A strange sensation: I felt as though my ribs were iron rods, constricting, definitely constricting my heart – there was not room enough for it. I stood before the glass door with the golden figures: I-330. She was sitting with her back to me, at the table, writing something. I entered.
“Here…” I held out the pink coupon. “I was notified today, and so I came.”
“How prompt you are! One moment, may I? Sit down, I’ll just finish.”
Again her eyes turned down to the letter – and what was going on within her, behind those lowered shades? What would she say? What was I to do a minute later? How could I find out, how calculate it, when all of her was – from there, from the savage, ancient land of dreams?
I looked at her silently. My ribs were iron rods; I could not breathe… When she spoke, her face was like a rapid, sparkling wheel – you could not see the individual spokes. But now the wheel was motionless. And I saw a strange combination: dark eyebrows raised high at the temples – a mocking, sharp triangle. And yet another, pointing upward – the two deep lines from the corners of her mouth to the nose. And these two triangles somehow contradicted one another, stamped the entire face with an unpleasant, irritating X, like a slanting cross. A face marked with a cross.
The wheel began to turn, the spokes ran together…
“So you did not go to the Office of the Guardians?”
“I did not… could not – I was sick.”
“Certainly. I thought so. Something had to prevent you – no matter what.” (Sharp teeth, smile.) “But now you are in my hands. You remember – ‘Every number who has failed to report to the Office of the Guardians within forty-eight hours, is considered…’ ”
My heart thumped so violently that the rods bent. Caught stupidly, like a boy. And stupidly I kept silent. And I felt: I’m trapped, I cannot move a hand or a foot.
She stood up and stretched lazily. Then she pressed a button, and the shades dropped, crackling lightly. I was cut off from the world, alone with her.
I-330 was somewhere behind me, near the closet. Her unif rustled, fell. I listened, all of me listened. And I remembered… no, it flashed upon me within one hundredth of a second…
I had had occasion recently to calculate the curve for a street membrane of a new type (now these membranes, gracefully camouflaged, were installed on every street, recording all conversations for the Office of the Guardians). And I remembered the rosy, concave, quivering film, the strange creature consisting of a single organ – an ear. I was such a membrane at this moment.
A click of the fastening at the collar, on the breast still lower. The glass silk rustled down the shoulders, knees, dropped to the floor. I heard, more clearly than I could see, one foot step out of the bluish-gray silk pile, the other…
The tautly stretched membrane quivered and recorded silence. No: sharp blows of a hammer against the iron rods, with endless pauses. And I heard – I saw her behind me, thinking for a second.
And now – the closet doors, the click of an opening lid – and again silk, silk…
“Well, if you please.”
I turned. She was in a light, saffron-yellow dress of the ancient model. This was a thousand times more cruel than if she had worn nothing. Two pointed tips through the filmy silk, glowing pink-two embers through the ash. Two delicately rounded knees…
She sat in a low armchair. On the rectangular table before her, a bottle with something poi-sonously green, two tiny glasses on stems. At the corner of her lips a thread of smoke – that ancient smoking substance in the finest paper tube (I forget what it was called).
The membrane still quivered. The hammer pounded inside me against the red-hot iron rods. I clearly heard each blow, and… and suddenly: What if she heard it too?
But she puffed calmly, glancing at me calmly, and carelessly shook off the ash – on my pink coupon.
As coolly as I could, I asked, “Now, listen, if that’s the case, why did you register for me? And why did you compel me to come here?”
It was as if she did not hear. She poured the liquid from the bottle into her glass, sipped it.
“Delicious liqueur. Would you like some?”
It was only now that I understood: alcohol. Yesterday’s scene flashed like a stroke of lightning: the Benefactor’s stony hand, the blinding ray. But on the Cube above – this body, prostrate, with the head thrown back. I shuddered.
“Listen,” I said. “You know that everyone who poisons himself with nicotine, and especially alcohol, is ruthlessly destroyed by the One State…”
Dark eyebrows rose high to the temples, a sharp mocking triangle. “Quick destruction of a few is more sensible than giving many the opportunity to ruin themselves? And then, degeneration, and so on. Right – to the point of indecency.”
“Yes… to the point of indecency.”
“And if this little company of naked, bald truths were to be let out in the street… No, just imagine… Well, take the most constant admirer of mine – oh, but you know him-… Imagine that he has discarded all the falsehood of clothes and stood among the people in his true shape… Oh!”
She laughed. But I could clearly see her lower, sorrowful triangle – the two deep lines from the corners of her mouth to her nose. And for some reason these lines revealed it to me: that stooping, wing-eared, doubly curved… he embraced her – as she was now… He…
But I am trying to convey the feelings – the abnormal feelings – I had at that moment Now, as I write this, I am perfectly aware that all of this is as it should be. Like every honest number, he has an equal right to joy, and it would be unjust… Oh, well, but this is clear.
I-330 laughed very strangely and very long. Then she looked closely at me – into me. “But the main thing is that I am completely at ease with you. You are such a dear – oh, I am sure of it – you will never think of going to the Office and reporting that I drink liqueur, that I smoke. You will be sick, or you will be busy, or whatever. I am even sure that in a moment you will drink this marvelous poison with me…”
That brazen, mocking tone. I definitely felt: now I hate her again. But why the “now”? I have hated her all the time.
She tilted the whole glassful of green poison into her mouth, stood up, and, glowing pink through the transparent saffron, took several steps… and stopped behind my chair.
Suddenly, an arm around my neck, lips into lips – no, somewhere still deeper, still more terrifying. I swear, this took me completely by surprise, and perhaps that was the only reason why… After all, I could not – now I realize it clearly – I myself could not have wanted what happened after that.
Intolerably sweet lips (I suppose it must have been the taste of the “liqueur”) – and a mouthful of fiery poison flowed into me – then more, and more… I broke away from the earth and, like a separate planet, whirling madly, rushed down, down, along an unknown, uncalculated orbit…
What followed can be described only approximately, only by more or less close analogies.
It has never occurred to me before, but this is truly how it is: all of us on earth walk constantly over a seething, scarlet sea of flame, hidden below, in the belly of the earth. We never think of it. But what if the thin crust under our feet should turn into glass and we should suddenly see… I became glass. I saw – within myself. There were two of me. The former one, D-503, number D-503, and the other… Before, he had just barely shown his hairy paws from within the shell; now all of him broke out, the shell cracked; a moment, and it would fly to pieces and… And then… what?