, an old dog, his lion-coloured hide scarred from innumerable manglings. His eyes are closed, he is resting, snoozing. Beyond him is nothing but a desert of sand and stone, to infinity. It is her first vision in a long while, and she does not trust it, does not trust in particular the anagram GOD-DOG. Too literary, she thinks again. A curse on literature!

The man behind the desk has evidently had enough of questions. He lays down his pen, folds his hands, regards her levelly. 'All the time,' he says. 'We see people like you all the time.'

At such moments even a negligible creature, a dog, a rat, a beetle, a stunted apple tree, a cart track winding over a hill, a mossy stone, counts more for me than a night of bliss with the most beautiful, most devoted mistress. These dumb and in some cases inanimate creatures press toward me with such fullness, such presence of love, that there is nothing in range of my rapturous eye that does not have life. It is as if everything, everything that exists, everything I can recall, everything my confused thinking touches on, means something.

Hugo von Hofmannsthal 'Letter of Lord Chandos to Lord Bacon' (1902)