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 rushing into space: a head—rushing because at either side of it stood out pink wing-ears. Then the curve at the heavy back of the head, the stooped shoulders— double-curved—the letter S…And through the glass walls of my algebraic world, again that eyelash—something unpleasant that I must do today.

“Oh, no, it’s nothing. Certainly.” I smiled at my neighbor, bowing to him. The number S-4711 glinted from his badge. So this was why I had associated him from the very first with the letter S: a visual impression, unrecorded by the conscious mind. His eyes glinted—two sharp little drills, revolving rapidly, boring deeper and deeper—in a moment they would reach the very bottom and see what I would not… even to myself…

That troubling eyelash suddenly became entirely clear to me. He was one of them, one of the Guardians, and it was simplest to tell him everything at once, without delay.

“You know, I was at the Ancient House yesterday…” My voice was strange, somehow flattened out I tried to clear my throat.

“Why, that’s excellent. It gives material for very instructive conclusions.”

“But, you see, I was not alone, I accompanied number I-330, and…”

’I-330? I am delighted for you. A very interesting, talented woman. She has many admirers.”

But then, perhaps, he too? That time during the walk… And he might even be registered for her?

No, it was impossible, unthinkable to talk to him about it; that was clear.

“Oh, yes, yes! Of course, of course! Very.” I smiled more and more broadly and foolishly, and I felt: This smile makes me look naked, stupid.

The little gimlets had reached the very bottom, then, whirling rapidly, slipped back into his eyes. With a double-edged smile, S nodded to me and slid away toward the exit.

I hid behind my newspaper—it seemed to me that everyone was staring at me—and instantly forgot about the eyelash, the gimlets, everything. The news I read was so upsetting that it drove all else out of my mind. There was but one short line:

“According to reliable sources, new traces have been discovered of the elusive organization which aims at liberation from the beneficent yoke of the State.”

“Liberation?” Amazing, the extent to which criminal instincts persist in human nature. I use the word “criminal” deliberately. Freedom and crime are linked as indivisibly as… well, as the motion of the aero and its speed: when its speed equals zero, it does not move; when man’s freedom equals zero, he commits no crimes. That is clear. The only means of ridding man of crime is ridding him of freedom. And now, just as we have gotten rid of it (on the cosmic scale, centuries are, of course, no more than “just”), some wretched halfwits…

No, I cannot understand why I did not go to the Office of the Guardians yesterday, immediately. Today, after sixteen o’clock, I shall go without fail.

At sixteen-ten I came out, and immediately saw O on the corner—all pink with pleasure at the meeting. “She, now, has a simple, round brain.

How fortunate: she will understand and support me… But no, I needed no support, I had made a firm decision…

The March rang out harmoniously from the trumpets of the Music Plant—the same daily March. What ineffable delight in this daily repetition, its constancy, its mirror clarity!

She seized my hand. “Let’s walk.” The round blue eyes wide open to me—blue windows—and I could step inside without stumbling against anything; nothing there—that is, nothing extraneous, unnecessary.

“No, no walk today. I must…” I told her where I had to go. To my astonishment, the rosy circle of her lips compressed itself into a crescent, its horns down, as if she had tasted something sour. I exploded.

“You female numbers seem to be incurably riddled with prejudices. You are totally incapable of thinking abstractly. You will pardon me, but it is plain stupidity.”

“You are going to the spies---Ugh! And I have brought you a spray of lilies of the valley from the Botanical Museum…”

“Why this ‘and I’—why the ‘and’? Just like a woman.” Angrily (I confess) I snatched her lilies of the valley. “All right, here they are, your lilies of the valley! Well? Smell them—it is pleasant, yes? Then why can’t you follow just this much logic? Lilies of the valley smell good. Very well. But you cannot speak of smell itself, of the concept ‘smell’ as either good or bad. You cannot, can you? There is the fragrance of lilies of the valley—and there is the vile stench of henbane: both are smells. There were spies in the ancient state—and there are spies in ours… yes, spies. I am not afraid of words. But it is clear that those spies were henbane, and ours are lilies of the valley. Yes, lilies of the valley!”

The pink crescent trembled. I realize now that it only seemed to me—but at that moment I was sure she would burst out laughing. And I shouted still more loudly, “Yes, lilies of the valley. And there is nothing funny about it, nothing at all.”

The smooth round spheres of heads floated by and turned to look. O took me gently by the arm. “You are so strange today… You are not ill?”

The dream—yellow—Buddha… It instantly became clear to me that I must go to the Medical Office.

“You are right, I’m ill,” I cried happily (an incomprehensible contradiction—there was nothing to be happy about).

“Then you must see a doctor at once. You understand yourself—it is your duty to be well. It would be ridiculous for me to try to prove it to you.”

“My dear O, of course you are right. Absolutely right!”

I did not go to the Office of the Guardians. It could not be helped, I had to go to the Medical Office; they kept me there until seventeen.

And in the evening (it was all the same now—in the evening the Office of the Guardians was closed) O came to me. The shades were not lowered. We were solving problems from an ancient mathematics textbook: it is very calming and helps to clear the mind. O-90 sat over the exercise book, her head bent to her left shoulder,’ her tongue diligently pushing out her left cheek. This was so childlike, so enchanting. And within me everything was pleasant, clear, and simple.

She left. I was alone. I took two deep breaths— this is very beneficial before bedtime. Then suddenly, an unscheduled smell, and again something disturbing… Soon I found it: a spray of lilies of the valley tucked into my bed. Immediately, everything swirled up, rose from the bottom. No, she was simply tactless to leave it there. Very well, I did not go! But it was not my fault that I was sick.

Eighth Entry

TOPICS:

Irrational Root

Triangle

R-13

How long ago it was—during my school years— when I first encountered V- l. A vivid memory, as though cut out of time: the brightly lit spherical hall, hundreds of round boys’ heads, and Plapa, our mathematics teacher. We nicknamed him Plapa. He was badly worn out, coming apart, and when the monitor plugged him in, the loudspeakers would always start with “Pla-pla-pla-tsh-sh sh,” and only then go on to the day’s lesson. One day Plapa told us about irrational numbers, and, I remember, I cried, banged my fists on the table, and screamed, “I don’t want V”!! Take V-1 out of me!” This irrational number had grown into me like something foreign, alien, terrifying. It devoured me—it was impossible to conceive, to render harmless, because it was outside ratio.

And now again V-1. I’ve just glanced through my notes, and it is clear to me: I have been dodg-ing, lying to myself—merely to avoid seeing the V-1 — It’s nonsense that I was sick, and all the rest of it. I could have gone there. A week ago, I am sure, I would have gone without a moment’s hesitation. But now? Why?

Today, too. Exactly at sixteen-ten I stood before the sparkling glass wall. Above me, the golden, sunny, pure gleam of the letters on the sign over the Office. Inside, through the glass, I saw the long line of bluish unifs. Faces glowing like icon lamps in an ancient church: they had come to perform a great deed, to surrender upon the altar of the One State their loved ones, their friends, themselves. And I—I longed to join them, to be with them. And could not: my feet were welded deep into the glass slabs of the pavement, and I stood staring dully, incapable of moving from the spot.

“Ah, our mathematician! Dreaming?”

I started. Black eyes, lacquered with laughter; thick, Negroid lips. The poet R-13, my old friend— and with him, pink O.

I turned angrily. If they had not intruded, I think I finally would have torn the V-1 out of myself with the flesh, and entered the Office.

“Not dreaming. Admiring, if you wish!” I answered sharply.

“Certainly, certainly! By rights, my good friend, you should not be a mathematician; you ought to be a poet! Yes! Really, why not transfer to us poets, eh? How would you like that? I can arrange it in a moment, eh?”

R-13 speaks in a rush of words; they spurt out in a torrent and spray comes flying from his thick lips. Every “p” is a fountain; “poets”—a fountain.

“I have served and will continue to serve knowledge,” I frowned. I neither like nor understand jokes, and R-13 has the bad habit of joking.

“Oh, knowledge! This knowledge of yours is only cowardice. Don’t argue, it’s true. You’re simply trying to enclose infinity behind a wall, and you are terrified to glance outside the wall. Yes! Just try and take a look, and you will shut your eyes. Yes!”

“Walls are the foundation of all human…” I began.

R spurted at me like a fountain. O laughed roundly, rosily. I waved them off—laugh if you please, it doesn’t matter to me. I had other things to think about I had to do something to expunge, to drown out that damned V-1.

“Why not come up to my room,” I suggested. “We can do some mathematical problems.” I thought of that quiet hour last evening—perhaps it would be quiet today as well.

O glanced at R-13, then at me with clear, round eyes. Her cheeks flushed faintly with the delicate, exciting hue of our coupons.

“But today I… Today I am assigned to him,” she nodded at R, “and in the evening he is busy… So that…”

R’s wet, lacquered lips mumbled good-humoredly “Oh, half an hour will be enough for us. Right, O? I don’t care for your problems, let’s go up to my place for a while.”

I was afraid to remain alone with myself, or rather, with that new, foreign being who merely by some odd chance had my number—D-503. And I went with them to R’s place. True, he is not precise, not rhythmical, he has a kind of inside-out, mocking logic; nevertheless, we are friends. Three years ago we had chosen together the charming, rosy O. This bound us even more firmly than our school years.

Then, up in R’s room. Everything would seem to be exactly the same as mine: the Table, the glass chairs, the closet, the bed. But the moment R entered, he moved one chair, another—and all planes became displaced, everything slipped out of the established proportions, became non-Euclidean. R is the same as ever. In Taylor and in mathematics he was always at the bottom of the class.

We recalled old Plapa, the little notes of thanks we boys would paste all over his glass legs (we were very fond of him). We reminisced about our law instructor.[3]This instructor had an extraordinarily powerful voice; it was as though blasts of violent wind blew from the loud-speaker—and we children yelled the texts after him in deafening chorus. We also recalled how the unruly R-13 once stuffed his speaker with chewed-up paper, and every text came with a shot of a spitball. R was punished, of course; what he had done was bad, of course, but now we laughed heartily—our whole triangle—and I confess, I did too.

“What if he had been alive, like the ancient teachers, eh? Wouldn’t that have been…”—a spray of words from the thick lips.

Sunlight—through the ceiling, the walls; sun— from above, from the sides, reflected from below. O sat on R’s lap, and tiny drops of sunlight gleamed in her blue eyes. I felt warmed, somehow, restored. The V-1 died down, did not stir…

“And how is your Integral? We shall soon be setting off to educate the inhabitants of other planets, eh? You’d better rush it, or else we poets will turn out so much material that even your Integral will not be able to lift it. Every day from eight to eleven…” R shook his head, scratched it The back of his head is like a square little valise, attached from behind (I recalled the ancient painting, “In the Carriage”).

“Are you writing for the Integral, too?” I was interested. “What about? Today, for example?”

“Today, about nothing. I was busy with something else…” His ‘b’s spurted out at me.

“What?”

R made a grimace. “What, what! Well, if you wish, a court sentence. I versified a sentence. An idiot, one of our poets, too… For two years he sat next to me, and everything seemed all right Then suddenly, how do you do! ‘I am a genius,’ he says, ‘a genius, above the law.’ And scribbled such a mess---Eh! Better not speak about it…”

The thick lips hung loosely, the lacquer vanished from his eyes. R-13 jumped up, turned, and stared somewhere through the wall. I looked at his tightly locked little valise, thinking, What is he turning over there, in that little box of his?

A moment of awkward, asymmetrical silence. It was unclear to me what the trouble was, but something was wrong.

“Fortunately, the antediluvian ages of all those Shakespeares and Dostoyevskys, or whatever you call them, are gone,” I said, deliberately loudly.

R turned his face to me. The words still rushed out of him like spray, but it seemed to me that the merry shine was no longer in his eyes.

’Yes, my dearest mathematician, fortunately, fortunately, fortunately! We are the happiest arithmetical mean… As you mathematicians say —integration from zero to infinity, from a cretin to Shakespeare… yes!”

I do not know why—it seemed completely irrelevant—but I recalled the other one, her tone; the finest thread seemed to extend from her to R. (What was it?) Again the V-1 began to stir. I opened my badge—it was twenty-five minutes to seventeen. They had forty-five minutes left for their pink coupon.

“Well, I must go…” I kissed O, shook hands with R, and went out to the elevator.

In the street, when I had already crossed to the other side, I glanced back: in the bright, sun-permeated glass hulk of the building squares of bluish-gray, opaque drawn shades could be seen here and there—squares of rhythmic, Taylorized happiness. On the seventh floor I found R-13’s square; he had already drawn the blind.

Dear O… Dear R… In him there is also (I don’t know why “also,” but let my hand write as it will)—in him there is also something not entirely clear to me. And yet, he, I, and O—we are a triangle, perhaps not equilateral, but a triangle nonetheless. To put it in the language of our ancestors (perhaps, my planetary readers, this language is more comprehensible to you), we are a family. And it is so good occasionally, if only briefly, to relax, to rest, to enclose yourself in a simple, strong triangle from all that…

Ninth Entry

TOPICS:

Liturgy