I did not ask where we were going. It did not matter. The only thing that mattered was to walk, to walk, to ripen, to fill up more and more firmly…
“Here.” I-330 stopped at a door. “The one I spoke to you about at the Ancient House is on duty here today.”
From far away, with my eyes only, protecting what was ripening within me, I read the sign: MEDICAL OFFICE. I understood.
A glass room filled with golden fog. Glass ceilings, colored bottles, jars. Wires. Bluish sparks in tubes.
And a tiny man, the thinnest I had ever seen. All of him seemed cut out of paper, and no matter which way he turned, there was nothing but a profile, sharply honed: the nose a sharp blade, lips like scissors.
I did not hear what I-330 said to him: I watched her speak, and felt myself smiling blissfully, uncontrollably. The scissor-lips flashed and the doctor said, “Yes, yes. I understand. The most dangerous disease—I know of nothing more dangerous…” He laughed, quickly wrote something with the thinnest of paper hands, and gave the slip to I-330; then he wrote another one and gave it to me.
He had given us certificates that we were ill and could not report to work. I was stealing my services from the One State, I was a thief, I saw myself under the Benefactor’s Machine. But all of this was as remote and indifferent as a story in a book… I took the slip without a moment’s hesitation. I—all of me, my eyes, lips, hands—knew that this had to be.
At the corner, at the almost empty garage, we took an aero. I-330 sat down at the controls, as she had the first time, and switched the starter to “Forward.” We broke from the earth and floated away. And everything followed us: the rosy-golden fog, the sun, the finest blade of the doctor’s profile, suddenly so clear. Formerly, everything had turned around the sun; now I knew—everything was turning around me—slowly, blissfully, with tightly closed eyes…
The old woman at the gates of the Ancient House. The dear mouth, grown together, with its rays of wrinkles. It must have been closed all these days, but now it opened, smiled. “Aah, you mischievous imp! Instead of working like everybody else… oh, well, go in, go in! If anything goes wrong, I’ll come and warn you…”
The heavy, creaky, untransparent door closed, and at once my heart opened painfully wide—still wider—all the way. Her lips were mine. I drank and drank. I broke away, stared silently into her eyes, wide open to me, and again…
The twilight of the rooms, the blue, the saffron-yellow, the dark green leather, Buddha’s golden smile, the glimmering mirrors. And—my old dream, so easy to understand now—everything filled with golden-pink sap, ready to overflow, to spurt…
It ripened. And inevitably, as iron and the magnet, in sweet submission to the exact, immutable law, I poured myself into her. There was no pink coupon, no accounting, no State, not even myself. There were only the tenderly sharp clenched teeth, the golden eyes wide open to me; and through them I entered slowly, deeper and deeper. And silence. Only in the corner, thousands of miles away, drops falling in the washstand, and I was the universe, and from one drop to the other-eons, millennia…
Slipping on my unif, I bent down to I-330 and drank her in with my eyes for the last time.
“I knew it… I knew you…” she said, just audibly.
Rising quickly, she put on her unif and her usual sharp bite-smile. “Well, fallen angel. You’re lost now. You’re not afraid? Good-by, then! You will return alone. There.”
She opened the mirrored door of the wardrobe; looking at me over her shoulder, she waited. I went out obediently. But I had barely stepped across the threshold when suddenly I felt that I must feel her press against me with her shoulder-only for a second, only with her shoulder, nothing more.
I rushed back, into the room where she was probably still fastening her unif before the mirror. I ran in—and stopped. I clearly saw the ancient key ring still swaying in the door of the wardrobe, but I-330 was not there. She could not have left—there was only one exit And yet she was not there. I searched everywhere, I even opened the wardrobe and felt the bright, ancient dresses. No one…
I feel embarrassed, somehow, my planetary readers, to tell you about this altogether improbable occurrence. But what can I say if this was exactly how it happened? Wasn’t the whole day, from the earliest morning, full of improbabilities? Isn’t it all like that ancient sickness of dreams? And if so, what difference does it make if there is one absurdity more, or one less? Besides, I am certain that sooner or later I shall succeed in fitting all these absurdities into some logical formula. This reassures me and, I hope, will reassure you.
But how full I ami If only you could know how full I am—to the very brim!
Fourteenth Entry
More about the other day. My personal hour before bedtime was occupied, and I could not record it yesterday. But all of it is etched in me, and most of all—perhaps forever—that intolerably cold floor…
In the evening O was to come to me—this was her day. I went down to the number on duty to obtain permission to lower my shades.
“What is wrong with you?” the man on duty asked me. “You seem to be sort of…”
“I… I am not well…”
As a matter of fact, it was true. I am certainly sick. All of this is an illness. And I remembered: yes, of course, the doctor’s note… I felt for it in my pocket—it rustled there. Then everything had really happened, it had been real…
I held out the slip of paper to the man on duty. My cheeks burned. Without looking, I saw him glance up at me, surprised.
And then it was twenty-one and a half. In the room at the left, the shades were down. In the room at the right, I saw my neighbor over a book— his knobby brow and bald head a huge yellow parabola. Tormentedly I paced my room. How could I now, with O, after all that had happened? And from the right I sensed distinctly the man’s eyes upon me, I saw distinctly the wrinkles on his forehead—a row of yellow illegible lines; and for some reason it seemed to me those lines were about me.
At a quarter to twenty-two a joyous rosy hurricane burst into my room, a strong circle of rosy arms closed about my neck. And then I felt the circle weakening, weakening. It broke. The arms dropped.
“You’re not the same, you’re not the old one, not mine!”
“What sort of primitive notion—’mine’? I never was…” and I broke off. It came to me: it’s true; before this I never was… But now? Now I no longer live in our clear, rational world; I live in the ancient nightmare world, the world of square roots of minus one.
The shades fell. Behind the wall on the right my neighbor dropped bis book on the floor, and in the last, momentary narrow slit between the shade and the floor I saw the yellow hand picking up the book, and my one wish was to grasp at that hand with all my strength…
“I thought—I hoped to meet you during the walk today. I have so much—there is so much I must tell you…”
Sweet, poor O! Her rosy mouth—a rosy crescent, its horns down. But how can I tell her what happened? I cannot, if only because that would make her an accomplice to my crimes. I knew she would not have enough strength to go to the Office of the Guardians, and hence…
She lay back. I kissed her slowly. I kissed that plump, naive fold on her wrist. Her blue eyes were closed, and the rosy crescent slowly opened, bloomed, and I kissed all of her.
And then I felt how empty, how drained I was— I had given everything away. I cannot, must not. I must—and it’s impossible. My lips grew cold at once…