The Most Difficult Love

Yesterday was her day, and once again she did not come, and once again she sent an inarticulate note, explaining nothing. But I am calm, I am completely calm. If nevertheless I follow the note’s dictates, if I take down her coupon to the controller on duty and then, lowering the shades, sit in my room alone, it is not because I am unable to act against her wishes. Ridiculous! Of course not It is simply because, protected by the shades from all the plaster-healing smiles, I can quietly write these pages.

That is one. Second, I am afraid that if I lose I-330, I will also lose what is perhaps the only key to the disclosure of all the unknown quantities (the incident of the closet, my temporary death, and so on). And, even simply as the author of these notes, I feel that I am duty-bound to find the answers. Not to mention the fact that all unknowns are organically inimical to man, and homo sapiens is human in the full sense of the word only when his grammar is entirely free of question marks, when it has nothing but exclamation points, periods, and commas.

And so, guided, it seems to me, precisely by an author’s obligation, I took an aero today at sixteen and proceeded once more to the Ancient House. I flew against a strong wind. The aero plowed with difficulty through the airy thickets, their invisible branches swishing and whipping at it The city beneath me seemed built entirely of blue blocks of ice. Suddenly—a cloud, a swift slanting shadow, and the ice turned leaden, swelled as the ice on a river in springtime, when you are standing on the bank and waiting: a moment, and everything will burst, spill over, whirl, and rush downstream. But minutes pass, and the ice still holds; and you feel as though you yourself were swelling, and your heart beats faster, faster, with mounting disquiet (But why am I writing all this, and whence these strange sensations? For there is surely no icebreaker capable of crushing the most transparent, most enduring crystal of our life…).

There was no one at the entrance to the Ancient House. I walked around it and found the old gatekeeper near the Green Wall. Her hand shielding her eyes, she was looking up. There, above the Wall—the sharp black triangles of some birds. Screaming, they dashed themselves against the firm, invisible barrier of electric waves, recoiled, and—back again over the Wall.

I saw their slanting shadows glide swiftly over her dark, wrinkled face, her swift glance at me.

“There’s no one, no one here! No one! And no need to go in. No…”

What does she mean, no need? And what a strange notion—regarding me only as someone’s shadow!

What if all of them are only my shadows? Was it not I who populated with them all these pages—just recently no more than white rectangular deserts? Without me, would they ever be seen by those whom I shall lead behind me along the narrow paths of lines?

Naturally, I said nothing of all this to her. From my own experience I know that the crudest thing is to make a person doubt his own reality, his three-dimensional—not any other—reality. I merely told her dryly that her job was to open the door, and she let me into the courtyard.

Empty. Quiet. Wind outside, behind the walls, distant as the day when, shoulder to shoulder, two as one, we came out from below, from the corridors —if, indeed, this ever really happened. I walked beneath stone archways where my steps, resounding from the damp vaults, seemed to fall behind me, as if someone followed on my heels. Yellow walls with scars of red brick watched me through the dark glass squares of their windows, watched me open the singing doors of barns, peer into corners, dead ends, nooks, and crannies. A gate in the fence, and a desolate vacant lot—memorial of the great Two Hundred Years’ War. Rising from the earth-bare stony ribs, the yellow grinning jaws of walls, an ancient stove with a vertical chimney—a ship forever petrified among the stony splashes of red and yellow brick.

It seemed to me that I had seen those yellow teeth before, dimly, as through water, at the bottom of a deep lake. And I began to search. I stumbled into pits, tripped over rocks; rusty claws caught at my unif; sharp, salty drops of sweat crept down my forehead into my eyes…

It was not there! I could not find it anywhere— that exit from below, from the corridors. It was not there. But then, it might be better this way: more likelihood that all of it had been one of my senseless “dreams.”

Exhausted, covered with dust and cobwebs, I had already opened the gate to return to the main yard. Suddenly—a rustle behind me, splashing steps, and there, as I turned—the pink wing-ears, the double-curved smile of S.

Squinting, he bored through me with his gimlets, then asked, “Taking a stroll?”

I was silent. My hands were alien.

“Well, then, are you feeling better now?”

“Yes, thank you. I think I am returning to normal.”

He released me—raised his eyes, threw back his head, and for the first time I noticed his Adam’s apple.

Above us, at the height of no more than fifty meters, buzzed several aeros. By their low altitude, slow flight, and lowered black trunks of observation tubes, I recognized them: they were the aeros of the Guardians—not the usual group of two or three, but ten or twelve of them (unfortunately, I must confine myself to an approximate figure).

“Why are there so many today?” I ventured to ask.

“Why? Hm… A true physician begins his cure with a healthy man, one who will get sick only tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, or in a week. Prophylaxis, you seel”

He nodded, and plashed away across the stone slabs of the yard. Then he turned, and over his shoulder, “Be careful!”

I was alone. Quiet. Empty. Far above the Green Wall the wind, the birds were tossing about What did he mean?

My aero glided swiftly down the current. Light, heavy shadows of clouds; below—blue cupolas, cubes of glass ice turned leaden, swollen…

In the evening

I opened my manuscript to jot down in these pages some thoughts that I believe will prove useful (to you, my readers), thoughts about the great Day of Unanimity, which is approaching. And then I realized I could not write tonight. I was listening constantly to the wind as it flapped its dark wings against the window; I was constantly turning back, waiting. For what? I did not know. And when the familiar brownish-pink gills appeared in ray room, I confess I was glad. She sat down, modestly smoothed out the fold of her unif which fell between her knees, quickly plastered me all over with her smiles, a piece on every crack— and I felt myself pleasantly, firmly bound.

“You know, I came to class today (she works at the Child-Rearing Factory) and found a caricature on, the wall. Yes, yes, I assure you! They drew me as a kind of fish. Perhaps I am really…”

“Oh, no, no, of course not,” I hastened to say. (From nearby, there was really nothing in her face resembling gills, and my words about gills had been entirely wrong.)

“Well, anyway, that isn’t important. But, you understand, the act itself. Naturally, I called out the Guardians. I am very fond of children, and I believe that the most difficult and noble love is— cruelty. Do you understand it?”

I certainly did! It echoed my own thoughts. I could not refrain from reading to her a fragment from my Twentieth Entry, beginning with “My thoughts tick quietly, with metallic clarity.”

Without looking up, I saw the quivering of her brown-pink cheeks, drawing closer and closer to me, and now her dry, hard, almost pricking fingers were on my hands.

“Give it to me, give it to me! I will record it and have the children memorize it. We need this more than your Venusians, we need it—today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow.”

She glanced over her shoulder and almost whispered, “Have you heard? They say that on the Day of Unanimity…”

I jumped up. “What—what do they say? What about the Day of Unanimity?”

The comfortable walls had disappeared. I instantly felt myself flung out, there, where the immense wind tossed over the roofs and the slanting twilit clouds sank lower and lower…

U resolutely, firmly grasped my shoulders, although I noticed that, as if resonating to my own agitation, her bony fingers trembled.

“Sit down, my dear, don’t get upset. People say all sorts of things, it doesn’t matter. And then—if only you need it, I shall be with you on that day. I’ll leave my children with someone else and be with you; for you, my dear, are also a child, and you need…”

“No, no.” I waved her away. “Certainly not! Then you will really think that I am a child, that I cannot… by myself… Certainly not!” (I must confess that I had other plans for that day.)

She smiled. The unspoken meaning of the smile was obviously, “Ah, what an obstinate boy!” She sat down, eyes lowered, hands modestly straightening again the fold of her unif that dropped between her knees. And then she turned to something else. “I think I must decide… for your sake… No, I beg you, don’t hurry me, I must still think about it…”

I did not hurry her, although I realized that I ought to be pleased, and that there was no greater honor than gracing someone’s evening years.

All that night I was tormented by wings. I walked about shielding my head with my hands from the wings. And then, there was the chair. Not one of ours, not a modern glass chair, but an ancient wooden one. It moved like a horse—front right foot, rear left, front left, rear right. It ran up to my bed, climbed into it, and I made love to the wooden chair. It was uncomfortable and painful.

Amazing: can’t anyone invent a remedy for this dream-sickness? Or else turn it into something rational, or even useful?

Twenty-second Entry

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Congealed Waves