And all the way above, upon the Cube, near the Machine – the motionless figure, as if cast in metal, of Him whom we call the Benefactor. His face could not be seen in detail from below; all you could tell was that it was defined in square, austere, majestic contours. But the hands… It sometimes happens in photographs that the hands, placed in the foreground too near the camera, come out huge; they hold the eye and shut out all the rest So with these heavy hands, still calmly reposing on the knees. And it was clear – they were stone, and the knees were barely able to support their weight.
Then suddenly one of those huge hands slowly rose – a slow, cast-iron movement. And from the stands, obeying the raised hand, a number approached the Cube. He was one of the State Poets, whose happy lot it was to crown the celebration with his verse. Divine, brass iambics thundered over the stands – about the madman with glass eyes, who stood there on the steps, awaiting the logical results of his mad ravings.
A blazing fire. In the iambics buildings swayed, went up in jets of liquid gold, collapsed. Fresh green trees withered, shriveled, sap dripping out-nothing remaining but the black crosses of their skeletons. But now Prometheus (meaning us) appeared.
And everything was new, everything was steel – a steel sun, steel trees, steel men. But suddenly a madman “unchained the fire” and everything would perish again…
Unfortunately, I have a poor memory for verses, but I remember one thing: it would have been impossible to choose more beautiful, more instructive images.
Again the slow, heavy gesture, and a second poet appeared on the steps of the Cube. I even rose a little from my seat: it could not be! No, those were his thick lips, it was he… Why hadn’t he told me he was to have this high… His lips trembled, they were gray. I understood: to appear before the Benefactor, before the entire host of Guardians… Yet-to be so nervous…
Sharp, quick trochees – like blows of an ax. About a heinous crime, about sacrilegious verses which dared to call the Benefactor… no, my hand refuses to repeat it.
R-13 sank into his seat, pale, looking at no one (I would not have expected him to be so shy). For the smallest fraction of a second I had a glimpse of someone’s face – a dark, sharp, pointed triangle-flashing near him, then vanishing at once. My eyes, thousands of eyes, turned up to the Machine. The third castiron gesture of the nonhuman hand. And the transgressor, swayed by an unseen wind, walked slowly up one stair, another, and now – the last step in his life, and he is on his last bed, face to the sky, head thrown back.
The Benefactor, heavy, stony as fate, walked around the Machine, placed His huge hand on the lever… Not a sound, not a breath – all eyes were on that hand. What a fiery gust of exaltation one must feel to be the instrument, the resultant of a hundred thousand wills! What a great destiny!
An infinite second. The hand moved down, switching on the current A flash of the intolerably dazzling blade of the ray, sharp as a shiver; faint crackling of the tubes in the Machine. The prone body enveloped in a light, glowing mist – and melting, melting before our eyes, dissolving with appalling speed. Then nothing – only a small puddle of chemically pure water, which but a moment ago had pulsed redly, wildly in the heart…
All this was elementary and known to everyone: yes, dissociation of matter; yes, splitting of the atoms of the human body. And yet each tune it was a miracle – a token of the superhuman power of the Benefactor.
Above us, facing Him, the flushed faces of ten female numbers, lips parted with excitement, flowers swaying in the wind.[4]
According to the old custom, ten women garlanded with flowers the Benefactor’s unif, still wet with spray. With the majestic step of a high priest, He slowly descended and slowly walked between the stands. And in His wake, the delicate white branches of female hands raised high, and a million-voiced storm of cheers, shouted in unison. Then cheers in honor of the host of Guardians, invisibly present somewhere here, within our ranks. Who knows, perhaps it was precisely these Guardians who had been foreseen by the imagination of ancient man when he created his dread and gentle “archangels” assigned to each man from his birth.
Yes, there was something of the old religions, something purifying like a storm, in that solemn ceremony. You who will read this – are you familiar with such moments? I pity you if you are not…
Tenth Entry
Topics: A Letter. A Membrane. My Shaggy Self
Yesterday was to me like the paper through which chemists filter their solutions: all suspended particles, all that is superfluous remains on this paper. And this morning I went downstairs freshly distilled, transparent.
Downstairs in the vestibule, the controller sat at her table, glancing at the watch and writing down the numbers of those who entered. Her name is U… but I had better not mention her number, lest I say something unflattering about her. Although, essentially, she is quite a respectable middle-aged woman. The only thing I dislike about her is that her cheeks sag like the gills of a fish (but why should that disturb me?).
Her pen scraped, and I saw myself on the page – D-503, and next to me an inkblot.
I was just about to draw her attention to it when she raised her head and dripped an inky little smile at me. “There is a letter for you. Yes. You will get it, my dear, yes, yes, you will get it.”
I know that the letter, which she had read, still had to pass the Office of the Guardians (I believe there is no need to explain to you this natural procedure), and would reach me not later than twelve. But I was disturbed by that little smile; the ink drop muddied my transparent solution. So much, in fact, that later, at the Integral construction site, I could not concentrate and even made a mistake in my calculations, which had never happened to me before.
At twelve, again the pinkish-brown gills, and finally the letter was in my hands. I don’t know why I did not read it at once, but slipped it into my pocket and hurried to my room. I opened it, ran through it, and sat down… It was an official notification that number I-330 had registered for me and that I was to be at her room today at twenty-one. The address was given below.
No! After everything that had happened, after I had so unequivocally shown my feelings toward her! Besides, she did not even know whether I had gone to the Office of the Guardians. After all, she had no way of learning that I had been sick – well, that I generally could not… And despite all this…
A dynamo whirled, hummed in my head. Buddha, yellow silk, lilies of the valley, a rosy crescent… Oh, yes, and this too: O was to visit me today. Ought I to show her the notice concerning I-330? I didn’t know. She would not believe (indeed, how could she?) that I’ve had nothing to do with it, that I was entirely… And I was sure – there would be a difficult, senseless, absolutely illogical conversation… No, only not that Let everything be resolved automatically: I would simply send her a copy of the notice. I hurriedly stuffed the notice into my pocket – and suddenly saw this dreadful, apelike hand of mine. I recalled how I-330 had taken my hand that time, during the walk, and looked at it. Did she really…
And then it was a quarter to twenty-one. A white night. Everything seemed made of greenish glass. But a very different glass from ours – fragile, unreal, a thin glass shell; and under it something whirling, rushing, humming… And I would not have been astonished if the cupolas of the auditoriums had risen up in slow, round clouds of smoke, and the elderly moon smiled inkily – like the woman at the table in the morning, and all the shades dropped suddenly in all the houses, and behind the shades…
4
From the Botanical Museum, of course. Personally, I see nothing beautiful in flowers, or in anything belonging to the primitive world long exiled beyond the Green Wall. Only the rational and useful is beautifuclass="underline" machines, boots, formulas, food, and so on.