In a Ring
A Carrot
A Murder
I did not sleep all night. The whole night but one thought.... As
a result of yesterday's mishap my head is tightly bandaged,--it
seems to me not a bandage but a ring, a pitiless ring of glass-iron,
riveted about my head. And I am busy with the same thought, always
the same thought in my riveted circle: to kill U-. To kill U-
and then go to her and say: "Now do you believe?" What is most
disquieting is that to kill is dirty, primitive. To break her head
with something--the thought of it gives me a peculiar sensation of
something disgustingly sweet in my mouth, and I am unable to swallow
my saliva; I am always spitting into my handkerchief, yet my mouth
feels dry.
I had in my closet a heavy piston-rod which cracked during the
casting and which I brought home in order to find out the cause of
the cracking with a microscope. I made my manuscript into a tube
(let her read me to the last letter!), pushed the broken piston into
that tube and went downstairs. The stairway seemed endless, the
steps disgustingly slippery, liquid. I had to wipe off moisture
from my mouth very frequently. Downstairs ... my heart dropped. I
took out the piston and went to the controller's table, but she was
not there; instead an empty, icy desk with ink-blots. I remembered
that today all work was stopped; everybody was to go to be operated
upon. Hence there was no need for her to stay here. There was nobody
to be registered....
The street. It was windy. The sky seemed to be composed of soaring
panels of cast-iron. And exactly as it seemed for one moment
yesterday, the whole world was broken up into separate, sharp,
independent fragments, and each of these fragments was falling at
full speed; each would stop for a second, hang before me in the
air and disappear without trace. It was as if the black, precise
letters on this page should suddenly move apart and begin to jump
hither and thither in fright, so that there was not a word on the
page, only nonsensical "ap," "jum," "wor." The crowd seemed just
as nonsensical, dispersed (not in rows), going forward, backward,
diagonally, transversely....
Then nobody. For a second while I was dashing at full speed,
suddenly stopping, I saw on the second floor in the glass cage
hanging in the air,--a man and a woman--a kiss; she standing with
her whole body bent backward brokenly: "This is for the last time,
forever...."
At a corner a thorny, moving bush of heads. Above the heads,
separate, floating in the air, a banner: "Down with the machines!
Down with the Operation!" And (distinct from my own self) I thought:
"Is it possible that each one of us bears such a pain, that it can
be removed only with his heart.... That something must be done to
each one, before he...." For a second everything disappeared for me
from the world, except my beast-like hand with the heavy cast-iron
package it held....
A boy appeared. He was running, a shadow under his lower lip. The
lower lip turned out like the cuff of a rolled-up sleeve. His face
was distorted; he wept loudly; he was running away from somebody.
Stamping of feet was heard behind him....
The boy reminded me: "U- must be in school. I must hurry!" I ran
to the nearest opening of the Underground Railway. At the entrance
someone passed me and said, "Not running. No trains today ...
there!" I descended. A sort of general delirium was reigning. The
glitter of cut-crystal suns; the platform packed closely with heads.
An empty, torpid train.
In the silence--a voice. I could not see her but I knew, I knew that
intense, living, flexible, whip-like, flogging voice! I felt there
that sharp triangle of brows drawn to the temples....
"Let me! Let me reach her! I must!..."
Someone's tentacles caught my arm, my shoulders. I was nailed. In
the silence I heard:
"No. Go up to them. There they will cure you; there they will
overfeed you with that leavened happiness. Satiated, you will
slumber peacefully, organized, keeping time and snoring sweetly. Is
it possible that you do not yet hear that great symphony of snoring?
Foolish people! Don't you realize that they want to liberate you
from these gnawing, worm-like, torturing question marks? And you
remain standing here and listening to me? Quick! Up! To the Great
Operation! What is your concern, if I remain here alone? What does
it matter to you if I want to struggle, hopelessly struggle? So much
the better! What does it matter to you that I do not want others
to desire for me? I want to desire for myself. If I desire the
impossible...."
Another voice, slow, heavy:
"Ah, the impossible! Which means to run after your stupid fancies;
those fancies would whirl from under your very noses like a tail.
No, we shall catch that tail, and then...."
"And then--swallow it and fall snoring; a new tail will become
necessary. They say the ancients had a certain animal which they
called 'Ass.' In order to make it go forward they would attach a
carrot to a bow held in front of its nose, so that it could not
reach it.... If it had caught and swallowed it...."
The tentacles suddenly let me go; I threw myself towards the place
she was speaking from; but at that very moment everything was
brought to confusion. Shouts from behind: "They are coming here!
Coming here!" The lights twinkled and went out,--someone cut the
cable,--and everything was like a lava of cries, groaning, heads,
fingers....
I do not know how long we were rolled about that way in the
underground tube. I only remember that steps were felt, dusk
appeared, becoming brighter and brighter, and again we were in the
street, dispersing fan-wise in different directions.
Again I was alone. Wind. Gray, low twilight crawling over my head.
In the damp glass of the sidewalk, somewhere very deep, there were
light topsy-turvy walls and figures moving along, feet upward. And
that terribly heavy package in my hands pulled me down into that
depth to the bottom.
At the desk again. U- was not yet there; her room was dark and
empty. I went up to my room and turned on the light. My temples
tightly bound by the iron ring were pulsating. I paced and paced,
always in the same circle: my table, the white package on the table,
the bed, my table, the white package on the table.... In the room
to my left the curtains were lowered. To my right: the knotty bald
head over a book, the enormous parabolic forehead. Wrinkles on the
forehead like a series of yellow, illegible lines. At times our eyes
met and then I felt that those lines were about me.
... It happened at twenty-one o'clock exactly. U- came in on her
own initiative. I remember that my breathing was so loud that I
could hear it and that I wanted to breathe less noisily but was
unable to.
She sat down and arranged the fold of her unif on her knees. The
pinkish-brown gills were waving.
"Oh, dear, is it true that you are wounded? I just learned about it,
and at once I ran...."
The piston was before me on the table. I jumped up, breathing even
louder. She heard, and stopped half-way through a word and rose.
Already I had located the place on her head; something disgustingly
sweet was in my mouth.... My handkerchief! I could not find it. I
spat on the floor.
The fellow with the yellow fixed wrinkles which think of me! It was
necessary that he should not see. It would be even more disgusting
if he could.... I pressed the button. (I had no right to do that,
but who cared about rights then?) The curtains fell.
Evidently she felt and understood what was coming for she rushed to
the door. But I was quicker than she and I locked the door with the
key, breathing loudly and not taking my eyes for a second away from
that place on her head....
"You ... you are mad! How dare you...." She moved backward towards
the bed, put her trembling hands between her knees.... Like a tense
spring, holding her firmly with my gaze, I slowly stretched out my
arm towards the table (only one arm could move), and I snatched the
piston.
"I implore you! One day--only one day! Tomorrow I shall go and
attend to the formalities...."
What was she talking about? I swung my arm.... And I consider I
killed her. Yes, you my unknown readers, you have the right to call
me murderer. I know that I should have dealt the blow on her head
had she not screamed:
"For ... for the sake ... I agree.... I ... one moment...." With
trembling hands she tore off her unif;--a large, yellow, drooping
body, she fell upon the bed....
Then I understood; she thought that I pulled the curtains ... in
order to ... that I wanted....
This was so unexpected and so stupid that I burst out laughing.
Immediately the tense spring within me broke and my hand weakened
and the piston fell to the floor.
Here I learned from personal experience that laughter is the most
terrible of weapons; you can kill anything with laughter, even
murder. I sat at my table and laughed desperately; I saw no way out
of that absurd situation. I don't know what would have been the end
if things had run their natural course, for suddenly a new factor in
the arithmetical chain: the telephone rang.
I hurried, grasped the receiver. Perhaps she ... I heard an
unfamiliar voice:
"Wait a minute."
Annoying, infinite buzzing. Heavy steps from afar, nearer and louder
like cast-iron, and....
"D-503? The Well-Doer speaking. Come at once to me."
Ding! He hung up the receiver. Ding! like a key in a keyhole.
U- was still in bed, eyes closed, gills apart in the form of a
smile. I picked up her clothes, threw them on her and said through
clenched teeth:
"Well. Quick! Quick!"
She raised her body on her elbow, her breasts hanging down to one
side, eyes round. She became a figure of wax.
"What?"
"Get dressed, that is what!"
Face distorted, she firmly snatched her clothes and said in a flat
voice, "Turn away...."
I turned away, pressed my forehead against the glass. Light,
figures, sparks, were trembling in the black, wet mirror.... No,
all this was I, myself,--within me.... What did he call me for?
Is it possible that he knows already about her, about me, about
everything?
U-, already dressed, was at the door. I made a step toward her and
pressed her hand as hard as though I hoped to squeeze out of it drop
by drop what I needed.
"Listen.... Her name, you know whom I am talking of,--did you report
her name? No? Tell the truth, I must.... I care not what happens,
but tell the truth!"
"No."
"No? But why not, since you...."
Her lower lip turned out like the lip of that boy and her face ...
tears were running down her cheeks.
"Because I ... I was afraid that if I did you might ... you would
stop lov-- Oh, I cannot, I could not!"
I understood. It was the truth. Absurd, ridiculous, human truth. I
opened the door.