[archived on crispytomato.net only to spread the word about this
great novel, please buy a copy if you like it... not that it
will matter much to Zamyatin since he's dead, but do it for the
principle of it.
-- mickie, bloodflower@gmail.com]



We
Yevgeny Zamyatin
(translated by Mirra Ginsburg)
Introduction and biographies at end.



First Entry

TOPICS:
A Proclamation
The Wisest of Lines
A Poem


I shall simply copy, word for word, the proclamation that appeared today in
the One State Gazette:
"The building of the Integral will be completed in one hundred and twenty
days. The great historic hour when the first Integral will soar into cosmic
space is drawing near. One thousand years ago your heroic ancestors subdued
the entire terrestrial globe to the power of the One State. Yours will be a
still more glorious feat: you will integrate the infinite equation of the
universe with the aid of the fire-breathing, electric, glass Integral. You
will subjugate the unknown beings on other planets, who may still be living
in the primitive condition of freedom, to the beneficent yoke of reason. If
they fail to understand that we bring them mathematically infallible
happiness, it will be our duty to compel them to be happy. But before
resorting to arms, we shall try the power of words."

In the name of the Benefactor, therefore, we proclaim to all the numbers of
the One State:

Everyone who feels capable of doing so must compose tracts, odes,
manifestoes, poems, or other works extolling the beauty and the grandeur of
the One State.

This will be the first cargo to be carried by the Integral.

Long live the One State, long live the numbers, long live the Benefactor!

I write this, and I feel: my cheeks are burning. Yes, to integrate the
grandiose cosmic equation. Yes, to unbend the wild, primitive curve and
straighten it to a tangent—an asymptote—a straight line. For the line of 
the
One State is the straight line. The great, divine, exact, wise straight
line— the wisest of all lines.

I, D-503, Builder of the Integral, am only one of the mathematicians of the
One State. My pen, accustomed to figures, does not know how to create the
music of assonances and rhymes. I shall merely attempt to record what I see
and think, or, to be more exact, what we think (precisely so—we, and let
this We be the title of my record). But since this record will be a
derivative of our life, of the mathematically perfect life of the One State,
will it not be, of itself, and regardless of my will or skill, a poem? It
will. I believe, I know it.

I write this, and my cheeks are burning. This must be similar to what a
woman feels when she first senses within herself the pulse of a new, still
tiny, still blind little human being. It is I, and at the same time, not I.
And for many long months it will be necessary to nourish it with my own
life, my own blood, then tear it painfully from myself and lay it at the
feet of the One State.

But I am ready, like every one, or almost every one, of us. I am ready.





Second Entry

TOPICS:
Ballet
Square Harmony
X

Spring. From beyond the Green Wall, from the wild, invisible plains, the
wind brings yellow honey pollen of some unknown flowers. The sweet pollen
dries your lips, and every minute you pass your tongue over them. The lips
of all the women you see must be sweet (of the men, too, of course). This
interferes to some extent with the flow of logical thought.

But the sky! Blue, unblemished by a single cloud. (How wild the tastes of
the ancients, whose poets could be inspired by those absurd, disorderly,
stupidly tumbling piles of vapor!) I love—I am certain I can safely say, 
we
love—only such a sterile, immaculate sky. On days like this the whole 
world
is cast of the same impregnable, eternal glass as the Green Wall, as all our
buildings. On days like this you see the bluest depth of things, their
hitherto unknown, astonishing equations—you see them even in the most
familiar everyday objects.

Take, for instance, this. In the morning I was at the dock where the
Integral is being built, and suddenly I saw: the lathes; the regulator
sphere* rotating with closed eyes, utterly oblivious of all; the cranks
flashing, swinging left and right; the balance beam proudly swaying its
shoulders; the bit of the slotting machine dancing up and down in time to
unheard music Suddenly I saw the whole beauty of this grandiose mechanical
ballet, flooded with pale blue sunlight.

And then, to myself: Why is this beautiful? Why is dance beautiful? Answer:
because it is unfree motion, because the whole profound meaning of dance
lies precisely in absolute, esthetic subordination, in ideal unfreedom. And
if it is true that our forebears abandoned themselves to dance at the most
exalted moments of their lives (religious mysteries, military parades), it
means only one thing: the instinct of unfreedom is organically inherent in
man from time immemorial, and we, in our present life, are only
consciously....

I will have to finish later: the annunciator clicked. I looked up: O-90, of
course. In half a minute she'll be here, for our daily walk.

Dear O! It always seems to me that she looks exactly like her name: about
ten centimeters shorter than the Maternal Norm, and therefore carved in the
round, all of her, with that pink O, her mouth, open to meet every word I
say. And also, that round, plump fold on her wrist, like a baby's.

When she came in, the flywheel of logic was still humming at full swing
within me, and I began, by sheer force of inertia, to speak to her about the
formula I had just established, which encompassed everything—dance,
machines, and all of us.

"Marvelous, isn't it?" I asked.

"Yes, marvelous." O-90 smiled rosily at me. "It's spring." 4

Well, wouldn't you know: spring ... She talks about spring. Women ... I fell
silent

Downstairs, the avenue was full. In such weather, the afternoon personal
hour is used for an additional walk. As always, the Music Plant played the
"March of the One State" with all its trumpets. The numbers walked in even
ranks, four abreast, ecstatically stepping in time to the music-hundreds,
thousands of numbers, in pale blue units,* with golden badges on their
breasts, bearing the State Number of each man and woman. And I—the four of
us—but one of the innumerable waves in this mighty stream. On my left, 
O-90 (if this were being written by one of my hairy ancestors a thousand years
ago, he probably would have described her by that funny word "mine"); on my
right, two numbers I did not know, male and female.

Blessedly blue sky, tiny baby suns in every badge, faces unshadowed by the
insanity of thoughts ... Rays. Do you understand that? Everything made of
some single, radiant, smiling substance. And the brass rhythms:
"Ta-ta-ta-tam! Ta-ta-ta-tam!" Like brass stairs gleaming in the sun, and
every step taking you higher and higher, into the dizzying blue....

And again, as this morning at the dock, I saw everything as though for the
first time in my life: the straight, immutable streets, the glittering glass
of the pavements, the divine parallelepipeds of the transparent houses, the
square harmony of the gray-blue ranks. And I felt: it was not the
generations before me, but I—yes, I—who had conquered the old God and 
the
old life. It was I who had created all this. And I was like a tower, I dared
not move an elbow lest walls, cupolas, machines tumble in fragments about
me.

• Derived apparently from the ancient "uniform."

Then—a leap across the centuries, from + to —. I remembered (evidently 
an
association by contrast) —I suddenly remembered a picture I had seen in a
museum: one of their avenues, out of the twentieth century, dazzlingly
motley, a teeming crush of people, wheels, animals, posters, trees, colors,
birds. . . . And they say this had really existed—could exist. It seemed 
so
incredible, so preposterous that I could not contain myself and burst out
laughing.

And immediately, there was an echo—laughter— on my right. I turned: a 
flash
of white—extraordinarily white and sharp teeth, an unfamiliar female face.

"Forgive me," she said, "but you looked at everything around you with such
an inspired air, like some mythical god on the seventh day of creation. It
seems to me you are sure that even I was created by you, and by no one else.
I am very flattered. . . ."

All this—without a smile; I would even say, with a certain deference
(perhaps she knew that I am the Builder of the Integral). But in the eyes,
or in the eyebrows—I could not tell—there was a certain strange, 
irritating
X, which I could not capture, could not define in figures.

For some odd reason, I felt embarrassed and tried, in a rather stumbling
manner, to explain my laughter to her logically. It was entirely clear, I
said, that this contrast, this impassable abyss between the present and the
past...

"But why impassable?" (What white teeth!) "A bridge can be thrown across an
abyss. Just think: drums, battalions, ranks—all this has also existed in 
the
past; and, consequently ..."

"But of course!" I cried. (What an astonishing coincidence of ideas:  she
spoke almost my own words, the words I had written down before our walk.)
"You understand, even ideas. And this is because nobody is 'one,' but 'one
of.' We are so alike___"

She: "Are you sure?"

I saw her eyebrows raised to her temples at a sharp angle, like the pointed
horns of an X, and again I was confused. I glanced right, left, and ...

On my right—she, slender, sharp, stubbornly pliant, like a whip, I-330 (I
could see her number now); on my left—O, altogether different, all curves,
with that childish fold on her wrist; and at the other end of our row, a
male number I did not know—strange, doubly bent somehow, like the letter 
S.
All of us so different...

That one on the right, 1-330, seemed to have intercepted my flustered
glance, and with a sigh she said, "Yes. . . . Alas!"

Actually, this "alas" was entirely appropriate. But again there was that
something in her face, or in her voice. ,. . And with a sharpness unusual
for me, I said,  "No reason for 'Alas.' Science progresses, and it is
obvious that, if not now, then in fifty or a hundred years ..." "Even
everyone's noses ..." "Yes," I almost shouted, "noses. If there is any
ground for envy, no matter what it is ... If I have a button-nose and
another ..."

"Oh, your nose is 'classical,' as they used to say in olden times. But your
hands ... No, let us see, let us see your hands!"

I detest to have anyone look at my hands: all hairy, shaggy—a stupid
atavism. I held out my hand and said, as indifferently as I could, "An ape's
hands."

She glanced at my hands, then at my face. "A most interesting conjunction."
She weighed me with her eyes as on a scale, and the horns flicked again at
the corners of her eyebrows.

"He is registered with me." O-90's lips opened rosily, with eager joy.

I wished she had kept silent—this was altogether out of place. Generally,
this dear O . . . how shall I put it ... her tongue is wrongly timed; the
speed of the tongue should always be some seconds behind the speed of
thought, but certainly not the other way around.

At the end of the avenue, the bell on the Accumulator Tower was loudly
striking seventeen. The personal hour was over. 1-330 was leaving with the
S-shaped male number. His face somehow inspired respect, and now it seemed
familiar. I must have met him somewhere, but where?

In parting, 1-330 said with another of her X-smiles, "Come to auditorium 112
the day after tomorrow."

I shrugged. "If I am assigned to that auditorium ..."

And she, with an odd certainty, "You will be."

The woman affected me as unpleasantly as an irresolvable irrational member
that has somehow slipped into an equation. And I was glad to remain for at
least a few moments alone with dear O.

Hand in hand, we crossed four lines of avenues. At the corner she had to
turn right, and I, left.

"I'd like so much to come to you today and let down the blinds. Today, right
now . . ." O timidly raised her round, blue-crystal eyes to me.

How funny she is. What could I say to her? She had come to me only the day
before, and she knew as well as I did that our next sexual day was the day
after tomorrow. It was simply a case of her usual "words ahead of
thought"—like the occasional (and sometimes damaging) premature supply of 
a
spark to a motor.

Before we parted, I kissed her lovely blue eyes, unshadowed by a single
cloud, two-no, let me be precise—three times.





Third Entry

TOPICS:
Coat
Wall
Tables

I have just looked over what I had written yesterday, and I see that I did
not express myself clearly enough. Of course, it is all entirely clear to
any of us. But perhaps you, the unknown readers to whom the Integral will
bring my notes, have reached only that page in the great book of
civilization that our ancestors read some nine hundred years ago. Perhaps
you do not know even about such elementary things as the Table of Hours, the
Personal Hour, the Maternity Norm, the Green Wall, and the Benefactor. It
seems to me ridiculous yet very difficult to speak about all this. It is as
if a writer of, say, the twentieth century had to explain in his novel the
meaning of "coat," or "apartment," or "wife." Yet, if his novel were to be
translated for savages, how could he avoid explaining what a "coat" meant?

I am certain that a savage would look at the "coat" and wonder, "What is it
for? It's only a hindrance." It seems to me that your response may be
exactly the same when I tell you that none of us has been beyond the Green
Wall since the Two Hundred Years' War.

But, my dear readers, a man must think, at least a little. It helps. After
all, it is clear that the entire history of mankind, insofar as we know it,
is the history of transition from nomadic to increasingly settled forms of
existence. And does it not follow that the most settled form (ours) is at
the same time the most perfect (ours) ? People rushed about from one end of
the earth to the other only in prehistoric times, when there were nations,
wars, commerce, discoveries of all sorts of Americas. But who needs that
now? What for?
I admit, the habit of such settled existence was not achieved easily, or all
at once. During the Two Hundred Years' War, when all the roads fell into
ruin and were overgrown with grass, it must at first have seemed extremely
inconvenient to live in cities cut off from one another by green jungles.
But what of it? After man's tail dropped off, it must have been quite
difficult for him at first to learn to drive off flies without its aid. In
the beginning he undoubtedly missed bis tail. But now—can you imagine
yourself with a tail? Or can you imagine yourself in the street naked,
without a coat? (For you may still be trotting about in "coats.") And so it
is with me: I cannot imagine a city that is not dad in a Green Wall; I
cannot imagine a life that is not regulated by the figures of our Table.

The Table ... At this very moment, from the wall in my room, its purple
figures on a field of gold stare tenderly and sternly into my eyes.
Involuntarily, my mind turns to what the ancients called an "icon," and I
long to compose poems or prayers (which are the same thing). Oh, why am I
not a poet, to render fitting praise to the Table, the heart and pulse of
the One State!

As schoolchildren we all read (perhaps you have, too) that greatest literary
monument to have come down to us from ancient days—"The Railway Guide." 
But
set it side by side with our Table, and it will be as graphite next to a
diamond: both consist of the same element—carbon—yet how eternal, how
transparent is the diamond, how it gleams! Whose breath will fail to quicken
as he rushes clattering along the pages of "The Railway Guide"? But our
Table of Hours! Why, it transforms each one of us into a figure of steel, a
six-wheeled hero of a mighty epic poem. Every morning, with six-wheeled
precision, at the same hour and the same moment, we—millions of us—get 
up as
one. At the same hour, in million-headed unison, we start work; and hi
million-headed unison we end it And, fused into a single million-handed
body, at the same second, designated by the Table, we lift our spoons to our
mouths. At the same second, we come out for our walk, go to the auditorium,
go to the hall for Taylor exercises, fall asleep....

I shall be entirely frank: even we have not yet found an absolute, precise
solution to the problem of happiness. Twice a day, from sixteen to
seventeen, and from twenty-one to twenty-two, the single mighty organism
breaks up into separate cells; these are the Personal Hours designated by
the Table. In these hours you will see modestly lowered shades in the rooms
of some; others will walk with measured tread along the avenue, as though
climbing the brass stairs of the March; still others, like myself now, are
at their desks. But I am confident—and you may call me an idealist and
dreamer—I am confident that sooner or later we shall fit these Personal
Hours as well into the general formula. Some day these 86,400 seconds will
also be entered in the Table of Hours.

I have read and heard many incredible things about those times when people
still lived in a free, i.e., unorganized, savage condition. But most
incredible of all, it seems to me, is that the state authority of that
time—no matter how rudimentary —could allow men to live without anything
like our Table, without obligatory walks, without exact regulation of
mealtimes, getting up and going to bed whenever they felt like it Some
historians even say that in those times the street lights burned all night,
and people walked and drove around in the streets at all hours of the night.

Try as I may, I cannot understand it After all, no matter how limited their
intelligence, they should have understood that such a way of life was truly
mass murder—even if slow murder. The state (humaneness) forbade the 
killing
of a single individual, but not the partial killing of millions day by day.
To kill one individual, that is, to diminish the total sum of human lives by
fifty years, was criminal. But to diminish the sum of human lives by fifty
million years was not considered criminal. Isn't that absurd? Today, any
ten-year-old will solve this mathematical-moral problem in half a minute.
They, with all their Kants taken together, could not solve it (because it
never occurred to any of the Kants to build a system of scientific ethics,
i.e., ethics based on subtraction, addition, division, and multiplication).

And wasn't it absurd that the state (it dared to call itself a state!) could
leave sexual life without any semblance of control? As often and as much as
anyone might wish. . . . Totally unscientific, like animals. And blindly,
like animals, they bore their young. Isn't it ridiculous: to know
agriculture, poultry-breeding, fish-breeding (we have exact information that
they knew all this), yet fail to go on to the ultimate step of this logical
ladder-is
child-breeding; fail to establish such a thing as our Maternal and Paternal
Norms.

It is so absurd, so unbelievable, that I am afraid, as I write this, that
you, my unknown readers, will think me a malicious joker. I am afraid you
may decide that I am merely trying to mock you, telling you utter nonsense
with a straight face.

But, to begin with, I am incapable of jokes, for every joke contains a lie
as an implicit function. Secondly, our One State Science asserts that this
was how the ancients lived, and our State Science never errs. Besides, where
would state logic have come from at a time when men were living hi the
condition of freedom—the condition of animals, apes, the herd? What could 
be
expected of them, when even in our time the wild, apelike echo still
occasionally rises from somewhere below, from some shaggy depth?

Fortunately, only on rare occasions. Fortunately, they are only breakdowns
of minor parts which can easily be repaired without halting the eternal,
grandiose movement of the entire Machine. And to expel the warped bolt, we
have the skilled, heavy hand of the Benefactor and the experienced eyes of
the Guardians.

And, by the way, I've just remembered. That number I saw yesterday, bent
like an S—I think I've seen him coming out of the Office of the Guardians.
Now I understand that instinctive feeling of respect I had for him, and the
sense of awkwardness when the strange 1-330 spoke before him-----1 must
confess that this 1-330...

The bell for bedtime: it is past twenty-two. Until tomorrow.

14

Fourth Entry

TOPICS:
A Savage with a Barometer
Epilepsy
If

Until now, everything in life was clear to me (no wonder I seem to have a
predilection for the very word "clear"). Yet today ... I cannot understand
it.
First: I was, indeed, assigned to auditorium 112, as she had told me.
Although the probability was

1500                       3
------------------=-------------
10,000,000       20,000

(1500 being the number of auditoriums; 10,000,000, the number of numbers).

And, second . . . But let me tell it in order, as it happened.

The auditorium—an enormous, sun-drenched hemisphere of massive glass.
Circular rows of nobly spherical, smooth-shaven heads. With a slightly
palpitating heart I looked around me. I think I was searching for the sight
of a rosy crescent—O's sweet lips—over the blue waves of unifs. A flash 
of
someone's extraordinarily white, sharp teeth, like ... No, but it wasn't
that. O was to come to me at twenty-one that evening. It was entirely
natural for me to wish to see her there.

The bell rang. We stood up and sang the Hymn of the One State. And then,
from the stage, the voice of the phono-lecturer, glittering with its golden
loud-speakers and wit.

"Respected numbers! Our archeologists have recently dug up a certain
twentieth-century book in which the ironic author tells the story of a
savage and a barometer. The savage noticed that every time the barometer
indicated 'rain/ it actually rained. And since he wanted it to rain, he
picked out exactly enough mercury from the column to leave it at "rain.'"
(On the screen—a savage, dressed in feathers, picking out the mercury.
Laughter.) "You are laughing. But does it not seem to you that the European
of that period was even more ridiculous? Like the savage, the European
wanted 'rain'—rain with a capital letter, algebraic rain. But all he did 
was
stand before the barometer like a limp wet hen. The savage, at least, had
more courage and energy and logic, if only primitive logic He had been able
to discover that there was a connection between effect and cause. Picking
out the mercury, he was able to take the first step on that great road along
which . . ."

At this point (I repeat, I write these notes without concealing 
anything)—at
this point I became as though impermeable to the vitalizing stream that
flowed from the loud-speakers. I was suddenly overcome by the feeling that I
had come there for nothing (why "for nothing," and how could I not have
come, since I had been assigned there?). Everything seemed empty to me,
nothing but mere husks. And when, by dint of a considerable effort, I
managed to switch on my attention again, the phono-lecturer had already gone
on to his main topic: our music, mathematical composition. (The
mathematician as the cause, music as the effect.) He was describing the
recently devised musicometer.

"Simply by turning this handle, any of you can produce up to three sonatas
an hour. Yet think how much effort this had cost your forebears! They were
able to create only by whipping themselves up to fits of 'inspiration'—an
unknown form of epilepsy. And here you have a most amusing illustration of
what they produced: Scriabin, the twentieth century. They called this black
box" (a curtain parted on the stage, revealing their most ancient
instrument) "a 'grand,' a 'royal' instrument, which only shows once more to
what extent their entire music ..."

And then I lost the thread again, perhaps because . . . Yes, I will be
frank, because she, 1-330, came out to the "royal" box. I suppose I was
simply startled by her sudden appearance on the stage.

She wore the fantastic costume of the ancient epoch: a closely fitting black
dress, which sharply emphasized the whiteness of her bare shoulders and
breast, with that warm shadow, stirring with her breath, between . . . and
the dazzling, almost angry teeth....

A smile—a bite—to us, below. Then she sat down and began to play. 
Something
savage, spasmodic, variegated, like their whole life at that time—not a
trace of rational mechanical method. And, of course, all those around me
were right, they all laughed.
Except for a few . . . but why was it that I, too... I?

Yes, epilepsy, a sickness of the spirit, pain . . . Slow, sweet pain—a
bite—and you want it still deeper, still more painful. Then, slowly, the
sun. Not ours, not that bluish, crystal, even glow through glass bricks,
no—a wild, rushing, scorching sun—and off with all your clothing, tear
everything to shreds.

The number next to me glanced to the left, at me, and snorted. Somehow, a
vivid memory remains: a tiny bubble of saliva blew out on his lips and
burst. The bubble sobered me. I was myself again.

Like all the others, I now heard only senseless, hurried clattering. I
laughed. There was a feeling of relief; everything was simple. The clever
phono-lecturer had given us too vivid a picture of that primitive age. That
was all.

With what enjoyment I listened afterward to our present music! (It was
demonstrated at the end, for contrast.) The crystalline chromatic measures
of converging and diverging infinite series and the synthesizing chords of
Taylor and McLauren formulas; the full-toned, square, heavy tempos of
"Pythagoras' Trousers"; the sad melodies of attenuating vibrations; vivid
beats alternating with Frauenhofer lines of pauses—like the spectroscopic
analysis of planets. . . . What grandeur! What imperishable logic! And how
pathetic the capricious music of the ancients, governed by nothing but wild
fantasies. . ..

As usual, we walked out through the wide doors of the auditorium in orderly
ranks, four abreast. The familiar, doubly bent figure flashed past; I bowed
respectfully.

O was to come in an hour. I felt pleasantly and beneficially excited. At
home I stepped hurriedly into the office, handed in my pink coupon, and
received the certificate permitting me to lower the shades. This right is
granted only on sexual days. At all other times we live behind our
transparent walls that seem woven of gleaming air—we are always visible,
always washed in light We have nothing to conceal from one another. Besides,
this makes much easier the difficult and noble task of the Guardians. For
who knows what might happen otherwise? Perhaps it was precisely those
strange, opaque dwellings of the ancients that gave rise to their paltry
cage psychology. "My (sic!) home is my castle." What an ideal

At twenty-two I lowered the shades, and at the same moment O entered,
slightly out of breath. She held up to me her pink lips and her pink coupon.
I tore off the stub—and could not tear myself away from her pink mouth 
until
the very last second—twenty-two-fifteen.

Afterward I showed her my "notes" and spoke (I think I spoke very well)
about the beauty of the square, the cube, the straight line. She listened
with such enchanting pink attention, and suddenly a tear dropped from the
blue eyes, then a second, a third, right on the open page (page 7). The ink
ran. Now I shall have to copy the page.

"Darling D, if only you—if..."

"If" what? If ... Her old song again about a child? Or, perhaps, something
new—about... about the other one? But this would ... No, really, it would 
be
too absurd.






Fifth Entry

TOPICS:
Square
The Rulers of the World
A Pleasantly Useful Function

Again it's all wrong. Again I speak to you, my unknown reader, as though you
... As though, let us say, you were my old friend R-13, the poet, the one
with the Negroid lips—everybody knows him. But you are—on the moon, on
Venus, Mars, Mercury? Who knows where you are, or who you are.

Now, think of a square, a living, beautiful square. And imagine that it must
tell you about itself, about its life. You understand, a square would
scarcely ever think of telling you that all its four angles are equal: this
has become so natural, so ordinary to it that it's simply no longer
consciously aware of it. And so with me: I find myself continually in this
square's position. Take the pink coupons, for example, and all the rest that
goes with them. To me, this is as natural as the equality of its four angles
is to the square, but to you it may be more of a mystery than Newton's
binomial theorem.

Well. One of the ancient sages said a clever thing—accidentally, of
course—"Love and Hunger rule the world." Ergo: to conquer the world, man
must conquer its rulers. Our forebears succeeded, at heavy cost, in
conquering Hunger; I am speaking of the Great Two Hundred Years' War—the 
war
between the city and the village. The primitive peasants, prompted perhaps
by religious prejudice, stubbornly clung to their "bread." * But in the year
85 before the founding of the One State, our present food, a petroleum
product, was developed. True, only 0.2 of the earth's population survived
the war. But, cleansed of its millennial filth, how radiant the face of the
earth has become! And those two tenths survived to taste the heights of
bliss in the shining palace of the One State.

Is it not clear, however, that bliss and envy are the numerator and
denominator of the fraction called happiness? And what sense would there be
in the countless sacrifices of the Two Hundred Years' War, if reasons for
envy still remained in our life? Yet they did remain, for there were still
"button" noses and "classical" ones (our conversation during the walk);
there were still some whose love was sought by many, and those whose love
was sought by none.

Naturally, having conquered Hunger (algebraically, by the sum total of
external welfare), the One State launched its attack against the other ruler
of the world—Love. And finally this elemental force was also subjugated,
i.e., organized and reduced to mathematical order. About three hundred years
ago, our historic Lex Sexualis was proclaimed: "Each number has a right to
any other number, as to a sexual commodity."

Since then it has been only a matter of technology. You are carefully
examined in the laboratories of the Sexual Department; the exact content of
sexual hormones in your blood is determined, and you are provided with an
appropriate Table of sexual days. After that, you declare that on your
sexual days you wish to use number so-and-so, and you receive your book of
coupons (pink). And that is all.

• This word has survived only as a poetic metaphor; the chemical 
composition
of this substance is unknown to us.

Clearly, this leaves no possible reasons for envy; the denominator of the
happiness fraction is reduced to zero, and the fraction is transformed into
a magnificent infinity. And so what to the ancients was the source of
innumerable stupid tragedies has been reduced to a harmonious, pleasant, and
useful function of the organism, a function like sleep, physical labor, the
consumption of food, defecation, and so on. Hence you see how the great
power of logic purifies everything it touches. Oh, if only you, my dear
readers, would come to know this divine power, if you, too, would learn to
follow it to the end!

How strange ... I have written today about the loftiest peaks of human
history; I have breathed all this time the purest mountain air of thought
Yet within me everything is somehow cloudly, cobwebby, shadowed by the cross
of a strange, fourpawed X. Or is it my own shaggy paws? And all because they
have been so long before my eyes? I dislike to talk about them, and I
dislike them: they are a relic of a savage epoch. Can it be that somewhere
within me there is really....

I wanted to cross out all this, because it is outside the outlined topics
for this entry. Then I decided I would leave it. Let my notes, like the most
sensitive seismograph, record the curve of even the most insignificant
vibrations of my brain: for it is precisely such vibrations that are
sometimes the forewarning of...

But this is entirely absurd. This really should be stricken out: we have
channeled all elemental forces —there can be no catastrophes.

And now all is entirely clear to me. The odd feeling within me is simply the
result of that same square position I have described before. And the
troubling X is not within me (it cannot be); it is simply my fear that some
X may remain in you, my unknown readers. But I am confident you will not
judge me too severely. I am confident you will understand that it is far
more difficult for me to write than it has been for any other author in the
history of mankind. Some wrote for their contemporaries; others for their
descendants. But no one has ever written for ancestors, or for beings
similar to his primitive, remote ancestors.






Sixth Entry

TOPICS:
An Incident
The Damned "It's Clear"
Twenty-four Hours

I repeat: I have made it my duty to write without concealing anything.
Therefore, sad as it is, I must note here that even among us the process of
the hardening, the crystallization of life has evidently not yet been
completed; there are still some steps to be ascended before we reach the
ideal. The ideal (clearly) is the condition where nothing happens any more.
But now . . . Well, today's One State Gazette announces that the day after
tomorrow there will be a celebration of Justice at the Plaza of the Cube.
This means that once again some number has disturbed the operation of the
great State Machine; again something has happened that was unforeseen,
unforecalculated.

Besides, something has happened to me as well. True, this was during the
Personal Hour, that is, at a time especially set aside for unforeseen
circumstances. Nevertheless . . .

At about the hour of sixteen (or, to be exact, ten to sixteen) I was at
home. Suddenly the telephone rang. A female voice: "D-503?"

"Yes."

"Are you free?"

"Yes."

"This is 1,1-330.1 shall call for you in a moment —we'll go to the Ancient
House. Agreed?"

1-330 ... She irritates and repels me, she almost frightens me. But this is
exactly why I said, "Yes."

Five minutes later we were already in the aero. The blue majolica of the
Maytime sky; the light sun in its own golden aero buzzing after us, neither
falling behind nor overtaking us. And ahead of us— a cloud, white as a
cataract, preposterous and puffed out like the cheeks of an ancient cupid,
and somehow disturbing. Our front window is up. Wind, drying the lips.
Involuntarily, you lick them all the time, and all the time you think of
lips.

Then, in the distance, blurred green spots—out there, behind the Wall. A
slight, quick sinking of the heart—down, down, down—as from a steep
mountain, and we are at the Ancient House.

The whole strange, fragile, blind structure is completely enclosed in a
glass shell. Otherwise, of course, it would have fallen apart a long time
ago. At the glass door, an old woman, all wrinkled, especially her
mouth—nothing but folds and pleats, the lips sunk inward, as if the mouth
had grown together somehow. It seemed incredible that she would still be
able to speak. And yet, she spoke.

"Well, darlings, so you've come to see my little house?" And the wrinkles
beamed (they must have arranged themselves radially, creating the impression
of "beaming").

"Yes, Grandmother, I felt like seeing it again," said 1-330.

The wrinkles beamed. "What sunshine, eh? Well, well, now? You little pixy! I
know, I know! All right, go in by yourselves, I'll stay here, in the sun..."

Hm .. . My companion must be a frequent guest here. I had a strong desire to
shake something off, something annoying: probably the same persistent visual
image—the cloud on the smooth blue majolica.

As we ascended the broad, dark staircase, 1-330 said, "I love her, that old
woman."

"Why?"

"I don't know. Perhaps for her mouth. Or perhaps for no reason. Just like
that."

I shrugged. She went on, smiling faintly, or perhaps not smiling at all, "I
feel terribly guilty. Obviously, there should be no love just like that,'
but only 'love because.' All elemental phenomena should . . ."

"It's clear ..." I began, but immediately caught myself at the word and cast
a stealthy glance at 1-330: had she noticed it or not?

She was looking down somewhere; her eyes were lowered, like shades.

I thought of the evening hour, at about twenty-two. You walk along the
avenue and there, among the bright, transparent cells—the dark ones, with
lowered shades. And behind the shades . . . What was behind the shades
within her? Why had she called me today, and what was all this for?

I opened a heavy, creaking, opaque door, and we stepped into a gloomy,
disorderly place (they called it an "apartment") . The same strange "royal"
musical instrument—and again the wild, disorganized, mad music, like the
other time—a jumble of colors and forms. A white flat area above; dark 
blue
walls; red, green, and orange bindings of ancient books; yellow
bronze—chandeliers, a statue of Buddha; furniture built along lines
convulsed in epilepsy, incapable of being fitted into an equation.

I could barely endure all that chaos. But my companion evidently had a
stronger organism.

"This is my favorite ..." and suddenly she seemed to catch herself. A
bite-smile, white sharp teeth. "I mean, to be exact, the most absurd of all
then1 'apartments.' '*

"Or, to be even more exact," I corrected her, "their states. Thousands of
microscopic, eternally warring states, as ruthless as ..."

"Of course, that's dear ..." she said, apparently with utmost seriousness.

We crossed a room with small children's beds (the children at that time were
also private property) . Then more rooms, glimmering mirrors, somber
wardrobes, intolerably gaudy sofas, a huge "fireplace," a large mahogany
bed. Our modern-beautiful, transparent, eternal—glass was there only in 
the
pathetic, fragile little window squares.

"And then, imagine! Here they all loved 'just like that,' burning,
suffering. ..." (Again the dropped shades of the eyes.) "What stupid,
reckless waste of human energy—don't you think?"

She seemed to speak somehow out of myself; she spoke my thoughts. But in her
smile there was that constant, irritating X. Behind the shades, something
was going on within her—I don't know what— that made me lose my 
patience. I
wanted to argue with her, to shout at her (yes, shout), but I had to
agree—it was not possible to disagree.

She stopped before a mirror. At that moment I saw only her eyes. I thought:
A human being is made as absurdly as these preposterous "apartments"; human
heads are opaque, with only tiny windows in them—the eyes. As though
guessing, she turned. "Well, here are my eyes. Well?" (Silently, of course.)

Before me, two eerily dark windows, and within, such a mysterious, alien
life. I saw only flame-some fireplace of her own was blazing there—and
shapes resembling ...

This, of course was natural: I saw myself reflected in her eyes. But what I
was feeling was unnatural and unlike me (it must have been the opres-sive
effect of the surroundings). I felt definitely frightened. I felt trapped,
imprisoned in that primitive cage, caught by the savage whirlwind of the
ancient life.

"You know what," said 1-380. "Step out for a moment to the next room." Her
voice came from there, from within, from behind the dark windows of her
eyes, where the fireplace was blazing.

I went out and sat down. From a shelf on the wall, the snubnosed,
asymmetrical physiognomy of some ancient poet (Pushkin, I think) smiled
faintly right into my face. Why was I sitting there, meekly enduring that
smile? Why all of this? Why was I there—why these ridiculous feelings? 
That
irritating, repellent woman, her strange game ...

A closet door was shut behind the wall, the rustle of silk. I barely
restrained myself from going in and ... I don't remember exactly—I must 
have
wanted to say very sharp words to her.

But she had already come out She wore a short, old, vivid yellow dress, a
black hat, black stockings. The dress was of light silk. I could see the
stockings, very long, much higher than the knees. And the bare throat, and
the shadow between ...

"Look, you are clearly trying to be original, but don't you ..."

"Clearly," she interrupted me, "to be original is to be in some way distinct
from others. Hence, to be original is to violate equality. And that which in
the language of the ancients was called 'being banal* is with us merely the
fulfillment of our duty. Because ..."

"Yes, yes! Precisely." I could not restrain myself. "And there is no reason
for you to ... to ..."

She went over to die statue of the snub-nosed poet and, drawing down the
blinds over the wild flame of her eyes, blaring within her, behind her
windows, she said a very sensible thing (this time, it seems to me, entirely
in earnest, perhaps to mollify me). "Don't you find it astonishing that once
upon a time people tolerated such characters? And not only tolerated, but
worshiped them? What a slavish spirit! Don't you think?"

"It's clear ... I mean ..." (That damned "It's clear" again!)

"Oh, yes, I understand. But actually, these poets were masters far more
powerful than their crowned kings. Why weren't they isolated, exterminated?
With us ..."

'Yes, with us ..." I began, and suddenly she burst out laughing. I could see
that laughter with my eyes: the resonant sharp curve of it, as pliantly
resistant as a whip.

I remember, I trembled all over. Just to seize her, and ... I cannot recall
what I wanted to do. But I had to do something, anything. Mechanically I
opened my golden badge, glanced at the watch. Ten to seventeen.

"Don't you think it's time?" I said as politely as I could.

"And if I asked you to remain here with me?"

"Look, do you ... do you know what you are saying? In ten minutes I must be
in the auditorium. . . ."

"... and all numbers must attend the prescribed courses in art and
sciences," she said in my voice. Then she raised the blinds, looked up; the
fireplace blazed through the dark windows. "I know a doctor at the Medical
Office, he is registered with me. If I ask him, he will give you a
certificate that you were sick. Well?"

Now I understood. At last, I understood where that whole game of hers was
leading.

"So that's it! And do you know that, like any honest number, I must, in
fact, immediately go to the Office of the Guardians and ..."

"And not 'in fact'?"—sharp smile-bite. "I am terribly curious—will you 
go to
the Office, or won't you?"

"Are you staying?" I put my hand on the doorknob. It was brass, and I heard
my voice—it was also brass.

"One moment... . May I?"

She went to the telephone, asked for some number—I was too upset to 
remember
it—and cried out, "I shall wait for you in the Ancient House. Yes, yes,
alone...."

I turned the cold brass knob.

'You will permit me to take the aero?"

"Yes, certainly! Of course. ..."

Outside, in the sunshine, at the entrance, the old woman was dozing like a
vegetable. Again it was astonishing that her closegrown mouth opened and she
spoke.

"And your ... did she remain there by herself?"

"By herself."

The old woman's mouth grew together again. She shook her head. Evidently,
even her failing brain understood the full absurdity and danger of the
woman's conduct

Exactly at seventeen I was at the lecture. And it was only here that I
suddenly realized I had said an untruth to the old woman: 1-330 was not
there by herself now. Perhaps it was this—that I had unwittingly lied to 
the
old woman—that tormented me and interfered with my listening. Yes, she was
not by herself: that was the trouble.

After half past twenty-one I had a free hour. I could go to the Office of
the Guardians right there and then and turn in my report. But I felt
extremely tired after that stupid incident And then— the legal time limit
for reporting was two days. I would do it tomorrow; I still had twenty-four
hours.






Seventh Entry

TOPICS:
An Eyelash
Taylor
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
value*.

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 dear my throat.

"Why, that's excellent. It gives material for very instructive conclusions."

"But, you see, I was not alone, I accompanied number 1-330, and ..."

'1-330? 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? M

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 die 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 dear 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,
dear, 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 met"
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.

0 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-humored-ly "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.* 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?"

• Naturally, his subject was not "Religious Law," or "God's Law," as the
ancients called it, but the law of the One State.

"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
—intergration 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 dear
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
Iambics and Trochees
A Cast-Iron Hand

A bright, solemn day. On such days you forget your weaknesses, imprecisions,
ailments, and everything is crystal, immutable, eternal—like our glass.

The Cube Plaza. Sixty-six great concentric circles of stands. Sixty-six rows
of quiet luminous faces, eyes reflecting the glow of the sky, or perhaps the
glow of the One State. Blood-red flowers—the women's lips. Tender garlands
of childish faces in the front rows, near the center of action. Absorbed,
stern, Gothic silence.

According to the descriptions that have come down to us, something similar
was experienced by the ancients during their "religious services." But they
worshiped their own irrational, unknown God; we serve our rational and
precisely known one. Their God gave them nothing except eternal, tormenting
searching; their God had not been able to think of anything more sensible
than offering himself as sacrifice for some incomprehensible reason. We, on
the other hand, offer a sacrifice to our God, the One State—a calm,
reasoned, sensible sacrifice. Yes, this was our solemn liturgy to the One
State, a remembrance of the awesome time of trial, of the Two Hundred Years'
War, a grandiose celebration of the victory of all over one, of the sum over
the individual.

The one. He stood on the steps of the sun-filled Cube. A white—no, not 
even
white, already colorless—face: a glass face, glass lips. And only the
eyes—black, greedy, engulfing holes. And the dread world from which he was
but minutes away. The golden badge with his number had already been removed.
His arms were bound with a purple ribbon—an ancient custom. (It evidently
dates back to olden times, before such things were done in the name of the
One State; in those days, the condemned understandably felt that they had
the right to resist, and so their hands were usually bound in chains.)

And all the way above, upon the Cube, near the Machine—the motionless
figure, as if cast in metal, of Him whom we call the Benefactor. His face
could not be seen in detail from below; all you could tell was that it was
defined in square, austere, majestic contours. But the hands ... It
sometimes happens in photographs that the hands, placed in the foreground
too near the camera, come out huge; they hold the eye and shut out all the
rest So with these heavy hands, still calmly reposing on the knees. And it
was clear—they were stone, and the knees were barely able to support their
weight.

Then suddenly one of those huge hands slowly rose—a slow, cast-iron
movement. And from the stands, obeying the raised hand, a number approached
the Cube. He was one of the State Poets, whose happy lot it was to crown the
celebration with his verse. Divine, brass iambics thundered over the
stands—about the madman with glass eyes, who stood there on the steps,
awaiting the logical results of his mad ravings.

A blazing fire. In the iambics buildings swayed, went up in jets of liquid
gold, collapsed. Fresh green trees withered, shriveled, sap dripping
out-nothing remaining but the black crosses of their skeletons. But now
Prometheus (meaning us) appeared.

"He harnessed fire in the machine, in steel, And bound chaos in the chains
of Law."

And everything was new, everything was steel—a steel sun, steel trees, 
steel
men. But suddenly a madman "unchained the fire" and everything would perish
again....

Unfortunately, I have a poor memory for verses, but I remember one thing: it
would have been impossible to choose more beautiful, more instructive
images.

Again the slow, heavy gesture, and a second poet appeared on the steps of
the Cube. I even rose a little from my seat: it could not be! No, those were
his thick lips, it was he.... Why hadn't he told me he was to have this high
... His lips trembled, they were gray. I understood: to appear before the
Benefactor, before the entire host of Guardians ... Yet-to be so nervous ...

Sharp, quick trochees—like blows of an ax. About a heinous crime, about
sacrilegious verses which dared to call the Benefactor... no, my hand
refuses to repeat it.

R-13 sank into his seat, pale, looking at no one (I would not have expected
him to be so shy). For die smallest fraction of a second I had a glimpse of
someone's face—a dark, sharp, pointed triangle-flashing near him, then
vanishing at once. My eyes, thousands of eyes, turned up to the Machine. The
third castiron gesture of the nonhuman hand. And the transgressor, swayed by
an unseen wind, walked slowly up one stair, another, and now—the last step
in his life, and he is on his last bed, face to the sky, head thrown back.

The Benefactor, heavy, stony as fate, walked around the Machine, placed His
huge hand on the lever. ... Not a sound, not a breath—all eyes were on 
that
hand. What a fiery gust of exaltation one must feel to be the instrument,
the resultant of a hundred thousand wills! What a great destiny!

An infinite second. The hand moved down, switching on the current A flash of
the intolerably dazzling blade of the ray, sharp as a shiver; faint
crackling of the tubes in the Machine. The prone body enveloped in a light,
glowing mist—and melting, melting before our eyes, dissolving with 
appalling
speed. Then nothing—only a small puddle of chemically pure water, which 
but
a moment ago had pulsed redly, wildly hi the heart ...

All this was elementary and known to everyone: yes, dissociation of matter;
yes, splitting of the atoms of the human body. And yet each tune it was a
miracle—a token of the superhuman power of the Benefactor.

Above us, facing Him, the flushed faces of ten female numbers, lips parted
with excitement, flowers swaying in the wind.*

According to the old custom, ten women garlanded with flowers the
Benefactor's unif, still wet with spray. With the majestic step of a high
priest, He slowly descended and slowly walked between the stands. And in His
wake, the delicate white branches of female hands raised high, and a
million-voiced storm of cheers, shouted in unison. Then cheers in honor of
the host of Guardians, invisibly present somewhere here, within our ranks.
Who knows, perhaps it was precisely these Guardians who had been foreseen by
the imagination of ancient man when he created his dread and gentle
"archangels" assigned to each man from his birth.

• From the Botanical Museum, of course. Personally, I see nothing 
beautiful
in flowers, or in anything belonging to the primitive world long exiled
beyond the Green WaLL Only the rational and useful is beautiful: machines,
boots, formulas, food, and BO on.

Yes, there was something of the old religions, something purifying like a
storm, in that solemn ceremony. You who will read this—are you familiar 
with
such moments? I pity you if you are not...







Tenth Entry

TOPICS:
A Letter
A Membrane
My Shaggy Self

Yesterday was to me like the paper through which chemists filter their
solutions: all suspended particles, all that is superfluous remains on this
paper. And this morning I went downstairs freshly distilled, transparent.

Downstairs in the vestibule, the controller sat at her table, glancing at
the watch and writing down the numbers of those who entered. Her name is U
... but I had better not mention her number, lest I say something
unflattering about her. Although, essentially, she is quite a respectable
middle-aged woman. The only thing I dislike about her is that her cheeks sag
like the gills of a fish (but why should that disturb me?).

Her pen scraped, and I saw myself on the page— D-503, and next to me an
inkblot.

I was just about to draw her attention to it when she raised her head and
dripped an inky little smile at me. "There is a letter for you. Yes. You
will get it, my dear, yes, yes, you will get it."

I know that the letter, which she had read, still had to pass the Office of
the Guardians (I believe there is no need to explain to you this natural
procedure), and would reach me not later than twelve. But I was disturbed by
that little smile; the ink drop muddied my transparent solution. So much, in
fact, that later, at the Integral construction site, I could not concentrate
and even made a mistake in my calculations, which had never happened to me
before.

At twelve, again the pinkish-brown gills, and finally the letter was in my
hands. I don't know why I did not read it at once, but slipped it into my
pocket and hurried to my room. I opened it, ran through it, and sat down.
... It was an official notification that number 1-330 had registered for me
and that I was to be at her room today at twenty-one. The address was given
below.

No! After everything that had happened, after I had so unequivocally shown
my feelings toward her! Besides, she did not even know whether I had gone to
the Office of the Guardians. After all, she had no way of learning that I
had been sick—well, that I generally could not... And despite all this...

A dynamo whirled, hummed in my head. Buddha, yellow silk, lilies of the
valley, a rosy crescent ... Oh, yes, and this too: O was to visit me today.
Ought I to show her the notice concerning 1-330? I didn't know. She would
not believe (indeed, how could she?) that I've had nothing to do with it,
that I was entirely ... And I was sure—there would be a difficult,
senseless, absolutely illogical conversation ... No, only not that Let
everything be resolved automatically: I would simply send her a copy of the
notice.
I hurriedly stuffed the notice into my pocket— and suddenly saw this
dreadful, apelike hand of mine. I recalled how 1-330 had taken my hand that
time, during the walk, and looked at it Did she really...

And then it was a quarter to twenty-one. A white night Everything seemed
made of greenish glass. But a very different glass from ours—fragile,
unreal, a thin glass shell; and under it something whirling, rushing,
humming ... And I would not have been astonished if the cupolas of the
auditoriums had risen up in slow, round clouds of smoke, and the elderly
moon smiled inkily—like the woman at the table in the morning, and all the
shades dropped suddenly in all the houses, and behind the shades ...

A strange sensation: I felt as though my ribs were iron rods, constricting,
definitely constricting my heart—there was not room enough for it. I stood
before the glass door with the golden figures: 1-330. She was sitting with
her back to me, at the table, writing something. I entered.

"Here ..." I held out the pink coupon. "I was notified today, and so I
came."

"How prompt you are! One moment may I? Sit down, I'll just finish."

Again her eyes turned down to the letter—and what was going on within her,
behind those lowered shades? What would she say? What was I to do a minute
later? How could I find out, how calculate it, when all of her was—from
there, from the savage, ancient land of dreams?

I looked at her silently. My ribs were iron rods; I could not breathe ...
When she spoke, her face was like a rapid, sparkling wheel—you could not 
see
the individual spokes. But now the wheel was motionless. And I saw a strange
combination: dark eyebrows raised high at the temples—a mocking, sharp
triangle. And yet another, pointing upward— the two deep lines from the
corners of her mouth to the nose. And these two triangles somehow
contradicted one another, stamped the entire face with an unpleasant,
irritating X, like a slanting cross. A face marked with a cross.

The wheel began to turn, the spokes ran together....

"So you did not go to the Office of the Guardians?"

"I did not... could not—I was sick."

"Certainly. I thought so. Something had to prevent you—no matter what."
(Sharp teeth, smile.) "But now you are in my hands.
You remember— 'Every number who has failed to report to the Office of the
Guardians within forty-eight hours, is considered ...' "

My heart thumped so violently that the rods bent Caught stupidly, like a
boy. And stupidly I kept silent. And I felt: I'm trapped, I cannot move a
hand or a foot

She stood up and stretched lazily. Then she pressed a button, and the shades
dropped, crackling lightly. I was cut off from the world, alone with her.

1-330 was somewhere behind me, near the closet Her unif rustled, fell. I
listened, all of me listened. And I remembered ... no, it flashed upon me
within one hundredth of a second ...

I had had occasion recently to calculate the curve for a street membrane of
a new type (now these membranes, gracefully camouflaged, were installed on
every street, recording all conversations for the Office of the Guardians).
And I remembered the rosy, concave, quivering film, the strange creature
consisting of a single organ—an ear. I was such a membrane at this moment
A click of the fastening at the collar, on the breast still lower. The glass
silk rustled down the shoulders, knees, dropped to the floor. I heard, more
clearly than I could see, one foot step out of the bluish-gray silk pile,
the other. ...

The tautly stretched membrane quivered and recorded silence. No: sharp blows
of a hammer against the iron rods, with endless pauses. And I heard—I saw
her behind me, thinking for a second.

And now—the closet doors, the click of an opening lid—and again silk, 
silk
...

"Well, if you please."

I turned. She was in a light, saffron-yellow dress of the ancient model.
This was a thousand times more cruel than if she had worn nothing. Two
pointed tips through the filmy silk, glowing pink-two embers through the
ash. Two delicately rounded knees...

She sat in a low armchair. On the rectangular table before her, a bottle
with something poi-sonously green, two tiny glasses on stems. At the corner
of her lips a thread of smoke—that ancient smoking substance in the finest
paper tube (I forget what it was called).

The membrane still quivered. The hammer pounded inside me against the
red-hot iron rods. I clearly heard each blow, and ... and suddenly: What if
she heard it too?

But she puffed calmly, glancing at me calmly, and carelessly shook off the
ash—on my pink coupon.

As coolly as I could, I asked, "Now, listen, if that's the case, why did you
register for me? And why did you compel me to come here?"

It was as if she did not hear. She poured the liquid from the bottle into
her glass, sipped it.

"Delicious liqueur. Would you like some?"

It was only now that I understood: alcohol. Yesterday's scene flashed like a
stroke of lightning: the Benefactor's stony hand, the blinding ray. But on
the  Cube   above— this  body,  prostrate,  with  the head thrown back. I
shuddered.

"Listen," I said. "You know that everyone who poisons himself with nicotine,
and especially alcohol, is ruthlessly destroyed by the One State...."

Dark eyebrows rose high to the temples, a sharp mocking triangle. "Quick
destruction of a few is more sensible than giving many the opportunity to
ruin themselves? And then, degeneration, and so on. Right—to the point of
indecency."

"Yes... to the point of indecency."

"And if this little company of naked, bald truths were to be let out in the
street . . . No, just imagine. . . . Well, take the most constant admirer of
mine—oh, but you know him- . . . Imagine that he has discarded all the
falsehood of clothes and stood among the people in his true shape.... Oh!"

She laughed. But I could clearly see her lower, sorrowful triangle—the two
deep lines from the corners of her mouth to her nose.
And for some reason these lines revealed it to me: that stooping,
wing-eared, doubly curved ... he embraced her—as she was now.... He...

But I am trying to convey the feelings—the abnormal feelings—I had at 
that
moment Now, as I write this, I am perfectly aware that all of this is as it
should be. Like every honest number, he has an equal right to joy, and it
would be unjust . . . Oh, well, but this is dear.

1-330 laughed very strangely and very long. Then she looked closely at
me—into me. "But the main thing is that I am completely at ease with you.
You are such a dear—oh, I am sure of it—you will never think of going to 
the
Office and reporting that I drink liqueur, that I smoke. You will be sick,
or you will be busy, or whatever. I am even sure that in a moment you will
drink this marvelous poison with me...."

That brazen, mocking tone. I definitely felt: now I hate her again. But why
the "now"? I have hated her all the time.

She tilted the whole glassful of green poison into her mouth, stood up, and,
glowing pink through the transparent saffron, took several steps ... and
stopped behind my chair.

Suddenly, an arm around my neck, lips into lips—no, somewhere still 
deeper,
still more terrifying. I swear, this took me completely by surprise, and
perhaps that was the only reason why ... After all, I could not—now I
realize it clearly—I myself could not have wanted what happened after that

Intolerably sweet lips (I suppose it must have been the taste of the
"liqueur") —and a mouthful of fiery poison flowed into me—then more, and
more. ... I broke away from the earth and, like a separate planet, whirling
madly, rushed down, down, along an unknown, uncalculated orbit....

What followed can be described only approximately, only by more or less
close analogies.

It has never occurred to me before, but this is truly how it is: all of us
on earth walk constantly over a seething, scarlet sea of flame, hidden
below, in the belly of the earth. We never think of it. But what if the thin
crust under our feet should turn into glass and we should suddenly see ... I
became glass. I saw—within myself. There were two of me. The former one,
D-503, number D-503, and the other ... Before, he had just barely shown his
hairy paws from within the shell; now all of him broke out, the shell
cracked; a moment, and it would fly to pieces and ... And then ... what?

With all my strength, as though clutching at a straw, I gripped the arms of
the chair and asked— only to hear myself, the other self, the old one, 56

"Where ... where did you get this... this poison?"

"Oh, this! A certain doctor, one of my ..."

" 'One of my ...'? 'One of my'-what?" And suddenly the other leaped out and
yelled, "I won't allow it! I want no one but me. I'll kill anyone who .. .
Because I... Because you ... I..."

I saw—he seized her roughly with his shaggy paws, tore the silk, and sank
his teeth into ... I remember exactly—his teeth ...
I don't know how, but 1-330 managed to slip away. And now—her eyes behind
that damned impermeable shade—she stood leaning with her back against the
wardrobe and listened to me.

I remember—I was on the floor, embracing her legs, kissing her knees,
pleading, "Now, right this minute, right now ..."

Sharp teeth, sharp mocking triangle of eyebrows. She bent down and silently
unpinned my badge.

"Yes! Yes, darling, darling." I hurriedly began to throw off my unit But
1-330 just as silently showed me the watch on my badge. It was five minutes
to twenty-two and a half.

I turned cold. I knew what it meant to be seen in the street after
twenty-two and a half. My madness vanished as if blown away. I was myself.
And one thing was clear to me: I hate her, hate her, hate her!

Without a good-by, without a backward glance, I rushed out of the room.
Hurriedly pinning on the badge as I ran, skipping steps, down the stairway
(afraid of meeting someone in the elevator), I burst out into the empty
street.

Everything was in its usual place—so simple, ordinary, normal: the glass
houses gleaming with lights, the pale glass sky, the motionless greenish
night But under this cool quiet glass something violent blood-red, shaggy,
rushed soundlessly. And I raced, gasping, not to be late.

Suddenly I felt the hastily pinned badge loosening—it slipped off, 
clicking
on the glass pavement. I bent down to pick it up, and in the momentary
silence heard the stamping of feet behind me. I turned—something little,
bowed, slunk out from around the corner, or so it seemed to me at the time.

I rushed on at full speed, the air whistling in my ears. At the entrance I
stopped: the watch showed one minute before twenty-two and a half. I
listened—there was no one behind me. Obviously, it had all been a
preposterous fantasy, the effect of the poison.

It was a night of torment My bed rose and sank and rose again under me,
floating along a sinusoid. I argued with myself: At night numbers must
sleep; it is their duty, just as it is their duty to work in the daytime.
Not sleeping at night is a criminal offense. ... And yet, I could not and
could not.

I am perishing. I am unable to fulfill my obligations to the One State....
I...








Eleventh Entry

TOPICS : No, I cannot, Ml simply write, without a plan

Evening. A light mist The sky is hidden by a milky-golden veil and you
cannot see what is above, beyond it The ancients knew that God— their
greatest, bored skeptic—was there. We know that there is only a
crystal-blue, naked, indecent nothing. But now I do not know what is there:
I have learned too much. Knowledge, absolutely sure of its infallibility, is
faith. I had had firm faith in myself; I had believed that I knew everything
within myself. And now...

I stand before a mirror. And for the first time in my life—yes, for the
first time—I see myself clearly, sharply, consciously. I see myself with
astonishment as a certain "he." Here am I—he: black eyebrows, etched in a
straight line; and between them, like a scar, a vertical fold (I don't know
whether it was there before). Steel-gray eyes, surrounded by the shadow of a
sleepless night. And there, behind this steel... it turns out that I have
never known what is there. And out of "there" (this "there" is at the same
time here and infinitely far), out of "there" I look at myself—at 
him—and I
know: he, with his straight eyebrows, is a stranger, alien to me, someone I
am meeting for the first time in my life. And I, the real I, am not he.

No. Period. All this is nonsense, and all these absurd sensations are but
delirium, the result of yesterday's poisoning. . . . Poisoning by what?—a
sip of the green venom, or by her? It does not matter. I am writing all this
down merely to show how strangely human reason, so sharp and so precise, can
be confused and thrown into disarray. Reason that had succeeded in making
even infinity, of which the ancients were so frightened, acceptable to them
by means of ...

The annunciator clicks: it is R-13. Let him come; in fact, I am glad. It is
too difficult for me to be alone now..

Twenty minutes later

On the plane surface of the paper, in the two-dimensional world, these lines
are next to one another. But in a different world they ... I am losing my
sense of figures: twenty minutes may be two hundred or two hundred thousand.
And it seems so strange to write down in calm, measured, carefully chosen
words what has occurred just now between me and R. It is like sitting down
in an armchair by your own bedside, legs crossed, and watching curiously how
you yourself are writhing in the bed.

When R-13 entered, I was perfectly calm and normal. I spoke with sincere
admiration of how splendidly he had succeeded in versifying the sentence,
and told him that his trochees had been the most effective instrument of all
in crushing and destroying that madman.

"I would even say—if I were asked to draw up a schematic blueprint of the
Benefactor's Machine, I would somehow, somehow find a way of incorporating
your verses into the drawing," I concluded.

But suddenly I noticed R's eyes turn lusterless, his lips turn gray.

"What is it?"

"What, what! Oh ... Oh, I'm simply tired of it Everyone around talks of
nothing but the sentence. I don't want to hear about it any more. I just
don't want to!"

He frowned and rubbed the back of his head-that little box of his with its
strange baggage that I did not understand. A pause. And then he found
something in the box, pulled it out, opened it. His eyes glossed over with
laughter as he jumped up.

"But for your Integral, I am composing ... That will be ... Oh, yes, that
will be something!"

It was again the old R: thick, sputtering lips, spraying saliva, and a
fountain of words. "You see" ("s"—a spray) ". . . that ancient legend 
about
paradise ... Why, it's about us, about today. Yes! Just think. Those two, in
paradise, were given a choice: happiness without freedom, or freedom without
happiness. There was no third alternative. Those idiots chose freedom, and
what came of it? Of course, for ages afterward they longed for the chains.
The chains—you understand? That's what world sorrow was about For ages! 
And
only we have found the way of restoring happiness. ... No, wait listen
further! The ancient God and we—side by side, at the same table. Yes! We
have helped God ultimately to conquer the devil—for it was he who had
tempted men to break the ban and get a taste of ruinous freedom, he, the
evil serpent. And we, we've brought down our boot over his little head,
and—cr-runch! Now everything is fine—we have paradise again. Again we 
are as
innocent and simple-hearted as Adam and Eve. No more of that confusion about
good and evil. Everything is simple—heavenly, childishly simple. The
Benefactor, the Machine, the Cube, the Gas Bell, the Guardians—all this is
good, all this is sublime, magnificent, noble, elevated, crystally pure.
Because it protects our unfreedom—that is, our happiness. The ancients 
would
begin to talk and think and break their heads—ethical, unethical . . . 
Well,
then. In short, what about such a paradisiac poem, eh? And, of course, in
the most serious tone. . . . You understand? Quite something, eh?"

Understand? It was simple enough. I remember thinking: such an absurd,
asymmetrical face, yet such a dear, correct mind. This is why he is so close
to me, the real me (I still consider my old self the true one; all of this
today is, of course, only a sickness).

R evidently read these thoughts on my face. He put his arm around my
shoulders and roared with laughter.

"Ah, you ... Adam! Yes, incidentally, about Eve...

He fumbled in his pocket, took out a notebook, and turned the pages. "The
day after tomorrow ... no, in two days, O has a pink coupon to visit you.
How do you feel about it? As before? Do you want her to ..."

"Of course, naturally."

"I'll tell her so. She is a little shy herself, you see. . . . What a
business! With me, it is nothing, you know, merely a pink coupon, but with
you.... And she would not tell me who the fourth one is that broke into our
triangle. Confess it now, you reprobate, who is it? Well?"

A curtain flew up inside me—the rustle of silk, a green bottle, lips. ...
And inappropriately, to no purpose, the words broke out (if I had only
restrained myself!): "Tell me, have you ever tasted nicotine or alcohol?"

R compressed his lips and threw me a sidelong look. I heard his thoughts
with utmost clarity: You may be a friend, all right... still... . And then
his answer: "Well, how shall I put it? Actually, no. But I knew a certain
woman ..."

"1-330," I shouted.

"So ... you—you too? With her?" He filled with laughter, gulped, ready to
spill over.

My mirror hung on the wall in such a way that I could see myself only across
the table; from here, from the chair, I saw only my forehead and my
eyebrows.

And now I—the real I—saw in the mirror the twisted, jumping line of
eyebrows, and the real I heard a wild, revolting shout: "What 'too'? What do
you mean, 'too'? No, I demand an answer!"

Gaping thick lips, bulging eyes. Then I—the real I—seized the other, the
wild, shaggy, panting one, by the scruff of the neck. The real I said to R,
"Forgive me, for the Benefactor's sake. I am quite ill, I cannot sleep. I
don't know what is happening to me ..."

A fleeting smile on the thick lips. "Yes, yes! I understand, I understand!
It's all familiar to me ... theoretically, of course. Good-by!"

In the doorway he turned, bounced back toward me like a small black ball,
and threw a book down on the table.

"My latest... I brought it for you—almost forgot it. Good-by ..." The "b"
sprayed at me, and he rolled out of the room.

I am alone. Or, rather, alone with that other "I." I am sitting in the
chair, legs crossed, watching with curiosity from some "there" how I—my 
own
self—writhe in the bed.

Why, why is it that for three whole years O and R and I have had that fine,
warm friendship, and now—a single word about the other one, about 1-330 
...
Is it possible that all this madness—love, jealousy—exists not only in 
those
idiotic ancient books? And to think that I ... Equations, formulas, figures,
and ... this! I don't understand anything ... anything at all.... Tomorrow I
shall go to R and tell him that...

No, it isn't true, I will not go. Neither tomorrow, nor the day after
tomorrow—I shall never go. I cannot, I don't want to see him. It is the 
end!
Our triangle is broken.

I am alone. Evening. A light mist. The sky is hidden behind a milky-golden
veil. If only I could know what is there, above it! If only I could know:
Who am I, what am I like?








Twelfth Entry

TOPICS :
The Limitation of Infinity
An Angel
Reflections on Poetry

I have the constant feeling: I will recover, I can recover. I slept very
well. None of those dreams or other morbid symptoms. Tomorrow dear O will
come to me, and everything will be as simple, right, and limited as a
circle. I do not fear this word "limitation." The function of man's highest
faculty, his reason, consists precisely of the continuous limitation of
infinity, the breaking up of infinity into convenient, easily digestible
portions— differentials. This is precisely what lends my field, 
mathematics,
its divine beauty. And it is the understanding of this beauty that the other
one, 1-330, lacks. However, this is merely in passing—a chance 
association.

All these thoughts—in time to the measured, regular clicking of the wheels
of the underground train. I silently scanned the rhythm of the wheels and
R's poems (from the book he had given me yesterday). Then I became aware of
someone cautiously bending over my shoulder from behind and peering at the
opened page. Without turning, out of the merest corner of my eye, I saw the
pink wide wing-ears, the double-bent... it was he! Reluctant to disturb him,
I pretended not to notice. I cannot imagine how he got there; he did not
seem to be in the car when I entered.

This incident, trivial in itself, had a particularly pleasant effect upon
me; it strengthened me. How good it is to know that a vigilant eye is fixed
upon you, lovingly protecting you against the slightest error, the slightest
misstep. This may seem somewhat sentimental, but an analogy comes to my
mind—the Guardian Angels that the ancients dreamed of. How many of the
things they merely dreamed about have been realized in our life!

At the moment when I felt the Guardian Angel behind my back, I was enjoying
a sonnet entitled "Happiness." I think I will not be mistaken if I say that
it is a poem of rare and profound beauty of thought Here are its first four
lines:

Eternally enamored two times two. Eternally united in the passionate four,
Most ardent lovers in the world-Inseparable two times two. ..

And so on—about the wise, eternal bliss of the multiplication table.

Every true poet is inevitably a Columbus. America existed for centuries
before Columbus, but only Columbus succeeded in discovering it. The
multiplication table existed for centuries before R-13, yet it was only R-13
who found a new Eldorado in the virginal forest of figures. And indeed, is
there any happiness wiser, more unclouded than the happiness of this
miraculous world? Steel rusts. The ancient God created the old man, capable
of erring—hence he erred himself. The multiplication able is wiser and 
more
absolute than the ancient God: it never—do you realize the full meaning of
the word?—it never errs. And there are no happier figures than those which
live according to the harmonious, eternal laws of the multiplication table.
No hesitations, no delusions. There is only one truth, and only one true
way; this truth is two times two, and the true way—four. And would it not 
be
an absurdity if these happily, ideally multiplied twos began to think of
some nonsensical freedom—i.e., clearly, to error? To me it is axiomatic 
that
R-13 succeeded in grasping the most fundamental, the most....

At this point I felt once more—first at the back of my head, then at my 
left
ear—the want, delicate breath of my Guardian Angel. He had obviously 
noticed
that the book on my lap was now dosed and my thoughts far away. Well, I was
ready, there and then, to open all the pages of my mind to him; there was
such serenity, such joy in this feeling. I remember: I turned and looked
into his eyes with pleading insistence, but he did not understand, or did
not wish to understand, and asked me nothing. Only one thing remains to
me—to speak to you, my unknown readers, about everything. (At this moment
you are as dear and near and unattainable to me as he was then.)

My reflections proceeded from the part to the whole: the part, R-13; the
majestic whole, our Institute of State Poets and Writers. I wondered at the
ancients who had never realized the utter absurdity of their literature and
poetry. The enormous, magnificent power of the literary word was completely
wasted. It's simply ridiculous—everyone wrote anything he pleased. Just as
ridiculous and absurd as the fact that the ancients allowed the ocean to
beat dully at the shore twenty-four hours a day, while the millions of
kilogrammometers of energy residing in the waves went only to heighten
lovers' feelings. But we have extracted electricity from the amorous whisper
of the waves; we have transformed the savage, foam-spitting beast into a
domestic animal; and in the same way we have tamed and harnessed the once
wild element of poetry. Today, poetry is no longer the idle, impudent
whistling of a nightingale; poetry is civic service, poetry is useful.

Take, for example, our famous "mathematical couplets." Could we have learned
in school to love the four rules of arithmetic so tenderly and so sincerely
without them? Or "Thorns," that classical image: the Guardians as the thorns
on the rose, protecting the delicate flower of the State from rude contacts.
. . . Whose heart can be so stony as to remain unmoved at the sight of
innocent childish lips reciting like a prayer the verse:

"The bad boy rudely sniffed the rose, But the steely thorn pricked bis nose.
The mischief-maker cries, 'Oh, Oh,' And runs as fast as he can go," and so
on.

Or the Daily Odes to the Benefactor? Who, upon reading them, will not bow
piously before the selfless labors of this Number of Numbers? Or the awesome
Red Flowers of Court Sentences? Or the immortal tragedy He Who Was Late to
Work? Or the guidebook Stanzas on Sexual Hygiene?

All of our life, in its entire complexity and beauty, has been engraved
forever in the gold of words.

Our poets no longer soar in the empyrean; they have come down to earth; they
stride beside us to the stern mechanical March of the Music Plant. Their
lyre encompasses the morning scraping of electric toothbrushes and the dread
crackle of the sparks in the Benefactor's Machine; the majestic echoes of
the Hymn to the One State and the intimate tinkle of the gleaming crystal
chamberpot; the exciting rustle of dropping shades, the merry voices of the
latest cookbook, and the scarcely audible whisper of the listening membranes
in the streets.

Our gods are here, below, with us—in the office, the kitchen, the 
workshop,
the toilet; the gods have become like us. Ergo, we have become as gods. And
we shall come to you, my unknown readers on the distant planet, to make your
life as divinely rational and precise as ours.








Thirteenth Entry

TOPICS:
Fog
Thou
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." 1-330 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 1-330 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 1-330; 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. 1-330 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 dear. Formerly, everything had turned around the sun; now I
knew—everything was turning around me—slowly, blissfully, with tightly 
dosed
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 1-330 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 1-330 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
The Mirror-Smooth Sea
I Am to Burn Eternally

I had just stepped into the dock where the Integral is being built when the
Second Builder hurried to meet me. His face—round, white, as usual—a 
china
plate; and his words, like something exquisitely tasty, served up on the
plate: "Well, while it pleased you to be sick the other day, we had, I'd
say, quite a bit of excitement here in the chiefs absence."

"Excitement?"

"Oh, yes! The bell rang at the end of the workday, and everybody began to
file out. And imagine— the doorman caught a man without a number. I'll 
never
understand how he managed to get in. He was taken to the Operational
Section. They'll know how to drag the why and how out of the fellow ..."
(All this with the tastiest smile.)

The Operational Section is staffed with our best and most experienced
physicians, who work under the direct supervision of the Benefactor Himself.
They have a variety of instruments, the most effective of them all the
famous Gas Bell. Essentially, it is the old school laboratory experiment: a
mouse is placed under a glass jar and an air pump gradually rarefies the air
inside it And so on. But, of course, the Gas Bell is a much more perfect
apparatus, using all sorts of gases. And then, this is no longer torture of
a tiny helpless animal. It serves a noble end: it safeguards the security of
the One State—in other words, the happiness of millions. About five
centuries ago, when the Operational Section was first being developed, there
were some fools who compared the Section to the ancient Inquisition, but
that is as absurd as equating a surgeon performing a tracheotomy with a
highwayman; both may have the same knife in then-hands, both do the same
thing—cut a living man's throat—yet one is a benefactor, the other a
criminal; one has a + sign, the other a....

All this is entirely clear—within a single second, at a single turn of the
logical machine. Then suddenly the gears catch on the minus, and something
altogether different comes to ascendancy—the key ring, still swaying in 
the
door. The door had evidently just been shut, yet 1-330 was already gone,
vanished. That was something the machine could not digest in any way. A
dream? But even now I felt that strange sweet pain in my right shoulder—
1-330 pressing herself against the shoulder, next to me in the fog. "Do you
like fog?" Yes, I love the fog. ... I love everything, and everything is
firm, new, astonishing, everything is good....

"Everything is good," I said aloud.

"Good?" The china eyes goggled at me. "What is good about this? If that
unnumbered one had managed ... it means that they are everywhere, all around
us, at all times .. . they are here, around the Integral, they ..."

"Who are they?"

"How would I know who? But I feel them, you understand? All the time."

"And have you heard about the newly invented operation—excision of the
imagination?" (I had myself heard something of the kind a few days earlier.)

"I know about it. But what has that to do with ... ?"

"Just this: in your place, I would go and ask to be operated on."

Something distinctly lemon-sour appeared on the plate. The good fellow was
offended by the hint that he might possibly possess imagination. . . . Oh,
well, only a week ago I would have been offended myself. Not today. Today I
know that I have it, that I am ill. I also know that I don't want to be
cured. I don't, and that's all there is to it We ascended the glass stairs.
Everything below was as dearly visible as if it were spread out on the palm
of my hand.

You, who read these notes, whoever you may be—you have a sun over your
heads. And if you have ever been as ill as I am now, you know what the sun
is like—what it can be like—in the morning. You know that pink, 
transparent,
warm gold, when the very air is faintly rosy and everything is suffused with
the delicate blood of the sun, everything is alive: the stones are alive and
soft; iron is alive and soft; people are alive, and everyone is smiling. In
an hour, all this may vanish, in an hour the rosy blood may trickle out,
.but for the moment everything lives. And I see something pulsing and
flowing in the glass veins of the Integral. I see—the Integral is 
pondering
its great, portentous future, the heavy load of unavoidable happiness it
will carry upward, to you, unknown ones, who are forever searching and never
finding. You shall find what you seek, you shall be happy—it is your duty 
to
be happy, and you do not have much longer to wait.

The body of the Integral is almost ready: a graceful, elongated ellipsoid
made of our glass—as eternal as gold, as flexible as steel. I saw the
transverse ribs and the longitudinal stringers being attached to the body
from within; in the stern they were installing the base for the giant rocket
motor. Every three seconds, a blast; every three seconds the mighty tail of
the Integral will eject flame and gases into cosmic space, and the fiery
Tamerlane of happiness will soar away and away....

I watched the men below move in regular, rapid rhythm, according to the
Taylor system, bending, unbending, turning like the levers of a single huge
machine. Tubes glittered in their hands; with fire they sliced and welded
the glass walls, angles, ribs, brackets. I saw transparent glass monster
cranes rolling slowly along glass rails, turning and bending as obediently
as the men, delivering their loads into the bowels of the Integral. And all
of this was one: humanized machines, perfect men. It was the highest, the
most stirring beauty, harmony, music. ... Quick! Below! To join them, to be
with them!

And now, shoulder to shoulder, welded together with them, caught up in the
steel rhythm ... Measured movements; firmly round, ruddy cheeks;
mirror-smooth brows, untroubled by the madness of thought. I floated on the
mirror-smooth sea. I rested.

Suddenly one of them turned to me serenely. "Better today?"

"Better? What's better?"

"Well, you were out yesterday. We had thought

it might be something dangerous. ..." A bright forehead, a childlike,
innocent smile.

The blood rushed to my face. I could not, could not lie to those eyes. I was
silent, drowning....

The gleaming white round china face bent down through the hatch above. "Hey!
D-503! Come up, please! We're getting a rigid frame here with the brackets,
and the stress ..."

Without listening to the end, I rushed up to him. I was escaping
ignominiously, in headlong flight I could not raise my eyes. The glittering
glass stairs flashed under my feet, and every step increased my
hopelessness: I had no place here—I, the criminal, the poisoned one. Never
again would I merge into the regular, precise, mechanical rhythm, never
again float on the mirrorlike untroubled sea. I was doomed to burn forever,
to toss about, to seek a corner where to hide my eyes-forever, until I
finally found strength to enter that door and ...

And then an icy spark shot through me: I—well, I didn't matter; but I 
would
also have to tell about her, and she, too, would be ...
I climbed out of the hatch and stopped on the deck. I did not know where to
turn now, I didn't know why I had come there. I looked up. The midday-weary
sun was rising dully. Below me was the Integral, gray-glassy, unalive. The
rosy blood had trickled out It was clear to me that all of this was merely
my imagination, that everything re-mained as it had been before, yet it was
also dear...

"What's wrong with you, 508, are you deaf? I have been calling and
calling.... What's the matter?" The Second Builder shouted into my ear. He
must have been shouting for a long time.

What's the matter with me? I have lost the rudder. The motor roars, the aero
quivers and rushes at full speed, but there is no rudder, no controls, and I
don't know where I'm flying: down-to crash into the ground in a moment, or
up-into the sun, into the flames....








Sixteenth Entry

TOPICS:
Yellow
Two-Dimensional Shadow
Incurable Soul

I have not written anything for several days, I don't know how many. All the
days are one day. All the days are one color—yellow, like parched, fiery
sand. And there is not a spot of shadow, not a drop of water. ... On and on
endlessly over the yellow sand. I cannot live without her, yet since she
vanished so incomprehensibly that day in the Ancient House, she ...
I have seen her only once since that day, during the daily walk. Two, three,
four days ago—I do not know; all the days are one. She flashed by, filling
for a second the yellow, empty world. And, hand in hand with her, up to her
shoulder, the double-bent S and the paper-thin doctor. And there was a
fourth one—I remember nothing but his fingers: they would fly out of the
sleeves of his unif like clusters of rays, incredibly thin, white, long.
1-330 raised her hand and waved to me. Over her neighbor's head she bent
toward the one with the ray-like fingers. I caught the word Integral. All
four glanced back at me. Then they were lost in the
gray-blue  sky,   and  again—the  yellow,  dessicated road.

That evening she had a pink coupon to visit me. I stood before the
annunciator and implored it, with tenderness, with hatred, to click, to
register in the white slot: 1-880. Doors slammed; pale, tall, rosy, swarthy
numbers came out of the elevator; shades were pulled down on all sides. She
was not there. She did not come.

And possibly, just at this very moment, exactly at twenty-two, as I am
writing this, she stands with closed eyes, leaning against someone with her
shoulder, saying to someone, "Do you love?" To whom? Who is he? The one with
the raylike fingers, or the thick-lipped, sputtering R? Or S?

S ... Why am I constantly hearing his flat steps all these days, splashing
as through puddles? Why is he following me all these days like a shadow?
Before me, beside me, behind—a gray-blue, two-dimensional shadow. Others
pass through it, step on it, but it is invariably here, bound to me as by
some invisible umbilical cord. Perhaps this cord is she—I-330? I don't 
know.
Or perhaps they, the Guardians, already know that I ...

Suppose you were told: Your shadow sees you, sees you all the time. Do you
understand me? And suddenly you have the strangest feeling: your hands are
not your own, they interfere with you. And I catch myself constantly
swinging my arms absurdly, out of time with my steps. Or suddenly I feel
that I must glance back, but it's impossible, no matter how I try, my neck
is rigid, locked. And I run, I run faster and faster, and feel with my
back—my shadow runs faster behind me, and there is no escape, no escape
anywhere. . . .

Alone, at last, in my room. But here there is something else—the 
telephone.
I pick up the receiver. "Yes, 1-330, please." And again I hear a rustle in
the receiver, someone's steps in the hall, past her room—and silence. ... 
I
throw down the receiver—I can't, I can't endure it any longer. I must run
there, to her.

This happened yesterday. I hurried there, and wandered for an hour, from
sixteen to seventeen, near the house where she lives. Numbers marched past
me, row after row. Thousands of feet stepped rhythmically, a million-footed
monster floated, swaying, by. And only I was alone, cast out by a storm upon
a desert island, seeking, seeking with my eyes among the gray-blue waves.

A moment, and I shall see the sharply mocking angle of the eyebrows lifted
to the temples, the dark windows of the eyes, and there, within them, the
burning fireplace, the stirring shadows. And I will step inside directly, I
will say, "You know I cannot live without you. Why, then ..." I will use the
warm, familiar "thou"—only "thou."

But she is silent. Suddenly I hear the silence, I do not hear the Music
Plant, and I realize it is past seventeen, everybody else is gone, I am
alone, I am late. Around me—a glass desert, flooded by the yellow sun. In
the smooth glass of the pavement, as in water, I see the gleaming walls
suspended upside down, and myself, hung mockingly head down, feet up.

I must hurry, this very second, to the Medical Office to get a certificate
of illness, otherwise they'll take me and ... But perhaps that would be
best? To stay here and calmly wait until they see me and take me to the
Operational Section—and so put an end to everything, atone for everything 
at
once.

A faint rustle, and a doubly bent shadow before me. Without looking, I felt
two steel-gray gimlets drill into me. With a last effort, I smiled and
said—I had to say something—"I ... I must go to the Medical Office."


"What's the problem, then? Why do you stand here?"

Absurdly upside down, hung by the feet, I was silent, burning up with shame.
"Come with me," S said harshly. I followed obediently, swinging my
unnecessary, alien arms. It was impossible to raise my eyes; I walked all
the way through a crazy, upside-down world: some strange machines, their
bases up; people glued antipodally to the ceiling; and, lower still, beneath
it all, the sky locked into the thick glass of the pavement. I remember:
what I resented most of all was that, for this last time in my life, I was
seeing everything in this absurdly upside-down, unreal state. But it was
impossible to raise my eyes.

We stopped. A staircase rose before me. Another step, and I would see the
figures in white medical smocks, the huge, mute Bell....

With an enormous effort, I finally tore my eyes away from the glass
underfoot, and suddenly the golden letters of MEDICAL OFFICE burst into my
face. At that moment it had not even occurred to me to wonder why he had
spared me, why he had brought me here instead of to the Operational Section.
At a single bound I swung across the steps, slammed the door firmly behind
me, and took a deep breath. I felt: I had not breathed since morning, my
heart had not been beating—and it was only now that I had taken my first
breath, only now that the sluices in my breast had opened. ...

There were two of them: one short, with tubby legs, weighing the patients
with his eyes as though lifting them on horns; the other paper-thin, with
gleaming scissor-lips, his nose a finest blade. . . . The same one. I rushed
to him as to someone near and dear, mumbling about insomnia, dreams,
shadows, a yellow world. The scissor-lips gleamed, smiled.

"You're in a bad way! Apparently, you have developed a soul."

A soul? That strange, ancient, long-forgotten word. We sometimes use the
words "soul-stirring," "soulless," but "soul" ... ?

"Is it... very dangerous?" I muttered.

"Incurable," the scissors snapped.

"But ... what, essentially, does it mean? I somehow don't... don't
understand it."

"Well, you see ... How can I explain it to you? ... You are a mathematician,
aren't you?"

"Yes."

"Well, then—take a plane, a surface—this mirror, say. And on this 
surface
are you and I, you see? We squint against the sun. And here, the blue
electric spark inside that tube, and there—the passing shadow of an aero.
All of it only on the surface, only momentary. But imagine this impermeable
substance softened by some fire; and nothing slides across it any more,
everything enters into it, into this mirror world that we examined with such
curiosity when we were children. Children are not so foolish, I assure you.
The plane has acquired volume, it has become a body, a world, and everything
is now inside the mirror—inside you: the sun, the blast of the whirling
propeller, your trembling lips, and someone else's. Do you understand? The
cold mirror reflects, throws back, but this one absorbs, and everything
leaves its tracer-forever. A moment, a faint line on someone's face—and it
remains in you forever. Once you heard a drop fall in the silence, and you
hear it now. ..."

"Yes, yes, exactly. ..." I seized his hand. I heard it now—drops falling
slowly from the washstand faucet And I knew: this was forever. "But why, why
suddenly a soul? I've never had one, and suddenly ... Why . .. No one else
has it, and I. . . ?"

I clung even more violently to the thin hand; I was terrified of losing the
lifeline.

"Why? Why don't you have feathers, or wings-only shoulder blades, the base
for wings? Because wings are no longer necessary, we have the aero, wings
would only interfere. Wings are for flying, and we have nowhere else to fly:
we have arrived, we have found what we had been searching for. Isn't that
so?"

I nodded in confusion. He looked at me with a scalpel-sharp laugh. The other
heard it, pattered in from his office on his tubby feet, lifted my
paper-thin doctor, lifted me on his horn-eyes.

"What's the trouble? A soul? A soul, you say? What the devil! We'll soon
return to cholera if you go on that way. I told you" (raising the paper-thin
one on his horns) "—I told you, we must cut out imagination. In everyone. 
.
. . Extirpate imagination. Nothing but surgery, nothing but surgery will
do___"

He saddled his nose with huge X-ray glasses, circled around and around me
for a long time, peered through the bones of my skull, examining the brain,
and writing something in his book.

"Curious, most curious I Listen, would you consent to ... to being preserved
in alcohol? It would be extremely useful to the One State. ... It would help
us prevent an epidemic. ... Of course, unless you have some special reasons
to ..."

"Well, you see," said the thin one, "Number D-503 is the Builder of the
Integral, and I am sure it would interfere with ..."

"U-um." The other grunted and pattered back to his office.

We remained alone. The paper-thin hand fell lightly, gently on my hand, the
profile face bent close to mine. He whispered, "I'll tell you in
confidence—you are not the only one. It was not for nothing that my
colleague spoke about an epidemic Try to remember—haven't you noticed
anything like it, very much like it, very similar in anyone else?" He peered
at me closely. What was he hinting at? Whom did he mean? Could it be . . . ?

"Listen." I jumped up from the chair.

But he was already speaking loudly about other things. "As far as your
insomnia and your dreams, I can suggest one thing—do more walking. Start
tomorrow morning, go out and take a walk ... well, let's say to the Ancient
House."

He pierced me with his eyes again, smiling his thinnest smile. And it seemed
to me—I saw quite clearly a word, a letter, a name, the only name, wrapped
in the finest tissue of that smile. ... Or was this only my imagination
again?

I could barely wait until he wrote out a certificate of illness for that day
and the next. Silently I pressed his hand once more, and ran out. My heart,
fast and light as an aero, swept me up and up. I knew—some joy awaited me
tomorrow. What was it?











Seventeenth Entry

TOPICS :
Through the Glass
I Am Dead
Corridors

I am completely bewildered. Yester