I sought and could not find a way out of this wild thicket of logic. It was the same unknown and eerie jungle as that other one, behind the Green Wall, inhabited by the extraordinary, incomprehensible creatures that spoke without words. It seemed to me that I was seeing through thick glass something infinitely huge and at the same time infinitely small, scorpionlike, with a hidden yet constantly sensed sting – the V-1… But perhaps this was nothing else but my “soul,” which, like the legendary scorpion of the ancients, voluntarily stung itself with everything that…
The bell. It was day. All of this, without dying, without vanishing, was merely covered by the light of day, just as visible objects, without dying, are covered at night by the darkness. A vague, quivering mist filled my head. Through the mist I saw the long glass tables, the spherical heads chewing slowly, silently, in unison. From afar through the fog I heard the ticking of the metronome, and in time to this familiar, caressing music I mechanically counted to fifty along with everyone else: fifty prescribed chewing movements for each bite. And, mechanically, in time to the ticking, I descended and marked off my name in the book of departures – like everyone else. But I felt I lived apart from everyone, alone, behind a soft wall that muted outside sounds. And here, behind this wall – my world…
But then, if this world is mine alone, why does it go into these notes? Why record all these absurd “dreams,” closets, endless corridors? I am saddened to see that, instead of a harmonious and strict mathematical poem in honor of the One State, I am producing some sort of a fantastic adventure novel. Ah, if it were really nothing but a novel, and not my present life, filled with X’s, V-1 and falls.
However, perhaps it is all for the best. You, my unknown readers, are most probably children compared to us, for we have been brought up by the One State and hence have reached the highest summits possible for man. And, like children, you will swallow without protest everything bitter I shall give you only when it is carefully coated with the thick syrup of adventure.
Are you familiar with the feeling of speeding in an aero up and up the blue spiral, when the window is open and the wild wind whistles past your face? There is no earth, you forget the earth, it is as far from you as Saturn, Jupiter, Venus. This is how I live now. A storm-wind rushes at my face, and I have forgotten the earth, I have forgotten the sweet, rosy O. And yet the earth exists; sooner or later one must glide back to it, and I merely shut my eyes before the day for which her name – O-90 – is entered in my Sexual Table.
This evening the distant earth reminded me of its existence.
Obeying the doctor’s instructions (I sincerely, most sincerely want to get well), I wandered for two hours along the glass deserts of our precise, straight avenues. Everyone else was in the auditoriums, as prescribed by the Table of Hours, and only I was alone… It was essentially an unnatural sight: imagine a human finger cut off from the whole, from the hand – a separate human finger, running, stooped and bobbing, up and down, along the glass pavement. I was that finger. And the strangest, the most unnatural thing of all was that the finger had no desire whatever to be on the hand, to be with others. I wanted either to continue thus – by myself, or… But why try to conceal it any longer – to be with her, with I-330, once again pouring all of myself into her through the shoulder, through the intertwined hands…
I returned home when the sun was already setting. The rosy ash of evening glowed on the glass walls, on the golden spire of the Accumulator Tower, in the voices and smiles of the numbers I met. How strange: the dying rays of the sun fall at exactly the same angle as those flaring in the morning, yet everything is altogether different The rosiness is different: now it was quiet, just faintly tinged with bitterness, and in the morning it would again be seething, resonant.
Downstairs in the lobby, U, the controller, took a letter from under a pile of envelopes covered with the rosy ash and handed it to me. I repeat: she is a perfectly decent woman, and I am certain that her feelings toward me are most friendly. And yet, every time I see those sagging, gill-like cheeks, they somehow set my teeth on edge.
Holding out the letter with her gnarled hand, U sighed. But her sigh just barely ruffled the curtain that separated me from the world; my whole being was centered on the envelope that trembled in my hands – undoubtedly containing a letter from I-330.
A second sigh, heavily underscored by two lines, made me break away from the envelope. I looked up: between the gills through the bashful blinds of lowered eyelids – a sympathetic, enveloping, clinging smile. And then, “My poor, poor friend,” with a sigh underscored by three lines and a barely noticeable nod at the letter, the contents of which she was, of course, in the line of duty, familiar with.
“No, really, I… But why?”
“No, no, my dear, I know you better than you know yourself. I have long been watching you, and I can see that you need someone marching hand in hand with you through life who has been a student of life for many years…”
I felt myself all plastered over by her cloying smile – the plaster that would cover the wounds about to be inflicted by the letter trembling in my hands. And finally, through the bashful blinds, almost whispering, “I shall think about it, my dear, I shall think about it. And be assured: if I feel myself strong enough… But no, I must first think about it…”
Great Benefactor! Am I to… does she mean to say that…
There were spots before my eyes, thousands of sinusoids, and the letter jumped in my hand. I walked to the wall, nearer to the light. The sun was dying, and the dismal, dark rose ash fell, thickening steadily, upon me, the floor, my hands, the letter.
I tore the envelope, and quickly – the signature, the wound: it was not I-330, it was… O. And still another wound: a watery blot on the lower right-hand corner of the page – where the drop fell… I detest blots, whatever the reason for them – ink, or… anything else. And I know that formerly I simply would have been annoyed, my eyes would have been offended by that annoying blot. Why, then, was this gray little spot now like a cloud, turning everything darker, more leaden? Or was this again my “soul”?
You know… or, perhaps, you do not know… I cannot say it properly, but it does not matter: now you know that without you there will be no day, no morning, no spring for me. Because R is to me only… but this is of no interest to you. At any rate, I am very grateful to him. Without him, alone, these past days, I don’t know what I would have… During these days and nights I have lived ten or perhaps twenty years. And it seems to me that my room is not rectangular, but round and endless – around and around, and all is the same, and no doors anywhere.
I cannot live without you – because I love you. Because I see, I understand: today you don’t need anyone, anyone in the world except her, the other one, and… you understand – just because I love you I must…
I need only two or three days to put together the pieces of me into some semblance of the former O-90, and then I will go and tell them myself that I withdraw my registration for you. And you must feel relieved, you must be happy. I shall never again… Farewell.
Never again. Yes, it is better that way, she is right. But why, then, why…
Nineteenth Entry
Topics: The Infinitestimal of the Third. Order. A Scowling Glance Over the Parapet