The dress was of light silk. I could see the stockings, very long, much higher than the knees. And the bare throat, and the shadow between…
“Look, you are clearly trying to be original, but don’t you…”
“Clearly,” she interrupted me, “to be original is to be in some way distinct from others. Hence, to be original is to violate equality. And that which in the language of the ancients was called ‘being banal’ is with us merely the fulfillment of our duty. Because…”
“Yes, yes! Precisely.” I could not restrain myself. “And there is no reason for you to… to…”
She went over to the statue of the snub-nosed poet and, drawing down the blinds over the wild flame of her eyes, blaring within her, behind her windows, she said a very sensible thing (this time, it seems to me, entirely in earnest, perhaps to mollify me). “Don’t you find it astonishing that once upon a time people tolerated such characters? And not only tolerated, but worshiped them? What a slavish spirit! Don’t you think?”
“It’s clear… I mean…” (That damned “It’s clear” again!)
“Oh, yes, I understand. But actually, these poets were masters far more powerful than their crowned kings. Why weren’t they isolated, exterminated? With us…”
’Yes, with us…” I began, and suddenly she burst out laughing. I could see that laughter with my eyes: the resonant sharp curve of it, as pliantly resistant as a whip.
I remember, I trembled all over. Just to seize her, and… I cannot recall what I wanted to do. But I had to do something, anything. Mechanically I opened my golden badge, glanced at the watch. Ten to seventeen.
“Don’t you think it’s time?” I said as politely as I could.
“And if I asked you to remain here with me?”
“Look, do you… do you know what you are saying? In ten minutes I must be in the auditorium…”
“… and all numbers must attend the prescribed courses in art and sciences,” she said in my voice. Then she raised the blinds, looked up; the fireplace blazed through the dark windows. “I know a doctor at the Medical Office, he is registered with me. If I ask him, he will give you a certificate that you were sick. Well?”
Now I understood. At last, I understood where that whole game of hers was leading.
“So that’s it! And do you know that, like any honest number, I must, in fact, immediately go to the Office of the Guardians and…”
“And not ‘in fact’?” – sharp smile-bite. “I am terribly curious – will you go to the Office, or won’t you?”
“Are you staying?” I put my hand on the doorknob. It was brass, and I heard my voice – it was also brass.
“One moment… May I?”
She went to the telephone, asked for some number – I was too upset to remember it – and cried out, “I shall wait for you in the Ancient House. Yes, yes, alone…”
I turned the cold brass knob.
’You will permit me to take the aero?”
“Yes, certainly! Of course…”
Outside, in the sunshine, at the entrance, the old woman was dozing like a vegetable. Again it was astonishing that her closegrown mouth opened and she spoke.
“And your… did she remain there by herself?”
“By herself.”
The old woman’s mouth grew together again. She shook her head. Evidently, even her failing brain understood the full absurdity and danger of the woman’s conduct.
Exactly at seventeen I was at the lecture. And it was only here that I suddenly realized I had said an untruth to the old woman: I-330 was not there by herself now. Perhaps it was this – that I had unwittingly lied to the old woman – that tormented me and interfered with my listening. Yes, she was not by herself: that was the trouble.
After half past twenty-one I had a free hour. I could go to the Office of the Guardians right there and then and turn in my report. But I felt extremely tired after that stupid incident And then – the legal time limit for reporting was two days. I would do it tomorrow; I still had twenty-four hours.
Seventh Entry
Topics: An Eyelash. Taylor. Henbane and Lilies of the Valley
Night. Green, orange, blue. Red royal instrument. Orange-yellow dress. The bronze Buddha. Suddenly he raises his heavy bronze eyelids, and sap begins to flow from them, from Buddha. And sap from the yellow dress, and drops of sap trickling down the mirror, and from the large bed, and the children’s beds, and now I myself, flowing with sap – and some strange, sweet, mortal terror…
I woke: soft, bluish light, glimmer of glass walls, glass chairs and table. This calmed me; my heart stopped hammering. Sap, Buddha… what nonsense! Clearly I must be ill. I have never dreamed before. They say that with the ancients dreaming was a perfectly ordinary, normal occurrence. But of course, their whole life was a dreadful whirling carousel – green, orange, Buddhas, sap. We, however, know that dreams are a serious psychic disease. And I know that until this moment my brain has been a chronometrically exact gleaming mechanism without a single speck of dust. But now… Yes, precisely: I feel some alien body in my brain, like the finest eyelash in the eye. You do not feel your body, but that eye with the lash in it – you can’t forget it for a second…
The brisk crystal bell over my head: seven o’clock, time to get up. On the right and the left, through the glass walls, I see myself, my room, my clothes, my movements – repeated a thousand times over. This is bracing: you feel yourself a part of a great, powerful, single entity. And the precise beauty of it – not a single superfluous gesture, curve, or turn.
Yes, this Taylor was unquestionably the greatest genius of the ancients. True, his thought did not reach far enough to extend his method to all of life, to every step, to the twenty-four hours of every day. He was unable to integrate his system from one hour to twenty-four. Still, how could they write whole libraries of books about some Kant, yet scarcely notice Taylor, that prophet who was able to see ten centuries ahead?
Breakfast is over. The Hymn of the One State is sung in unison. In perfect rhythm, by fours, we walk to the elevators. The faint hum of motors, and quickly – down, down, down, with a slight sinking of the heart…
Then suddenly again that stupid dream – or some implicit function of the dream. Oh, yes, the other day – the descent in the aero. However, all that is over. Period. And it is good that I was so decisive and sharp with her.
In the car of the underground I sped to the place where the graceful body of the Integral, still motionless, not yet animated by fire, gleamed in the sun. Shutting my eyes, I dreamed in formulas. Once more I calculated in my mind the initial velocity needed to tear the Integral away from the earth. Each fraction of a second the mass of the Integral would change (expenditure of the explosive fuel). The equation was very complex, with transcendental values.
As through a dream – in that firm world of numbers – someone sat down, next to me, jostled me slightly, said, “Sorry.”
I opened my eyes a little. At first glance (association with the Integral), something
