If only I had a mother as the ancients had,—my mother, mine, for whom I should be not the Builder of the Integral and not D-530, not a molecule of the United State but merely a living human piece, a piece of herself, a trampled, smothered, a cast-off piece.... And though I were driving the nails into the cross or being nailed to it (perhaps it is the same), she would hear what no one else could hear; her old grown-together wrinkled lips....
RECORD THIRTY-SEVEN
Infusorian
Doomsday
Her Room
This morning while we were in the refectory, my neighbor to my left whispered to me in a frightened tone:
“But why don’t you eat? Don’t you see, they are looking at you!”
I had to pluck up all my strength to show a smile. I felt it—like a crack in my face; I smiled and the borders of the crack drew apart wider and wider; it was quite painful.
What followed was this: no sooner had I lifted the small cube of paste upon my fork, than my fork jerked from my hand and tinkled against the plate, and at once the tables, the walls, the plates, the air even, trembled and rang; and outside too, an enormous, iron, round roar reaching the sky—floating over heads and houses it died away in the distance in small, hardly perceptible circles like those upon water.
I saw faces instantaneously grow faded and bleached; I saw mouths filled with food suddenly motionless and forks hanging in air. Then everything became confused, jumped off the centuries-old tracks, everybody jumped up from his place
(without singing the Hymn!) and confusedly, in disorder, hastily finishing chewing, choking, grasping one another.... They were asking: “What? What happened? What?...” And the disorderly fragments of the Machine which was once perfect and great, fell down in all directions,—down the elevators, down the stairs.... Stamping of feet.... Pieces of words like pieces of torn letters carried by the wind....
The same outpour from the neighboring houses. A minute later the avenue seemed like a drop of water under a microscope: the infusoria locked up in the transparent, glass-like drop of water were tossing around, to the sides, up and down.