This was so unexpected and so stupid that I burst out laughing. Immediately the tense spring within me broke and my hand weakened and the piston fell to the floor. Here I learned from personal experience that laughter is the most terrible of weapons; you can kill anything with laughter, even murder. I sat at my table and laughed desperately; I saw no way out of that absurd situation. I don't know what would have been the end if things had run their natural course, for suddenly a new factor in the arithmetical chain: the telephone rang. I hurried, grasped the receiver. Perhaps she ... I heard an unfamiliar voice: "Wait a minute." Annoying, infinite buzzing. Heavy steps from afar, nearer and louder like cast-iron, and.... "D-503? The Well-Doer speaking. Come at once to me." Ding! He hung up the receiver. Ding! like a key in a keyhole. U- was still in bed, eyes closed, gills apart in the form of a smile. I picked up her clothes, threw them on her and said through clenched teeth: "Well. Quick! Quick!" She raised her body on her elbow, her breasts hanging down to one side, eyes round. She became a figure of wax. "What?" "Get dressed, that is what!" Face distorted, she firmly snatched her clothes and said in a flat voice, "Turn away...." I turned away, pressed my forehead against the glass. Light, figures, sparks, were trembling in the black, wet mirror.... No, all this was I, myself,--within me.... What did he call me for? Is it possible that he knows already about her, about me, about everything? U-, already dressed, was at the door. I made a step toward her and pressed her hand as hard as though I hoped to squeeze out of it drop by drop what I needed. "Listen.... Her name, you know whom I am talking of,--did you report her name? No? Tell the truth, I must.... I care not what happens, but tell the truth!" "No." "No? But why not, since you...." Her lower lip turned out like the lip of that boy and her face ... tears were running down her cheeks. "Because I ... I was afraid that if I did you might ... you would stop lov-- Oh, I cannot, I could not!" I understood. It was the truth. Absurd, ridiculous, human truth. I opened the door. RECORD THIRTY-SIX Empty Pages The Christian God About My Mother It is very strange that a kind of empty white page should be left in my head. How I walked there, how I waited (I remember I had to wait), I know nothing about it; I remember not a sound, not a face, not a gesture, as if all communicating wires between me and the world were cut. When I came to, I found myself standing before Him; I feared to raise my eyes,--I saw only His enormous cast-iron hands upon His knees. Those hands weighed upon Him, bending His knees with their weight. He was slowly moving His fingers. His face was somewhere above as if in fog. And, only because His voice came to my ear from such a height, it did not roar like thunder, it did not deafen me but appeared to be an ordinary human voice.