And now, at the very moment when we have caught up with that dream, when we hold it like this”: (He clenched his hand so, that if he had held a stone in it sap would have run out!) “At the moment when all that was left for us was to adorn our prize and distribute it amongst all in equal pieces, at that very moment you, you. …”
The cast-iron roar was suddenly broken off. I was as red as a piece of iron on an anvil, under the moulding sledgehammer. This seemed to have stopped for a second, hanging in air, and I waited, waited … until suddenly:
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-two.”
“Just double the age, and as simple as at sixteen! Listen. Is it possible that it really never occurred to you that they (we do not yet know their names but I am certain you will disclose them to us), that they were interested in you only as the Builder of the Integral ? only in order to be able through the use of you—”
“Don’t! Don’t!” I cried. But it was like protecting yourself with your hands and crying to a bullet: you may still be hearing your own “don’t” but the bullet meanwhile has burned you through, and writhing with pain, you are prostrated on the ground.
Yes, yes; the Builder of the Integral . … Yes, yes. … At once there came back to me the angry face of U- with twitching, brick-red gills, on that morning when both of them. …
I remember now, clearly, how I raised my eyes and laughed. A Socrates-like, bald-headed man was sitting before me; and small drops of sweat dotted the bald surface of his cranium.
How simple, how magnificently trivial everything was! How simple! Almost to the point of being ridiculous. Laughter was choking me and