Yes, exactly, exactly! That is why I am afraid of I-330; I struggle against her, I don’t want.... But why is it that within me “I don’t want to” and “I want to” stand side by side? That is the chief horror of the matter; I continue to long for that happy death of yesterday. The horror of it is that even now, when I have integrated the logical function, when it becomes evident that the
latter contains death hidden in it, nevertheless I long for it with my lips, arms, breast, with every millimeter....
Tomorrow is the Day of Unanimity. She will certainly be there and I shall see her, though from a distance. That distance will be painful to me, for I must be, I am inevitably drawn, close to her, so that her hands, her shoulder, her hair.... I long for even that pain.... Let it come.... Great Well-Doer! How absurd to desire pain! Who is ignorant of the simple fact that pains are negative items which reduce that sum total we call happiness? Consequently ... Well, no “consequently” ... Emptiness.... Nakedness!
The Same Evening.
Through the glass wall of the house I see a disquieting, windy, feverishly pink, sunset. I move my armchair to avoid that pinkness and turn over these pages, and I find I am forgetting that I write this not for myself but for you unknown people whom I love and pity, for you who still lag centuries behind, below. Let me tell you about the Day of Unanimity, about that Great Day. I think that day for us is what Easter was for the ancients. I remember I used to prepare an hour-calendar the eve of that day; solemnly I would cross out every time the figure of the hour elapsed; nearer by one hour! one hour less
to wait!... If I were certain that nobody would discover it, I assure you I should now too, make out such a calendar and carry it with me, and I should watch how many hours remain until tomorrow, when I shall see, at least from a distance....
(I was interrupted. They brought me a new unif from the shop. As is customary, new unifs are given to us for tomorrow’s celebration. Steps in the hall, exclamations of joy, noises.)
I shall continue; tomorrow I shall see the same spectacle which we see year after year and which always awakes in us fresh emotions, as though we saw it for the first time: an impressive throng of piously lifted arms. Tomorrow is the day of the yearly election of the Well-Doer. Tomorrow we shall again hand over to our Well-Doer the keys to the impregnable fortress of our happiness. Certainly this in no way resembles the disorderly, unorganized election-days of the ancients, on which (it seems so funny!) they did not even know in advance the result of the election. To build a state on some non-discountable contingencies, to build blindly,—what could be more nonsensical? Yet centuries were required to pass before this was understood!
Needless to say, we in this respect as in all others have no place for contingencies; nothing unexpected can happen. The elections themselves have rather a symbolic meaning. They remind us that we are a united, powerful organism of
millions of cells, that—, to use the language of the “gospel” of the ancients, we are a united church. The history of the United State knows not a single case in which upon this solemn day even a solitary voice has dared to violate the magnificent unison.