Dying with shame, I held out the sheet of paper. He read it over, and I noticed a tiny smile jump
out of his eyes, jump down his face and slightly wagging its tail, perch upon the right angle of his mouth....
“Somewhat ambiguous, yet.... Well, you may continue; we shall not disturb you any more.”
He went splashing towards the door as if in a ditch of water. And with every step of his I felt coming back to me my legs, my arms, my fingers,—my soul again distributed itself evenly over my whole body; I breathed....
The last thing: U- lingered in my room to come back to me and say in my very ear in a whisper: “It is lucky for you that I....”
I did not understand. What did she mean by that? The same evening I learned that they led away three Numbers, although nobody speaks out loud about that, or about anything that happened. This ostensible silence is due to the educational influence of the Guardians who are ever present among us. Conversations deal chiefly with the quick fall of the barometer and the forthcoming change in the weather.
RECORD TWENTY-NINE
Threads on the Face
Sprouts
An Unnatural Compression
It is strange: the barometer continues to fall yet there is no wind. There is quiet. Above, the storm which we do not yet hear has begun. The clouds are rushing with a terrific speed. There are few of them as yet; separate fragments; it is as if there above us an unknown city were being destroyed and pieces of walls and towers were rushing down, coming nearer and nearer with terrific speed, but it will take some days of rushing through the blue infinite before they reach the bottom, that is us, below. And below there is silence.
There are thin, incomprehensible, almost invisible threads in the air; every autumn they are brought here from beyond the Wall. They float slowly, and suddenly you feel something foreign and invisible on your face; you want to brush it off, but no, you cannot rid yourself of it. You feel it especially near the Green Wall, where I was this morning. I-330 made an appointment with me to meet her in the Ancient House in that “Apartment” of ours.