and sat down. It was the official notification advising me that Number I-330 had had me assigned to her and that today at twenty-one o’clock, I was to go to her. Her address was given.
“No! After all that happened! After I showed her frankly my attitude toward her! Besides, how could she know that I did not go to the Bureau of the Guardians? She had no way of knowing that I was ill and could not. … And despite all this. …”
A dynamo was whirling and buzzing in my head. Buddha … yellow … lilies-of-the-valley … rosy crescent. … Besides—besides, O- wanted to come to see me today! I am sure she would not believe (how could one believe), that I had absolutely nothing to do with the matter, that … I am sure also that we ( O- and I) will have a difficult, foolish and absolutely illogical conversation. No, anything but that! Let the situation solve itself mechanically; I shall send her a copy of this official communication.
While I was hastily putting the paper in my pocket, I noticed my terrible apelike hand. I remembered how that day during our walk, she took my hand and looked at it. Is it possible that she really … that she. …
A quarter to twenty-one. A white northern night. Everything was glass—greenish. But it was a different kind of glass, not like ours, not genuine but very breakable—a thin glass shell and within that shell things were flying, whirling, buzzing. I should not have been surprised if suddenly the cupola of the auditorium had risen in slow, rolling clouds of smoke; or if the ripe moon had sent an inky smile—like that one at the little table this morning; or if in all the houses suddenly all the curtains had been lowered and behind the curtains. …
I felt something peculiar; my ribs were like iron bars that interfered, decidedly interfered, with my heart, giving it too little space. I stood at a glass door on which were the golden letters I-330 ; I-330 sat at the table with her back to me; she was writing something. I stepped in.