I was afraid to remain alone with myself, or to be more correct, with that new strange self, who by some curious coincidence bore my number, D-503 . So I went with R- . True, he is not precise, not rhythmic, his logic is jocular and turned inside out, yet we are.⁠ ⁠… Three years ago we both chose our dear, rosy O- . This tied our friendship more firmly together than our schooldays did. In R-’s room everything seems like mine; the Tables, the glass of the chairs, the table, the closet, the bed. But as we entered, R- moved one chair out of place, then another⁠—the room became confused, everything lost the established order and seemed to violate every rule of Euclid’s geometry. R- remained the same as before; in Taylor and in mathematics he always lagged at the tail of the class.