After twenty-one-thirty o’clock I had a free hour. I could therefore have gone to the office of
the Guardians to make my report; but after that stupid adventure I was so tired—besides, the law provides two days. I shall have time tomorrow; I have another twenty-four hours.
RECORD SEVEN
An Eyelash
Taylor
Henbane and Lily of the Valley
Night. Green, orange, blue. The red royal instrument. The yellow dress. Then a brass Buddha. Suddenly it lifted the brass eyelids and sap began to flow from it, from Buddha. Sap also from the yellow dress. Even in the mirror,—drops of sap, and from the large bed and from the children’s bed and soon from myself.... It is horror, mortally sweet horror!...
I woke up. Soft blue light, the glass of the walls, of the chairs, of the table was glimmering. This calmed me. My heart stopped palpitating. Sap! Buddha! How absurd! I am sick, it is clear; I never saw dreams before. They say that to see dreams was a common normal thing with the ancients. Yes, after all, their life was a whirling carousel: green, orange, Buddha, sap,—but we, people of today, we know all too well that dreaming is a serious mental disease. I.... Is it possible that my brain, this precise, clean, glittering mechanism, like a chronometer without a speck of dust on it, is...? Yes it is, now. I really feel there in the brain some foreign body like an eyelash in the eye. One does not feel one’s
whole body but this eye with a hair in it, one cannot forget it for a second....
The cheerful, crystalline sound of the bell at my head. Seven o’clock. Time to get up. To the right and to the left as in mirrors, to the right and to the left through the glass walls I see others like myself, other rooms like my own, other clothes like my own, movements like mine, duplicated thousands of times. This invigorates me; I see myself as a part of an enormous, vigorous, united body; and what precise beauty! Not a single superfluous gesture, or bow, or turn. Yes, this Taylor was undoubtedly the greatest genius of the ancients. True, he did not come to the idea of applying his method to the whole life, to every step throughout the twenty-four hours of the day; he was unable to integrate his system from one o’clock to twenty-four. I cannot understand the ancients. How could they write whole libraries about some Kant and take notice only slightly of Taylor, of this prophet who saw ten centuries ahead?
Breakfast was over. The hymn of the United State had been harmoniously sung; rhythmically, four abreast we walked to the elevators, the motors buzzed faintly and swiftly we went down—down—down, the heart sinking slightly. Again that stupid dream or some unknown function of that dream. Oh, yes! Yesterday in the aero, then down—down! Well, it is all over, anyhow. Period. It is very fortunate that I was so firm and brusque with her.
The car of the underground railway carried me swiftly to the place where the motionless, beautiful body of the Integral, not yet spiritualized by fire, was glittering in the docks in the sunshine. With closed eyes I dreamed in formulae. Again I calculated in my mind what was the initial velocity required to tear away the Integral from the earth. Every second the mass of the Integral would change because of the expenditure of the explosive fuel. The equation was very complex with transcendant figures. As in a dream I felt, right here in the firm calculated world, how someone sat down at my side, barely touching me and saying, “Pardon.” I opened my eyes. At first, apparently because of an association with the Integral, I saw something impetuously flying into the distance: a head; I saw pink wing-ears sticking out on the sides of it, then the curve of the overhanging back of the head, the double-curved letter S.