The blunt snout of some unknown beast was to be seen dimly through the glass of the Wall; its yellow eyes kept repeating the same thought which remained incomprehensible to me. We looked into each other’s eyes for a long while. Eyes are shafts which lead from the superficial world into a world which is beneath the surface. A thought awoke in me: “what if that yellow-eyed one, sitting there on that absurd dirty heap of leaves, is happier than I, in his life which cannot be calculated in figures!” I waved my hand. The yellow eyes twinkled, moved back and disappeared in the foliage. What a pitiful being! How absurd the idea that he might be happier! Happier than I he may be, but I am an exception, am I not? I am sick.
I noticed that I was approaching the dark red walls of the Ancient House and I saw the grown-together lips of the old woman. I ran to her with all speed.
“Is she here?”
The grown-together lips opened slowly:
“Who is ‘she’?”
“Who? I-330, of course. You remember we came together, she and I, in an aero the other day.”
“Oh, yes, yes, yes—yes.”
Ray-wrinkles around the lips, artful rays radiating from the eyes. They were making their way deeper and deeper into me.
“Well, she is here, all right. Came in a while ago.”
“Here!” I noticed at the feet of the old woman a bush of silver—bitter wormwood. (The court of the Ancient House, being a part of the museum is carefully kept in its prehistoric state.) A branch of the bush touched the old woman, she caressed that branch; upon her knees lay stripes of sunshine. For a second I myself, the sun, the old woman, the wormwood, those yellow eyes, all seemed to be one; we were firmly united by common veins and one common blood, boisterous, magnificent blood, was running through those veins.
I am ashamed now to write down all this, but I promised to be frank to the end of these records: yes, I bent over and kissed that soft, grown-together mouth of the old woman. She wiped it with her hand and laughed.
Running, I passed through familiar, half-dark, echoing rooms, and for some reason I ran straight to the bedroom. When I had reached the door, a thought flashed: “And if she is there … not alone?” I stopped and listened. But all I heard was the ticktock of my heart, not within me, but somewhere near, outside me.
I entered. The large bed—untouched. A mirror … another mirror in the door of the cupboard, and in the keyhole an ancient key upon an ancient ring. No one was there. I called softly: “I-330, are you here?”—and then in a still lower voice with closed eyes, holding my breath—in a voice as though I were kneeling before her, “I-, dear.” Silence. Only the water was dripping fast into the white basin of the washstand. I cannot now explain why, but I disliked that sound. I turned the faucet hard and went out. She was not there, so much was clear. She must be in another “apartment.”
I ran down a wide, sombre stairway, pulled one door, another, a third—locked. Every room was locked save that of “our” apartment. And she was not there. I went back again to the same apartment without knowing why. I walked slowly, with difficulty; my shoe-soles suddenly became as heavy as cast-iron. I remember distinctly my thought, “It is a mistake that the force of gravity is a constant; consequently all my formulae. …”
Suddenly—an explosion! A door slammed down below; someone stamped quickly over the flagstones. I again became lightfooted, extremely light! I dashed to the railing to bend over, and in one word, one exclamation, expressed everything: “You!”
I became cold. Below in the square shadow of the window-frame, flapping its pink wing-ears, the head of S- passed by!
Like lightning I saw only the naked conclusion. Without any premises (I don’t recall any premises even now) the conclusion: he must not see me here! And on the tips of my toes, pressing myself against the wall, I sneaked upstairs into the unlocked apartment.
I stopped for a second at the door. He was stamping upward, here. If only the door. … I prayed to the door but it was a wooden one—It squeaked, it squealed. Like a wind something red passed my eyes, something green, and the yellow Buddha. In front of the mirror-door of the cupboard, my pale face; my ears still following those steps, my lips. … Now he was already passing the green and yellow, now he was passing Buddha, now at the doorsill of the bedroom. …
I grasped the key of the cupboard; the ring oscillated. This oscillation reminded me of something. Again a conclusion, a naked conclusion without premises; a conclusion, or to be more exact, a fragment of one: “Now I-330 is. …” I brusquely opened the cupboard and when inside in the darkness shut the
