We
She shook her head. Through the dark windows of her eyes I saw
within her a flaming oven, sparks, tongues of flame and above them a
heap of dry, tarry wood. It was clear to me that it was too late, my
words could be of no avail.
She stood up. She would soon leave. Perhaps these were the last
days, or the last minutes.... I grasped her hand.
"No, stay a little while longer ... for the sake ... for the
sake...."
She slowly lifted my hand towards the light, my hairy paw which I
detest. I wanted to withdraw it but she held it tightly.
"Your hand.... You undoubtedly don't know and very few do know,
that women from here occasionally used to fall in love with _them_.
Probably there are in you a few drops of that blood of the sun and
the woods. Perhaps that is why I...."
Silence. It was so strange that because of that silence, because of
an emptiness, of nothing, my heart should beat so wildly. I cried.
"Ah, you shall not go yet! You shall not go until you tell me about
_them_ ... for you love ... them, and I do not know even who they
are, nor where they come from."
"Who are they? The half we have lost. H2 and O, two halves; but
in order to get water, H2O, creeks, seas, waterfalls, storms, it
is necessary that those two halves be united."
I distinctly remember every movement of hers. I remember she picked
up a glass triangle from my table and while talking she pressed its
sharp edge against her cheek; a white scar would appear; then it
would fill again and become pink and disappear. And it is strange
that I cannot remember her words, especially the beginning of the
story. I remember only different images and colors. At first,
I remember, she told me about the Two Hundred Years' War. Red
color.... On the green of the grass, on the dark clay, on the
pale blue of the snow,--everywhere red ditches that would not
become dry. Then yellow; yellow grass burned by the sun, yellow
naked wild-men and wild dogs side by side near swollen cadavers
of dogs or perhaps of men. All this, certainly beyond the Walls,
for the City was already the victor and it possessed already our
present-day petroleum food. And at night ... down from the sky
... heavy black folds. The folds would swing over the woods, the
villages,--blackish-red slow columns of smoke. A dull moaning;
endless strings of people driven into the City to be saved by force
and to be whipped into happiness.
"... You knew almost all this."
"Yes, almost."
"But you did not know and only a few did, that a small part of them
remained together and stayed to live beyond the Wall. Being naked,
they went into the woods. They learned there from the trees, beasts,
birds, flowers and sun. Hair soon grew over their bodies, but under
that hair they preserved their warm red blood. With you it was
worse; numbers covered your bodies; numbers crawled over you like
lice. One ought to strip you of everything, and naked you ought to
be driven into the woods. You ought to learn how to tremble with
fear, with joy, with wild anger, with cold; you should pray to fire!
And we Mephi, we want...."
"Oh, wait a minute! 'Mephi,' what does it mean!"
"Mephi? It is from Mephisto. You remember, there on the rock, the
figure of the youth? Or, no. I shall explain it to you in your own
language and you will understand better: there are two forces in
the world, entropy and energy. One leads into blessed quietude, to
happy equilibrium, the other to the destruction of equilibrium,
to torturingly perpetual motion. Our, or rather your ancestors,
the Christians, worshipped entropy like a God. But we are not
Christians, we...."
At that moment a slight whisper was suddenly heard, a knock at the
door, and in rushed that flattened man with the forehead low over
his eyes, who several times had brought me notes from I-330. He ran
straight to us, stopped, panting like an air-pump, and could say not
a word, as he must have been running at top speed.
"But tell me! What has happened?" I-330 grasped him by the hand.
"They are coming here,--" panted the air-pump, "with guards.... And
with them that what's-his-name, the hunchback...."
"S-?"
"Yes. They are in the house by this time. They'll soon be here.
Quick, quick!"
"Nonsense, we have time!" I-330 was laughing, cheerful sparks in her
eyes. It was either absurd, senseless courage, or else there was
something I did not yet understand.
"I-, dear, for the sake of the Well-Doer! You must understand that
this...."
"For the sake of the Well-Doer!" The sharp, triangle-smile.
"Well ... well, for my sake, I implore you!"
"Oh, yes, I wanted to talk to you about some other matters.... Well,
never mind.... We'll talk about them tomorrow."
And cheerfully (yes cheerfully) she nodded to me; the other came out
for a second from under his forehead's awning and nodded also. I was
alone.
Quick! To my desk! I opened this manuscript, took the pen so that
they should find me at this work which is for the benefit of
the United State. Suddenly I felt every hair on my head living,
separated, moving: "What if they should read, even one page of these
most recently written?"
Motionless I sat at the table but everything around me seemed to
be moving, as if the less than microscopic movements of the atoms
suddenly were magnified millions of times, and I saw the walls
trembling, my pen trembling and the letters swinging and fusing
together. "To hide them! But where?" Glass all around. "To burn
them?" But they would notice the fire through the corridor and in
the neighboring room. Besides I felt unable, I felt too weak, to
destroy this torturing and perhaps dearest piece of my own self....
Voices from a distance (from the corridor) and steps. I had only
time to snatch a handful of pages and put them under me, and then as
if soldered to the armchair, every atom of which was quivering, I
remained sitting, while the floor under my feet rolled like the deck
of a ship, up and down....
All shrunk together and hidden under the awning of my own forehead
like that messenger, I watched them stealthily; they were going from
room to room, beginning at the right end of the corridor. Nearer
... nearer.... I saw that some sat in their rooms, torpid like me;
others would jump up and open their doors wide,--lucky ones! If only
I too, could....
"The Well-Doer is the most perfect fumigation humanity needs,
consequently no peristalsis in the organism of the United State
could...." I was writing this nonsense, pressing my trembling pen
hard, and lower and lower my head bent over the table, and within me
some sort of crazy forge.... With my back I was listening ... and
I heard the click of the door-knob.... A current of fresh air....
My armchair was dancing a mad dance.... Only then, and even then
with difficulty, I tore myself away from the page, turned my head
in the direction of the newcomers (how difficult it is to play
a foul game!). In front of all was S-, morose, silent, swiftly
drilling with his eyes deep shafts within me, within my armchair
and within the pages which were twitching in my hands. Then for a
second--familiar, everyday faces at the door; one of them separated
itself from the rest with its bulging, pinkish-brown gills....
At once I recalled everything that happened in the same room half an
hour ago and it was clear to me that they would presently....
All my being was shriveling and pulsating in that fortunately opaque
part of my body with which I was covering the manuscript. U- came up
to S-, gently plucked his sleeve and said in a low voice:
"This is D-503, the builder of the _Integral_. You have probably
heard of him. He is always like that, at his desk; does not spare
himself at all!"
... And I thought!... What a dear, wonderful woman!...
S- slid up to me, bent over my shoulder toward the table. I covered
the lines I had written with my elbow but he shouted severely:
"Show us at once what you have there, please!"
Dying with shame, I held out the sheet of paper. He read it over,
and I noticed a tiny smile jump out of his eyes, jump down his face
and slightly wagging its tail, perch upon the right angle of his
mouth....
"Somewhat ambiguous, yet.... Well, you may continue; we shall not
disturb you any more."
He went splashing towards the door as if in a ditch of water. And
with every step of his I felt coming back to me my legs, my arms,
my fingers,--my soul again distributed itself evenly over my whole
body; I breathed....
The last thing: U- lingered in my room to come back to me and say in
my very ear in a whisper: "It is lucky for you that I...."
I did not understand. What did she mean by that? The same evening I
learned that they led away three Numbers, although nobody speaks out
loud about that, or about anything that happened. This ostensible
silence is due to the educational influence of the Guardians who are
ever present among us. Conversations deal chiefly with the quick
fall of the barometer and the forthcoming change in the weather.
RECORD TWENTY-NINE
Threads on the Face
Sprouts
An Unnatural Compression
It is strange: the barometer continues to fall yet there is no
wind. There is quiet. Above, the storm which we do not yet hear has
begun. The clouds are rushing with a terrific speed. There are few
of them as yet; separate fragments; it is as if there above us an
unknown city were being destroyed and pieces of walls and towers
were rushing down, coming nearer and nearer with terrific speed,
but it will take some days of rushing through the blue infinite
before they reach the bottom, that is us, below. And below there is
silence.
There are thin, incomprehensible, almost invisible threads in the
air; every autumn they are brought here from beyond the Wall. They
float slowly, and suddenly you feel something foreign and invisible
on your face; you want to brush it off, but no, you cannot rid
yourself of it. You feel it especially near the Green Wall, where I
was this morning. I-330 made an appointment with me to meet her in
the Ancient House in that "Apartment" of ours.
I was not far from the rust-red, opaque mass of the Ancient House,
when I heard behind me short hasty steps and rapid breathing. I
turned around and saw O-90 trying to catch up to me. She seemed
strangely and perfectly rounded. Her arms and breast, her whole
body, so familiar to me, was rounded out, stretching her unif. It
seemed as though it would soon tear the thin cloth and come out into
the sun, into the light. I think that there in the green debris, in
springtime, the unseen sprouts try thus to tear their way through
the ground in order to emit their branches and leaves and to bloom.
For a few seconds she shone into my face with her blue eyes in
silence.
"I saw you on the Day of Unanimity."
"I saw you, too." I at once remembered; below, in a narrow passage
she had stood, pressing herself to the wall, protecting her abdomen
with her arms, and automatically I glanced now at her abdomen which
rounded the unif. She must have noticed, for she became pink, and
with a rosy smile:
"I am so happy ... so happy! I am so full of ... you understand, I
am ... I walk and I hear nothing around me.... And all the while I
listen within, within me...."
I was silent. Something foreign was shadowing my face and I was
unable to rid myself of it. Suddenly, all shining, light blue, she
caught my hand; I felt her lips upon it.... It was for the first
time in my life.... It was some ancient caress as yet unknown to
me.... And I was so ashamed and it pained me so much that I swiftly,
I think even roughly, pulled my hand away.
"Listen, you are crazy, it seems.... And anyway you ... what are you
happy about? Is it possible that you forget what is ahead of you? If
not now, then within a month or two...."