We
surfaces--there is something shaggy and rough....
I waited long for the Bell to ring. I was lying thinking, untangling
a very strange logical chain. In our superficial life, every
formula, every equation, corresponds to a curve or a solid. We
have never seen any curve or solid corresponding to my square-root
of minus one. The horrifying part of the situation is that there
exist such curves or solids; unseen by us they do exist, they
must, inevitably; for in mathematics as on a screen, strange sharp
shadows appear before us. One must remember that mathematics like
death, never makes mistakes, never plays tricks. If we are unable
to see those irrational curves or solids, it only means that they
inevitably possess a whole immense world somewhere beneath the
surface of our life....
I jumped up without waiting for the waking Bell and began to pace
up and down the room. My mathematics, the only firm and immovable
island of my shaken life, this too was torn from its anchor and
was floating, whirling. Then it means that that absurd thing, the
"soul," is as real as my unif, as my boots, although I do not see
them since they are behind the door of the closet. If boots are not
a sickness, why should the "soul" be one? I sought, but I could not
find, a way out of the logical confusion. It looked to me like that
strange and sad debris beyond the Green Wall; my logical debris
too, is filled with extraordinary, incomprehensible, wordless
but speaking beings. It occurred to me for a moment that through
some strange, thick glass I saw _it_; I saw it at once infinitely
large and infinitely small, scorpion-like with hidden but ever
perceptible sting; I _saw_ the square-root of minus one. Perhaps it
was nothing else but my "soul," which like the legendary scorpion of
the ancients, was voluntarily stinging itself with....
The Bell! The day began. All I saw and felt neither died, nor
disappeared, it merely became covered with daylight, as our visible
world does not die or disappear at the end of the day but merely
becomes covered with the darkness of night. My head was filled by
a light, thin haze. Through that haze I perceived the long glass
tables and the globe-like heads busy chewing, slowly, silently,
in unison. At a distance, through the haze, the metronome was
slowly beating its tick-tock, and to the accompaniment of this
customary and caressing music I joined with the others in counting
automatically to fifty: fifty is the number of chewing movements
required by the law of the State for every piece of food. And
automatically then, keeping time, I went downstairs and put my
name down in the book for the outgoing Numbers,--as everyone did.
But I felt I _lived_ separately from everybody; I lived by myself
separated by a soft wall which absorbs noises; beyond that wall
there was my world.
Here a thought occurred to me. If that world is only my own, why
should I tell about it in these records? Why should I recount
all these absurd "dreams" about closets, endless corridors? With
great sorrow I notice that instead of a correct and strictly
mathematical poem in honor of the United State, I am writing a
fantastic novel. Oh! if only it were a novel and not my actual life,
full of X's, square-roots of minus one and down-fallings! Yet all
may be for the best. Probably you, my unknown readers, are children
still as compared with us. We are brought up by the United State;
consequently we have reached the highest summits attainable by man.
And you, being children, may swallow without crying all the bitter
things I am to give you only if they be coated with the syrup of
adventures.
* * * * *
_The Same Evening_
Are you familiar with the following sensation? You are in an aero
and you dash upward along a blue spiral line; the window is open and
the wind rushes past your face, whistling. There is no earth. The
earth is forgotten. The earth is as far from you as Venus, Saturn
or Jupiter. That is how I live now. A hurricane wind beats into my
face; I forget the earth, forget rosy, dear O-90. Yet the earth does
exist and sooner or later I must plane down to that earth; only I
close my eyes to avoid seeing the date at which there is the name
O-90 written on my Tables.
This evening the distant earth reminded me of itself. In order to
fulfill the recommendation of the doctor (I desire sincerely, most
sincerely I desire to be cured), I wandered for two hours and eight
minutes over the straight lines of the deserted avenues. Everybody
was in the auditoriums, in accordance with the Table. Only I, cut
off from the rest, I was alone. Strictly speaking, it was a very
unnatural situation. Imagine a finger cut off from the whole, from
the hand; a separate human finger, somewhat hunched, running over
the glass sidewalk. I was such a finger. What seemed most strange
and unnatural was that the finger had no desire to be with its
hand, with its fellows. I want either to be alone or with _her_;
to transfuse my whole being into hers through a contact with her
shoulder or through our interwoven fingers.
I came home as the sun was setting. The pink dust of evening was
covering the glass of the walls, the golden peak of the Accumulating
Tower, the voices and smiles of the Numbers. Is it not strange: the
passing rays of the evening sun fall to the earth at the same angle
as the awakening rays of the morning, yet they make everything seem
so different; the pink tinge is different. At sunset it is so quiet,
somewhat melancholy; at sunrise it is resounding, boisterous.
In the hall downstairs when I entered, I saw U-, the controller. She
took a letter from the heaps of envelopes covered with pink dust and
handed it to me. I repeat: she is a very respectable woman and I am
sure she has only the very best feelings towards me.... Yet, every
time I see those cheeks hanging down, which look like the gills of a
fish, I....
Holding out her dry hand with the letter, U- sighed. But that sigh
only very slightly moved in me the curtains which separate me from
the rest of the world. I was completely projected upon the envelope
which trembled in my hand. I had no doubt but that it was a letter
from I-330.
At that moment I heard another sigh, such a deliberate one,
underscored with two lines, that I raised my eyes from the envelope
and saw a tender, cloudy smile coming from between the gills,
through the bashful jalousies of lowered eyes. And then:
"You poor, poor, dear!..." a sigh underscored with three lines, and
a glance at the letter, an imperceptible glance. (What was in the
letter she naturally knew, _ex officio_.)
"No, really?... Why?"
"No, no, dear, I know better than you. For a long time I have
watched you and I see that you need some one with years of
experience of life to accompany you."
I felt all pasted around by her smile. It was like a plaster upon
the wounds which were to be inflicted upon me by the letter I held
in my hand. Finally, through the bashful jalousies of her eyes, she
said in a very low voice: "I shall think about it, dear. I shall
think it over. And be sure that if I feel myself strong enough ..."
"Great Well-Doer! Is it possible that my lot is?... Is it possible
that she means to say, that she?..."
My eyes were dimmed and filled with thousands of sinusoids; the
letter was trembling. I went near the light, to the wall. There the
light of the sun was going out; from the sun was falling thicker and
thicker the dark, sad, pink dust, covering the floor, my hands, the
letter. I opened the envelope and found the signature as fast as I
could,--the first wound! It was not I-330; it was O-90! And another
wound: in the right-hand corner a slovenly splash,--a blot! I cannot
bear blots. It matters little whether they are made by ink or by ...
well, it matters not by what. Heretofore, such a blot would have had
only a disagreeable effect, disagreeable to the eyes; but now--why
did that small gray blot seem to be like a cloud and seem to spread
about me a leaden, bluish darkness? Or was it again the "soul" at
work? Here is a transcript of the letter:
"You know, or perhaps you don't ... I cannot write well. Little it
matters! Now you know that without you there is for me not a single
day, a single morning, a single spring, for R- is only ... well,
that is of no importance to you. At any rate, I am very grateful
to him, for without him, alone all these days, I don't know what
would.... During these last few days and nights I have lived through
ten years, or perhaps twenty years. My room seemed to me not square
but round; I walk around without end, round after round, always the
same thing, not a door to escape through. I cannot live without
you because I love you; and I should not, I cannot be with you any
more,--because I love you! Because I see and I understand that you
need no one now, no one in the world save that other, and you must
realize that it is precisely because I love you I must ...
"I need another two or three days in order to paste together the
fragments of myself and thus restore at least something similar to
the O-90 of old. Then I shall go myself, and myself I shall state
that I take your name from my list, and this will be better for you;
you must feel happy now. I shall never again...."
"Good-bye, O-."
Never again. Yes, that is better. She is right. But, why then?...
Why then?...
RECORD NINETEEN
The Infinitesimal of the Third Order
From Under the Forehead
Over the Railing
There in the strange corridor lighted by the dotted line of dim
little electric lamps ... or no, no, later, when we had already
reached one of the nooks in the courtyard of the Ancient House, she
said, "Day-after-tomorrow." That "day-after-tomorrow" is today. And
everything seems to have wings and to fly; the day flies; and our
_Integral_ too already has wings. We finished placing the motor
and tried it out today, without switching it in. What magnificent,
powerful salvos! Each of them sounded for me like a salute in honor
of _her_, the only one,--in honor of today!
At the time of the first explosion about a dozen loafing Numbers
from the docks stood near the main tube--and nothing was left of
them save a few crumbs and a little soot. With pride I write down
now that this occurrence did not disturb the rhythm of our work even
for a second. Not a man shrank. We and our lathes continued our
rectilinear or curved motions with the same sparkling and polished
precision as before, as if nothing had happened. As a matter of
fact, what did happen? A dozen Numbers represent hardly one hundred
millionth part of the United State. For practical consideration,
that is but an infinitesimal of the third order. That _pity_, a
result of arithmetical ignorance, was known to the ancients; to us
it seems absurd.
It seems droll to me also, that yesterday I was thinking, even
relating in these pages about a gray blot! All that was only the
"softening of the surface" which is normally as hard as diamond,
like our walls. (There is an ancient saying: "Shooting beans at a
stone wall--")
Sixteen o'clock. I did not go for the supplementary walk; who knows,
she might come now, when the sun is so noisily bright.
I am almost the only one in his room. Through the walls full of
sunshine I see for a distance to the right and to the left and below
strings of other rooms, repeating each other as if in a mirror,
hanging in the air and empty. Only on the bluish stairway, striped
by the golden ink of the sun, is seen rising a thin, gray shadow.
Already I hear steps, and I see through the door and I feel a smile
pasted to my face like a plaster. But it passed to another stairway
and down. The click of the switchboard! I threw myself to that
little white slit and ... an unfamiliar male Number! (A consonant