Part 6

We were walking--as one. Somewhere beyond the fog the sun was singing in a faint tone, gradually swelling, filling the air with tension and with pearl and gold and rose and red.... The whole world seemed to be one unembraceable woman, and we who were in her body were not yet born; we were ripening in joy. It was clear to me, absolutely clear, that everything existed only for me: the sun, the fog, the gold--for me. I did not ask where we were going; what did it matter? It was pleasure to walk, to ripen, to become stronger and more tense....

"Here ..." I-330 stopped at a door. "It so happens that today there is some one on duty who ... I told you about him in the Ancient House."

Carefully guarding the forces ripening within me, I read the sign: "Medical Bureau." Automatically only I understood.

... A glass room, filled with golden fog; shelves of glass, colored bottles, jars, electric wires, bluish sparks in tubes; and a male Number--a very thinly flattened man. He might have been cut out of a sheet of paper. Wherever he was, whichever way he turned, he showed only a profile, a sharply pointed, glittering blade of a nose and lips like scissors.

I could not hear what I-330 told him; I merely saw her lips when she was talking; and I felt that I was smiling, irrepressibly, blissfully. The scissors-like lips glittered and the doctor said, "Yes, yes, I see. A most dangerous disease. I know of nothing more dangerous." And he laughed. With his thin, flat, papery hand he wrote something on a piece of paper and gave it to I-330; he wrote on another piece of paper and handed it over to me. He had given us certificates, testifying that we were ill, that we were unable to go to work. Thus I stole my work from the United State; I was a thief; I deserved to be put beneath the Machine of the Well-Doer. Yet I was indifferent to this thought; it was as distant from me as though it were written in a novel. I took the certificate without an instant's hesitation. I, all my being, my eyes, my lips, my hands ... knew it was as it should be.

At the corner, from a half empty garage we took an aero. I-330 took the wheel as she had done before, pressed the starter and we tore away from the earth. We soared. Behind us the golden haze; the Sun. The thin, blade-like profile of the doctor seemed to me suddenly so dear, so beloved. Formerly I knew everything was revolving around the Sun. Now I knew everything was revolving around me. Slowly, blissfully, with half-closed eyes....

At the gate of the Ancient House we found the same old woman. What a dear mouth, with lips grown together and ray-like wrinkles around it! Probably those lips have remained grown together all these days; but now they parted and smiled:

"Ah! you mischievous girl, you! Work is too much for you? Well, all right, all right. If anything happens I'll run up and warn you."

A heavy, squeaky, opaque door. It closed behind us, and at once my heart opened painfully, widely, still wider.... My lips ... hers.... I drank and drank from them. I tore myself away; in silence I looked into her widely open eyes, and then again....

The room in half dusk.... Blue and saffron-yellow lights, dark green morocco leather, the golden smile of Buddha, a wide mahogany bed, a glimmer of mirrors.... And my dream of a few days before became so comprehensible, so clear to me; everything seemed saturated with the golden prime-juice of life, and it seemed that I was overflowing with it,--one second more and it would splash out.... Like iron-ore to a loadstone, in sweet submission to the precise and unchangeable law, inevitably, I clung to her.... There was no pink check, no counting, no United State; I myself was no more. Only, drawn together, the tenderly-sharp teeth were there, only her golden, widely open eyes, and through them I saw deeper, within.... And silence.... Only somewhere in a corner, thousands of miles away it seemed, drops of water were dripping from the faucet of the washstand. I was the Universe!

... And between drops whole epochs, eras, were elapsing....

I put on my unif and bent over I-330 to draw her into me with my eyes--for the last time.

"I knew it.... I knew you," said I-330 in a very low voice. She passed her hand over her face as though brushing something away; then she arose brusquely, put on her unif and her usual sharp, bite-like smile.

"Well, my fallen angel ... you perished just now, do you know that? No? You are not afraid? Well, _au-revoir_. You shall go home alone. Well?"

She opened the mirror-door of the cupboard and looking at me over her shoulder, she waited. I left the room obediently. Yet no sooner had I left the room than I felt it was urgent that she touch me with her shoulder--only for one second with her shoulder, nothing more. I ran back into the room, where (I presumed) she was standing before the mirror, busy buttoning up her unif; I rushed in and stopped abruptly. I saw (I remember it clearly), I saw the key in the keyhole of the closet and the ancient ring upon it was still swinging but I-330 was not there. She could not have left the room as there was but one exit.... Yet I-330 was not there! I looked around everywhere. I even opened the cupboard and felt of the different ancient dresses; nobody....

I feel somewhat ridiculous, my dear planetary readers, relating to you this most improbable adventure. But what else can I do since it all happened exactly as I relate it? Was not the whole day from early morning, full of improbable adventures? Does it not all resemble the ancient disease of dream-seeing? If this be so, what does it matter if I relate one absurdity more, or one less? Moreover, I am convinced that sooner or later I shall be able to include all these absurdities in some kind of a logical sequence. This thought comforts me as I hope it will comfort you.

... How overwhelmed I am! If only you knew how overwhelmed!

RECORD FOURTEEN

"Mine" Impossible A Cold Floor

I shall continue to relate my adventures of yesterday. I was busy during the personal hour before retiring to bed, and thus I was unable to record everything last night. But everything is graven in me; especially, for some reason, and apparently forever, I shall remember that unbearably cold floor....

I was expecting O-90 last evening as it was her regular day. I went downstairs to the controller on duty to get a permit for the lowering of my curtains.

"What is the matter with you?" asked the controller. "You seem so peculiar tonight."

"I ... I am sick."

Strictly speaking, I told her the truth. I certainly am sick. All this _is_ an illness. Presently I remembered; of course, my certificate! I touched it in my pocket. Yes, there it was, rustling. Then all this did happen! It did actually happen!

I held out the paper to the controller. As I did so, I felt the blood rushing to my cheeks. Without looking directly at her, I noticed with what an expression of surprise she gazed at me.

Then at twenty-one-thirty o'clock.... In the room to the left the curtains were lowered, and in the room to the right my neighbor was sitting over a book. His head is bald and covered with bulging lumps. His forehead is enormous--a yellow parabola. I was walking up and down the room--suffering. How could I meet her, after all that happened! O-90, I mean. I felt plainly to my right, how the eyes of my neighbor were staring at me. I clearly saw the wrinkles on his forehead like a row of yellow, illegible lines; and for some reason I was certain that those lines dealt with me.

A quarter of an hour before twenty-two, the cheerful, rosy whirlwind was in my room; the firm ring of her rosy arms closed about my neck. Then I felt how that ring grew weaker and weaker, and then it broke and her arms dropped....

"You are not the same, not the same man! You are no longer mine!"

"What curious terminology: 'mine.' I never belonged--" I faltered. It suddenly occurred to me: true, I belonged to no one before, but now--Is it not clear that now I do not live any more in our rational world but in the ancient delirious world, in a world of square-root of minus one?

The curtains fell. There to my right my neighbor let his book drop at that moment from the table to the floor. And through the last narrow space between the curtain and the floor I saw a yellow hand pick up the book. Within I felt: "Only to seize that hand with all my power."

"I thought ... I wanted to meet you during the hour for the walk. I wanted ... I must talk to you about so many things, so many...."

Poor, dear, O-90. Her rosy mouth was a crescent with its horns downward. But I could not tell her everything, could I, if for no other reason than that it would make her an accomplice of my crimes? I knew that she would not have the courage to report me to the Bureau of Guardians, consequently....

"My dear O-, I am sick, I am exhausted. I went again today to the Medical Bureau; but it is nothing, it will pass. But let us not talk about it;--let us forget it."

O-90 was lying down. I kissed her gently. I kissed that childish, fluffy fold at her wrist. Her blue eyes were closed. The pink crescent of her lips was slowly blooming, more and more like a flower. I kissed her....

Suddenly I clearly realized how empty I was, how I had given away.... No, I could not--impossible! I knew I must ... but no--impossible! I ought ... but no--impossible! My lips cooled at once. The rosy crescent trembled, darkened, drew together. O-90 covered herself with the bedspread, her face hidden in the pillow.

I was sitting near the bed, on the floor. What a desperately cold floor! I sat there in silence. The terrible cold from the floor rose higher and higher. There in the blue, silent space among the planets, there probably it is as cold.

"Please understand, dear; I did not mean..." I muttered, "With all my heart, I ..."

It was the truth. I, my real self did not mean.-- ... Yet how could I express it in words? How could I explain to her that the piece of iron did not want to.... But that the law is precise, inevitable!

O-90 lifted her face from the pillow and without opening her eyes she said, "Go away." But because she was crying she pronounced it "Oo aaa-ay." For some reason this absurd detail will not leave my memory.

Penetrated by the cold and torpid, I went out into the hall. I pressed my forehead against the cold glass. Outside a thin, almost imperceptible film of haze was spread. "Towards night," I thought, "it will descend again and drown the world. How sad a night it will be!"

O-90 passed swiftly by, going toward the elevator. The door slammed.

"Wait a minute!" I screamed. I was frightened.

But the elevator was already groaning, going down--down--down....

"She robbed me of R-, she robbed me of O-90, yet, yet ... nevertheless...."

RECORD FIFTEEN

The Bell The Mirror-Like Sea I Am To Burn Eternally

I was walking upon the dock where the _Integral_ is being built, when the Second Builder came to meet me. His face as usual was round and white,--a porcelain plate. When he speaks it seems as though he serves you a plate of something unbearably tasty.

"You chose to be ill, and without the Chief we had an accident, as it were, yesterday."

"An accident?"

"Yes, sir. We finished the bell and started to let it down, and imagine! the men caught a male without a number. How he got in, I cannot make out. They took him to the Operation Department. Oh, they'll draw the mystery out of the fellow there; 'why' and 'how,' etc...." He smiled delightedly.

Our best and most experienced physicians work in the Operation Department under the direct supervision of the Well-Doer himself. They have all kinds of instruments, but the best of all is the Gas Bell. The procedure is taken from an ancient experiment of elementary physics: they used to put a rat under a gas bell and gradually pump out the air; the air becomes more and more rarified, and ... you know the rest.

But our Gas Bell is certainly a more perfect apparatus and it is used in combination with different gasses. Furthermore, we don't torture a defenseless animal as the ancients did; we use it for a higher purpose: to guard the security of the United State, in other words, the happiness of millions. About five centuries ago when the work of the Operation Department was only beginning, there were yet to be found some fools who compared our Operation Department with the ancient Inquisition. But this is as absurd as to compare a surgeon performing a tracheotomy with a highway cut-throat. Both use a knife, perhaps the same kind of a knife, both do the same thing, viz., cut the throat of a living man, yet one is a well-doer, the other is a murderer; one is marked plus, the other minus.... All this becomes perfectly clear in one second, in one turn of our logical wheel, the teeth of which engage that _minus_, turn it upward and thus change its aspect. That other matter is somewhat different; the ring in the door was still oscillating, apparently the door had just closed, yet she, I-330, had disappeared; she was not there! The logical wheel could not turn this fact. A dream? But even now I feel still in my right shoulder that incomprehensible sweet pain of I-330 near me in the fog, pressing herself against me. "Thou lovest fog?" Yes, I love the fog too. I love everything and everything appears to me wonderful, new, tense; everything is so good!...

"So good," I said aloud.

"Good?" The porcelain eyes bulged out. "What good do you find in that? If that man without a number contrived to sneak in, it means that there are others around here, everywhere, all the time, here around the _Integral_, they--"

"Whom do you mean by 'they'?"

"How do I know who? But I sense them, all the time."

"Have you heard about the new operation which has been invented? I mean the surgical removal of fancy?" (There really were rumors of late about something of the sort.)

"No, I haven't. What has that to do with it?"

"Merely this: if I were you, I should go and ask to have this operation performed upon me."

The plate expressed distinctly something lemon-like, sour. Poor fellow! He took offence if one even hinted that he might possess imagination. Well, a week ago I too should have taken offence at such a hint. Not so now, for I know that I have imagination, that is what my illness consists in, and more than that: I know that it is a wonderful illness,--one does not want to be cured, simply does not want to!

We ascended the glass steps; the world spread itself below us like the palm of a hand.

You, readers of these records, whoever you be, you have the sun above you. And if you ever were ill, as I am now, then you know what kind of a sun there is or may be in the morning; you know that pinkish, lucid, warm gold; the air itself looks a little pinkish; everything seems permeated by the tender blood of the sun; everything is alive; the stones seem soft and living; iron living and warm; people all full of life and smiles. It may be that in a short while all this will disappear, that in an hour the pinkish blood of the sun will be drained out, but in the meantime everything is alive. And I see how something flows and pulsates in the sides of the _Integral_; I see the _Integral_ _think_ of its great and lofty future, of the heavy load of inevitable happiness which it is to carry up there into the heights, to you, unseen ones, to you who seek eternally and who never find. You shall find! You shall be happy! You must be happy, and you have now not very long to wait!

The body of the _Integral_ is almost ready; it is an exquisite, oblong ellipsoid, made of our glass, which is everlasting like gold and flexible like steel. I watched them within, fixing its transverse ribs and its longitudinal stringers; in the stern they were erecting the base of the gigantic motor. Every three seconds the powerful tail of the _Integral_ will eject flame and gasses into the universal space, and the _Integral_ will soar forward and higher,--like a flaming Tamerlane of happiness! I watched how the workers, true to the Taylor system, would bend down, then unbend and turn around swiftly and rhythmically like levers of an enormous engine. In their hands they held glittering glass pipes which emitted bluish streaks of flame; the glass walls were being cut into with flame; with flame there were being welded the angles, the ribs, the bars. I watched the monstrous glass cranes easily rolling over the glass rails; like the workers themselves they would obediently turn, bend down and bring their loads inward into the bowels of the _Integral_. All seemed one, humanized machine and mechanized humans. It was the most magnificent, the most stirring beauty, harmony, music!

Quick! Down! To them, and with them! And I descended and mingled with them, fused with their mass, caught in the rhythm of steel and glass. Their movements were measured, tense and round. Their cheeks were colored with health, their mirror-like foreheads not clouded by the insanity of thinking. I was floating upon a mirror-like sea. I was reposing.... Suddenly one of them turned toward me his care-free face.

"Well, better today?"

"What better?"

"You were not here yesterday. And we thought something serious...." His forehead was shining; a childish and innocent smile.

My blood rushed to my face. No, I could not lie, facing those eyes. I remained silent; I was drowning.... Above, the shiny round white porcelain face appeared in the hatchway.

"Eh! D-503! Come up here! Something is wrong with a frame and brackets here, and ..."

Not waiting until he had finished, I rushed to him, upstairs; I was shamefully saving myself by flight. I had not the power to raise my eyes. I was dazed by the sparkling glass steps under my feet, and with every step I made I felt more and more hopeless. I, a corrupted man, a criminal, was out of place here. No, I shall probably never again be able to fuse myself into this mechanical rhythm, nor to float over this mirror-like, untroubled sea. I am to burn eternally from now on, running from place to place, seeking a nook where I may hide my eyes, eternally, until I.... A spark cold as ice pierced me: "I myself, I matter little, but is it necessary that _she_ also...? I must see that she ..."

I crawled through the hatchway to the deck and stood there; where was I to go now? I did not know what I had come for! I looked aloft. The midday sun exhausted by its march, was fuming dimly. Below was the _Integral_, a gray mass of glass,--dead. The pink blood was drained out! It was clear to me that all this was my imagination and that everything remained as before, yet it was also clear to me that ...

"What is the matter with you, D-503? Are you deaf? I call you and call.... What is the matter with you?" It was the Second Builder yelling directly into my ear; he must have been yelling that way for quite a while.

What was the matter with me? I had lost my rudder, the motor was groaning as before, the aero was quivering and rushing on but it had no rudder. I did not even know where I was rushing, down to the earth or up to the sun, to its flame....

RECORD SIXTEEN

Yellow A Two-dimensional Shadow An Incurable Soul

I have not written for several days, for I don't know how many. All my days are alike. All are of one color,--yellow like dry, overheated sand. Not a patch of shade, not a drop of water, only an infinity of yellow sand. I cannot live without her, but she, since she disappeared that day so mysteriously in the Ancient House....

Since that time I have seen her only once, during the hour for the Walk, two, three, four days ago, I do not remember exactly. All my days are alike. She only passed swiftly by and for a second filled up the yellow, empty world. With her, arm in arm, reaching not higher than her shoulder, were the double-curved S- and the thin papery doctor, and a fourth person whose fingers only I remember well; they streamed out, those fingers, from the sleeve of the unif like a bundle of rays, uncommonly thin, white, long. I-330 raised her hand and waved to me, then she bent toward the one with the ray-like fingers, over the head of S-. I overheard the word _Integral_. All four turned around to look at me,--and then they disappeared in the bluish-gray sea and my road was once more dry and yellow.

That same evening she had a pink check on me. I stood before the switchboard and with hatred and tenderness I implored it to click and soon to show the number I-330. I would jump out into the hall at every sound of the elevator. The door of the latter would open heavily. Pale, tall, blonde and dark they would come out of the elevator, and here and there curtains were falling.... But she was not there. She did not come. And it is quite possible that now, at this minute, as I write these lines, at twenty-two o'clock exactly, with her eyes closed, she is pressing her shoulder against somebody else _in the same way_ and _in the same way_ she may be asking someone: "Do you love me?" Whom? Who is he? That one with ray-like fingers or that thick-lipped, sprinkling R-? Or S-? S-! Why is it that I have heard his steps splashing behind me as though in a ditch all these days? Why has he been following me all these days like a shadow? Ahead of me, to my side, behind me, a grayish-blue, two-dimensional shadow; people cross it, people step on it but it remains nearby, attached to me by unseen ties. Perhaps that tie is I-330. I do not know. Or perhaps they, the Guardians I mean, already know that I ...

If some one should tell you your shadow sees you, sees you all the time, would you understand? All at once peculiar sensations arise in you; your arms seem to belong to someone else, they are in the way. That is how I feel; very frequently now I notice how absurdly I wave my hands without any rhythm. I have an irresistible desire to glance behind me but I am unable to do so, my neck might as well be forged of iron. I flee, I run faster and faster, and even with my back I feel that shadow following me as fast as I can run, and there is no place to hide myself, no place!

At length I reach my room. Alone at last! But here I find another thing, the telephone. I pick up the receiver. "Yes, I-330 please." And again I hear a light noise through the receiver; some one's step in the hall there, passing the door of her room, and--silence.... I drop the receiver. I cannot, cannot bear it any longer, and I run to see her!

This happened yesterday. I ran there and for a whole hour from sixteen to seventeen I wandered near the house in which she lives. Numbers were passing by in rows. Thousands of feet were beating the time like a behemoth with a million legs passing by. I was alone, thrown out by a storm on an uninhabited island, and my eyes were seeking and seeking among the grayish-blue waves. "There soon," I thought, "will appear from somewhere the sharp mocking angles of the brows lifted to the temples, and the dark window-eyes, and there behind them a flaming fireplace and someone's shadow.... And I will rush straight in behind those windows and say to her, 'Thou' (yes, 'thou' without fail), 'Thou knowest I cannot live without thee any longer, then why-- ...?'" But silence reigned.

Suddenly I heard the silence; suddenly I heard the Musical Tower silenced, and I understood! It was after seventeen already; every one had already left. I was alone. It was too late to return home. Around me,--a desert made of glass and bathed with yellow sunshine. I saw, as if in water, the reflection of the walls in the glass smoothness of the street, sparkling walls, hanging upside down. Myself also upside down, hanging absurdly in the glass.