We

Twenty-sixth Entry

Morning. Through the ceiling, the sky—firm, round, ruddy-cheeked as ever. I think I would be less astonished if I had seen above me some extraordinary square sun; people in varicolored garments of animal skins; stone, untransparent walls, Does it mean, then, that the world—our world—still exists? Or is this merely by inertia? The generator is already switched off, but the gears still clatter, turning—two revolutions, three, and on the fourth they’ll stop…

Are you familiar with this strange condition? You wake at night, open your eyes to blackness, and suddenly you feel you’ve lost your way—and quickly, quickly you grope around you, seeking something familiar, solid—a wall, a lamp, a chair. This was exactly how I groped around me, ran through the pages of the One State Gazette—quick, quick. And then:

Yesterday we celebrated Unanimity Day, which everyone has long awaited with impatience. For the forty-eighth time, the Benefactor, who has demonstrated his steadfast wisdom on so many past occasions, was elected by a unanimous vote. The celebration was marred by a slight disturbance, caused by the enemies of happiness. These enemies have, naturally, forfeited the right to serve as bricks in the foundation of the One State—a foundation renewed by yesterday’s election. It is clear to everyone that taking account of their votes would be as absurd as considering the coughs of some sick persons in the audience as a part of a magnificent heroic symphony.

Oh, all-wise! Are we, after all, saved in spite of everything? Indeed, what objection can be raised to this most crystal clear of syllogisms?

And two lines further:

Today at twelve there will be a joint session of the Administrative Office, the Medical Office, and the Office of the Guardians. An important state action will take place within the next few days.

No, the walls are still intact. Here they are—I can feel them. And I no longer have that strange sensation that I am lost, that I am in some unknown place and do not know the way. And it’s no longer surprising that I see the blue sky, the round sun. And everyone—as usual—is going to work.

I walked along the avenue with especially firm, ringing steps, and it seemed to me that everybody else walked with the same assurance. But when I turned at a crossing, I saw that everybody shied off sideways from the corner building, gave it a wide berth—as if a pipe had burst there and cold water were gushing out, making it impossible to use the sidewalk.

Another five, ten steps, and I was also showered with cold water, shaken, thrown off the sidewalk… At the height of some two meters a rectangular sheet of paper was pasted on the wall, bearing an incomprehensible, venomously green inscription:

And beneath it, the S-shaped back, transparent wing-ears, quivering with anger, or excitement. His right hand raised, his left stretched helplessly back, like a hurt, broken wing, he was leaping up, trying to tear off the paper—and could not reach it, every time just short of touching it.

Each passerby was probably deterred by the same thought: If I come over, just I of all these others—won’t he think I’m guilty of something and therefore trying…

I confess to the same thought. But I recalled the many times when he was truly my Guardian Angel, the many times he saved me—and I boldly walked up to him, stretched my hand, and pulled off the sheet.

S turned, quickly bored his gimlets into me, to the very bottom, found something there. Then he raised his left eyebrow and winked with it at the wall where MEPHI had just hung. And flicked a corner of a smile at me, which seemed somehow astonishingly gay. But then, it was really nothing to wonder at. A physician will always prefer a rash and a forty-degree fever to the tormenting, slowly rising temperature of the incubation period: at least, the nature of the illness is clear. The MEPHI scattered on the walls today is the rash. I understood the smile.[5]

Steps down to the underground, and underfoot, on the immaculate glass of the stairs—again the white sheet: MEPHI. And on the wall below, on a bench, on a mirror in the car (evidently pasted hurriedly, awry), everywhere the same white, frightening rash.

In the silence, the distinct hum of the wheels was like the noise of inflamed blood. Someone was touched on the shoulder; he started and dropped a roll of papers. And on my left, another—reading the same line in his newspaper over and over, the paper trembling faintly. I felt that everywhere—in the wheels, hands, newspapers, eyelashes—the pulse was beating faster and faster. And, perhaps, today, when I get there with I-330, the temperature will be thirty-nine, forty, forty-one degrees centigrade-marked on the thermometer by a black line…

At the dock—the same silence, humming like a distant, invisible propeller. The machines stand glowering silently. And only the cranes are gliding, scarce audibly, as if on tiptoe, bending down, grasping in their claws the pale-blue blocks of frozen ah- and loading them into the tanks of the Integral: we are already preparing it for the test flight.

“Well, do you think we’ll finish loading in a week?” I ask the Second Builder. His face is like fine china, embellished with sweet pale blue and delicately rosy flowers (eyes, lips); but today they are somehow faded, washed away. We calculate aloud, but I break off in the middle of a word and stand there, gaping: high under the cupola, on the blue block just lifted by the crane—a scarcely visible white square, a pasted sheet of paper. And all of me shakes—could it be with laughter? Yes, I hear myself laughing (do you know the feeling when you hear your own laughter?).

“No, listen…” I say. “Imagine yourself in an ancient plane; the altimeter shows five thousand meters; the wing snaps, you plunge down like a tumbler pigeon, and on the way you calculate: ‘Tomorrow, from twelve to two… from two to six… at six—dinner…’ Isn’t that absurd? But that’s exactly what we are doing now!”

The little blue flowers stir, bulge. What if I were made of glass, and he could see that in some three or four hours…