Level 7 (Mordecai Roshwald) читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги

OCTOBER 10

Level 7 is emptying fast. I went out for lunch again just now, and the place looked like a battlefield. Corpses scattered around everywhere. But not a wound to be seen.

The loudspeaker has been silent today. Presumably nobody is left to operate it any more.

X-107m died just a few minutes ago. He is lying in his bed. He will have to stay there, for there is nobody to take him away and I have not the strength to do it.

He was not talkative during his delirium. But sometime late this afternoon he called me over and pointed to his jacket. When I carried it across to him he groped in a pocket for a piece of paper, which he gave me, just managing to say: “Into the diary.”

On the sheet of paper I found what appears to be some sort of poetry, though it is very irregular and has no rhymes. I shall copy it into my diary now, since he asked me to, not that anybody will ever read it. Or the diary.

This is what he wrote:

When I was a boy I used to watch my sister build a house of cards.

One on another balanced in delicate equilibrium

(Quiet now, don’t knock the table)

Until there the house stood, tall and fine.

But I was mischievous,

I liked to blow the house down,

To watch the cards slip, the house crumble and fall.

To destroy what had been built was my pleasure.

Just one puff, and all that labour of careful construction—

Nothing!

When I grew up I found that houses were not made of cards.

Plaster, concrete, wood, steel.

I could blow my lungs out

And not shift those in a thousand thousand years.

But something could.

Progress had seen to it. Puff!—

And the plaster, the concrete, the wood and the steel

Blown by the bomb’s breath

Tumble like cards.

In this game atoms are trumps.

And it’s easy, so easy.

Just push the button with your finger, lightly,

And down go the office blocks, down go the factories,

Houses, churches, all monuments of man’s endeavour,

Down like a pack of cards!

I never suspected X-107m of writing strange stuff like that. What did he want to say? Just to explain the psychology of his push-button career? Or to indict himself? Did he feel any remorse? He didn’t show it ever.

Who knows? I almost added “Who cares?” But I care! He was a fine fellow, and a good comrade too.