She was sitting where I had brought her on the uppermost glass bench
which was hot from the sun. Her right shoulder and the beginning of
the wonderful and incalculable curve were uncovered,--an exceedingly
thin serpent of blood. She seemed not to be aware of the blood, or
that her breast was uncovered. No, I will say rather: she seemed
to see all that and seemed to feel that it was essential to her,
that if her unif were buttoned she would have torn it, she would
have....
"And tomorrow!" She breathed the words through sparkling white
clenched teeth, "Tomorrow, nobody knows what ... do you understand?
Neither I nor anyone else knows; it is unknown! Do you realize what
a joy it is? Do you realize that all that was certain has come to an
end? Now ... things will be new, improbable, unforeseen!"
Below the human waves were still foaming, tossing, roaring, but they
seemed to be very far away, and to be growing more and more distant.
For she was looking at me. She slowly drew me into herself through
the narrow, golden windows of her pupils. We thus remained silent
for a long while. And for some reason I recalled how once I watched
some queer yellow pupils through the Green Wall, while above the
Wall birds were soaring (or was this another time?).
"Listen, if nothing particular happens tomorrow, I shall take you
there; do you understand?"
No, I did not understand but I nodded in silence. I was dissolved, I
became infinitesimal, a geometrical point....
After all, there is some logic,--a peculiar logic of today, in this
state of being a point. A point has more unknowns than any other
entity. If a point should start to move, it might become thousands
of curves, or hundreds of solids.
I was afraid to budge. What might I have become if I had moved? It
seemed to me that everybody like myself was afraid now of even the
most minute of motions.
At this moment, for instance, as I sit and write, everyone is
sitting hidden in his glass cell, expecting something. I do not hear
the buzzing of the elevators, usual at this hour, or laughter or
steps, from time to time Numbers pass in couples through the hall,
whispering, on tip-toe....
What will happen tomorrow? What will become of me tomorrow?