Chapter III: Part 3

"You see, it is the ancient legend of paradise." ("p" like a fountain.) "That legend referred to us of today, did it not? Yes. Only think of it, think of it a moment! There were two in paradise and the choice was offered to them: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. No other choice. _Tertium non datur_. They, fools that they were, chose freedom. Naturally, they longed for centuries afterwards for fetters, for the fetters of yore. This was the meaning of their world-weariness, _Weltschmerz_. For centuries! And only we found a way to regain happiness.... No, listen, follow me! The ancient god and we, side by side at the same table! Yes, we helped god definitely and finally to defeat the devil. It was he, the devil, who lead people to transgression, to taste pernicious freedom, he the cunning serpent? And we came along, planted a boot on his head and ... squash! Done with him! Paradise again! We returned to the simple-mindedness and innocence of Adam and Eve. No more meddling with good and evil and all that; everything is simple again, heavenly, childishly simple! The Well-Doer, The Machine, The Cube, the giant Gas Bell, The Guardians,--all these are good. All this is magnificent, beautiful, noble, lofty, crystalline, pure. For all this preserves our non-freedom, that is, our happiness. In our place those ancients would indulge in discussions, deliberations, etc. They would break their heads trying to make out what was moral or unmoral. But we.... Well, in short, these are the highlights of my little paradise poem. What do you think of it? And above all the style is most solemn, pious. Understand me? Nice little idea, is it not? Do you understand?"

Of course I understood. I remember my thoughts at that moment: "his appearance is nonsensical and lacking in symmetry, yet what an orderly-working mind he has!" This made him dear to me, that is to the real _me_. (I still insist that _I_ of before is the real one; my I of late is, certainly, only an illness.)

Apparently R- read my thought in my face; he put his hand on my shoulders and laughed: "Oh you!... Adam! By the way, about Eve...." He searched for something in his pockets, took out a little book, turned over a few leaves and said, "For the day-after-tomorrow,--oh, no, two days from now,--O-90 has a pink check on you. How about it?... As before?... You want her to?"

"Of course, of course!"

"All right then, I'll tell her. You see she herself is very bashful.... What a funny story! You see, for me she has only a pink-check affection, but for you!... And you, you did not even come to tell us how a fourth member sneaked into our triangle! Who is it? Repent, sinner! Come on!"

A curtain rose inside me; rustle of silk, green bottle, lips.... Without any reason whatever I exclaimed (oh, why didn't I restrain myself at that moment?), "Tell me, R-, did you ever have the opportunity to try nicotine or alcohol?"

R- sucked in his lips, looked at me from under his brows. I distinctly heard his thoughts: "Friend though he is, yet...." And he answered:

"What shall I say? Strictly speaking, no. But I know a woman...."

"I-330?" I cried.

"What! You? You too?" R- was full of laughter; he chuckled, ready to splash over.

My mirror was hanging in such a way that in order to see R- clearly I had to turn and look across the table. From my armchair I could see now only my own forehead and eyebrows. Then I, the real I, suddenly saw in the mirror a broken, quivering line of brow; I, the real I, heard suddenly a wild disgusting cry: "What? What does that 'also' mean? What does that 'also' mean? I demand...."

Widely parted negro lips.... Eyes bulging. I (the real I) grasped my other wild, hairy, heavily breathing self forcibly. I (the real I) said to him, to R-, "In the name of the Well-Doer, please forgive me. I am very sick; I don't sleep; I do not know what is the matter with me."

A swiftly passing smile appeared on the thick lips.

"Yes, yes, I understand, I understand. I am familiar with all this, theoretically, of course. Good-bye."

At the door he turned around like a little black ball, came back to the table and put a book upon it. "This is my latest book. I came to bring it to you. Almost forgot. Good-bye." ("b" like a splash.) The little ball rolled out.

I am alone. Or, to be more exact, I am _tête-à-tête_ with that other self. I sit in the armchair and having crossed my legs, I watch curiously from some indefinite "there," how I (myself) am shrivelling in my bed!

Why, oh, why is it, that for three years R-, O-, and I were so friendly together and now suddenly--one word only about that other female, about I-330, and.... Is it possible that that insanity called love and jealousy does exist not only in the idiotic books of the ancients? What seems most strange is that I, I!... Equations, formulae, figures, and suddenly this! I can't understand it, I can't! Tomorrow I shall go to R- and tell him.... No, it isn't true; I shall not go; neither tomorrow nor day after tomorrow, nor ever.... I can't, I do not want to see him. This is the end. Our triangle is broken up.

I am alone. It is evening. There is a light fog. The sky is covered by a thin milky-golden tissue. If I only knew what is there--higher. If I only knew who I am. Which I am I?

RECORD TWELVE

The Delimitation of the Infinite
Angel
Meditations on Poetry

I continue to believe that I shall recover, that I may recover. I slept very well. No dreams or any other symptoms of disease. Dear O-90 will come tomorrow. Everything will again be simple, regular and limited like a circle. I am not afraid of this word "limited." The work of the highest faculty of man, judgment, is always directed toward the constant limiting of the infinite, toward the breaking up of the infinite into comfortably digestible portions,--differentials. This is what gives divine beauty to my element, mathematics. And it is exactly this beauty that that other female lacks. But this last thought of mine is only an accidental mental association.

These thoughts swarmed in my mind while I was listening to the regular, rhythmic sounds of the underground railway. Silently I followed the rhythm of its wheels and recited to myself R-'s verses (from the book which he gave me yesterday), and I felt that behind me some one was leaning over my shoulder and looking at the open pages. I did not turn around but with the corner of my eye I noticed pink ears, spread like wings, the double-curved ... like the letter.... It was he, but I did not want to disturb him. I feigned not to have noticed him. How he came in, I do not know. I did not see him when I got into the car.

This incident, insignificant in itself, had an especially good effect upon me; it invigorated me, I should say. It is pleasant to feel that somebody's penetrating eye is watching you from behind your shoulder, lovingly guarding you from making the most minute mistake, from the most minute incorrect step. It may seem to you too sentimental but I see in all this the materialization of the dream of the ancients about a Guardian-Angel. How many things about which the ancients had only dreams, are materialized in our life!

At the moment when I became aware of the presence of the Guardian-Angel behind me I was enjoying a poem entitled "Happiness." I think I am not mistaken when I say that it is a piece of rare beauty and depth of thought. Here are the first four lines:

"Two times two--eternal lovers;
Inseparable in passion four ...
Most flaming lovers in the world,
Eternally welded, two times two."

And the rest is in the same vein: on the wisdom and the eternal happiness of the multiplication table. Every poet is inevitably a Columbus. America existed before Columbus for ages, but only Columbus found it. The multiplication table existed before R-13 for ages, but only R-13 could find in the virginal forest of figures a new Eldorado. Is it not true? Is there any happiness more wise and cloudless in this wonderful world? Steel may rust. The ancient god created the ancient man, i.e., the man capable of mistakes, _ergo_ the ancient god himself made a mistake. The multiplication table is more wise and more absolute than the ancient god, for the multiplication table never (do you understand--_never_) makes mistakes! There are no more fortunate and happy people than those who live according to the correct, eternal laws of the multiplication table. No hesitation! No errors! There is but one truth, and there is but one path to it; and that truth is: four, and that path is: two times two. Would it not seem preposterous for these happily multiplied twos suddenly to begin thinking of some foolish kind of freedom? i.e. (is it not clear?) of a mistake? It seems undeniable, axiomatic, that R-13 knows how to grasp the most fundamental, the most....

At that moment again I felt (first near the back of my head, then on my left ear) the warm, tender breath of the Guardian-Angel. He apparently noticed that the book on my lap had long been closed and that my thoughts were somewhere very far.... Well, I am ready this minute to spread before him the pages of my brain. This gives one such a feeling of tranquility and joy. I remember I even turned around and gazed long and questioningly into his eyes; but either he did not understand, or he did not want to understand me. He did not ask me anything.... The only thing left for me is to relate everything to you, my unknown readers. You are to me now as dear and as near and as far out of reach as he was at that moment.

This was my way of thinking: from the part to the whole,--R-13 is the part; the whole is our Institution of State Poets and Authors. I thought: how was it that the ancients did not notice the utter absurdity of their prose and poetry? The gigantic, magnificent power of the artistic word was spent by them in vain. It is really droll; anybody wrote whatever happened to come into his head! It was as foolish as the fact that in the days of the ancients the ocean blindly splashed at the shore for twenty-four hours without interruption or use. The millions of kilogram-meters of energy which were hidden in the waves were used only for the stimulation of sweethearts! We obtained electricity from the amorous whisper of the waves! We made a domestic animal out of that sparkling, foaming, rabid one! And in the same manner we domesticated and harnessed the wild element of poetry. Now poetry is no longer the unpardonable whistling of nightingales but a State Service! Poetry is a commodity.

Our famous "Mathematical Norms"! Without them in our schools, how could we love so sincerely and dearly our four rules of arithmetic? And "Thorns!" This is a classical image: the Guardians are thorns about a rose; thorns that guard our tender State-Flower from coarse hands. Whose heart could resist, could remain indifferent to see and hear the lips of our children recite like a prayer: "A bad boy caught the rose with his hand but the thorn of steel pricked him like a needle; the bad boy cried and ran home," etc., etc. And the "Daily Odes to the Well-Doer!" Who, having read them, will not bow piously before the unselfish service of that Number of all Numbers? And the dreadful red "Flowers of Court Sentences!" And the immortal tragedy, "Those Who Come Late to Work!" And the popular book, "Stanzas on Sex-Hygiene!"

Our whole life in all its complexity and beauty is thus stamped forever in the gold of words. Our poets do not soar any longer in the unknown; they have descended to earth and they march with us, keeping step to the accompaniment of our austere and mechanical March of the musical State Tower. Their lyre is the morning rubbing-sound of the electric tooth-brushes, and the threatening crack of the electric sparks coming from the Machine of the Well-Doer, and the magnificent echo of the Hymn of the United State, and the intimate ringing of the crystalline, shining wash-basins, and the stimulating rustle of the falling curtains, and the joyous voices of the newest cook-books, and the almost imperceptible whisper of the street membranes....

Our gods are here, below. They are with us in the Bureau, in the kitchen, in the shops, in the rest-rooms. The gods have become like us, _ergo_ we have become like gods. And we shall come to you, my unknown readers on another planet, we shall come to you to make your life as god-like, as rational and as correct as ours....

RECORD THIRTEEN

Fog
Thou
A Decidedly Absurd Adventure

I awoke at dawn. The rose-colored firmament looked into my eyes. Everything was beautiful, round. "O-90 is to come tonight. Surely I am healthy again." I smiled and fell asleep. The Morning Bell! I got up; everything looked different. Through the glass of the ceiling, through the walls, nothing could be seen but fog,--fog everywhere, strange clouds, becoming heavier and nearer; the boundary between earth and sky disappeared. Everything seemed to be floating and thawing and falling.... Not a thing to hold to. No houses to be seen; they all were dissolved in the fog like crystals of salt in water. On the sidewalks and inside the houses dark figures like suspended particles in a strange milky solution, were hanging, below, above,--up to the tenth floor. Everything seemed to be covered with smoke, as though a fire were somewhere raging noiselessly.

At eleven-forty-five exactly (I looked at the clock particularly at that time to catch the figures, to save at least the figures) at eleven-forty-five, just before leaving, according to our Table of Hours, to go and occupy myself with physical labor, I dropped into my room for a moment. Suddenly the telephone rang. A voice,--a long needle slowly penetrating my heart:

"Oh, you are at home? I am very glad! Wait for me at the corner. We shall go together.... Where? Well, you'll see."

"You know perfectly well that I am going to work now."

"You know perfectly well that you'll do as I say! _Au-revoir._ In two minutes!..."

I stood at the corner. I had to wait to try to make clear to her that only the United State directs me, not she. "You'll do as I say!" How sure she is! One hears it in her voice. And what if...?

Unifs, dull gray as if woven of damp fog would appear for a second at my side and then soundlessly redissolve. I was unable to turn my eyes away from the clock.... I seemed myself to have become that sharp, quivering hand which marked the seconds. Ten, eight minutes ... three ... two minutes to twelve.... Of course! I was late! Oh, how I hated her, yet I had to wait to prove that I....

A red line in the milky whiteness of the fog--like blood, like a wound made by a sharp knife--her lips.

"I made you wait, I think? And now you are late for your work anyway?"

"How...? Well, yes, it is too late now."

I glanced at her lips in silence. All women are lips, lips only. Some are rosy lips, tense and round, a ring, a tender fence separating one from the world. But these! A second ago they were not here, and suddenly ... the slash of a knife! I seemed to see even the dripping sweet blood....

She came nearer. She leaned gently against my shoulder; we became one. Something streamed from her into me. I felt, I knew, it _should_ be so. Every fibre of my nervous system told me this, every hair on my head, every painfully sweet heartbeat. And what a joy it was to submit to what _should_ be. A fragment of iron-ore probably feels the same joy of submission to precise, inevitable law, when it clings to a loadstone. The same joy is in a stone which thrown aloft, hesitates a little at the height of its flight and then rushes down to the ground. It is the same with a man when in his final convulsion he takes a last deep breath and dies.

I remember I smiled vaguely and said for no reason at all, "Fog ... very."

"Thou lovest fog, dost thou?"

This ancient, long-forgotten _thou_--the thou of a master to his slave--penetrated me slowly, sharply.... Yes, I was a slave.... This too was inevitable, was good.

"Yes, good ..." I said aloud to myself, and then to her, "I hate fog. I am afraid of fog."

"Then you love it. For if you fear it because it is stronger than you, hate it because you fear it, you love it. For you cannot subject it to yourself. One loves only the things one cannot conquer."

"Yes, that is so. That is why ... that is precisely why I...."

We were walking--as one. Somewhere beyond the fog the sun was singing in a faint tone, gradually swelling, filling the air with tension and with pearl and gold and rose and red.... The whole world seemed to be one unembraceable woman, and we who were in her body were not yet born; we were ripening in joy. It was clear to me, absolutely clear, that everything existed only for me: the sun, the fog, the gold--for me. I did not ask where we were going; what did it matter? It was pleasure to walk, to ripen, to become stronger and more tense....

"Here ..." I-330 stopped at a door. "It so happens that today there is some one on duty who ... I told you about him in the Ancient House."

Carefully guarding the forces ripening within me, I read the sign: "Medical Bureau." Automatically only I understood.

... A glass room, filled with golden fog; shelves of glass, colored bottles, jars, electric wires, bluish sparks in tubes; and a male Number--a very thinly flattened man. He might have been cut out of a sheet of paper. Wherever he was, whichever way he turned, he showed only a profile, a sharply pointed, glittering blade of a nose and lips like scissors.

I could not hear what I-330 told him; I merely saw her lips when she was talking; and I felt that I was smiling, irrepressibly, blissfully. The scissors-like lips glittered and the doctor said, "Yes, yes, I see. A most dangerous disease. I know of nothing more dangerous." And he laughed. With his thin, flat, papery hand he wrote something on a piece of paper and gave it to I-330; he wrote on another piece of paper and handed it over to me. He had given us certificates, testifying that we were ill, that we were unable to go to work. Thus I stole my work from the United State; I was a thief; I deserved to be put beneath the Machine of the Well-Doer. Yet I was indifferent to this thought; it was as distant from me as though it were written in a novel. I took the certificate without an instant's hesitation. I, all my being, my eyes, my lips, my hands ... knew it was as it should be.

At the corner, from a half empty garage we took an aero. I-330 took the wheel as she had done before, pressed the starter and we tore away from the earth. We soared. Behind us the golden haze; the Sun. The thin, blade-like profile of the doctor seemed to me suddenly so dear, so beloved. Formerly I knew everything was revolving around the Sun. Now I knew everything was revolving around me. Slowly, blissfully, with half-closed eyes....

At the gate of the Ancient House we found the same old woman. What a dear mouth, with lips grown together and ray-like wrinkles around it! Probably those lips have remained grown together all these days; but now they parted and smiled:

"Ah! you mischievous girl, you! Work is too much for you? Well, all right, all right. If anything happens I'll run up and warn you."

A heavy, squeaky, opaque door. It closed behind us, and at once my heart opened painfully, widely, still wider.... My lips ... hers.... I drank and drank from them. I tore myself away; in silence I looked into her widely open eyes, and then again....

The room in half dusk.... Blue and saffron-yellow lights, dark green morocco leather, the golden smile of Buddha, a wide mahogany bed, a glimmer of mirrors.... And my dream of a few days before became so comprehensible, so clear to me; everything seemed saturated with the golden prime-juice of life, and it seemed that I was overflowing with it,--one second more and it would splash out.... Like iron-ore to a loadstone, in sweet submission to the precise and unchangeable law, inevitably, I clung to her.... There was no pink check, no counting, no United State; I myself was no more. Only, drawn together, the tenderly-sharp teeth were there, only her golden, widely open eyes, and through them I saw deeper, within.... And silence.... Only somewhere in a corner, thousands of miles away it seemed, drops of water were dripping from the faucet of the washstand. I was the Universe!

... And between drops whole epochs, eras, were elapsing....

I put on my unif and bent over I-330 to draw her into me with my eyes--for the last time.

"I knew it.... I knew you," said I-330 in a very low voice. She passed her hand over her face as though brushing something away; then she arose brusquely, put on her unif and her usual sharp, bite-like smile.

"Well, my fallen angel ... you perished just now, do you know that? No? You are not afraid? Well, _au-revoir_. You shall go home alone. Well?"

She opened the mirror-door of the cupboard and looking at me over her shoulder, she waited. I left the room obediently. Yet no sooner had I left the room than I felt it was urgent that she touch me with her shoulder--only for one second with her shoulder, nothing more. I ran back into the room, where (I presumed) she was standing before the mirror, busy buttoning up her unif; I rushed in and stopped abruptly. I saw (I remember it clearly), I saw the key in the keyhole of the closet and the ancient ring upon it was still swinging but I-330 was not there. She could not have left the room as there was but one exit.... Yet I-330 was not there! I looked around everywhere. I even opened the cupboard and felt of the different ancient dresses; nobody....

I feel somewhat ridiculous, my dear planetary readers, relating to you this most improbable adventure. But what else can I do since it all happened exactly as I relate it? Was not the whole day from early morning, full of improbable adventures? Does it not all resemble the ancient disease of dream-seeing? If this be so, what does it matter if I relate one absurdity more, or one less? Moreover, I am convinced that sooner or later I shall be able to include all these absurdities in some kind of a logical sequence. This thought comforts me as I hope it will comfort you.

... How overwhelmed I am! If only you knew how overwhelmed!

RECORD FOURTEEN

"Mine"
Impossible
A Cold Floor

I shall continue to relate my adventures of yesterday. I was busy during the personal hour before retiring to bed, and thus I was unable to record everything last night. But everything is graven in me; especially, for some reason, and apparently forever, I shall remember that unbearably cold floor....

I was expecting O-90 last evening as it was her regular day. I went downstairs to the controller on duty to get a permit for the lowering of my curtains.

"What is the matter with you?" asked the controller. "You seem so peculiar tonight."

"I ... I am sick."

Strictly speaking, I told her the truth. I certainly am sick. All this _is_ an illness. Presently I remembered; of course, my certificate! I touched it in my pocket. Yes, there it was, rustling. Then all this did happen! It did actually happen!

I held out the paper to the controller. As I did so, I felt the blood rushing to my cheeks. Without looking directly at her, I noticed with what an expression of surprise she gazed at me.

Then at twenty-one-thirty o'clock.... In the room to the left the curtains were lowered, and in the room to the right my neighbor was sitting over a book. His head is bald and covered with bulging lumps. His forehead is enormous--a yellow parabola. I was walking up and down the room--suffering. How could I meet her, after all that happened! O-90, I mean. I felt plainly to my right, how the eyes of my neighbor were staring at me. I clearly saw the wrinkles on his forehead like a row of yellow, illegible lines; and for some reason I was certain that those lines dealt with me.

A quarter of an hour before twenty-two, the cheerful, rosy whirlwind was in my room; the firm ring of her rosy arms closed about my neck. Then I felt how that ring grew weaker and weaker, and then it broke and her arms dropped....

"You are not the same, not the same man! You are no longer mine!"

"What curious terminology: 'mine.' I never belonged--" I faltered. It suddenly occurred to me: true, I belonged to no one before, but now--Is it not clear that now I do not live any more in our rational world but in the ancient delirious world, in a world of square-root of minus one?

The curtains fell. There to my right my neighbor let his book drop at that moment from the table to the floor. And through the last narrow space between the curtain and the floor I saw a yellow hand pick up the book. Within I felt: "Only to seize that hand with all my power."

"I thought ... I wanted to meet you during the hour for the walk. I wanted ... I must talk to you about so many things, so many...."

Poor, dear, O-90. Her rosy mouth was a crescent with its horns downward. But I could not tell her everything, could I, if for no other reason than that it would make her an accomplice of my crimes? I knew that she would not have the courage to report me to the Bureau of Guardians, consequently....

"My dear O-, I am sick, I am exhausted. I went again today to the Medical Bureau; but it is nothing, it will pass. But let us not talk about it;--let us forget it."

O-90 was lying down. I kissed her gently. I kissed that childish, fluffy fold at her wrist. Her blue eyes were closed. The pink crescent of her lips was slowly blooming, more and more like a flower. I kissed her....

Suddenly I clearly realized how empty I was, how I had given away.... No, I could not--impossible! I knew I must ... but no--impossible! I ought ... but no--impossible! My lips cooled at once. The rosy crescent trembled, darkened, drew together. O-90 covered herself with the bedspread, her face hidden in the pillow.

I was sitting near the bed, on the floor. What a desperately cold floor! I sat there in silence. The terrible cold from the floor rose higher and higher. There in the blue, silent space among the planets, there probably it is as cold.

"Please understand, dear; I did not mean..." I muttered, "With all my heart, I ..."

It was the truth. I, my real self did not mean.-- ... Yet how could I express it in words? How could I explain to her that the piece of iron did not want to.... But that the law is precise, inevitable!

O-90 lifted her face from the pillow and without opening her eyes she said, "Go away." But because she was crying she pronounced it "Oo aaa-ay." For some reason this absurd detail will not leave my memory.

Penetrated by the cold and torpid, I went out into the hall. I pressed my forehead against the cold glass. Outside a thin, almost imperceptible film of haze was spread. "Towards night," I thought, "it will descend again and drown the world. How sad a night it will be!"

O-90 passed swiftly by, going toward the elevator. The door slammed.

"Wait a minute!" I screamed. I was frightened.

But the elevator was already groaning, going down--down--down....

"She robbed me of R-, she robbed me of O-90, yet, yet ... nevertheless...."

RECORD FIFTEEN

The Bell
The Mirror-Like Sea
I Am To Burn Eternally

I was walking upon the dock where the _Integral_ is being built, when the Second Builder came to meet me. His face as usual was round and white,--a porcelain plate. When he speaks it seems as though he serves you a plate of something unbearably tasty.

"You chose to be ill, and without the Chief we had an accident, as it were, yesterday."

"An accident?"

"Yes, sir. We finished the bell and started to let it down, and imagine! the men caught a male without a number. How he got in, I cannot make out. They took him to the Operation Department. Oh, they'll draw the mystery out of the fellow there; 'why' and 'how,' etc...." He smiled delightedly.

Our best and most experienced physicians work in the Operation Department under the direct supervision of the Well-Doer himself. They have all kinds of instruments, but the best of all is the Gas Bell. The procedure is taken from an ancient experiment of elementary physics: they used to put a rat under a gas bell and gradually pump out the air; the air becomes more and more rarified, and ... you know the rest.

But our Gas Bell is certainly a more perfect apparatus and it is used in combination with different gasses. Furthermore, we don't torture a defenseless animal as the ancients did; we use it for a higher purpose: to guard the security of the United State, in other words, the happiness of millions. About five centuries ago when the work of the Operation Department was only beginning, there were yet to be found some fools who compared our Operation Department with the ancient Inquisition. But this is as absurd as to compare a surgeon performing a tracheotomy with a highway cut-throat. Both use a knife, perhaps the same kind of a knife, both do the same thing, viz., cut the throat of a living man, yet one is a well-doer, the other is a murderer; one is marked plus, the other minus.... All this becomes perfectly clear in one second, in one turn of our logical wheel, the teeth of which engage that _minus_, turn it upward and thus change its aspect. That other matter is somewhat different; the ring in the door was still oscillating, apparently the door had just closed, yet she, I-330, had disappeared; she was not there! The logical wheel could not turn this fact. A dream? But even now I feel still in my right shoulder that incomprehensible sweet pain of I-330 near me in the fog, pressing herself against me. "Thou lovest fog?" Yes, I love the fog too. I love everything and everything appears to me wonderful, new, tense; everything is so good!...

"So good," I said aloud.

"Good?" The porcelain eyes bulged out. "What good do you find in that? If that man without a number contrived to sneak in, it means that there are others around here, everywhere, all the time, here around the _Integral_, they--"

"Whom do you mean by 'they'?"

"How do I know who? But I sense them, all the time."

"Have you heard about the new operation which has been invented? I mean the surgical removal of fancy?" (There really were rumors of late about something of the sort.)

"No, I haven't. What has that to do with it?"

"Merely this: if I were you, I should go and ask to have this operation performed upon me."

The plate expressed distinctly something lemon-like, sour. Poor fellow! He took offence if one even hinted that he might possess imagination. Well, a week ago I too should have taken offence at such a hint. Not so now, for I know that I have imagination, that is what my illness consists in, and more than that: I know that it is a wonderful illness,--one does not want to be cured, simply does not want to!

We ascended the glass steps; the world spread itself below us like the palm of a hand.

You, readers of these records, whoever you be, you have the sun above you. And if you ever were ill, as I am now, then you know what kind of a sun there is or may be in the morning; you know that pinkish, lucid, warm gold; the air itself looks a little pinkish; everything seems permeated by the tender blood of the sun; everything is alive; the stones seem soft and living; iron living and warm; people all full of life and smiles. It may be that in a short while all this will disappear, that in an hour the pinkish blood of the sun will be drained out, but in the meantime everything is alive. And I see how something flows and pulsates in the sides of the _Integral_; I see the _Integral_ _think_ of its great and lofty future, of the heavy load of inevitable happiness which it is to carry up there into the heights, to you, unseen ones, to you who seek eternally and who never find. You shall find! You shall be happy! You must be happy, and you have now not very long to wait!

The body of the _Integral_ is almost ready; it is an exquisite, oblong ellipsoid, made of our glass, which is everlasting like gold and flexible like steel. I watched them within, fixing its transverse ribs and its longitudinal stringers; in the stern they were erecting the base of the gigantic motor. Every three seconds the powerful tail of the _Integral_ will eject flame and gasses into the universal space, and the _Integral_ will soar forward and higher,--like a flaming Tamerlane of happiness! I watched how the workers, true to the Taylor system, would bend down, then unbend and turn around swiftly and rhythmically like levers of an enormous engine. In their hands they held glittering glass pipes which emitted bluish streaks of flame; the glass walls were being cut into with flame; with flame there were being welded the angles, the ribs, the bars. I watched the monstrous glass cranes easily rolling over the glass rails; like the workers themselves they would obediently turn, bend down and bring their loads inward into the bowels of the _Integral_. All seemed one, humanized machine and mechanized humans. It was the most magnificent, the most stirring beauty, harmony, music!

Quick! Down! To them, and with them! And I descended and mingled with them, fused with their mass, caught in the rhythm of steel and glass. Their movements were measured, tense and round. Their cheeks were colored with health, their mirror-like foreheads not clouded by the insanity of thinking. I was floating upon a mirror-like sea. I was reposing.... Suddenly one of them turned toward me his care-free face.

"Well, better today?"

"What better?"

"You were not here yesterday. And we thought something serious...." His forehead was shining; a childish and innocent smile.

My blood rushed to my face. No, I could not lie, facing those eyes. I remained silent; I was drowning.... Above, the shiny round white porcelain face appeared in the hatchway.

"Eh! D-503! Come up here! Something is wrong with a frame and brackets here, and ..."

Not waiting until he had finished, I rushed to him, upstairs; I was shamefully saving myself by flight. I had not the power to raise my eyes. I was dazed by the sparkling glass steps under my feet, and with every step I made I felt more and more hopeless. I, a corrupted man, a criminal, was out of place here. No, I shall probably never again be able to fuse myself into this mechanical rhythm, nor to float over this mirror-like, untroubled sea. I am to burn eternally from now on, running from place to place, seeking a nook where I may hide my eyes, eternally, until I.... A spark cold as ice pierced me: "I myself, I matter little, but is it necessary that _she_ also...? I must see that she ..."

I crawled through the hatchway to the deck and stood there; where was I to go now? I did not know what I had come for! I looked aloft. The midday sun exhausted by its march, was fuming dimly. Below was the _Integral_, a gray mass of glass,--dead. The pink blood was drained out! It was clear to me that all this was my imagination and that everything remained as before, yet it was also clear to me that ...

"What is the matter with you, D-503? Are you deaf? I call you and call.... What is the matter with you?" It was the Second Builder yelling directly into my ear; he must have been yelling that way for quite a while.

What was the matter with me? I had lost my rudder, the motor was groaning as before, the aero was quivering and rushing on but it had no rudder. I did not even know where I was rushing, down to the earth or up to the sun, to its flame....

RECORD SIXTEEN

Yellow
A Two-dimensional Shadow
An Incurable Soul

I have not written for several days, for I don't know how many. All my days are alike. All are of one color,--yellow like dry, overheated sand. Not a patch of shade, not a drop of water, only an infinity of yellow sand. I cannot live without her, but she, since she disappeared that day so mysteriously in the Ancient House....

Since that time I have seen her only once, during the hour for the Walk, two, three, four days ago, I do not remember exactly. All my days are alike. She only passed swiftly by and for a second filled up the yellow, empty world. With her, arm in arm, reaching not higher than her shoulder, were the double-curved S- and the thin papery doctor, and a fourth person whose fingers only I remember well; they streamed out, those fingers, from the sleeve of the unif like a bundle of rays, uncommonly thin, white, long. I-330 raised her hand and waved to me, then she bent toward the one with the ray-like fingers, over the head of S-. I overheard the word _Integral_. All four turned around to look at me,--and then they disappeared in the bluish-gray sea and my road was once more dry and yellow.

That same evening she had a pink check on me. I stood before the switchboard and with hatred and tenderness I implored it to click and soon to show the number I-330. I would jump out into the hall at every sound of the elevator. The door of the latter would open heavily. Pale, tall, blonde and dark they would come out of the elevator, and here and there curtains were falling.... But she was not there. She did not come. And it is quite possible that now, at this minute, as I write these lines, at twenty-two o'clock exactly, with her eyes closed, she is pressing her shoulder against somebody else _in the same way_ and _in the same way_ she may be asking someone: "Do you love me?" Whom? Who is he? That one with ray-like fingers or that thick-lipped, sprinkling R-? Or S-? S-! Why is it that I have heard his steps splashing behind me as though in a ditch all these days? Why has he been following me all these days like a shadow? Ahead of me, to my side, behind me, a grayish-blue, two-dimensional shadow; people cross it, people step on it but it remains nearby, attached to me by unseen ties. Perhaps that tie is I-330. I do not know. Or perhaps they, the Guardians I mean, already know that I ...

If some one should tell you your shadow sees you, sees you all the time, would you understand? All at once peculiar sensations arise in you; your arms seem to belong to someone else, they are in the way. That is how I feel; very frequently now I notice how absurdly I wave my hands without any rhythm. I have an irresistible desire to glance behind me but I am unable to do so, my neck might as well be forged of iron. I flee, I run faster and faster, and even with my back I feel that shadow following me as fast as I can run, and there is no place to hide myself, no place!

At length I reach my room. Alone at last! But here I find another thing, the telephone. I pick up the receiver. "Yes, I-330 please." And again I hear a light noise through the receiver; some one's step in the hall there, passing the door of her room, and--silence.... I drop the receiver. I cannot, cannot bear it any longer, and I run to see her!

This happened yesterday. I ran there and for a whole hour from sixteen to seventeen I wandered near the house in which she lives. Numbers were passing by in rows. Thousands of feet were beating the time like a behemoth with a million legs passing by. I was alone, thrown out by a storm on an uninhabited island, and my eyes were seeking and seeking among the grayish-blue waves. "There soon," I thought, "will appear from somewhere the sharp mocking angles of the brows lifted to the temples, and the dark window-eyes, and there behind them a flaming fireplace and someone's shadow.... And I will rush straight in behind those windows and say to her, 'Thou' (yes, 'thou' without fail), 'Thou knowest I cannot live without thee any longer, then why-- ...?'" But silence reigned.

Suddenly I heard the silence; suddenly I heard the Musical Tower silenced, and I understood! It was after seventeen already; every one had already left. I was alone. It was too late to return home. Around me,--a desert made of glass and bathed with yellow sunshine. I saw, as if in water, the reflection of the walls in the glass smoothness of the street, sparkling walls, hanging upside down. Myself also upside down, hanging absurdly in the glass.

"I must go at once, this very second, to the Medical Bureau or else ... or perhaps _this_ would be best: to remain here, to wait quietly until they see me and come and take me into the Operation Department and put an end to everything at once, redeem everything...." A slight rustle! and the double-curved S- was before me. Without looking I felt his two gray steel-drill eyes bore quickly into me. I plucked up all my strength to show a smile and to say (I had to say something), "I, I must go to the Medical Bureau."

"Who is detaining you? What are you standing here for?"

I was silent, absurdly hanging upside down.

"Follow me," said S- austerely.

I followed obediently, waving my unnecessary, foreign arms. I could not raise my eyes. I walked through a strange world turned upside down, where people had their feet pasted to the ceilings, and where engines stood with their bases upward, and where, still lower, the sky merged in the heavy glass of the pavement. I remember what pained me most was the fact that looking at the world for the last time in my life, I should see it upside down rather than in its natural state; but I could not raise my eyes.

We stopped. Steps. One step ... and I should see the figures of the doctors in their white aprons and the enormous dumb Bell.

With force, with some sort of an inner screw, at length I succeeded in tearing my eyes away from the glass beneath my feet, and I noticed the golden letters, "Medical Bureau." Why did he bring me here rather than to the Operation Department? Why did he spare me?--about this I did not even think at that moment. I made one jump over all the steps, firmly closed the door behind me and took a very deep breath, as if I had not breathed since morning and as if my heart had not beaten for the same length of time, as if only now I started to breathe and only now there opened a sluice in my chest....

Inside there were two of them, one a short specimen with heavy legs, his eyes like the horns of a bull tossing the patients up, the other extremely thin with lips like sparkling scissors, a nose like a blade--it was the same man who ... I ran to him as to a dear friend, straight over close to the blade, and muttered something about insomnia, dreams, shadows, yellow sand. The scissors-lips sparkled and smiled.

"Yes, it _is_ too bad. Apparently a soul has formed in you."

A soul?--that strange ancient word that was forgotten long ago....

"Is it ... v-very dangerous?" I stuttered.

"Incurable," was the cut of the scissors.

"But more specifically, what is it? Somehow I cannot imagine--"

"You see ... how shall I put it? Are you a mathematician?"

"Yes."

"Then you see ... imagine a plane, let us say this mirror. You and I are on its surface. You see? there we are, squinting our eyes to protect ourselves from the sunlight, or here is the bluish electric spark in that tube, there the shadow of that aero that just passed. All this is on the surface, is momentary only. Now imagine this very same surface softened by a flame so that nothing can any longer glide over it, so everything instead will penetrate into that mirror world which excites such curiosity in children. I assure you, children are not so foolish as we think they are! The surface becomes a volume, a body, a world; and inside the mirror,--within you, there is the sunshine, and the whirlwind caused by the aero propeller, and your trembling lips and someone else's lips also. You see, the cold mirror reflects, throws out, while this one absorbs; it keeps forever a trace of everything that touches it. Once you saw an imperceptible wrinkle on some one's face, and this wrinkle is forever preserved within you; you may happen to hear in the silence a drop of water falling,--and you will hear it forever!"

"Yes, yes, that is it!" I grasped his hand. I could hear drops of water dripping in the silence from the faucet of a washstand and at once I knew it was forever.

"But tell me please, why suddenly ... suddenly a soul? There was none, yet suddenly.... Why is it that no one has it, yet I...." I pressed the thin hand; I was afraid to loosen the safety belt.

"Why? Well, why don't we grow feathers or wings, but only shoulder blades, bases for wings? We have aeros; wings would only be in the way. Wings are needed in order to fly, but we don't need to fly anywhere. We have arrived at the terminus. We have found what we wanted. Is that not so?"

I nodded vaguely. He glanced at me and laughed a scalpel-like metallic laugh. The other doctor overheard us and stamped out of his room on his heavy legs. He picked up the thin doctor with his horn-eyes, then picked me up.

"What is the matter, a soul? You say a soul? Oh, damn it! We may soon retrogress even to the cholera epidemics. I told you," he tossed the thin one on the horns, "I told you the only thing to do is to operate on them all, wholesale! simply extirpate the centre for fancy. Only surgery can help here, only surgery." He put on a pair of enormous X-ray spectacles and remained thus for a long while, looking into my skull, through the bones into my brain and making notes.

"Very, very curious! Listen." He looked firmly into my eyes. "Would you not consent to have me perform an extirpation on you? It would be invaluable to the United State; it might help us to prevent an epidemic. If you have no special reasons, of course...."

Some time ago I should probably have said without hesitation, "I am willing," but now,--I was silent. I caught the profile of the thin doctor; I implored him!

"You see," he said at last, "Number D-530 is building the _Integral_ and I am sure the operation would interfere...."

"Ah-h!" grumbled the other and stamped back into his room.

We remained alone. The paper-like hand was put lightly and caressingly upon mine, the profile-like face came nearer and he said in a very low voice: "I shall tell you a secret. You are not the only one. My colleague is right when he speaks of an epidemic. Try to remember, have you not noticed yourself, some one with something similar, very similar, identical?"

He looked at me closely. What was he alluding to? To whom?... Is it possible?...

"Listen," I jumped up from my seat. But he had already changed the subject. In a loud metallic tone:

"... As to the insomnia and for the dreams you complain of, I advise you to walk a great deal. Tomorrow morning you must begin taking long walks ... say as far as the Ancient House."

Again he pierced me with his eyes and he smiled thinly. It seemed to me that I saw enveloped in the tender tissue of that smile a word, a letter, a name, the only name.... Or was it only my imagination? I waited impatiently while he wrote a certificate of illness for today and tomorrow. Once more I gently and firmly pressed his hand, then I ran out.

My heart now feels light and swift like an aero; it carries me higher and higher.... I know joy will come tomorrow. What joy?...

RECORD SEVENTEEN

Through Glass
I Died
The Corridor

I am puzzled. Yesterday, at the very moment when I thought everything was untangled, and that all the X's were at last found, new unknowns appeared in my equation. The origin of the coordinates of the whole story is of course the Ancient Home. From this centre the axes of all the X's, Y's, and Z's radiate, and recently they have entered into the formation of my whole life.

I walked along the X-axis (Avenue 59) towards the centre. The whirlwind of yesterday still raged within me; houses and people upside down; my own hands torturingly foreign to me; glimmering scissors; the sharp sound of drops dripping from the faucet;--all this existed, all this _existed_ once! All these things were revolving wildly, tearing my flesh, rotating wildly beneath the molten surface, there where the "soul" is located.

In order to follow the instructions of the doctor I chose the road which followed not the hypotenuse but the two legs of a triangle. Soon I reached the road running along the Green Wall. From beyond the Wall, from the infinite ocean of green there rose toward me an immense wave of roots, branches, flowers, leaves. It rose higher and higher; it seemed as though it would splash over me and that from a man, from the finest and most precise mechanism which I am, I would be transformed into.... But fortunately there was the Green Wall between me and that wild green sea. Oh, how great and divinely limiting is the wisdom of walls and bars! This Green Wall is I think the greatest invention ever conceived. Man ceased to be a wild animal the day he built the first wall; man ceased to be a wild man only on the day when the Green Wall was completed, when by this wall we isolated our machine-like, perfect world from the irrational, ugly world of trees, birds and beasts....

The blunt snout of some unknown beast was to be seen dimly through the glass of the Wall; its yellow eyes kept repeating the same thought which remained incomprehensible to me. We looked into each other's eyes for a long while. Eyes are shafts which lead from the superficial world into a world which is beneath the surface. A thought awoke in me: "what if that yellow-eyed one, sitting there on that absurd dirty heap of leaves, is happier than I, in his life which cannot be calculated in figures!" I waved my hand. The yellow eyes twinkled, moved back and disappeared in the foliage. What a pitiful being! How absurd the idea that he might be happier! Happier than _I_ he may be, but I am an exception, am I not? I am sick.