We, By Eugene Zamatin A Puke (TM) Audiobook

Reformatted for Machine Speech, 2023.

RECORD ONE.
An Announcement.
The Wisest of Lines.
A Poem.
This is merely a copy, word for word, of what was published this morning in the State newspaper:
"In another hundred and twenty days the building of the Integral will be completed. The great historic hour is near, when the first Integral will rise into the limitless space of the universe. One thousand years ago your heroic ancestors subjected the whole earth to the power of the United State. A still more glorious task is before you: the integration of the indefinite equation of the Cosmos by the use of the glass, electric, fire-breathing Integral. Your mission is to subjugate to the grateful yoke of reason the unknown beings who live on other planets, and who are perhaps still in the primitive state of freedom. If they will not understand that we are bringing them a mathematically faultless happiness, our duty will be to force them to be happy. But before we take up arms, we shall try the power of words.
“In the name of the Well-Doer, the following is announced herewith to all Numbers of the United State:
"Whoever feels capable must consider it his duty to write treatises, poems, manifestoes, odes, and other compositions on the greatness and the beauty of the United State.
"This will be the first cargo which the Integral will carry.
"Long live the United State! Long live the Numbers! Long live the Well-Doer!"
I feel my cheeks burn as I write this. To integrate the colossal, universal equation! To unbend the wild curve, to straighten' it out to a tangent-to a straight line! For the United State is a straight line, a great, divine, precise, wise line, the wisest of lines! I, D-503, the builder of the Integral, I am only one of the many mathematicians of the United State. My pen, which is accustomed to figures, is unable to express the march and rhythm of consonance; therefore I shall try to record only the things I see, the things I think, or, to be more exact, the things we think. Yes, "we"; that is exactly what I mean, and We, therefore, shall be the title of my records. But this, will only be a derivative of our life, of our mathematical, perfect life in the United State. If this be so, will not this derivative be a poem in itself, despite my limitations? It will. I believe it, I know it.
"'My cheeks still burn as I write this. I feel something similar to what a woman probably feels when for the first time she senses within herself the pulse of a tiny, blind, human being. It is I, and at the same time it is not I. And for many long months it will be necessary to feed it with my life, with my blood, and then with a pain at my heart, to tear it from myself and lay it at the feet of the. United State.
Yet I am ready, as everyone, or nearly everyone of us, is. I am ready.

RECORD TWO.
Ballet.
Square Harmony.
X.
SPRING.
From behind the Green Wall, from some unknown plains the wind brings to us the yellow honeyed pollen of Rowers. One's lips are dry from this sweet dust. Every moment one passes one's tongue over them. Probably all women whom I meet in the street (and certainly men also) have sweet lips today. This somewhat disturbs my logical thinking. But the sky! The sky is blue.
Its limpidness is not marred by a single cloud. (How primitive was the taste of the ancients, since their poets were always inspired by these senseless, formless, stupidly rushing accumulations of vapor!) I love, I am sure it will not be an error if I say too love, only such a sky-a sterile, faultless sky. On such days the whole universe seems to be moulded of the same eternal glass, like the Green Wall, and like all our buildings. On such days one sees their wonderful equations, hitherto unknown. One sees these equations in everything, even in the most ordinary, everyday things.
Here is an example: this morning I was on the dock where the Integral is being built, and I saw the lathes; blindly, with abandon, the balls of the regulators were rotating; the cranks were swinging from side to side with a glimmer; the working beam proudly swung its shoulder, and the mechanical chisels were dancing to the melody of unheard tarantellas. I suddenly perceived all the music, all the beauty, of this colossal, this mechanical ballet, illumined by light blue rays of sunshine. Then the thought came: why beautiful? Why is the dance beautiful? Answer: because it is an unfree movement. Because the deep meaning of the dance is contained in its absolute, ecstatic submission, in the ideal non-freedom. If it is true that our ancestors would abandon themselves in dancing at the most inspired moments of their lives (religious mysteries, military parades), then it means only one thing: the instinct of non-freedom has been characteristic of human nature from ancient times, and we in our life of today, we are only consciously.
I was interrupted. The switchboard clicked. I raised my eyes-a-go, of course! In half a minute she will be here to take me for the walk.
Dear O! She always seems to me to look like her name, O. She is approximately ten centimeters shorter than the required Maternal Norm. Therefore she appears round all over; the rose-colored O of her lips is open to meet every word of mine. She has a round soft dimple on her wrist. Children have such dimples. As she came in, the logical flywheel was still buzzing in my head, and following its inertia, I began to tell her about my new formula which embraced the machines and the dancers and all of us.
"Wonderful, isn't it?" I asked.
"Yes, wonderful. Spring!" she replied, with a rosy smile.
You see? Spring! She talks about Spring! Females!
I became silent.
We were down in the street. The avenue was crowded.
On days when the weather is so beautiful, the afternoon personal hour is usually the hour of the supplementary walk. As always, the big Musical Tower was playing the March of the United State with all its pipes. The Numbers, hundreds, thousands of Numbers in light blue unifs, probably a derivative of the ancient uniform, with golden badges on the chest-the State number of each one, male or female-the Numbers were walking slowly, four abreast, exaltedly keeping step. I, we four, were but one of the innumerable waves of a powerful torrent: to my left, O-90 (if one of my long-haired ancestors were writing this a thousand years ago he would probably call her by that funny word, mine); to my right, two unknown Numbers, a she-Number and a he-Number.
Blue sky, tiny baby suns in each one of our badges; our faces are unclouded by the insanity of thoughts. Rays.
Do you picture it? Everything seems to be made of a kind of smiling, a ray-like matter. And the brass measures:
Tra-ta-ta-tam, Tra-ta-ta-tafil. Stamping on the brassy steps that sparkle in the sun, with every step you rise higher and higher into the dizzy blue heights. Then, as this morning on the dock, again I saw, as if for the first time in my life, the impeccably straight streets, the glistening glass of the pavement, the divine parallelepipeds of the transparent dwellings, the square harmony of the grayish-blue rows of Numbers. And it seemed to me that not past generations, but I myself, had won a victory over the old god and the old life, that I myself had created all this. I felt like a tower: I was afraid to move my elbow, lest the walls, the cupola, and the machines should fall to pieces.
Then without warning-a jump through centuries: I remembered (apparently through an association by contrast) a picture in the museum, a picture of an avenue of the twentieth century, a thundering, many-colored confusion of men, wheels, animals, billboards, trees, colors, and birds. They say all this once actually existed! It seemed to me so incredible, so absurd, that I lost control of myself and laughed aloud. A laugh, as if an echo of mine, reached my ear from the right. I turned. I saw white, very white, sharp teeth, and an unfamiliar, female face.
"I beg your pardon," she said, "but you looked about you like an inspired mythological god on the seventh day of creation. You look as though you are sure that I, too, was created by you, by no one but you. It is very flattering."
All this without a smile, even with a certain degree of respect (she may know that I am the builder of the Integral).
In her eyes, nevertheless, and on her brows, there was a strange irritating X, and I was unable to grasp it, to find an arithmetical expression for it. Somehow I was confused; with a somewhat hazy mind, I tried logically to explain my laughter.
"It was absolutely clear that this contrast, this impassable abyss, between the things of today and of years ago."
"But why impassable?" (What bright, sharp teeth!)
"One might throw a bridge over that abyss. Please imagine: a drum battalion, rows-all this existed before and consequently."
"Oh, yes, it is clear," I exclaimed.
It was a remarkable intersection of thoughts. She said almost in the same words the things I had written down before the walk! Do you understand? Even the thoughts! It is because nobody is one, but one of. We are all so much alike.
"Are you sure?" I noticed her brows that rose to the temples in an acute angle-like the sharp corners of an X.
Again I was confused, casting a glance to the right, then to the left. To my right-she, slender, abrupt, resistantly flexible like a whip, I-330 (I saw her number now). To my left, 0, totally different, all made of circles with a childlike dimple on her wrist; and at the very end of our rowan unknown he-Number, double-curved like the letter S. We were all so different from one another.
The one to my right, I-330, apparently caught the confusion in my eye, for she said with a sigh, "Yes, alas!"
I don't deny that this exclamation was quite in place, but again there was something in her face or in her voice.
With an abruptness unusual for me, I said, "Why, alas? Science is developing and if not now, then within fifty or one hundred years."
"Even the noses will."
"Yes, noses!" This time I almost shouted, "Since there is still a reason, no matter what, for envy. Since my nose is button-like and someone else's is."
"Well, your nose is rather classic, as they would have said in ancient days, although your hands. No, no, show me your hands!"
I hate to have anyone look at my hands; they are covered with long hair-a stupid atavism. I stretched out my hand and said as indifferently as I could, "Apelike."
She glanced at my hand, then at my face.
"No, a very curious harmony."
She weighed me with her eyes as though with scales.
The little horns again appeared at the corners of her brows.
"He is registered in my name," exclaimed O-90 with a rosy smile.
I made a grimace. Strictly speaking, she was out of order. This dear O, how shall I say it? The speed of her tongue is not correctly calculated; the speed per second of her tongue should be slightly less than the speed per second of her thoughts-at any rate not the reverse.
At the end of the avenue the big bell of the Accumulating Tower resounded seventeen. The personal hour was at an end. I-330 was leaving us with that S-like he-Number.
He has such a respectable, and I noticed then, such a familiar, face. I must have met him somewhere, but where I could not remember. Upon leaving me I-330 said with the same X-like smile:
"Drop in day after tomorrow at auditorium 112.”
I shrugged my shoulders: "If I am assigned to the auditorium you just named."
She, with a peculiar, incomprehensible certainty: “You will be."
The woman had a disagreeable effect upon me, like an irrational component of an equation which you cannot eliminate. I was glad to remain alone with dear O, at least for a short while. Hand in hand with her, I passed four lines of avenues; at the next corner she went to the right, I to the left. O timidly raised her round blue crystalline eyes.
“I would like so much to come to you today and pulldown the curtains, especially today, right now."
How funny she is. But what could I say to her? She was with me only yesterday and she knows as well as I that our next sexual day is day after tomorrow. It is merely another case in which her thoughts are too far ahead. It sometimes happens that the spark comes too early to the motor.
At parting I kissed her twice-no, I shall be exact, three times, on her wonderful blue eyes, such clear, unclouded eyes.

RECORD THREE.
A Coat.
A Wall.
The Tables.
I looked over all that I wrote down yesterday and I find that my descriptions are not sufficiently clear.
That is, everything would undoubtedly be clear to one of us, but who knows to whom my Integral will someday bring these records? Perhaps you, like our ancestors, have read the great book of civilization only up to the page of nine hundred years ago. Perhaps you don't know even such elementary things as the Hour Tables, Personal Hours, Maternal Norm, Green Wall, Well-Doer. It seems droll to me, and at the same time it is very difficult to explain these things. It is as though, let us say, a writer of the twentieth century should start to explain in his novel such words as coat, apartment, wife. Yet if his novel had been translated for primitive races, how could he have avoided explaining what a coat meant? I am sure that the primitive man would look at a coat and think, "What is this for? It is only a burden, an unnecessary burden." I am sure that you will feel the same, if I tell you that not one of us has ever stepped beyond the Green Wall since the Two Hundred Years' War.
But, dear readers, you must think, at least a little. It helps.
It is clear that the history of mankind, as far as our knowledge goes, is a history of the transition from nomadic forms to more sedentary ones. Does it not follow that the most sedentary form of life (ours) is at the same time the most perfect one? There was a time when people rushed from one end of the earth to another, but this was the prehistoric time when such things as nations, wars, commerce, different discoveries of different Americas still existed.
Who has need of these things now? I admit that humanity acquired this habit of a sedentary form of life not without difficulty and not all at once. When the Two Hundred Years' War had destroyed all the roads, which later were overgrown with grass, it was probably very difficult at first. It must have seemed uncomfortable to live in cities which were cut off from each other by green debris. But what of it? Man soon after he lost his tail probably did not learn at once how to chase away flies without its help. I am almost sure that at first he was even lonesome without his tail; but now, can you imagine yourself with a tail? Or can you imagine yourself walking in the street naked, without clothes? (It is possible you go without clothes still.) Here we have the same case. I cannot imagine a city which is not surrounded by a Green Wall. I cannot imagine a life which is not surrounded by the figures of our Tables.
Tables. Now even, purple figures look at me austerely yet kindly from the golden background of the wall. Involuntarily I am reminded of the thing which was called by the ancients "Sainted Image," and I feel a desire to compose verses, or prayers, which are the same. Oh, why am I not a poet, so as to be able to glorify the Tables properly, the heart and pulse of the United State! All of us and perhaps all of you read in childhood, while in school, that greatest of all monuments of ancient literature, the Official Railroad Guide. But if you compare this with the Tables, you will see side by side graphite and diamonds. Both are the same, carbon.

But how eternal, transparent, how shining the diamond! Who does not lose his breath when he runs through the pages of the Guide? The Tables transformed each one of us, actually, into a six-wheeled steel hero of a great poem. Every morning, with six-wheeled precision, at the same hour, at the same minute, we wake up, millions of us at once. At the very same hour, millions like one, we begin our work, and millions like one, we finish it. United into a single body with a million hands, at the very same second, designated by the Tables, we carry the spoons to our mouths; at the same second we all go out to walk, go to the auditorium, to the halls for the Taylor exercises, and then to bed.
I shall be quite frank: even we have not attained the absolute, exact solution of the problem of happiness.
Twice a day, from sixteen to seventeen o'clock and from twenty-one to twenty-two, our powerful united organism dissolves into separate cells; these are the personal hours designated by the Tables. During these hours you would see the curtains discreetly drawn in the rooms of some; others march slowly over the pavement of the main avenue or sit at their desks as I sit now. But I firmly believe, let them call me an idealist and a dreamer, I believe that sooner or later we shall somehow find a place in the general formula even for these hours. Somehow, all of the 86,400 seconds will be incorporated in the Tables of Hours.
I have had opportunity to read and hear many improbable things about those times when human beings still lived in the state of freedom, that is, in an unorganized primitive state. One thing has always seemed to me most improbable: how could a government, even a primitive government, permit people to live without anything like our Tables-without compulsory walks, without precise regulation of the time to eat, for instance? They would get up and go to bed whenever they liked. Some historians even say that in those days the streets were lighted all night, and all night people went about the streets.
That I cannot understand. True, their minds were rather limited in those days. Yet they should have understood, should they not, that such a life was actually wholesale murder, although slow murder, day after day? The State (humanitarianism) forbade in those days the murder of one person, but it did not forbid the killing of millions slowly and by inches. To kill one person, that is, to reduce the individual span of human life by fifty years, was considered criminal, but to reduce the general sum of human life by fifty million years was not considered criminal! Isn't it droll? Today this simple mathematical moral problem could easily be solved in half a minute's time by any ten year-old Number, yet they couldn't do it! All their Immanuel Kants together couldn't do it! It didn't enter the heads of all their Kants to build a system of scientific ethics, that is, ethics based on adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing.
Further, is it not absurd that their State (they called it State!) left sexual life absolutely without control? On the contrary, whenever and as much as they wanted, absolutely unscientific, like beasts! And like beasts they blindly gave birth to children! Is it not strange to understand gardening, chicken farming, fishery (we have definite knowledge that they were familiar with all these things), and not to be able to reach the last step in this logical scale, namely, production of children not to be able to discover such things as Maternal and Paternal Norms? It is so droll, so improbable, that while I write this I am afraid lest you, my unknown future readers, should think I am merely a poor jester. I feel almost as if you may think I want simply to mock you and with a very serious face try to relate absolute nonsense to you. But first I am incapable of jesting, for in every joke a lie has its hidden function.

And second, the science of the United State contends that the life of the ancients was exactly what I am describing, and the science of the United State does not make mistakes! Yet how could they have State logic, since they lived in a condition of freedom like beasts, like apes, like herds? What could one expect of them, since even in our day one hears from time to time, coming from the bottom, the primitive depths, the echo of the apes? Fortunately it happens only from time to time, very seldom. Happily, it is only a case of small parts breaking; these may easily be repaired without stopping the eternal great march of the whole machine. And in order to eliminate a broken peg we have the skillful heavy hand of the Well-Doer, we have the experienced eyes of the Guardians.
By the way, I just thought of that Number whom I met yesterday, the double-curved one like the letter S; I think I have seen him several times coming out of the Bureau of Guardians. Now I understand why I felt such an instinctive respect for him and a kind of awkwardness when I saw that strange I-330 at his side. I must confess that, that I, they ring the bell, time to sleep, it is twenty-two thirty.
Till tomorrow, then.

RECORD FOUR.
The Wild Man with a Barometer.
Epilepsy.
If.
Until today everything in life seemed to me clear, that is why, I think, I always had a sort of partiality toward the word "clear", but today, I don’t understand.
First, I really was assigned to auditorium 112, as she said, although the probability was 500 to 10,000,000 or I to 20,000.
Five hundred is the number of auditoriums and there are 10,000,000 Numbers. And second. But let me relate things in proper order.
The auditorium: an enormous half-globe of glass with the sun piercing through. The circular rows of noble, globelike, closely shaven heads. With joy in my heart I looked around. I believe I was looking in the hope of seeing the rose-colored scythe, the dear lips of O somewhere among the blue waves of the unifs. Then I saw extraordinarily white, sharp teeth like the. But no! Tonight at twenty-one o’clock O was to come to me; therefore my desire to see her was quite natural. The bell. We stood up, sang the Hymn of the United State, and our clever phono-Iecturer appeared on the platform with-a sparkling golden loud-speaker.
"Respected Numbers, not so long ago our archaeologists dug up a book written in the twentieth century. In this book the ironical author tells about a Wild Man and a barometer. The Wild Man noticed that every time the barometer's hand stopped on the word rain, it actually rained. And as the Wild Man craved rain, he let out as much mercury as was necessary to put it at the level of the word rain on the screen a Wild Man with feathers, letting out the mercury. Laughter.
"You are laughing at him, but don't you think the European of that age deserves more to be laughed at? He, like the Wild Man, wanted rain-rain with a little 'r,' an algebraic rain; but he remained standing before the barometer like a wet hen. The Wild Man at least had more courage and energy and logic, although primitive logic.
The Wild Man showed the ability to establish a connection between cause and effect: by letting out the mercury he made the first step on the path which."
Here, I repeat, I am not concealing anything, I am setting down everything, I suddenly became impermeable to the quickening currents coming from the loud-speaker.
I suddenly felt I had come here in vain (why in vain and how could I not have come here, since I was assigned to come here?). Everything seemed to me empty like a shell.
I succeeded with difficulty in tuning my attention in again when the phono-Iecturer came to the main theme of the evening-to our music as a mathematical composition, mathematics is the cause, music the effect. The phono-lecturer began the description of the recently invented musicometer.
“By merely rotating this handle anyone is enabled to produce about three sonatas per hour. What difficulties our predecessors had in making music! They were able to compose only by bringing themselves to attacks of inspiration, an extinct form of epilepsy. Here you have an amusing illustration of their achievements: the music of Scriabin, twentieth century. This black box," a curtain patted on the platform, and we saw an ancient instrument, "this box they called the Royal Grand. They attached to this idea of regality, which also goes to prove how their music.”
And I don't remember anything further. Very possibly because, I'll tell you frankly, because she, I-330, came to the "Royal” box. Probably I was simply startled by her unexpected appearance on the platform.
She was dressed in a fantastic dress of the ancient time, a black dress closely fitting the body, sharply delimiting the white of her shoulders and breasts, and that warm shadow waving with her breath between. And the dazzling, almost angry teeth. A smile, a bite, directed downward. She took her seat; she began to play something wild, convulsive, loud like all their life then-not a shadow of rational mechanism. Of course all those around me were right; they were laughing. Only a few. But why is it that I, too, I? Yes, epilepsy, a mental disease, a pain. A slow, sweet pain, bite, and it goes deeper and becomes sharper. And then, slowly, sunshine-not our sunshine, not crystalline, bluish, and soft, coming through the glass bricks. No, a wild sunshine, rushing and burning, tearing everything into small bits.
The Number at my left glanced at me and chuckled. I don't know why but I remember exactly how a microscopic saliva bubble appeared on his lips and burst. That bubble brought me back to myself. I was again I.
Like all the other Numbers I heard now only the senseless, disorderly crackling of the chords. I laughed; I felt so light and simple. The gifted phono-Iecturer represented to us only too well that wild epoch. And that was all.
With what a joy I listened afterward to our contemporary music. It was demonstrated to us at the end of the lecture for the sake of contrast. Crystalline, chromatic scales converging and diverging into endless series; and synthetic harmony of the formulae of Taylor and McLauren, wholesome, square, and massive like the "trousers of Pythagoras." Sad melodies dying away in waving movements. The beautiful texture of the spectrum of planets, dissected by Frauenhofer lines, what magnificent, what perfect regularity! How pitiful the willful music of the ancients, not limited except by the scope of their wild imaginations! As usual, in good order, four abreast, all of us left the auditorium. The familiar double-curved figure passed swiftly by. I respectfully bowed.
Dear O was to come in an hour. I felt agitated, agreeably and usefully. Home at last! I rushed to the house office, handed over to the controller on duty my pink ticket, and received a certificate permitting the use of the curtains. This right exists in our State only for the sexual days. Normally we live surrounded by transparent walls which seem to be knitted of sparkling air; we live beneath the eyes of everyone, always bathed in light. We have nothing to conceal from one another; besides, this mode of living makes the difficult and exalted task of the Guardians much easier. Without it many bad things might happen. It is possible that the strange opaque dwellings of the ancients were responsible for their pitiful cellish psychology.
“My (sic!) home is my fortress!" How did they manage to think such things? At twenty-two o'clock I lowered the curtain and at the same second O came in smiling, slightly out of breath.
She extended to me her rosy lips and her pink ticket. I tore off the stub but I could not tear myself away from the rosy lips up to the last moment, twenty-two-fifteen.
Then I showed her my diary and I talked; I think I talked very well on the beauty of a square, a cube, a straight line. At first she listened so charmingly, she was so rosy; then suddenly a tear appeared in her blue eyes, then another, and a third fell straight on the open page (page 7). The ink blurred; well, I shall have to copy it again.
"My dear O, if only you, if."
"What if? If what?"
Again the old lament about a child or perhaps something new regarding, regarding, the other one? Although it seems as though some. But that would be too absurd!

RECORD FIVE.
The Square.
The Rulers of the World.
An Agreeable and Useful Function.
Again with you, my unknown reader; I talk to you as though you were, let us say, my old comrade, R-13, the poet with the lips of a Negro-well, everyone knows him. Yet you are somewhere on the moon, or on Venus, or on Mars. Who knows you? Where and who are you? Imagine a square, a living, beautiful square. Imagine that this square is obliged to tell you about itself, about its life. You realize that this square would hardly think it necessary to mention the fact that all its four angles are equal. It knows this too well. This is such an ordinary, obvious thing. I am in exactly the same square position.
Take the pink checks, for instance, and all that goes with them: for me they are as natural as the equality of the four angles of the square. But for you they are perhaps more mysterious and hard to understand than Newton's binomial theorem. Let me explain: an ancient sage once said a clever thing, accidentally, beyond doubt. He said, “Love and Hunger rule the world." Consequently, to dominate the world, man had to win a victory over hunger after paying a very high price. I refer to the great Two Hundred Years' War, the war between the city and the land. Probably on account of religious prejudices, the primitive peasants stubbornly held on to their “bread.”
This word came down to us for use only as a poetic form, for the chemical constitution of this substance is unknown to us.
In the thirty-fifth year before the foundation of the United State our contemporary petroleum food was invented.
True, only about two tenths of the population of the globe did not die out. But how beautifully shining the face of the earth became when it was cleared of its impurities! Accordingly the 0.2 which survived have enjoyed the greatest happiness in the bosom of the United State.
But is it not clear that supreme bliss and envy are only the numerator and the denominator, respectively, of the same fraction, happiness? What sense would the innumerable sacrifices of the Two Hundred Years' War have for us if a reason were left in our life for jealousy? Yet such a reason persisted because there remained button like noses and classical noses, cf our conversation during the promenade.
For there were some whose love was sought by everyone, and others whose love was sought by no one.
Naturally, having conquered hunger, that is, algebraically speaking, having achieved the total of bodily welfare, the United State directed its attack against the second ruler of the world, against love. At last this element also was conquered, that is, organized and put into a mathematical formula. It is already three hundred years since our great historic Lex Sexualis was promulgated: "A Number may obtain a license to use any other Number as a sexual product."
The rest is only a matter of technique. You are carefully examined in the laboratory of the Sexual Department where they find the content of the sexual hormones in your blood, and they accordingly make out for you a Table of sexual days. Then you file an application to enjoy the services of Number so and so, or Numbers so and so. You get for that purpose a checkbook (pink).
That is all.
It is clear that under such circumstances there is no reason for envy or jealousy. The denominator of the fraction of happiness is reduced to zero and the whole fraction is thus converted into a magnificent infiniteness. The thing which, was for the ancients a source of innumerable stupid tragedies has been converted in our time into a harmonious, agreeable, and useful function of, the organism, a function like sleep, physical labor, the taking of food, digestion, etc., etc. Hence you see how the great power of logic purifies everything it happens to touch. Oh, if only you unknown readers can conceive this divine power! If you will only learn to follow it to the end!
It is very strange. While I was Writing today of the loftiest Summit of human history, all the while I breathed the purest mountain air of thought, but within me it was and remains cloudy, cobwebby, and there is a kind of cross-like, four-pawed X. Or perhaps it is my paws and I feel like that only because they are always before my eyes, my hairy paws. I don't like to talk about them, I dislike them. They are a trace of a primitive epoch, is it possible that there is in me? I wanted to strike out all this because it trespasses on the limits of my synopsis. But then I decided: no, I shall not! Let this diary give the curve of the most imperceptible vibrations of my brain, like a precise seismograph, for at times such vibrations serve as fore warnings.
Certainly this is absurd! This certainly should be stricken out; we have conquered all the elements; catastrophes are not possible any more, Now everything is clear to me, The peculiar feeling inside is a result of that very same square situation of which I spoke in the beginning. There is no X in me.
There can be none. I am simply afraid lest some X will be left in you; my unknown readers. I believe you will understand that it is harder for me to write than it ever was for any author throughout human history, Some of them wrote for contemporaries, some for future generations, but none of them ever wrote for their ancestors, or for beings' like their primitive, distant ancestors.

RECORD SIX.
An Accident.
The Cursed "It's Clear."
Twenty-four Hours.
I must repeat, I have made it my duty to write concealing nothing. Therefore I must point out now that, sad as it may be, the process of the hardening and crystallization of life has evidently not been completed even here in our State. A few steps more and we will be within reach of our ideal. The ideal (it's clear) is to be found where nothing happens, but here. I will give you an example: in the State paper I read that in two days the holiday of Justice will be celebrated on the Plaza of the Cube. This means that again some Number has impeded the smooth running of the great State machine. Again something that was not foreseen, or fore-calculated, happened.
Besides, something happened to me. True, it occurred during the personal hour, that is during the time specifically assigned to unforeseen circumstances, yet.
At about sixteen (to be exact, ten minutes to sixteen), I was at home. Suddenly the telephone:
"D-503?" A woman's voice.
"Yes."
"Are you free?'
"Yes."
"It is I, I-330. I shall run over to you immediately. We shall go together to the Ancient House. Agreed?"
I-330! This I irritates me, repels me. She almost frightens me; but just because of that I answered, "Yes."
In five minutes we were in an aero. Blue sky of May.
The bright sun in its own golden aero buzzed behind us without catching up and without lagging behind. Ahead of us a white cataract of a cloud. Yes, a white cataract of a cloud, nonsensically Huffy like the cheeks of an ancient cupid. That cloud was disturbing. The front window was open; it was windy; lips were dry. Against one's will one passed the tongue constantly over them and thought about lips.
Already we saw in the distance the hazy green spots on the other side of the Wall. Then a slight involuntary sinking of the heart, down-down-down, as if from a steep mountain, and we were at the Ancient House.
That strange, delicate, blind establishment is covered all around with a glass shell, otherwise it would undoubtedly have fallen to pieces long ago. At the glass door we found an old woman all wrinkles, especially her mouth, which was all made up of folds and pleats. Her lips had disappeared, having folded inward; her mouth seemed grown together. It seemed incredible that she should be able to talk, and yet she did.
"Well, dear, come again to see my little house?"
Her wrinkles shone, that is, her wrinkles diverged like rays, which created the impression of shining.
""Yes, Grandmother," answered I-330.
The wrinkles continued to shine.
"And the sun, eh, do you see it, you rogue, you! I know, I know. It's all right. Go all by yourselves, I shall remain here in the sunshine."
Hum. Apparently my companion was a frequent guest here. Something disturbed me; probably that unpleasant optical impression, the cloud on the smooth blue surface of the sky.
While we were ascending the wide, dark stairs, I-330 said, "I love her, that old woman."
"Why?"
"I don't know. Perhaps for her mouth-or perhaps for nothing, just so."
I shrugged my shoulders. She continued walking upstairs with a faint smile, or perhaps without a smile at all.
I felt very guilty. It is clear that there must not be "love, just so," but "love because of." For all elements of nature should be.
“It's clear." I began, but I stopped at that word and cast a furtive look at I-330. Did she notice it or not? She looked somewhere, down; her eyes were closed like curtains.
It struck me suddenly: evening about twenty-two; you walk on the avenue and among the brightly lighted, transparent, cubic cells are dark spaces, lowered curtains, and there behind the curtains. What has she behind her curtains? Why did she phone me today? Why did she bring me here? and all this.
She opened a heavy, squeaking, opaque door and we found ourselves in a somber disorderly space (they called it an "apartment"). The same strange "royal" musical instrument and a wild, unorganized, crazy loudness of colors and forms like their ancient music. A white plane above, dark blue walls, red, green, orange bindings of ancient books, yellow bronze candelabra, a statue of Buddha, furniture with lines distorted by epilepsy, impossible to reduce to any clear equation.
I could hardly bear that chaos. But my companion apparently possessed a stronger constitution.
"This is my most beloved," she suddenly caught herself, again a smile, bite, and white sharp teeth,"to be more exact, the most nonsensical of all apartments."
"Or, to be most exact, of all the States. Thousands of microscopic States, fighting eternal wars, pitiless like."
"Oh, yes, it's clear," said I-330 with apparent sincerity.
We passed through a room where we found a few small children's beds (children in those days were also private property).
Then more rooms, glimmering mirrors, somber closets, unbearably loud-colored divans, an enormous "fireplace," a large mahogany bed. Our contemporary beautiful, transparent, eternal glass was represented here only by pitiful, delicate, tiny squares of windows.
"And to think; here there was love just so; they burned and tortured themselves." Again the curtain of the eyes was lowered. "What a stupid, uneconomical spending of human energy. Am I not right?"
She spoke as though reading my thoughts, but in her smile there remained always that irritating X. There behind the curtains something was going on, I don't know what, but something that made me lose my patience. I wanted to quarrel with her, to scream at her (exactly, to scream), but I had to agree. It was impossible not to agree, we stopped in front of a mirror, At that moment I saw only her eyes. An idea came to me: human beings are built as nonsensically as these stupid "apartments," human heads are opaque, and there are only two very small windows that lead inside, the eyes. She seemed to have guessed my thoughts; she turned around: "Well, here they are, my eyes. Well" (this suddenly, then silence).
There in front of me were two gloomy, dark windows and behind them, inside, such strange hidden life. I saw there only fire, burning like a peculiar "fireplace," and unknown figures resembling.
All this was certainly very natural; I saw in her eyes the reflection of my own face. But my feelings were unnatural and not like me. Evidently the depressing influence of the surroundings was beginning to tell on me. I definitely felt fear. I felt as if I were trapped in a strange cage. I felt that I was caught in the wild hurricane of ancient life, "Do you know." said I-330. "Step for a moment into the next room." Her voice came from there, from inside, from behind the dark window eyes, where the fireplace was blazing.
I went in, sat down. From a shelf on the wall there looked straight into my face, somewhat smiling, the snub nosed, asymmetrical physiognomy of one of the ancient poets; I think it was Pushkin.
"Why do I sit here enduring this smile with such resignation, and what is this all about? Why am I here? And why all these strange sensations, this irritating, repellent female, this strange game?"
The door of the closet slammed; there was the rustle of silk. I felt it difficult to restrain myself from getting up and, and, I don't remember exactly; probably I wanted to tell her a number of disagreeable things. But she had already appeared.
She was dressed in a short, bright-yellowish dress, black hat, black stockings. The dress was of light silk.
I saw clearly very long black stockings above the knees, an uncovered neck, and the shadow between.
''It's clear that you want to seem original. But is it passible that you?"
"It is clear," interrupted I-330, "that to be original means to stand out among others; consequently, to be original means to violate the law of equality. What was called in the language of the ancients to be common is with us only the fulfilling of one's duty. For."
"Yes, yes, exactly," I interrupted impatiently, "and there is no use, no use."
She came near the bust of the snub-nosed poet, lowered the curtain on the wild fire of her eyes, and said, this time I think she was really in earnest, or perhaps she merely wanted to soften my impatience with her, but she said a very reasonable thing:
"Don't you think it surprising that once people could stand types like this? Not only stand them, but worship them? What a slavish spirit, don't you think so?"
“It's clear, that is!" I wanted, damn that cursed "it's clear!"
“Oh, yes, I understand. But in fact these poets were stronger rulers than the crowned ones. Why were they not isolated and exterminated? In our State."
"Oh, yes, in our State." I began.
But suddenly she laughed. I saw the laughter in her eyes. I saw the resounding sharp curve of that laughter, flexible, tense like a whip. I remember my whole body shivered. I thought of grasping her and I don't know what. I had to do something, it mattered little what, automatically I looked at my golden badge, glanced at my watch-ten minutes to seventeen!
"Don't you think it is time to go?" I said in as polite a tone as possible.
"And if I should ask you to stay here with me?"
"What? Do you realize what you are saying? In ten minutes I must be in the auditorium."
"And Call the Numbers must take the prescribed courses in art and science," said I-330 with my voice.
Then she lifted the curtain, opened her eyes-through the dark windows the fire was blazing.
"I have a physician in the Medical Bureau; he is registered to me; if I ask him, he will give you a certificate declaring that you are ill. All right?"
Understood! At last I understood where this game was leading.
"Ah, so! But you know that every honest Number as a matter of course must immediately go to the office of the Guardians and."
"And as a matter not of course?" (Sharp smile-bite.) "I am very curious to know: will you or will you not go to the Guardians?"
"Are you going to remain here?"
I grasped the knob of the door. It was a brass knob, a cold, brass knob, and I heard, cold like brass, her voice:
"Just a minute, may I?"
She went to the telephone, called a Number, I was so upset it escaped me, and spoke loudly: "I shall be waiting for you in the Ancient House. Yes, yes, alone."
I turned the cold brass knob.
“May I take the aero?"
"Oh, yes, certainly, please!"
In the sunshine at the gate the old woman was dozing like a plant. Again I was surprised to see her grown-together mouth open, and to hear her say:
"And your lady, did she remain alone?"
"Alone."
The mouth of the old woman grew together again; she shook her head; apparently even her weakening brain understood the stupidity and the danger of that woman's behavior.
At seventeen o’clock exactly I was at the lecture. There I suddenly realized that I did not tell the whole truth to the old woman. I-330 was not there alone now. Possibly this fact, that I involuntarily told the old woman a lie, was torturing me now and distracting my attention. Yes, not alone-that was the point.
After twenty-one-thirty o'clock I had a free hour; I could therefore have gone to the office of the Guardians to make my report. But after that stupid adventure I was so tired; besides, the law provides two days. I shall have time tomorrow; I have another twenty-four hours.

RECORD SEVEN.
An Eyelash.
Taylor.
Henbane and Lily of the Valley.
Night. Green, orange, blue. The red royal instrument.
The yellow dress. Then a brass Buddha. Suddenly it lifted the brass eyelids and sap began to How from it, from Buddha. Sap also from the yellow dress.
Even in the mirror, drops of sap, and from the large bed and from the children's bed and soon from myself.
It is horror, mortally sweet horror!
I woke up. Soft blue light, the glass of the walls, of the chairs, of the table was glimmering. This calmed me. My heart stopped palpitating. Sap! Buddha! How absurd! I am sick, it is clear; I never saw dreams before. They say that to see dreams was a common normal thing with the ancients. Yes, after all, their life was a whirling carousel: green, orange, Buddha, sap. But we, people of today, we know all too well that dreaming is a serious mental disease.
I, Is it possible that my brain, this precise, clean, glittering mechanism, like a chronometer without a speck of dust on it, is? Yes, it is, now. I really feel there in the brain some foreign body like an eyelash in the eye. One does not feel one's whole body, but this eye with a hair in it; one cannot forget it for a second.
The cheerful, crystalline sound of the bell at my head.
Seven o'clock. Time to get up. To the right and to the left as in mirrors, to the right and to the left through the glass walls I see others like myself, other rooms like my own, other clothes like my own, movements like mine, duplicated thousands of times. This invigorates me; I see myself as a part of an enormous, vigorous, united body; and what precise beauty! Not a single superfluous gesture, or bow, or tum. Yes, this Taylor was undoubtedly the greatest genius of the ancients. True, he did not come to the idea of applying his method to the whole life, to every step throughout the twenty-four hours of the day; he was unable to integrate his system from one o'clock to twenty four.
I cannot understand the ancients. How could they write whole libraries about some Kant and take only slight notice of Taylor, of this prophet who saw ten centuries ahead? Breakfast was over. The hymn of the United State had been harmoniously sung; rhythmically, four abreast we walked to the elevators, the motors buzzed faintly, and swiftly we went down, down, down, the heart sinking slightly. Again that stupid dream, or some unknown function of that dream. Oh, yes! Yesterday in the aero, then down, down! Well, it is all over, anyhow. Period. It is very fortunate that I was so firm and brusque with her.
The car of the underground railway carried me swiftly to the place where the motionless, beautiful body of the Integral, not yet spiritualized by fire, was glittering in the docks in the sunshine. With closed eyes I dreamed in formulae. Again I calculated in my mind what was the initial velocity required to tear the Integral away from the earth.
Every second the mass of the Integral would change because of the expenditure of the explosive fuel. The equation was very complex, with transcendent figures. As in a dream I felt, right here in the firm calculated world, how someone sat down at my side, barely touching me and saying, "Pardon." I opened my eyes.
At first, apparently because of an association with the Integral, I saw something impetuously flying into the distance-a head; I saw pink wing ears sticking out on the sides of it, then the curve of the overhanging back of the head, the double-curved letter S.
Through the glass walls of my algebraic world again I felt the eyelash in my eye. I felt something disagreeable, I felt that today I must.
"Certainly, please." I smiled at my neighbor and bowed.
I saw Number 8-4711 glittering on his golden badge, that is why I associated him with the letter S from the very first moment: an optical impression which remained unregistered by consciousness. His eyes sparkled, two sharp little drills; they were revolving swiftly, drilling in deeper and deeper. It seemed that in a moment they would drill in to the bottom and would see something that I do not even dare to confess to myself.
That bothersome eyelash became wholly clear tome.
S was one of them, one of the Guardians, and it would be the simplest thing immediately, without deferring, to tell him everything! "I went yesterday to the Ancient House." My voice was strange, husky, flat, I tried to cough.
"That is good. It must have given you material for some instructive deductions."
“Yes, but. You see, I was not alone; I was in the company of I-330, and then."
"I-330? You are fortunate. She is a very interesting, gifted woman; she has a host of admirers."
But he, too-then during the promenade. Perhaps he is even assigned as her he-Number! No, it is impossible to tell him, unthinkable. This was perfectly clear.
“Yes, yes, certainly, very.” I smiled, more and more broadly, more stupidly, and felt as if my smile made me look foolish, naked.
The drills reached the bottom; revolving continually they screwed themselves back into his eyes. S smiled double-curvedly, nodded, and slid to the exit.
I covered my face with the newspaper. I felt as if everybody were looking at me, and soon I forgot about the eyelash, about the little drills, about everything, I was so upset by what I read in the paper: "According to authentic information, traces of an organization, which still remains out of reach, have again been discovered.
This organization aims at liberation from the beneficial yoke of the State."

Liberation! It is remarkable how persistent human criminal instincts are! I use deliberately the word "criminal," for freedom and crime are as closely related as-well, as the movement of an aero and its speed: if the speed of an aero equals zero, the aero is motionless; if human liberty is equal to zero, man does not commit any crime.
That is clear. The way to rid man of criminality is to rid him of freedom. No sooner did we rid ourselves of freedom, in the cosmic sense centuries are only a "no sooner," than suddenly some unknown pitiful degenerates. No, I cannot understand why I did not go immediately yesterday to the Bureau of Guardians. Today, after sixteen o'clock, I shall go without fail.
At sixteen-ten I was in the street; at once I noticed O-90 at the corner; she was all rosy with delight at the encounter.
She has a simple, round mind. A timely meeting, she would understand and lend me support. Or, no, I did not need any support; my decision was firm.
The pipes of the Musical Tower thundered out harmoniously the March-the same daily March. How wonderful the charm of this dailiness, of this constant repetition and mirror-like smoothness! "Out for a walk?" Her round blue eyes opened toward me widely, blue windows leading inside; I penetrate there unhindered; there is nothing in there, I mean nothing foreign, nothing superfluous.
"No, not for a walk. I must got I told her where. And to my astonishment I saw her rosy round mouth form a crescent with the horns downward as if she tasted something sour. This angered me.

"You she-Numbers seem to be incurably eaten up by prejudices. You are absolutely unable to think abstractly.
Forgive me the word, but this I call bluntness of mind."
"You? To the spies? How ugly! And I went to the Botanical Garden and brought you a branch of lily of the valley."
"Why and I? Why this and? Just like a woman!"
Angrily, this I must confess, I snatched the flowers.
"Here they are, your lilies of the valley. Well, smell them! Good? Yes? Why not use a little bit of logic? The lilies of the valley smell good; all right! But you cannot say about an odor, about the conception of an odor, that it is good or bad, can you? You can't, can you? There is the smell of lilies of the valley, and there is the disagreeable smell of henbane. Both are odors. The ancient States had their spies; we have ours, yes, spies! I am not afraid of words.
But is it not clear to you that there the spies were henbane, here they are lilies of the valley? Yes, lilies of the valley. Yes!"
The rosy crescent quivered. Now I understand that it was only my impression, but at that moment I was certain she was going to laugh. I shouted still louder:
"Yes, lilies of the valley! And there is nothing funny about it, nothing funny!”
The smooth round globes of heads passing by were turning toward us. O-90 gently took my hand.
"You are so strange today are you ill?"
My dream. Yellow color Buddha. It was at once borne clearly upon me that I must go to the Medical Bureau.
"Yes, you are right, I am sick," I said with joy, that seems to me an inexplicable contradiction; there was nothing to be joyful about.
"You must go at once to the doctor. You understand that; you are obliged to be healthy; it seems strange to have to prove it to you."
"My dear O, of course you are right. Absolutely right.”
I did not go to the Bureau of Guardians; I could not; I had to go to the Medical Bureau; they kept me there until seventeen o'clock.
In the evening, incidentally, the Bureau of Guardians is closed evenings, in the evening O came to see me.
The curtains were not lowered. We busied ourselves with the arithmetical problems of an ancient textbook. This occupation always calms and purifies our thoughts. 0sat over her notebook, her head slightly inclined to the left; she was so assiduous that she poked out her left cheek with the tongue from within. She looked so childlike, so charming. I felt everything in me was pleasant, precise, and simple.
She left. I remained alone. I breathed deeply two times, it is very good exercise before retiring for the night.
Suddenly-an unexpected odor reminiscent of something very disagreeable! I soon found out what was the matter, a branch of lily of the valley was hidden in my bed.
Immediately everything was aroused again, came up from the bottom. Decidedly, it was tactless on her part to put these lilies of the valley there surreptitiously. Well, true I did not go; I didn't, but was it my fault that I had felt indisposed?

RECORD EIGHT.
An Irrational Root.
R-13.
The Triangle.
It was long ago, during my school days, when I first encountered the square root of minus one. I remember it all very clearly: a bright globe like class hall, about a hundred round heads of children, and Plappa our mathematician. We nicknamed him Plappa; it was a very much used-up mathematician, loosely screwed together; as the member of the class who was on duty that day would put the plug into the socket behind, we would hear at first from the loud-speaker, "Plap-plap-plap-plaptshshsh."
Only then the lesson would follow. One day Plappa told us about irrational numbers, and I remember I wept and banged the table with my fist and cried, “I do not want that square root of minus one; take that square root of minus one away!" This irrational root grew into me as something strange, foreign, terrible; it tortured me; it could not be thought out. It could not be defeated because it was beyond reason.
Now, that square root of minus one is here again. I read over what I have written and I see clearly that I was insincere with myself, that I lied to myself in order to avoid seeing that square root of minus one. My sickness is all nonsense! I could go there. I feel sure that if such a thing had happened a week ago I should have gone with out hesitating. Why, then, am I unable to go now?
Why? Today, for instance, at exactly sixteen-ten I stood before the glittering Glass Wall. Above was the shining, golden, sun-like sign: "Bureau of Guardians." Inside, a long queue of bluish-gray unifs awaiting their turns, faces shining like the oil lamps in an ancient temple. They had come to accomplish a great thing: they had come to put on the altar of the United State their beloved ones, their friends, their own selves. My whole being craved to join them, yet. I could not; my feet were as though melted into the glass plates of the sidewalk. I simply stood there looking foolish.
"Hey, mathematician! Dreaming?"
I shivered. Black eyes varnished with laughter looked at me-thick Negro lips! It was my old friend the poet, R-13, and with him rosy O. I turned around angrily. I still believe that if they had not appeared I should have entered the Bureau and have torn the square root of minus one out of my flesh.
"Not dreaming at all. If you will, standing in adoration," I retorted quite brusquely.
"Oh, certainly, certainly! You, my friend, should never have become a mathematician; you should have become a poet, a great poet! Yes, come over to our trade, to the poets. Eh? If you will, I can arrange it in a jiffy. Eh?"
R-13 usually talks very fast. His words run in torrents, his thick lips sprinkle. Every "p" is a fountain, every "poets" a fountain.
"So far I have served knowledge, and I shall continue to serve knowledge."
I frowned. I do not like, I do not understand jokes, and R-13 has the bad habit of joking.
"Oh, to the deuce with knowledge. Your much-heralded knowledge is but a form of cowardice. It is a fact! Yes, you want to encircle the infinite with a wall, and you fear to cast a glance behind the wall Yes, sir! And if ever you should glance beyond the wall, you would be dazzled and close your eyes-yes."
"Walls are the foundation of every human," I began.
R-13 sprinkled his fountain. O laughed rosily and roundly. I waved my hand. "Well, you may laugh, I don't care." I was busy with something else. I had to find a way of eating up, of crashing down, that square root of minus one. “Suppose," I offered,” we go to my place and do some arithmetical problems." The quiet hour of yesterday afternoon came to my memory; perhaps today also.
O glanced at R, then serenely and roundly at me; the soft, endearing color of our pink checks came to her cheeks.
“But today I am, I have a check to him today." A glance at R, “And tonight he is busy, so."
The moist, varnished lips whispered good-naturedly:
"Half an hour is plenty for us, is it not, O? I am not a great lover of your problems; let us simply go over to my place and chat."
I was afraid to remain alone with myself or, to be more correct, with that strange new self who by some curious coincidence bore my number, D-503. So I went with R.
True, he is not precise, not rhythmic, his logic is jocular and turned inside out, yet we are. Three years ago we both chose our dear, rosy O. This tied our friendship more firmly together than our school days did. In R's room everything seems like mine: the Tables, the glass of the chairs, the table, the closet, the bed. But as we entered, R moved one chair out of place, then another-the room became confused, everything lost the established order and seemed to violate every rule of Euclid's geometry.
R remained the same as always; in Taylor and in mathematics he always lagged at the tail of the class.
We recalled Plappa, how we boys used to paste the whole surface of his glass legs with paper notes expressing our thanks, we all loved Plappa. We recalled our priest, it goes without saying that we were not taught the "law" of ancient religion but the law of the United State. Our priest had a very powerful voice; a real hurricane would come out of the loud-speaker. And we children would yell the prescribed texts after him with all our lung power. We recalled how our scapegrace, R-13, used to stuff the priest with chewed paper; every word was thus accompanied by a paper wad shot out. Naturally, R was punished, for what he did was undoubtedly wrong, but now we laughed heartily-by we I mean our triangle, R, O, and I. I must confess, I, too.
"And what if he had been a living one? Like the ancient ones, eh? We'd have b, b,” a fountain running from the fat bubbling lips. The sun was shining through the ceiling, the sun above, the sun from the sides, its reflection from below. O on R-13's lap and minute drops of sunlight in O’s blue eyes. Somehow my heart warmed up. The square' root of minus one became silent and motionless.
"Well, how is your Integral? Will you soon hop off to enlighten the inhabitants of the planets? You'd better hurry up, my boy, or we poets will have produced such a devilish lot that even your Integral will be unable to lift the cargo. Every day from eight to eleven," R wagged his head and scratched the back of it. The back of his head is square; it looks like a little valise, I recalled for some reason an ancient painting "In the Cab". I felt more lively.
"You, too, are writing for the Integral? Tell me about it. What are you writing about? What did you write today, for instance?"
"Today I did not write; today I was busy with something else."
"B-b-busy" sprinkled straight into my face.
"What else?"
R frowned. What? What? "Well, if you insist I'll tell you. I was busy with the Death Sentence. I was putting the Death Sentence into verse. An idiot-and to be frank, one of our poets. For two years we all lived side by side with him and nothing seemed wrong. Suddenly he went crazy. I, said he, am a genius! and I am above the law. All that sort of nonsense. But it is not a thing to talk about."
The fat lips hung down. The varnish disappeared from the eyes. He jumped up, turned around, and stared through the wall. I looked at his tightly closed little "valise" and thought, "What is he handling in his little valise now?"
A moment of awkward, asymmetric silence. I could not see clearly what was the matter, but I was certain there was something, to "Fortunately the antediluvian time of those Shakespeares and Dostoevskys, or what were their names? is past," I said in a voice deliberately loud.
R turned his face to me. Words sprinkled and bubbled out of him as before, but I thought I noticed there was no more joyful varnish to his eyes.
"Yes, dear mathematician, fortunately, fortunately. We are the happy arithmetical mean. As you would put it, the integration from zero to infinity, from imbeciles to Shakespeare. Do I put it right?"
I do not know why, it seemed to me absolutely uncalled for, I recalled suddenly the other one, her tone.
A thin, invisible thread stretched between her and R, what thread? The square root of minus one began to bother me again. I glanced at my badge; sixteen-twenty five o'clock! They had only thirty-five minutes for the use of the pink check.
"Well, I must go." I kissed O, shook hands with R, and went to the elevator.
As I crossed the avenue I turned around. Here and there in the huge mass of glass penetrated by sunshine there were grayish-blue squares, the opaque squares of lowered curtains, the squares of rhythmic, Taylorized happiness. On the seventh floor I found R-13's square.
The curtains were already lowered.
Dear O. Dear R. He also has, I do not know why I write this "also," but I write as it comes from my pen, he, too, has something which is not entirely clear in him. Yet I, he, and O, we are a triangle; I confess, not an isosceles triangle, but a triangle nevertheless. We, to speak in the language o