At this point I felt once more—first at the back of my head, then at my left ear—the want, delicate breath of my Guardian Angel. He had obviously noticed that the book on my lap was now dosed and my thoughts far away. Well, I was ready, there and then, to open all the pages of my mind to him; there was such serenity, such joy in this feeling. I remember: I turned and looked into his eyes with pleading insistence, but he did not understand, or did not wish to understand, and asked me nothing. Only one thing remains to me—to speak to you, my unknown readers, about everything. (At this moment you are as dear and near and unattainable to me as he was then.)
My reflections proceeded from the part to the whole: the part, R-13; the majestic whole, our Institute of State Poets and Writers. I wondered at the ancients who had never realized the utter absurdity of their literature and poetry. The enormous, magnificent power of the literary word was completely wasted. It’s simply ridiculous—everyone wrote anything he pleased. Just as ridiculous and absurd as the fact that the ancients allowed the ocean to beat dully at the shore twenty-four hours a day, while the millions of kilogrammometers of energy residing in the waves went only to heighten lovers’ feelings. But we have extracted electricity from the amorous whisper of the waves; we have transformed the savage, foam-spitting beast into a domestic animal; and in the same way we have tamed and harnessed the once wild element of poetry. Today, poetry is no longer the idle, impudent whistling of a nightingale; poetry is civic service, poetry is useful.
Take, for example, our famous “mathematical couplets.” Could we have learned in school to love the four rules of arithmetic so tenderly and so sincerely without them? Or “Thorns,” that classical image: the Guardians as the thorns on the rose, protecting the delicate flower of the State from rude contacts… Whose heart can be so stony as to remain unmoved at the sight of innocent childish lips reciting like a prayer the verse:
“The bad boy rudely sniffed the rose, But the steely thorn pricked bis nose. The mischief-maker cries, ‘Oh, Oh,’ And runs as fast as he can go,” and so on.
Or the Daily Odes to the Benefactor? Who, upon reading them, will not bow piously before the selfless labors of this Number of Numbers? Or the awesome Red Flowers of Court Sentences? Or the immortal tragedy He Who Was Late to Work? Or the guidebook Stanzas on Sexual Hygiene?
All of our life, in its entire complexity and beauty, has been engraved forever in the gold of words.
Our poets no longer soar in the empyrean; they have come down to earth; they stride beside us to the stern mechanical March of the Music Plant. Their lyre encompasses the morning scraping of electric toothbrushes and the dread crackle of the sparks in the Benefactor’s Machine; the majestic echoes of the Hymn to the One State and the intimate tinkle of the gleaming crystal chamberpot; the exciting rustle of dropping shades, the merry voices of the latest cookbook, and the scarcely audible whisper of the listening membranes in the streets.
Our gods are here, below, with us—in the office, the kitchen, the workshop, the toilet; the gods have become like us. Ergo, we have become as gods. And we shall come to you, my unknown readers on the distant planet, to make your life as divinely rational and precise as ours.
Thirteenth Entry
I woke at dawn; the solid, rosy firmament greeted my eyes. Everything was beautifully round. In the evening O would be here. I felt: I am completely well. I smiled and fell asleep again.
The morning bell. I rose. But now all was different around me: through the glass of the ceiling, the wall—everywhere—dense, penetrating fog. Crazy clouds, now heavier, now lighter. There were no longer any boundaries between sky and earth; everything was flying, melting, falling—nothing to get hold of. No more houses. The glass walls dissolved in the fog like salt crystals in water. From the street, the dark figures inside the houses were like particles suspended in a milky, nightmare solution, some hanging low, some higher and still higher-all the way up to the tenth floor. And everything was swirling smoke, as in a silent, raging fire.
Exactly eleven-forty-five; I glanced deliberately at the watch—to grasp at the figures, at the solid safety of the figures.
At eleven-forty-five, before going to perform the usual physical labor prescribed by the Table of Hours, I stopped off for a moment in my room. Suddenly, the telephone rang. The voice—a long, slow needle plunged into the heart: “Ah, you are still home? I am glad. Wait for me on the corner. We shall go… you’ll see where.”
“You know very well that I am going to work now.”
“You know very well that you will do as I tell you. Good-by. In two minutes…”
Two minutes later I stood on the corner. After all, I had to prove to her that I was governed by the One State, not by her. “You will do as I tell you…” And so sure of herself—I could hear it in her voice. Well, now I shall have a proper talk with her.
Gray unifs, woven of the raw, damp fog, hurriedly came into being at my side and instantly dissolved in the fog. I stared at my watch, all of me a sharp, quivering second hand. Eight minutes, ten… Three minutes to twelve, two minutes…
Finished. I was already late for work. I hated her. But I had to prove to her…
At the corner, through the white fog, blood—a slit, as with a sharp knife—her lips.
“I am afraid I delayed you. But then, it’s all the same. It is too late for you now.”
How I… But she was right, it was too late.
I silently stared at her lips. All women are lips, nothing but lips. Some pink, firmly round—a ring, a tender protection against the whole world. But these: a second ago they did not exist, and now—a knife slit—and the sweet blood will drip down.
She moved nearer, leaned her shoulder against me—and we were one, and something flowed from her into me, and I knew: this is how it must be. I knew it with every nerve, and every hair, every heartbeat, so sweet it verged on pain. And what joy to submit to this “must.” A piece of iron must feel such joy as it submits to the precise, inevitable law that draws it to a magnet. Or a stone, thrown up, hesitating a moment, then plunging headlong back to earth. Or a man, after the final agony, taking a last deep breath—and dying.
I remember I smiled dazedly and said, for no good reason, “Fog… So very…”
“Do you like fog?”
She used the ancient, long-forgotten “thou”—the “thou” of the master to the slave. It entered into me slowly, sharply. Yes, I was a slave, and this, too, was necessary, was good.
“Yes, good…” I said aloud to myself. And then to her, “I hate fog. I am afraid of it.”
“That means you love it. You are afraid of it because it is stronger than you; you hate it because you are afraid of it; you love it because you cannot subdue it to your will. Only the unsubduable can be loved.”
Yes, this is true. And this is precisely why— precisely why I…
We walked, the two of us—one. Somewhere far through the fog the sun sang almost inaudibly, everything was filling up with firmness, with pearl, gold, rose, red. The entire world was a single unen-compassable woman, and we were in its very womb, unborn, ripening joyfully. And it was clear to me—ineluctably clear—that the sun, the fog, the rose, and the gold were all for me…