I don’t know what title—Perhaps the whole synopsis may be called a cast-off cigarette-butt.
I awoke. A bright glare painful to look at. I half closed my eyes. My head seemed filled with some caustic blue smoke. Everything was enveloped in fog and through the fog:
“But I did not turn on the light … then how is it. …”
I jumped up. At the table, leaning her chin on her hand and smiling, was I-330 , looking at me.
She was at the very table at which I am now writing. Those ten or fifteen minutes are already behind me, cruelly twisted into a very firm spring. Yet it seems to me that the door closed after her only a second ago and that I could still overtake her and grasp her hand—and that she might laugh out and say. …
I-330 was at the table. I rushed towards her.
“You? You! I have been. … I saw your room. … I thought you. …” But midway I hurt myself upon the sharp, motionless spears of her eyelashes and I stopped. I remembered: she looked at me in the same way before—in the Integral . It was urgent to tell her everything in one second and in such a way that she should believe—or she would never. …
“Listen, I-330 , I must. … I must … everything! No, no, one moment—let me have a glass of water first.”
My mouth was as dry as though it were lined with blotting paper. I poured a glass of water but I could not. … I put the glass back upon the table, and with both hands firmly grasped the carafe.