She was somewhere behind me, near the closet door. The unif was rustling, falling. I was listening, all listening. I remembered,—no, it glistened in my mind for one hundredth of a second,—I once had to calculate the curve of a street membrane of a new type. (These membranes are handsomely decorated and are placed on all the avenues, registering all street conversations for the Bureau of Guardians.) I remembered a rosy concave, trembling membrane,—a strange being consisting of one organ only, an ear. I was at that moment such a membrane.
Now the “click” of the snap-button at her collar, at her breast, and ... lower. The glassy silk rustled over her shoulders and knees, over the floor. I heard—and this was clearer than actual seeing—I heard how one foot stepped out of the grayish-blue heap of silk, then the other.... Soon I’d hear the creak of the bed and ...
The tensely stretched membrane trembled and registered the silence,—no, the sharp hammer-like blows of the heart against the iron bars and endless pauses between beats. And I heard, saw, how she, behind me hesitated for a second, thinking.
The door of the closet.... It slammed; again silk ... silk....
“Well, all right.”
I turned around. She was dressed in a saffron-yellow dress of an ancient style. This was a thousand times worse than if she had not been dressed at all. Two sharp points, through the thin tissue glowing with rosiness, two burning embers piercing through ashes; two tender, round knees....
She was sitting in a low armchair. In front of her on a small square table, I noticed a bottle filled with something poisonously green and two small glasses on thin legs. In the corner of her mouth she had a very thin paper tube; she was ejecting smoke formed by the burning of that ancient smoking substance whose name I do not now remember.
The membrane was still vibrating. Within the sledge-hammer was pounding the red-hot iron bars of my chest. I heard distinctly every blow of the hammer, and ... what if she too heard it?
But she continued to produce smoke very calmly; calmly she looked at me; and nonchalantly she flicked ashes on the pink check!
With as much self-control as possible I asked, “If you still feel that way, why did you have me assigned to you? And why did you make me come here?”