RECORD TWELVE
KEYWORDS: The Delimiting of Infinity. An Angel. Reflections on Poetry.
It seems to me that I am getting better, that I can get better. I slept excellently. None of those dreams or that other sickly phenomena. Tomorrow, sweet O will come to me and everything will be as simple, correct, and delimited as a circle. I am not afraid of that word “delimited”: the worthiest human efforts are those intellectual pursuits that specifically seek the uninterrupted delimiting of infinity, the reduction of infinity into convenient, easily digestible portions—into differentials. The divine beauty of my medium— mathematics—is exactly that. And the comprehension of this very beauty is exactly what that I-330 woman is lacking. But that’s of no relevance here, just an accidental mental association.
These thoughts are set to the rhythmical, metrical rumble of wheels of the subterranean rail. I am scanning the rumblings and R’s poems (his book from yesterday) in my head. And I feel: behind me, someone is carefully bending over my shoulder and staring at the open page in front of me. Without turning around, in a little corner of my eye, I see: pink, outstretched wing-ears, a twice-bent … it’s him! But I didn’t want to bother him and so I pretended I hadn’t noticed him. How he came to be here, I don’t know; he hadn’t been here when I entered the train—I don’t think.
This incident, meaningless in itself, had an especially good effect on me. I’d even say: it strengthened me. How pleasant it was to feel someone’s vigilant eye lovingly protecting you from the slightest mistake, from the slightest misstep. Sentimental as it may sound, that same analogy came into my head again: the “guardian angel” as imagined by the Ancients. How much has materialized in our lives that they only ever imagined …
At the moment when I had sensed a guardian angel about myself, behind my back, I had been taking pleasure in a sonnet entitled “Happiness.” I think I’m not mistaken if I say that it is a thing of rarity in its beauty and depth of thought. Here are the first four lines:
Forever amorous two-times-two
Forever amalgamated in passionate four
The hottest lovers in the world—
Inseparable two-times-two
And it continues on about all this—about the wisdom and the eternal happiness of the multiplication table.
Every genuine poet is necessarily a Columbus. America existed for centuries before Columbus but it was only Columbus who was able to track it down. The multiplication table existed for centuries before R-13 but it was only R-13 who managed to find a new El Dorado in the virgin thicket of digits. Indeed: is there a place where happiness is wiser, more cloudless, than in this miraculous world? Steel rusts; the ancient God created an ancient human capable of mistakes—and, therefore, He made a mistake Himself. The multiplication table is wiser, more absolute than the ancient God: it never—you understand—it never makes mistakes. And there is nothing happier than digits, living according to the well-constructed, eternal laws of the multiplication table. Without wavering, without erring. The truth is one, and the true path is one; and this truth is two-times-two, and this true path is four. And wouldn’t it be absurd, if these happily, ideally multiplying pairs started to think about some kind of freedom, by which I clearly mean—about making a mistake? I find it axiomatic that R-13 was able to capture this most fundamental, most …
Then I felt it—first at the back of my head, then on my left ear—the warm, gentle breath of the guardian angel. He obviously noticed that the book on my knees was already closed and my thoughts were far away. No matter, I was prepared right then to peel open the pages of my brain before him: this was a calm, gratifying feeling. I remember: I even glanced around and I insistently and pleadingly looked him in the eye, but he didn’t understand— or didn’t want to understand—he didn’t ask me about a thing. It was left to me to do one thing: tell everything to you, my unknown readers (now you are as dear to me, and as close and yet unattainable to me as he was in that moment).
This was my thought path: from the parts to the whole. The part was R-13 and the majestic whole was our Institute of State Poets and Writers. I thought: how could it be that the utter silliness of their literature and poetry didn’t fling itself into the eyes of the Ancients? The tremendous, splendid force of the artistic word was wasted absolutely in vain. It’s pure comedy: anyone wrote about whatever he took it in his head to write. It’s just as comic and ridiculous that the oceans of the Ancients beat stupidly against their shores, night and day, and that the millions of kilogram-meters contained in these waves were only expended as kindling for the feelings of lovers. We, from those amorous whispers of the waves, procured electricity. From the beast, gushing with rabid froth, we made a domestic animal. And that is exactly how we tamed and saddled the once-wild natural force of poetry. Now poetry is no longer a brazen nightingale call. Poetry is a state service; poetry is purpose.
How could we have loved the four rules of arithmetic at school so sincerely and tenderly without our famous Mathematical Norms? And as for the classical image of “thorns”: the Guardians are the thorns around the rose, guarding the delicate State Flower from rough contact … Whose stone heart can remain indifferent before the sight of the innocent lips of a child, babbling, as if in prayer: “A bad little boy a rose did grab. The steel spike of a thorn his hand did jab. You naughty child, go home, be quick. Ow, ow, ow, how that jab did prick …” etc.? And the Daily Ode to the Benefactor? Who, having read that, doesn’t bow down piously before the selfless labor of this Cipher of Ciphers? And the terrifying red of the Flowers of Judicial Verdicts? And the immortal tragedy He Who Was Late for Work? And the reference book Stanzas on Sexual Hygiene?
All of life in its complexity and beauty is forever minted in the gold of words.
Our poets don’t soar in the empyrean anymore: they came down to earth; they keep step with us under the strict mechanical March of the Music Factory; their lyres play the morning buzz of electric toothbrushes and the menacing crackle of the spark in the Machine of the Benefactor, and the majestic echo of the Hymn of the One State, and the intimate peal of the crystal-sparkling latrine, and the thrilling sputter of falling blinds, and the joyful voices of a new cookbook, and the barely audible whisper of the street membranes.
Our gods are here, below, with us—in the Bureau, in the kitchen, in the workshop, in the latrine. Gods have become like us, ergo, we have become like gods. And to you, my unknown planetary readers, we will come to you, to make your life as divinely rational and exact as ours.
RECORD THIRTEEN
KEYWORDS: A Fog. You. A Completely Ridiculous Incident.
At dawn, I awoke with a pink, strong firmament right in my eyes. All was good, round. This evening O is coming here. I am undoubtedly already healthy. I smiled and fell back asleep.
The morning bell. I get up and everything is totally different: through the glass of the ceilings and walls, all around, everywhere, it is foggy. Crazy clouds, some heavy, some lighter, are getting closer, and there is already no distinction between the earth and the sky, everything is flying, melting, falling with nothing to catch on to. There are no more buildings: the glass walls have dispersed in the fog, like crystal salts in water. If you look up from the sidewalk, the dark figures of people in buildings are like suspended particles in a delirious, milky solution—some low-hanging and some higher up, and others, higher still, on the tenth floor. And everything is billowing—as though some kind of inaudible fire was raging somewhere.
At exactly 11:45, I purposefully looked at my timepiece in order to catch hold of the digits—the digits, at least, would rescue me.
At 11:45, before going to the usual session of physical labor, in accordance with the Table of Hours, I ran over to my room. All of a sudden, the telephone rings and there is a voice, a long, slow needle into my heart: “Aha, you’re at home? I’m very glad. Wait for me on the corner. We’ll set our course for the … well, you’ll see where.”
“You know perfectly well that I’m going to work rig
ht now.”
“And you know perfectly well that you’ll do just what I tell you to do. See you in a minute. In two minutes.”
Two minutes later, I was standing at the corner. It was a necessity to show her that I was governed by the One State, not by her … “You’ll do just what I tell you to do.” And you can tell she is sure of it: you can hear it in her voice. But, now, I will tell her how it really is.
Gray unifs, woven from the damp fog, hurriedly spirited by me and unexpectedly vanished into the fog. I couldn’t tear myself away from my timepiece—I was the sharp, trembling second hand. Eight, ten minutes … three minutes to 12:00, two minutes to 12:00 …
Enough. I’m off to work—and already late. How I hate her. But it was a necessity that I show her …
On the corner in the white fog: blood—a slit made with a sharp knife—it was her lips.
“It seems I have kept you waiting. But then, it doesn’t matter. You’re late as it is.”
How I hate—but then, yes, I was late as it was.
I looked silently at her lips. All women are lips, all lips. Some are pink and firmly round: a ring, a tender guardrail from the whole world. And then there are these ones: a second ago they weren’t here, and just now—like a knife-slit—they are here, still dripping sweet blood.
She comes up close, leans on my shoulder, and we are one, she flows into me and I know: this was the necessary part. I know this with every nerve, with every hair, with every sweet and almost painful beat of my heart. And I submitted to this “necessity” with joy. A piece of iron probably submits just as joyfully to its unavoidable, precise laws and fastens itself to a magnet. A rock, thrown up, wavers for a second and then falls downward, headlong to the ground. And a man, after his agony, exhaling finally, for the last time, dies.
I remember: I smiled bewilderedly and said, for no reason: “Fog … very.”
“You like fog?”
She used an ancient, long-forgotten pronunciation of “You,” the “You” of the owner to the slave, and it entered me sharply, slowly: yes, I am a slave, and this was also a necessity, it was also good.
“Yes, good …” I said to myself aloud. And then to her: “I hate the fog. I am afraid of fog.”
“That means you love it. You’re afraid of it—because it is stronger than you. You hate it—because you are afraid of it. You love it—because you can’t conquer it yourself. You see, you can only love the unconquerable.”
Yes, that is true. And that was precisely why—it was precisely why I …
We walked in two—as one. Somewhere far away, through the fog, the sun sang almost audibly, filling everything with firmness, pearl, gold, pink, red. The whole world is one immense woman, and we are in her very womb, we are not yet born, we are joyfully ripening. And it is clear to me, it is indestructibly clear to me that everything was for my sake: the sun, the fog, the pink, the red, the gold were all for my sake …
I wasn’t going to ask where we were going. It didn’t matter: only to go, to go, to ripen, to fill everything with more and more firmness—
“Well, here we are …” I-330 stopped in front of some doors. “Someone I know here is on duty today, as it happens. I spoke about him that time, at the Ancient House.”
I was far away and using only my eyes, while carefully protecting the ripening, I read the sign: “BUREAU OF MEDICINE.” All was understood.
A glass room, full of golden fog. Glass ceilings, colored bottles, jars. Wires. Bluish sparks inside tubes.
And a super-thin little man. He looked just as though he had been cut out of paper, and it wouldn’t have mattered which way he turned since he was all profile, sharply sharpened. His nose: a gleaming blade. His lips: scissors.
I didn’t hear what I-330 said to him but I watched how she spoke it. I could feel something: I was smiling irrepressibly, blissfully. The blades of the scissor-lips gleamed, and the doctor said: “Yes, yes. I understand. A most dangerous illness—I don’t know of any more dangerous …” He laughed, and with a super-thin paper-hand wrote something and gave the piece of paper to I-330; he then wrote something else and gave it to me.
This was certification that we were sick, that we were not able to appear at the workplace. I had stolen my work from the One State, I am a thief, I would soon be under the Machine of the Benefactor. But this was a distant, abstract concern, like something in a book … I took the piece of paper without hesitating a second. I— my eyes, lips, hands—knew: this was a necessity.
At the corner, we took an aero from a half-empty garage. I-330 sat behind the wheel, like before; she moved the starter to “forward,” and we tore off from the Earth, setting sail. And everything was following us: the pinkly golden fog, the sun, the super-thin-bladed profile of the doctor, which was all suddenly so near and dear. Before, everything revolved around the sun; now I know that everything revolves around me—slowly, blissfully, squinting its eyes …
The old lady was at the gates of the Ancient House. That sweet, overgrown-with-ray-wrinkles mouth. It had probably overgrown again and had only opened just now, for the first time in a few days, to smile.
“Aha, Miss Prankster! Can’t get to work like everybody else … no? Well, now, all right … If anything happens—I’ll run up and let you know …”
The heavy, creaking, opaque door closed and just then, with great pain, my heart opened wide and then wider still: all the way open. Her lips: mine. I drank and drank, then broke away and silently looked into the eyes thrown open to me … and again …
The semidarkness of the room, the blue, the saffron-yellow, the dark-green Morocco leather, the golden smile of the Buddha, the twinkle of the mirror. And my old dream is so understandable now: everything is impregnated with golden pink sap, and it was about to overflow its edges, about to gush—
Ripened. And, inevitably, like the iron and the magnet with sweet obedience to their precise, immutable laws, I poured myself into her. There was no pink ticket, there were no calculations, there was no One State, there was no me. There were only gentle, sharp, clenched teeth and there were gold eyes thrown wide open to me—and through them I slowly went inside, deeper and deeper still. And silence—except in the corner, thousands of miles away, where drops were dripping into the sink. I was the universe, and eras and epochs passed as drop followed drop …
Having thrown on my unif, I bent down to I-330 and sucked her in with my eyes one last time.
“I knew this … I knew you …” said I-330, very quietly. Quickly getting up, she put on her unif and there was her ever-sharp smile-sting.
“Well, now, fallen angel. You, I’d say, are now lost. You’re not afraid, are you … ? Well, then, goodbye! You will return alone. Right?”
She opened the mirrored door that was set into one side of the closet; she waited, looking at me over her shoulder. I obediently left. But I had hardly stepped across the threshold when suddenly I needed her to press up against my shoulder again—only for a second, on my shoulder, not more.
I flung myself back into the room—she would (probably) still be buttoning her unif in front of the mirror. I ran in and stopped. The antiquated ring on the key in the door of the closet is still swinging—I see it clearly—but I-330 isn’t there. She couldn’t have gone anywhere—there was only one way out of the room—but, nevertheless, she wasn’t there. I ransacked everything, I even opened the closet and felt the colorful ancient dresses in there: no one …
It’s a bit awkward, my planetary readers, to tell you about this completely improbable incident. But what can I do if everything was really like that? Wasn’t the whole day, from the early morning,
after all, full of improbable incidents? Wasn’t all this just like the ancient sickness of dreaming? If so—does it really matter whether I describe one more absurdity, or one less? Besides that, I am sure, sooner or later, I will succeed in including each and every one of these absurdities in some sort of syllogism. This calms me and I hope it calms you, too …
… How f
ulfilled I am! If only you knew how filled to the full I am!
RECORD FOURTEEN
KEYWORDS: “Mine.” The Forbidden. A Cold Floor.
Still more about yesterday’s occurrences. I was busy during the Personal Hour before bedtime so I could not write these records yesterday. It has all been practically carved into me and particularly—forever, I’m quite sure—that unbearably cold floor …
In the evening O was meant to be coming over—it was her day. I went down to the monitor to get blind-lowering permission.
“Are you all right?” asked the monitor. “There’s something about you today …”
“I … I’m sick.”
In reality, this was true: I, of course, am sick. All this is a sickness. And right then, it occurred to me: yes, I have certification … I felt for it in my pocket: yes, it rustled. Meaning that everything had happened, everything had actually happened.
I extended the little piece of paper to the monitor. I felt my cheeks burn and without glancing up, I saw: the monitor looking at me in surprise …
It’s 21:30. The blinds are lowered in the room to the left of mine. In the room on my right, I see my neighbor: bent over a book, his bald patch, knobbly with hummocks, and his forehead, a huge, yellow parabola. I pace and pace in torment: how can I—after all that just went on with I-330—now … with O? And from my right side, I clearly feel eyes on me. I distinctly see the wrinkles on his forehead: a row of yellow, illegible lines—and, for some reason, it seems to me that these lines are about me.
In my room at 21:45: a joyful, pink whirlwind, a strong ring of pink arms around my neck. And then I feel: the ring weakening, weaker and weaker still, then unfastening, the arms let go … “You are not the same, you are not your former self, you aren’t mine!”