We
Forehead--Over the Railing 130
20. Discharge--The Material of an Idea--The Zero Rock 139
21. The Duty of an Author--The Ice-swells--The Most Difficult
Love 144
22. The Benumbed Waves--Everything is Improving--I Am a Microbe 152
23. Flowers--The Dissolution of a Crystal--If Only (?) 158
24. The Limit of the Function--Easter--To Cross Out Everything 165
25. The Descent from Heaven--The Greatest Catastrophe in
History--The Known--Is Ended 171
26. The World Does Exist--Rash--Forty-one Degrees Centigrade 181
27. No Headings. It Is Impossible 187
28. Both of Them--Entropy and Energy--The Opaque Part of
the Body 196
29. Threads of the Face--Sprouts--An Unnatural Compression 207
30. The Last Number--Galileo's Mistake--Would It Not Be Better 211
31. The Great Operation--I Forgave Everything--The Collision
of Trains 217
32. I Do Not Believe--Tractors--A Little Human Splinter 228
33. This without a Synopsis, Hastily, the Last 237
34. The Forgiven Ones--A Sunny Night--A Radio-Walkryie 239
35. In a Ring--A Carrot--A Murder 251
36. Empty Pages--The Christian God--About My Mother 260
37. Infusorian--Doomsday--Her Room 266
38. I Don't Know What Title--Perhaps the Whole Synopsis May Be
Called a Cast-off Cigarette-Butt 272
39. The End 276
40. Facts--The Bell--I Am Certain 284
WE
RECORD ONE
An Announcement
The Wisest of Lines
A Poem
This is merely a copy, word by word, of what was published this
morning in the State newspaper:
"In another hundred and twenty days the building of the _Integral_
will be completed. The great historic hour is near, when the first
_Integral_ will rise into the limitless space of the universe. A
thousand years ago your heroic ancestors subjected the whole earth
to the power of the United State. A still more glorious task is
before you,--the integration of the indefinite equation of the
Cosmos by the use of the glass, electric, fire-breathing _Integral_.
Your mission is to subjugate to the grateful yoke of reason the
unknown beings who live on other planets, and who are perhaps still
in the primitive state of freedom. If they will not understand that
we are bringing them a mathematically faultless happiness, our duty
will be to force them to be happy. But before we take up arms, we
shall try the power of words.
"In the name of The Well-Doer, the following is announced herewith
to all Numbers of the United State:
"Whoever feels capable must consider it his duty to write treatises,
poems, manifestoes, odes and other compositions on the greatness and
the beauty of the United State.
"This will be the first load which the _Integral_ will carry.
"Long live the United State! Long live the Numbers!! Long live the
Well-Doer!!!"
I feel my cheeks are burning as I write this. To integrate the
colossal, universal equation! To unbend the wild curve, to
straighten it out to a tangent--to a straight line! For the United
State is a straight line, a great, divine, precise, wise line, the
wisest of lines!
I, D-503, the builder of the _Integral_, I am only one of the many
mathematicians of the United State. My pen, which is accustomed to
figures, is unable to express the march and rhythm of consonance;
therefore I shall try to record only the things I see, the things
I think, or to be more exact, the things _we_ think. Yes, we; that
is exactly what I mean, and "We" shall, therefore, be the title of
my records. But this will only be a derivative of our life,--of our
mathematical, perfect life in the United State. If this be so, will
not this derivative be a poem in itself, despite my limitations? It
will. I believe, I know it.
I feel my cheeks are burning as I write this. I feel something
similar to what a woman probably feels when for the first time she
senses within herself the pulse of a tiny, blind, human being. It
is I, and at the same time it is not I. And for many long months it
will be necessary to feed it with my life, with my blood, and then
with a pain at my heart, to tear it from myself and lay it at the
feet of the United State.
Yet I am ready, as everyone, or nearly everyone of us, is. I am
ready.
RECORD TWO
Ballet
Square Harmony
X
Spring. From behind the Green Wall from some unknown plains the
wind brings to us the yellow honeyed pollen of flowers. One's lips
are dry from this sweet dust. Every moment one passes one's tongue
over them. Probably, all women whom I meet in the street (and men
certainly also), have today sweet lips. This disturbs somewhat my
logical thinking. But the sky! The sky is blue. Its limpidness is
not marred by a single cloud. (How primitive was the taste of the
ancients, since their poets were always inspired by these senseless,
formless, stupidly rushing accumulations of steam!) I love, I am
sure it will not be an error if I say we love, only such a sky--a
sterile, faultless sky. On such days the whole universe seems to be
moulded of the same eternal glass, like the Green Wall, and like all
our buildings. On such days one sees into the very blue depth of
things. One sees their wonderful equations, hitherto unknown. One
sees them in everything, even in the most ordinary everyday things.
Here is an example: this morning I was on the dock where the
_Integral_ is being built, and I saw the lathes; blindly, with
abandon, the balls of the regulators were rotating; the cranks
were swinging from side to side with a glimmer; the working-beam
proudly swung its shoulder; and the mechanical chisels were dancing
to the melody of an unheard Tarantella. I suddenly perceived all
the music, all the beauty, of this colossal, of this mechanical
ballet, illumined by light blue rays of sunshine. Then the thought
came: why beautiful? Why is a dance beautiful? Answer: because it
is an _unfree_ movement. Because the deep meaning of the dance
is contained in its absolute, ecstatic submission, in the ideal
_non-freedom_. If it is true that our ancestors would abandon
themselves in dancing at the most inspired moments of their lives
(religious mysteries, military parades) then it means only one
thing: the instinct of non-freedom has been characteristic of human
nature from ancient times, and we in our life of today, we are only
consciously--
I was interrupted. The switchboard clicked. I raised my eyes,--O-90,
of course! In half a minute she herself will be here to take me for
the walk.
Dear O--! She always seems to me to look like her name, O--. She is
approximately ten centimeters shorter than the required Maternal
Norm. Therefore she appears all round; the rose-colored O of her
lips is open to meet every word of mine. She has a round soft dimple
on her wrist. Children have such dimples. As she came in, the
logical fly-wheel was still buzzing in my head, and following its
inertia, I began to tell her about my new formula which embraced the
machines and the dancers and all of us.
"Wonderful, isn't it!" I asked.
"Yes, wonderful ... Spring!" she replied, with a rosy smile.
You see? Spring! She talks about Spring! Females!... I became
silent.
We were down in the street. The avenue was crowded. On days when
the weather is so beautiful the afternoon personal hour is usually
the hour of the supplementary walk. As always the big Musical Tower
was playing with all its pipes, the March of the United State.
The Numbers, hundreds, thousands of Numbers in light blue unifs
(probably a derivative of the ancient _uniform_) with golden badges
on the chest,--the State number of each one, male or female,--the
Numbers were walking slowly, four abreast, exaltedly keeping
the step. I, we four, were but one of the innumerable waves of
a powerful torrent. To my left, O-90 (if one of my long-haired
ancestors were writing this a thousand years ago, he would probably
call her by that funny word, _mine_), to my right, two unknown
Numbers, a she-Number and a he-Number.
Blue sky, tiny baby suns in each one of our badges; our faces are
unclouded by the insanity of thoughts. Rays.... Do you picture it?
Everything seems to be made of a kind of smiling, a ray-like matter.
And the brass measures: Tra-ta-ta-tam.... Tra-ta-ta-tam ... stamping
on the brassy steps which sparkle in the sun; with every step you
rise higher and higher into the dizzy blue heights.... Then, as this
morning on the dock, again I saw as if for the first time in my
life, the impeccably straight streets, the glistening glass of the
pavement, the divine parallelopipeds of the transparent dwellings,
the square harmony of the grayish-blue rows of Numbers. And it
seemed to me that not past generations, but I myself, had won a
victory over the old god and the old life, that I myself had created
all this. I felt like a tower: I was afraid to move my elbow, lest
the walls, the cupola and the machines should fall to pieces.
Then without warning--a jump through centuries: I remembered
(apparently through an association by contrast) a picture in
the museum, a picture of an avenue of the twentieth century,
a thundering many-colored confusion of men, wheels, animals,
bill-boards, trees, colors, and birds.... They say all this once
actually existed!
It seemed to me so incredible, so absurd, that I lost control of
myself and laughed aloud. A laugh, as if an echo of mine, reached my
ear from the right. I turned. I saw white, very white, sharp teeth,
and an unfamiliar female face.
"I beg your pardon," she said, "but you looked about you like an
inspired mythological god on the seventh day of creation. You look
as though you are sure that I, too, was created by you, by no one
but you. It is very flattering."
All this without a smile, even with a certain degree of respect--(she
may know that I am the builder of the _Integral_). In her eyes
nevertheless, in her brows, there was a strange irritating X, and
I was unable to grasp it, to find an arithmetical expression for
it. Somehow I was confused; with a somewhat hazy mind, I tried
logically to motivate my laughter.
"It was absolutely clear that this contrast, this impassable abyss,
between the things of today and of years ago--"
"But why impassable?" (What bright, sharp teeth!) "One might throw a
bridge over that abyss. Please imagine: a drum battalion, rows,--all
this existed before and consequently--"
"Oh, yes, it is clear," I exclaimed.
It was a remarkable intersection of thoughts. She said almost in
the same words the things I wrote down before the walk! Do you
understand? Even the thoughts! It is because nobody is _one_, but
_one of_. We are all so much alike--
"Are you sure?" I noticed her brows which rose to the temples in an
acute angle,--like the sharp corners of an X. Again I was confused,
casting a glance to the right, then to the left. To my right--she,
slender, abrupt, resistantly flexible like a whip, I-330 (I saw her
number now). To my left, O-, totally different, made all of circles
with a child-like dimple on her wrist; and at the very end of our
row, an unknown he-Number, double-curved like the letter S. We were
all so different from one another....
The one to my right, I-330, apparently caught my confused eye, for
she said with a sigh, "Yes, alas!"