A Letter
A Manhunt
Hairy I
Yesterday was for me a kind of filter-paper which chemists use for
filtering their solutions (all suspended and superfluous particles
remain on the paper). This morning I went downstairs all purified
and distilled, transparent.
Downstairs in the hall the controller sat at a small table,
constantly looking at her watch and recording the Numbers who were
leaving. Her name is U- ... well, I prefer not to give her Number,
for I fear I may not write kindly about her. Although, as a matter
of fact, she is a very respectable, mature woman. The only thing I
do not like in her is that her cheeks fold down a little like gills
of a fish (although I do not see anything wrong in this appearance).
She scratched with her pen and I saw on the page "D-503"--and
suddenly, splash! an ink-blot. No sooner did I open my mouth to call
her attention to that, than she raised her head and blotted me with
an inky smile. "There is a letter for you. You will receive it,
dear. Yes, yes, you will."
I knew a letter, after she had read it, must go through the Bureau
of the Guardians (I think it is unnecessary to explain in detail
this natural order of things); I would receive it not later than
twelve o'clock. But that tiny smile confused me; the drop of ink
clouded the transparency of the distilled solution. At the dock of
the _Integral_ I could not concentrate; I even made a mistake in my
calculations,--that never happened to me before.
At twelve o'clock, again the rosy-brown fish-gills' smile, and at
last the letter was in my hands. I cannot say why I did not read
it right there, but I put it in my pocket and ran into my room.
I opened it and glanced it over and ... and sat down. It was the
official notification advising me that Number I-330 had had me
assigned to her and that today at twenty-one o'clock, I was to go to
her. Her address was given.
"No! After all that happened! After I showed her frankly my attitude
toward her! Besides, how could she know that I did not go to the
Bureau of the Guardians? She had no way of knowing that I was ill
and could not.... And despite all this...."
A dynamo was whirling and buzzing in my head. Buddha ... yellow
... lilies-of-the-valley ... rosy crescent.... Besides,--besides,
O- wanted to come to see me today! I am sure she would not believe
(how could one believe), that I had absolutely nothing to do with
the matter, that ... I am sure also that we (O- and I) will have
a difficult, foolish and absolutely illogical conversation. No,
anything but that! Let the situation solve itself mechanically; I
shall send her a copy of this official communication.
While I was hastily putting the paper in my pocket, I noticed my
terrible ape-like hand. I remembered how that day during our walk,
she took my hand and looked at it. Is it possible that she really
... that she....
A quarter to twenty-one. A white northern night. Everything was
glass,--greenish. But it was a different kind of glass, not like
ours, not genuine but very breakable,--a thin glass shell and within
that shell things were flying, whirling, buzzing. I should not have
been surprised if suddenly the cupola of the auditorium had risen in
slow, rolling clouds of smoke; or if the ripe moon had sent an inky
smile,--like that one at the little table this morning; or if in all
the houses suddenly all the curtains had been lowered and behind the
curtains....
I felt something peculiar; my ribs were like iron bars that
interfered, decidedly interfered, with my heart, giving it too
little space. I stood at a glass door on which were the golden
letters _I-330_; I-330 sat at the table with her back to me; she was
writing something. I stepped in.
"Here...." I held out the pink check, "... I received the
notification this noon and here I am!"
"How punctual you are! Just a minute please, may I? Sit down. I
shall finish in a minute."
She lowered her eyes to the letter. What had she there, behind her
lowered curtains? What would she say? What would she do in a second?
How to learn it? How to calculate it, since she comes from beyond,
from the wild ancient land of dreams? I looked at her in silence.
My ribs were iron bars. The space for the heart was too small....
When she speaks her face is like a swiftly revolving, glittering
wheel; you cannot see the separate bars. But at that moment the
wheel was motionless. I saw a strange combination: dark eyebrows
running right to the temples--a sharp, mocking triangle; and still
another dark triangle with its apex upward--two deep wrinkles from
the nose to the angles of the mouth. And these two triangles somehow
contradicted each other. They gave the whole face that disagreeable,
irritating X, or cross; a face obliquely marked by a cross.
The wheel started to turn; its bars blurred.
"So you did not go to the Bureau of Guardians after all?"
"I did ... I did not feel well ... I could not."
"Yes? I thought so; something _must_ have prevented you, matters
little what (sharp teeth--a smile). But now you are in my hands. You
remember: 'Any Number who within forty-eight hours fails to report
to the Bureau is considered....'"
My heart banged so forcibly that the iron bars bent. If I were
not sitting ... like a little boy, how stupid! I was caught like
a little boy and stupidly I kept silent. I felt I was in a net;
neither my legs nor my arms....
She stood up and stretched herself lazily. She pressed the button
and the curtains on all four walls fell with a slight rustle. I was
cut off from the rest of the world, alone with her.
She was somewhere behind me, near the closet door. The unif
was rustling, falling. I was listening, _all_ listening. I
remembered,--no, it glistened in my mind for one hundredth of a
second,--I once had to calculate the curve of a street membrane
of a new type. (These membranes are handsomely decorated and are
placed on all the avenues, registering all street conversations for
the Bureau of Guardians.) I remembered a rosy concave, trembling
membrane,--a strange being consisting of one organ only, an ear. I
was at that moment such a membrane.
Now the "click" of the snap-button at her collar, at her breast, and
... lower. The glassy silk rustled over her shoulders and knees,
over the floor. I heard--and this was clearer than actual seeing--I
heard how one foot stepped out of the grayish-blue heap of silk,
then the other.... Soon I'd hear the creak of the bed and ...
The tensely stretched membrane trembled and registered the
silence,--no, the sharp hammer-like blows of the heart against the
iron bars and endless pauses between beats. And I heard, saw, how
she, behind me hesitated for a second, thinking. The door of the
closet.... It slammed; again silk ... silk....
"Well, all right."
I turned around. She was dressed in a saffron-yellow dress of an
ancient style. This was a thousand times worse than if she had not
been dressed at all. Two sharp points, through the thin tissue
glowing with rosiness, two burning embers piercing through ashes;
two tender, round knees....
She was sitting in a low armchair. In front of her on a small square
table, I noticed a bottle filled with something poisonously green
and two small glasses on thin legs. In the corner of her mouth she
had a very thin paper tube; she was ejecting smoke formed by the
burning of that ancient smoking substance whose name I do not now
remember.
The membrane was still vibrating. Within the sledge-hammer was
pounding the red-hot iron bars of my chest. I heard distinctly every
blow of the hammer, and ... what if she too heard it?
But she continued to produce smoke very calmly; calmly she looked at
me; and nonchalantly she flicked ashes on the pink check!
With as much self-control as possible I asked, "If you still feel
that way, why did you have me assigned to you? And why did you make
me come here?"
As if she had not heard at all, she poured some of the green liquid
from the bottle into a small glass and sipped it.
"Wonderful liqueur! Want some?"
Then I understood; alcohol! Like lightning there came to memory what
I saw yesterday: the stony hand of the Well-Doer, the unbearable
blade of the electric ray; there on the Cube, the head thrown
backward, the stretched-out body! I shivered.
"Please listen," I said, "You know, do you not, that any one who
poisons himself with nicotine, more particularly with alcohol, is
severely treated by the United State?"
Dark brows raised high to the temples, the sharp mocking triangle.
"'It is more reasonable to annihilate a few than to allow many to
poison themselves.... And degeneration,' ... etc.... This is true to
the point of indecency."
"Indecency?"
"Yes. To let out into the street such a group of bald-headed naked
little truths. Only imagine please. Imagine, say, that persistent
admirer of mine, S-, well, you know him. Then imagine: if he should
discard the deception of clothes and appear in public in his true
form ... oh!" She laughed. But I clearly saw her lower, sorrowful
triangle; two deep grooves from the nose to the mouth. And for
some reason these grooves made me think: that double-curved being,
half-hunched, with wing-like ears,--he embraced her? her, such ...
Oh!
Naturally, I try now merely to express my abnormal feelings of that
moment. Now, as I write, I understand perfectly that all this is as
it should be; that he, S-4711, like any other honest Number has a
perfect right to the joys of life and that it would be unjust....
But I think the point is quite clear.
I-330 laughed a long, strange laugh. Then she cast a look at me,
into me.
"The most curious thing is that I am not in the least afraid of you.
You are such a dear, I am sure of it! You would never think of going
to the Bureau and reporting that I drink liqueurs and smoke. You
will be sick or busy, or I don't know what.... Furthermore, I am
sure you will drink this charming poison with me."
What an impertinent, mocking tone! I felt definitely that in a
moment I should hate her. (Why in a moment? In fact I hated her all
the time.)
I-330 turned over the little glass of green poison straight into
her mouth. Then she stood up, and all rosy through the translucent
saffron-yellow tissue, she made a few steps and stopped behind my
chair.... Suddenly her arms were about my neck ... her lips grew
into mine, no, even somewhere much deeper, much more terribly.... I
swear all this was very unexpected for me. That is why perhaps ...
for I could not (at this moment I see clearly) I could not myself
have the desire to....
Unbearably sweet lips. (I suppose it was the taste of the liqueur.)
It was as though burning poison were being poured into me, and more
and more....
I tore away from the earth and began revolving as an independent
planet,--down--down--following an uncalculable curve....
What happened next I am able to describe only in an approximate way,
only by way of more or less corresponding analogies.
It never occurred to me before but it is true: we who live on the
earth, we are always walking over a seething red sea of fire which
is hidden in the womb of the earth. We never think of it. But
imagine the ground under our feet suddenly transformed into a thin
glass shell; suddenly we should behold...!
I became glass-like and saw within myself. There were two selves in
me. One, the former D-503, Number D-503; and the other.... Before,
that other used only to show his hairy paws from time to time, but
now the whole other self left his shell. That shell was breaking,
and in a moment....
Grasping with all my strength the last straw (the arms of the
chair), I asked loudly (so as to hear my first self), "Where, where
did you get this poison?"
"Oh, this? A physician, one of my...."
"'One of my! one of my' what?" And my other self jumped up suddenly
and yelled: "I won't allow it! I want no one but me.... I shall
kill any one who.... Because I.... You." ... I saw my other self
grasp her rudely with his hairy paws, tear the silk, and put his
teeth in her flesh!... I remember exactly, his teeth!...
I do not remember how, but I-330 slipped away and I saw her
straightened, her head raised high, her eyes overlain by that cursed
impenetrable curtain. She stood leaning with her back against the
closet door and listening to me.
I remember I was on the floor; I embraced her limbs, kissed her
knees and cried supplicatingly, "At once, right away, right away."
Sharp teeth.... The sharp mocking triangle of the brows.... She bent
over and in silence unbuttoned my badge.
"Yes, yes, dear--dear."
I began hastily to remove my unif. But I-330, silent as before,
lifted my badge to my eyes, showing me the clock upon it. It was
twenty-two-twenty-five.
I became cold. I knew what it meant to be out in the street after
twenty-two-thirty. My insanity disappeared at once. I was again
I. I saw clearly one thing: I hated her, hated her, hated-- ...
Without saying good-bye, without looking back, I ran out of the
room. Hurriedly trying to fasten the badge back in its place, I
ran down the stairs (I was afraid lest some one notice me in the
elevator), and jumped out into a deserted street.
Everything was in its place; life so simple, ordinary, orderly.
Glittering glass houses, pale glass sky, a greenish, motionless
night. But under that cool glass something wild, something red
and hairy, was silently seething. I was gasping for breath but I
continued to run, so as not to be late.
Suddenly I felt that my badge which I had hurriedly pinned on, was
detaching itself; it came off and fell to the sidewalk. I bent
over to pick it up and in the momentary silence I heard somebody's
steps. I turned. Someone small and hunched was disappearing around
the corner. At least so it seemed. I started to run as fast as I
could. The wind whistled in my ears. At the entrance of my house I
stopped and looked at the clock; one minute to twenty-two-thirty! I
listened; nobody behind. It was my foolish imagination, the effect
of the poison.
The night was full of torture. My bed seemed to lift itself under
me, then to fall again, then up again! I used autosuggestion: "At
night all the Numbers must sleep; sleeping at night is a duty just
like working during the day. To sleep at night is necessary for the
next day's work. Not to sleep at night is criminal." Yet I could
not sleep--I could not. I was perishing! I was unable to fulfill my
duties to the United State! I....