Infusorian
Doomsday
Her Room
This morning while we were in the refectory, my neighbor to my left
whispered to me in a frightened tone:
"But why don't you eat? Don't you see, they are looking at you!"
I had to pluck up all my strength to show a smile. I felt it--like a
crack in my face; I smiled and the borders of the crack drew apart
wider and wider; it was quite painful.
What followed was this: no sooner had I lifted the small cube of
paste upon my fork, than my fork jerked from my hand and tinkled
against the plate, and at once the tables, the walls, the plates,
the air even, trembled and rang; and outside too, an enormous, iron,
round roar reaching the sky--floating over heads and houses it died
away in the distance in small, hardly perceptible circles like those
upon water.
I saw faces instantaneously grow faded and bleached; I saw mouths
filled with food suddenly motionless and forks hanging in air. Then
everything became confused, jumped off the centuries-old tracks,
everybody jumped up from his place (without singing the Hymn!)
and confusedly, in disorder, hastily finishing chewing, choking,
grasping one another.... They were asking: "What? What happened?
What?..." And the disorderly fragments of the Machine which was once
perfect and great, fell down in all directions,--down the elevators,
down the stairs.... Stamping of feet.... Pieces of words like pieces
of torn letters carried by the wind....
The same outpour from the neighboring houses. A minute later the
avenue seemed like a drop of water under a microscope: the infusoria
locked up in the transparent, glass-like drop of water were tossing
around, to the sides, up and down.
"Ah!" Some one's triumphant voice. I saw the back of a neck
and a finger pointing to the sky. I remember very distinctly a
yellow-pinkish nail and under the nail a crescent crawling out as if
from under the horizon. The finger was like a compass; all eyes were
raised to the sky.
There, running away from an invisible pursuit, masses of cloud
were rushing upon each other; and colored by the clouds the aeros
of the Guardians, with their tubes like antennae, were floating.
And farther to the west--something like.... At first nobody could
understand what it was, even I, who knew (unfortunately) more
than the others. It was like a great hive of black aeros swarming
somewhere at an extraordinary height--they looked like hardly
noticeable, swiftly moving points.... Nearer and nearer.... Hoarse,
guttural sounds began to reach the earth and finally we saw _birds_
just over our heads! They filled the sky with their sharp, black,
descending triangles. The stormy wind drove them down and they began
to land on the cupolas, on the roofs, poles and balconies.
"Ah--ah!" and the triumphant back of the neck turned, and I saw that
man with the protruding forehead but it seemed that the title, so
to speak, was all that was left of him: he seemed to have crawled
out from under his forehead and on his face, around the eyes and
lips, bunches of rays were growing. Through the noise of the wind
and wings and cawing, he cried to me:
"Do you realize? Do you realize! They have blown up the Wall! The
Wall has been blown up! Do you _understand_?"
Somewhere in the background, figures with their heads drawn in
were hastily rushing by, and into the houses. In the middle of the
pavement a mass of those who had been already operated upon; they
moved towards the west....
... Hairy bunches of rays around the lips and eyes.... I grasped his
hands:
"Tell me. Where is she? Where is I-330? There? Beyond the Wall
or...? I must.... Do you hear me? At once.... I cannot...."
"Here!" he shouted in a happy, drunken voice, showing strong yellow
teeth, "here in town, and she is acting! Oh, we are doing great
work!"
Who are those "we"? Who am I?
There were about fifty around him. Like him, they seemed to have
crawled out from under their foreheads. They were loud, cheerful,
strong-toothed, swallowing the stormy wind. With their simple, not
at all terrible-looking electrocutors (where did they get them?)
they started to the west, towards the operated ones, encircling
them, keeping parallel to forty-eighth avenue....
Stumbling against the tightly-drawn ropes woven by the wind, I
was running to her. What for? I did not know. I was stumbling....
Empty streets.... The city seemed foreign, wild, filled with the
ceaseless, triumphant, hubbub of birds. It seemed like the end of
the world, _Doomsday_.
Through the glass of the walls in quite a few houses (this
cut into my mind) I saw male and female Numbers in shameless
embraces--without curtains lowered, without pink checks, in the
middle of the day!...
The house--her house; the door ajar. The lobby, the control desk,
all was empty. The elevator had stopped in the middle of its shaft.
I ran panting up the endless stairs. The corridor. Like the spokes
of a wheel figures on the doors dashed past my eyes; 320, 326,
330,--I-330! Through the glass wall everything in her room was seen
to be upside down, confused, creased. The table overturned, its legs
in the air like a beast. The bed was absurdly placed away from the
wall, obliquely. Strewn over the floor--fallen, trodden petals of
the pink checks.
I bent over and picked up one, two, three of them; all bore the
name D-503. I was on all of them, drops of myself, of my molten,
poured-out self. And that was all--that was left....
Somehow I felt they should not lie there on the floor and be trodden
upon. I gathered a handful of them, put them on the table and
carefully smoothed them out, glanced at them and ... laughed aloud!
I never knew it before but now I know, and you too, know, that
laughter may be of different colors. It is but a distant echo of an
explosion within us; it may be the echo of a holiday, red, blue and
golden fireworks, or at times it may represent pieces of human flesh
exploded into the air....
I noticed an unfamiliar name on some of the pink checks. I do not
remember the figures but I do remember the letter--F. I brushed
the stubs from the table to the floor, stepped on them, on myself,
stamped on them with my heels,--and went out....
I sat in the corridor on the window-sill in front of her door and
waited long and stupidly. An old man appeared. His face was like
a pierced, empty bladder with folds; from beneath the puncture
something transparent was still slowly dripping. Slowly, vaguely I
realized--tears. And only when the old man was quite far off I came
to and exclaimed:
"Please ... listen.... Do you know ... Number I-330?"
The old man turned around, waved his hand in despair and stumbled
farther away....
I returned home at dusk. On the west side the sky was twitching
every second in a pale blue electric convulsion:--a subdued, heavy
roar was proceeding from that direction. The roofs were covered with
black charred sticks,--birds.
I lay down; and instantly like a heavy beast sleep came and stifled
me....