We: New Edition Page 5

  “Well, my dears, have you come to see my little house?” And her wrinkles shone (that is, they probably folded together in such a way as to look like rays, but it made the impression of shining).

  “Yes, Granny. Felt like it again,” said I-330.

  The wrinkles glowed. “What sun we have today! Isn’t it something, though? Such a tease, such a tease ... but I know. It’s all right, you can go ahead by yourselves. I’d better stay here—in the sun.”

  Hm-m. My companion seems to come here often. I keep feeling I’d like to brush something off me, something bothering me. It’s probably that same visual image that I can’t shake off: that cloud on the smooth blue of the majolica.

  As we were going up the wide, dark staircase, 1-330 said: “I love her, that old woman.”

  “What for?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe for her mouth. Maybe for nothing at all. I just do.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. She went on with a sort of smile, or maybe it wasn’t a smile: “I feel very guilty. It’s clear that one shouldn’t love ‘just because’ but ‘because of.’ All our natural impulses should be ...”

  “It’s clear,” I began, then caught myself at the word and stole a glance at 1-330 to see whether she’d noticed.

  She was looking down at something; her eyes were lowered like blinds.

  I thought suddenly of how you walk along the avenue around 22:00 hours, and among the brightly lit cages there are some dark ones, with the blinds lowered.... What was going on there in her head, behind her blinds? Why had she phoned me today, and what was all this?

  I opened a heavy, squeaking, solid door, and we found ourselves in a gloomy, untidy place (which they used to call an “apartment”). It contained that same strange “royal” instrument as well as a riot of colors and forms that were just as wild and disorganized and crazy as their music. The upper surface was a white plane; the walls were a dark blue; old books were bound in red, green, and orange; the candelabra was of yellow bronze; a statue of Buddha; and the lines of the furniture made lopsided ellipses that could never be accommodated in any conceivable equation.

  I could hardly stand this chaos. But my companion, apparently, had a stronger constitution.

  “This is my absolute favorite....” And then she suddenly seemed to catch herself, and there was that incisive smile, those sharp white teeth, and she went on: “I mean to say, the absolute stupidest of their so-called ‘apartments.’ ”

  “Or to be more precise,” I said, “of their states. Thousands of microscopic, eternally belligerent, merciless states, like ... ”

  “Oh, yes, of course, that’s clear ...” said she, seemingly quite serious.

  We walked through a room containing small beds for children (children were also private property in that era). And there were more rooms, flashing mirrors, gloomy chests, sofas covered in unbearably clashing fabrics, huge “fireplaces,” an immense mahogany bed. What we have now—our splendid, transparent, eternal glass—could be seen nowhere except in their pathetic little rickety rectangular windows.

  “And just think ... here they loved ‘just because,’ they burned, they tormented themselves.” Again, she lowered the blinds of her eyes. “What an idiotic, what a wasteful expense of human energy, don’t you think?”

  It was as though she were speaking with my voice, putting my thoughts into words. But her smile always contained that irritating X. There behind her blinds something ... I have no idea what ... was going on in her, something that made me lose all patience. I wanted to argue with her, yell at her (exactly that, yell), but I had to agree. It was impossible not to agree.

  And now we stopped in front of the mirror. At that moment all I could see were her eyes. An idea hit me: The way the human body is built, it’s just as stupid as those “apartments”—human heads are opaque and there’s no way to see inside except through those tiny little windows, the eyes. She seemed to guess what I was thinking and turned around. “Well, here are my eyes. What do you think?” (Without actually saying this, of course.)

  I saw before me two ominously dark windows, and inside there was another life, unknown. All I could see was a flame—there was some sort of “fireplace” inside—and some figures, that looked ...

  That would be natural, of course. What I saw there was my own reflection. But it was not natural and it did not look like me (apparently the surroundings were having a depressing effect). I felt absolutely afraid, I felt trapped, shut into that wild cage, I felt myself swept into the wild whirlwind of ancient life.

  “You know what...” she said. “Go into the next room for a minute.” Her voice came from there inside, from behind the windows of her eyes, where the fire was burning.

  I went out and sat down. On a little bracket on the wall was a bust of one of their ancient poets, Pushkin, I think. His asymmetrical, snub-nosed face was looking straight at me with a barely detectable smile. Why am I sitting here? Why am I meekly putting up with this smile? And what is all this, anyway? What am I doing here? How did this ridiculous situation arise? That irritating, repellent woman ... this weird game...?

  Inside, the door of the chest banged, there was the rustle of silk, and I had a hard time making myself not go in there and... I don’t know what I was thinking: probably I meant to say some very sharp things to her.

  But she’d already come out. She was wearing an old-fashioned dress, short, bright yellow, and had on a black hat and black stockings. The dress was made of a very thin silk —I could clearly see that the stockings were long and came way above her knees. And the neck was cut very low, with that shadow between her...

  “Listen,” I said, “it’s clear that you want to show off your originality, but do you really have to ...”

  “It’s clear,” she broke in, “that to be original means to distinguish yourself from others. It follows that to be original is to violate the principle of equality. And what the ancients called, in their idiotic language, ‘being banal’ is what we call ‘just doing your duty.’ Because ...”

  I couldn’t control myself: “Yes, yes, yes! That’s exactly right! And you’ve got no business ...”

  She went up to the bust of the snub-nosed poet and, lowering the blinds to cover the wild fire behind the windows of her eyes, said something that, for once at least, struck me as completely serious (to calm me down, maybe). She said a very reasonable thing:

  “Don’t you think it surprising that people were once willing to put up with someone like this one here? And not only put up with him—they adored him. What a slavish mentality! Don’t you agree?”

  “It’s clear ... that is, I mean ...” (Damn that “clear” I keep saying!)

  “Oh, of course I understand. But the fact is, you know, that people like him were rulers with more power than those who actually wore the crown. Why weren’t they isolated and wiped out? In our world ...”

  “Yes, in our world ...” I had only begun when she burst out laughing. I didn’t hear the laugh, only saw it with my eyes. I saw the curve of that laugh, ringing, steep, resilient, and lively as a whip.

  I remember how I was trembling all over. I should have ... I don’t know ... grabbed her, and—what? I don’t remember. But I felt that I had to, I don’t know, do something. What I did was mechanically open up my gold badge and look at the watch. It was 16:50.

  “Don’t you think it’s time to go?” I said, as politely as I could.

  “And suppose I asked you—to stay here with me?”

  “Listen, do you... are you aware of what you’re saying? In ten minutes I’m supposed to be in the auditorium....”

  “... And it is the obligation of all Numbers to follow the prescribed course in art and the sciences,” said 1-330, mimicking my own voice. Then she raised the blinds, lifted her eyes, and I saw the fire burning behind those windows. “In the Bureau of Medicine there is a doctor I know... he’s assigned to me ... and if I ask, he’ll make out a certificate for you, that you were sick. How about it?”

  I
understood. At last I understood where this whole game was leading.

  “So that’s how it is! And you know that what I should do, basically, like any honest Number, is head for the Bureau of Guardians immediately and ...”

  “And not just ‘basically’ [this with one of her smile-bites] ... I’m really terribly curious: Are you or aren’t you going to the Bureau?”

  “You’re staying?” I said as I reached for the handle of the door. The handle was made of brass, and my voice sounded to me like it was made of the same brass.

  “Just a minute.... Do you mind?”

  She went to the telephone, made a call, and spoke to some Number—1 didn’t catch who he was, I was so upset: “I’ll wait for you at the Ancient House,” she shouted. “Yes, yes, I’ll be alone....”

  I turned the cold brass handle. “Will you let me take the aero?”

  “Oh, of course. Please.”

  At the entrance the old woman was dozing in the sun, like a plant. Once more I was surprised that her mouth seemed to appear out of some undergrowth and produce speech: “And your ... what’s her name... she’s staying on by herself?”

  “Yes, by herself.”

  The old woman’s mouth sank out of sight again. She shook her head. Apparently even her feeble brain understood how stupid and dangerous that woman’s behavior was.

  I got to the lecture precisely at 17:00. Just then for some reason it struck me that I’d told the old woman a lie: 1-330 was not alone there now. I didn’t mean to, but I misinformed the old woman; maybe that was what preyed on my mind and kept me from hearing the lecture. No, she was not alone. That was just the trouble.

  After 21:30 I had a free hour. There was still time today to go make my report to the Bureau of Guardians. But I was so tired after that idiotic business. And then, too, you have two days by law to make the report. I’d still have time tomorrow, a whole twenty-four hours.

  RECORD 7

  An Eyelash Taylor Henbane and Lily of the Valley

  It’s night. Green, orange, blue; a red “royal” instrument; a yellow-orange dress. Then, a bronze Buddha; suddenly it raised its bronze eyelids and juice started to flow, juice out of the Buddha. Then out of the yellow dress, too: juice. Juices ran all over the mirror, and the bed began to ooze juice, and then it came from the children’s little beds, and now from me, too—some kind of fatally sweet horror....

  I wake up. Mild bluish light. The glass walls, the glass armchairs, the table were all glistening. This was reassuring. My heart stopped hammering. Juice? Buddha? What kind of nonsense... ? It was clear: I was sick. I never used to dream. They say in the old days it was the most normal thing in the world to have dreams. Which makes sense: Their whole life was some kind of horrible merry-go-round of green, orange, Buddha, juice. But today we know that dreams point to a serious mental illness. And I know that up to now my brain has checked out chronometrically perfect, a mechanism without a speck of dust to dull its shine ... and now what? Now ... what I feel there in my brain is just like... some kind of foreign body... like having a very thin little eyelash in your eye. You feel generally okay, but that eye with the lash in it—you can’t get it off your mind for a second.

  The cheerful little crystal bell in my headboard dings 7:00 A.M.: time to get up. To the right and left through the glass walls I see something like my own self, my own room, my own clothes, my own movements, and all repeated a thousand times. It cheers you up: You see yourself as part of an immense, powerful, single thing. And such a precise beauty it is: not a wasted gesture, bend, turn.

  No doubt about it, that Taylor was the genius of antiquity. True, it never finally occurred to him to extend his method over the whole of life, over every step you take right around the clock. He wasn’t able to integrate into his system the whole spread from hour 1:00 to hour 24:00. But still, how could they write whole libraries about someone like Kant and hardly even notice Taylor—that prophet who could see ten centuries ahead?

  Breakfast is over. The OneState Anthem harmoniously sung. Harmoniously, four abreast, everyone to the elevators. Hum of the engines, hardly audible. Down, down, down. Heart nearly in your throat.

  And then suddenly that stupid dream—or maybe some concealed function of that dream. Oh, yes, it was being in the aero yesterday, too—same descent. But all that’s finished. Period. Good thing, too, that I was blunt and firm with her.

  In the subway car I was speeding to where the elegant body of the INTEGRAL was gleaming on its stocks, shining in the sun and not yet alive with its own fire. With my eyes closed I was in a revery of formulas. Once more I mentally calculated the initial velocity needed to tear the INTEGRAL away from earth. Second by second, as the explosive fuel diminishes, the mass of the INTEGRAL changes. The equation is extremely complex, the values transcendental.

  As though in a dream, while I was here in this world of hard figures, someone sat down beside me, someone brushed lightly against me and said: “Sorry.”

  I half opened my eyes, and at first I saw (associations carried over from the INTEGRAL) something flying into space: a head, and it was flying because on the sides it had ears like pink wings. Then the curve of a head bent over, a curved back, double curved, the letter S ...

  And through the glass walls of my algebraic world there was again that eyelash, something unpleasant, something that, today, I had to ...

  “Please, think nothing of it,” I said, smiling at my neighbor and nodding to him. On his badge was a bright number: S-4711 (I could see why from the very first he was connected in my mind with the letter S—it was a visual impression beneath the threshold of consciousness). And his eyes flashed—two sharp drills whirling rapidly, screwing deeper and deeper down until they drilled to the very bottom and saw what I wouldn’t even let myself ...

  Suddenly I knew what the eyelash was! He was one of them, one of the Guardians. What could be simpler—stop putting it off and tell him everything right now.

  “I—er—you see—I was at the Ancient House yesterday ...” My voice was strange, flat, squashed. I tried clearing my throat.

  “So ... that’s excellent. That furnishes material for a lot of edifying conclusions.”

  “But, you see—1 wasn’t alone. I was with 1-330, and what ...”

  “1-330. Good for you. Very interesting, talented woman. She has a lot of admirers.”

  But he, too—back during the walk—and maybe he was even assigned to her? No, I couldn’t tell him. It was unthinkable. That was clear.

  “Right! Right! You said it! Very ...” My smile got wider and stupider, and it made me feel like a naked idiot.

  The drills went right to the bottom of my soul and then turned around and drilled their way back up to the eyes. S smiled a double smile at me, bowed, and slipped away to the exit.

  I hid behind the newspaper (it seemed to me everyone was looking at me), and soon I read something that upset me so much I forgot all about the eyelash, the drills, and everything. It was one short line: Reliable sources report the discovery once again of signs pointing to an elusive organization whose goal is liberation from the beneficent yoke of the State.

  “Liberation?” Astonishing how the criminal instincts do survive in the human species. I choose the word criminal advisedly. Freedom and criminality are just as indissolubly linked as ... well, as the movement of an aero and its velocity. When the velocity of an aero is reduced to 0, it is not in motion; when a man’s freedom is reduced to zero, he commits no crimes. That’s clear. The only means to rid man of crime is to rid him of freedom. And now when we’d only just managed to get rid of it (in the cosmic scale of things, centuries amount to “only just”), suddenly some pathetic morons...

  No, I don’t see why I didn’t go immediately yesterday to the Bureau of Guardians. Today after 16:00 I’ll go for sure.

  At 16:10 1 went out, and the first thing I saw was O standing on the corner, all pink with pleasure over running into me. “Now, she’s got a simple round mind,” I thought. “Just what I needed
. She’ll understand me and support me. But, wait ...no, I don’t need any support. I’ve got my mind made up. ”

  The pipes of the Music Factory were harmoniously booming out the March—the good old daily March. You can’t find words for how charming that is, that dailiness, that repetition, that mirror image.

  0 took my hand. “A walk ... ?” Her round blue eyes open wide to me, those windows into the core of her being, and through them I enter in, nothing in my way, since there is nothing there—nothing, that is, strange or useless.

  “No, no walk. I’ve got to ...” and I told her where I was going. And to my surprise I saw the pink circle of her mouth turn into a pink crescent, with the corners turned down, as if she’d tasted something sour. I blew up.

  “You women Numbers! You’re so prejudiced it’s hopeless. You absolutely cannot think abstractly. I’m sorry, but that’s just stupid.”

  “You ... you’re going to the spies... ugh! And I was just going to bring you this bunch of lily-of the-valley from the Botanical Museum.”

  “Why ‘And I’? Where do you get that ‘And’? Just like a woman!” I grabbed her flowers (angrily, I admit it). “Okay. Take your lily-of the-valley, okay? Have a smell. Nice, right? Now please try to follow just this little bit of logic, all right? Lily-of-the-valley smells nice... agreed. But you cannot say about smell—I’m talking about the concept smell-that it is good or bad, right? That you cannot, repeat NOT, do, right? There’s the smell of lily-of-the-valley, and then there’s the nasty smell of henbane: They’re both of them smells. There were spies in the ancient state, and we have spies. That’s right, spies; the word doesn’t scare me. But what is clear is this. Their spies were henbane, ours are lily-of-the-valley. That’s what I said: lily-of-the-valley!”