Everything Is Being Perfected

I Am a Microbe

Imagine yourself standing on the shore: the waves rise rhythmically, then, having risen, suddenly remain there—frozen, congealed. It seemed just as eerie and unnatural when our daily walk, prescribed by the Table of Hours, suddenly halted midway, and everyone was thrown into confusion. The last time something similar happened, according to our annals, was 119 years ago, when a meteorite dropped, smoking and whistling, right into the thick of the marching rows.

We walked as usual, in the manner of the warriors on Assyrian reliefs: a thousand heads, two fused, integral feet, two integral, swinging arms. At the end of the avenue, where the Accumulator Tower hummed sternly, a rectangle moved toward us. In front, behind, and on the sides—guards; in the middle—three people, the golden numbers already removed from their unifs. And everything was terrifyingly clear.

The huge clock atop the Tower was a face; leaning from the clouds, spitting down seconds, it waited indifferently. And then, exactly at six minutes past thirteen, something went wrong in the rectangle. It happened quite near me, and I saw every detail; I clearly remember the thin long neck and the network of blue veins on the temple, like rivers on the map of some tiny unknown world, and this unknown world was evidently a very young man. He must have noticed someone in our ranks; rising to his toes, he stretched his neck, and stopped. A click: one of the guards sent the blue spark of an electric whip across him, and he squealed thinly, like a puppy. Then—a series of distinct clicks, about every two seconds: a dick, and a squeal, a click, and a squeal.

We continued our rhythmic, Assyrian walk, and, looking at the graceful zigzags of the sparks, I thought: Everything in human society is being continually perfected—and should be. What a hideous weapon was the ancient whip—and how beautiful…

But at this moment, like a nut slipping off a machine in full swing, a slender, pliant female figure broke from our ranks and with the cry “Enough! Don’t dare to…!” she threw herself into the midst of the rectangle. It was like that meteor, 119 years ago: the whole procession stopped dead, and our ranks were like the gray crests of waves congealed by a sudden frost.

For a moment I looked at her as a stranger, like everyone else. She was no longer a number—she was only a human being, she existed only as the metaphysical substance of an insult thrown in the face of the One State. But then one of her movements—turning, she swung her hips to the left—and all at once I felt: I know, I know this body, pliant as a whip! My eyes, my lips, my arms know it! At that moment I was completely certain of it.

Two of the guards stepped out to intercept her.

In a second, their trajectories will cross over that still limpid, mirrorlike point of the pavement—in a moment she will be seized… My heart gulped, stopped, and without reasoning—is it allowed, forbidden, rational, absurd?—I flung myself toward that point.

I sensed upon me thousands of terrified, wide-open eyes, but this merely fed the desperate, gay, exulting strength of the hairy-armed savage who broke out of me, and he ran still faster. Only two steps remained. She turned…

Before me was a trembling, freckled face, red eyebrows… It was not she, not I-330.

Wild burst of joy. I wanted to cry out something like “Right, hold her!” but I heard only a whisper. And on my shoulder—a heavy hand. I was held, I was being taken somewhere, I tried to explain to them… “But listen, but you must understand, I thought that…”

But how explain all of myself, all of my sickness, recorded in these pages? And I subsided and walked obediently… A leaf torn off a tree by a sudden blast of wind obediently falls downward, but on the way it whirls, catches at every familiar branch, fork, knot And I, too, was catching at every silent spherical head, at the transparent ice of the walls, at the blue spire of the Accumulator Tower piercing a cloud.

At that moment, when an impenetrable curtain was just about to cut me off from this whole, beautiful world, I saw nearby, swinging his pink ear-wings, gliding over the mirror-smooth pavement, a huge, familiar head. And a familiar, flattened voice: “It is my duty to inform you that Number D-503 is ill and incapable of controlling his emotions. And I am sure that he was carried away by natural indignation…”

“Yes, yes.” I seized at it. “I even cried ‘Hold her!’ ”

Behind my back: “You did not cry anything.”

“Yes, but I wanted to—I swear by the Benefactor, I did.”

For a second the gray, cold gimlet-eyes drilled through me. I don’t know whether he saw within me that this was (almost) the truth, or whether he had some secret purpose of his own in sparing me again for a while, but he wrote out a note and gave it to one of those who held me. And I was free again, or, to be more exact, was returned again to the regular, endless Assyrian ranks.

The rectangle, containing both the freckled face and the temple with the map of bluish veins, disappeared around the corner, forever. We walked— a single million-headed body, and within each of us—that humble joy which probably fills the lives of molecules, atoms, phagocytes. In the ancient world this was understood by the Christians, our only predecessors (however imperfect): humility is a virtue, and pride a vice; “We” is from God, and “I” from the devil.

And now I was marching in step with everyone— yet separated from them. I still trembled from the recent excitement, like a bridge after an ancient iron train rushed, clattering, across it. I felt myself. But only an eye with a speck of dust in it, an abscessed finger, an infected tooth feel themselves, are aware of their individuality; a healthy eye, finger, tooth are not felt—they seem nonexistent Is it not clear that individual consciousness is merely a sickness?

Perhaps I am no longer a phagocyte, busily and calmly devouring microbes (with bluish temples and freckles). Perhaps I am a microbe, and perhaps there are already thousands of them among us, still—like myself—pretending to be phagocytes…

What if today’s essentially unimportant incident… what if it is only a beginning, only the first meteorite of a hail of thundering fiery rocks poured by infinity upon our glass paradise?

Twenty-third Entry

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Flowers