Thirty-fifth Entry

Topics: In a Hoop. A Carrot. A Murder

I did not sleep all night. All night – a single thought…

Since yesterday, my head is tightly bandaged. But no: it’s not a bandage – it is a hoop; a merciless tight hoop of glass steel riveted to my head, and I am caught within this single, locked circle: I must kill U. Kill her, and then go to the other and say, “Now you believe?” The most disgusting thing of all is that killing is somehow messy, primitive. Crushing her skull with something – it gives me a strange sensation of something sickeningly sweet in the mouth, and I cannot swallow my saliva, I keep spitting it out into my handkerchief, and my mouth is dry.

In my closet there was a heavy piston rod which had snapped in the casting (I had to examine the structure of the breach under the microscope). I rolled up my notes into a tube (let her read all of me – to the last letter), slipped the rod into the tube, and went downstairs. The staircase was interminable, the stairs disgustingly slippery, liquid; I wiped my lips with my handkerchief all the time…

Below. My heart thumped. I stopped, pulled out the rod, and walked to the control table…

U was not there: an empty, icy board. I remembered – all work was stopped today; everyone was to report for the Operation. Of course, there was no reason for her to be here – no one to register.

In the street. Wind. A sky of flying cast-iron slabs. And – as at a certain moment yesterday – the world was split into sharp, separate, independent fragments, and each, as it hailed down, halted for a second, hung before me in the air – and vanished without a trace.

It was as though the precise, black letters on this page were suddenly to slide off, scatter in terror – here, there – and not a single word, nothing but a senseless jumble: fright-skip-jump… The crowd in the street was also like that-scattered, not in rows – moving forward, back, aslant, across.

And now no one. And for an instant, rushing headlong, everything stood still. There, on the second floor, in a glass cage suspended in the air, a man and a woman – kissing as they stood, her whole body brokenly bent backward. This – forever, for the last time…

At some corner, a stirring, spiky bush of heads. Over the heads – separately, in the air – a banner, words: “Down with the machines! Down with the Operation!” And apart (from me) – I, with a fleeting thought: Is everybody filled with pain that can be torn from within only together with his heart? Must everybody do something, before… And for a second there was nothing in the world except my brutish hand with its heavy, cast iron roll…

A small boy – all of him thrust forward, a shadow under his lower lip. The lower lip is turned out like the cuff of a rolled-up sleeve. His whole face is distorted, turned inside out – he is crying loudly, rushing from someone at full speed – and the stamping of feet behind him…

The boy reminded me: yes, U must be at school today, I must hurry. I ran to the nearest stairs to the underground.

In the doorway, someone, rushing past: “Not running! Trains aren’t running today! There…”

I went down. Utter delirium. Glitter of faceted, crystal suns. Platform densely packed with heads. An empty, motionless train.

And in the silence – a voice. Hers. I could not see her, but I knew this firm, pliant voice like a striking whip – and somewhere, the sharp triangle of eyebrows raised to temples…

I shouted, “Let me! Let me through! I must…”

But someone’s fingers dug into my arms, my shoulders, like a vise, nailing me down. In the silence, the voice: “Run upstairs! They’ll cure you, they’ll stuff you full of rich, fat happiness, and, sated, you will doze off peacefully, snoring in perfect unison – don’t you hear that mighty symphony of snores? Ridiculous people! They want to free you of every squirming, torturing, nagging question mark. And you are standing here and listening to me. Hurry upstairs, to the Great Operation! What is it to you if I stay here – alone? What is it to you if I don’t want others to want for me, if I want to want myself – if I want the impossible…”

Another voice – slow, heavy: “Ah! The impossible? That means running after your stupid fantasies, which wag their tails before your nose? No, we’ll grab them by the tail, and crush them, and then…”

“And then gobble them up and snore – and there will have to be a new tail before your nose. They say the ancients had an animal they called an ass. To force it to go forward, ever forward, they would tie a carrot to the harness shaft before him, just where he could not reach it. And if he reached it and gobbled it down…”

Suddenly the vise released me. I rushed to the middle, where she was speaking. But at that moment everybody surged, crushed together – there was a shout behind: “They’re coming, they’re coming here!” The light flared, went out – someone had cut the wire. An avalanche of bodies, screams, groans, heads, fingers…

I don’t know how long we rolled so through the underground tube. At last, stairs, a dim light, growing lighter – and once more out in the street, fanlike, in all directions.

And now – alone. Wind, gray twilight – low, just overhead. On the wet glass of the pavement – deep, deep – the upside-down lights, walls, figures moving feet up. And the incredibly heavy roll in my hand-pulling me into the depths, to the very bottom.

Downstairs, at the table, – there was still no U, and her room was empty, dark.

I went up to my room, switched on the light. My temples throbbed in the tight circle of the hoop, I was still locked within the same circle: the table, on the table the white roll; bed, door, table, white roll… In the room on the left the shades were down. On the right, over a book – a knobby bald head, the forehead a huge yellow parabola. The wrinkles on the forehead – a row of yellow, illegible lines. Sometimes our eyes would meet, and then I felt: they were about me, those yellow lines.

It happened exactly at 21. U came to me herself. Only one thing remains clear in my memory: I breathed so loudly that I heard my own breathing, and tried and tried to lower it – and could not.

She sat down, smoothed her unif on her knees. The pink-brown gills fluttered.

“Ah, my dear – so it is true that you were hurt? As soon as I learned – I immediately…”

The rod was before me on the table. I sprang up, breathing still more loudly. She heard it, halted in mid-sentence, and also, for some reason, stood up. I saw already that place on her head… A sickening sweetness in my mouth… My handkerchief – but it wasn’t there; I spat on the floor.

The one behind the right wall – with yellow, intent wrinkles – about me. He must not see, it will be still more disgusting if he sees… I pressed the button – what difference if I had no right to, it was all the same now – the shades fell.

She evidently understood, dashed to the door. But I anticipated her – and, breathing loudly, my eyes fixed every moment on that spot on her head…

“You… you’ve gone mad! Don’t dare…” She backed away – sat down, or, rather, fell on the bed, thrust her folded hands between her knees, trembling. Tense as a spring, still holding her firmly with my eyes, I slowly stretched my hand to the table – only my hand moved – and seized the rod.

“I beg you! One day – only one day! Tomorrow-tomorrow I’ll go and do everything…”

What was she talking about? I swung at her…

And I consider that I killed her. Yes, you, my unknown readers, you have the right to call me a murderer. I know I would have brought the rod down on her head if suddenly she had not cried, “Please… for the sake… I agree – I… in a moment”

With shaking hands she pulled off her unif. The large, yellow, flabby body fell back on the bed… And only now I understood: she thought I had lowered the shades… that I wanted…

This was so unexpected, so absurd, that I burst out laughing. At once the tigthly wound spring within me cracked, my hand hung limp, the rod clanked on the floor. And I learned from my own experience that laughter was the most potent weapon: laughter can kill everything – even murder.

I sat at the table and laughed – a desperate, final laugh – and could see no way out of this preposterous situation. I don’t know how it all would have ended if it had proceeded in a normal way – but suddenly a new, external component was added: the telephone rang.

I rushed, grasped the receiver. Perhaps it was she? But an unfamiliar voice said, “Just a moment”.

A tormenting, endless hum. From a distance, a heavy tread, coming nearer, more resonant, more leaden. Then “D-503? Uh-uh… This is the Benefactor speaking. Report to me at once!”

Clink – the receiver was down – clink.

U still lay on the bed, eyes closed, gills spread wide in a smile. I gathered up her dress from the floor, flung it at her, and, through my teeth, “Here! Quick, quick!”

She raised herself on her elbow, her breasts swished sideways, eyes round, all of her waxen.

“What?”

“Just that. Well, hurry – get dressed!”

All doubled up into a knot, clutching her dress, her voice strangled. “Turn away…”

I turned, leaned my forehead against the glass. Lights, figures, sparks trembled in the black wet mirror. No, it is I, the trembling is within me… Why did He call me? Does He already know everything about her, about me, about everything?

U, dressed, was at the door. Two steps to her, and I squeezed her hands as though expecting to squeeze out everything I needed from those hands.

“Listen… Her name-you know whom I mean-did you name her? No? But only the truth – I must know… I don’t care – only the truth…”

“No.”

“No? But why – since you had gone there and reported…”

Her lower lip was suddenly turned out, like that boy’s – and from the cheeks, down the cheeks-drops…

“Because I… I was afraid that… if I named her… you might… you would stop lov-… Oh, I can’t – I couldn’t have…”

I knew it was the truth. An absurd, ridiculous, human truth! I opened the door.