pages....
At first I heard behind me, behind the door, a loud voice. I recognized her voice, the voice of I-330, tense, metallic—and another one, almost inflexible, like a wooden ruler, the voice of U-. Then the door came open with a crack and both of them shot into the room. Shot is the right word.
I-330 put her hand on the back of my armchair and smiled over her shoulder but only with her teeth, at U-. I should not care to stand before such a smile.
“Listen,” she said to me, “this woman seems to have made it her business to guard you from me like a little child. Is it with your permission?”
“But he is a child. Yes! That is why he does not notice that you ... that it is only in order.... That all this is only a foul game! Yes! And it is my duty....”
For a second (in the mirror) the broken, trembling line of brows. I leaped, controlling with difficulty the other self within me, the one with the hairy fists; with difficulty, pushing every word through my teeth, I cried straight into her face, into her very gills:
“Get out of here at once! Out! At once!”
The gills swelled at first into brick-red lumps, then fell and became gray. She opened her mouth to say something but without a word she slammed it shut and went out.
I threw myself towards I-330.
“Never, never will I forgive myself! She dared! You ... but you don’t think, do you, that you, that she.... This is all because she wants to register on me but I....”
“Fortunately she will not have time for that now. Besides, even a thousand like her.... I don’t care.... I know you will not believe that thousand but only me. For after all that happened yesterday, I am all yours, all, to the very end, as you wanted it. I am in your hands; you can now at any moment....”
“What, ‘at any moment?’” (But at once I understood what. My blood rushed to my ears and cheeks.) “Don’t speak about that, you must never speak about that! The other I, my former self ... but now....”
“How do I know? Man is like a novel: up to the last page one does not know what the end will be. It would not be worth reading otherwise.”
She was stroking my head. I could not see her face but I could tell by her voice that she was looking somewhere very far into the distance; she hooked herself to that cloud which was floating silently, slowly, no one knows where to.
Suddenly she pushed me away with her hand, firmly but tenderly.
“Listen. I came to tell you that perhaps we are now ... our last days.... You know, don’t you, that all Auditoriums are to be closed after tonight?”
“Closed?”
“Yes. I passed by and saw that in all Auditoriums preparations are going on: tables; medics all in white....”
“But what does it all mean?”
“I don’t know. Nobody knows as yet. That is the worst of it. I only feel the current is on, the spark is jumping, and if not today, then tomorrow.... Yet perhaps they will not have time....”
For a long while I have ceased to understand who are they and who we. I do not understand what I want; do I want them to have or not to have enough time? One thing is clear to me: I-330 is now on the very edge, on the very edge, and in one second more....
“But it is folly,” I said. “You, versus the United State! It is the same as if you should cover the muzzle of a gun with your hands and expect that way to prevent the shot.... It is absolute folly!”
A smile.
“‘We must all go insane,—as soon as possible go insane.’ It was yesterday, do you remember?”
Yes, she was right; I had even written it down. Consequently it really took place. In silence I looked into her face. At that moment the dark cross was especially distinct.
“I-, dear, before it is too late.... If you want ... I’ll leave everything, I’ll forget everything, and we’ll go there beyond the Wall, to them.... I do not even know who they are....”
She shook her head. Through the dark windows of her eyes I saw within her a flaming oven, sparks, tongues of flame and above them a heap of dry, tarry wood. It was clear to me that it was too late, my words could be of no avail.
She stood up. She would soon leave. Perhaps these were the last days, or the last minutes.... I grasped her hand.
“No, stay a little while longer ... for the sake ... for the sake....”
She slowly lifted my hand towards the light, my hairy paw which I detest. I wanted to withdraw it but she held it tightly.
“Your hand.... You undoubtedly don’t know and very few do know, that women from here occasionally used to fall in love with them. Probably there are in you a few drops of that blood of the sun and the woods. Perhaps that is why I....”
Silence. It was so strange that because of that silence, because of an emptiness, of nothing, my heart should beat so wildly. I cried.
“Ah, you shall not go yet! You shall not go until you tell me about them ... for you love ... them, and I do not know even who they are, nor where they come from.”
“Who are they? The half we have lost. H2 and O, two halves; but in order to get water, H2O, creeks, seas, waterfalls, storms, it is necessary that those two halves be united.”
I distinctly remember every movement of hers. I remember she picked up a glass triangle from my table and while talking she pressed its sharp edge against her cheek; a white scar would appear; then it would fill again and become pink and disappear. And it is strange that I cannot remember her words, especially the beginning of the story. I remember only different images and colors. At first, I remember, she told me about the Two Hundred Years’ War. Red color.... On the green of the grass, on the dark clay, on the pale blue of the snow,—everywhere red ditches that would not become dry. Then yellow; yellow grass burned by the sun, yellow naked wild-men and wild dogs side by side near swollen cadavers of dogs or perhaps of men. All this, certainly beyond the Walls, for the City was already the victor and it possessed already our present-day petroleum food. And at night ... down from the sky ... heavy black folds. The folds would swing over the woods, the villages,—blackish-red slow columns of smoke. A dull moaning; endless strings of people driven into the City to be saved by force and to be whipped into happiness.
“... You knew almost all this.”
“Yes, almost.”
“But you did not know and only a few did, that a small part of them remained together and stayed to live beyond the Wall. Being naked, they went into the woods. They learned there from the trees, beasts, birds, flowers and sun. Hair soon grew over their bodies, but under that hair they preserved their warm red blood. With you it was worse; numbers covered your bodies; numbers crawled over you like lice. One ought to strip you of everything, and naked you ought to be driven into the woods. You ought to learn how to tremble with fear, with joy, with wild anger, with cold; you should pray to fire! And we Mephi, we want....”
“Oh, wait a minute! ‘Mephi,’
