“Ah!” Someone’s triumphant voice. I saw the back of a neck and a finger pointing to the sky. I remember very distinctly a yellow-pinkish nail and under the nail a crescent crawling out as if from under the horizon. The finger was like a compass; all eyes were raised to the sky.
There, running away from an invisible pursuit, masses of cloud were rushing upon each other; and colored by the clouds the aeros of the Guardians, with their tubes like antennae, were floating. And farther to the west—something like. … At first nobody could understand what it was, even I, who knew (unfortunately) more than the others. It was like a great hive of black aeros swarming somewhere at an extraordinary height—they looked like hardly noticeable, swiftly moving points. … Nearer and nearer. … Hoarse, guttural sounds began to reach the earth and finally we saw birds just over our heads! They filled the sky with their sharp, black, descending triangles. The stormy wind drove them down and they began to land on the cupolas, on the roofs, poles and balconies.
“Ah—ah!” and the triumphant back of the neck turned, and I saw that man with the protruding forehead but it seemed that the title, so to speak, was all that was left of him: he seemed to have crawled out from under his forehead and on his face, around the eyes and lips, bunches of rays were growing. Through the noise of the wind and wings and cawing, he cried to me:
“Do you realize? Do you realize! They have blown up the Wall! The Wall has been blown up! Do you understand?”
Somewhere in the background, figures with their heads drawn in were hastily rushing by, and into the houses. In the middle of the pavement a mass of those who had been already operated upon; they moved towards the west. …
… Hairy bunches of rays around the lips and eyes. … I grasped his hands:
“Tell me. Where is she? Where is I-330? There? Beyond the Wall or … ? I must. … Do you hear me? At once. … I cannot. …”
“Here!” he shouted in a happy, drunken voice, showing strong yellow teeth, “here in town, and she is acting! Oh, we are doing great work!”
Who are those “we”? Who am I?
There were about fifty around him. Like him, they seemed to have crawled out from under their foreheads. They were loud, cheerful, strong-toothed, swallowing the stormy wind. With their simple, not at all terrible-looking electrocutors (where did they get them?) they started to the west, towards the operated ones, encircling them, keeping parallel to forty-eighth avenue. …
Stumbling against the tightly-drawn ropes woven by the wind, I was running to her. What for? I did not know. I was stumbling. … Empty streets. … The city seemed foreign, wild, filled with the ceaseless, triumphant, hubbub of birds. It seemed like the end of the world, Doomsday.
Through the glass of the walls in quite a few houses (this cut into my mind) I saw male and female Numbers in shameless embraces—without curtains lowered, without pink checks, in the middle of the day! …
The house—her house; the door ajar. The lobby, the control desk, all was empty. The elevator had stopped in the middle of its shaft. I ran panting up the endless stairs. The corridor. Like the spokes of a wheel figures on the doors dashed past my eyes; 320, 326, 330—I-330! Through the glass wall everything in her room was seen to be upside down, confused, creased. The table overturned, its legs in the air like a beast. The bed was absurdly placed away from the wall, obliquely. Strewn over the floor—fallen, trodden petals of the pink checks.
I bent over and picked up one, two, three of them; all bore the name D-503. I was on all of them, drops of myself, of my molten, poured-out self. And that was all—that was left. …
Somehow I felt they should not lie there on the floor and be trodden upon. I gathered a handful of them, put them on the table and carefully smoothed them out, glanced at them and … laughed aloud! I never knew it before but now I know, and you too, know, that laughter may be of different colors. It is but a distant echo of an explosion within us; it may be the echo of a holiday, red, blue and golden fireworks, or at times it may represent pieces of human flesh exploded into the air. …
I noticed an unfamiliar name on some of the pink checks. I do not remember the figures but I do remember the letter—F. I brushed the stubs from the table to the floor, stepped on them, on myself, stamped on them with my heels—and went out. …
I sat in the corridor on the windowsill in front of her door and waited long and stupidly. An old man appeared. His face was like a pierced, empty bladder with folds; from beneath the puncture something transparent was still slowly dripping. Slowly, vaguely I realized—tears. And only when the old man was quite far off I came to and exclaimed:
“Please … listen. … Do you know … Number I-330?”
The old man turned around, waved his hand in despair and stumbled farther away. …
I returned home at dusk. On the west side the sky was twitching every second in a pale blue electric convulsion:—a subdued, heavy roar was proceeding from that direction. The roofs were covered with black charred sticks—birds.
I lay down; and instantly like a heavy beast sleep came and stifled me. …
Record Thirty-Eight
I don’t know what title—Perhaps the whole synopsis may be called a cast-off cigarette-butt.
I awoke. A bright glare painful to look at. I half closed my eyes. My head seemed filled with some caustic blue smoke. Everything was enveloped in fog and through the fog:
“But I did not turn on the light … then how is it. …”
I jumped up. At the table, leaning her chin on
