R evidently read these thoughts on my face. He put his arm around my shoulders and roared with laughter.
“Ah, you… Adam! Yes, incidentally, about Eve…
He fumbled in his pocket, took out a notebook, and turned the pages. “The day after tomorrow… no, in two days, O has a pink coupon to visit you. How do you feel about it? As before? Do you want her to…”
“Of course, naturally.”
“I’ll tell her so. She is a little shy herself, you see… What a business! With me, it is nothing, you know, merely a pink coupon, but with you… And she would not tell me who the fourth one is that broke into our triangle. Confess it now, you reprobate, who is it? Well?”
A curtain flew up inside me – the rustle of silk, a green bottle, lips… And inappropriately, to no purpose, the words broke out (if I had only restrained myself!): “Tell me, have you ever tasted nicotine or alcohol?”
R compressed his lips and threw me a sidelong look. I heard his thoughts with utmost clarity: You may be a friend, all right… still… And then his answer: “Well, how shall I put it? Actually, no. But I knew a certain woman…”
“I-330,” I shouted.
“So… you – you too? With her?” He filled with laughter, gulped, ready to spill over.
My mirror hung on the wall in such a way that I could see myself only across the table; from here, from the chair, I saw only my forehead and my eyebrows.
And now I – the real I – saw in the mirror the twisted, jumping line of eyebrows, and the real I heard a wild, revolting shout: “What ‘too’? What do you mean, ‘too’? No, I demand an answer!”
Gaping thick lips, bulging eyes. Then I – the real I – seized the other, the wild, shaggy, panting one, by the scruff of the neck. The real I said to R, “Forgive me, for the Benefactor’s sake. I am quite ill, I cannot sleep. I don’t know what is happening to me…”
A fleeting smile on the thick lips. “Yes, yes! I understand, I understand! It’s all familiar to me… theoretically, of course. Good-by!”
In the doorway he turned, bounced back toward me like a small black ball, and threw a book down on the table.
“My latest… I brought it for you – almost forgot it. Good-by…” The “b” sprayed at me, and he rolled out of the room.
I am alone. Or, rather, alone with that other “I.” I am sitting in the chair, legs crossed, watching with curiosity from some “there” how I – my own self – writhe in the bed.
Why, why is it that for three whole years O and R and I have had that fine, warm friendship, and now – a single word about the other one, about I-330… Is it possible that all this madness – love, jealousy – exists not only in those idiotic ancient books? And to think that I… Equations, formulas, figures, and… this! I don’t understand anything… anything at all… Tomorrow I shall go to R and tell him that…
No, it isn’t true, I will not go. Neither tomorrow, nor the day after tomorrow – I shall never go. I cannot, I don’t want to see him. It is the end! Our triangle is broken.
I am alone. Evening. A light mist. The sky is hidden behind a milky-golden veil. If only I could know what is there, above it! If only I could know: Who am I, what am I like?
Twelfth Entry
Topics: The Limitation of Infinity. An Angel. Reflections on Poetry
I have the constant feeling: I will recover, I can recover. I slept very well. None of those dreams or other morbid symptoms. Tomorrow dear O will come to me, and everything will be as simple, right, and limited as a circle. I do not fear this word “limitation.” The function of man’s highest faculty, his reason, consists precisely of the continuous limitation of infinity, the breaking up of infinity into convenient, easily digestible portions – differentials. This is precisely what lends my field, mathematics, its divine beauty. And it is the understanding of this beauty that the other one, I-330, lacks. However, this is merely in passing – a chance association.
All these thoughts – in time to the measured, regular clicking of the wheels of the underground train. I silently scanned the rhythm of the wheels and R’s poems (from the book he had given me yesterday). Then I became aware of someone cautiously bending over my shoulder from behind and peering at the opened page. Without turning, out of the merest corner of my eye, I saw the pink wide wing-ears, the double-bent… it was he! Reluctant to disturb him, I pretended not to notice. I cannot imagine how he got there; he did not seem to be in the car when I entered.
This incident, trivial in itself, had a particularly pleasant effect upon me; it strengthened me. How good it is to know that a vigilant eye is fixed upon you, lovingly protecting you against the slightest error, the slightest misstep. This may seem somewhat sentimental, but an analogy comes to my mind – the Guardian Angels that the ancients dreamed of. How many of the things they merely dreamed about have been realized in our life!
At the moment when I felt the Guardian Angel behind my back, I was enjoying a sonnet entitled “Happiness.” I think I will not be mistaken if I say that it is a poem of rare and profound beauty of thought. Here are its first four lines:
And so on – about the wise, eternal bliss of the multiplication table.
Every true poet is inevitably a Columbus. America existed for centuries before Columbus, but only Columbus succeeded in discovering it. The multiplication table existed for centuries before R-13, yet it was only R-13 who found a new Eldorado in the virginal forest of figures. And indeed, is there any happiness wiser, more unclouded than the happiness of this miraculous world? Steel rusts. The ancient God created the old man, capable of erring – hence he erred himself. The multiplication able is wiser and more absolute than the ancient God: it never – do you realize the full meaning of the word? – it never errs. And there are no happier figures than those which live according to the harmonious, eternal laws of the multiplication table. No hesitations, no delusions. There is only one truth, and only one true way; this truth is two times two, and the true way – four. And would it not be an absurdity if these happily, ideally multiplied twos began to think of some nonsensical freedom – i.e., clearly, to error? To me it is axiomatic that R-13 succeeded in grasping the most fundamental, the most…
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.