IN THE PUPIL OF THE EYE

(from Glas 8)

1

Human love is a frightened thing, it keeps its eyes closed; it dives into the twilight, darts around darkened streets, speaks in whispers, hides behind curtains, puts out the light.I'm not jealous of the sun. Let it do its peeping - so long as it stays put as I undo the clasps. Let it take a peek through the windows. It doesn't bother me.
Yes, I've always been of the opinion that midday is much better suited for love-making than midnight. The moon, on which so many enthusiastic interjections are wasted, is a night sun under a blue bourgeois lampshade; I just can't stand that. The story about a certain "Yes" and its consequences - that's what this story is about - began in bright sunshine, by a window wide open to the daylight. It's not my fault that it happened to end between day and night, in the murky nastiness. It's the fault of the woman whose "yes" I'd waited for so long and so passionately.
But even before that "yes", certain events took place which it is essential to mention. One can claim that with love it's the eyes which, shall we say, run on ahead. That's understandable - they're more mobile and they know how to look right through you. While the lovers' bodies, by comparison with their eyes, are clumsy and huge and hide from one another behind the clothes, whilst even words somehow huddle and stumble on the lips, fearing to leap into the air, the eyes, running on ahead, are already giving themselves to each other.
Oh, how clearly I remember that bright day, shot through with an azure sky, when the pair of us standing at the window which was opened to the sun, simultaneously, as though by agreement, glanced... not out of the window, naturally, but at each other. And that was when the third person appeared: a tiny little fellow, his glance fixed on me from within her pupil, a miniaturized likeness of me, who'd already made his way there. I hadn't even yet dared to touch the edge of her dress, and he was already... I smiled and nodded to him. The little fellow nodded back politely. But the eyes turned away and we didn't meet again until that very "yes".
When it summoned me, that barely audible "yes", I didn't ask any more questions. Grabbing the wrists of the submissive arms, I saw him prominent through the round window of the pupil, his excited face was getting nearer and nearer. For an instant, he was curtained by the eyelashes. Then he came into view again briefly and disappeared. His face, as I managed to notice, shone with joy and proud satisfaction: he was like a successful manager, busying himself assiduously with other people's affairs.
From then on, with every fresh meeting, before my lips sought out her lips, I would glance under the eyelashes of my beloved, seeking him out, that tiny fixer of love. He was invariably there on the dot, and however tiny the face of the little man in the pupil, I could always accurately work out his expression -- sometimes it had a youthful cheerfulness, sometimes there was a hint of fatigue, sometimes it was peacefully contemplative.
One day, during a rendezvous, I was telling my girl friend about the little man who had penetrated her pupil and about my thoughts on him. To my surprise, my story was received coldly, even with slight hostility.
"What rubbish," and I saw how her pupils, with an instinctive shudder, shifted away from me. I took her head in my hands and tried by force to seek out the little man but, laughing, she lowered her eyelids.
"No, no," and it seemed to me that in her laughter there was no laughter at all.
Sometimes you get used to a trifle, you attribute some sense to it, you give it some philosophical significance -- and lo and behold, that trifle raises its head and launches into an argument with what's important and real, shamelessly demanding an augmentation of its being, some elaboration. I'd already started to get used to the trivial little man from the pupil; it was convenient for me when I was telling some story or other to see that she was listening and so was he. Furthermore, into the normal course of our meetings there gradually entered a sort of game (lovers think up all kinds of such things) which consisted of the woman hiding the little man and me trying to find him; this was accompanied by a lot of laughter and kisses. And so one day (I still find it somehow rather difficult to think back about this)... one day, as we were putting our lips close together, I looked into her eyes and saw: the little man, peeping out from behind her eyelashes and nodding to me -- his face was sad and he was on his guard - and then suddenly, sharply turning his back, with little mincing steps, he began to recede into the pupil.
"Well, go on, kiss her quickly," and the little man was shut in behind the eyelids.
"Come back!" I shouted and, forgetting myself, squeezed her shoulders with my fingers. In her alarm, the woman raised her eyes and from the depths of her expanding pupils there once again flashed before me the figure of the tiny me as he moved away.
To the alarmed questioning I remained silent, concealing my answer. I sat, looking to one side, and I knew the game was over.

2

For several days I didn't show up -- neither to her, nor to other people. Then a letter found me. Inside a narrow cream-coloured envelope there were about a dozen question marks: had I gone away suddenly, was I ill? "Perhaps I was ill," I thought, reading over the spidery lines. I decided to go -- immediately, without a moment's delay. But not far from the house where my girl friend lived, I sat down on a bench in the street and began to wait for the twilight. It was certainly cowardice, ridiculous cowardice; d'you see I was afraid, afraid of not seeing what I'd already not seen. You would think that the simplest thing to do in that case was right there to get my pupils to examine hers. No doubt, it was just an ordinary hall-ucination, a phantom pupil, and nothing else. But it was just that the very fact of carrying out the test looked to me like a sign of the real individual life of the little man in the pupil, that seemed to me a manifestation of an illness, a psychological jolt. The impossibility of that absurd trifle had to be rejected, so it seemed, in a completely logical way, without succumbing to the temptation of an experiment; for wouldn't a series of concrete actions, carried out for the sake of something insubstantial, bestow upon him a certain degree of reality? Of course, I was easily able to hide my own fear from myself. It seemed that I was sitting on the bench because the weather was fine, because I was tired, and because in the end the little man in the pupil was a good subject for a story, and so why not, right now, while at leisure, just think it over, even if only in general terms. Finally, the approaching evening let me into the house. In the dark hall I heard a "Who's there?" It was her voice, but somehow slightly different - intended for someone else.
"There you are at last!"
We entered the room. Her hand, dimly pale through the twilight, stretched out to switch on the light.
"Don't bother."
I pulled her towards me. We loved each other blindly, soundlessly muffled in the murk of love. And that evening we didn't switch on the lights. I left with the feeling of one who has received a stay of execution.
There's no need to recount this in detail: the longer it goes on, the less interesting it gets. In fact, anyone could finish this chapter, anyone with a smooth gold ring on his finger. Our meetings, radically changing over from midday to midnight, became long drawn out, blind and sleepy, like night itself. Our love gradually turned into something civic, double-bedded, with a complicated inventory ranging from soft slippers to the chamber pot, inclusive. I went the whole way: yet the fear of encountering her pupils and seeing that they were empty, without me, woke me up every morning an hour before dawn. I would get up quietly and dress, trying not to disturb the sleep of my beloved, and then, carefully on tiptoe, I'd depart. At first these early disappearances seemed odd to her. Then it became part of the normal course of events. Thank you, man with ring on finger, I'll tell the rest myself. And each time, as I strode in the freezing urban dawn towards my place, at the other end of the city, I thought about the little man from the pupil. Gradually, as my musings continued, the thought of him ceased to frighten me: if earlier I had been alarmed by the prospect of his concrete existence and had thought about him with apprehension and suspicion, now the little man's non-existence made me sad. It was that very illusoriness and shadowiness.
"How many of these minute reflections do we scatter in other people's eyes," I would usually fantasize, as I made my way along the deserted silent streets, "and suppose I were to gather all those tiny, similar creatures nestling in all those strangers' pupils and form them into a whole little tribe of modified, miniaturized "I’s. Of course they exist, while I'm looking at them, but then so do I exist while someone, anyone is looking at me. If that person shuts his eyes... what nonsense. But if it is nonsense, if I'm not somebody's vision but me in my own right, then the one who's in the pupil - well, he exists as well."
At this point, my sleepy thoughts would usually get muddled and I would have to disentangle them afresh.
"How odd! Why did he have to go away? And where to? Well, OK, fair enough if there was nothing at all in her pupils. What does that mean? What do I need that flicker of my facial likeness for? Isn't it all the same whether he's there or not? And how come that some little pupil person dares to meddle in my affairs, stage a phantom counter-existence and part one person from another?"
When I hit on that thought, I was ready to turn back and wake up my sleeping love and fetch out from under her eyelids the secret of whether he was there or not.
But, I'd never return before evening. Not only that, if there was a light in the room I'd turn my face away and not respond to caresses. No doubt I was morose and rude, until darkness put a blind over our eyes. Then I would boldly bring my face close to hers and ask her, again and again, did she love me? And the normal course of nocturnal events would take over.

3

On one such night I felt, through layers of sleep, how something unseen, clinging to one of the lashes of my left eyelid, was pulling the lash painfully downwards. l opened my eyes wide: something flashed past by my left eye, a little spot tumbling head over heels, and then it rolled down my cheek inside the helix, and in a whisper squeaked in my ear:
"Bloody hell! Like an empty flat - no-one's answering."
"What's that?" I said quietly, not being quite sure if I was awake, or whether it was one dream replacing another.
"First of all, not what, but who. And secondly, lay your ear down close to the pillow so that I can jump out. Nearer - a bit more. Fine."
At the edge of the pillow case, gleaming white in the grey air of the dawn, there sat the little man from the pupil. Leaning against the white threads, his head bent, he was breathing heavily like a traveller who has succeeded in making a long and difficult crossing. There was sadness and concentration on his face. In his hands was a book, black with grey clasps.
"So you're not an illusion?" I shouted, looking the little man up and down with amazement.
"What a silly question," he interrupted me, "and don't make such a noise or you'll wake up that one, her. Put your ear closer. Right. I've got something important to tell you."
He stretched out his tired legs, settled himself more comfortably, and started in a whisper:
"There's no point in telling you about my pupil-warming party. We both remember all about that. I liked my new home. It seemed to me a comfortable and cheerful place, with its full complement of glassy reflections, the window in the round rainbow frame, the convex lenses neatly washed down with a tear, and the automatic blinds lowered at night - in a word, it was a comfortable flat. Well, OK, there was a long dark corridor stretching out behind, goodness knows where to, but I used to spend nearly all my time by the window, waiting for you to come. What was back there - behind me - didn't interest me. Sometimes it came about that one of the meeting you had arranged didn't take place. I'd walk up and down along the corridor, trying not to go too far away, so that at any moment I would be able to meet you. While this was happening, the day was fading beyond the round opening. "He's not coming," I thought. It got a bit boring and, not knowing what to do with myself, I decided to make my way to the end of the corridor. But, as I've already said, it was murky inside the pupil and after just a few steps I found myself in total darkness. My hand stretched out in front of me but found no support. I was already about to turn back when a low, muffled sound emitted from down there, from the depths of the narrow corridor, attracted my attention. I tried to listen in to it: it was like the long drawn out singing of several voices, voices off-key, but determinedly trying to hold a tune. I even thought that my ear could make out some individual words, then I couldn't make anything out.
This seemed an interesting phenomenon to me, but I decided that it would be more sensible to return to my former place in case the eyelid closing shut off the way back in the dark.
That wasn't the end of it. The next day, without even leaving my seat, I heard the voices behind my back once again. They were coming together in an appalling cacophonous hymn. The words were still difficult to pick out, but it was quite clear that it was an all-male choir. This circumstance saddened me and made me think. I needed to examine the passageway into the interior thoroughly. I won't say that I was particularly keen to undertake the search, with the risk of bumping into goodness knows what and losing the way back to the window and out to the world. For the next two or three days the phenomenon did not recur. "Perhaps I imagined it all," I thought, trying to calm myself down. But then once, right in the middle of the day, when the woman and I had each sat down at our window, waiting for the assignation, this peculiar sound reasserted itself and on this occasion with an unexpected clarity and force: an out of tune mishmash of words, long drawn out and tedious, repeating itself over and over again, assailed my ears and their meaning was such that I firmly resolved to make my way to the singers. I was gripped by curiosity and impatience, but I didn't want to go away without giving warning. We said goodbye: do you remember? Maybe it was a bit unexpected for you. And I quickly marched off into the pupil. It was absolutely quiet. The light which followed me for a long way down the cavernous passage gradually weakened and dimmed. Soon my footsteps rang out in total darkness. I walked on, catching on to the slippery walls of the ocular corridor, stopping every now and again to listen. Finally, from far away, a yellow, dead sort of light beckoned to me; no doubt the wandering lights of marsh gas give off the same kind of gloomy murky flame. Weariness and a dumb indifference seized me. "What am I looking for, what do I want from these catacombs?" I asked myself. "Why should I exchange the sun for this yellow, rotten gloom?" And perhaps I would have turned back once more but, at that instant, the singing which had started to fade from my memory rang out once more; now I could make out individual voices, disappearing out of the wild incantation:

This nonsense drew me towards it like a fish to the hook. A circular opening met me as I walked forward, from which came the yellow light. Grabbing hold of the edge of the hole I put my head inside, down below from the void came the howl of a dozen throats. A yellow fluorescence blinded me. Peering in, I leaned over the gap but at that moment the sticky edges of the opening began to move apart and, with my hands grabbing helplessly at the air, I tumbled down. It didn't seem far to the bottom of the cave: I quickly got up on my elbows, sat down and looked around. My eyes, gradually growing accustomed to the light, began to pick out the surroundings. I was sitting as it were inside a glassy but not transparent bottle with pulsating walls, right in the centre of its convex bottom. Below me a glowing yellow spot was spreading out, around me a dozen human shapes, half hidden in the shadows, their heels to the light, their heads against the wall, were majestically reaching the climax of the refrain:

My question "Where am I?" got lost in the roar. Looking for the exit, I tried to straighten up out of the hollow, but my very first step dragged me back, down the slope and, to general laughter and joyful roar, turning up my heels I sat down between two inhabitants of the well.
"It's getting a bit crowded in here," my neighbour on the left rumbled and turned to one side. But the one sitting on the right turned his face to me in a confidential manner: I would have described him as a University type, with an erudite bulbous forehead, thoughtful eyes, a sharp pointed beard and a carefully combed-over bald crown.
"Who are you? Where am I?"
"We're the ones who got here before you. The thing is, a woman's pupil is like any living-space. First they billet you there, then they eject you - and everybody ends up here. For example, I'm No.6 - this one to the left of us is No. 2. You're No. 12. As a matter of fact we don't sort ourselves out strictly according to number, but by our associations. Will that do, or do you want something still more popular? By the way, have you hurt yourself?"
"Against the wall?"
"No, against the sense?"
We remained silent for a moment.
"By the way, don't forget to register your being forgotten. Oh, these female pupils," he pulled at his beard, "the pupils which beckon you below the shelter of the lashes. Just think - such a wonderful entrance, all the sparkling colours of the rainbow and such a nasty dark bottom. Once I did this too..."
I interrupted him:
"Who registers you here?"
"Quagga."
"I've never heard such a name."
"Well, have you heard of telegony?"
"No."
"Hm. That's not so good, you won't know anything about Lord Morton's mare either."
"What's that got to do with it?"
"One thing at a time: there once was a mare. Sorry, first there was Lord Morton. His mare gave birth to a striped foal out of Quagga, while Morton out of Quagga gave birth to the theory of telegony. What it is is that whoever they mated the said mare with, her offspring was always striped, so to speak, in memory of Quagga, who was her first. From this one draws the conclusion that any female organism is irrevocably bound to her first lover and he continues to live as it were within future liaisons, immutably and indestructibly. The first inhabitant of the pupil, on the base of which you and I are presently to be found, in so far as chronology is in his favour, can claim the role of Quagga. I will say that I've more than once explained to him that this theory has long since been disproved by Mr Ewart, but the silly fool tries to dictate matters here, insisting that he's the ground and we're just lumps and all our attempts to repeat the unrepeatable..."
"Tell me," I ask him again, "this telegony, or whatever you call it, is it really disproved once and for all, or...?"
"I knew it," the University type smiled, "I've noticed for a long time that the higher the number, the greater the interest in the question - is love striped or not? But we'll come back to that. Can you hear? No.1's Calling you."
"Forgotten No.12 - come here!"
I stood up and, with my palms slipping along the wall, I went towards the sound. Stepping over the legs outstretched along the way, I noticed that the contours of the pupil-people stood out with different degrees of clarity: some of them so merged into the yellow fog of the nether regions that I involuntarily bumped into them, not noticing the faded, as it were, half-erased figures. Suddenly, two invisible but strongly-gripping hands grabbed me by the ankles.
"Please answer the questions."
I bent down so as to get a good look at the hands which were holding me as if in fetters, but it was impossible to see them. No.1 was clearly fading away to the colour of the air. The unseen fingers freed me and flicked open the covers of the book. This very book. Covered in signs, its pages rose and fell and rose again until a blank page fell open marked with my number.
The registration form involved dozens of questions. It began with one's date of entry, the basis on which entry was sought, the proposed length of stay (for this section there were three sub-paras: (a) eternally (b) until the grave (c) until something better turns up -- please underline your preference. I seem to remember that the form concluded with a series of affectionate and diminutive names and your attitude to jealousy. Soon my page was filled. An invisible finger gently turned it over revealing more clean white sheets.
"Well, then," said Quagga, shutting the book. "Another new appointment. The book's getting filled up slowly. That's all, I won't keep you any more."
I returned to my former place between No.2 and No.6. No.6's pale beard jutted forward to meet me but, encountering silence, immediately hid in the shadows.
I sat for a long time, deep in thought about the clean unentered pages of the book of residence permits. A sudden noise returned me to the real world.
"No.11 come out into the middle," Quagga was shouting.
"No.11, No.11!" rang out from all sides.
"What's that?" I turned to my neighbour.
"It's the duty story," he explained. "It goes in numerical order: so next time it'll be your turn."
I didn't' have any reason for more detailed questioning, since the number who had been summoned was already scrambling up the mound that rose from the bottom. His heavy figure seemed at once somehow familiar. My predecessor, settling himself on the yellow spot, quietly looked around. Catching in his teeth the drooping string of his pince-nez, he thoughtfully chewed it, his flabby cheeks quivering:
"Right then!" It's funny to recall it but there once was a time when my sole aim, as with all of us, was somehow or other, by fair means or foul, to find my way through the pupil to our hostess. That's why we're all here. What now?"
He wound the string of his pince-nez round his finger, pulled the glass from his eye, and, screwing up his eye squeamishly, went on:
"A man-trap. Yes, sirree! But let's get down to business. The first encounter decided everything. I remember ours -- that day she wore a black buttoned-up dress. And her face seemed somehow tightly buttoned up: her lips were primly sealed, her eyelids half-lowered. The cause of her melancholy is to the left of me. That's our revered No. l0. His story, which we heard last time, remains in everyone's mind. Because forgotten people don't forget. But at that time I had not had the pleasure of knowing him. That's to say that even then I guessed that not everything was all right in those pupils hiding behind the eyelashes and, indeed, when I finally managed to glance into the eyes of the woman, there was so much left-aloneness there that, because I was at that time on the lookout for suitable pupils, I immediately decided to take up residence in the empty property.
But how was that to be achieved? Each of us has his own way of getting into another's soul. Mine lies in the accumulation of little and mostly cheap good deeds: "Have you read this or that?" "No, but I'd like to"... and in the morning, the messenger brings her a book with uncut pages. The eyes which you require to penetrate encounter your respectful inscription and name under the cover. If she loses her hatpin, or the needle for cleaning the primus, make sure you remember all this rubbish accurately, so that at the very next encounter, grinning devotedly, you can take out of your waistcoat pocket a needle, a pin, an opera ticket, some pills and whatever else besides. Really, in actual fact, one probes into another person in tiny doses, with tiny, barely visible miniature men who, if they can be concentrated in sufficient numbers, will finally take over the other person's consciousness. And amongst all these, there's always one, just as pathetically small as the others, but if he goes away, all sense goes with him. Do you understand that? The whole atomic structure falls apart, immediately and irreparably, though you pupil-dwellers don't need to have that explained to you.
And so I put into action the system of small good deeds. All over the place, amidst the bits and pieces, books and pictures clinging to the walls of the room where our mistress lived, there began to appear the objects of my solicitude; her eyes had nowhere to turn from the miniature men who penetrated every nook and whispered my name from every cranny. I thought that, sooner or later, one or other of them would succeed in getting into her pupil. But, for the moment, the matter was moving forward only slowly: the woman's eyelids, as if carrying a huge weight, only rarely gave up, which for me as someone from the pupil, constituted a very difficult situation.
I remember how after the nth good turn, the woman said, smiling somewhere away to one side:
"I believe you're trying to put me under your spell. It's no good."
"Never mind," I replied humbly. "Once in mid-journey to the Crimea, I remember looking out of the window while the train was stopped and seeing a forlorn little brick house, rising up out of the yellow smudges of the fields. On the house was a board with the words Patience Station.
As I spoke to her, the woman's eyes opened slightly.
"So according to you, this is mid-journey. That's amusing."
l don't remember what stupid answer I gave, but I do remember that, having reached Patience Station, the train didn't move on for a long time. So that was when I decided to come to you for help, my dear predecessors. I didn't yet know who you were and how many of you there were, but I felt instinctively that the pupils were, so to speak, well lived in, that some Xs of the male sex were leaning over them, that their reflections... well, in a word, I decided, having dipped my spoon into the past, right to the very bottom, to mix it and stir things up again. If a woman has stopped loving one man and hasn't yet started to love another, then if that man has the slightest drop of common sense, he should work things out and not allow a moment of oblivion, until all possible approaches have been revealed.
I stirred my spoon more or less as follows: "Nobody loves people like me. I know that. The one you loved wasn't like me. That's right, isn't it? The one or the ones? Won't you say? Well, of course. Probably it was..." and with the dull conscientiousness of the worker who's been ordered to mix up the must, I continued to stir my questions around. At first I was answered by silences, then by half-words. I could see it: on the surface of her consciousness little bubbles began to swell up and burst, momentary flashes of the rainbow which had seemed forever buried in the past. Encouraged by this success, I carried on my stirring. Oh, yes, I know very well that one can't turn emotional stimuli upside down without disturbing the emotion itself. Images long unloved which I raised from the bottom immediately fell back again, into the darkness, but the sensation which was just on the point of being stirred into life and roused with the images wouldn't lie down and continued to stay up on the surface. The woman's eyes ever more frequently seemed to turn their gaze to meet the questions, and more than once I braced my knees, ready for the jump. But then my huge likeness, in whose pupil I was at the time, in its clumsiness and massiveness, let go one opportunity after another. At last the decisive day came. I, or we that is, found her at the window, her shoulders hunched with cold under the shawl.
"What's the matter with you?"
"Just a fever. Don't take any notice."
But the man who works by the small good turns method isn't allowed not to take any notice. I immediately made for the exit, and quarter of an hour later I was ordered to "turn away".
Tucked into the circulation of the minute hand, I heard the rustle of silk and the click of the knob: the thermometer was being erected in the expected place.
"Well, what does it say?"
"36.6."
Now came the moment when even my ridiculous bulk couldn't mistake the diagnosis. We moved closer to the woman.
"You don't know how to do it. Let me."
"Leave me alone."
"First you have to shake it. Like this. Then..."
"Don't you dare."
My eyes came closer to hers. I managed to jump. The woman's pupils were coated by that particular misty film which is the surest sign... Well, to cut a long story short, I misjudged my jump and got caught on the curve of one of her eyelashes, which was tossing from side to side like a branch in a storm. But I know what's what, and a few seconds later, squeezing through the pupil into the interior, short of breath and agitated, I heard behind me first the sound of kisses and then the clink of the thermometer falling to the floor. From the outside I was shut in by the eyelids. But I'm not curious. With the feeling of a duty performed, I sat down under the high vault, musing on the difficult and dangerous profession of being a pupil person. The future demonstrated that I was correct. Indeed, it turned out to be gloomier than my gloomiest expectations.
No. 11 fell silent as he sat, suspended morosely on the glittering eminence, and the forgotten ones started up their song again, first softly, then louder and louder they sang their strange hymn:

Thinking over this handful of words, I never suspected that, taking up the thought, I would never let it go. It occurred to me then that imaginings are perpetually wandering from the conscious to the unconscious. But sometimes they go so far into the unconscious that they can't find a way back to the conscious. And I was interested in the question of how imagination declines: does it dim like slowly dying embers, or like a candle snuffed out by one breath, gradually, or at once, is the process long draw out and difficult or is it immediate? At first I agreed with the poet -- the process of oblivion appeared to me like a slow build up to a sudden avalanche. Here it was, now it isn't any more. I recall using Ebbihaus's mnemonic rows to try to calculate the moment of disappearance, the point of its washing away, the collapse of whichever concept. Instantly, my attention was drawn to the question of forgotten emotions. This really is a most intriguing question. A certain woman meets `n' times with some man, and each time both of them experience a certain arousal. But on the nth plus l meeting, shall we say, this woman comes to this man but the arousal doesn't happen. Of course, the certain man fakes it in all kinds of ways and, even when left on his own, meticulously examines his soul, trying to find again what he has lost. But it's all in vain: you can reconstruct the image of the woman you've left, but it's quite impossible to reconstruct the feeling once it has left you. You might say that the lizard has run away leaving its tail in your hands and so the association of the image with the emotion has disassociated itself. When I researched the cooling off process in which the thing dear to one becomes repellent, I could not help citing analogies: it became immediately obvious to me that there is some connection between the process of the cooling of passion and, let's say, the cooling off of a piece of ordinary sulphur. In extracting the calorific value from the sulphur, we transfer its crystals from one system to another; that's to say we force it to change its shape, to take another form, another appearance. In any case, this has already been the subject of enquiry: a chemical body, for instance phosphorus, as it gradually cools not only changes its crystalline formation, and its colour (from violet to red and from red to black) but at a certain point in the cooling process it loses all shape altogether, it decrystallizes, it becomes amorphous. Now, if only one could catch that moment of turning into formlessness. So if one can spot that instant when the gleaming carbon, which we call diamond, turns into ordinary coal which we avoid getting ourselves dirty on, then why can't we just catch that moment when "I am in love" transforms into...
But, even remaining within the realm of chemical formulae, it wasn't all that easy to do this. A crystal, before it loses its shape and its contours and becomes a formless, amorphous body, goes through the stage known as metastability, something halfway between form and formlessness. This analogy seemed to me convincing. Many people have relationships which are metastable, which occupy some middle ground between a thaw and boiling point. It's interesting, incidentally, that metastability gives the highest indicator of viscosity. One can take this analogy further. A white-hot body, if it is presented to itself, cools down naturally and continuously. It's the same with emotion. Just by altering its focus, just by piling on yet more fuel, you can keep it at the same level of heat. I do recall that at this point these analogies led me to a dead end from which there was no way back. But, in answering the question of the circumstances a cooling of the temperature turns a crystal into something amorphous, natural science gave me a kind of answer to the problem of the exact circumstances in which the process of natural emotional cooling, so to speak, turns diamond into coal, the loved into the indifferent, the formed into the formless. It seems that the crystal body, as it undergoes cooling, tries not to lose its shape but rather attempts to change but, since the speed of cooling exceeds the speed of recrystallization, that latter process cannot be completed, the particles which have been caught en route, from one shape to another, by the drop in temperature, stay where they are and the result is chilled and shapeless or, to move from the physical to the psychical - repellent and forgotten. In such circumstances, a sustained and lengthy relationship can only be explained in the following manner: it's a series of mutual betrayals between two people. Why are you astonished by this? That's exactly how it is. If one could only find one person who was completely faithful to the image of such and such a person, which had been engraved upon him like an inscription on a brass plate, then his love might last, well, let's say a couple of days, and even that's unlikely. For the real object of love is constantly changing, and loving you today is only possible by cheating on yesterday's love in favour of you. You know, if I were a writer I would try to write a fantastic story: my hero meets a young girl, you know, a charming young creature, in her seventeenth year. That's fine. Love. Sharing. Then children. Year in, year out. They love as they have always loved: deeply, satisfyingly, simply. Of course, he has asthma and she has wrinkles around the eyes and faded skin, but all that is familiar, habitual, it's their own. And suddenly the door opens and she comes in, but it's not her, or rather it's not how she was an hour or a day ago, but it's that 17-year-old girl as she used to be, the very one whom he swore to love eternally and unchangingly. My hero is confused, perhaps even dumbfounded. The newcomer looks around at this ageing, unfamiliar life with incomprehension. She sees her children whom she didn't give birth to. She sees a paunchy, half-familiar man, casting frightened glances at the door to the next room. He's worried in case that other one emerges from there. "Yesterday you promised me," says the young creature, but the asthmatic wipes his brow in embarrassment. "Yesterday" was twenty years ago and he doesn't know what to do with his lady guest. And that instant he hears the footsteps of that other one, the same one as now, coming to the door. "You must go, she might catch you."
"Who?"
"Hurry up now."
But it's too late. The door opens and my hero, well, let's say... Maybe he woke up."
"Look here, No.6, this can't go on - from psychology to chemistry, from chemistry to literature. I don't see how you're going to get back from this point to your crystallization, whether it's images or whether it's phosphorus and coal."
"Well, I'm just getting back to the point. Listen: someone loves a certain A, but today's A becomes tomorrow's A1 and next week's A2. So it follows that in order to keep peace with a constantly recrysta-llizing being, you have to keep reconstructing the image, that's to say redirect your emotional sensation from one fancy to another, from one tussock to another, and so on... Cheating on A-primus with A-secundus and A... And if this series of infidelities is conditional upon the capacity for infidelity of the lovers and proceeds at the same speed as the replacement of the loved one, then everything is fine - and just as a man on the razzle doesn't realize as he covers a hundred paces that his body was about to fall a hundred times, but that on each occasion his muscles kept him on his feet just in time, so lovers, having spent many weeks, perhaps years with each other, never suspect that there were as many infidelities as meetings."
He finished with the air of a fashionable lecturer awaiting applause, but theorizing has the same effect on me as sleeping pills. After a moment's silence, No.6 got back on his hobby horse: different speeds, infidelity which can't keep up with the changes, changes which don't keep pace with the infidelities. My eyes closed and I fell into sleep. Even here, I was pursued by circling swarms of chemical formulae and algebraic symbols: with a fine, menacing buzzing they carried out their marital flight.
I don't know how long my sleep would have lasted if prods and voices hadn't woken me:
"Come out to the middle, No.12."
"Let's hear the new boy."
"No.12."
There was nothing for it. Pushed and urged on from right and left, I scrambled up on to the bright yellow mound. A dozen pairs of eyes, staring at me out of the darkness, were preparing to draw the secret of two people into themselves, to drag it off into their brains. And so I began my story. You know it. Let it pass. When I finished, they began to sing their strange hymn again. A dull gloom took hold of me by the temples and, rocking from side to side, empty and dead, I sang with the others:

Finally they let me return to my place. I crawled nimbly into the shadow. A slight shudder made my teeth chatter. I'd rarely felt worse. The little beard on the right nodded to me sympathetically and No.6 leaned over and whispered in my ear:
"Forget it. It's not worth it. You've said your piece and that's fine. I can see it got to you."
And his dry fingers squeezed my hand in a quick movement.
"Listen," I turned to No.6, "maybe that's how it is with all of us, me and the others, but what do you want from love? Why are you messing around here with the rest of us at the bottom of the pupil? After all, you've the soul of a librarian, you've enough bookmarks to keep you going, you could just live with them and your formulae, bury your head in the pages instead of poking your nose into other folk's business, getting involved where you're not wanted."
The lecturer lowered his head in embarrassment:
"Look, this happens to everyone... They say that even Falesius, as he walked along with his face pointing up to the stars, once fell into a well. Well, it's the same for me. I really didn't want to, but if the pupils are there for the taking... In two words: I used to lecture to women students on psychology. Well, we went in for seminars, practicals, essays and all the rest of it. Naturally, the students used to come to me, sometimes to my home, asking for essay topics, information sources. And she was one of them - you know, our one. More than once she came. In those day I didn't yet know that for women science, like everything else, is always personalized. Questions, answers, and questions again. I won't say that she was particularly quick on the uptake. Once, explaining to her the logarithms of inflammation in Weber-Fechner's formula, I noticed that she wasn't listening. "Repeat it, please." She said nothing, smiling at something. "I don't understand why you come here at all," I suddenly exploded, and I think I banged the book against the table. Them she raised her eyes to me and I saw there were tears. I don't know what people do in these cases. I moved closer and was incautious enough to glance into her moist pupils. And that was that..."
No.6 waved his hand dismissively and fell silent.
And once again the yellow murk of the well closed over us. I ran my fingers over the glassy cylindrical enclosed walls and thought, is this to be my last dwelling place, has the present really been taken away from me for ever and with no prospect of return?
By this time No.1's turn had arrived. On top of the yellow spot there settled a black one. Beside him was his book (Quagga would not be parted from it).
"With the help of one intimate symptom," began the black spot, "it's possible to divide all women into four categories. To the first belong those women who, having presented themselves for an assignation, allow themselves to be undressed and dressed. In this type I would include many high-class courtesans and many women in general who know the art of turning their lovers into obedient slaves, on whom is laid the entire responsibility and all the feverish work of hooking and unhooking, doing up and undoing buttons which leap from the fingers. This first category, however, at the same time seems to play no part, she just shuts her eyes and allows it to happen. The second category are women whom you can undress, but who put their clothes back on themselves. At this point the man is sitting looking out of the window or at the wall, or smoking a cigarette. The third category is perhaps the most dangerous - they're the ones who themselves show you the way to the hooks and buttons, but who afterwards make you serve them lovingly in all the minutest and most touching details of their toilette. These are malicious flirts, lovers of dodgy conversations, experienced predators, in a word `come hither' types. The fourth category undress and dress themselves whilst their partners wait with greater or lesser impatience. These are the run-of-the-mill prostitutes, fading spouses and goodness knows who else. Not let me ask you, in which category, my dear successor, do you place our mistress?"
The blot paused. And immediately from all sides, interrupting each other, came the cries:
"The first, of course."
"Of course not - the second."
"Come off it, the third."
And a hoarse bass voice, overriding the shouts, barked out:
"In the finalest category."
The black blob shook with silent laughter.
"I knew it. Opinions were bound to be divided. This book - the one I'm holding in my hand - knows a lot about many people. Of course it still has plenty of blank pages and we're not all in the collection. But sooner or later, there comes a time when the mistress's pupils will lose the capacity to attract and seduce. And, at that point, when I have written the last words on these pages, I shall get down to the compilation of a Full and Systematic History of a Certain Attraction, with the addition of a subject and alphabetical index. My categories are just the outline. They possess a methodological significance, as our No.6 would put it. The doors between one category and another - well, they're all open wide, there's nothing surprising about the fact that she's been through the lot of them.
You all know that with me she began to be a woman.
It was how many years ago?.. Anyway, the only thing that's important is that it did happen. We were introduced at some literary tea party: "Here is Miss... just up from the country - hope you'll be kind to her." Her unfashionable dress, which emphasized her youthful fragility, bore witness to this. I tried to catch her eye with mine, but no, with a flick of the eyelashes, they turned to one side.
After that we rattled our teaspoons in the cups and someone did a reading, mixing up the pages as they did so. The organizer of this piece of cultural boredom took me on one side and asked if I would escort the young lady from the country back to her place ("She's on her own, you know, it's night-time, she might get lost"). I remember that her coat had the loop torn off.
We left. It was pouring with rain. I called a cab and through the slanting whiplash of the rain we dived under the leather hood of the cab. She said something, but the cobbles were already clattering beneath us and I couldn't hear what she was saying. A turning, then another. I tentatively took her by the elbow; the girl was startled and tried to move away, but there was nowhere to move. The cobbles over which we were jumping jolted us towards each other with short nervous thumps. Somewhere here, just beside me, were her lips. I wanted to find out where exactly and bent forward and at that very second something very unusual happened. Thrust sharply forward, she ripped back the leather covering and leapt out of the moving cab. I can remember how I read in some novel about a similar device, but in the novels it is usually a man who does it and pouring rain doesn't usually enter into the situation. For a few moments I sat beside emptiness, completely discouraged and confused - just about the time I needed to wake the driver and stop his horse. The driver, seeing me jump out of the cab, took the thing the wrong way and yelled out about the fare - a few more seconds had been lost. Finally, I rushed forward along the damp pavement, trying to make out the silhouette of the fugitive in the darkness. The street lamps had gone out. I thought I had caught up with her at the crossroads. She turned round, the spark of a cigarette suddenly glowing between her teeth, and called out: "Let's go to bed." It was a woman of the streets. I rushed on. The crossroads was a muddle of streets - she was nowhere. Almost in despair, I set off at random across one of the streets and suddenly I practically fell over my fugitive. She was standing, frozen through and lashed by the rain, obviously completely confused by the network of streets and not knowing where to go. I won't recount our conversation: I've told it to you many times. My remorse was genuine: I kissed her wet fingers, begging her to forgive me and threatened to kneel down right in the puddle if she didn't stop being angry. We found the cab again and no matter how much the cobbles jolted me I sat through the whole journey quietly, trying to turn my shoulder away from hers. We were both frozen through and our teeth were chattering. As we said goodbye, I kissed her cold fingers once again and suddenly my companion burst out into a young and cheerful laugh. A couple of days later I called on her, bringing with me a heap of reassurances and some patent medicines. The latter came in handy. The poor girl was coughing and complaining of aches. I didn't have recourse to your remedy, No.11, at that stage it would have been... premature. The slightest carelessness could have destroyed the friendship that was developing. At that time there was rather more to me than this grey, faded blob. Sitting on the shuddering springs of the sofa, we would often chat till almost nightfall. The inexperienced girl knew neither the town, the world, nor me. The topics of our conversations seemed to veer from side to side, as though blown by the wind: sometimes I would carefully describe how to use a paraffin stove correctly, sometimes, muddling it up myself, I would set forth the premises of Kant's critique of pure reason. Snuggled into a corner of the sofa, her legs tucked under her, she would listen avidly, about the stove and about Kant equally, without taking her deep dark eyes off me. Yes, and there was another thing she didn't know about -- herself. And so, during one of our conversations which lasted well on into the evening, I tried to explain to her about herself, I tried to open the clasps to the book which you see here, half filled and worn, in my hands. Yes, that evening we spoke about her future, about the encounters which awaited her, the involvements and the disappointments and fresh encounters. I deliberately tried to knock on the door of her future. Sometimes she would laugh, drily and abruptly, sometimes she would correct me, sometimes she would listen silently and without interruption. Once by chance (my cigarette had gone out, I guess) I struck a match and in its yellow light I saw that her face was different. It was older and more womanly, just as if indeed I had had a vision of it from the future. Blowing out the match, I threw myself further forward in time: first love, the first blows of life, the bitterness of partings, fresh attempts with the heart already left behind. Gabbling my words in haste, I was beginning to reach the years when feelings are whipped out and weary, when the fear of fading forces one to make haste and crumple up one happiness like waste paper, when curiosity gets the better of passion, when... at this point I struck another match and gazed eye to eye with amazement until I burned my finger. Yes, my respected successors, if one could carry out my experiment correctly, a dozen matches would have shown me all the faces of which you have grasped the memory. But, ripping the box from my hand, she threw it aside. Our fingers intertwined and trembled, as though exposed to the cold pouring rain. Maybe I don't need to say anything more?"
And the blurred humanoid blob began slowly to descend.
"Well, what do you think of our Quagga?" No.6 was curious.
I remained impolitely silent.
"Hey, you look as if you were jealous. I must confess there was a time when Quagga's pretensions, all that boasting about being the first, annoyed even me. But you can't turn back the past. It's the Supreme Being. You have to come to terms with it and, anyway, when you think about it, what is jealousy?"
But I turned my back on the lecture and pretended to be asleep. Grumbling vaguely about badly-behaved people, No.6 relapsed into hurt silence.
At first I did pretend to sleep, but then I really fell asleep. I don't know how long this oblivion lasted: a sudden light which penetrated under my eyelids forced me to open my eyes. Around me was a phosphorescent blue. I propped myself up on my elbows, looking for the source of this strange light. To my great astonishment, I realized that the light was coming out of me. My body was surrounded by a phosphorescent halo, whose short rays disappeared several feet away. My very body became light and springy, as happens sometimes in dreams. All around were asleep. With one bound I leaped on to the hollow of the yellow blob and two sources of light, their rays crisscrossing filled the air with all the colours of the rainbow. Another effort and my light body, sliding in a crazy manner, began to clamber out along the vertical slope of the wall to the vault of the cave. The barely visible crack opened up and, with my hands grabbing its flexible edges, my viscous body easily broke through to the outside. In front of me stretched the low corridor which had beckoned me to the depths. Once before I had wandered its curves, bumping against the walls in the dark, but now the light, blue all around me, was pointing the way. Suddenly hope sprang up within me. I walked on, surrounded by my phosphorescent aura, back towards the exit out of the pupil. Spots of light and shapes slid along the walls overtaking me, but I had no time to make them out. My heart was in my throat when I finally made it to the round window of the pupil. I threw myself blindly forward and hurt myself against the lowered eyelid. The damned blind of skin blocked my exit. I wound myself up and began to beat against it with my fist, but the eyelid never so much as batted: it seemed as though the woman was fast asleep. Maddened, I started to beat against the barrier with my knees and shoulders, the eyelid quivered and at this point the light which had surrounded me began to fade and die. In confusion, I dashed back, fearing that I'd be left in complete darkness. The rays were drawn back into my body, and together with that, my weight returned. With leadening steps, panting from the run, I finally made it back to the opening into the vault of the cave; it stretched out obediently for me and I jumped down. My thoughts were swirling around, like sand in the wind: why had I come back, what force had turned me round again to the depths, from freedom to slavery, or perhaps this was all a ridiculous nightmare? But in that case why not... I crawled back to my place and began to pummel No.6's shoulder. He jumped up, rubbing his eyes, and faced a torrent of questions from me.
"Hang on! Hang on a minute, you say it was a dream?" he questioned me again, peering attentively at the last drooping sputterings of my burnt out halo. "Hm... I guess this really is a dream going on here and that dream, believe it or not, is you. Yes, yes, this has happened here with the others as well: her dreams sometimes wake us up and force us to wander about like lunatics, not knowing why or where. It's you she's dreaming about now, do you see? Wait a minute, you're still giving off a bit of light. Eh, it's gone out -- that means she's finished her dream."
"Six," I whispered, grabbing his hand, "I can't take this any more. Let's make a dash for it."
But my neighbour shook his head:
"That's impossible."
"But why? I've just been there myself, at the entrance to the outside world. If it hadn't been for the eyelid..."
"It's impossible," repeated No.6. "First of all, who can guarantee you that, having got out of her eye, you'll find your master? Perhaps they've already split up, there's a lot of space and you... might get lost and perish. And secondly, there were other bold guys before you who tried to escape. They..."
"What about them?"
"Would you believe it, they came back."
"They came back?"
"Yes, you see the opening in the vault only opens for those who are being dreamt about and those who arrive there from the outside world. But the dreams lead us on a long rein, keeping us away from the waking world by means of the lowered eyelids and when we are done in the dreams they throw us back down to the depths. There remains a second possibility. Having waited for the moment when the crack in the vault opens to let in a newcomer, you can jump out - and then it's a matter of passageways through the caverns (you know them) and - freedom! You'd think it would be easy. But there's one detail which could rule the whole thing out."
"I don't understand that."
"Well, look, the moment when you break out you have to meet, head to head, shoulder to shoulder, with the new person who has jumped inside in your place. And here the temptation to look at your successor, if only for an instant, is so great... that, in a nutshell, if you lose a moment you lose your freedom: the opening closes and the fugitive, together with the newcomer, falls down right to the bottom. At any rate, that was what happened to all those who made the attempt. It's a matter, don't you see, of a psychological trap from which there's no escape."I listened in silence, and the more the word "impossible" was repeated, the more my resolution grew.
I spent several hours, thinking over every detail of the plan. While this went on, it was the turn of No.2. My silent neighbour on the left made his way out into the yellow spot. For the first time I saw his colourless, squat, cheerless appearance. With an embarrassed cough, he began, stumbling slightly over his words:
"This was how it all came about. Once I received a letter - in one of those long envelopes. It smelt faintly of verbena. I opened it. There were these crooked spidery letters. I started reading: What was this all about?"
"Quiet," Quagga's voice suddenly rang out. "Stop the story. There up above, do you hear?"
The story teller and the voices suddenly fell silent. At first there didn't seem to be anything. Then - was it imagination, or was it real? From far away above the vault there came a light and cautious step. Then it broke off. Then again. Then it fell silent.
"Can you hear?" No.6 whispered in my ear. "He's announced himself. He's on the move."
"Who?"
"No.13."
First quietly, so as not to frighten him, then louder and louder, we sang the hymn of the forgotten. Occasionally, at a sign from Quagga, we broke off the singing and listened. The footsteps seemed to be coming quite near and then suddenly they started to move away.
"Louder. Come on, louder!" shouted Quagga. "Draw him in, draw him in. You won't get away, old son, no, you won't."
And our hoarse, desperate voices rebounded from the slimy walls of our prison.
But it seemed as though No.13, hiding out there somewhere in the dark passages, was uncertain and blundering. Finally our strength ran out, Quagga allowed a break, and soon everyone around we was deep in sleep.
But I didn't allow weariness to overcome me. With my ear to the wall, I continued to listen in to the darkness.
At first everything was quiet, then, once again, there, above the vault, the approaching steps rang out. The opening began ever so slowly to move apart. Grabbing the slippery jutting out sections of the walls, I tried to make my way up, but immediately I lost my footing and fell, hitting myself on some hard object. It was the book of oblivion. Trying to move silently (suppose Quagga should suddenly awake) I opened its clasps and, using the hinges, I began quickly to pull myself up, from one protuberance to another, until my hand found itself holding on to the edge of the exit gap. Someone's head was pointing down at me but, screwing my eyes up with the effort, in one short burst I threw my body forward and out and charged forward without looking around. After my two wanderings around the labyrinth of the pupil, I was able somehow to find my way, even in the dark. Soon I encountered the first faint flickerings of light from under the half lowered eyelids. Forcing my way out, I jumped on to the pillow and marched off, fighting with gusts of breathing which met me.
"But what if it isn't, he isn't mine?" I thought, wavering between fear and hope. And when finally in the pre-morning light I began to make out my giant-size features, when I saw you after all those days apart, master, I swore never to leave you again and never to hang about strange pupils. By the way, that's not like me, but like you..."
The little pupil man fell silent and stood up, putting his black volume under his arm. The pink blotches of dawn were ambling by the windows. Somewhere in the distance, wheels clattered by. The woman's eyelashes gave a little flutter. The little man from the pupil turned to look at them apprehensively and again turned his tired little face towards we. He was awaiting instructions. "Let's do it your way," I smiled at him, and moved my eyes as close as I could to the little fellow. With one leap, he clambered up under my eyelids and stepped into me. But something, perhaps the sharp corner of the book which was sticking out from under his elbow, pricked me on the edge of my pupil and gave me a sharp pain in the brain. There was black before my eyes, I thought, for a moment... but no: the dawn turned from pink to black; around me was the black silent night. It was as though time, bending its paws, had crawled backwards. Slipping off the bed, I dressed hurriedly and quietly. I opened the door. There was the corridor, the turning, the door, another door and, fumbling my way along the wall, step by step, I made it to the outside. I was on the street. I walked on, straight, without turning off, not knowing where or why. Gradually, the air started to thin, setting free the contours of the houses. I looked round. A blue-to-pink second dawn was catching up with me.
Suddenly, somewhere up above, from the belfry, the bells stirred, clanking metal on metal. I raised my eyes. From the pediment of an old church, decorated in a triangle, an enormous eye was staring at me through the fog. The chill gripped me between the shoulder-blades with a jab like the points of a pair of compasses. "Painted bricks." That was all it was. Untangling my footsteps from the fringes of the fog, I kept on repeating, "Painted bricks" - and that was all.
Out of the mist, through which rays of light were emerging, I came upon the familiar bench. Here I had waited - was it a long time ago - for darkness to be my companion. Now the back of the seat was visible in the feeble light and damp from early morning dew.
I sat down on the damp edge and remembered. It was on this spot that, its outlines vaguely drawn, the idea of the story about the little man in the pupil had come to me. Now I had sufficient material to firm up the theme. And right here and now I began to consider, as I came to meet the approaching day, how I could tell people everything and tell them nothing. First of all, one must cross out the truth, who needs it? Then one had to depict the pain in sharper hues to the limits of the plot - yes, yes. Then just an old bit of the mundane, and on top, like veneer on paint, a spot of banality - you can't do without that. Finally, insert two or three bits of philosophy and -- reader, you turn away, you want to shake off the lines out of the pupils - no, no, don't leave me on the long empty bench. Hold your palm in mine -- like that - firmer, still firmer. I've been alone too long. And I won't tell anyone else, but I'll tell you: when all's said and done, why frighten children with the dark when you can use it to keep them quiet and get them to sleep?

1927