This evening the distant earth reminded me of itself. In order to fulfill the recommendation of the doctor (I desire sincerely, most sincerely I desire to be cured), I wandered for two hours and eight minutes over the straight lines of the deserted avenues. Everybody was in the auditoriums, in accordance with the Table. Only I, cut off from the rest, I was alone. Strictly speaking, it was a very unnatural situation. Imagine a finger cut off from the whole, from the hand; a separate human finger, somewhat hunched, running over the glass sidewalk. I was such a finger. What seemed most strange and unnatural was that the finger had no desire to be with its hand, with its fellows. I want either to be alone or with her; to transfuse my whole being into hers through a contact with her shoulder or through our interwoven fingers.
I came home as the sun was setting. The pink dust of evening was covering the glass of the walls, the golden peak of the Accumulating Tower, the voices and smiles of the Numbers. Is it not strange: the passing rays of the evening sun fall to the earth at the same angle as the awakening rays of the morning, yet they make everything seem so different; the pink tinge is different. At sunset it is so quiet, somewhat melancholy; at sunrise it is resounding, boisterous.
In the hall downstairs when I entered, I saw U-, the controller. She took a letter from the heaps of envelopes covered with pink dust and handed it to me. I repeat: she is a very respectable woman and I am sure she has only the very best feelings towards me. … Yet, every time I see those cheeks hanging down, which look like the gills of a fish, I. …
Holding out her dry hand with the letter, U- sighed. But that sigh only very slightly moved in me the curtains which separate me from the rest of the world. I was completely projected upon the envelope which trembled in my hand. I had no doubt but that it was a letter from I-330.
At that moment I heard another sigh, such a deliberate one, underscored with two lines, that I raised my eyes from the envelope and saw a tender, cloudy smile coming from between the gills, through the bashful jalousies of lowered eyes. And then:
“You poor, poor, dear! …” a sigh underscored with three lines, and a glance at the letter, an imperceptible glance. (What was in the letter she naturally knew, ex officio.)
“No, really? … Why?”
“No, no, dear, I know better than you. For a long time I have watched you and I see that you need someone with years of experience of life to accompany you.”
I felt all pasted around by her smile. It was like a plaster upon the wounds which were to be inflicted upon me by the letter I held in my hand. Finally, through the bashful jalousies of her eyes, she said in a very low voice: “I shall think about it, dear. I shall think it over. And be sure that if I feel myself strong enough …”
“Great Well-Doer! Is it possible that my lot is? … Is it possible that she means to say, that she? …”
My eyes were dimmed and filled with thousands of sinusoids; the letter was trembling. I went near the light, to the wall. There the light of the sun was going out; from the sun was falling thicker and thicker the dark, sad, pink dust, covering the floor, my hands, the letter. I opened the envelope and found the signature as fast as I could—the first wound! It was not I-330; it was O-90! And another wound: in the right-hand corner a slovenly splash—a blot! I cannot bear blots. It matters little whether they are made by ink or by … well, it matters not by what. Heretofore, such a blot would have had only a disagreeable effect, disagreeable to the eyes; but now—why did that small gray blot seem to be like a cloud and seem to spread about me a leaden, bluish darkness? Or was it again the “soul” at work? Here is a transcript of the letter:
“You know, or perhaps you don’t … I cannot write well. Little it matters! Now you know that without you there is for me not a single day, a single morning, a single spring, for R- is only … well, that is of no importance to you. At any rate, I am very grateful to him, for without him, alone all these days, I don’t know what would. … During these last few days and nights I have lived through ten years, or perhaps twenty years. My room seemed to me not square but round; I walk around without end, round after round, always the same thing, not a door to escape through. I cannot live without you because I love you; and I should not, I cannot be with you any more—because I love you! Because I see and I understand that you need no one now, no one in the world save that other, and you must realize that it is precisely because I love you I must …
“I need another two or three days in order to paste together the fragments of myself and thus restore at least something similar to the O-90 of old. Then I shall go myself, and myself I shall state that I take your name from my
