The Wild Man with a Barometer
Epilepsy
If
Until today everything in life seemed to me clear (that is why, I
think, I always had a sort of partiality toward the word "clear"),
but today ... I don't understand. First, I really was assigned
to auditorium 112 as she said, although the probability was as
500:10,000,000 or 1:20,000. (500 is the number of auditoriums and
there are 10,000,000 Numbers.) And second ... but let me relate
things in successive order. The auditorium: an enormous half-globe
of glass with the sun piercing through. The circular rows of
noble, globe-like, closely-shaven heads. With joy in my heart I
looked around. I believe I was looking in the hope of seeing the
rose-colored scythe, the dear lips of O-, somewhere among the blue
waves of the unifs. Then I saw extraordinarily white, sharp teeth
like the.... But no! Tonight at twenty-one o'clock O- was to come
to me; therefore my desire to see her was quite natural. The bell.
We stood up, sang the Hymn of the United State, and our clever
phono-lecturer appeared on the platform with a sparkling golden
megaphone.
"Respected Numbers, not so long ago our archaeologists dug up a
book written in the twentieth century. In this book the ironical
author tells about a Wild Man and a barometer. The Wild Man noticed
that every time the barometer's hand stopped on the word 'rain,' it
actually rained. And as the Wild Man craved rain, he let out as much
mercury as was necessary to put it at the level of the word 'rain'
(on the screen a Wild Man with feathers, letting out the mercury.
Laughter).
"You are laughing at him, but don't you think the 'European' of that
age deserves more to be laughed at? He, like the Wild Man, wanted
rain,--rain with a little r, an algebraic rain; but he remained
standing before the barometer like a wet hen. The Wild Man at least
had more courage and energy and logic, although primitive logic. The
Wild Man showed the ability to establish a connection between cause
and effect: by letting out the mercury he made the first step on the
path which...."
Here (I repeat, I am not concealing anything, I am setting down
everything) I suddenly became impermeable to the quickening currents
coming from the megaphone. I suddenly felt I had come here in
vain (why in vain and how could I not have come here, where I
was assigned?). Everything seemed to me empty like a shell. I
succeeded with difficulty in switching my attention in again when
the phono-lecturer came to the main theme of the evening,--to our
music as a mathematical composition (mathematics is the cause,
music the effect). The phono-lecturer began the description of the
recently invented musicometer.
"... By merely rotating this handle any one is enabled to produce
about three sonatas per hour. What difficulties our predecessors
had in making music! They were able to compose only by bringing
themselves to strokes of inspiration,--an extinct form of epilepsy.
Here you have an amusing illustration of their achievements: the
music of Scriabin, twentieth century. This black box," (a curtain
parted on the platform, and we saw an ancient instrument) "this box
they called the 'Royal Grand.' They attached to this the idea of
_regality_, which also goes to prove how their music...."
And I don't remember anything further. Very possibly because ...
I'll tell you frankly, because she, I-330, came to the "Royal" box.
Probably I was simply startled by her unexpected appearance on the
platform.
She was dressed in a fantastic dress of the ancient time, a black
dress closely fitting the body, sharply delimiting the white of her
shoulders and breast and that warm shadow waving with her breath
between.... And the dazzling, almost angry teeth. A smile, a bite,
directed downward. She took her seat; she began to play something
wild, convulsive, loud like all their life then,--not a shadow of
rational mechanism. Of course all those around me were right; they
were laughing. Only a few ... but why is it that I too, I...?
Yes, epilepsy, a mental disease, a pain. A slow, sweet pain,
bite, and it goes deeper and becomes sharper. And then, slowly,
sunshine,--not our sunshine, not crystalline, bluish and soft,
coming through the glass bricks. No, a wild sunshine, rushing and
burning, tearing everything into small bits....
The Number at my left glanced at me and chuckled. I don't know why
but I remember exactly how a microscopic saliva bubble appeared on
his lips and burst. That bubble brought me back to myself. I was
again I.
Like all the other Numbers I heard now only the senseless,
disorderly cracking of the chords. I laughed; I felt so light and
simple. The gifted phono-lecturer represented to us only too well
that wild epoch. And that was all.
With what a joy I listened afterward to our contemporary music. It
was demonstrated to us at the end of the lecture for the sake of
contrast. Crystalline, chromatic scales converging and diverging
into endless series; and synthetic harmony of the formulae of Taylor
and McLauren, wholesome, square and massive like the "trousers
of Pythagoras." Sad melodies dying away in waving movements.
The beautiful texture of the spectrum of planets, dissected by
Frauenhofer lines ... what magnificent, what perfect regularity!
How pitiful the wilful music of the ancients, not limited except by
the scope of their wild imaginations!
As usual in good order, four abreast, all of us left the auditorium.
The familiar double-curved figure passed swiftly by. I respectfully
bowed.
Dear O- was to come in an hour. I felt agitated,--agreeably and
usefully. Home at last! I rushed to the house-office, handed over
to the controller on duty my pink ticket and received a certificate
permitting the use of the curtains. This right exists in our State
only for the sexual days. Normally we live surrounded by transparent
walls which seem to be knitted of sparkling air; we live beneath
the eye of everyone, always bathed in light. We have nothing to
conceal from one another; besides, this mode of living makes the
difficult and exalted task of the Guardians much easier. Without it
many bad things might happen. It is possible that the strange opaque
dwellings of the ancients were responsible for their pitiful cellish
psychology. "My (_sic!_) home is my fortress!" How did they manage
to think of such things?
At twenty-two o'clock I lowered the curtain and at the same second
O- came in smiling, slightly out of breath. She extended to me
her rosy lips and her pink ticket. I tore off the stub but I
could not tear myself away from the rosy lips up to the last
moment,--twenty-two-fifteen.
Then I showed her my diary and I talked; I think I talked very
well on the beauty of a square, a cube, a straight line. At first
she listened so charmingly, she was so rosy, when suddenly a tear
appeared in her blue eyes, then another, and a third fell straight
on the open page (page 7). The ink blurred; well, I shall have to
copy it again.
"My dear O-, if only you, if...."
"What if? If what?"
Again the old lament about a child or perhaps something new
regarding, regarding ... the other one? Although it seems as though
some ... but that would be too absurd!