I bent down, picked up one, another, a third: all bore the number D-503. I was on each one, drops of me, molten, spilled over the brim. And this was all that remained…
For some reason, it was impossible to leave them on the floor, to be trampled on. I gathered up another handful, put them on the table, smoothed them carefully, glanced at them, and… laughed.
I had never known this before, but now I know it, and you know it: laughter can be of different colors. It is only an echo of a distant explosion within you. It may be festive – red, blue, and golden fireworks; or – torn fragments of a human body flying up…
An unfamiliar name flashed on a coupon. I do not remember the number, only the letter: F. I brushed all the coupons off the table, stepped on them – on myself – with my heel, like this, and went out…
For a long time, dumbly, I sat in the corridor near the door, waiting for something. Shuffling steps from the left. An old man: face like a punctured, empty, shrunken, creased balloon – with something transparent still dripping through the punctures, slowly trickling down. Slowly, dimly, I understood – tears. And only when the old man was already far, I recalled myself and cried out, “Wait-listen, do you know? Number I-330…”
The old man turned, waved his hand despairingly, and hobbled on…
At dusk, I returned home. In the west, the sky contracted every second in a pale blue spasm. A dull, muffled roar came from there. The roofs were covered with black, charred pieces – birds.
I lay down on the bed – and like a heavy beast sleep weighed me down, stifled me…
Thirty-eighth Entry
Topics: I don’t know – perhaps only one: A Discarded Cigarette
When I awakened, the brightness hurt my eyes. I closed them tightly. In my head – a strange, caustic, blue haze. Everything as in a fog. And through the fog: But I didn’t turn on the light! How…
I jumped up. At the table, her chin resting on her hand, sat I-330, looking at me with a wry smile…
I am writing on this table now. Those ten or fifteen minutes, brutally twisted into the tightest spring, are long past And yet, it seems to me, the door has just swung shut behind her, and it’s still possible to catch up with her, to seize her hands – and she may laugh and say…
I-330 sat at the table. I rushed to her. “You, you! I was – I saw your room – I thought you…”
But in mid-word I tripped against the sharp, immobile spears of lashes. I stopped, remembering: this was how she looked at me that day, aboard the Integral. And yet I must now, in a single second, find a way of telling her – of making her believe – or else it will be never…
“Listen to me – I must… I must tell you… everything… No, just a moment – I have to take a drink…”
My mouth was dry as though lined with blotting paper. I tried to pour some water, and I couldn’t. I put the glass down on the table and seized the pitcher with both hands.
Now I saw: the blue smoke was from her cigarette. She brought it to her lips, inhaled, greedily swallowed the smoke, as I the water, and said, “Don’t. Be silent. It does not matter. You see, I came anyway. They are waiting for me below. And you want our last minutes to…”
She flung the cigarette down on the floor, leaned backward with her whole body over the arm of the chair (the button was there, on the wall, and it was difficult to reach). And I remember how the chair tilted and two of its legs were lifted from the floor. Then the shades fell.
She came over, embraced me, hard. Her knees through her dress – the slow, tender, warm, all-enveloping poison…
Then suddenly… It sometimes happens that you have sunk completely into a sweet, warm dream – and suddenly you’re stung by something, you start, and you are wide awake… So now: the trampled pink coupons on the floor in her room, and on one – the letter F, and some figures… They tangled within me into a single knot, and even now I don’t know what the feeling was, but I crushed her so that she cried out with pain…
Another minute – of those ten or fifteen on the dazzling white pillow – her head thrown back with half-closed eyes; the sharp, sweet line of teeth. And all that time, the persistent, absurd, tormenting intimation of something that must not be… that must not be remembered now. And I press her ever more tenderly, more cruelly – the blue spots from my fingers deeper, brighter…
Without opening her eyes (I noticed this), she said, “I heard that you were at the Benefactor’s yesterday. Is that true?”
“Yes, it is.”
Then her eyes opened, wide – and I took pleasure in watching how rapidly her face paled, faded, disappeared: nothing but eyes.
I told her everything. Except – I don’t know why… No, it isn’t true, I know – except for one thing – the words He had spoken at the very end, that they had needed me only…
Gradually, like a photographic image in the developer, her face emerged: her cheeks, the white line of her teeth, her lips. She rose, went over to the mirrored closet door.
Again my mouth was dry. I poured myself some water, but it nauseated me. I put the glass back on the table and asked, “Is this what you have come for – you needed to find out?”
The sharp, mocking triangle of eyebrows raised to the temples looked at me from the mirror. She turned to say something to me, but said nothing.
There was no need. I knew.
Bid her good-by? I moved my – alien – feet, caught at the chair – it fell prone, dead, like the other one, in her room. Her lips were cold, as cold as, once upon a time, the floor here, near my bed.
And when she left, I sat down on the floor and bent down over her discarded cigarette.
I cannot write any more – I do not want to any more!
Thirty-ninth Entry
All this was like the final grain of salt dropped into a saturated solution: rapidly, bristling like needles, the crystals began to form, congeal, solidify. And it was clear to me: all is decided-tomorrow morning I shall do it. It is the same as killing myself – but perhaps this is the only way to resurrection. For only what is killed can be resurrected.
In the west, the sky shuddered every second in a blue spasm. My head burned and hammered. I sat so all night, falling asleep only at seven in the morning, when the darkness was already drawn out, turning green, and I could see the bird-strewn roofs.
I awakened at ten – there had evidently been no bell today. A glass of water – last night’s – stood on the table. I gulped it down greedily and ran out: I had to do it quickly, as quickly as I could.
The sky was empty, blue, all of it eaten away by the storm. Jagged corners of shadows, everything cut out of blue autumn air – thin – too fragile to be touched, or it will snap, be pulverized to flying glass dust. And the same within me: I must not think, I must not think, I must not think, or…
And I did not think. Perhaps I did not even see properly – merely registered. There, on the pavement, branches from somewhere, their leaves green, amber, crimson. Up above, crossing each other’s paths, birds and aeros tossing this way and that. Here – heads, open mouths, arms waving branches. All this must have been shouting, cawing, buzzing…
Then empty streets – as if swept clean by plague. I remember tripping on something unbearably soft, yielding, yet motionless. I bent down – a corpse. It lay on its back, its bent legs spread apart like a woman’s. The face…
I recognized the thick, Negroid lips, which even now still seemed to spray me with laughter. With tightly shut eyes, he laughed into my face. A moment – I stepped across him and ran – because I could bear it no longer, I had to get it over with quickly, or else, I felt, I would snap, warp like an overloaded rail…