female numbers seem to be incurably riddled with prejudices. You are totally incapable of thinking abstractly. You will pardon me, but it is plain stupidity.”
“You are going to the spies – ugh! And I have brought you a spray of lilies of the valley from the Botanical Museum…”
“Why this ‘and I’ – why the ‘and’? Just like a woman.” Angrily (I confess) I snatched her lilies of the valley. “All right, here they are, your lilies of the valley! Well? Smell them – it is pleasant, yes? Then why can’t you follow just this much logic? Lilies of the valley smell good. Very well. But you cannot speak of smell itself, of the concept ‘smell’ as either good or bad. You cannot, can you? There is the fragrance of lilies of the valley – and there is the vile stench of henbane: both are smells. There were spies in the ancient state – and there are spies in ours… yes, spies. I am not afraid of words. But it is clear that those spies were henbane, and ours are lilies of the valley. Yes, lilies of the valley!”
The pink crescent trembled. I realize now that it only seemed to me – but at that moment I was sure she would burst out laughing. And I shouted still more loudly, “Yes, lilies of the valley. And there is nothing funny about it, nothing at all.”
The smooth round spheres of heads floated by and turned to look. O took me gently by the arm. “You are so strange today… You are not ill?”
The dream – yellow – Buddha… It instantly became clear to me that I must go to the Medical Office.
“You are right, I’m ill,” I cried happily (an incomprehensible contradiction – there was nothing to be happy about).
“Then you must see a doctor at once. You understand yourself – it is your duty to be well. It would be ridiculous for me to try to prove it to you.”
“My dear O, of course you are right. Absolutely right!”
I did not go to the Office of the Guardians. It could not be helped, I had to go to the Medical Office; they kept me there until seventeen.
And in the evening (it was all the same now – in the evening the Office of the Guardians was closed) O came to me. The shades were not lowered. We were solving problems from an ancient mathematics textbook: it is very calming and helps to clear the mind. O-90 sat over the exercise book, her head bent to her left shoulder,’ her tongue diligently pushing out her left cheek. This was so childlike, so enchanting. And within me everything was pleasant, clear, and simple.
She left. I was alone. I took two deep breaths – this is very beneficial before bedtime. Then suddenly, an unscheduled smell, and again something disturbing… Soon I found it: a spray of lilies of the valley tucked into my bed. Immediately, everything swirled up, rose from the bottom. No, she was simply tactless to leave it there. Very well, I did not go! But it was not my fault that I was sick.
Eighth Entry
Topics: Irrational Root. R-13. Triangle
How long ago it was – during my school years – when I first encountered V-l. A vivid memory, as though cut out of time: the brightly lit spherical hall, hundreds of round boys’ heads, and Plapa, our mathematics teacher. We nicknamed him Plapa. He was badly worn out, coming apart, and when the monitor plugged him in, the loudspeakers would always start with “Pla-pla-pla-tsh-sh sh,” and only then go on to the day’s lesson. One day Plapa told us about irrational numbers, and, I remember, I cried, banged my fists on the table, and screamed, “I don’t want V”!! Take V-1 out of me!” This irrational number had grown into me like something foreign, alien, terrifying. It devoured me – it was impossible to conceive, to render harmless, because it was outside ratio.
And now again V-1. I’ve just glanced through my notes, and it is clear to me: I have been dodging, lying to myself – merely to avoid seeing the V-1 – It’s nonsense that I was sick, and all the rest of it. I could have gone there. A week ago, I am sure, I would have gone without a moment’s hesitation. But now? Why?
Today, too. Exactly at sixteen-ten I stood before the sparkling glass wall. Above me, the golden, sunny, pure gleam of the letters on the sign over the Office. Inside, through the glass, I saw the long line of bluish unifs. Faces glowing like icon lamps in an ancient church: they had come to perform a great deed, to surrender upon the altar of the One State their loved ones, their friends, themselves. And I – I longed to join them, to be with them. And could not: my feet were welded deep into the glass slabs of the pavement, and I stood staring dully, incapable of moving from the spot.
“Ah, our mathematician! Dreaming?”
I started. Black eyes, lacquered with laughter; thick, Negroid lips. The poet R-13, my old friend – and with him, pink O.
I turned angrily. If they had not intruded, I think I finally would have torn the V-1 out of myself with the flesh, and entered the Office.
“Not dreaming. Admiring, if you wish!” I answered sharply.
“Certainly, certainly! By rights, my good friend, you should not be a mathematician; you ought to be a poet! Yes! Really, why not transfer to us poets, eh? How would you like that? I can arrange it in a moment, eh?”
R-13 speaks in a rush of words; they spurt out in a torrent and spray comes flying from his thick lips. Every “p” is a fountain; “poets” – a fountain.
“I have served and will continue to serve knowledge,” I frowned. I neither like nor understand jokes, and R-13 has the bad habit of joking.
“Oh, knowledge! This knowledge of yours is only cowardice. Don’t argue, it’s true. You’re simply trying to enclose infinity behind a wall, and you are terrified to glance outside the wall. Yes! Just try and take a look, and you will shut your eyes. Yes!”
“Walls are the foundation of all human…” I began.
R spurted at me like a fountain. O laughed roundly, rosily. I waved them off – laugh if you please, it doesn’t matter to me. I had other things to think about I had to do something to expunge, to drown out that damned V-1.
“Why not come up to my room,” I suggested. “We can do some mathematical problems.” I thought of that quiet hour last evening – perhaps it would be quiet today as well.
O glanced at R-13, then at me with clear, round eyes. Her cheeks flushed faintly with the delicate, exciting hue of our coupons.
“But today I… Today I am assigned to him,” she nodded at R, “and in the evening he is busy… So that…”
R’s wet, lacquered lips mumbled good-humoredly “Oh, half an hour will be enough for us. Right, O? I don’t care for your problems, let’s go up to my place for a while.”
I was afraid to remain alone with myself, or rather, with that new, foreign being who merely by some odd chance had my number – D-503. And I went with them to R’s place. True, he is not precise, not rhythmical, he has a kind of inside-out, mocking logic; nevertheless, we are friends. Three years ago we had chosen together the charming, rosy O. This bound us even more firmly than our school years.
Then, up in R’s room. Everything would seem to be exactly the same as mine: the Table, the glass chairs, the closet, the bed. But the moment R entered, he moved one chair, another – and all planes became displaced, everything slipped out of the established proportions, became non-Euclidean. R is the same as ever. In Taylor and in mathematics he was always at the bottom of the class.
We recalled old Plapa, the little notes of thanks we boys would paste all over his glass legs (we were very fond of him). We reminisced about our law instructor.[3] This instructor had an extraordinarily powerful voice; it was as though blasts of violent wind blew from the loud-speaker – and we children yelled the texts after him in deafening chorus. We also recalled how the unruly R-13 once stuffed his speaker with chewed-up paper, and every text came with a shot of a spitball. R was punished, of course; what he had done was bad, of course, but now we laughed heartily – our whole triangle – and I confess, I did too.
“What