Fog
Thou
A Decidedly Absurd Adventure
I awoke at dawn. The rose-colored firmament looked into my eyes.
Everything was beautiful, round. "O-90 is to come tonight. Surely
I am healthy again." I smiled and fell asleep. The Morning Bell!
I got up; everything looked different. Through the glass of the
ceiling, through the walls, nothing could be seen but fog,--fog
everywhere, strange clouds, becoming heavier and nearer; the
boundary between earth and sky disappeared. Everything seemed to
be floating and thawing and falling.... Not a thing to hold to. No
houses to be seen; they all were dissolved in the fog like crystals
of salt in water. On the sidewalks and inside the houses dark
figures like suspended particles in a strange milky solution, were
hanging, below, above,--up to the tenth floor. Everything seemed
to be covered with smoke, as though a fire were somewhere raging
noiselessly.
At eleven-forty-five exactly (I looked at the clock particularly at
that time to catch the figures, to save at least the figures) at
eleven-forty-five, just before leaving, according to our Table of
Hours, to go and occupy myself with physical labor, I dropped into
my room for a moment. Suddenly the telephone rang. A voice,--a long
needle slowly penetrating my heart:
"Oh, you are at home? I am very glad! Wait for me at the corner. We
shall go together.... Where? Well, you'll see."
"You know perfectly well that I am going to work now."
"You know perfectly well that you'll do as I say! _Au-revoir._ In
two minutes!..."
I stood at the corner. I had to wait to try to make clear to her
that only the United State directs me, not she. "You'll do as I
say!" How sure she is! One hears it in her voice. And what if...?
Unifs, dull gray as if woven of damp fog would appear for a second
at my side and then soundlessly redissolve. I was unable to turn my
eyes away from the clock.... I seemed myself to have become that
sharp, quivering hand which marked the seconds. Ten, eight minutes
... three ... two minutes to twelve.... Of course! I was late! Oh,
how I hated her, yet I had to wait to prove that I....
A red line in the milky whiteness of the fog--like blood, like a
wound made by a sharp knife--her lips.
"I made you wait, I think? And now you are late for your work
anyway?"
"How...? Well, yes, it is too late now."
I glanced at her lips in silence. All women are lips, lips only.
Some are rosy lips, tense and round, a ring, a tender fence
separating one from the world. But these! A second ago they were not
here, and suddenly ... the slash of a knife! I seemed to see even
the dripping sweet blood....
She came nearer. She leaned gently against my shoulder; we became
one. Something streamed from her into me. I felt, I knew, it
_should_ be so. Every fibre of my nervous system told me this, every
hair on my head, every painfully sweet heartbeat. And what a joy it
was to submit to what _should_ be. A fragment of iron-ore probably
feels the same joy of submission to precise, inevitable law, when
it clings to a loadstone. The same joy is in a stone which thrown
aloft, hesitates a little at the height of its flight and then
rushes down to the ground. It is the same with a man when in his
final convulsion he takes a last deep breath and dies.
I remember I smiled vaguely and said for no reason at all, "Fog ...
very."
"Thou lovest fog, dost thou?"
This ancient, long-forgotten _thou_--the thou of a master to his
slave--penetrated me slowly, sharply.... Yes, I was a slave.... This
too was inevitable, was good.
"Yes, good ..." I said aloud to myself, and then to her, "I hate
fog. I am afraid of fog."
"Then you love it. For if you fear it because it is stronger than
you, hate it because you fear it, you love it. For you cannot
subject it to yourself. One loves only the things one cannot
conquer."
"Yes, that is so. That is why ... that is precisely why I...."
We were walking--as one. Somewhere beyond the fog the sun was
singing in a faint tone, gradually swelling, filling the air with
tension and with pearl and gold and rose and red.... The whole world
seemed to be one unembraceable woman, and we who were in her body
were not yet born; we were ripening in joy. It was clear to me,
absolutely clear, that everything existed only for me: the sun, the
fog, the gold--for me. I did not ask where we were going; what did
it matter? It was pleasure to walk, to ripen, to become stronger and
more tense....
"Here ..." I-330 stopped at a door. "It so happens that today there
is some one on duty who ... I told you about him in the Ancient
House."
Carefully guarding the forces ripening within me, I read the sign:
"Medical Bureau." Automatically only I understood.
... A glass room, filled with golden fog; shelves of glass, colored
bottles, jars, electric wires, bluish sparks in tubes; and a male
Number--a very thinly flattened man. He might have been cut out of a
sheet of paper. Wherever he was, whichever way he turned, he showed
only a profile, a sharply pointed, glittering blade of a nose and
lips like scissors.
I could not hear what I-330 told him; I merely saw her lips when
she was talking; and I felt that I was smiling, irrepressibly,
blissfully. The scissors-like lips glittered and the doctor said,
"Yes, yes, I see. A most dangerous disease. I know of nothing more
dangerous." And he laughed. With his thin, flat, papery hand he
wrote something on a piece of paper and gave it to I-330; he wrote
on another piece of paper and handed it over to me. He had given us
certificates, testifying that we were ill, that we were unable to go
to work. Thus I stole my work from the United State; I was a thief;
I deserved to be put beneath the Machine of the Well-Doer. Yet I was
indifferent to this thought; it was as distant from me as though it
were written in a novel. I took the certificate without an instant's
hesitation. I, all my being, my eyes, my lips, my hands ... knew it
was as it should be.
At the corner, from a half empty garage we took an aero. I-330 took
the wheel as she had done before, pressed the starter and we tore
away from the earth. We soared. Behind us the golden haze; the Sun.
The thin, blade-like profile of the doctor seemed to me suddenly so
dear, so beloved. Formerly I knew everything was revolving around
the Sun. Now I knew everything was revolving around me. Slowly,
blissfully, with half-closed eyes....
At the gate of the Ancient House we found the same old woman. What
a dear mouth, with lips grown together and ray-like wrinkles around
it! Probably those lips have remained grown together all these days;
but now they parted and smiled:
"Ah! you mischievous girl, you! Work is too much for you? Well, all
right, all right. If anything happens I'll run up and warn you."
A heavy, squeaky, opaque door. It closed behind us, and at once my
heart opened painfully, widely, still wider.... My lips ... hers....
I drank and drank from them. I tore myself away; in silence I looked
into her widely open eyes, and then again....
The room in half dusk.... Blue and saffron-yellow lights, dark green
morocco leather, the golden smile of Buddha, a wide mahogany bed,
a glimmer of mirrors.... And my dream of a few days before became
so comprehensible, so clear to me; everything seemed saturated
with the golden prime-juice of life, and it seemed that I was
overflowing with it,--one second more and it would splash out....
Like iron-ore to a loadstone, in sweet submission to the precise
and unchangeable law, inevitably, I clung to her.... There was no
pink check, no counting, no United State; I myself was no more.
Only, drawn together, the tenderly-sharp teeth were there, only her
golden, widely open eyes, and through them I saw deeper, within....
And silence.... Only somewhere in a corner, thousands of miles away
it seemed, drops of water were dripping from the faucet of the
washstand. I was the Universe!
... And between drops whole epochs, eras, were elapsing....
I put on my unif and bent over I-330 to draw her into me with my
eyes--for the last time.
"I knew it.... I knew you," said I-330 in a very low voice. She
passed her hand over her face as though brushing something away;
then she arose brusquely, put on her unif and her usual sharp,
bite-like smile.
"Well, my fallen angel ... you perished just now, do you know that?
No? You are not afraid? Well, _au-revoir_. You shall go home alone.
Well?"
She opened the mirror-door of the cupboard and looking at me over
her shoulder, she waited. I left the room obediently. Yet no sooner
had I left the room than I felt it was urgent that she touch me
with her shoulder--only for one second with her shoulder, nothing
more. I ran back into the room, where (I presumed) she was standing
before the mirror, busy buttoning up her unif; I rushed in and
stopped abruptly. I saw (I remember it clearly), I saw the key
in the keyhole of the closet and the ancient ring upon it was
still swinging but I-330 was not there. She could not have left
the room as there was but one exit.... Yet I-330 was not there! I
looked around everywhere. I even opened the cupboard and felt of the
different ancient dresses; nobody....
I feel somewhat ridiculous, my dear planetary readers, relating
to you this most improbable adventure. But what else can I do
since it all happened exactly as I relate it? Was not the whole
day from early morning, full of improbable adventures? Does it not
all resemble the ancient disease of dream-seeing? If this be so,
what does it matter if I relate one absurdity more, or one less?
Moreover, I am convinced that sooner or later I shall be able to
include all these absurdities in some kind of a logical sequence.
This thought comforts me as I hope it will comfort you.
... How overwhelmed I am! If only you knew how overwhelmed!