Everything was in its place; life so simple, ordinary,
orderly. Glittering glass houses, pale glass sky, a greenish, motionless night. But under that cool glass something wild, something red and hairy, was silently seething. I was gasping for breath but I continued to run, so as not to be late.
Suddenly I felt that my badge which I had hurriedly pinned on, was detaching itself; it came off and fell to the sidewalk. I bent over to pick it up and in the momentary silence I heard somebody’s steps. I turned. Someone small and hunched was disappearing around the corner. At least so it seemed. I started to run as fast as I could. The wind whistled in my ears. At the entrance of my house I stopped and looked at the clock; one minute to twenty-two-thirty! I listened; nobody behind. It was my foolish imagination, the effect of the poison.
The night was full of torture. My bed seemed to lift itself under me, then to fall again, then up again! I used autosuggestion: “At night all the Numbers must sleep; sleeping at night is a duty just like working during the day. To sleep at night is necessary for the next day’s work. Not to sleep at night is criminal.” Yet I could not sleep—I could not. I was perishing! I was unable to fulfill my duties to the United State! I....
RECORD ELEVEN
No, I Can’t; Let It Be without Headings!
Evening. It is somewhat foggy. The sky is covered with a milky-golden tissue, and one cannot see what is there, beyond, on the heights. The ancients “knew” that the greatest, bored skeptic—their God, lived there. We know that crystalline, blue, naked, indecent Nothing is there. I do not know any more what is there. I have learned too many things of late. Knowledge, self-confident knowledge which is sure that it is faultless, is faith. I had firm faith in myself; I believed that I knew all about myself. But then.... I look in the mirror. And for the first time in my life, yes, for the first time in my life, I see clearly, precisely, consciously and with surprise, I see myself as some “him!” I am “he.” Frowning, black, straight brows; between them like a scar, there is a vertical wrinkle. (Was there that wrinkle before?) Steel gray eyes encircled by the shadow of a sleepless night. And behind that steel ... I understand; I never before knew what there was behind that steel. From there (this “there” is at once so near and so infinitely distant!) I look at myself—at “him.” And I know surely that “he” with his straight brows is a stranger, that I meet him here for the first time in my life. The real I is not he.
No. Period. All this is nonsense. And all these foolish emotions are only delirium, the result of last night’s poisoning.... Poisoning with what? With a sip of that green poison or with her? It matters little. I write all this merely in order to demonstrate how strangely the precise and sharp human reason may become confused. This reason, strong enough to make infinity which the ancients feared so much, understandable by means of.... The switch buzzes, “Number R-13.” Well, I am even glad; alone I should....
Twenty minutes later:
On the plane of this paper, in a world of two dimensions, these lines follow each other, but in another world they.... I am losing the sense for figures.... Twenty minutes! Perhaps two hundred or two hundred thousand!...