All ran. Close to the wall there still was an open living gate of
human beings. Everybody dashed through it, heads forward. Their
heads became sharp wedges, so with their ribs, shoulders, hips....
Like a stream of water compressed in a firehose they spurted out
in the form of a fan,--and all around me stamping feet, raised
arms, unifs.... The double-curved S- with his transparent wing-ears
appeared for a moment close before my eyes; he disappeared as
suddenly; I was alone among arms and legs appearing for a second and
disappearing. I was running....
I dashed to the entrance of a house to stop for a breath, my back
close to the door,--and immediately, like a splinter borne by the
wind, a human being was thrown towards me.
"All the while I ... I have been following you. I do not want ... do
you see? I do not want ... I am ready to...."
Small round hands on my sleeves, round dark blue eyes--it was O-90.
She just slipped along my body like a unif which, its hanger broken,
slips along the wall to fall upon the floor. Like a little bundle
she crumpled below me on the cold door-step, and I stood over her,
stroking her head, her face,--my hands were wet. I felt as if I
were very big and she very small, a small part of myself. I felt
something quite different from what I feel towards I-330. I think
that the ancients must have had similar feelings towards their
private children.
Below, passing through her hands with which she was covering her
face, a voice came to me:
"Every night I ... I cannot! If they cure me.... Every night I sit
in the darkness alone and think of _him_, and of what he will look
like when I.... If cured I should have nothing to live with--do you
understand me? You must ... you must...."
An absurd feeling yet it was there; I really must! Absurd, because
this "duty" of mine was nothing but another crime. Absurd, because
white and black cannot be one, duty and crime cannot coincide. Or
perhaps there is no black and white in life, but everything depends
upon the first logical premise? If the premise is that I unlawfully
gave her a child....
"It is all right, but don't, only don't ..." I said. "Of course I
understand.... I must take you to I-330, as I once offered to, so
that she...."
"Yes." (This in a low voice, without uncovering her face.)
I helped her rise. Silently we went along the darkening street, each
busy with his own thoughts, or perhaps with the same thought.... We
walked between silent leaden houses, through the tense, whipping
branches of the wind....
Through the whistling of the wind all at once I heard, as if
splashing through ditches, the familiar footsteps coming from some
unseen point. At the corner I turned around, and among the clouds,
flying upside-down reflected in the dim glass of the pavement I saw
S-. Instantly my arms became foreign, swinging out of time, and
I began to tell O-90 in a low voice that tomorrow, yes tomorrow,
was the day of the first flight of the _Integral_, and that it was
to be something that never happened before in all history, great,
miraculous.
"Think of it! For the first time in life to find myself outside
the limits of our city and see--who knows what is beyond the Green
Wall?"
O-90 looked at me extremely surprised, her blue eyes trying to
penetrate mine; she looked at my senselessly swinging arms. But
I did not let her say a word,--I kept talking, talking.... And
within me, apart from what I was saying and audible only to myself a
thought was feverishly buzzing and knocking. "Impossible! You must
somehow ... you must not lead _him_ to I-330!"
Instead of turning to the right I turned to the left. The bridge
submissively bent its back in a slavish way to all three of us,
to me, to O-, to him behind. Lights were falling from the houses
across the water, falling and breaking into thousands of sparks
which danced feverishly, sprayed with the mad white foam of the
water. The wind was moaning like a tensely stretched string of a
double-basso somewhere not far away. Through this basso, behind, all
the while....
The house where I live. At the entrance O- stopped and began:
"No! You promised, did you not, that...."
I did not let her finish. Hastily I pushed her through the entrance
and we found ourselves in the lobby. At the controller's desk--the
familiar, hanging, excitedly quivering cheeks, a group of Numbers
around. They were quarreling about something, heads bending over the
banisters on the second floor; they were running downstairs one by
one. But about that later. I at once drew O-90 into the opposite,
unoccupied corner and sat down with my back to the wall. I saw a
dark large-headed shadow gliding back and forth over the sidewalk. I
took out my notebook. O-90 in her chair was slowly sinking as if she
were evaporating from under her unif, as if her body were thawing,
as if only her empty unif were left, and empty eyes taking one into
the blue emptiness. In a tired voice:
"Why did you bring me here? You lied to me?"
"No, not so loud! Look here! Do you see? Through the wall?"
"Yes, I see a shadow."
"He is always following me.... I cannot.... Do you understand? I
cannot therefore ... I am going to write a few words to I-330. You
take the note and go alone. I know he will remain here."
Her body began again to take form and to move beneath the unif; on
her face a faint sunrise, dawn. I put the note between her cold
fingers, pressed her hand firmly and for the last time looked into
her blue eyes.
"Good-bye. Perhaps some day...." She freed her hand. Slightly
bending over she slowly moved away, made two steps, turned around
quickly and again we were side by side. Her lips were moving; with
her lips and with her eyes she repeated some inaudible word. What an
unbearable smile! What suffering!
Then the bent-over human splinter went to the door; a bent-over
little shadow beyond the wall; without turning around she went on
faster, still faster....
I went to U-'s desk. With emotion filling up her indignant gills she
said to me:
"They have all gone crazy! He, for instance, is trying to assure me
that he himself saw a naked man covered with hair near the Ancient
House...."
A voice from the group of empty raised heads;
"Yes. I repeat it, yes."
"Well, what do you think of that? Oh, what a delirium!" The
word "delirium" came out of her mouth so full of conviction, so
unbending, that I asked myself: "Perhaps it really was nothing but
delirium, all that has been going on around me of late?" I glanced
at my hairy hand and I remembered: "There are, undoubtedly, some
drops of that blood of the sun and woods in you. That is why perhaps
you...." No, fortunately it was not delirium; or no, _un_fortunately
it was not delirium.