We
lips, bunches of rays were growing. Through the noise of the wind
and wings and cawing, he cried to me:
"Do you realize? Do you realize! They have blown up the Wall! The
Wall has been blown up! Do you _understand_?"
Somewhere in the background, figures with their heads drawn in
were hastily rushing by, and into the houses. In the middle of the
pavement a mass of those who had been already operated upon; they
moved towards the west....
... Hairy bunches of rays around the lips and eyes.... I grasped his
hands:
"Tell me. Where is she? Where is I-330? There? Beyond the Wall
or...? I must.... Do you hear me? At once.... I cannot...."
"Here!" he shouted in a happy, drunken voice, showing strong yellow
teeth, "here in town, and she is acting! Oh, we are doing great
work!"
Who are those "we"? Who am I?
There were about fifty around him. Like him, they seemed to have
crawled out from under their foreheads. They were loud, cheerful,
strong-toothed, swallowing the stormy wind. With their simple, not
at all terrible-looking electrocutors (where did they get them?)
they started to the west, towards the operated ones, encircling
them, keeping parallel to forty-eighth avenue....
Stumbling against the tightly-drawn ropes woven by the wind, I
was running to her. What for? I did not know. I was stumbling....
Empty streets.... The city seemed foreign, wild, filled with the
ceaseless, triumphant, hubbub of birds. It seemed like the end of
the world, _Doomsday_.
Through the glass of the walls in quite a few houses (this
cut into my mind) I saw male and female Numbers in shameless
embraces--without curtains lowered, without pink checks, in the
middle of the day!...
The house--her house; the door ajar. The lobby, the control desk,
all was empty. The elevator had stopped in the middle of its shaft.
I ran panting up the endless stairs. The corridor. Like the spokes
of a wheel figures on the doors dashed past my eyes; 320, 326,
330,--I-330! Through the glass wall everything in her room was seen
to be upside down, confused, creased. The table overturned, its legs
in the air like a beast. The bed was absurdly placed away from the
wall, obliquely. Strewn over the floor--fallen, trodden petals of
the pink checks.
I bent over and picked up one, two, three of them; all bore the
name D-503. I was on all of them, drops of myself, of my molten,
poured-out self. And that was all--that was left....
Somehow I felt they should not lie there on the floor and be trodden
upon. I gathered a handful of them, put them on the table and
carefully smoothed them out, glanced at them and ... laughed aloud!
I never knew it before but now I know, and you too, know, that
laughter may be of different colors. It is but a distant echo of an
explosion within us; it may be the echo of a holiday, red, blue and
golden fireworks, or at times it may represent pieces of human flesh
exploded into the air....
I noticed an unfamiliar name on some of the pink checks. I do not
remember the figures but I do remember the letter--F. I brushed
the stubs from the table to the floor, stepped on them, on myself,
stamped on them with my heels,--and went out....
I sat in the corridor on the window-sill in front of her door and
waited long and stupidly. An old man appeared. His face was like
a pierced, empty bladder with folds; from beneath the puncture
something transparent was still slowly dripping. Slowly, vaguely I
realized--tears. And only when the old man was quite far off I came
to and exclaimed:
"Please ... listen.... Do you know ... Number I-330?"
The old man turned around, waved his hand in despair and stumbled
farther away....
I returned home at dusk. On the west side the sky was twitching
every second in a pale blue electric convulsion:--a subdued, heavy
roar was proceeding from that direction. The roofs were covered with
black charred sticks,--birds.
I lay down; and instantly like a heavy beast sleep came and stifled
me....
RECORD THIRTY-EIGHT
I Don't Know What Title--Perhaps the Whole Synopsis May Be Called
a Cast-off Cigarette-butt.
I awoke. A bright glare painful to look at. I half closed my eyes.
My head seemed filled with some caustic blue smoke. Everything was
enveloped in fog and through the fog:
"But I did not turn on the light ... then how is it...."
I jumped up. At the table, leaning her chin on her hand and smiling,
was I-330, looking at me.
She was at the very table at which I am now writing. Those ten or
fifteen minutes are already behind me, cruelly twisted into a very
firm spring. Yet it seems to me that the door closed after her only
a second ago and that I could still overtake her and grasp her
hand,--and that she might laugh out and say....
I-330 was at the table. I rushed towards her.
"You? You! I have been.... I saw your room.... I thought you...."
But midway I hurt myself upon the sharp, motionless spears of her
eyelashes and I stopped. I remembered: she looked at me in the same
way before,--in the _Integral_. It was urgent to tell her everything
in one second and in such a way that she should believe--or she
would never....
"Listen, I-330, I must.... I must ... everything! No, no, one
moment--let me have a glass of water first."
My mouth was as dry as though it were lined with blotting paper. I
poured a glass of water but I could not.... I put the glass back
upon the table, and with both hands firmly grasped the carafe.
Now I noticed that the blue smoke was from a cigarette. She brought
the cigarette to her lips and with avidity she drew in and swallowed
the smoke as I did water; then she said:
"Don't. Be silent. Don't you see it matters little? I came anyway.
They are waiting for me below.... Do you want these minutes which
are our last...?"
Abruptly she threw the cigarette on the floor and bent backwards
over the side of the chair to reach the button in the wall (it was
quite difficult to do so), and I remember how the chair swayed
slightly, how two of its legs were lifted. Then the curtains fell.
She came close to me and embraced me. Her knees, through her dress,
were like a slow, gentle, warm, enveloping and permeating poison....
Suddenly (it happens at times) you plunge into sweet, warm
sleep--when all at once, as if something pricks you, you tremble and
your eyes are again widely open. So it was now; there on the floor
in her room were the pink checks stamped with traces of footsteps,
one of them bore the letter F. and some figures.... Plus and minus
fused within my mind into one lump.... I could not say even now what
sort of a feeling it was but I crushed her so that she cried out
with pain....
One more minute out of these ten or fifteen; her head thrown back,
lying on the bright white pillow, her eyes half closed, a sharp,
sweet line of teeth.... And all this reminded me in an irresistible,
absurd, torturing way about something forbidden, something not
permissible at that moment. More tenderly, more cruelly, I pressed
her to myself, more bright grew the blue traces of my fingers....
She said, without opening her eyes (I noticed this), "They say you
went to see the Well-Doer yesterday, is it true?"
"Yes."
Then her eyes opened widely and with delight I looked at her and saw
that her face grew quickly paler and paler, that it effaced itself,
disappearing,--only the eyes remained.
I told her everything. Only for some reason, what I don't know--(no,
it is not true, I know the reason) I was silent about one thing: His
assertion at the end that they needed me only in order....
Like the image on a photographic plate in a developing fluid, her
face gradually reappeared; the cheeks, the white line of teeth, the
lips. She stood up and went to the mirror-door of the closet. My
mouth was dry again. I poured water but it was revolting to drink
it; I put the glass back on the table and asked:
"Did you come to see me because you wanted to inquire...?"
A sharp, mocking triangle of brows drawn to the temples looked at
me from the mirror. She turned around to say something but said
nothing.
It was not necessary; I knew.
To bid her good-bye, I moved my foreign limbs, struck the chair with
them. It fell upside down, dead, like the table in her room. Her
lips were cold ... just as cold was once the floor, here, near my
bed....
When she left I sat down on the floor, bent over the
cigarette-butt....
I cannot write any more--I no longer want to!
RECORD THIRTY-NINE
The End
All this was like the last crystal of salt thrown into a saturated
solution; quickly, needle-like crystals began to appear, to grow
more substantial and solid. It was clear to me; the decision was
made and tomorrow morning _I shall do it_! It amounts to suicide
but perhaps then I shall be re-born. For only what is killed can be
re-born.
Every second the sky twitched in convulsion there in the west. My
head was burning and pulsating inside; I was up all night and I fell
asleep only at about seven o'clock in the morning when the darkness
of the night was already dispelled and becoming gray and when the
roofs crowded with birds became visible....
I woke up; ten o'clock. Evidently the bell did not ring today. On
the table--left from yesterday--there stood the glass of water.
I gulped the water down with avidity and I ran; I had to do it
quickly, as quickly as possible.
The sky was deserted, blue, all eaten up by the storm. Sharp corners
of shadows.... Everything seemed to be cut out of blue autumnal
air--thin, dangerous to touch; it seemed so brittle, ready to
disperse into glass dust. Within me something similar; I ought not
to think; it was dangerous to think, for....
And I did not think, perhaps I did not even see properly; I
only registered impressions. There on the pavement, thrown from
somewhere, branches were strewn; their leaves were green, amber and
cherry-red. Above, crossing each other, birds and aeros were tossing
about. Here below heads, open mouths, hands waving branches.... All
this must have been shouting, buzzing, chirping....
Then--streets empty as if swept by a plague. I remember I stumbled
over something disgustingly soft, yielding yet motionless. I bent
down--a corpse. It was lying flat, the legs apart. The face.... I
recognized the thick negro lips which even now seemed to sprinkle
with laughter. His eyes, firmly screwed in, laughed into my face.
One second.... I stepped over him and ran. I could no longer.... I
had to have everything done as soon as possible, or else I felt I
would break, I would break in two like an overloaded sail....
Luckily it was not more than twenty steps away; I already saw the
sign with the golden letters: "The Bureau of Guardians." At the
door I stopped for a moment to gulp down as much air as I could and
stepped in.
Inside, in the corridor stood an endless chain of numbers, holding
small sheets of paper and heavy note-books. They moved slowly,
advancing a step or two and stopping again. I began to be tossed
about along the chain, my head was breaking to pieces; I pulled
them by the sleeves, I implored them as a sick man implores to be
given something that would even at the price of sharpest pain end
everything, forever.
A woman with a belt tightly clasped around her waist over the unif
and with two distinctly protruding squatty hemispheres tossing about
as if she had eyes on them, chuckled at me:
"He has a belly-ache! Show him to the room second door to the
right!"
Everybody laughed, and because of that laughter something rose in my
throat; I felt I should either scream or ... or....
Suddenly from behind some one touched my elbow. I turned around.
Transparent wing-ears! But they were not pink as usual; they were
purplish red; his Adam's apple was tossing about as though ready to