We

  “I was … I couldn’t. I was sick.”

  “Yes. Well, I thought so. Something was always going to prevent you—it didn’t matter what.” Sharp teeth, a smile. “And so, now you are in my hands. You do remember: ‘Any cipher who does not declare themselves to the Bureau in the course of forty-eight hours is considered …’ ”

  My heart struck so hard that the twigs bent. Like a little boy— foolish, like a foolish little boy, I had been caught, and foolishly, I stayed silent. And I felt: I have been caught—by hand, by foot …

  She stood up and stretched lazily. She pressed a button and with a light crackle the blinds fell on all sides. I was severed from the world—alone with her.

  I-330 was somewhere behind my back, near the closet. Her unif rustled and fell; I listened—all of me listened. And I was reminded of … it’s gone—flashed past in one hundredth of a second …

  Not long ago I had to calculate the curvature of a new model of street diaphragm (now these elegantly decorated diaphragms are on every avenue, recording street conversations for the Bureau of Guardians). And I remember: each was a concave, pink, quivering membrane; they were strange organisms, made up of only one organ—an ear. I was now this membrane.

  Then the unsnapping of buttons, the collar, to the breast and further, lower. Glassy silk rustled on her shoulders, knees, the floor. I heard—which is clearer than seeing—one foot stepping from out of the heap of bluish-gray silk, then the other …

  The tautly stretched membrane vibrated and recorded the quiet. No: it recorded the abrupt beating of a hammer on twigs in between endless pauses. And I heard (I saw): her, behind me, thinking for a minute.

  After that: the doors to the closet. Then: some kind of lid banged and again, silk, silk …

  “Well, here you go.”

  I turned around. She was in a light, saffron-yellow, ancient-style dress. This was a thousand times meaner than if she had been wearing nothing. Two sharp dots were smoldering with pink through the fine fabric—two coals through ash. Two gently rounded knees …

  She sat on a low chair. On the four-sided little table in front of her was a flask with something poison-green in it and two tiny little glasses on stems. The corner of her mouth smoked from a slim paper tube: this was ancient smoking (I forget right now what it was called).

  The membrane was still vibrating. The hammer beat—inside me—on the twigs, so burning-hot they were red. I distinctly heard each strike and … and what if suddenly she hears them, too?

  But she calmly smoked, calmly looking at me, and carelessly flicked her ash on my pink ticket.

  As cold-bloodedly as possible, I asked: “Listen, in that case— why ever did you register me? Why did you make me come here?”

  It was as if she didn’t hear me. She poured from the flask into the little glass, took a sip.

  “Delightful liqueur. Would you like some?”

  Only then did I get it: alcohol. Yesterday’s lightning flashed: the stone hand of the Benefactor, the unbearable blades of the laser beams, but this time, instead, it was her in the Cube, with her head thrown back—body outstretched. I winced.

  “Listen,” I said, “you must know: anyone who poisons themselves with nicotine and alcohol, in particular, will be shown no mercy by the One State …”

  Dark eyebrows, high up toward the temples, a sharp, mocking triangle: “To destroy the few quickly is more reasonable than to give the many an opportunity to ruin themselves—degeneration and all that. This is obscenely correct.”

  “Yes … obscenely.”

  “Yes, and if this little bunch of bald, naked truths is turned out onto the streets … No, imagine it yourself … well, for example, take my faithful admirer—yes, you know him—imagine that he threw off this whole lie of clothing, and stood there, in public, just as he was born … Ha!”

  She laughed. But her lower, sorrowful triangle was clearly visible to me: two deep creases from the corners of her mouth to her nose. And for some reason, from these creases it became clear to me: that man—the twice-bent, stooping and wing-eared one—had embraced her. Just as she was right now … He …

  Mind you, I am trying to relay my (abnormal) feelings at the time. Now, as I write this, I realize perfectly well: all this was just as it ought to have been, and he, like every honest cipher, has an equal right to joy. And it would be unjust … well, yes, all that is clear.

  I-330 laughed very strangely and at great length. Afterward, she looked intently at me, inside: “The important thing is that I am completely peaceful with you. You are so sweet—oh, I am sure of that—and you wouldn’t think of going to the Bureau and telling them that I drink liqueur and smoke. You will be sick—or you will be busy—or whatever. Furthermore: I am sure that you are going to drink this charming poison with me now …”

  What an obnoxious, taunting tone. I definitely felt: now I hate her again. But, why “now”? I had hated her the whole time.

  She downed the whole little glass of green poison, stood up— her whole pinkness shining through the saffron—took a few steps, and stopped behind my chair …

  All of a sudden: a hand around my neck and then lips on my lips … no, somewhere even deeper, even scarier … I swear that this was completely unexpected to me, and, maybe, it was only because of this … I couldn’t possibly have … Now I know this absolutely definitely: I could not have wanted what happened next.

  Unbearably sweet lips (I suggest that this was the taste of the “liqueur”) and a mouthful of burning-hot poison was poured into me—and then more—and more … I unfastened from the Earth and became an independent planet, furiously rotating, rushing down, down—according to some kind of uncalculated orbit …

  I can describe this last scene only approximately, only by more or less close analogy.

  The thought had somehow never even entered my head before, but, well, it goes exactly like this: we, on the Earth, are constantly walking over a bubbling, crimson sea of fire, hidden there, in the belly of the Earth. But we never think about it. But what if suddenly the fine crust of earth under our feet became glass, and suddenly we could see …

  I became glass. I saw into myself, inside.

  There were two of me. One me was the former, D-503, cipher D-503, but the other one … Before, he only just managed to stick his shaggy paws out of my shell, but now he has crawled out whole, the shell is cracked open, now shattered into pieces and … and what next?

  With all my strength, clutching at straws and at the arms of the chair, I asked, in order to hear myself (the former me): “Where … where did you get this … this poison?”

  “Oh, this? Just a doctor, one of my …”

  “ ‘One of my’? ‘One of my’—who?”

  And the other me suddenly jumped out and began to yell: “I won’t allow it! I want there to be no one except me. I will kill anyone who … Because I—you. I—you …”

  I saw it: he grabbed her roughly with his shaggy paws, tore up the fine silk and sunk his teeth into her. I distinctly remember: it was his teeth.

  I don’t know how, but I-330 slipped away. And there she stood, her eyes covered by those damned impermeable blinds, leaning her back against the closet and listening to me.

  I remember: I was on the floor, hugging her legs, kissing her knees. And I begged: “Now—right now—this very minute …”

  Sharp teeth. The sharp mocking triangle of her eyebrows. She bent down, saying nothing, and unfastened my badge.

  “Yes! Yes, my sweet—my sweet.” I started to hurriedly throw off my unif. But I-330, still mute, brought the timepiece on my badge up to my very own eyes. It was five minutes to 22:30.

  I grew cold. I knew what this meant: appearing on the street after 22:30. All my craziness immediately blew away. I—was me. One thing became clear to me: I hate her, hate her, hate her!

  Without a good-bye, without a glance, I flung myself right out of the room. Somehow managing to attach my badge while running downstairs in leaps using the emergency stair
way (I was afraid to meet anyone in the elevator). I leapt out onto the empty avenue.

  Everything was in its place, so simple, normal, legitimate: glassy buildings, beaming with lights; a glassy, pale sky; a greenish, still night. But underneath all this quiet, chilly glass, the boiling, the crimson, the shagginess drifted inaudibly. And panting, I rushed, in order not to be late.

  Suddenly I felt: my hastily pinned badge was unfastening—it had unfastened and was jingling on the glass sidewalk. I stooped to pick it up and in that second of silence: someone’s tramping steps were behind me. I turned around: something small and curved turned the corner. So, at least, it had seemed to me.

  I bolted at full throttle, the air whistling in my ears. At the entrance I stopped—it was one minute before 22:30 on the clock. I listened: there was no one behind me. It had all obviously been a ridiculous hallucination, the action of the poison.

  The night was torturous. The bed underneath me rose, fell, and rose again—sailing along a sine curve. To myself, I kept suggesting: “At night, all ciphers are obliged to sleep; this is an obligation, just exactly like working during the daytime. Indeed it is necessary in order to work in the daytime. Not sleeping at night is criminally …” But all the same I couldn’t, I could not.

  I’m finished. I am not in any condition to fulfill my obligations before the One State … I …

  RECORD ELEVEN

  KEYWORDS: No, I Can’t—Let This Record Be Without Keywords.

  Evening. A light fog. The sky is covered with a golden milky fabric and you cannot see what’s there: beyond it, higher up. The Ancients knew what was there, up above: their majestic, bored skeptic … “God.” We know that above us is a crystal-blue, bare, obscene nothing. But I don’t know what is up there anymore—I have learned too much. Knowledge that is absolutely certain it is infallible: it is belief. I had a firm belief in myself; I believed that I knew everything in myself. And then …

  I am in front of the mirror. And for the first time in my life—yes, exactly—for the first time in my life, I see myself clearly, definitively, consciously. I see myself, with astonishment, like some kind of “him.” I am him: black eyebrows that look like they’ve been struck through with a straight line; and a vertical wrinkle between them, like a scar (I don’t know whether it was there before or not). Steely gray eyes encircled by the shadows of a sleepless night; and behind this steel … it turns out, I had never known what was there. And it is from “there” (this “there” is both here and infinitely far away at the same time), it is from “there” that I am looking at myself, at him. And I firmly know: this person with eyebrows that look like they’ve been struck through with a straight line, he is an outsider and alien to me, and I am meeting him for the first time in my life. But I am real. I—not he …

  No: period. All this is junk, and all these ridiculous sensations are delirium—the result of yesterday’s contamination … by the mouthful of green poison—or was it by her? It doesn’t matter. I am recording this only to show how strangely entangled and dislodged human reason—so precise and sharp—can become. Reason, which has even been able to make infinity (something so frightening to the Ancients) into a digestible concept, by …

  The intercom clicked and digits appeared: R-13. Well fine, I’m actually glad: being alone now was going to be …

  20 MINUTES LATER

  On the plane of a piece of paper, in a two-dimensional world, these lines are side by side, but in another world … I am losing my numerical touch: 20 minutes might have been 200 or 200,000. And it is so odd to record what just occurred between R and me—I am calmly and carefully considering each word. It is the equivalent of you sitting in a chair by your own personal bed, crossing one leg over the other, and, with curiosity, watching yourself, your own self, writhe around on that very bed.

  When R-13 came in, I was completely calm and normal. With a feeling of sincere rapture, I started talking about how magnificently he succeeded to trochee-isize the verdict and that it was his trochees that had hacked the madman to pieces and destroyed him more effectively than anything else.

  “And furthermore, if I was invited to make a schematic sketch of the Machine of the Benefactor, I would without fail—without fail—somehow draw your trochees into this sketch.” I finished.

  All of a sudden, I see: R’s eyes are frosting, his lips are graying.

  “What’s with you?”

  “What. What? Well … oh, I’m simply fed up: everyone, everywhere, can only talk about the verdict this and the verdict that. I just don’t want to hear any more of it—that’s all. No more!”

  He frowned and rubbed the back of his head—his little suitcase with its strange, inscrutable contents. A pause. Then he found something in his little suitcase, dragged it out, started unfolding it, and, having unfolded it, his eyes lacquered with laughter, he leapt up.

  “On the other hand, I am composing something for your Integral … and it is something! It is something!”

  His former self: lips smacking, spraying, words gushing in a fountain.

  “You see”—an “s” fountain—“… that ancient legend about paradise … it, you see, was about us, about now. Yes! Think about that! Those two in paradise stood before a choice: happiness without freedom or freedom without happiness; a third choice wasn’t given. They, the blockheads, they chose freedom—and then what? Understandably, for centuries, they longed for fetters. For fetters— you understand? That was the cause of world sorrow. For centuries! Until we figured out how to return to happiness again … No, wait— wait, listen! We and the ancient God are side by side, at the same table. Yes! We have helped God to conquer the devil definitively— it was this devil, you know, who urged people to violate what was forbidden and take a bite of that fatal freedom; he was the malicious snake. But our boot: on his head— crrunch! And there: paradise is restored. Again we are simple-hearted innocents, like Adam and Eve. No more confusion about good and evil: everything is very simple, heavenly, childishly simple. The Benefactor, the Machine, the Cube, the Gas Bell Jar, the Guardians—all these are good, all these are majestic, wonderful, noble, sublime, crystal-clean. Because they guard our non-freedom—that is, our happiness. Those Ancients would be discussing it, deliberating and racking their brains: is it ethical, is it unethical … et cetera. So there you go. What do you make of my heavenly little poem, eh? It will have a very serious tone to it too … do you see? Quite something, eh?”

  Well, I couldn’t have seen better. I remember, I thought: he has such a ridiculous, asymmetrical outward appearance and such a correctly thinking mind. And because of that, he is so dear to me— to the real me (I still consider the former me to be the real me—all this recent stuff is, of course, sickness).

  R apparently read all this on my forehead, hugged me around the shoulders, and laughed.

  “Oh, you … Adam! … Yes, and, incidentally, regarding Eve …”

  He rummaged in his pocket, pulled out a notebook, flicked through it.

  “The day after tomorrow … No, after two days. O has a pink ticket for you. How is that for you? Same as before? Do you want her to …”

  “Well, yes, of course.”

  “Then I’ll tell her. She herself, you see, will be too shy … What an affair, I tell you! I’m just a regular pink ticket to her, but you … you’re … And she won’t say who this fourth person is who has crawled into our triangle. Who is it—confess, you sinner—hmm?”

  Curtains drew open in me and there was a rustling of silk, a green flask, lips … And for no particular reason, at this inappropriate moment, these words broke loose from me (if only I had contained myself!): “Tell me—have you ever had the occasion to try nicotine or alcohol?”

  R tucked up his lips and peered at me from under his brow. I heard his thoughts with total clarity: “My friend, you’re a good friend … but really …” And his answer: “Well, how can I put it? Personally—no. But I did know one woman …”

  “I-330!” I screamed.

&
nbsp; “How … you—you also? With her?” He spilled laughter, choked, and would start spraying again at any time.

  The mirror in my room was hung so that you had to look across the table in order to see into it. From here, in the chair, I could only see my forehead and eyebrows.

  And then I (the real me) saw the jagged line of my eyebrows in the mirror, and I (the real me) heard a wild, repulsive cry: “What?! Also? No: what do you mean by ‘also’? No—I demand to know.”

  Stretched African lips. Goggle eyes … I (the real me) firmly grabbed this other self (the wild, shaggy, heavily breathing self) by the scruff of the neck. I (the real me) said to R: “Forgive me, for the Benefactor’s sake. I am totally sick, not sleeping. I don’t understand what’s wrong with me …”

  The thick lips smirked fleetingly.

  “Yes, yes, yes! I understand—I understand! I’m familiar with that … theoretically speaking. See you later!”

  He got to the doorway, then bounced back to the table like a little black ball and tossed a book onto it: “My latest … I brought it especially—I almost forgot. See you later.” The “s” spattered me and he rolled away.

  I am alone. Or, more like: alone with that other “me.” I am on the chair and I have crossed my legs. From some kind of “there,” I watch, with curiosity, as I—yes, me—writhe around on the bed.

  Why is it—really, why is it that for three whole years, O and I have lived so amicably, and suddenly now, with just one word about that woman, about I-330 … Can it be that all that craziness (love, jealousy, etc.) isn’t only the stuff of idiotic ancient books? And to think that it involves me! Equations, formulas, figures, and … and then this—I don’t understand any of it! Any of it. Tomorrow I will go to R and tell him that …

  That’s not true: I won’t. Not tomorrow, not the day after— I won’t ever go again to see him. I cannot and do not want to see him. End of story! Our triangle has collapsed.

  I am alone. It is evening. A light fog. The sky is covered with a milky golden fabric; if only I knew what was up above—up high? And if only I knew: who I am, which one is me?