would stop for a second, hang before me in the air and disappear without trace. It was as if the black, precise letters on this page should suddenly move apart and begin to jump hither and thither in fright, so that there was not a word on the page, only nonsensical “ap,” “jum,” “wor.” The crowd seemed just as nonsensical, dispersed (not in rows), going forward, backward, diagonally, transversely. …
Then nobody. For a second while I was dashing at full speed, suddenly stopping, I saw on the second floor in the glass cage hanging in the air—a man and a woman—a kiss; she standing with her whole body bent backward brokenly: “This is for the last time, forever. …”
At a corner a thorny, moving bush of heads. Above the heads, separate, floating in the air, a banner: “Down with the machines! Down with the Operation!” And (distinct from my own self) I thought: “Is it possible that each one of us bears such a pain, that it can be removed only with his heart. … That something must be done to each one, before he. …” For a second everything disappeared for me from the world, except my beast-like hand with the heavy cast-iron package it held. …
A boy appeared. He was running, a shadow under his lower lip. The lower lip turned out like the cuff of a rolled-up sleeve. His face was distorted; he wept loudly; he was running away from somebody. Stamping of feet was heard behind him. …
The boy reminded me: “ U- must be in school. I must hurry!” I ran to the nearest opening of the Underground Railway. At the entrance someone passed me and said, “Not running. No trains today … there!” I descended. A sort of general delirium was reigning. The glitter of cut-crystal suns; the platform packed closely with heads. An empty, torpid train.
In the silence—a voice. I could not see her but I knew, I knew that intense, living, flexible, whip-like, flogging voice! I felt there that sharp triangle of brows drawn to the temples. …