“Here....” I held out the pink check, “... I received the notification this noon and here I am!”
“How punctual you are! Just a minute please, may I? Sit down. I shall finish in a minute.”
She lowered her eyes to the letter. What had she there, behind her lowered curtains? What would she say? What would she do in a second? How to learn it? How to calculate it, since she comes from beyond, from the wild ancient land of dreams? I looked at her in silence. My ribs were iron bars. The space for the heart was too small.... When she speaks her face is like a swiftly revolving, glittering wheel; you cannot see the separate bars. But at that moment the wheel was motionless. I saw a strange combination: dark eyebrows running right to the temples—a sharp, mocking triangle; and still another dark triangle with its apex upward—two deep wrinkles from the nose to the angles of the mouth. And these two triangles somehow contradicted each other. They gave the whole face that disagreeable, irritating X, or cross; a face obliquely marked by a cross.
The wheel started to turn; its bars blurred.
“So you did not go to the Bureau of Guardians after all?”
“I did ... I did not feel well ... I could not.”
“Yes? I thought so; something must have prevented you, matters little what (sharp teeth—a smile). But now you are in my hands. You remember: ‘Any Number who within forty-eight hours fails to report to the Bureau is considered....’”
My heart banged so forcibly that the iron bars bent. If I were not sitting ... like a little boy,
how stupid! I was caught like a little boy and stupidly I kept silent. I felt I was in a net; neither my legs nor my arms....
She stood up and stretched herself lazily. She pressed the button and the curtains on all four walls fell with a slight rustle. I was cut off from the rest of the world, alone with her.