Through the wall to my left a she-number before the mirror-door of the closet; she is hastily unbuttoning her unif. For a second, swiftly--eyes, lips, two sharp, pink ... the curtains fell. Within me instantly awoke all that happened yesterday and now I no longer know what I meant to say by "besides...." I no longer wish to;--I cannot. I want one thing. I want I-330. I want her every minute, every second, to be with me, with no one else. All that I wrote about Unanimity is of no value; it is not what I want; I have a desire to cross it out, to tear it to pieces and throw it away. For I know (be it a sacrilege, yet it is the truth), that a glorious Day is possible only with her and only then when we are side by side, shoulder to shoulder. Without her the Sun of tomorrow will appear to me only as a little circle cut out of a tin sheet, and the sky a sheet of tin painted blue, and I myself ... I snatched the telephone receiver.
"Perhaps not too late yet. I want to ask you ... I want you to be with me tomorrow--dear!"
"Dear" I said in a very low voice. And for some reason a thing I saw this morning at the docks flashed through my mind: just for fun someone put a watch under the hundred-ton sledge-hammer.... A swing, a breath of wind in the face and the silent hundred-ton, knife-like weight on the breakable watch....
A silence. I thought I heard someone's whisper in I-330's room. Then her voice:
"No, I cannot. Of course you understand that I myself.... No, I cannot. 'Why?' You shall see tomorrow."
The Descent from Heaven The Greatest Catastrophe in History The Known--Is Ended
At the beginning all arose, and the hymn, like a solemn mantle, slowly waved above our heads. Hundreds of tubes of the Musical Tower and millions of human voices. For a second I forgot everything; I forgot that alarming something at which I-330 hinted in connection with today's celebration; I think I even forgot about her. At that moment I was the very same little boy who once wept because of a tiny ink-stain on his unif, which no one else could see. Even if it be so, if nobody sees that I am covered with black, ineffaceable stains, I know it, do I not? I know that there should be no place for a criminal like me among these frank open faces. What if I should rush forward and shout out all at once everything about myself! The end might follow. Let it! At least for a second I would feel myself clear and clean and senseless like that innocent blue sky....