Threads on the Face
Sprouts
An Unnatural Compression
It is strange: the barometer continues to fall yet there is no
wind. There is quiet. Above, the storm which we do not yet hear has
begun. The clouds are rushing with a terrific speed. There are few
of them as yet; separate fragments; it is as if there above us an
unknown city were being destroyed and pieces of walls and towers
were rushing down, coming nearer and nearer with terrific speed,
but it will take some days of rushing through the blue infinite
before they reach the bottom, that is us, below. And below there is
silence.
There are thin, incomprehensible, almost invisible threads in the
air; every autumn they are brought here from beyond the Wall. They
float slowly, and suddenly you feel something foreign and invisible
on your face; you want to brush it off, but no, you cannot rid
yourself of it. You feel it especially near the Green Wall, where I
was this morning. I-330 made an appointment with me to meet her in
the Ancient House in that "Apartment" of ours.
I was not far from the rust-red, opaque mass of the Ancient House,
when I heard behind me short hasty steps and rapid breathing. I
turned around and saw O-90 trying to catch up to me. She seemed
strangely and perfectly rounded. Her arms and breast, her whole
body, so familiar to me, was rounded out, stretching her unif. It
seemed as though it would soon tear the thin cloth and come out into
the sun, into the light. I think that there in the green debris, in
springtime, the unseen sprouts try thus to tear their way through
the ground in order to emit their branches and leaves and to bloom.
For a few seconds she shone into my face with her blue eyes in
silence.
"I saw you on the Day of Unanimity."
"I saw you, too." I at once remembered; below, in a narrow passage
she had stood, pressing herself to the wall, protecting her abdomen
with her arms, and automatically I glanced now at her abdomen which
rounded the unif. She must have noticed, for she became pink, and
with a rosy smile:
"I am so happy ... so happy! I am so full of ... you understand, I
am ... I walk and I hear nothing around me.... And all the while I
listen within, within me...."
I was silent. Something foreign was shadowing my face and I was
unable to rid myself of it. Suddenly, all shining, light blue, she
caught my hand; I felt her lips upon it.... It was for the first
time in my life.... It was some ancient caress as yet unknown to
me.... And I was so ashamed and it pained me so much that I swiftly,
I think even roughly, pulled my hand away.
"Listen, you are crazy, it seems.... And anyway you ... what are you
happy about? Is it possible that you forget what is ahead of you? If
not now, then within a month or two...."
Her light went out, her roundness sagged and shrank. And in my
heart an unpleasant, even a painful compression, mixed with pity.
Our heart is nothing else than an ideal pump: a compression, i.e.,
a shrinking at the moment of pumping, is a technical absurdity.
Hence it is clear how essentially absurd, unnatural and pathological
are all these "loves" and "pities," etc., etc., which create that
compression....
Silence. To the left the cloudy green glass of the Wall. And just
ahead the dark red mass. Those two colors combined, gave me as a
resultant what I thought was a splendid idea.
"Wait! I know how to save you! I shall save you from.... To see
one's own child for a few moments only and then be sent to death!
No! You shall be able to bring it up! You shall watch it and see it
grow in your arms, and ripen like a fruit...."
Her body quivered and she seemed to have chained herself to me.
"Do you remember that woman, I-330? That ... of ... of long ago?...
Who during that walk?... Well, she is now right here, in the
Ancient House. Let us go to her and I assure you that I shall
arrange matters at once."
I already pictured us, I-330 and I, leading O-90 through the
corridors ... then how she would be brought amidst flowers, grass,
and leaves.... But O-90 stepped back, the little horns of her rosy
crescent trembling and bending downward.
"Is she _that same one_?" she asked.
"That is...." I was confused for some reason. "Yes, of course ...
that very same...."
"And you want me to go to _her_, to ask her ... to.... Don't you
ever dare to say another word about it!"
Leaning over, she walked away.... Then as if she remembered
something, she turned around and cried:
"I shall die; be it so! And it is none of your business ... what do
you care?"
Silence. From above pieces of blue towers and walls were falling
downward with terrific speed ... they will have perhaps hours or
days to fly through the infinite.... Unseen threads were slowly
floating through the air, planting themselves upon my face, and it
was impossible to brush them off, impossible to rid myself of them.
I walked slowly toward the Ancient House and in my heart I felt that
absurd, tormenting compression....