“Yes. And as I walked past, I saw—they were preparing something in the auditoriums: tables, medics in white.”
“But what can it mean?”
“I don’t know. No one knows as yet. And that’s the worst of it But I feel—the current is switched on, the spark is running. If not today, then tomorrow… But perhaps they won’t have time enough.”
I have long ceased to understand who “They” are, who are “We.” I do not know what I want— whether I want them to have time enough, or not. One thing is clear to me: I-330 is now walking on the very edge—and any moment…
“But this is madness,” I say. “You—and the One State. It is like putting a hand over the muzzle of a gun and hoping to stop the bullet. It’s utter madness!”
A smile. “ ‘Everyone must lose his mind—the sooner the better.’ Somebody said this yesterday. Do you remember? Out there…”
Yes, I have it written down. Hence, it really happened. Silently I stare into her face: the dark cross is especially distinct on it now.
“Darling, before it is too late… If you want, I will leave everything, I will forget it all—let’s go together there, beyond the Wall, to those… whoever they are.”
She shook her head. Through the dark windows of her eyes, deep within her, I saw a flaming oven, sparks, tongues of fire leaping up, a heaping pile of dry wood. And it was clear to me: it was too late, my words would no longer avail…
She stood up. In a moment she would leave. These might be the last days—perhaps the last minutes… I seized her hand.
“No! Just a little longer—oh, for the sake… for the sake…”
She slowly raised my hand, my hairy hand which I hated so much, toward the light. I wanted to pull it away, but she held it firmly.
“Your hand… You don’t know—few know it— that there were women here, women of the city, who loved the others. You, too, must have some drops of sunny forest blood. Perhaps that’s why I…”
A silence. And strangely—this silence, this emptiness made my heart race madly. And I cried, “Ah! You will not go! You will not go until you tell me about them, because you love… them, and I don’t even know who they are, where they are from. Who are they? The half we have lost? H2 and O? And in order to get H2O—streams, oceans, waterfalls, waves, storms—the two halves must unite…”
I clearly remember every movement she made. I remember how she picked up from the table my glass triangle, and while I spoke, she pressed its sharp edge to her cheek; there was a white line on the cheek, then it had filled with pink and vanished. And how strange that I cannot recall her words, especially at first—only fragmentary images, colors.
I know that in the beginning she spoke about the Two Hundred Years’ War. I saw red on the green of grass, on dark clay, on blue snow—red, undrying pools. Then yellow, sun-parched grasses, naked, yellow, shaggy men and shaggy dogs—together, near swollen corpses, canine, or perhaps human… This, of course, outside the Wall. For the city had already conquered, the city had our present food, synthesized of petroleum.
And almost from the very sky, down to the ground—black, heavy, swaying curtains: slow columns of smoke, over woods, over villages. Stifled howling—black endless lines driven to the city—to be saved by force, to be taught happiness.
“You have almost known all this?”
“Yes, almost.”
“But you did not know—few knew—that a small remnant still survived, remained there, outside the Wall. Naked, they withdrew into the woods. They learned how to live from trees, from animals and birds, from flowers and the sun. They have grown a coat of fur, but under the fur they have preserved their hot, red blood. With you it’s worse: you’re overgrown with figures; figures crawl all over you like lice. You should be stripped of everything and driven naked into the woods. To learn to tremble with fear, with joy, with wild rage, with cold, to pray to fire. And we, Mephi—we want…”
“No, wait! ‘Mephi’? What’s ‘Mephi’?”
“Mephi? It is an ancient name, it’s he who… Do you remember—out there, the image of the youth drawn on the stone? Or no, I’ll try to say it in your language, it will be easier for you to understand. There are two forces in the world—entropy and energy. One leads to blissful quietude, to happy equilibrium; the other, to destruction of equilibrium, to tormentingly endless movement.
Entropy was worshiped as God by our—or, rather, your— ancestors, the Christians. But we anti-Christians, we…”
At this moment, there was a barely audible, a whispered knock at the door, and the man with the squashed face, with the forehead pushed low over his eyes, who had often brought me notes from I-330, burst into the room.
He rushed up to us, stopped, his breath hissing like an air pump, unable to say a word. He must have run at top speed.
“What is it! What happened?” She seized him by the hand.
“They’re coming-here…” he finally panted. “Guards… and with them that—oh, what d’you call him… like a hunchback…”
“S?”
“Yes! They’re right here, in the house. They’ll be here in a moment Quick, quick!”
“Nonsense! There’s time…” She laughed, and in her eyes-sparks, gay tongues of flame.
It was either absurd, reckless courage—or something else, still unknown to me.
’For the Benefactor’s sake! But you must realize— this is…”
“For the Benefactor’s sake?” A sharp triangle-a smile.
“Well,. then… for my sake… I beg you.”
“Ah, and I still had to talk to you about a certain matter… Oh, well, tomorrow…”
She gaily (yes, gaily) nodded to me; the other, coming out for a fraction of a second from under his forehead, nodded too. And then I was alone.
Quick, to the table. I opened my notes, picked up a pen. They must find me at this work, for the benefit of the One State. And suddenly—every hair on my head came alive and separate, stirring: What if they take it and read at least one page—of these, the last ones?
I sat at the table, motionless—and saw the trembling of the walls, the trembling of the pen in my hands, the swaying, blurring of the letters…
Hide it? But where? Everything is glass. Burn it? But they will see from the next rooms, from the hall. And then, I could not, I was no longer able to destroy this anguished—perhaps most precious— piece of myself.
From the distance, in the corridor, voices, steps. I only managed to snatch a handful of the sheets and thrust them under myself. And now I was riveted to the chair, which trembled with every atom. And the floor under my feet—a ship’s deck. Up and down…
Shrinking into a tiny lump, huddling under the shelter of my own brow, I saw stealthily, out of the corner of my eye, how they went from room to room, beginning at the right end of the hallway, and coming nearer, nearer… Some sat benumbed, like me; others jumped up to meet them, throwing their doors wide open—lucky ones! If I could also…
“The Benefactor is the most perfect disinfection, essential to mankind, and therefore in the organism of the One State no peristalsis…” With a jumping pen I squeezed out this utter nonsense, bending ever lower over the table, while in my head there was a crazy hammering, and with my back I heard the door handle click. A gust of air. The chair under me danced…
With an effort I tore myself away from the page and turned to my visitors. (How difficult it is to play games… Who spoke to me of games today?) They were led by S. Glumly, silently, quickly his eyes bored wells in me, in my chair, in the pages quivering under my hand. Then, for a second-familiar, everyday faces on the threshold, one separating from among them—inflated, pink-brown gills…
I recalled everything that had taken place in this room half an hour ago, and it was clear to me that in a moment she… My whole being throbbed and pulsed in that (fortunately, untransparent) part of my body which covered the manuscript.
