She stood up and stretched herself lazily. She pressed the button and the curtains on all four walls fell with a slight rustle. I was cut off from the rest of the world, alone with her.
She was somewhere behind me, near the closet door. The unif was rustling, falling. I was listening, all listening. I remembered—no, it glistened in my mind for one hundredth of a second—I once had to calculate the curve of a street membrane of a new type. (These membranes are handsomely decorated and are placed on all the avenues, registering all street conversations for the Bureau of Guardians.) I remembered a rosy concave, trembling membrane—a strange being consisting of one organ only, an ear. I was at that moment such a membrane.
Now the “click” of the snap-button at her collar, at her breast, and … lower. The glassy silk rustled over her shoulders and knees, over the floor. I heard—and this was clearer than actual seeing—I heard how one foot stepped out of the grayish-blue heap of silk, then the other. … Soon I’d hear the creak of the bed and …
The tensely stretched membrane trembled and registered the silence—no, the sharp hammer-like blows of the heart against the iron bars and endless pauses between beats. And I heard, saw, how she, behind me hesitated for a second, thinking. The door of the closet. … It slammed; again silk … silk. …
“Well, all right.”
I turned around. She was dressed in a saffron-yellow dress of an ancient style. This was a thousand times worse than if she had not been dressed at all. Two sharp points, through the thin tissue glowing with rosiness, two burning embers piercing through ashes; two tender, round knees. …
She was sitting in a low armchair. In front of her on a small square table, I noticed a bottle filled with something poisonously green and two small