We

Seventeenth Entry

I am completely bewildered. Yesterday, at the very moment when I thought that everything was already disentangled, that all the X’s were found, new unknown quantities appeared in my equation.

The starting point of all the coordinates in this entire story is, of course, the Ancient House. It is the center of the axial lines of all the X’s, Y’s and Z’s on which my whole world has been built of late. Along the line of X’s ( Fifty-ninth Avenue ) I walked toward the starting point of the coordinates. All that had happened yesterday whirled like a hurricane within me: upside-down houses and people, tormentingly alien hands, gleaming scissors, sharp drops falling in the washstand—all this had happened, had happened once. And all of it, tearing my flesh, was whirling madly within, beneath the surface melted by a fire, where the “soul” was.

In order to carry out the doctor’s prescription, I deliberately chose to walk along two lines at right angles instead of a hypotenuse. I was already on the second line—the road along the Green Wall. From the illimitable green ocean behind the Wall rose a wild wave of roots, flowers, branches, leaves. It reared, and in a moment it would roll and break and overwhelm me, and, instead of a man—the finest and most precise of instruments—I would be turned into…

But fortunately between me and the wild green ocean was the glass of the Wall. Oh, great, divinely bounding wisdom of walls and barriers! They are, perhaps, the greatest of man’s inventions. Man ceased to be a wild animal only when he built the first wall Man ceased to be a savage only when we had built the Green Wall, when we had isolated our perfect mechanical world from the irrational, hideous world of trees, birds, animals…

Through the glass the blunt snout of some beast stared dully, mistily at me; yellow eyes, persistently repeating a single, incomprehensible thought. For a long time we stared into each other’s eyes—those mine-wells from the surface world into another, subterranean one. And a question stirred within me: What if he, this yellow-eyed creature, in his disorderly, filthy mound of leaves, in his uncomputed life, is happier than we are?

I raised my hand, the yellow eyes blinked, backed away, and disappeared among the greenery. The paltry creature! What absurdity—that he could possibly be happier than we are! Happier than I, perhaps; but I am only an exception, I am sick.

But even I… The dark-red walls of the Ancient House were already before me, and the old woman’s dear, ingrown mouth.

I rushed to her: “Is she here?”

The ingrown mouth opened slowly. “Which ‘she’?”

“Oh, which, which! I-330, of course… We came here together that day—by aero…”

“Oh, oh, I see… I see…”

The rays of wrinkles round the lips, sly rays from the yellow eyes, probing inside me, deeper and deeper. And at last, “Oh, well… She’s here, she came a little while ago.”

She’s here. I saw a shrub of silvery-bitter wormwood at the old woman’s feet. (The courtyard of the Ancient House is part of the museum, carefully preserved in its prehistoric state.) A branch of the wormwood lay along the old woman’s hand and she stroked it; a yellow strip of sunlight fell across her knees. And for an instant, I, the sun, the old woman, the wormwood, and the yellow eyes were one, bound firmly together by some invisible veins, and, pulsing through the veins, the same tumultuous, glorious blood…

I am embarrassed to write about this now, but I have promised to be completely frank in these notes. Well, then: I bent and kissed the ingrown, soft, mossy mouth. The old woman wiped her lips and laughed.

I ran through the familiar, dim, echoing rooms— for some reason directly to the bedroom. And it was only at the door, when I had already seized the handle, that suddenly the thought came, What if she is not alone? I stopped and listened. But all I heard was the beating of my heart—not within, but somewhere near me.

I entered. The wide bed—smooth, untouched. The mirror. Another mirror in the closet door, and in the keyhole—the key with the antique ring. And no one.

I called quietly, “I-330 Are you here?” Then, still more quietly, with eyes closed, scarcely breathing, as though I were already on my knees before her, “Darling!”

Silence. Only the drops falling hurriedly into the washstand from the faucet. I cannot explain why, but at that moment it annoyed me. I turned the faucet firmly and went out. Clearly, she was not there. That meant she must be in some other “apartment.”

I ran down the wide gloomy stairway, tried one door, another, a third. Locked. Everything was locked except “our” apartment—and that was empty…

And yet, I turned back again without knowing why. I walked slowly, with difficulty; my shoes were suddenly as heavy as cast iron. I clearly remember thinking: It’s a mistake to assume that the force of gravity is constant. Hence, all my formulas…

The thought broke off: a door slammed downstairs, someone’s steps pattered quickly across the tiles. I—light again, lighter than light—rushed to the rail, to bend over, to say everything in one word, one cry—“You”…

I turned numb: below, etched against the dark square shadow of the window frame, swinging its rosy wing-ears, the head of S was hurrying across.

Lightning-fast, without reason (I still don’t know the reason), I felt: He must not see me, he must not!

On tiptoe, pressing myself into the wall, I slipped upstairs, toward the unlocked apartment.

A moment at the door. His feet stamped dully up the stairs, he was coming here. If only the door… I pleaded with the door, but it was wooden, it creaked, squealed. I stormed past green, red, the yellow Buddha; I was before the mirrored door of the wardrobe: my face pale, listening eyes, lips… Through the tumult of blood, I heard the door creaking again… It was he, he…

I seized the key; the ring swayed. A flash of memory—again an instant thought, bare, unreasoning, a splinter of a thought: “That time I-330…” I quickly opened the closet door; inside, in the darkness, I shut it tightly. A step, and the ground rocked under my feet. Slowly, softly, I floated down somewhere, my eyes turned dark, I died.

Later, when I sat down to record these strange events, I searched my memory and looked up some books. Now, of course, I understand it: it was a state of temporary death, familiar to the ancients, but—as far as I know—entirely unknown among us.

I have no idea how long I was dead—perhaps no more than five or ten seconds. But after a time I revived and opened my eyes. It was dark, and I felt myself going down and down… I stretched my hand and tried to grasp at something—it was scraped by a rough, rapidly moving wall. There was blood on my finger—clearly all this was not the product of my sick imagination. What was it, then?

I heard my broken, quivering breath (I am ashamed to confess this, but everything was so unexpected and incomprehensible). A minute, two, three—down and down. Finally, a soft thud; that which had been dropping under my feet was now motionless. In the dark I found a handle, pushed it; a door opened. Dim light Behind me I saw a small square platform speeding up. I rushed to it—too late: I was trapped there—but where this “there” was I did not know.

A corridor. The silence weighed a thousand tons. Along the vaulted ceiling, lamps—an endless, shimmering, trembling line of dots. The place was a little like the “tubes” of our underground, but much narrower and made not of our glass but of some ancient material. A thought flashed through my mind—the memory of the underground shelters where our ancestors supposedly hid during the Two Hundred Years’ War… No matter, I must go.

I must have walked some twenty minutes, then turned right. The corridor was wider here, the lamps brighter. A vague humming sound. Perhaps machines, perhaps voices, I could not tell, but I was near a heavy opaque door—the sound came from behind it.

I knocked. Then again, louder. The hum ceased. Something clanked, and the door swung open, heavily, slowly.

I don’t know which of us was more astonished: before me stood my blade-sharp, paper-thin doctor.

“You? Here?” And his scissor-lips snapped shut And I—as though I had never known a single human word—I stared silently without comprehending what he was saying. He must have been telling me to leave, because he quickly pushed me with his flat paper stomach to the end of the brighter section of the corridor, then turned me around and gave me a shove from the back.

“But, sorry… I wanted… I thought that I-330… But behind me…”

“Wait here,” the doctor snapped, and vanished.

At last! At last she was near me, here—and what did it matter where this “here” was? The familiar, saffron-yellow silk, the bite-smile, the veiled eyes… My lips, hands, knees trembled; and in my head, the silliest thought: Vibration is sound. Trembling must make a sound. Then why isn’t it audible?

Her eyes opened to me—all the way; I entered…

“I could not bear it any longer! Where have you been? Why?” I spoke quickly, incoherently, as in delirium, without tearing my eyes away from her. Or perhaps I merely thought this. “There was the shadow—following me… I died—in the closet… Because your… that one… he speaks with scissors… I have a soul… Incurable…”

“An incurable soul! My poor dear!” I-330 laughed—sprayed me with laughter, and the delirium was over, and drops of laughter rang, sparkled all around, and everything, everything was beautiful.

The doctor appeared again from around the corner—the marvelous, magnificent, thinnest doctor.

“Well.” He stopped beside her.

“It’s nothing, it’s all right! I’ll tell you later. A mere accident…… Tell them I shall return in… oh, fifteen minutes…”

The doctor slipped away around the corner. She waited. The door closed with a dull thud. Then I-330 slowly, slowly pressed against me with her shoulder, arm, all of her, plunging a sharp sweet needle deeper and deeper into my heart, and we walked together, the two of us—one…

I don’t remember where we turned off into darkness, and in the darkness—up a flight of stairs, endlessly, silently. I could not see, but I knew: she walked just as I did, with closed eyes, blind, her head thrown back, her teeth biting her lips—and listened to the music, to my barely audible trembling.

I came to in one of the innumerable nooks in the yard of the Ancient House. A fence—bare, rocky ribs and yellow teeth of ruined walls. She opened her eyes and said, “The day after tomorrow, at sixteen.” And she left.

Did all this really happen? I don’t know. I will learn the day after tomorrow. There is only one real trace—the scraped skin on my right hand, on the tips of my fingers. But the Second Builder has assured me that he saw me touch the polishing wheel by accident with those fingers, and that is all there is to it. Well, it may be so. It may be. I don’t know—I don’t know anything.