Twenty-eighth Entry

Topics: Two Women. Entropy and Energy. The Opaque Part of the Body

If your world is like the world of our distant forebears, imagine that you have stumbled upon a sixth, a seventh continent in the ocean – some Atlantis with fantastic labyrinth-cities, people soaring in the air without the aid of wings or aeros, rocks lifted by the power of a glance – in short, things that would never occur to you even if you suffer from dream-sickness. This is how I felt yesterday. Because, you understand – as I have told you before – not one of us has been beyond the Wall since the Two Hundred Years’ War.

I know: it is my duty before you, my unknown friends, to tell in greater detail about the strange and unexpected world that revealed itself to me yesterday. But I am still unable to return to that. There is a constant flood of new and new events, and I cannot collect them all: I lift the edges of my unif, I hold out my palms, and yet whole pailfuls spill past, and only drops fall on these pages.

First I heard loud voices behind my door, and recognized the voice of I-330, firm, metallic, and the other – almost inflexible, like a wooden ruler – the voice of U. Then the door flew open with a crash and catapulted both of them into my room. Yes, exactly – catapulted.

I-330 put her hand on the back of my chair and smiled at the other over her right shoulder, only with her teeth. I would not like to be faced with such a smile.

“Listen,” I-330 said to me. “This woman, it appears, has set herself the task of protecting you from me, like a small child. Is that with your permission?”

And the other, her gills quivering, “Yes, he is a child. He is! That is the only reason he doesn’t see that you’re with him… that it’s only in order to… that it is all a game. Yes. And it’s my duty…”

For a moment, in the mirror – the broken, jumping line of my eyebrows. I sprang up and, with difficulty restraining within me the other with the shaking hairy fists, with difficulty squeezing out each word through my teeth, I threw at her, straight at the gills, “Out! Th-this very moment! Get out!”

The gills swelled out, brick red, then drooped, turned gray. She opened her mouth to say something, then, saying nothing, snapped it shut and walked out.

I rushed to I-330. “I’ll never – I’ll never forgive myself! She dared – to you? But you don’t think that I think, that… that she… It’s all because she wants to register for me, and I…”

“Fortunately, she won’t have time to register. And I don’t care if there are a thousand like her. I know you will believe me, not the thousand. Because, after what happened yesterday, I am open to you – all of me, to the very end, just as you wanted. I am in your hands, you can – at any moment…”

“What do you mean – at any moment?” And immediately I understood. The blood rushed to my ears, my cheeks. I cried. “Don’t, don’t ever speak to me about it! You know that it was the other I, the old one, and now…”

“Who can tell? A human being is like a novel: until the last page you don’t know how it will end. Or it wouldn’t be worth reading…”

She stroked my head. I could not see her face, but I could tell by her voice: she was looking far, far off, her eyes caught by a cloud, floating soundlessly, slowly, who knows where…

Suddenly she thrust me away – firmly but tenderly. “Listen, I’ve come to tell you that these may be the last days we… You know – the auditoriums have been canceled as of this evening.”

“Canceled?”

“Yes. And as I walked past, I saw – they were preparing something in the auditoriums: tables, medics in white.”

“But what can it mean?”

“I don’t know. No one knows as yet. And that’s the worst of it But I feel – the current is switched on, the spark is running. If not today, then tomorrow… But perhaps they won’t have time enough.”

I have long ceased to understand who “They” are, who are “We.” I do not know what I want – whether I want them to have time enough, or not. One thing is clear to me: I-330 is now walking on the very edge – and any moment…

“But this is madness,” I say. “You – and the One State. It is like putting a hand over the muzzle of a gun and hoping to stop the bullet. It’s utter madness!”

A smile. “ ‘Everyone must lose his mind – the sooner the better.’ Somebody said this yesterday. Do you remember? Out there…”

Yes, I have it written down. Hence, it really happened. Silently I stare into her face: the dark cross is especially distinct on it now.

“Darling, before it is too late… If you want, I will leave everything, I will forget it all – let’s go together there, beyond the Wall, to those… whoever they are.”

She shook her head. Through the dark windows of her eyes, deep within her, I saw a flaming oven, sparks, tongues of fire leaping up, a heaping pile of dry wood. And it was clear to me: it was too late, my words would no longer avail…

She stood up. In a moment she would leave. These might be the last days – perhaps the last minutes… I seized her hand.

“No! Just a little longer – oh, for the sake… for the sake…”

She slowly raised my hand, my hairy hand which I hated so much, toward the light. I wanted to pull it away, but she held it firmly.

“Your hand… You don’t know – few know it – that there were women here, women of the city, who loved the others. You, too, must have some drops of sunny forest blood. Perhaps that’s why I…”

A silence. And strangely – this silence, this emptiness made my heart race madly. And I cried, “Ah! You will not go! You will not go until you tell me about them, because you love… them, and I don’t even know who they are, where they are from. Who are they? The half we have lost? H₂ and O? And in order to get H₂O – streams, oceans, waterfalls, waves, storms – the two halves must unite…”

I clearly remember every movement she made. I remember how she picked up from the table my glass triangle, and while I spoke, she pressed its sharp edge to her cheek; there was a white line on the cheek, then it had filled with pink and vanished. And how strange that I cannot recall her words, especially at first – only fragmentary images, colors.

I know that in the beginning she spoke about the Two Hundred Years’ War. I saw red on the green of grass, on dark clay, on blue snow – red, undrying pools. Then yellow, sun-parched grasses, naked, yellow, shaggy men and shaggy dogs – together, near swollen corpses, canine, or perhaps human… This, of course, outside the Wall. For the city had already conquered, the city had our present food, synthesized of petroleum.

And almost from the very sky, down to the ground – black, heavy, swaying curtains: slow columns of smoke, over woods, over villages. Stifled howling – black endless lines driven to the city – to be saved by force, to be taught happiness.

“You have almost known all this?”

“Yes, almost.”

“But you did not know – few knew – that a small remnant still survived, remained there, outside the Wall. Naked, they withdrew into the woods. They learned how to live from trees, from animals and birds, from flowers and the sun. They have grown a coat of fur, but under the fur they have preserved their hot, red blood. With you it’s worse: you’re overgrown with figures; figures crawl all over you like lice. You should be stripped of everything and driven naked into the woods. To learn to tremble with fear, with joy, with wild rage, with cold, to pray to fire. And we, Mephi – we want…”

“No, wait! ‘Mephi’? What’s ‘Mephi’?”

“Mephi? It is an ancient name, it’s he who… Do you remember – out there, the image of the youth drawn on the stone? Or no, I’ll try to say it in your language, it will be easier for you to understand. There are two forces in the world – entropy and energy. One leads to blissful quietude, to happy equilibrium; the other, to destruction of equilibrium, to tormentingly endless movement.

Entropy was worshiped as God by our – or, rather, your – ancestors, the Christians. But we anti-Christians, we…”

At this moment, there was a barely audible, a whispered knock at the door, and the man with the squashed face, with the forehead pushed low over his eyes, who had often brought me notes from I-330, burst into the room.

He rushed up to us, stopped, his breath hissing like an air pump, unable to say a word. He must have run at top speed.

“What is it! What happened?” She seized him by the hand.

“They’re coming-here…” he finally panted. “Guards… and with them that – oh, what d’you call him… like a hunchback…”

“S?”

“Yes! They’re right here, in the house. They’ll be here in a moment. Quick, quick!”

“Nonsense! There’s time…” She laughed, and in her eyes-sparks, gay tongues of flame.

It was either absurd, reckless courage – or something else, still unknown to me.

’For the Benefactor’s sake! But you must realize – this is…”

“For the Benefactor’s sake?” A sharp triangle – a smile.

“Well,. then… for my sake… I beg you.”

“Ah, and I still had to talk to you about a certain matter… Oh, well, tomorrow…”

She gaily (yes, gaily) nodded to me; the other, coming out for a fraction of a second from under his forehead, nodded too. And then I was alone.

Quick, to the table. I opened my notes, picked up a pen. They must find me at this work, for the benefit of the One State. And suddenly – every hair on my head came alive and separate, stirring: What if they take it and read at least one page – of these, the last ones?

I sat at the table, motionless – and saw the trembling of the walls, the trembling of the pen in my hands, the swaying, blurring of the letters…

Hide it? But where? Everything is glass. Burn it? But they will see from the next rooms, from the hall. And then, I could not, I was no longer able to destroy this anguished – perhaps most precious – piece of myself.

From the distance, in the corridor, voices, steps. I only managed to snatch a handful of the sheets and thrust them under myself. And now I was riveted to the chair, which trembled with every atom. And the floor under my feet – a ship’s deck. Up and down…

Shrinking into a tiny lump, huddling under the shelter of my own brow, I saw stealthily, out of the corner of my eye, how they went from room to room, beginning at the right end of the hallway, and coming nearer, nearer… Some sat benumbed, like me; others jumped up to meet them, throwing their doors wide open – lucky ones! If I could also…

“The Benefactor is the most perfect disinfection, essential to mankind, and therefore in the organism of the One State no peristalsis…” With a jumping pen I squeezed out this utter nonsense, bending ever lower over the table, while in my head there was a crazy hammering, and with my back I heard the door handle click. A gust of air. The chair under me danced…

With an effort I tore myself away from the page and turned to my visitors. (How difficult it is to play games… Who spoke to me of games today?) They were led by S. Glumly, silently, quickly his eyes bored wells in me, in my chair, in the pages quivering under my hand. Then, for a second-familiar, everyday faces on the threshold, one separating from among them – inflated, pink-brown gills…

I recalled everything that had taken place in this room half an hour ago, and it was clear to me that in a moment she… My whole being throbbed and pulsed in that (fortunately, untransparent) part of my body which covered the manuscript.

U approached S from behind, cautiously touched his sleeve, and said in a low voice, “This is D-503, the Builder of the Integral. You must have heard of him. He is always working here, at his table… Doesn’t spare himself at all!”

And I had… What an extraordinary, marvelous woman.

S slid over to me, bent over my shoulder, over the table. I tried to cover the writing with my elbow, but he shouted sternly, “You will show me what you have there, instantly!”

Flushed with shame, I held the paper out to him. He read it, and I saw a smile slip out of his eyes, flick down his face, and settle somewhere in the right corner of his lips, with a faint quiver of its tail…

“Somewhat ambiguous. Nevertheless… Well, continue: we shall not disturb you any more.”

He plashed away, like paddles on water, toward the door, and every step he made returned to me gradually my feet, my hands, my fingers. My soul again spread equally throughout my body. I was able to breathe.

And the last thing: U lingered a moment in my room, came over to me, bent to my ear, and in a whisper, “It’s your luck that I…”

What did she mean by that?

Later in the evening I learned that they had taken away three numbers. However, no one speaks aloud about this, or about anything that is happening these days (the educational influence of the Guardians invisibly present in our midst). Conversations deal chiefly with the rapid fall of the barometer and the change of weather.