What if today’s essentially unimportant incident… what if it is only a beginning, only the first meteorite of a hail of thundering fiery rocks poured by infinity upon our glass paradise?
Twenty-third Entry
TOPICS:
Flowers
The Dissolution of a Crystal
If Only
It is said there are flowers that bloom only once in a hundred years. Why should there not be some that bloom once in a thousand, in ten thousand years? Perhaps we never knew about them simply because this “once in a thousand years” has come only today?
Blissfully, drunkenly, I walked down the stairs to the number on duty, and all around me, wherever my eyes fell, thousand-year-old buds were bursting into bloom. Everything bloomed—armchairs, shoes, golden badges, electric bulbs, someone’s dark, shaggy eyes, the faceted columns of the banisters, a handkerchief someone dropped on the stairs, the table of the number on duty, and the delicately brown, speckled cheeks of U over the table. Everything was extraordinary, new, delicate, rosy, moist.
U took the pink coupon, and above her head, through the glass wall, the moon, pale blue, fragrant, swayed from an unseen branch. I pointed triumphantly at the moon and said, “The moon— you understand?”
U glanced at me, then at the number on the coupon, and I saw again that enchantingly modest, familiar movement of her hand, smoothing the folds of the unif between the angles of her knees.
“My dear, you don’t look normal, you look sick— for abnormality and sickness are the same thing. You are ruining yourself, but no one, no one will tell you that.”
That “no one” is, of course, equated with the number on the coupon: I-330. Dear, marvelous U! Of course you are right: I am imprudent, I am sick, I have a soul, I am a microbe. But isn’t blooming a sickness? Doesn’t it hurt when a bud splits open? And don’t you think that spermatozoa are the most terrible of microbes?
Back upstairs, in my room. In the wide-open calyx of the chair—I-330. I am on the floor, embracing her legs, my head in her lap. We do not speak. Silence, heartbeats… And I am a crystal, I dissolve in her. I feel with utmost clarity how the polished facets that delimit me in space are melting away, away—I vanish, dissolve in her lap, within her, I grow smaller and smaller and at the same time ever wider, ever larger, expanding into immensity. Because she is not she, but the universe. And for a moment I and this chair near the bed, suffused with joy, are one. And the magnificently smiling old woman at the gate of the Ancient House, and the wild jungle beyond the Green Wall, and some silver ruins on black ground, dozing like the old woman, and the slamming of a door somewhere, immeasurably far away—all this is in me, with me, listening to the beating of my pulse and rushing through the blessed second…
In absurd, confused, flooded words I try to tell her that I am a crystal, and therefore there is a door in me, and therefore I feel the happiness of the chair she sits in. But the words are so nonsensical that I stop, ashamed: I—and suddenly such…
“Darling, forgive me! I don’t know—I talk such nonsense, so foolishly…”
“And why do you think that foolishness is bad? If human foolishness had been as carefully nurtured and cultivated as intelligence has been for centuries, perhaps it would have turned into something extremely precious.”
“Yes…” (It seems to me that she is right—how could she be wrong at this moment?)
“And for one foolish action—for what you did the other day during the walk—I love you still more, much more.”
“But why did you torment me, why didn’t you come, why did you send me your coupons and make me…”
“Perhaps I had to test you? Perhaps I must know that you will do whatever I wish—that you are altogether mine?”
“Yes, altogether!”
She took my face—all of me—in her hands and raised my head. “And what about your ‘duty of every honest number’? Eh?”
Sweet, sharp, white teeth; a smile. In the open calyx of the chair she is like a bee—a sting, and honey.
Yes, duties… Mentally I turn the pages of my latest entries: not a hint of a thought anywhere that, actually, I should…
I am silent. I smile ecstatically (and probably foolishly), look into her pupils, run with my eyes from one to the other, and in each of them I see myself: I, tiny, infinitesimal, am caught in these tiny rainbow prisons. And then again—bees—lips, the sweet pain of blooming…
In every number there is an invisible, quietly ticking metronome, and we know the time exactly to within, five minutes without looking at a clock. But now my metronome had stopped, I did not know how much time had passed. Anxiously, I drew out the badge with my watch from under the pillow.
Thanks to the Benefactor! We still have twenty minutes. But minutes, so ridiculously short, are running fast, and I must tell her so much— everything, all of me: about O’s letter, about that dreadful evening when I gave her a child; and also, for some reason, about my childhood—about the mathematician Plapa, about V-1, about my first time at the Day of Unanimity, when I cried bitterly because, on such a day, there turned out to be an inkspot on my unif.
I-330 raised her head, leaned on her elbow. At the corners of her lips, two long, sharp lines, and the dark angle of raised eyebrows: a cross.
“Perhaps, on that day…” She broke off, her brow darkening. She took my hand and pressed it hard. “Tell me, you will not forget me, you will remember me always?”
“Why do you speak like that? What do you mean? My darling!”
She was silent, and her eyes now looked past me, through me, far away. I suddenly heard the wind flapping huge wings against the glass (of course, this had gone on all the time, but I had not heard it until now), and for some reason I recalled the piercing birds over the top of the Green Wall.
She shook her head, as if to free herself of something. Again, for a second, she touched me with all of herself—as an aero touches the earth for a moment, springlike, before settling down.
“Well, give me my stockings now! Hurry!”
Her stockings, thrown on the table, rested on the open page of my manuscript (the 193rd). In my haste, I swept off the manuscript, the pages scattered, I would never be able to collect them in order again. And even if I did, there would be no real order; some gaps, some obstacles, some X’s would remain.
“I can’t go on this way,” I said. “You are here, next to me, and yet you seem to be behind an ancient, opaque wall. I hear a rustling, voices behind the wall, but cannot make out the words; I don’t know what is there. I cannot bear it. You are forever keeping something back, you’ve never told me where I was that time in the Ancient House, and what those corridors were, and why the doctor. Or, perhaps, this never really happened?”
I-330 put her hands on my shoulders, and slowly entered deep into my eyes. “You want to know everything?”
“Yes, I want to. I must.”
“And you won’t be afraid to follow me anywhere, to the very end—wherever I might lead you?”
“Anywhere!”
“Good. I promise you: after the holiday, if only… Oh, by the way, how is your Integral doing? I always forget to ask—how soon?”
“No, what do you mean, ‘if only? Again? ‘If only’ what?”
But she, already at the door: “You’ll see yourself…”
I am alone. All that remains of her is a faint fragrance, reminiscent of the sweet, dry, yellow pollen of some flowers from behind the Wall. And also—the little hooks of questions firmly stuck within me—like those used by the ancients in catching fish ( Prehistoric Museum ).
Why did she suddenly think of the Integral?
Twenty-fourth Entry
TOPICS:
The Limit of Function
To Cross Out Everything
Easter
I am like a machine set at excessive speed: the bearings are overheated; another minute, and molten metal will begin to drip, and everything will turn to naught Quick—cold water, logic. I pour it by the pailfu
l, but logic hisses on the red-hot bearings and dissipates into the air in whiffs of white, elusive steam.
Of course, it’s clear: in order to determine the true value of a function it is necessary to take it to its ultimate limit And it is clear that yesterday’s preposterous “dissolution in the universe,” brought to its ultimate point, means death. For death is precisely the most complete dissolution of self in the universe. Hence, if we designate love as “L” and death as “D,” then L = f(D). In other words, love and death…
Yes, exactly, exactly. This is why I am afraid of I-330, I resist her, I don’t want to… But why does this “I don’t want” exist within me together with “I want”? That’s the full horror of it—I long for last night’s blissful death again. That’s the horror of it, that even, today, when the logical function has been integrated, when it is obvious that death is implicit in this function, I still desire her, with my lips, arms, breast, with every millimeter of me…
Tomorrow is Unanimity Day. She will, of course, be there too, I’ll see her, but only from a distance. From a distance—that will be painful, because I must, I am irresistibly drawn to be near her, so that her hands, her shoulder, her hair… But I long even for this pain—let it come.
Great Benefactor! How absurd—to long for pain. Who doesn’t know that pain is a negative value, and that the sum of pain diminishes the sum we call happiness? And hence…
And yet—there is no “hence.” Everything is blank. Bare.
In the evening
Through the glass walls of the house—a windy, feverishly pink, disquieting sunset. I turn my chair away from that intruding pinkness and turn the pages of my notes. And I can see: again I have forgotten that I am writing not for myself, but for you, unknown readers, whom I love and pity—for you who are still trudging somewhere below, behind, in distant centuries.
Well, then—about Unanimity Day, this great holiday. I have always loved it, since childhood. It seems to me that to us it has a meaning similar to that of “Easter” to the ancients. I remember, on the eve of this day I would prepare for myself a sort of hour calendar—then happily cross out each hour: an hour nearer, an hour less to wait… If I were certain that nobody would see it, honestly, I would carry such a little calendar with me even today, watching by it how many hours remain until tomorrow, when I will see—if only from a distance…
(I was interrupted: they brought me a new unif, fresh from the factory. We usually receive new unifs for this day. In the hallway outside—steps, joyful exclamations, noise.)
I continue. Tomorrow I will see the spectacle which is repeated year in, year out, and yet is ever new, and ever freshly stirring: the mighty chalice of harmony, the reverently upraised arms. Tomorrow is the day of the annual elections of the Benefactor. Tomorrow we shall again place in the Benefactor’s hands the keys to the imperishable fortress of our happiness.
Naturally, this is entirely unlike the disorderly, disorganized elections of the ancients, when-absurd to say—the very results of the elections were unknown beforehand. Building a state on entirely unpredictable eventualities, blindly—what can be more senseless? And yet apparently it needed centuries before man understood this.
Needless to say, among us, in this respect as in all others, there is no room for eventualities; nothing unexpected can occur. And the elections themselves are mainly symbolic, meant to remind us that we are a single, mighty, million-celled organism, that—in the words of the ancients—we are the Church, one and indivisible. Because the history of the One State knows of no occasion when even a single voice dared to violate the majestic unison.
It is said that the ancients conducted their elections in some, secret manner, concealing themselves like thieves. Some of our historians even assert that they came to the election ceremonies carefully masked. (I can imagine that fantastically gloomy sight: night, a square, figures in dark cloaks moving stealthily along the walls; the scarlet flame of torches flattened by the wind…) No one has yet discovered the full reason for all this secrecy; it is most likely that elections were connected with some mystical, superstitious, or even criminal rites. But we have nothing to conceal or be ashamed of; we celebrate elections openly, honestly, in broad daylight I see everyone voting for the Benefactor; everyone sees me voting for the Benefactor. And, indeed, how could this be otherwise, since “everyone” and “I” are a single “We.” How infinitely more ennobling, sincere, and lofty this is than the cowardly, stealthy “secrecy” of the ancients! And also—how much more expedient. For even assuming the impossible—some dissonance in the usual monophony—the unseen Guardians are right there, in our ranks. They can immediately take note of the numbers of those who have strayed and save them from further false steps—thus saving the One State from them. And, finally, one more…
Through the wall on the left—a woman hastily unfastening her unif before the glass door of the closet. And for a second, a glimpse of eyes, lips, two sharp rosy points… Then the blind falls, and all that happened yesterday is instantly upon me, and I no longer know what “finally, one more” was meant to be, I want to know nothing about it, nothing! I want one thing—I-330. I want her with me every minute, any minute, always—only with me. And all that I have just written about Unanimity is unnecessary, entirely beside the point, I want to cross it out, tear it up, throw it away. Because I know (this may be blasphemy, but it is true), the only holiday for me is to be with her, to have her near me, shoulder to shoulder. And without her, tomorrow’s sun will be nothing but a small circle cut of tin, and the sky, tin painted blue, and I myself…
I snatch the telephone receiver. “I-330, is it you?”
“Yes, I. You’re calling so late.”
“Perhaps it is not too late. I want to ask you… I want you to be with me tomorrow. Darling…”
I said the last word almost in a whisper. And for some reason, the memory of an incident this morning at the building site flashed before me. In jest, someone had placed a watch under a hundred-ton hammer—the hammer swung, a gust of wind in the face, and a hundred tons delicately, quietly came to rest upon the fragile watch.
A pause. It seems to me that I hear someone’s whisper there, in her room. Then her voice: “No, I cannot. You understand—I would myself… No, no, I cannot. Why? You will see tomorrow.”
Night
Twenty-fifth Entry
TOPICS:
Descent from Heaven
The Greatest Catastrophe in History
The Known Is Ended
Before the ceremony, everyone stood still and, like a solemn, slow canopy, the Hymn swayed over our heads—hundreds of trumpets from the Music Plant and millions of human voices—and for a second I forgot everything. I forgot the disquieting hints of I-330 about today’s celebration; I think I forgot even her. I was the boy who had once wept on this day over a tiny spot on his unif, visible to no one but himself. No one around may see the black, indelible spots I am covered with, but I know that I—a criminal—have no right to be among these frank, wide-open faces. If I could only stand up and shout, scream out everything about myself. And let it mean the end—let it!—if only for a moment I can feel myself as pure and thoughtless as this childishly innocent blue sky.
All eyes were raised. In the unblemished morning blue, still moist with night’s tears—a barely visible speck, now dark, now glowing in the sun’s rays. It was He, the new Jehovah, coming down to us from heaven, as wise and loving-cruel as the Jehovah of the ancients. He came nearer and nearer, and millions of hearts rose higher and higher to meet Him. Now He sees us. And, together with Him, I mentally look down from above on the concentric circles of the platforms, marked by the thin blue dotted lines of our unifs, like cobweb circles spangled with microscopic suns (our gleaming badges). And in a moment, He will sit down in the center of the cobweb, the white wise Spider— the white-robed Benefactor, who has wisely bound us hand and foot with the beneficent nets of happiness.
But now His majestic descent from heaven was completed,
the brass tones of the Hymn were silent, everyone sat down—and instantly I knew: all of this was indeed the finest cobweb; it was stretched tautly, it quivered—in a moment it would break and something unthinkable would happen…
Rising slightly in my seat, I glanced around, and my eyes met lovingly anxious eyes running from face to face. Now one number raised his hand, and, with a scarcely noticeable movement of his fingers, he signaled to another. And then—an answering signal. And another… I understood: these were the Guardians. I knew they were alarmed by something; the cobweb, stretched, was quivering. And within me—as in a radio receiver set on the same wave length—there was an answering quiver. On the stage, a poet read a pre-election ode, but I did not hear a single word—only the measured swaying of a hexametric pendulum, and every movement brought nearer some unknown appointed hour. I was still feverishly scanning the rows-face after face, like pages—and still failing to find the only one, the one I sought, I had to find it, quickly, for in a moment the pendulum would tick, and then…
He, it was he, of course. Below, past the stage, the rosy wing-ears slid past over the gleaming glass, the running body reflected as a dark, doubly curved S. He hurried somewhere in the tangled passages among the platforms.
S, I-330—there is some thread that links them (all the time I’ve sensed this thread between them; I still don’t know what it is; some day I’ll disentangle it). I fastened my eyes on him; like a ball of cotton he rolled farther and farther, the thread trailing behind him. Now he stopped, now…
Like a lightning-quick, high-voltage discharge: I was pierced, twisted into a knot. In my row, at no more than forty degrees from me, S stopped, bent down. I saw I-330, and next to her—the revoltingly thick-lipped, grinning R-13.
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