The Duty of an Author
The Ice-swells
The Most Difficult Love
Yesterday was her day and again she did not come. Again there
came her incoherent note, explaining nothing. But I am tranquil,
perfectly tranquil. If I do act as I am told to in the note, if I
do go to the controller on duty, produce the pink check and then,
having lowered the curtains if I do sit alone in my room, I do all
this of course not because I have no power to act contrary to her
desire. It seems funny? Decidedly not! It is quite simple: separated
from all curative, plaster-like smiles I am enabled quietly to
write these very lines. This first. And second: I am afraid to lose
in her, in I-330, perhaps the only clue I shall ever have to the
understanding of all the unknowns, like the story of the cupboard,
or my temporary death, for instance. To understand, to discover
these unknowns as the author of these records, I feel it simply my
duty. Moreover, the unknown is naturally the enemy of man. And _Homo
Sapiens_ only then becomes Man in the complete sense of the word,
when his punctuation includes no question marks, only exclamation
points, commas and periods.
Thus, guided by what seems to me simply my duty as an author, I
took an aero today at sixteen o'clock and went to the Ancient
House. A strong wind was blowing against me. The aero advanced with
difficulty through the thicket of air, its transparent branches
whistling and whipping. The city below seemed a heap of blue blocks
of ice. Suddenly--a cloud, a swift, oblique shadow. The ice became
leaden; it swelled. As in springtime when you happen to stand at the
shore and wait; in one more minute everything will move and pull
and crack! But the minute passes and the ice remains motionless;
you feel as though you yourself are swelling, your heart beats
more restlessly, more frequently.... But why do I write about all
this? And whence all these strange sensations? For is there such an
iceberg as could ever break the most lucid, solid crystal of our
life?
At the entrance of the Ancient House I found no one. I went around
it and found the old janitress near the Green Wall. She held her
hand above her eyes, looking upward. Beyond the Wall, sharp black
triangles of some birds; they would rush, cawing, in onslaught
on the invisible fence of electric waves, and as they felt the
electricity against their breasts, they would recoil and soar once
more beyond the Wall.
I noticed oblique, swift shadows on the dark, wrinkled face, a quick
glance at me.
"Nobody here, nobody, nobody! No! And no use coming here...."
In what respect is it "no use" and what a strange idea, to consider
me somebody's shadow. Perhaps all of you are only my shadows. Did I
not populate these pages which only recently were white quadrangular
deserts, with you? Without me would they whom I shall guide over the
narrow paths of my lines, could they ever see you?
Of course I did not say all this to the old woman. From experience
I know that the most torturing thing is to inoculate someone with a
doubt as to the fact that he or she is a three-dimensional reality
and not some other reality. I remarked only, quite drily, that her
business was to open the gate, and she let me into the courtyard.
It was empty. Quiet. The wind remained beyond the walls, distant
as on that day, when shoulder to shoulder, two like one, we came
out from beneath, from the corridors,--if it ever really happened.
I walked under stone arches, my steps resounded against the
damp vaults and fell behind me, sounding as though someone were
continually following me. The yellow walls with patches of red brick
were watching me through their square spectacles, windows,--watching
me open the squeaky doors of a barn, look into corners, nooks
and hidden places.... A gate in the fence and a lonely spot. The
monument of the Two Hundred Years' War. From the ground naked, stone
ribs were sticking out. The yellow jaws of the wall. An ancient oven
with a chimney like a ship petrified forever among red-brick waves.
It seemed to me that I had seen those yellow teeth once before.
I saw them still dimly in my mind, as at the bottom of a
barrel, through water. And I began to search. I fell into caves
occasionally; I stumbled over stones; rusty jaws caught my unif a
few times; salt drops of sweat ran from my forehead into my eyes.
Nowhere! I could find that exit from below, from the corridors,
nowhere! There was none. Well, perhaps it was better that it
happened so. Probably that _all_ was only one of my absurd "dreams."
Tired out, covered with cobweb and dust, I opened the gate to return
to the main yard, when suddenly ... a rustle behind me, splashing
steps, and there before me were the pink wing-like ears and the
double-curved smile of S-. Half closing his eyes, he bored his
little drills into me and asked:
"Taking a walk?"