Downstairs in the hall the controller sat at a small table, constantly looking at her watch and recording the Numbers who were leaving. Her name is U- ... well, I prefer not to give her Number, for I fear I may not write kindly about her. Although, as a matter of fact, she is a very respectable, mature woman. The only thing I do not like in her is that her cheeks fold down a little like gills of a fish (although I do not see anything wrong in this appearance). She scratched with her pen and I saw on the page “D-503”—and suddenly, splash! an ink-blot. No sooner did I open my mouth to call her attention to that, than she raised her head and blotted me with an inky smile. “There is a letter for you. You will receive it, dear. Yes, yes, you will.”
I knew a letter, after she had read it, must go through the Bureau of the Guardians (I think it is
unnecessary to explain in detail this natural order of things); I would receive it not later than twelve o’clock. But that tiny smile confused me; the drop of ink clouded the transparency of the distilled solution. At the dock of the Integral I could not concentrate; I even made a mistake in my calculations,—that never happened to me before.
At twelve o’clock, again the rosy-brown fish-gills’ smile, and at last the letter was in my hands. I cannot say why I did not read it right there, but I put it in my pocket and ran into my room. I opened it and glanced it over and ... and sat down. It was the official notification advising me that Number I-330 had had me assigned to her and that today at twenty-one o’clock, I was to go to her. Her address was given.
“No! After all that happened! After I showed her frankly my attitude toward her! Besides, how could she know that I did not go to the Bureau of the Guardians? She had no way of knowing that I was ill and could not.... And despite all this....”
A dynamo was whirling and buzzing in my head. Buddha ... yellow ... lilies-of-the-valley ... rosy crescent.... Besides,—besides, O- wanted to come to see me today! I am sure she would not believe (how could one believe), that I had absolutely nothing to do with the matter, that ... I am sure also that we (O- and I) will have a difficult, foolish and absolutely illogical
conversation. No, anything but that! Let the situation solve itself mechanically; I shall send her a copy of this official communication.
While I was hastily putting the paper in my pocket, I noticed my terrible ape-like hand. I remembered how that day during our walk, she took my hand and looked at it. Is it possible that she really ... that she....
A quarter to twenty-one. A white northern night. Everything was glass,—greenish. But it was a different kind of glass, not like ours, not genuine but very breakable,—a thin glass shell and within that shell things were flying, whirling, buzzing. I should not have been surprised if suddenly the cupola of the auditorium had risen in slow, rolling clouds of smoke; or if the ripe moon had sent an inky smile,—like that one at the little table this morning; or if in all the houses suddenly all the curtains had been lowered and behind the curtains....
I felt something peculiar; my ribs were like iron bars that interfered, decidedly interfered, with my heart, giving it too little space. I stood at a glass door on which were the golden letters I-330; I-330 sat at the table with her back to me; she was writing something. I stepped in.