How would I be looking at this mighty glass monster if everything had remained as yesterday? If I knew that tomorrow at twelve I would betray it… yes, betray…
Cautiously, someone touched my elbow from the back. I turned: the platelike flat face of the Second Builder.
“You know it already?” he said.
“What? The Operation? Yes? How strangely— everything, everything—at once…”
“No, not that: the trial flight has been postponed to the day after tomorrow. All because of this Operation… And we were rushing, doing our best—and all for nothing…”
“All because of this Operation…” What a ridiculous, stupid man. Sees nothing beyond his flat face. If he only knew that, were it not for the Operation, he would be locked up in a glass box tomorrow at twelve, rushing about, trying to climb the walls…
In my room, at half past fifteen. I entered and saw U. She sat at my table—bony, straight, rigid, her right cheek set firmly on her hand. She must have waited long, for, when she jumped up to meet me, five dents remained on her cheek from her fingers.
For a second I recalled that wretched morning, and herself there, raging by the table, next to I-330… But only for a second, and then the memory was washed away by today’s sun. It was like entering the room on a bright day and absently turning the switch: the bulb lights up, but is invisible—pallid, absurd, unneeded…
Without a thought, I held my hand out to her, I forgave her everything. She seized both of my hands and pressed them hard in her own bony ones. Her sagging cheeks quivering with excitement like some ancient ornaments, she said, “I have been waiting… Only for a moment… I only wanted to say how happy I am, how glad for you! You understand—tomorrow, or the day after, you will be well—completely well, newly born…
I saw some sheets of paper on the table—the last pages of my notes. They lay there as I left them in the evening. If she had seen what I had written there… However, it no longer mattered; now it was merely history, ridiculously distant, like something seen through the wrong end of binoculars…
“Yes,” I said. “And you know—just now I was walking down the street, and there was a man before me, and his shadow on the pavement. And imagine, the shadow glowed. And it seems to me—I am certain—that tomorrow there will be no shadows. No man, no object will cast a shadow… The sun will shine through everything…”
She spoke gently and sternly. “You are a dreamer! I would not permit the children at school to speak like that…”
And she went on about the children—how she had taken them all to the Operation, and how they had had to be tied up there… and that “love must be ruthless, yes, ruthless,” and that she thought she would at last decide…
She smoothed the gray blue cloth over her knees, quickly and silently plastered me over with her smile, and left.
Fortunately, the sun had not yet stopped today; it was still running, and now it was sixteen. I knocked at the door, my heart beating…
“Come in!”
And I was down on the floor near her chair, embracing her legs, head thrown back and looking into her eyes—one, then the other—and in each one seeing myself, in marvelous captivity…
And then, outside the wall, a storm. Clouds darkening—more and more like cast iron. Let them! My head could not contain the flow of riotous, wild words—spilling over the rim. I spoke aloud, and, together with the sun, we were flying somewhere… But now we knew where—and behind us, planets—planets spraying flame, inhabited by fiery, singing flowers—and mute, blue planets, where sentient, rational stones were organized into societies—planets which, like our earth, had reached the summit of absolute, and hundred per cent happiness…
Suddenly, from above, “But don’t you think that the society at the summit is precisely a society organized of stones?” The triangle of her eyebrows grew sharper, darker. “And happiness… Well, after all, desires torment us, don’t they? And, clearly, happiness is when there are no more desires, not one… What a mistake, what ridiculous prejudice it’s been to have marked happiness always with a plus sign. Absolute happiness should, of course, carry a minus sign—the divine minus.”
I remember I muttered in confusion, “Absolute minus? Minus 273°…”
“Precisely—minus 273°. Somewhat chilly, but wouldn’t that in itself prove that we’re at the summit?”
As once, a long time ago, she somehow spoke for me, through me, unfolding my ideas to the very end. But there was something sharply frightening in it—I could not bear it, and with an effort I forced a “no” out of sayself.
“No,” I said. “You… you are mocking me…”
She laughed, loudly—too loudly. Quickly, in a second, she laughed herself to some unseen edge, stumbled, fell… A silence.
She rose and placed her hands upon my shoulders, and looked at me slowly and long. Then pulled me to herself—and there was nothing, only her hot, sharp lips.
“Farewell!”
It came from far, from above, and took a long time to reach me—a minute, perhaps, or two.
“What do you mean, ‘Farewell’?”
“Well, you are sick, you have committed crimes because of me—has it not been a torment to you? And now, the Operation—and you will cure yourself of me. And that means—farewell.”
“No,” I cried out.
A pitilessly sharp, dark triangle on white: “What? You don’t want happiness?”
My head was splitting; two logical trains collided, climbing upon each other, crashing, splintering…
“Well, I am waiting. Make your choice: the Operation and one hundred per cent happiness— or…”
“I cannot… without you. I want nothing without you,” I said, or merely thought—I am not sure—but she heard.
“Yes, I know,” she answered. And, her hands still on my shoulders, her eyes still holding mine, “Until tomorrow, then. Tomorrow, at twelve. You remember?”
“No, it’s been postponed for a day… The day after tomorrow…”
“All the better for us. At twelve, the day after tomorrow…”
I walked alone through the twilit street. The wind was whirling, driving, carrying me like a slip of paper. Fragments of cast-iron sky flew and flew-they had another day, two days to hurtle through infinity… The unifs of passersby brushed against me, but I walked alone. I saw it clearly: everyone was saved, but there was no salvation for me. I did not want salvation…
Thirty-second Entry
TOPICS:
I Do Not Believe
Tractors
A Human Splinter
Do you believe that you will die? Yes, man is mortal, I am a man: hence… No, this is not what I mean. I know you know this. I am asking: have you ever really believed it; believed it totally, not with your mind, but with your body; have you ever felt that one day the fingers holding this very page will be icy, yellow…
No, of course you don’t believe it—and this is why you have not jumped from the tenth floor down to the pavement; this is why you are still eating, turning the page, shaving, smiling, writing…
The same—yes, exactly the same—is true of me today. I know that this little black arrow on the dock will crawl down here, below, to midnight, will slowly rise again, will step across some final line—and the incredible tomorrow will be here. I know this, but somehow I also don’t believe it. Or, perhaps, it seems to me that twenty-four hours are twenty-four years. And this is why I can still do something, hurry somewhere, answer questions, climb the ladder to the Integral. I still feel it rocking on the water; I know I must grasp the handrail and feel the cold glass under my hand. I see the transparent, living cranes bend their long, birdlike necks, stretch their beaks, and tenderly, solicitously feed the Integral with the terrible explosive food for its motors. And below, on the river, I clearly see the blue, watery veins and nodes, swollen with the wind. But all of this is quite apart from me, extraneous, flat—like a scheme on a sheet of paper. And it is strange that the flat, paper face of the
Second Builder is suddenly speaking.
“Well, then? How much fuel shall we take for the motors? If we think of three… or three and a half hours…”
Before me—projected on the blueprint—my hand with the calculator, the logarithmic dial at fifteen.
“Fifteen tons. No, better load… yes—load a hundred…”
Because, after all, I do know that tomorrow…
And I see, from somewhere at the side: my hand with the dial starts to tremble faintly.
“A hundred? Why so much? That would be for a week. A week? Much longer!”
“Anything might happen… Who knows…”
I know…
The wind howls; the air is tightly filled with something invisible, to the very top. I find it hard to breathe, hard to walk. And slowly, with an effort, without stopping for a second, the arrow crawls upon the face of the clock on the Accumulator Tower at the end of the avenue. The spire is in the clouds—dim, blue, howling in muted tones, sucking electricity. The trumpets of the Music Plant howl.
As ever, in rows, four abreast But the rows are somehow unsolid; perhaps it is the wind that makes them waver, bend—more and more. Now they have collided with something on the corner, they flow back, and there is a dense, congealed, immobile cluster, breathing rapidly. Suddenly everyone is craning his neck.
“Look! No, look—that way, quick!”
“It’s they! It’s they!”
“… I’ll never… Better put my head straight into the Machine…”
“Sh-sh! You’re mad…”
In the auditorium at the corner the door is gaping wide, and a slow, heavy column of some fifty people emerges. “People?” No, that does not describe them. These are not feet—they are stiff, heavy wheels, moved by some invisible transmission belt These are not people—they are humanoid tractors. Over their heads a white banner is flapping in the wind, a golden sun embroidered on it; between the sun’s rays, the words: “We are the first! We have already undergone the Operation! Everybody, follow us!”
Slowly, irresistibly, they plow through the crowd. And it is clear that if there were a wall, a tree, a house in their way, they would without halting plow through the wall, the tree, the house. Now they are in the middle of the avenue. Hands locked, they spread out into a chain, facing us. And we—a tense knot, necks stretched, heads bristling forward—wait. Clouds. Whistling wind.
Suddenly the flanks of the chain, on the right and the left, bend quickly and rush upon us, faster, faster, like a heavy machine speeding downhill. They lock us in the ring—and toward the gaping doors, into the doors, inside…
Someone’s piercing scream: “They’re driving us in! Run!”
And everybody rushes. Just near the wall there is still a narrow living gateway, and everyone streams there, head forward—heads instantly sharp as wedges, sharp elbows, shoulders, sides. Like a jet of water, compressed inside a fire hose, they spread fanlike, and all around—stamping feet, swinging arms, unifs. From somewhere for an instant—a glimpse of a double curved, S-like body, translucent wing-ears—and he is gone, as though swallowed by the earth, and I am alone, in the midst of flashing arms and feet—I run…
I dive into a doorway for a moment’s breath, my back pressed to the door—and instantly, a tiny human splinter—as if driven to me by the wind.
“I was… following you… all the time… I do not want to—you understand—I do not want to. I agree…”
Round, tiny hands upon my sleeve, round blue eyes: it is O. She seems to slide down along the wall and slump onto the ground. Shrunk into a little ball below, on the cold stair, and I bend over her, stroking her head, her face—my hands are wet. As though I were very big, and she—altogether tiny—a tiny part of my own self. This is very different from die feeling for I-330. It seems to me that something like it may have existed among the ancients toward their private children.
Below, through the hands covering the face, just audibly: “Every night I… I cannot… if they cure me… Every night—alone, in darkness—I think about him: what he will be like, how I will… There will be nothing for me to live by—you understand? And you must, you must…”
A preposterous feeling, but I know: yes, I must. Preposterous, because this duty of mine is yet another crime. Preposterous, because white cannot at the same time be black, duty and crime cannot coincide. Or is there no black or white in life, and the color depends only on the initial logical premise? And if the premise was that I unlawfully gave her a child…
“Very well-but don’t, don’t…” I say. “You understand, I must take you to I-330—as I offered that time—so that she…”
“Yes.” Quietly, without taking her hands from her face.
I helped her to get up. And silently, each with our own thoughts—who knows, perhaps about the same thing—along the darkening street, among mute, leaden houses, through the taut, swishing branches of wind…
At a certain transparent, tense point, I heard through the whistling of the wind familiar, slapping steps. At the corner, I glanced back, and in the midst of the rushing, upside-down clouds reflected in the dim glass of the pavement I saw S. Immediately, my hands were not my own, swinging out of time, and I was telling O loudly that tomorrow—yes, tomorrow—the Integral would go up for the first time, and it would be something utterly unprecedented, uncanny, miraculous.
O gave me an astonished, round, blue stare, looked at my loudly, senselessly swinging arms. But I did not let her say a word—I shouted on and on. And there, within me, separately—heard only by myself—the feverish, humming, hammering thought, No, I must not… I must somehow… I must not lead him to I-330…
Instead of turning left, I turned right. The bridge offered its obedient, slavishly bent back to the three of us—to me, O, and to S—behind us. The brightly lit buildings on the other side scattered lights into the water, the lights broke into thousands of feverishly leaping sparks, sprayed with frenzied white foam. The wind hummed like a thick bass string stretched somewhere low overhead. And through the bass, behind us all the time…
The house where I live. At the door O stopped, began to say something. “No! You promised…”
I did not let her finish. Hurriedly I pushed her into the entrance, and we were in the lobby, inside. Over the control desk, the familiar, excitedly quivering, sagging cheeks. A dense cluster of numbers in heated argument; heads looking over the banister from the second floor; people running singly down the stairs. But I would see about that later, later… Now I quickly drew O into the opposite corner, sat down, back against the wall (behind the wall I saw, gliding back and forth, a dark, large-headed shadow), and took out a note pad.
O slowly sagged into her chair—as though her body were melting, evaporating under her unif, and there were only an empty unif and empty eyes that sucked you into their blue emptiness.
Wearily, “Why did you bring me here? You lied to me!”
“No… Be quiet! Look that way—you see, behind the wall?”
“Yes, A shadow.”
“He follows me all the time… I cannot. You understand—I must not. I’ll write two words—you’ll take the note and go alone. I know he will remain here.”
The body stirred again under the unif, the belly rounded out a little; on the cheeks—a faint, rosy dawn.
I slipped the note into her cold fingers, firmly pressed her hand, dipped my eyes for the last time into her blue eyes.
“Good-by! Perhaps, some day we shall…” She took away her hand. Stooping, she walked off slowly… Two steps, and quickly she turned— and was again next to me. Her lips moved. With her eyes, her lips, all of herself—a single word, saying a single word to me—and what an unbearable smile, what pain…
And then, a bent tiny human splinter in the doorway, a tiny shadow behind the wall—without looking back, quickly, ever more quickly…
I went over to U’s desk. Excitedly, indignantly inflating her gills, she said to me, “You understand—they all seem to have lost their heads! He
insists that he has seen some human creature near the Ancient House—naked and all covered with fur…”
From the dense cluster of heads, a voice: “Yes! I’ll say it again—I saw it, yes.”
“Well, what do you think of that? The man’s delirious!”
And this “delirious” of hers was so sure, so unbending that I asked myself: Perhaps all of it, all that’s been happening to me and around me lately is really nothing but delirium?
But then I glanced at my hairy hands, and I remembered: “There must be a drop of forest blood in you… Perhaps that’s why I…”
No—fortunately, it is not delirium. No— unfortunately, it is not delirium.
Thirty-third Entry
TOPICS:
No outline, hurriedly, the last—
The day has come.
Quick, the newspaper. Perhaps it… I read it with my eyes (precisely—my eyes are now like a pen, a calculator, which you hold in your hands and feel—it is apart from you, an instrument).
In bold type, across the front page:
The enemies of happiness are not sleeping. Hold on to your happiness with both hands! Tomorrow all work will halt—all numbers shall report for the Operation. Those who fail to do so will be subject to the Benefactor’s Machine.
Tomorrow! Can there be—will there be a tomorrow?
By daily habit, I stretch my hand (an instrument) to the bookshelf to add today’s Gazette to the others, in the binding stamped with the gold design. And on the way: What for? What does it matter? I shall never return to this room.
The newspaper drops to the floor. And I stand up and look around the room, the whole room; I hastily take with me, gather up into an invisible valise, all that I’m sorry to leave behind. The table. The books. The chair. I-330 sat in it that day, and I—below, on the floor… The bed…
Then, for a minute or two—absurdly waiting for some miracle. Perhaps the telephone will ring, perhaps she’ll say that…
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