“I saw you on the Day of Unanimity.”
“I saw you, too.” I at once remembered; below, in a narrow passage she had stood, pressing herself to the wall, protecting her abdomen with her arms, and automatically I glanced now at her abdomen which rounded the unif. She must have noticed, for she became pink, and with a rosy smile:
“I am so happy … so happy! I am so full of … you understand, I am … I walk and I hear nothing around me. … And all the while I listen within, within me. …”
I was silent. Something foreign was shadowing my face and I was unable to rid myself of it. Suddenly, all shining, light blue, she caught my hand; I felt her lips upon it. … It was for the first time in my life. … It was some ancient caress as yet unknown to me. … And I was so ashamed and it pained me so much that I swiftly, I think even roughly, pulled my hand away.
“Listen, you are crazy, it seems. … And anyway you … what are you happy about? Is it possible that you forget what is ahead of you? If not now, then within a month or two. …”
Her light went out, her roundness sagged and shrank. And in my heart an unpleasant, even a painful compression, mixed with pity. Our heart is nothing else than an ideal pump: a compression, i.e. , a shrinking at the moment of pumping, is a technical absurdity. Hence it is clear how essentially absurd, unnatural and pathological are all these “loves” and “pities,” etc. , etc. , which create that compression. …
Silence. To the left the cloudy green glass of the Wall. And just ahead the dark red mass. Those two colors combined, gave me as a resultant what I thought was a splendid idea.