An Irrational Root
R-13
The Triangle
It was long ago during my school-days, when I first encountered the
square-root of minus one. I remember it all very clearly; a bright
globe-like class hall, about a hundred round heads of children
and Plappa--our mathematician. We nicknamed him Plappa; it was
a very much used-up mathematician, loosely screwed together; as
the member of the class who was on duty that day would be putting
the plug into the socket behind we would hear at first from the
megaphone, "Plap-plap-plap-plap--tshshsh...." Only then the lesson
would follow. One day Plappa told us about irrational numbers, and
I remember I wept and banged the table with my fist and cried, "I
do not want that square-root of minus one; take that square-root
of minus one away!" This irrational root grew into me as something
strange, foreign, terrible; it tortured me; it could not be thought
out. It could not be defeated because it was beyond reason.
Now that square-root of minus one is here again. I read over what
I have written and I clearly see that I was insincere with myself,
that I lied to myself in order to avoid seeing that square-root of
minus one. My sickness, etc., is all nonsense; _I could go there_. I
feel sure that if such a thing had happened a week ago I should have
gone without hesitating. Why then am I unable to go now?... Why?
Today, for instance, at exactly sixteen-ten I stood before the
glittering Glass Wall. Above was the shining, golden, sun-like sign:
"Bureau of Guardians." Inside, a long queue of bluish-gray unifs
awaiting their turns, faces shining like the oil lamps in an ancient
temple. They came to accomplish a great thing: they came to put on
the altar of the United State their beloved ones, their friends,
their own selves. My whole being craved to join them, yet ... I
could not; my feet were as though melted into the glass plates of
the sidewalk. I simply stood there looking foolish.
"Heh, mathematician! Dreaming?"
I shivered. Black eyes varnished with laughter looked at me,--thick
negro lips! It was my old friend the poet, R-13, and with him rosy
O-. I turned around angrily (I still believe that if they had
not appeared I should have entered the Bureau and have torn the
square-root of minus one out of my flesh).
"Not dreaming at all; if you will, 'standing in adoration'," I
retorted quite brusquely.
"Oh, certainly, certainly! You, my friend, should never have become
a mathematician; you should have become a poet, a great poet! Yes,
come over to our trade, to the poets. Heh? If you will, I can
arrange it in a jiffy. Heh?"
R-13 usually talks very fast: His words run in torrents, his thick
lips sprinkle. Every P is a fountain, every "poets" a fountain.
"So far I have served knowledge, and I shall continue to serve
knowledge."
I frowned. I do not like, I do not understand jokes, and R-13 has
the bad habit of joking.
"Heh, to the deuce with knowledge. Your much-heralded knowledge is
but a form of cowardice. It is a fact! Yes, you want to encircle the
infinite with a wall and you fear to cast a glance behind the wall.
Yes, sir! And if ever you should glance beyond the wall you would be
dazzled and close your eyes,--yes,--"
"Walls are the foundation of every human--" I began.
R-13 sprinkled his fountain. O- laughed rosily and roundly. I
waved my hand: "Well, you may laugh, I don't care." I was busy
with something else. I had to find a way of eating up, of crushing
down, that square-root of minus one. "Suppose," I offered, "we go
to my place and do some arithmetical problems." (The quiet hour of
yesterday afternoon came to my memory; perhaps today also....)
O- glanced at R-, then serenely and roundly at me; the soft,
endearing color of our pink checks came to her cheeks.
"But today I am.... I have a check to him today." (A glance at R-.)
"And tonight he is busy, so that--"
The moist varnished lips whispered good-naturedly: "Half an hour
is plenty for us, is it not, O-? I am not a great lover of your
problems; let us simply go over to my place and chat."
I was afraid to remain alone with myself, or to be more correct,
with that new strange self, who by some curious coincidence bore
my number, D-503. So I went with R-. True, he is not precise,
not rhythmic, his logic is jocular and turned inside out, yet we
are.... Three years ago we both chose our dear, rosy O-. This tied
our friendship more firmly together than our school-days did. In
R-'s room everything seems like mine; the Tables, the glass of the
chairs, the table, the closet, the bed. But as we entered, R- moved
one chair out of place, then another,--the room became confused,
everything lost the established order and seemed to violate every
rule of Euclid's geometry. R- remained the same as before; in Taylor
and in mathematics he always lagged at the tail of the class.
We recalled Plappa, how we boys used to paste the whole surface
of his glass legs with paper notes expressing our thanks (we all
loved Plappa). We recalled our priest (it goes without saying that
we were taught not the "law" of ancient religion but the law of
the United State). Our priest had a very powerful voice; a real
hurricane would come out of the megaphone. And we children would
yell the prescribed texts after him with all our lung-power. We
recalled how our scapegrace, R-13, used to stuff the priest with
chewed paper; every word was thus accompanied by a paper wad shot
out. Naturally, R- was punished, for what he did was undoubtedly
wrong, but now we laughed heartily;--by we I mean our triangle, R-,
O-, and I, I must confess, I too.
"And what if he had been a living one? Like the ancient ones, heh?"
We'd have b... b..., a fountain running from the fat bubbling lips.
The sun was shining through the ceiling, the sun above, the sun from
the sides, its reflection from below. O- on R-13's lap and minute
drops of sunlight in O-'s blue eyes. Somehow my heart warmed up. The
square-root of minus one became silent and motionless....
"Well, how is your _Integral_? Will you soon hop off to enlighten
the inhabitants of the planets? You'd better hurry up, my boy, or
we poets will have produced such a devilish lot that even your
_Integral_ will be unable to lift the cargo. 'Every day from eight
to eleven' ..." R- wagged his head and scratched the back of it.
The back of his head is square; it looks like a little valise (I
recalled for some reason an ancient painting "In the Cab"). I felt
more lively.
"You too are writing for the _Integral_? Tell me about it. What are
you writing about? What did you write today, for instance?"
"Today I did not write; today I was busy with something else."
"B-b-busy" sprinkled straight into my face.
"What else?"
R- frowned. "What? What? Well, if you insist I'll tell you. I was
busy with the Death Sentence. I was putting the Death Sentence into
verse. An idiot--and to be frank, one of our poets.... For two
years we all lived side by side with him and nothing seemed wrong.
Suddenly he went crazy. 'I,' said he, 'am a genius! And I am above
the law.' All that sort of nonsense.... But it is not a thing to
talk about."
The fat lips hung down. The varnish disappeared from the eyes. He
jumped up, turned around and stared through the wall. I looked at
his tightly closed little "valise" and thought, "What is he handling
in his little valise now?"
A moment of awkward asymmetric silence. I could not see clearly what
was the matter but I was certain there was something....
"Fortunately the antediluvian time of those Shakespeares and
Dostoyevskis (or what were their names?) is past," I said in a voice
deliberately loud.
R- turned his face to me. Words sprinkled and bubbled out of him as
before, but I thought I noticed there was no more joyful varnish to
his eyes.
"Yes, dear mathematician, fortunately, fortunately. We are the happy
arithmetical mean. As you would put it, the integration from zero to
infinity, from imbeciles to Shakespeare. Do I put it right?"
I do not know why (it seemed to me absolutely uncalled for) I
recalled suddenly the other one, _her_ tone. A thin invisible
thread stretched between her and R- (what thread?). The square-root
of minus one began to bother me again. I glanced at my badge;
sixteen-twenty-five o'clock! They had only thirty-five minutes for
the use of the pink check.
"Well, I must go." I kissed O-, shook hands with R- and went to the
elevator.
As I crossed the avenue I turned around. Here and there in the
huge mass of glass penetrated by sunshine there were grayish-blue
squares, the opaque squares of lowered curtains,--the squares of
rhythmic, Taylorized happiness. On the seventh floor I found R-13's
square. The curtains were already lowered.
Dear O-.... Dear R-.... He also has (I do not know why I write this
"also," but I write as it comes from my pen), he too has something
which is not entirely clear in him. Yet I, he and O-, we are a
triangle; I confess, not an isosceles triangle but a triangle
nevertheless. We, to speak in the language of our ancestors (perhaps
to you, my planetary readers, this is the more comprehensible
language) we are a family. And one feels so good at times, when one
is able for a short while, at least, to close oneself within a firm
triangle, to close oneself away from anything that....