“What is with her wild terminology: ‘mine’? I never was …” And I stumbled. It occurred to me—it’s true, I wasn’t before … but now I … It seems I no longer live in our rational world, but in an ancient, delirious—a world of square roots of minus one.
Blinds fall. There, behind the right wall, my neighbor is letting his book fall to the floor, and in that last, instantaneous narrow chink between the blinds and the floor, I see: a yellow hand grab the book. And inside me, I feel: I would have used all my strength if only to catch hold of that hand …
“I thought—I had hoped to see you today on the walk. I have a lot to— I really need to tell you …”
Sweet, poor O! Her pink mouth is a pink half-moon with its small horns pointing downward. But I cannot exactly tell her everything that has happened—if only because it would make her an accomplice to my crime, since I know that she hasn’t enough strength to go to the Bureau of Guardians and, consequently—
O was lying down. I slowly kissed her. I kissed that innocent little crease on her wrist, her blue eyes were closed, the pink half-moon slowly blossomed, came undone, and I kissed her all over.
Suddenly I clearly felt it: how empty and spent I was. I can’t, I musn’t do this. I should but I musn’t. My lips immediately went cold …
The pink half-moon began to tremble, faded, spasmed. O threw the bedspread over herself and wrapped herself up with her face in the pillow …
I sat on the floor by the bed—what an awfully cold floor—I sat there and said nothing. The excruciating cold from below was creeping higher and higher still. I imagine it was like the tacit cold up there, in the blue, mute interplanetary expanses.
“Please understand, I didn’t want …” I muttered … “I tried hard …”
It was true: I (the real me) hadn’t wanted to! But still: how could I put that into words for her? How could I explain to her that the iron hadn’t wanted to, but its laws were inescapable and precise—
O lifted her head from the pillow and, not opening her eyes, said: “Go away,” but through the tears it came out as “gowi” and for some reason this ridiculous trifle cut right into me.
Totally permeated with cold, frozen, I walked out into the corridor. There, behind the glass, was a light, barely perceptible puff of fog. Toward nighttime, it ought to descend, and apply itself to everything. What will this night bring?
O slipped past me without a word, toward the elevator. The door banged.
“One second,” I cried. I became scared.
But the elevator was already droning down, down, down …
She took R away from me.
She took O away from me.
And yet, and yet …
RECORD FIFTEEN
KEYWORDS: The Bell Jar. The Mirrored Sea. I Will Burn Forever.
I had only just entered the Integral’s hangar when I encountered the Second Builder. His face was as it always is: round and white, like a porcelain platter, and he talks as though he is carrying something unbearably delicious on his platter: “Well, since you deigned to be ill, here, without you, without your direction, yesterday, we had a sort of event.”
“Event?”
“Oh, yes! The bell rang, we finished up, and we were all being let out of the hangar and then, imagine: one of the guards caught an unnumbered person. And how he broke in—I can’t understand. They led him off to the Operation Room. There, they will drag the how and why out of him, dear fellow …” (A smile—delicious …)
In the Operation Room, our best and most experienced doctors work under the direct leadership of the Benefactor himself. There are various devices in the Operation Room including, most important, the famous Gas Bell Jar. This is used essentially as it was in that old-fashioned school experiment: a mouse is put under a bell jar; the air in the bell jar is more and more rarefied by an air pump … and, well, et cetera. But, of course, the Gas Bell Jar is a significantly more perfect apparatus—with its application of different gases—and then also, it is not merely a mockery of a small defense-less animal but has a higher purpose: the matter of the security of the One State, in other words, the happiness of millions. About five centuries ago, when work in the Operation Room had only just begun, there were fools who compared the Operation Room with the ancient Inquisition, but you see, that was just absurd. It was like equating a surgeon doing a tracheotomy to a highway robber: they both might have the same knife in their hands and they are both performing the same action (slitting the throat of a living person)—and yet one is a benefactor and the other, a criminal, one is a + sign and the other is a - sign …
All this is totally clear within a single second, within a single rotation of the logical machine. But just when the cogs have hooked that minus sign, something else pops up: the key ring is still swinging in the keyhole of the closet. The door, it was clear to see, had only just banged shut, but she, I-330, was gone: disappeared. The machine couldn’t crank this over. Was it a dream? But even now, I still feel it: an inexplicable, sweet hurting in my right shoulder— I-330 pressed up against my right shoulder, next to me in the fog. “Do you like fog?” Yes, the fog and … I love everything, and everything is firm, new, astounding, everything is good … “Everything is good,” I said aloud.
“Good?” His porcelain eyes goggled roundly. “That is, what is good about any of this? If that unnumbered person had managed to … it could have been … they are all around us, all the time, they are here, near the Integral, they …”
“But, who are they?”
“How should I know? But I feel them—you know? All the time.”
“Have you heard? It seems some kind of operation has been invented—the excision of the imagination.” (A few days ago, I had myself heard something of this nature.)
“Yes, I know—but what about it?”
“Well, let’s just say that if I was in your shoes, I would go and ask for this operation to be performed on me.”
On the platter, something distinctly revealed itself as lemon-sour. Dear man, the mere suggestion that he might have an imagination pains him … But then, a week ago it probably would have pained me, too. But now—now, no: because I know that I have one and that I am sick with it. And I also know that I don’t want to recover from it. I don’t want to recover and that’s that. We climbed up the glass steps. Everything underneath us, below, was as clear as the palm of my hand.
You, the readers of these records, no matter who you are, the sun is still above you. And if you’ve ever been sick like I am now, then you know what the sun is like—what it can be like. You know that in the morning, the sun is rosy, transparent, warm gold. And the air itself is a little rosy, all steeped in the sun’s gentle blood. Everything is alive: stones are living and soft; iron is living and warm; people are alive and each and every one is smiling. It may happen that an hour later everything might disappear and an hour later, that rosy blood might drain away, but for now everything is alive. And I can see: something is pulsing and flowing through the glass essence of the Integral. I can see: the Integral is contemplating its great and terrifying future, its heavy cargo of inescapable happiness, which it will carry up there, up to you, the unknown, you, who eternally search and never find. You will find you will be happy—you are obliged to be happy—and you haven’t much longer to wait.
The hull of the Integral was almost ready; the elegant, elongated ellipsoid made from our glass—everlasting, like gold, and supple, like steel. I saw: they were strengthening the glass body from the interior with transverse ribs and a frame of longitudinal stringers; in the stern they were laying the foundations for a gigantic rocket engine. Every three seconds, a combustion; every three seconds, the mighty tail of the Integral will disgorge flames and gases into cosmic space—and it will soar, soar—the fiery Tamer-lane of happiness …
I saw: people below, bending, straightening, turning, like the levers of one enormous machine, on the beat, rhythmically and rapidly, according to Taylorist mechanics. Pipes glittered in their
hands: they were slicing away with fire, soldering the glass walls, the joints, the ribs, and the gussets together with fire. I saw transparent glass monster cranes slowly gliding along glass rails and, just like the people, obediently turning, bending, pushing their load into the belly of the Integral. And all this was one: a humanized, perfect people. This was a higher and more stupendous beauty, harmony, music … As quick as I could, I went downstairs to them, to be with them!
And here I was, shoulder to shoulder, fused with them, carried away by the steel tempo … Rhythmical movements; firm, round, ruddy cheeks; foreheads, mirror-smooth, not clouded by the folly of a single thought. I swam through the mirrored sea. I relaxed.
And suddenly a person placidly turned to me: “Well, then, everything okay—you’re better today?”
“What do you mean, better?”
“Well, it’s just that—you weren’t here yesterday. We were, you know, thinking—that something dangerous … you …” His forehead beamed, his smile, boyish and innocent.
Blood surged to my face. I couldn’t—I couldn’t lie to such eyes. I said nothing, sinking …
Above, the porcelain face, shining in round whiteness, pushed down through a hatch.
“Hey, D-503! Could you … come up here? The frame’s become rigid here, you see, with the consoles and the junction features creating stress on the quadrilateral …”
Not listening to the rest, I dashed headlong to him above—I had shamefully saved myself by fleeing. I was so dazzled by the sparkling glass steps under my feet that I didn’t have the strength to lift my eyes, and with each step everything seemed more hopeless: this was no place for a criminal, contaminated like me. I will no longer be able to pour myself into the precise mechanical rhythm, I cannot swim with the mirror-placid sea. I will burn forever, rushing about, eternally trying to find a little corner where I can hide my eyes, until, finally, I find the strength to walk through those—
And an icy spark went through me: I—never mind me; I don’t matter. But it would have to involve her too and she would also be …
I clambered out of the hatch and onto the deck and stopped: I didn’t know where to go now, I didn’t know why I was here. I looked up. There, the worn-out midday sun was ascending dully. Below was the Integral, gray-glassed, inanimate. The rosy blood had drained away and it was clear to me that all this had only been my imagination, that everything was as it had always been, and yet it was also clear that …
“Hey! 503? What’s wrong? Are you deaf now? I’ve been calling you and calling you … what’s wrong with you?” This was the Second Builder—right into my ear. He must have been shouting for a while.
What’s wrong with me? I have lost my rudder. My motor is at full throttle, the aero is trembling and tearing along, but rudderless. I don’t know where I am racing to: downward to the ground, or now upward to the sun, to the fire …
RECORD SIXTEEN
KEYWORDS: Yellow. A Two-Dimensional Shadow. An Incurable Soul.
I haven’t entered anything in these records for several days. I don’t know how many: all days are one. All days are the same yellow color, like desiccated, incandescent sand, and there is not a tatter of a shadow, not a drop of water—it is yellow sand without end. I can’t go on without her but she, ever since she disappeared at the Ancient House …
Since then, I’ve only seen her once, on the walk. It was two, three, four days ago—I don’t know when: all days are one. She flashed past and for a second filled this yellow, empty world. That two-fold S was hand in hand with her (only as high as her shoulder), and there was that super-thin paper-doctor, and someone else, a fourth (I only remember his fingers: they flew out of his sleeve, like bundles of beams, exceptionally thin, white, and long). I-330 lifted her hand and waved at me; behind someone’s head I saw her leaning over to the finger-beam man. The word “Integral” was audible; the whole foursome glanced over at me; and then they were lost in the gray-blue sky, and again there was only the yellow, desiccated path.
In the evening that day she had a pink ticket for me. I stood in front of the intercom, and with affection and then with spite, I prayed it to click, to make those digits appear on the white panel as soon as possible: I-330. Doors banged and the pale, the tall, the pink, and the dark-complexioned came out of the elevator; blinds fell all around me. She wasn’t here. Hadn’t come.
And, maybe, at this very minute, at exactly 22:00, as I write this, she has closed her eyes and is leaning on someone’s shoulder like she did mine and uttering those same words: “Do you like … ?” But who to? Who is he? Is it that man with the finger-beams, or the lippy, spraying R? Or S?
S… Why do I hear his flat, puddle-squelching footsteps behind me all day, every day? Why is he behind me all day, every day—like a shadow? It’s up ahead, beside me, behind me, this gray-blue, two-dimensional shadow: everyone walks through it, steps on it, but it is nevertheless invariably here, nearby—fastened to me with an invisible umbilical cord. It may be that this umbilical cord is her, I-330? I don’t know. Or it may be that they, the Guardians, already know about it all, know that I …
Suppose someone told you: your shadow sees you, it sees you all the time. Do you understand? Suddenly you experience a strange sensation: the hands at your sides feel like someone else’s and you are aware of how absurdly you’re swinging your arms and how out of step you are. Then suddenly I can barely resist turning around to look—but looking back at anything is forbidden; my neck is locked. And I run and run, faster and faster, and at my spine, I feel it: the shadow is behind me, going faster and faster, and there is nowhere to flee, nowhere …
My room. I am at last alone. But then there’s something else: the telephone. I pick up the receiver: “Yes, I-330, please.” And again from the receiver there is a light noise, someone’s footsteps along a corridor, past the door of her room, and they’re saying nothing … I throw down the receiver—I can’t stand it, can’t stand any more. So I go to her.
That was yesterday. I ran over there and for the whole hour between 16:00 and 17:00, I wandered around the building in which she lives. Ciphers go past me, in rows. Thousands of feet were raining down in strokes, the million-footed Leviathan, heaving, was swimming past. But I, alone, am weathering the storm on an uninhabited island, and I’m searching, searching with my eyes through the gray-blue waves.
Any minute, from somewhere, anywhere: the sharp, mocking angle of her eyebrows, raised toward her temples above the dark windows of her eyes—and there, inside them, fires will be burning and shadows will be moving. I’ll be instantly inside, in there, and I’ll address her intimately, unavoidably intimately: “You know perfectly well—I cannot be without you. So why all this?”
But she says nothing. Suddenly, I hear the silence, instantly, I hear the Music Factory and I understand: it is already past 17:00 and everyone is long gone, I am alone, I am late. A glass desert, flooded with yellow sun, surrounds me. And, as if on the surface of water, I see: overturned, sparkling walls, suspended upside down from a glassy meniscus and I, too, am overturned, idiotically suspended upside down by my feet.
It is imperative that I immediately, this very second, go to the Bureau of Medicine to obtain certification that I am sick, otherwise they’ll get me and—well, maybe that would be for the best. By staying here and calmly waiting until they see me and convey me to the Operation Room—everything would be over immediately, immediately everything would be expiated.
A light rustle, and the twice-bent shadow was in front of me. Without looking, I felt how rapidly his two steel-gray gimlets drove themselves into me, and I smiled with all available strength and said something (something, anything, needed to be said): “I … need to go to the Bureau of Medicine.”
“What’s the matter? Why ever are you standing here?”
I was totally ablaze with shame, absurdly suspended by my feet, upside down. I said nothing.
“Follow me,” S said sternly.
I obediently followed, swinging my extr
aneous arms, which seemed to belong to someone else. I couldn’t raise an eye and I walked, the whole time, in a wild, turned-on-its-head world: there were machines of some kind, their foundations on top of them, and there were people with feet glued antipodally to the ceiling, and below them, the sky was contained in the thick glass of the sidewalk. I remember: how very offensive it all was, that for the last time in my life I was having to see it all this way—overturned, unreal. But I couldn’t raise an eye.
We stopped. There were steps before me. One step up and I’ll see: figures in white doctor’s aprons and an enormous mute Bell Jar …
With effort, a kind of spiral torque, I finally tore my eyes away from the glass below my feet—and suddenly the golden letters “MEDICINE” splashed in front of me … Why had he led me here and not to the Operation Room, and why had he spared me? But, at that moment, I wasn’t thinking of these things: with one leap over the steps, the door solidly banged behind me and I exhaled. Yes: it was as though I hadn’t breathed since dawn, as though my heart hadn’t struck a single beat—and it was only now that I exhaled for the first time, only now that the floodgates of my chest opened …
There were two of them: one was shortish, with cinder-block legs, and his eyes, like horns, tossed up the patients; the other one was skinny and sparkling with scissor-lips and a blade for a nose … I had met him before.
I flung myself at him as though he were kin, straight into the blade, and said something about being an insomniac, the dreams, the shadows, the yellow world. The scissor-lips flashed and smiled. “How awful for you! By the looks of it, you’ve developed a soul.”
A soul? That strange, ancient, long-forgotten word. We sometimes said “heart and soul,” “soulful,” “lost souls,” but a “soul”—
“This is … this is very grave,” I babbled.
“It’s incurable,” incised the scissors.