We: New Edition Page 15

  I don’t want to budge.... I’m afraid. What’ll I turn into? And it seems to me that everyone is like me—they’re all afraid of the slightest movement. Take right now, while I’m writing this. Everyone’s sitting all closed up in his own glass cage waiting for something. Out in the hallway there’s no noise from the elevator that you usually hear at this hour, no laughter, no footsteps. From time to time I see a couple walking down the hall on tiptoe, looking over their shoulders and whispering....

  What will happen tomorrow? What will I turn into tomorrow?

  RECORD 26

  The World Exists A Rash 41° Centigrade

  Morning. The usual morning—strong, round, red-cheeked —comes through the ceiling. It occurs to me that I would have been less surprised to see overhead some kind of unusual rectangular sun, people dressed in animal skins of various colors, or stone walls you couldn’t see through. So what does this mean? The world, our world, must still exist? Or is it just inertia? The generator’s still plugged in, the cogwheels are still buzzing and twirling, they’ll go on for two turns, three, and on the fourth they’ll quit.

  You know this strange condition? You wake up at night, open your eyes on the darkness, and suddenly you feel—you’re lost, and you start groping around as fast as you can, looking for something familiar and solid, the wall, lamp, chair. That’s just how I was groping, looking for something as fast as I could in the State Gazette. Here’s what I found:

  “The day long and impatiently awaited by everyone, the Day of Unanimity, took place yesterday. For the 48th time the unanimous election went to that same Benefactor who has so often given evidence of his unalterable wisdom. The solemn occasion was marred by a slight disturbance, caused by the enemies of happiness, who, in so doing, naturally forfeited their right to become bricks in the foundation, renewed yesterday, of OneState. Everyone clearly understands that to take their votes into account would be as absurd as to consider part of a great, heroic symphony the coughing of sick persons who merely chance to be in the audience....”

  Oh, how wise! Does it mean we’re saved after all, in spite of everything? No, really—could there be any objection to this pellucidly crystal syllogism?

  “Today at 12 there will be a joint session of the Administrative Bureau, the Medical Bureau, and the Bureau of Guardians. Important governmental action is impending in the next few days.”

  No, the walls are still standing, there they are, I can feel them. And I no longer have that strange feeling that I’m lost, that I don’t know where I am, that I’ve strayed off somewhere, and I’m not the least bit surprised that I can see the blue sky and the round sun; and everyone is headed off to work, just as usual.

  I was walking along the avenue with an especially firm, ringing tread, and everyone seemed to be doing the same. But then came the crossing, a turn round the corner, and I see everyone acting strangely, turning the corner of a building sideways, as though a pipe had burst in the wall and cold water was splashing all across the sidewalk, so that you couldn’t use it.

  I take another five, ten steps and also get a dousing with cold water that hits me and knocks me off the sidewalk. Stuck on the wall, about two meters up, I’d say, was a rectangular sheet of paper and on it some incomprehensible letters printed in poisonous green:MEPHI

  Beneath this was somebody’s back bent in the shape of the letter S and a pair of transparent ear-wings that either anger or excitement had set flapping. He was jumping up, with his right arm extended and his left held back like a broken wing, trying to tear the paper down, but he couldn’t do it—lacked just this much.

  Everyone passing by probably had the same thought: “If I go up to him, just me out of this crowd, won’t he think I’m guilty of something, which is the very reason I’m trying to ... ?”

  I won’t deny the same thought was in my own head. But I remembered all the times he’d been my real guardian angel, how many times he’d rescued me—so I walked boldly up, reached out my hand, and tore down the sheet.

  S turned around and quick as a flash his drills sank right down to the bottom of me, where they picked something up. Then his left eyebrow went up and made a sign toward the wall where “Mephi” had been hanging. And I thought I saw a little tip end of a smile, a kind of happy smile, to my astonishment. But what’s so astonishing, after all? A doctor always prefers a rash and a fever of 40° to a long-drawn-out incubation period of rising temperature: At least he knows right off what kind of illness he’s facing. The “Mephi” that broke out on the walls today—that’s the rash. I see why he’s smiling....f

  I head down into the subway, and under my feet, on the immaculate glass of the steps, there’s another white sheet: “Mephi.” And the same ominous white rash has broken out everywhere down there: on the wall, on the bench, on the mirror in the car (stuck on in a hurry, you can see, crooked and careless).

  The hum of the wheels stands out against the silence—sounds like feverish blood. Someone feels a touch on the shoulder—he shudders and drops his roll of papers. This other one to my left ... he’s reading one and the same line in the paper over and over and over again, and you can see his paper trembling slightly. And I can feel it—in the wheels, in hands, in newspapers, in eyelashes—everywhere the pulse is quicker, and maybe today, when 1-330 and I get there, the black line on the thermometer will show 39°, 40°, 41°.

  At the hangar there’s exactly the same silence, humming like some propeller so far away you can’t see it. The lathes stood around frowning, saying nothing. All you could hear, and just barely, was the cranes slipping around on tiptoes, bending over, grabbing in their claws the light-blue blocks of frozen air and loading them into the INTEGRAL’s lateral tanks: We’re already setting it up for its test flight.

  “What do you say—will we be done loading in a week?” I was talking to the Second Builder. He has this porcelain face decorated with sweet little blue and tender pink flowers (his eyes and lips), but today they had a faded, washed-out look. We were counting out loud, but I suddenly broke off in the middle of a word and stood there with my mouth gaping: Way up under the cupola, stuck on one of the blue blocks being lifted by a crane, you could just make out a white square of paper. And something jolted me—maybe it was a laugh—yes, I was hearing myself laugh (that ever happen to you, when you hear yourself laugh?).

  “No, listen,” I say. “Imagine this. You’re in an old aeroplane, the altimeter reads 5000 meters, you’ve lost a wing, you’re going down like a tumbler pigeon, and on the way you’re going over your schedule: Tomorrow from noon to two ... then from two to six ... dinner at six ... Wouldn’t that be crazy? But that’s just what we’re doing!”

  The little blue flowers go into action. They goggle. What if I were made of glass and he could see that in about three or four hours ...

  RECORD 27

  No Contents-Can’t

  I’m alone in endless corridors—the same ones as before. A mute concrete sky. Water is dripping on stone somewhere. Same door, heavy and opaque, with a muffled humming coming from behind it.

  She said she’d come out to me at 16:00, but I’ve watched 16:05, 16:10, 16:15 go by and ... nobody.

  For a second I feel like my old self, terrified that the door might open. Five minutes more and that’s it ... if she doesn’t come.

  Water dripping on stone somewhere. Nobody. I feel a kind of gloomy relief: I’m saved. I walk slowly back along the corridor. The quavering dotted line of lightbulbs on the ceiling gets dimmer and dimmer....

  Suddenly, from behind me, I hear the door open with a quick banging sound and then hurried footsteps reverberate softly from the ceiling and the walls and she comes flying, slightly out of breath from running, breathing through her mouth.

  “I knew you’d be here, that you’d come! I knew it. Oh, you ... you ...”

  The lances of her lashes move apart to let me pass inside ... and ... But how can I find words for what it does to me, this ancient rite, stupid and wonderful, of her lips touching mine?
What formula could express how this whirlwind sweeps everything out of my soul, except her? Yes, yes—I said soul. If you want to laugh, go ahead.

  With an effort she slowly raised her lids and managed to say, slowly: “No, enough ... Later. For now, let’s go.”

  The door opened. Steps, old and worn. A discordant racket, whistling, light ...

  Nearly twenty-four hours have passed since then, I’ve settled down a bit, and still it’s extremely hard for me to describe what happened, even in rough outline. It’s as if they set off a bomb in my head and all around, piled in a heap, are open mouths, wings, screams, leaves, words, stones ...

  I remember the first thing that went through my head was “Quick, clear out, get back!” Because I could see that while I was waiting there in the corridors they’d somehow blown up or destroyed the Green Wall—and the lower world that had always been kept out of our city was now beating and rushing over it.

  I must have said something like that to 1-330, because she gave a laugh: “Of course not! We’ve simply gone to the other side of the Green Wall.”

  Then I opened my eyes ... and found myself in broad daylight face to face with what no living person had ever seen up to then except reduced a thousand times, weakened and dimmed by the cloudy glass of the Wall.

  This sun ... it wasn’t our sun, evenly distributed over the mirrored surface of the sidewalks. This sun was all sharp fragments, alive somehow, constantly leaping spots, that blinded the eyes and made the head spin. And the trees were like candles sticking right up to the sky, or like spiders squatting on the ground with crooked legs, or like silent green fountains.... And all this was crawling about on all fours, shifting and buzzing, and out from under my feet some kind of shaggy tangle of something came slipping, and I ... I was riveted to the spot, I couldn’t move ... because I wasn’t standing on a surface, you see, not a surface, but something disgustingly soft, yielding, alive, green, springy.

  I was deafened by all this, I was choked—that’s probably the word that comes closest. I was standing there hanging on with both hands to some kind of swinging bough.

  “Don’t worry! Don’t worry! This is only the beginning. It’ll pass. Hang on!”

  Next to 1-330 against the dizzying, leaping network of green was someone’s profile, very thin, like something cut out of paper ... no, not someone’s—I know him. I remember him—it’s the doctor ... no, no, I’ve got it now. I see that the two of them have me by the arms and they’re dragging me forward, they’re laughing, my legs are twisted, I’m slipping toward cawing sounds, moss, tufts of grass, screeching, branches, tree trunks, wings, leaves, whistling ...

  And ... now the trees give way and I see a bright clearing, and in the clearing people ... or, I’m not sure, maybe creatures is more like it.

  And now comes the hardest part of all. Because this passes all the bounds you’d think possible. And now I see why 1-330 always insisted on holding something back: I wouldn’t have believed it anyway—not even her. Maybe tomorrow I won’t even believe myself, not even these notes.

  In the clearing, around a naked stone that looked like a human skull, there was a noisy crowd of some three or four hundred ... people. Let’s say “people,” otherwise I wouldn’t know what to say. And just as, when you see a whole lot of faces on a platform, you always first of all pick out the ones you know, so here the only thing I noticed at first was our gray-blue yunies. A second later and I saw, all around among the yunies I quite distinctly saw: jet black, reddish, tawny, bay, roan, and white people ... or they seemed like people. None of them had any clothes on, and they were all covered with short glossy fur, the kind anyone can see on the stuffed horse in the Prehistoric Museum. But the females had faces just like ... yes, exactly the same as our women: tender, pink, and hairless, and their breasts were also free of hair—large, firm, and very beautiful in geometrical form. As for the males, only part of their faces had no fur—the same as with our ancestors.

  This was so completely incredible, so totally unheard of, that I simply stood there. I’m telling you the truth, I simply stood there and looked. It’s the same as with scales—you overload one side and then you can put as much as you want there and the pointer won’t budge.

  Suddenly I find myself alone. 1-330 is no longer next to me, and I have no idea how or where she disappeared. The only ones around me are those with coats glistening like satin in the sun. I grab someone by his hot, strong, jet-black shoulder: “Listen, in the name of the Benefactor, you didn’t happen to see where she went? She was right here only a minute ago. ...”

  A pair of bushy, strict eyebrows turn toward me: “Sh-h-h! Be quiet!” And they made a busy wave toward the center, the place with the yellow stone that looked like a skull.

  There I saw her, up high, over the heads, over everybody. The sun was right in my eyes, from behind her, which made her whole figure stand out sharply, coal-black against the blue canvas of the sky, a coal-black silhouette on blue. A little higher up the clouds were flying past, and it seemed it wasn’t the clouds that were flying but the stone, and her on the stone, and the crowd behind her, and the clearing—it was all slipping silently away, like a ship, and the light earth beneath our feet was sailing away....

  “Brothers!” she was saying. “Brothers! All of you know that over there, beyond the Wall in the city, they’re building the INTEGRAL. All of you know that the day has come when we will demolish this Wall, all walls, so that a green wind may sweep all across the earth, from one end to the other. But the INTEGRAL is going to carry these walls aloft, up there, to the thousands of other earths whose lights will rustle for you tonight through black nocturnal foliage....”

  Against the stone, beating like waves, foam, wind: “Down with the INTEGRAL! Down with the INTEGRAL!”

  “No, brothers! Not down with it. The INTEGRAL must be ours. On that day when it launches out into the heavens for the first time—we will be on board. Because the Builder of the INTEGRAL is with us. He has left walls behind, he has come here with me, to be among you. Long live the Builder!”

  In a flash I’m somewhere up in the air and beneath me are heads, heads, heads, mouths wide open and screaming, hands shooting up and down. It was totally strange, intoxicating: I sensed myself above everyone; I was ... myself, something separate, a world; I stopped being one of many, the way I’d always been, and became just one.

  And then here I am back down, right beside the stone, my body rumpled, happy, crumpled as if it had just made love. Sun. Voices from above. 1-330’s smile. Some woman with golden hair, herself all gold and satin, smelling of grasses. She has a cup in her hands, a wooden cup, apparently. She drinks from it with her red lips and hands it to me and I shut my eyes and drink, I drink greedily, to douse the fire, I drink sweet, stinging, cold sparks.

  And after that my blood and the whole world go a thousand times faster and the light earth races like a bit of fluff. And everything seems to me easy, simple, and clear.

  Now I see the huge, familiar letters on the stone: “Mephi.” And it somehow seems to me that it’s just as it should be—that’s the strong, simple thread tying everything together. I see a crude drawing (also on the stone, maybe) of a winged youth with a transparent body and instead of a heart he has a glowing coal, blindingly crimson. And again I feel I understand this coal, or rather, I feel it—just as I feel each word (she’s speaking up there, on the stone) without actually hearing it—and feel everyone breathing in unison—and that it’s everyone’s fate to fly off together somewhere, just like the birds that time over the Wall....

  From behind, from the dense breathing thicket of bodies, there comes a loud voice: “But this is madness!”

  And I think I—yes, I think that was my voice—I think I jumped up onto the stone, from where I see sun, heads, a jagged-toothed saw of green against the blue, and I shout:

  “Yes, yes, that’s right! And everybody has to go mad, everybody must absolutely go mad, and as soon as possible! This is crucial! I know it is!”
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br />   1-330 is beside me. Her smile is two dark lines from the corners of her mouth upward at an angle, and it sinks into me like a coal, and this instant is easy, almost painless, wonderful....

  After that, all I retain are a few scattered sharp remnants. A slow, low-flying bird. I see it’s alive, like me. Like a human, it turns its head right and left and bores into me with its dark round eyes....

  More. A back with glistening fur the color of old ivory. Across the back a dark insect with tiny transparent wings is crawling—the back shivers to drive the insect off, shivers again....

  More. The leaves cast a shadow—woven, crosshatched. People are lying about in this shadow and eating something that looks like the legendary food of the ancients: a long yellow fruit and a piece of something dark. A woman puts this in my hand and I feel funny, not knowing whether I can eat it.

  And then the crowd, heads, legs, arms, mouths. Faces pop up for a second and then get lost, like soap bubbles that have burst. And for a moment I see, or maybe I think I see, transparent ear-wings that flit past.

  I grab I-330’s hand for all I’m worth. She turns to look at me: “What is it?”

  “He’s here.... I think I ...”

  “Who?”

  “S.... Just now, in the crowd. ...”

  Thin coal-black eyebrows pulled toward the temples. The sharp triangle of a smile. I don’t get it—why’s she smiling, how can she smile?

  “You don’t understand, I-330. You don’t understand what it means if he, or any of them, is here.”

  “You’re funny! Do you really think anyone over there behind the Wall could ever dream that we are here? Just think of yourself: Did you ever really imagine it was possible? They’re looking for us over there! Let them look! You’re dreaming. ”

  She gives an easy, gay smile, and I smile. The earth is drunk, merry, light—it’s sailing....