Through Glass
I Died
The Corridor
I am puzzled. Yesterday, at the very moment when I thought
everything was untangled, and that all the X's were at last found,
new unknowns appeared in my equation. The origin of the coordinates
of the whole story is of course the Ancient Home. From this centre
the axes of all the X's, Y's, and Z's radiate, and recently they
have entered into the formation of my whole life.
I walked along the X-axis (Avenue 59) towards the centre. The
whirlwind of yesterday still raged within me; houses and people
upside down; my own hands torturingly foreign to me; glimmering
scissors; the sharp sound of drops dripping from the faucet;--all
this existed, all this _existed_ once! All these things were
revolving wildly, tearing my flesh, rotating wildly beneath the
molten surface, there where the "soul" is located.
In order to follow the instructions of the doctor I chose the road
which followed not the hypotenuse but the two legs of a triangle.
Soon I reached the road running along the Green Wall. From beyond
the Wall, from the infinite ocean of green there rose toward me an
immense wave of roots, branches, flowers, leaves. It rose higher
and higher; it seemed as though it would splash over me and that
from a man, from the finest and most precise mechanism which I am,
I would be transformed into.... But fortunately there was the Green
Wall between me and that wild green sea. Oh, how great and divinely
limiting is the wisdom of walls and bars! This Green Wall is I think
the greatest invention ever conceived. Man ceased to be a wild
animal the day he built the first wall; man ceased to be a wild man
only on the day when the Green Wall was completed, when by this wall
we isolated our machine-like, perfect world from the irrational,
ugly world of trees, birds and beasts....
The blunt snout of some unknown beast was to be seen dimly through
the glass of the Wall; its yellow eyes kept repeating the same
thought which remained incomprehensible to me. We looked into each
other's eyes for a long while. Eyes are shafts which lead from the
superficial world into a world which is beneath the surface. A
thought awoke in me: "what if that yellow-eyed one, sitting there
on that absurd dirty heap of leaves, is happier than I, in his life
which cannot be calculated in figures!" I waved my hand. The yellow
eyes twinkled, moved back and disappeared in the foliage. What a
pitiful being! How absurd the idea that he might be happier! Happier
than _I_ he may be, but I am an exception, am I not? I am sick.
I noticed that I was approaching the dark red walls of the Ancient
House and I saw the grown-together lips of the old woman. I ran to
her with all speed.
"Is she here?"
The grown-together lips opened slowly:
"Who is 'she'?"
"Who? I-330, of course. You remember we came together, she and I, in
an aero the other day."
"Oh, yes, yes, yes,--yes."
Ray-wrinkles around the lips, artful rays radiating from the eyes.
They were making their way deeper and deeper into me.
"Well, she is here, all right. Came in a while ago."
"Here!" I noticed at the feet of the old woman a bush of
silver,--bitter wormwood. (The court of the Ancient House, being a
part of the museum is carefully kept in its prehistoric state.) A
branch of the bush touched the old woman, she caressed that branch;
upon her knees lay stripes of sunshine. For a second I myself, the
sun, the old woman, the wormwood, those yellow eyes, all seemed to
be one; we were firmly united by common veins and one common blood,
boisterous, magnificent blood, was running through those veins.
I am ashamed now to write down all this, but I promised to be frank
to the end of these records: yes, I bent over and kissed that soft,
grown-together mouth of the old woman. She wiped it with her hand
and laughed.
Running, I passed through familiar, half-dark, echoing rooms, and
for some reason I ran straight to the bedroom. When I had reached
the door, a thought flashed: "And if she is there ... not alone?" I
stopped and listened. But all I heard was the tick-tock of my heart,
not within me, but somewhere near, outside me.
I entered. The large bed,--untouched. A mirror ... another mirror
in the door of the cupboard, and in the keyhole an ancient key upon
an ancient ring. No one was there. I called softly: "I-330, are you
here?"--and then in a still lower voice with closed eyes, holding
my breath,--in a voice as though I were kneeling before her, "I-,
dear." Silence. Only the water was dripping fast into the white
basin of the washstand. I cannot now explain why, but I disliked
that sound. I turned the faucet hard and went out. She was not
there, so much was clear. She must be in another "apartment."
I ran down a wide, sombre stairway, pulled one door, another, a
third,--locked. Every room was locked save that of "our" apartment.
And she was not there. I went back again to the same apartment
without knowing why. I walked slowly, with difficulty; my shoe-soles
suddenly became as heavy as cast-iron. I remember distinctly my
thought, "It is a mistake that the force of gravity is a constant;
consequently all my formulae...."
Suddenly--an explosion! A door slammed down below; some one stamped
quickly over the flagstones. I again became lightfooted, extremely
light! I dashed to the railing to bend over, and in one word, one
exclamation, expressed everything: "You!"
I became cold. Below in the square shadow of the window-frame,
flapping its pink wing-ears, the head of S- passed by!
Like lightning I saw only the naked conclusion. Without any premises
(I don't recall any premises even now) the conclusion: he must not
see me here! And on the tips of my toes, pressing myself against the
wall, I sneaked upstairs into the unlocked apartment.
I stopped for a second at the door. He was stamping upward, here. If
only the door.... I prayed to the door but it was a wooden one,--It
squeaked, it squealed. Like a wind something red passed my eyes,
something green, and the yellow Buddha. In front of the mirror-door
of the cupboard, my pale face; my ears still following those steps,
my lips.... Now _he_ was already passing the green and yellow, now
he was passing Buddha, now at the doorsill of the bedroom....
I grasped the key of the cupboard; the ring oscillated. This
oscillation reminded me of something. Again a conclusion, a naked
conclusion without premises; a conclusion, or to be more exact, a
fragment of one: "Now I-330 is...." I brusquely opened the cupboard
and when inside in the darkness shut the door firmly. One step! The
floor shook under my feet. Slowly and softly I floated somewhere
downward; my eyes were dimmed,--I died!
Later when I sat down to describe all these adventures, I sought in
my memory and consulted some books; and now I understand, of course!
I was in a state of temporary death. This state was known to the
ancients, but as far as I am informed it is unknown to us. I have
no conception of how long I was dead, probably not longer than five
or ten seconds, but after awhile I arose from the dead and opened
my eyes. It was dark. But I felt I was falling down--down--down. I
stretched out my hand to attach myself to something but the rough
wall scratched my fingers; it was running away from me, upward. I
felt blood on my fingers. It was clear that all this was not merely
a play of my sick imagination. But what was it? What?
I heard my own frequent, trembling breaths. (I am not ashamed to
confess this, it was all unexpected and incomprehensible.) A minute,
two, three passed; I was still going down. Then a soft bump. The
thing that had been falling away from under my feet was motionless.
I found in the darkness a knob, and turned it; a door opened;
there was a dim light. I now noticed behind me a square platform,
travelling upward. I tried to run back to it but it was too late. "I
am cut off here," I thought. Where "here" might be, I did not know.
A corridor. A heavy silence. The small lamps on the vaulted ceiling
resembled an endless, twinkling, dotted line. The corridor was
similar to the "tube" of our underground railways but it was much
narrower, and made not of our glass but of some other, very ancient
material. For a moment I thought of the underground caves where they
say many tried to save themselves during the Two Hundred Years' War.
There was nothing to do but to walk ahead.
I walked, I think, for about twenty minutes. A turn to the right,
the corridor became wider, the small lamps brighter. There was a
dim droning somewhere.... Was it a machine or voices? I did not
know. I stood before a heavy, opaque door, from behind which came
the noise. I knocked. Then I knocked again, louder. Now there was
silence behind the door. Something clanked; the door opened slowly
and heavily.
I don't know which of us was the more dumbfounded; the thin
blade-like doctor stood before me!
"You here!" his scissors opened and remained open.
And I, as if I did not know a human word, stood silent, merely
stared, without comprehending that he was talking to me. He must
have told me to leave, for with his thin paper stomach he slowly
pressed me to the side, to the more brightly lighted end of the
corridor and poked me in the back.
"Beg your pardon ... I wanted ... I thought that she, I-330 ... but
behind me...."
"Stay where you are," said the doctor brusquely, and he disappeared.
At last! At last she was nearby, here, and what did it matter where
"here" was? I saw the familiar saffron-yellow silk, the smile-bite,
the eyes with their curtains drawn.... My lips quivered, so did my
hands and knees, and I had a most stupid thought: "Vibrations make
sounds. Shivering must make a sound. Why then don't I hear it?"
Her eyes opened for me widely. I entered into them.
"I could not ... any longer!... Where have you been?... Why?..."
I was unable to tear my eyes away from her for a second, and I
talked as if in a delirium, fast and incoherently, or perhaps I
only thought without speaking out: "A shadow ... behind me. I died.
And from the cupboard.... Because that doctor of yours ... speaks
with his scissors.... I have a soul ... incurable ... and I must
walk...."
"An incurable soul? My poor boy!" I-330 laughed. She covered me
with the sparkles of her laughter; my delirium left me. Everywhere
around her little laughs were sparkling! How good it was!
The doctor reappeared from around the turn, the wonderful,
magnificent, thinnest doctor.
"Well?" He was already beside her.
"Oh, nothing, nothing. I shall tell you later. He got here by
accident. Tell them that I shall be back in about a quarter of an
hour."
The doctor slid around the corner. She lingered. The door closed
with a heavy thud. Then slowly, very slowly, piercing my heart with
a sharp sweet needle, I-330 pressed against me with her shoulder and
then with her arm, with her whole body, and we walked away as if
fused into one.
I do not remember now where we turned into darkness; in the darkness
we walked up some endless stairway in silence. I did not see but I
knew, I knew that she walked as I did, with closed eyes, blind, her
head thrown a little backward, biting her lips and listening to the
music, that is to say, to my almost audible tremor.
I returned to consciousness in one of the innumerable nooks in the
courtyard of the Ancient House. There was a fence of earth with
naked stone ribs and yellow teeth of walls half fallen to pieces.
She opened her eyes and said, "Day-after-tomorrow at sixteen." She
was gone.
Did all this really happen? I do not know. I shall learn
day-after-tomorrow. One real sign remains: on my right hand the
skin has been rubbed from the tips of three fingers. But today, on
the _Integral_ the Second Builder assured me that he saw me touch
the polishing wheel with those very same fingers. Perhaps I did. It
is quite probable. I don't know. I don't know anything.