that even your Integral will be unable to lift the cargo. ‘Every day from eight to eleven’ …” R- wagged his head and scratched the back of it. The back of his head is square; it looks like a little valise (I recalled for some reason an ancient painting In the Cab ). I felt more lively.
“You too are writing for the Integral ? Tell me about it. What are you writing about? What did you write today, for instance?”
“Today I did not write; today I was busy with something else.” “B-b-busy” sprinkled straight into my face.
“What else?”
R- frowned. “What? What? Well, if you insist I’ll tell you. I was busy with the Death Sentence. I was putting the Death Sentence into verse. An idiot—and to be frank, one of our poets. … For two years we all lived side by side with him and nothing seemed wrong. Suddenly he went crazy. ‘I,’ said he, ‘am a genius! And I am above the law.’ All that sort of nonsense. … But it is not a thing to talk about.”