A swiftly passing smile appeared on the thick lips.
“Yes, yes, I understand, I understand. I am familiar with all this, theoretically, of course. Good-bye.”
At the door he turned around like a little black ball, came back to the table and put a book upon it. “This is my latest book. I came to bring it to you. Almost forgot. Good-bye.” (“b” like a splash.) The little ball rolled out.
I am alone. Or, to be more exact, I am tête-à-tête with that other self. I sit in the armchair and having crossed my legs, I watch curiously
from some indefinite “there,” how I (myself) am shrivelling in my bed!
Why, oh, why is it, that for three years R-, O-, and I were so friendly together and now suddenly—one word only about that other female, about I-330, and.... Is it possible that that insanity called love and jealousy does exist not only in the idiotic books of the ancients? What seems most strange is that I, I!... Equations, formulae, figures, and suddenly this! I can’t understand it, I can’t! Tomorrow I shall go to R- and tell him.... No, it isn’t true; I shall not go; neither tomorrow nor day after tomorrow, nor ever.... I can’t, I do not want to see him. This is the end. Our triangle is broken up.
I am alone. It is evening. There is a light fog. The sky is covered by a thin milky-golden tissue. If I only knew what is there—higher. If I only knew who I am. Which I am I?
RECORD TWELVE
The Delimitation of the Infinite
Angel
Meditations on Poetry
I continue to believe that I shall recover, that I may recover. I slept very well. No dreams or any other symptoms of disease. Dear O-90 will come tomorrow. Everything will again be simple, regular and limited like a circle. I am not afraid of this word “limited.” The work of the highest faculty of man, judgment, is always directed toward the constant limiting of the infinite, toward the breaking up of the infinite into comfortably digestible portions,—differentials. This is what gives divine beauty to my element, mathematics. And it is exactly this beauty that that other female lacks. But this last thought of mine is only an accidental mental association.