Another five, ten steps, and I was also showered with cold water, shaken, thrown off the sidewalk… At the height of some two meters a rectangular sheet of paper was pasted on the wall, bearing an incomprehensible, venomously green inscription:
And beneath it, the S-shaped back, transparent wing-ears, quivering with anger, or excitement. His right hand raised, his left stretched helplessly back, like a hurt, broken wing, he was leaping up, trying to tear off the paper—and could not reach it, every time just short of touching it.
Each passerby was probably deterred by the same thought: If I come over, just I of all these others—won’t he think I’m guilty of something and therefore trying…
I confess to the same thought. But I recalled the many times when he was truly my Guardian Angel, the many times he saved me—and I boldly walked up to him, stretched my hand, and pulled off the sheet.
S turned, quickly bored his gimlets into me, to the very bottom, found something there. Then he raised his left eyebrow and winked with it at the wall where MEPHI had just hung. And flicked a corner of a smile at me, which seemed somehow astonishingly gay. But then, it was really nothing to wonder at. A physician will always prefer a rash and a forty-degree fever to the tormenting, slowly rising temperature of the incubation period: at least, the nature of the illness is clear. The MEPHI scattered on the walls today is the rash. I understood the smile.[5]
Steps down to the underground, and underfoot, on the immaculate glass of the stairs—again the white sheet: MEPHI. And on the wall below, on a bench, on a mirror in the car (evidently pasted hurriedly, awry), everywhere the same white, frightening rash.
In the silence, the distinct hum of the wheels was like the noise of inflamed blood. Someone was touched on the shoulder; he started and dropped a roll of papers. And on my left, another—reading the same line in his newspaper over and over, the paper trembling faintly. I felt that everywhere—in the wheels, hands, newspapers, eyelashes—the pulse was beating faster and faster. And, perhaps, today, when I get there with I-330, the temperature will be thirty-nine, forty, forty-one degrees centigrade-marked on the thermometer by a black line…
At the dock—the same silence, humming like a distant, invisible propeller. The machines stand glowering silently. And only the cranes are gliding, scarce audibly, as if on tiptoe, bending down, grasping in their claws the pale-blue blocks of frozen ah- and loading them into the tanks of the Integraclass="underline" we are already preparing it for the test flight.
“Well, do you think we’ll finish loading in a week?” I ask the Second Builder. His face is like fine china, embellished with sweet pale blue and delicately rosy flowers (eyes, lips); but today they are somehow faded, washed away. We calculate aloud, but I break off in the middle of a word and stand there, gaping: high under the cupola, on the blue block just lifted by the crane—a scarcely visible white square, a pasted sheet of paper. And all of me shakes—could it be with laughter? Yes, I hear myself laughing (do you know the feeling when you hear your own laughter?).
“No, listen…” I say. “Imagine yourself in an ancient plane; the altimeter shows five thousand meters; the wing snaps, you plunge down like a tumbler pigeon, and on the way you calculate: ‘Tomorrow, from twelve to two… from two to six… at six—dinner…’ Isn’t that absurd? But that’s exactly what we are doing now!”
The little blue flowers stir, bulge. What if I were made of glass, and he could see that in some three or four hours…
Twenty-seventh Entry
I am alone in endless corridors—the same ones, under the Ancient House. A mute, concrete sky. Water dripping somewhere on stone. Familiar, heavy, opaque door—and a muted hum behind it.
She said she would come out to me exactly at sixteen. But it is already five minutes past sixteen, ten, fifteen—no one.
For a second I am the old I, terrified that the door might open. Five more minutes, and if she does not come…
Water dripping somewhere on stone. No one. With anguished joy I feel—I’m saved. I slowly walk back along the corridor. The quivering dotted line of bulbs on the ceiling grows dimmer and dimmer…
Suddenly, a door clicks hastily behind me, the quick patter of feet, softly rebounding from the walls, the ceiling—and there she is—light, airy, somewhat breathless with running, breathing through her mouth.
“I knew you would be here, you’d come! I knew— you, you…”
The spears of her eyelashes spread open, they let me in—and… How describe what it does to me— this ancient, absurd, miraculous ritual, when her lips touch mine? What formula can express the storm that sweeps everything out of my soul but her? Yes, yes, my soul—laugh if you will.
Slowly, with an effort, she raises her lids—and her words come slowly, with an effort “No, enough… later. Let us go now.”
The door opens. Stairs—worn, old. And an in. tolerably motley noise, whistling, light…
Nearly twenty-four hours have passed since then, and everything has settled down to some extent within me. And yet it is extremely difficult to describe what happened, even approximately. It is as if a bomb had been exploded in my head and open mouths, wings, shouts, leaves, words, rocks-piled, side by side, one after the other…
I remember my first thought was: Quick, rush back! It seemed clear to me: while I had waited in the corridor, they had managed somehow to blow up or destroy the Green Wall. And everything from out there had swept in and flooded our city, which had long ago been purged of the lower world.
I must have said something of the kind to I-330. She laughed. “Oh, no! We’ve simply come out beyond the Green Wall.”
I opened wide my eyes: face to face with me, in wide-awake reality, was that which hitherto had not been seen by any living man except diminished a thousandfold, muted and dimmed by the thick, cloudy glass of the Wall.
The sun… this was not our sun, evenly diffused over the mirror-smooth surface of our pavements.
These were living fragments, continually shifting spots, which dazed the eyes and made the head reel. And the trees, like candles—rising up into the sky itself; like spiders crouching on the earth with gnarled paws; like mute green fountains… And everything was crawling, stirring, rustling… Some shaggy little ball dashed out from underfoot. And I was frozen to the spot, I could not make a step, because under my feet was not a level surface— you understand—not a firm, level surface, but something revoltingly soft, yielding, springy, green, alive.
I was stunned by it all, I gasped, I gagged— perhaps this is the most accurate word. I stood, clutching at some swaying bough with both hands.
“It’s nothing, it’s nothing! It’s only in the beginning, it will pass. Don’t be afraid!”
Next to I-330, against the green, dizzyingly shifting latticework, somebody’s finest profile, paper, thin… No, not somebody’s—I know him. I remember—it is the doctor. No, no, my mind is clear, I see everything. Now they are laughing; they have seized me by the arms and drag me forward. My feet get tangled, slip. Before us—moss, hillocks, screeching, cawing, twigs, tree trunks, wings, leaves, whistles…
Then suddenly the trees spread out, run apart. A bright green clearing. In the clearing—people… Or—I don’t know what to call them—perhaps, more precisely, beings.
And here comes the most difficult part of all, because this transcended every limit of probability. And now it was clear to me why I-330 had always stubbornly refused to speak about it: I should not have believed her anyway—not even her. Perhaps, tomorrow I will not believe even myself—even these notes.
5
I must confess that I discovered the true reason for this smile only after many days filled to the brim with the strangest and most unexpected events.