We
hands modestly busied themselves with fixing the fold of the unif
which fell again between her knees, and suddenly, about something
entirely different, she said:
"I think I must decide ... for your sake.... But I implore you, do
not hurry me. I must think it over."
I did not hurry her, although I realized that I ought to have been
delighted, as there is no greater honor than to crown someone's
evening years.
... All night strange wings were about. I walked and protected my
head with my hands from those wings. And a chair, not like ours, but
an ancient chair, came in with a horse-like gait: first the right
fore- and left hind-leg, then the left fore- and right hind-leg. It
rushed to my bed and crawled into it, and I liked that wooden chair,
although it made me uncomfortable and caused me some pain.
It is very strange; is it really impossible to find any cure for
this dream-sickness, or to make it rational, perhaps even useful?
RECORD TWENTY-TWO
The Benumbed Waves
Everything Is Improving
I Am a Microbe
Please imagine that you stand at the seashore. The waves go
rhythmically up, down, up.... Suddenly when they have risen they
remain in that position, benumbed, torpid! It was just as weird
and unnatural when everything became confused and our regular walk
which is prescribed by the Tables, suddenly came to an end. The
last time such a thing happened was 119 years ago, when according
to our historians a meteorite fell hissing and fuming into the
very midst of the marchers. We were walking yesterday as usual,
that is like warriors on the Assyrian monuments, a thousand heads
and two composite, integrated legs and two swinging integrated
arms. At the end of the avenue where the Accumulating Tower was
formidably resounding, a quadrangle appeared: on the sides, in
front and behind--guards; in the centre three Numbers. Their unifs
were already stripped of the golden State badges; everything was
painfully clear. The enormous dial on the top of the Tower looked
like a face; it bent down from the clouds and spitting down its
seconds, it waited with indifference. It showed six minutes past
thirteen exactly. There was some confusion in the quadrangle. I was
very close and I saw the most minute details. I clearly remember
a thin, long neck and on the temple a confused net of small blue
veins like rivers on the map of a small unfamiliar world, and that
unknown world was apparently still a very young man. He evidently
noticed someone in our ranks; he stopped, rose upon his tip-toes
and stretched his neck. One of the guards snapped his back with
the bluish spark of the electric whip--he squealed in a thin voice
like a puppy. The distinct snaps followed each other at intervals
of approximately two seconds; a snap and a squeal, a snap and a
squeal.... We continued to walk as usual, rhythmically, in our
Assyrian manner. I watched the graceful zigzags of the electric
sparks and thought: "Human society is constantly improving, as it
should. How ugly a tool was the ancient whip and how much beauty
there is--"
At that moment, like a nut flying from a wheel revolving at full
speed, a female Number, thin, flexible and tense, tore herself
from our rows, and with a cry, "Enough! Don't you dare!" she threw
herself straight into the quadrangle. It was like the meteorite of
119 years ago; our march came to a standstill and our rows appeared
like the gray crests of waves frozen by sudden cold. For a second
I looked at that woman's figure with the eye of a stranger as all
the others did. She was no Number any longer; she was only a human
being and she existed for us only as a substantiation of the insult
which she cast upon the United State. But a motion of hers, her
bending while twisting to the left upon her hips, revealed to me
clearly who she was. I knew, I knew that body, flexible as a whip!
My eyes, my lips, my hands knew it; at that moment I was absolutely
certain.... Two of the guards dashed to catch her. One more moment
and that limpid mirror-like point on the pavement would have become
the point of meeting of their trajectories, and she would have been
caught! My heart fell, stopped. Without thinking whether it was
permissible or not, whether it was reasonable or absurd, I threw
myself straight to that point.
I felt thousands of eyes bulging with horror fixed upon me but that
only added a sort of desperately joyful power to that wild being
with hairy paws which arose in me and ran faster and faster. Two
more steps--she turned around--
I saw a quivering face covered with freckles, red eyebrows.... It
was not she! Not I-330!
A rabid, quivering joy took hold of me. I wanted to shout something
like: "Catch her! Get her, that--" But I heard only my whisper. A
heavy hand was already upon my shoulder; I was caught and led away.
I tried to explain to them:
"But listen, you must understand that I thought that...."
But could I explain even to myself all the sickness which I have
described in these pages? My light went out; I waited obediently. As
a leaf that is torn from its branch by a sudden gust of wind falls
humbly, but on its way down turns and tries to catch every little
branch, every fork, every knot; so I tried to catch every one of the
silent, globe-like heads, or the transparent ice of the walls, or
the blue needle of the Accumulating Tower which seemed to pierce the
clouds.
At that moment, when a heavy curtain was about to separate from me
this beautiful world, I noticed not far away a familiar, enormous
head gliding over the mirror surface of the pavement and wagging its
wing-like ears. I heard a familiar, flat voice:
"I deem it my duty to testify that Number D-503 is ill and is unable
to regulate his emotions. Moreover, I am sure that he was led by
natural indignation--"
"Yes! Yes!" I exclaimed, "I even shouted 'catch her!'"
From behind me: "You did not shout anything."
"No, but I wanted to. I swear by the Well-Doer, I wanted to!"
For a second I was bored through by the gray, cold, drill-eyes.
I don't know whether he believed that what I said was the truth
(almost!), or whether he had some secret reason for sparing me for a
while, but he wrote a short note, handed it to one of those who had
held me and again I was free. That is, I was again included in the
orderly, endless, Assyrian rows of Numbers.
The quadrangle, the freckled face and the temple with the map of
blue veinlets disappeared forever around the corner. We walked
again--a million-headed body; and in each one of us resided that
humble joyfulness with which in all probability molecules, atoms and
phagocytes live.
In the ancient days the Christians understood this feeling; they are
our only (though very imperfect) direct forerunners. The greatness
of the "Church of the United Flock" was known to them. They knew
that resignation is virtue, and pride--a vice; that "We" is from
God, "I" from the devil.
I was walking, keeping step with the others yet separated from them.
I was still trembling from the emotion just felt, like a bridge
over which a thundering ancient steel train has passed a moment
before. I _felt_ myself. To feel one's self, to be conscious of
one's personality, is the lot of an eye inflamed by a cinder, or an
infected finger, or a bad tooth. A healthy eye, or finger, or tooth
is not felt; it is non-existent as it were. Is it not clear then,
that consciousness of oneself is a sickness?
Apparently I am no longer a phagocyte which quietly, in a
business-like way devours microbes (microbes with freckled faces
and blue temples); apparently I am myself a microbe, and she too,
I-330, is a microbe, a wonderful, diabolic microbe! It is quite
possible that there are already thousands of such microbes among us,
still pretending to be phagocytes, as I pretend. What if today's
accident, although in itself not important, is only a beginning,
only the first meteorite of a shower of burning and thundering
stones which the infinite may have poured out upon our glass
paradise?
RECORD TWENTY-THREE
Flowers
The Dissolution of a Crystal
If only (?)
They say there are flowers that bloom only once in a hundred years.
Why not suppose the existence of flowers that bloom only once a
thousand years? We may have known nothing about them until now only
because today is the "once in a thousand years"?
Happy and dizzy I walked downstairs to the controller on duty
and quickly under my gaze all around me and silently the
thousand-year-old buds burst, and everything was blooming:
armchairs, shoes, golden badges, electric bulbs, someone's dark
heavy eyes, the polished columns of the banisters, the handkerchief
which someone lost on the stairs, the small, ink-blotted desk of the
controller and the tender brown, somewhat freckled cheeks of U-.
Everything seemed not ordinary, new, tender, rosy, moist. U- took
the pink stub from me while the blue, aromatic moon, hanging from an
unseen branch, shone through the glass of the wall and over the head
of U-. With a solemn gesture I pointed my finger and said:
"The moon. You see?"
U- glanced at me, then at the number of the stub and again made that
familiar, charmingly innocent movement with which she fixes the fold
of the unif between her knees.
"You look abnormal and ill, dear. Abnormality and illness are the
same thing. You are killing yourself. And no one would tell you
that, no one!"
That "No one" was certainly equivalent to the number on the
stub,--I-330. This thought was confirmed by an ink-blot which
fell close to the figure 330. Dear, wonderful U-! You are right,
of course. I am not reasonable. I am sick. I have a soul. I am a
microbe. But is blooming--not a sickness? Is it not painful when the
buds are bursting? And don't you think that spermatozoa are the most
terrible of all microbes?
Back upstairs to my room. In the widely open cup of the armchair
was I-330. I, on the floor, embracing her limbs, my head on her
lap. We were silent. Everything was silent. Only the pulse was
audible. Like a crystal I was _dissolving_ in her, in I-330. I
felt most distinctly how the polished facets which limited me in
space were slowly thawing, melting away. I was dissolving in her
lap, in her, and I became at once smaller and larger and larger,
unembraceable. For she was not she but the whole universe. For a
second I and that armchair near the bed, transfixed with joy, we
were one. And the wonderfully smiling old woman at the gate of the
Ancient House, and the wild debris beyond the Green Wall, and some
strange silver wreckage on a black background, dozing like the old
woman and the slam of a door in the distance,--all this was within
me, was listening to my pulse and soaring through the happiest of
seconds.
In absurd, confused, overflowing words I attempted to tell her that
I was a crystal and that there was a door in me, and that I felt how
happy the armchair was. But something nonsensical came out of the
attempt and I stopped. I was ashamed. And suddenly:
"Dear I-! Forgive me! I understand nothing. I talk so foolishly!"
"And why should you think that foolishness is not fine? If we had
taken pains to educate human foolishness through centuries, as
we have done with our intelligence, it might perhaps have been
transformed into something very precious."
Yes, I think she is right! How could she be wrong at that moment?
"... And for this foolishness of yours and for what you did
yesterday during the walk, I love you the more, much more."
"Then why did you torture me? Why would you not come? Why did you
send me the pink check and make me--?"
"Perhaps I wanted to test you. Perhaps I must be sure that you will
do anything I wish, that you are completely mine."
"Yes, completely."