Ballet
Square Harmony
X
Spring. From behind the Green Wall from some unknown plains the
wind brings to us the yellow honeyed pollen of flowers. One's lips
are dry from this sweet dust. Every moment one passes one's tongue
over them. Probably, all women whom I meet in the street (and men
certainly also), have today sweet lips. This disturbs somewhat my
logical thinking. But the sky! The sky is blue. Its limpidness is
not marred by a single cloud. (How primitive was the taste of the
ancients, since their poets were always inspired by these senseless,
formless, stupidly rushing accumulations of steam!) I love, I am
sure it will not be an error if I say we love, only such a sky--a
sterile, faultless sky. On such days the whole universe seems to be
moulded of the same eternal glass, like the Green Wall, and like all
our buildings. On such days one sees into the very blue depth of
things. One sees their wonderful equations, hitherto unknown. One
sees them in everything, even in the most ordinary everyday things.
Here is an example: this morning I was on the dock where the
_Integral_ is being built, and I saw the lathes; blindly, with
abandon, the balls of the regulators were rotating; the cranks
were swinging from side to side with a glimmer; the working-beam
proudly swung its shoulder; and the mechanical chisels were dancing
to the melody of an unheard Tarantella. I suddenly perceived all
the music, all the beauty, of this colossal, of this mechanical
ballet, illumined by light blue rays of sunshine. Then the thought
came: why beautiful? Why is a dance beautiful? Answer: because it
is an _unfree_ movement. Because the deep meaning of the dance
is contained in its absolute, ecstatic submission, in the ideal
_non-freedom_. If it is true that our ancestors would abandon
themselves in dancing at the most inspired moments of their lives
(religious mysteries, military parades) then it means only one
thing: the instinct of non-freedom has been characteristic of human
nature from ancient times, and we in our life of today, we are only
consciously--
I was interrupted. The switchboard clicked. I raised my eyes,--O-90,
of course! In half a minute she herself will be here to take me for
the walk.
Dear O--! She always seems to me to look like her name, O--. She is
approximately ten centimeters shorter than the required Maternal
Norm. Therefore she appears all round; the rose-colored O of her
lips is open to meet every word of mine. She has a round soft dimple
on her wrist. Children have such dimples. As she came in, the
logical fly-wheel was still buzzing in my head, and following its
inertia, I began to tell her about my new formula which embraced the
machines and the dancers and all of us.
"Wonderful, isn't it!" I asked.
"Yes, wonderful ... Spring!" she replied, with a rosy smile.
You see? Spring! She talks about Spring! Females!... I became
silent.
We were down in the street. The avenue was crowded. On days when
the weather is so beautiful the afternoon personal hour is usually
the hour of the supplementary walk. As always the big Musical Tower
was playing with all its pipes, the March of the United State.
The Numbers, hundreds, thousands of Numbers in light blue unifs
(probably a derivative of the ancient _uniform_) with golden badges
on the chest,--the State number of each one, male or female,--the
Numbers were walking slowly, four abreast, exaltedly keeping
the step. I, we four, were but one of the innumerable waves of
a powerful torrent. To my left, O-90 (if one of my long-haired
ancestors were writing this a thousand years ago, he would probably
call her by that funny word, _mine_), to my right, two unknown
Numbers, a she-Number and a he-Number.
Blue sky, tiny baby suns in each one of our badges; our faces are
unclouded by the insanity of thoughts. Rays.... Do you picture it?
Everything seems to be made of a kind of smiling, a ray-like matter.
And the brass measures: Tra-ta-ta-tam.... Tra-ta-ta-tam ... stamping
on the brassy steps which sparkle in the sun; with every step you
rise higher and higher into the dizzy blue heights.... Then, as this
morning on the dock, again I saw as if for the first time in my
life, the impeccably straight streets, the glistening glass of the
pavement, the divine parallelopipeds of the transparent dwellings,
the square harmony of the grayish-blue rows of Numbers. And it
seemed to me that not past generations, but I myself, had won a
victory over the old god and the old life, that I myself had created
all this. I felt like a tower: I was afraid to move my elbow, lest
the walls, the cupola and the machines should fall to pieces.
Then without warning--a jump through centuries: I remembered
(apparently through an association by contrast) a picture in
the museum, a picture of an avenue of the twentieth century,
a thundering many-colored confusion of men, wheels, animals,
bill-boards, trees, colors, and birds.... They say all this once
actually existed!
It seemed to me so incredible, so absurd, that I lost control of
myself and laughed aloud. A laugh, as if an echo of mine, reached my
ear from the right. I turned. I saw white, very white, sharp teeth,
and an unfamiliar female face.
"I beg your pardon," she said, "but you looked about you like an
inspired mythological god on the seventh day of creation. You look
as though you are sure that I, too, was created by you, by no one
but you. It is very flattering."
All this without a smile, even with a certain degree of respect--(she
may know that I am the builder of the _Integral_). In her eyes
nevertheless, in her brows, there was a strange irritating X, and
I was unable to grasp it, to find an arithmetical expression for
it. Somehow I was confused; with a somewhat hazy mind, I tried
logically to motivate my laughter.
"It was absolutely clear that this contrast, this impassable abyss,
between the things of today and of years ago--"
"But why impassable?" (What bright, sharp teeth!) "One might throw a
bridge over that abyss. Please imagine: a drum battalion, rows,--all
this existed before and consequently--"
"Oh, yes, it is clear," I exclaimed.
It was a remarkable intersection of thoughts. She said almost in
the same words the things I wrote down before the walk! Do you
understand? Even the thoughts! It is because nobody is _one_, but
_one of_. We are all so much alike--
"Are you sure?" I noticed her brows which rose to the temples in an
acute angle,--like the sharp corners of an X. Again I was confused,
casting a glance to the right, then to the left. To my right--she,
slender, abrupt, resistantly flexible like a whip, I-330 (I saw her
number now). To my left, O-, totally different, made all of circles
with a child-like dimple on her wrist; and at the very end of our
row, an unknown he-Number, double-curved like the letter S. We were
all so different from one another....
The one to my right, I-330, apparently caught my confused eye, for
she said with a sigh, "Yes, alas!"
I don't deny that this exclamation was quite in place, but again
there was something in her face or in her voice....
With an abruptness unusual for me, I said, "Why 'alas'? Science is
developing and if not now, then within fifty or one hundred years--"
"Even the noses will--"
"Yes, noses!" This time I almost shouted, "Since there is still a
reason, no matter what, for envy.... Since my nose is button-like
and someone else's is--"
"Well your nose is rather classic, as they would say in the ancient
days, although your hands--No, no, show me your hands!"
I hate to have anyone look at my hands; they are covered with
long hair,--a stupid atavism. I stretched out my hand and said as
indifferently as I could, "Ape-like."
She glanced at my hand, then at my face.
"No, a very curious harmony."
She weighed me with her eyes as though with scales. The little horns
again appeared at the corners of her brows.
"He is registered in my name," exclaimed O-90 with a rosy smile.
I made a grimace. Strictly speaking, she was out of order. This dear
O-, how shall I say it? the speed of her tongue is not correctly
calculated; the speed per second of her tongue should be slightly
less than the speed per second of her thoughts,--at any rate not the
reverse.
At the end of the avenue the big bell of the Accumulating Tower
resounded seventeen. The personal hour was at an end. I-330 was
leaving us with that S-like he-Number. He has such a respectable,
and I noticed then, such a familiar face. I must have met him
somewhere, but where I could not remember. Upon leaving me I-330
said with the same X-like smile:
"Drop in day after tomorrow at auditorium 112."
I shrugged my shoulders: "If I am assigned to the auditorium you
just named--"