Robert nodded. 'You're right: something doesn't ring true. And I'll tell you what it is: I'm too old.'

'What's your age got to do with it?'

'I realize only too well that many of the things I once set store by are no longer important; I'm being led to want a future very different from the one I used to imagine. Only I can't change myself, and therefore I see no place for myself in that future.'

'In other words, you're hoping for the triumph of Communism, knowing that you'd never be able to live in a Communist world. Is that it?'

'Yes, that's about it. I'll talk to you of it again,' he added. 'Now I'm going to write about it. It will be the ending of my book.'

'And when the book is finished, what are you going to do then?' I asked.

‘I’ll do the same as everybody else. There are two and a half billion men who don't write.'