Then—streets empty as if swept by a plague. I remember I stumbled over something disgustingly soft, yielding yet motionless. I bent down—a corpse. It was lying flat, the legs apart. The face. … I recognized the thick negro lips which even now seemed to sprinkle with laughter. His eyes, firmly screwed in, laughed into my face. One second. … I stepped over him and ran. I could no longer. … I had to have everything done as soon as possible, or else I felt I would break, I would break in two like an overloaded sail. …
Luckily it was not more than twenty steps away; I already saw the sign with the golden letters: “The Bureau of Guardians.” At the door I stopped for a moment to gulp down as much air as I could and stepped in.
Inside, in the corridor stood an endless chain of numbers, holding small sheets of paper and heavy notebooks. They moved slowly, advancing a step or two and stopping again. I began to be tossed about along the chain, my head was breaking to pieces; I pulled them by the sleeves, I implored them as a sick man implores to be given something that would even at the price of sharpest pain end everything, forever.
A woman with a belt tightly clasped around her waist over the unif and with two distinctly protruding squatty hemispheres tossing about as if she had eyes on them, chuckled at me:
“He has a bellyache! Show him to the room second door to the right!”
Everybody laughed, and because of that laughter something rose in my throat; I felt I should either scream or … or. …
Suddenly from behind someone touched my elbow. I turned around. Transparent wing-ears! But they were not pink as usual; they were purplish red; his Adam’s apple was tossing about as though ready to tear the covering. …