An Utterly Absurd Incident

I woke at dawn; the solid, rosy firmament greeted my eyes. Everything was beautifully round. In the evening O would be here. I felt: I am completely well. I smiled and fell asleep again.

The morning bell. I rose. But now all was different around me: through the glass of the ceiling, the wall—everywhere—dense, penetrating fog. Crazy clouds, now heavier, now lighter. There were no longer any boundaries between sky and earth; everything was flying, melting, falling—nothing to get hold of. No more houses. The glass walls dissolved in the fog like salt crystals in water. From the street, the dark figures inside the houses were like particles suspended in a milky, nightmare solution, some hanging low, some higher and still higher-all the way up to the tenth floor. And everything was swirling smoke, as in a silent, raging fire.

Exactly eleven-forty-five; I glanced deliberately at the watch—to grasp at the figures, at the solid safety of the figures.

At eleven-forty-five, before going to perform the usual physical labor prescribed by the Table of Hours, I stopped off for a moment in my room. Suddenly, the telephone rang. The voice—a long, slow needle plunged into the heart: “Ah, you are still home? I am glad. Wait for me on the corner. We shall go… you’ll see where.”

“You know very well that I am going to work now.”

“You know very well that you will do as I tell you. Good-by. In two minutes…”

Two minutes later I stood on the corner. After all, I had to prove to her that I was governed by the One State, not by her. “You will do as I tell you…” And so sure of herself—I could hear it in her voice. Well, now I shall have a proper talk with her.

Gray unifs, woven of the raw, damp fog, hurriedly came into being at my side and instantly dissolved in the fog. I stared at my watch, all of me a sharp, quivering second hand. Eight minutes, ten… Three minutes to twelve, two minutes…

Finished. I was already late for work. I hated her. But I had to prove to her…

At the corner, through the white fog, blood—a slit, as with a sharp knife—her lips.

“I am afraid I delayed you. But then, it’s all the same. It is too late for you now.”

How I… But she was right, it was too late.

I silently stared at her lips. All women are lips, nothing but lips. Some pink, firmly round—a ring, a tender protection against the whole world. But these: a second ago they did not exist, and now—a knife slit—and the sweet blood will drip down.

She moved nearer, leaned her shoulder against me—and we were one, and something flowed from her into me, and I knew: this is how it must be. I knew it with every nerve, and every hair, every heartbeat, so sweet it verged on pain. And what joy to submit to this “must.” A piece of iron must feel such joy as it submits to the precise, inevitable law that draws it to a magnet. Or a stone, thrown up, hesitating a moment, then plunging headlong back to earth. Or a man, after the final agony, taking a last deep breath—and dying.

I remember I smiled dazedly and said, for no good reason, “Fog… So very…”

“Do you like fog?”

She used the ancient, long-forgotten “thou”—the “thou” of the master to the slave. It entered into me slowly, sharply. Yes, I was a slave, and this, too, was necessary, was good.

“Yes, good…” I said aloud to myself. And then to her, “I hate fog. I am afraid of it.”

“That means you love it. You are afraid of it because it is stronger than you; you hate it because you are afraid of it; you love it because you cannot subdue it to your will. Only the unsubduable can be loved.”

Yes, this is true. And this is precisely why— precisely why I…

We walked, the two of us—one. Somewhere far through the fog the sun sang almost inaudibly, everything was filling up with firmness, with pearl, gold, rose, red. The entire world was a single unen-compassable woman, and we were in its very womb, unborn, ripening joyfully. And it was clear to me—ineluctably clear—that the sun, the fog, the rose, and the gold were all for me…

I did not ask where we were going. It did not matter. The only thing that mattered was to walk, to walk, to ripen, to fill up more and more firmly…

“Here.” I-330 stopped at a door. “The one I spoke to you about at the Ancient House is on duty here today.”

From far away, with my eyes only, protecting what was ripening within me, I read the sign: MEDICAL OFFICE. I understood.

A glass room filled with golden fog. Glass ceilings, colored bottles, jars. Wires. Bluish sparks in tubes.

And a tiny man, the thinnest I had ever seen. All of him seemed cut out of paper, and no matter which way he turned, there was nothing but a profile, sharply honed: the nose a sharp blade, lips like scissors.

I did not hear what I-330 said to him: I watched her speak, and felt myself smiling blissfully, uncontrollably. The scissor-lips flashed and the doctor said, “Yes, yes. I understand. The most dangerous disease—I know of nothing more dangerous…” He laughed, quickly wrote something with the thinnest of paper hands, and gave the slip to I-330; then he wrote another one and gave it to me.

He had given us certificates that we were ill and could not report to work. I was stealing my services from the One State, I was a thief, I saw myself under the Benefactor’s Machine. But all of this was as remote and indifferent as a story in a book… I took the slip without a moment’s hesitation. I—all of me, my eyes, lips, hands—knew that this had to be.

At the corner, at the almost empty garage, we took an aero. I-330 sat down at the controls, as she had the first time, and switched the starter to “Forward.” We broke from the earth and floated away. And everything followed us: the rosy-golden fog, the sun, the finest blade of the doctor’s profile, suddenly so clear. Formerly, everything had turned around the sun; now I knew—everything was turning around me—slowly, blissfully, with tightly closed eyes…

The old woman at the gates of the Ancient House. The dear mouth, grown together, with its rays of wrinkles. It must have been closed all these days, but now it opened, smiled. “Aah, you mischievous imp! Instead of working like everybody else… oh, well, go in, go in! If anything goes wrong, I’ll come and warn you…”

The heavy, creaky, untransparent door closed, and at once my heart opened painfully wide—still wider—all the way. Her lips were mine. I drank and drank. I broke away, stared silently into her eyes, wide open to me, and again…

The twilight of the rooms, the blue, the saffron-yellow, the dark green leather, Buddha’s golden smile, the glimmering mirrors. And—my old dream, so easy to understand now—everything filled with golden-pink sap, ready to overflow, to spurt…

It ripened. And inevitably, as iron and the magnet, in sweet submission to the exact, immutable law, I poured myself into her. There was no pink coupon, no accounting, no State, not even myself. There were only the tenderly sharp clenched teeth, the golden eyes wide open to me; and through them I entered slowly, deeper and deeper. And silence. Only in the corner, thousands of miles away, drops falling in the washstand, and I was the universe, and from one drop to the other-eons, millennia…

Slipping on my unif, I bent down to I-330 and drank her in with my eyes for the last time.

“I knew it… I knew you…” she said, just audibly.

Rising quickly, she put on her unif and her usual sharp bite-smile. “Well, fallen angel. You’re lost now. You’re not afraid? Good-by, then! You will return alone. There.”

She opened the mirrored door of the wardrobe; looking at me over her shoulder, she waited. I went out obediently. But I had barely stepped across the threshold when suddenly I felt that I must feel her press against me with her shoulder-only for a second, only with her shoulder, nothing more.

I rushed back, into the room where she was probably still fastening her unif before the mirror. I ran in—and stopped. I clearly saw the ancient key ring still swaying in the door of the wardrobe, but I-330 was not there. She could not have left—there was only one exit And yet she was not there. I searched everywhere, I even opened the wardrobe and felt the bright, ancient dresses. No one…

I feel embarrassed, somehow, my planetary readers, to tell you about this altogether improbable occurrence. But what can I say if this was exactly how it happened? Wasn’t the whole day, from the earliest morning, full of improbabilities? Isn’t it all like that ancient sickness of dreams? And if so, what difference does it make if there is one absurdity more, or one less? Besides, I am certain that sooner or later I shall succeed in fitting all these absurdities into some logical formula. This reassures me and, I hope, will reassure you.

But how full I ami If only you could know how full I am—to the very brim!

Fourteenth Entry

TOPICS:

“Mine”

Impossible

The Cold Floor

More about the other day. My personal hour before bedtime was occupied, and I could not record it yesterday. But all of it is etched in me, and most of all—perhaps forever—that intolerably cold floor…

In the evening O was to come to me—this was her day. I went down to the number on duty to obtain permission to lower my shades.

“What is wrong with you?” the man on duty asked me. “You seem to be sort of…”

“I… I am not well…”

As a matter of fact, it was true. I am certainly sick. All of this is an illness. And I remembered: yes, of course, the doctor’s note… I felt for it in my pocket—it rustled there. Then everything had really happened, it had been real…

I held out the slip of paper to the man on duty. My cheeks burned. Without looking, I saw him glance up at me, surprised.

And then it was twenty-one and a half. In the room at the left, the shades were down. In the room at the right, I saw my neighbor over a book— his knobby brow and bald head a huge yellow parabola. Tormentedly I paced my room. How could I now, with O, after all that had happened? And from the right I sensed distinctly the man’s eyes upon me, I saw distinctly the wrinkles on his forehead—a row of yellow illegible lines; and for some reason it seemed to me those lines were about me.

At a quarter to twenty-two a joyous rosy hurricane burst into my room, a strong circle of rosy arms closed about my neck. And then I felt the circle weakening, weakening. It broke. The arms dropped.

“You’re not the same, you’re not the old one, not mine!”

“What sort of primitive notion—’mine’? I never was…” and I broke off. It came to me: it’s true; before this I never was… But now? Now I no longer live in our clear, rational world; I live in the ancient nightmare world, the world of square roots of minus one.

The shades fell. Behind the wall on the right my neighbor dropped bis book on the floor, and in the last, momentary narrow slit between the shade and the floor I saw the yellow hand picking up the book, and my one wish was to grasp at that hand with all my strength…

“I thought—I hoped to meet you during the walk today. I have so much—there is so much I must tell you…”

Sweet, poor O! Her rosy mouth—a rosy crescent, its horns down. But how can I tell her what happened? I cannot, if only because that would make her an accomplice to my crimes. I knew she would not have enough strength to go to the Office of the Guardians, and hence…

She lay back. I kissed her slowly. I kissed that plump, naive fold on her wrist. Her blue eyes were closed, and the rosy crescent slowly opened, bloomed, and I kissed all of her.

And then I felt how empty, how drained I was— I had given everything away. I cannot, must not. I must—and it’s impossible. My lips grew cold at once…

The rosy half-moon trembled, wilted, twisted. O drew the blanket over herself, wrapped herself in it, hid her face in the pillow…

I sat on the floor near the bed—what an incredibly cold floor!—I sat silently. The agonizing cold rose from beneath, higher and higher. It must be cold like this in the blue, silent, interplanetary space.

“But you must understand, I did not want to…” I muttered. “I did all I could…”

This was true. I, the real I, had not wanted to. And yet how could I tell her this? How explain that the iron may not want to, but the law is ineluctable, exact…

O raised her face from the pillow and said without opening her eyes, “Go away.” But she was crying, and the words came out as “gooway,” and for some reason this silly trifle cut deeply into me.

Chilled, numb all through, I went out into the corridor. Outside, behind the glass, a light, barely visible mist. By nightfall the fog would probably be dense again. What would happen that night?

O silently slipped past me toward the elevator. The door clicked.

“One moment,” I cried out, suddenly frightened.

But the elevator was already humming, down, down, down.

She had robbed me of R.

She had robbed me of O.

And yet, and yet…

Fifteenth Entry

TOPICS:

The Bell