I Do Not Believe
Tractors
A Little Human Splinter
Do you believe that _you will die_? Oh, yes, "Man is mortal. I am a
man, consequently...." No, not that; I know that; you know it. But I
ask: has it ever happened that you _actually believed_ it? Believed
definitely, believed not with your reason but with your _body_, that
you actually felt that some day those fingers which now hold this
page, will become yellow, icy?...
No, of course you cannot believe this. That is why you have not
jumped from the tenth floor to the pavement before now, that is why
you eat, turn over these pages, shave, smile, write.
This very thing, yes, exactly this is alive in me today. I know that
that small black hand on the clock will slide down here towards
midnight, then again it will start to ascend, and it will cross
some last border and the improbable tomorrow will have arrived. I
_know_ it, but somehow I do not _believe_ it, or perhaps I think
that twenty-four hours are twenty-four years. Therefore I am still
able to act, to hurry, to answer questions, to climb the rope-ladder
to the _Integral_. I am still able to feel how the latter is shaking
the surface of the water, and I still understand that I must grasp
the railing, and I am still able to feel the cold glass in my hand.
I see the transparent, living cranes, bending their long necks,
carefully feeding the _Integral_ with the terrible explosive food
which the motors need. I still see below on the river the blue veins
and knots of water swollen by the wind.... Yet all this seems very
distant from me, foreign, flat,--like a draught on a sheet of paper.
And it seems to me strange, when the flat, draught-like face of the
Second Builder, suddenly asks:
"Well, then. How much fuel for the motors shall we load on? If we
count on three, or say three and a half hours...."
I see before me, over a draught, my hand with the counter and the
logarithmic dial at the figure 15.
"Fifteen tons. But you'd better take ... yes, better take a
thousand."
I said that because I _know_ that tomorrow.... I noticed that my
hands and the dial began to tremble.
"A thousand! What do you need such a lot for? That would last a
week! No, more than a week!"
"Well, nobody knows...."