Yellow
A Two-dimensional Shadow
An Incurable Soul
I have not written for several days, for I don't know how many.
All my days are alike. All are of one color,--yellow like dry,
overheated sand. Not a patch of shade, not a drop of water, only an
infinity of yellow sand. I cannot live without her, but she, since
she disappeared that day so mysteriously in the Ancient House....
Since that time I have seen her only once, during the hour for the
Walk, two, three, four days ago, I do not remember exactly. All my
days are alike. She only passed swiftly by and for a second filled
up the yellow, empty world. With her, arm in arm, reaching not
higher than her shoulder, were the double-curved S- and the thin
papery doctor, and a fourth person whose fingers only I remember
well; they streamed out, those fingers, from the sleeve of the
unif like a bundle of rays, uncommonly thin, white, long. I-330
raised her hand and waved to me, then she bent toward the one with
the ray-like fingers, over the head of S-. I overheard the word
_Integral_. All four turned around to look at me,--and then they
disappeared in the bluish-gray sea and my road was once more dry and
yellow.
That same evening she had a pink check on me. I stood before the
switchboard and with hatred and tenderness I implored it to click
and soon to show the number I-330. I would jump out into the hall
at every sound of the elevator. The door of the latter would open
heavily. Pale, tall, blonde and dark they would come out of the
elevator, and here and there curtains were falling.... But she was
not there. She did not come. And it is quite possible that now, at
this minute, as I write these lines, at twenty-two o'clock exactly,
with her eyes closed, she is pressing her shoulder against somebody
else _in the same way_ and _in the same way_ she may be asking
someone: "Do you love me?" Whom? Who is he? That one with ray-like
fingers or that thick-lipped, sprinkling R-? Or S-? S-! Why is it
that I have heard his steps splashing behind me as though in a
ditch all these days? Why has he been following me all these days
like a shadow? Ahead of me, to my side, behind me, a grayish-blue,
two-dimensional shadow; people cross it, people step on it but it
remains nearby, attached to me by unseen ties. Perhaps that tie is
I-330. I do not know. Or perhaps they, the Guardians I mean, already
know that I ...
If some one should tell you your shadow sees you, sees you all the
time, would you understand? All at once peculiar sensations arise
in you; your arms seem to belong to someone else, they are in the
way. That is how I feel; very frequently now I notice how absurdly
I wave my hands without any rhythm. I have an irresistible desire to
glance behind me but I am unable to do so, my neck might as well be
forged of iron. I flee, I run faster and faster, and even with my
back I feel that shadow following me as fast as I can run, and there
is no place to hide myself, no place!
At length I reach my room. Alone at last! But here I find another
thing, the telephone. I pick up the receiver. "Yes, I-330 please."
And again I hear a light noise through the receiver; some one's step
in the hall there, passing the door of her room, and--silence.... I
drop the receiver. I cannot, cannot bear it any longer, and I run to
see her!
This happened yesterday. I ran there and for a whole hour from
sixteen to seventeen I wandered near the house in which she lives.
Numbers were passing by in rows. Thousands of feet were beating the
time like a behemoth with a million legs passing by. I was alone,
thrown out by a storm on an uninhabited island, and my eyes were
seeking and seeking among the grayish-blue waves. "There soon," I
thought, "will appear from somewhere the sharp mocking angles of the
brows lifted to the temples, and the dark window-eyes, and there
behind them a flaming fireplace and someone's shadow.... And I will
rush straight in behind those windows and say to her, 'Thou' (yes,
'thou' without fail), 'Thou knowest I cannot live without thee any
longer, then why-- ...?'" But silence reigned.
Suddenly I heard the silence; suddenly I heard the Musical Tower
silenced, and I understood! It was after seventeen already; every
one had already left. I was alone. It was too late to return home.
Around me,--a desert made of glass and bathed with yellow sunshine.
I saw, as if in water, the reflection of the walls in the glass
smoothness of the street, sparkling walls, hanging upside down.
Myself also upside down, hanging absurdly in the glass.
"I must go at once, this very second, to the Medical Bureau or else
... or perhaps _this_ would be best: to remain here, to wait quietly
until they see me and come and take me into the Operation Department
and put an end to everything at once, redeem everything...." A
slight rustle! and the double-curved S- was before me. Without
looking I felt his two gray steel-drill eyes bore quickly into me. I
plucked up all my strength to show a smile and to say (I had to say
something), "I, I must go to the Medical Bureau."
"Who is detaining you? What are you standing here for?"