“And you, why don’t you go in?” I asked, addressing no one, or, rather, everyone.
“And what about you?” A spherical head turned to me.
“I will, later. I must first…”
Somewhat embarrassed, I withdrew. I really had to see her, 330, first. But why “first”? This I could not answer.
The dock. Icy-blue, the Integral shimmered, sparkled. In the machine compartment the dynamo hummed gently, caressingly, repeating some word over and over again – and the word seemed familiar, one of my own. I bent over it and stroked the long, cold tube of the engine. Dear… so dear. Tomorrow you will come alive; tomorrow, for the first time in your life, you will be shaken by the fiery, flaming sparks within your womb…
How would I be looking at this mighty glass monster if everything had remained as yesterday? If I knew that tomorrow at twelve I would betray it… yes, betray…
Cautiously, someone touched my elbow from the back. I turned: the platelike flat face of the Second Builder.
“You know it already?” he said.
“What? The Operation? Yes? How strangely – everything, everything – at once…”
“No, not that: the trial flight has been postponed to the day after tomorrow. All because of this Operation… And we were rushing, doing our best – and all for nothing…”
“All because of this Operation…” What a ridiculous, stupid man. Sees nothing beyond his flat face. If he only knew that, were it not for the Operation, he would be locked up in a glass box tomorrow at twelve, rushing about, trying to climb the walls…
In my room, at half past fifteen. I entered and saw U. She sat at my table – bony, straight, rigid, her right cheek set firmly on her hand. She must have waited long, for, when she jumped up to meet me, five dents remained on her cheek from her fingers.
For a second I recalled that wretched morning, and herself there, raging by the table, next to I-330… But only for a second, and then the memory was washed away by today’s sun. It was like entering the room on a bright day and absently turning the switch: the bulb lights up, but is invisible – pallid, absurd, unneeded…
Without a thought, I held my hand out to her, I forgave her everything. She seized both of my hands and pressed them hard in her own bony ones. Her sagging cheeks quivering with excitement like some ancient ornaments, she said, “I have been waiting… Only for a moment… I only wanted to say how happy I am, how glad for you! You understand – tomorrow, or the day after, you will be well – completely well, newly born…
I saw some sheets of paper on the table – the last pages of my notes. They lay there as I left them in the evening. If she had seen what I had written there… However, it no longer mattered; now it was merely history, ridiculously distant, like something seen through the wrong end of binoculars…
“Yes,” I said. “And you know – just now I was walking down the street, and there was a man before me, and his shadow on the pavement. And imagine, the shadow glowed. And it seems to me – I am certain – that tomorrow there will be no shadows. No man, no object will cast a shadow… The sun will shine through everything…”
She spoke gently and sternly. “You are a dreamer! I would not permit the children at school to speak like that…”
And she went on about the children – how she had taken them all to the Operation, and how they had had to be tied up there… and that “love must be ruthless, yes, ruthless,” and that she thought she would at last decide…
She smoothed the gray blue cloth over her knees, quickly and silently plastered me over with her smile, and left.
Fortunately, the sun had not yet stopped today; it was still running, and now it was sixteen. I knocked at the door, my heart beating…
“Come in!”
And I was down on the floor near her chair, embracing her legs, head thrown back and looking into her eyes – one, then the other – and in each one seeing myself, in marvelous captivity…
And then, outside the wall, a storm. Clouds darkening – more and more like cast iron. Let them! My head could not contain the flow of riotous, wild words – spilling over the rim. I spoke aloud, and, together with the sun, we were flying somewhere… But now we knew where – and behind us, planets – planets spraying flame, inhabited by fiery, singing flowers – and mute, blue planets, where sentient, rational stones were organized into societies – planets which, like our earth, had reached the summit of absolute, and hundred per cent happiness…
Suddenly, from above, “But don’t you think that the society at the summit is precisely a society organized of stones?” The triangle of her eyebrows grew sharper, darker. “And happiness… Well, after all, desires torment us, don’t they? And, clearly, happiness is when there are no more desires, not one… What a mistake, what ridiculous prejudice it’s been to have marked happiness always with a plus sign. Absolute happiness should, of course, carry a minus sign – the divine minus.”
I remember I muttered in confusion, “Absolute minus? Minus 273°…”
“Precisely – minus 273°. Somewhat chilly, but wouldn’t that in itself prove that we’re at the summit?”
As once, a long time ago, she somehow spoke for me, through me, unfolding my ideas to the very end. But there was something sharply frightening in it – I could not bear it, and with an effort I forced a “no” out of sayself.
“No,” I said. “You… you are mocking me…”
She laughed, loudly – too loudly. Quickly, in a second, she laughed herself to some unseen edge, stumbled, fell… A silence.
She rose and placed her hands upon my shoulders, and looked at me slowly and long. Then pulled me to herself – and there was nothing, only her hot, sharp lips.
“Farewell!”
It came from far, from above, and took a long time to reach me – a minute, perhaps, or two.
“What do you mean, ‘Farewell’?”
“Well, you are sick, you have committed crimes because of me – has it not been a torment to you? And now, the Operation – and you will cure yourself of me. And that means – farewell.”
“No,” I cried out.
A pitilessly sharp, dark triangle on white: “What? You don’t want happiness?”
My head was splitting; two logical trains collided, climbing upon each other, crashing, splintering…
“Well, I am waiting. Make your choice: the Operation and one hundred per cent happiness – or…”
“I cannot… without you. I want nothing without you,” I said, or merely thought – I am not sure – but she heard.
“Yes, I know,” she answered. And, her hands still on my shoulders, her eyes still holding mine, “Until tomorrow, then. Tomorrow, at twelve. You remember?”
“No, it’s been postponed for a day… The day after tomorrow…”
“All the better for us. At twelve, the day after tomorrow…”
I walked alone through the twilit street. The wind was whirling, driving, carrying me like a slip of paper. Fragments of cast-iron sky flew and flew-they had another day, two days to hurtle through infinity… The unifs of passersby brushed against me, but I walked alone. I saw it clearly: everyone was saved, but there was no salvation for me. I did not want salvation…
Thirty-second Entry
Topics: I Do Not Believe. Tractors. A Human Splinter
Do you believe that you will die? Yes, man is mortal, I am a man: hence… No, this is not what I mean. I know you know this. I am asking: have you ever really believed it; believed it totally, not with your mind, but with your body; have you ever felt that one day the fingers holding this very page will be icy, yellow…
No, of course you don’t believe it – and this is why you have not jumped from the tenth floor down to the pavement; this is why you are still eating, turning the page, shaving, smiling, writing…