Flowers
The Dissolution of a Crystal
If only (?)
They say there are flowers that bloom only once in a hundred years.
Why not suppose the existence of flowers that bloom only once a
thousand years? We may have known nothing about them until now only
because today is the "once in a thousand years"?
Happy and dizzy I walked downstairs to the controller on duty
and quickly under my gaze all around me and silently the
thousand-year-old buds burst, and everything was blooming:
armchairs, shoes, golden badges, electric bulbs, someone's dark
heavy eyes, the polished columns of the banisters, the handkerchief
which someone lost on the stairs, the small, ink-blotted desk of the
controller and the tender brown, somewhat freckled cheeks of U-.
Everything seemed not ordinary, new, tender, rosy, moist. U- took
the pink stub from me while the blue, aromatic moon, hanging from an
unseen branch, shone through the glass of the wall and over the head
of U-. With a solemn gesture I pointed my finger and said:
"The moon. You see?"
U- glanced at me, then at the number of the stub and again made that
familiar, charmingly innocent movement with which she fixes the fold
of the unif between her knees.
"You look abnormal and ill, dear. Abnormality and illness are the
same thing. You are killing yourself. And no one would tell you
that, no one!"
That "No one" was certainly equivalent to the number on the
stub,--I-330. This thought was confirmed by an ink-blot which
fell close to the figure 330. Dear, wonderful U-! You are right,
of course. I am not reasonable. I am sick. I have a soul. I am a
microbe. But is blooming--not a sickness? Is it not painful when the
buds are bursting? And don't you think that spermatozoa are the most
terrible of all microbes?
Back upstairs to my room. In the widely open cup of the armchair
was I-330. I, on the floor, embracing her limbs, my head on her
lap. We were silent. Everything was silent. Only the pulse was
audible. Like a crystal I was _dissolving_ in her, in I-330. I
felt most distinctly how the polished facets which limited me in
space were slowly thawing, melting away. I was dissolving in her
lap, in her, and I became at once smaller and larger and larger,
unembraceable. For she was not she but the whole universe. For a
second I and that armchair near the bed, transfixed with joy, we
were one. And the wonderfully smiling old woman at the gate of the
Ancient House, and the wild debris beyond the Green Wall, and some
strange silver wreckage on a black background, dozing like the old
woman and the slam of a door in the distance,--all this was within
me, was listening to my pulse and soaring through the happiest of
seconds.
In absurd, confused, overflowing words I attempted to tell her that
I was a crystal and that there was a door in me, and that I felt how
happy the armchair was. But something nonsensical came out of the
attempt and I stopped. I was ashamed. And suddenly:
"Dear I-! Forgive me! I understand nothing. I talk so foolishly!"
"And why should you think that foolishness is not fine? If we had
taken pains to educate human foolishness through centuries, as
we have done with our intelligence, it might perhaps have been
transformed into something very precious."
Yes, I think she is right! How could she be wrong at that moment?
"... And for this foolishness of yours and for what you did
yesterday during the walk, I love you the more, much more."
"Then why did you torture me? Why would you not come? Why did you
send me the pink check and make me--?"
"Perhaps I wanted to test you. Perhaps I must be sure that you will
do anything I wish, that you are completely mine."
"Yes, completely."
She took my face, my whole self, between her palms, lifted my head:
"And how about 'It is the duty of every honest Number'? Eh?"
Sweet, sharp, white teeth,--a smile. In the open cup of the armchair
she was like a bee,--sting and honey combined.
Yes, duty.... I turned over in my mind the pages of my records;
indeed there is not a thought about the fact that strictly speaking
I should....
I was silent. Exaltedly (and probably stupidly) I smiled, looking
into the pupils of her eyes. I followed first one eye and then
the other and in each of them I saw myself, a millimetric self
imprisoned in those tiny rainbow cells. Then again the lips and the
sweet pain of blooming.
In each Number of the United State there is an unseen metronome
which tick-tocks silently; without looking at the clock we know
exactly the time of day within five minutes. But now my metronome
had stopped and I did not know how much time had passed. In fright
I grasped my badge with its clock from under the pillow. Glory be
to the Well-Doer! I had twenty minutes more! But those minutes were
such tiny, short ones! They ran! And I wanted to tell her so many
things. I wanted to tell her all about myself; about the letter from
O- and about that terrible evening when I gave her a child; and for
some reason also about my childhood, about our mathematician Plappa
and about the square-root of minus one; and how, when I attended
the glorification on the Day of Unanimity for the first time in my
life, I wept bitterly because there was an ink-stain on my unif--on
such a holy day!
I-330 lifted her head. She leaned on her elbow. In the corners
of her lips two long, sharp lines and the dark angle of lifted
eyebrows--a cross.
"Perhaps on that day ..." her brow grew darker; she took my hand and
pressed it hard. "Tell me, will you ever forget me? Will you always
remember me?"
"But why such talk? What is it, I-, dear?"
She was silent. And her eyes were already sliding past me, through
me, away into the distance. I suddenly heard the wind beating the
glass with its enormous wings. Of course it had been blowing all the
while but I had not noticed it until then. And for some reason those
cawing birds over the Green Wall came to my mind.
I-330 shook her head with a gesture of throwing something off. Once
more she touched me for a second with her whole body, as an aero
before landing touches the ground for a second with all the tension
of a recoiling spring.
"Well, give me my stockings, quick!"
The stockings were on the desk, on the open manuscript, on page 124.
Being in haste I caught some of the pages and they were scattered
over the floor so that it was hard to put them back in the proper
order. Moreover, even if I put them in that order there will be no
real order; there are obstacles to that anyway, some undiscoverable
unknowns.
"I can't bear it," I said, "You are here, near me, yet you seem to
be behind an opaque ancient wall; through that wall I hear a rustle
and voices; I cannot make out the words, I don't know what is there.
I cannot bear it. You seem always to withhold something from me; you
have never told me what kind of a place it was where I found myself
that day beneath the Ancient House. Where did those corridors lead?
Why was the doctor there,--or perhaps all that never happened?"
I-330 put her hands on my shoulders and slowly entered deeply into
my eyes.
"You want to know all?"
"Yes, I do."
"And you would not be afraid to follow me anywhere? Wherever I
should lead you?"
"Anywhere!"
"All right then. I promise you, after the holiday, if only.... Oh
yes, there is your _Integral_. I always forget to ask; will it soon
be completed?"
"No. 'If only' what? Again! 'If only' what?"