“Yes, you are right, I am sick,” I said with joy (that seems to me an inexplicable contradiction; there was nothing to be joyful about).
“You must go at once to the doctor. You understand that; you are obliged to be healthy; it seems strange to have to prove it to you.”
“My dear O-, of course you are right. Absolutely right.”
I did not go to the Bureau of the Guardians; I could not; I had to go to the Medical Bureau; they kept me there until seventeen o’clock.
In the evening (incidentally, the Bureau of Guardians is closed evenings)—in the evening O- came to see me. The curtains were not lowered.
We busied ourselves with the arithmetical problems of an ancient text-book. This occupation always calms and purifies our thoughts. O- sat over her note book, her head slightly inclined to the left; she was so assiduous that she poked out her left cheek with the tongue from within. She looked so child-like, so charming.... I felt everything in me was pleasant, precise and simple.
She left. I remained alone. I breathed deeply two times (it is very good exercise before retiring for the night). Suddenly,—an unexpected odor reminiscent of something very disagreeable! I soon found out what was the matter: a branch of lily-of-the-valley was hidden in my bed. Immediately everything was aroused again, came up from the bottom. Decidedly, it was tactless on her part surreptitiously to put these lilies-of-the-valley there. Well, true I did not go; I didn’t, but was it my fault that I felt indisposed?
RECORD EIGHT
An Irrational Root
R-13
The Triangle
It was long ago during my school-days, when I first encountered the square-root of minus one. I remember it all very clearly; a bright globe-like class hall, about a hundred round heads of children and Plappa—our mathematician. We nicknamed him Plappa; it was a very much used-up mathematician, loosely screwed together; as the member of the class who was on duty that day would be putting the plug into the socket behind we would hear at first from the megaphone, “Plap-plap-plap-plap—tshshsh....” Only then the lesson would follow. One day Plappa told us about irrational numbers, and I remember I wept and banged the table with my fist and cried, “I do not want that square-root of minus one; take that square-root of minus one away!” This irrational root grew into me as something strange, foreign, terrible; it tortured me; it could not be thought out. It could not be defeated because it was beyond reason.