I seized the key; the ring swayed. A flash of memory – again an instant thought, bare, unreasoning, a splinter of a thought: “That time I-330…” I quickly opened the closet door; inside, in the darkness, I shut it tightly. A step, and the ground rocked under my feet. Slowly, softly, I floated down somewhere, my eyes turned dark, I died.
Later, when I sat down to record these strange events, I searched my memory and looked up some books. Now, of course, I understand it: it was a state of temporary death, familiar to the ancients, but – as far as I know – entirely unknown among us.
I have no idea how long I was dead – perhaps no more than five or ten seconds. But after a time I revived and opened my eyes. It was dark, and I felt myself going down and down… I stretched my hand and tried to grasp at something – it was scraped by a rough, rapidly moving wall. There was blood on my finger – clearly all this was not the product of my sick imagination. What was it, then?
I heard my broken, quivering breath (I am ashamed to confess this, but everything was so unexpected and incomprehensible). A minute, two, three – down and down. Finally, a soft thud; that which had been dropping under my feet was now motionless. In the dark I found a handle, pushed it; a door opened. Dim light Behind me I saw a small square platform speeding up. I rushed to it – too late: I was trapped there – but where this “there” was I did not know.
A corridor. The silence weighed a thousand tons. Along the vaulted ceiling, lamps – an endless, shimmering, trembling line of dots. The place was a little like the “tubes” of our underground, but much narrower and made not of our glass but of some ancient material. A thought flashed through my mind – the memory of the underground shelters where our ancestors supposedly hid during the Two Hundred Years’ War… No matter, I must go.
I must have walked some twenty minutes, then turned right. The corridor was wider here, the lamps brighter. A vague humming sound. Perhaps machines, perhaps voices, I could not tell, but I was near a heavy opaque door – the sound came from behind it.
I knocked. Then again, louder. The hum ceased. Something clanked, and the door swung open, heavily, slowly.
I don’t know which of us was more astonished: before me stood my blade-sharp, paper-thin doctor.
“You? Here?” And his scissor-lips snapped shut And I – as though I had never known a single human word – I stared silently without comprehending what he was saying. He must have been telling me to leave, because he quickly pushed me with his flat paper stomach to the end of the brighter section of the corridor, then turned me around and gave me a shove from the back.
“But, sorry… I wanted… I thought that I-330… But behind me…”
“Wait here,” the doctor snapped, and vanished.
At last! At last she was near me, here – and what did it matter where this “here” was? The familiar, saffron-yellow silk, the bite-smile, the veiled eyes… My lips, hands, knees trembled; and in my head, the silliest thought: Vibration is sound. Trembling must make a sound. Then why isn’t it audible?
Her eyes opened to me – all the way; I entered…
“I could not bear it any longer! Where have you been? Why?” I spoke quickly, incoherently, as in delirium, without tearing my eyes away from her. Or perhaps I merely thought this. “There was the shadow – following me… I died – in the closet… Because your… that one… he speaks with scissors… I have a soul… Incurable…”
“An incurable soul! My poor dear!” I-330 laughed – sprayed me with laughter, and the delirium was over, and drops of laughter rang, sparkled all around, and everything, everything was beautiful.
The doctor appeared again from around the corner – the marvelous, magnificent, thinnest doctor.
“Well.” He stopped beside her.
“It’s nothing, it’s all right! I’ll tell you later. A mere accident…… Tell them I shall return in… oh, fifteen minutes…”
The doctor slipped away around the corner. She waited. The door closed with a dull thud. Then I-330 slowly, slowly pressed against me with her shoulder, arm, all of her, plunging a sharp sweet needle deeper and deeper into my heart, and we walked together, the two of us – one…
I don’t remember where we turned off into darkness, and in the darkness – up a flight of stairs, endlessly, silently. I could not see, but I knew: she walked just as I did, with closed eyes, blind, her head thrown back, her teeth biting her lips – and listened to the music, to my barely audible trembling.
I came to in one of the innumerable nooks in the yard of the Ancient House. A fence – bare, rocky ribs and yellow teeth of ruined walls. She opened her eyes and said, “The day after tomorrow, at sixteen.” And she left.
Did all this really happen? I don’t know. I will learn the day after tomorrow. There is only one real trace – the scraped skin on my right hand, on the tips of my fingers. But the Second Builder has assured me that he saw me touch the polishing wheel by accident with those fingers, and that is all there is to it. Well, it may be so. It may be. I don’t know – I don’t know anything.
Eighteenth Entry
Topics: A Logical Jungle. Wounds and Plaster. Never Again
Yesterday I went to bed, and instantly sank into the very depths of sleep, like an overturned, overloaded ship. A heavy, dense mass of swaying green water. And then I slowly rose from the bottom, and somewhere in the middle depths I opened my eyes: my own room, morning, still green, congealed. A splinter of sunlight on the mirrored door of the closet, flashing into my eyes, preventing me from punctually fulfilling the hours of sleep prescribed by the Table of Hours. It would be best to open the closet door. But all of me seemed wrapped in cobwebs; the cobwebs even spread over my eyes; I had no strength to rise…
And yet I rose and opened – and suddenly, behind the mirrored door, struggling out of her dress, all rosy, I-330. By now I was so accustomed to the most incredible events, that, as I recall, I was not even surprised and asked no questions. I quickly stepped into the closet and breathlessly, blindly, greedily united with her. I can see it now: through the crack in the darkness, a sharp ray of sunlight breaking like a flash of lightning on the floor, on the wall of the closet, rising higher… and now the cruel, gleaming blade fell on the bare outstretched neck of I-33… And this was so terrifying that I could not bear it, I cried out, and opened my eyes again.
My room. Morning, still green, congealed. A splinter of sunlight on the closet door. Myself – in bed. A dream. But my heart still hammered madly, quivered, sprayed pain; aching fingers, knees. There was no doubt that all of it had happened. And I no longer knew what was dream and what reality. Irrational values were growing through everything solid, familiar, three-dimensional, and instead of firm, polished planes I was surrounded by gnarled, shaggy things…
It was still long before the bell. I lay thinking, and an extremely odd chain of logic unwound itself in my mind.
Every equation, every formula in the surface world has its corresponding curve or body. But for irrational formulas, for my V-1, we know of no corresponding bodies, we have never seen them… But the horror of it is that these invisible bodies exist, they must, they inevitably must exist: in mathematics, their fantastic, prickly shadows-irrational formulas – pass before us as on a screen. And neither mathematics nor death ever makes a mistake. So that, if we do not see these bodies in our world, there must be, there inevitably must be, a whole vast world for them – there, beyond the surface…
I jumped up without waiting for the bell and rapidly began to pace the room. My mathematics – until now the only firm and immutable island in my entire dislocated world – has also broken off its moorings, is also floating, whirling. Does it mean, then, that this preposterous “soul” is as real as my unif, as my boots, although I do not see them at the moment? (They are behind the mirrored closet door.) And if the boots are not a disease, why is the “soul” a disease?