Through the glass of the walls in quite a few houses (this cut into my mind) I saw male and female Numbers in shameless embraces--without curtains lowered, without pink checks, in the middle of the day!... The house--her house; the door ajar. The lobby, the control desk, all was empty. The elevator had stopped in the middle of its shaft. I ran panting up the endless stairs. The corridor. Like the spokes of a wheel figures on the doors dashed past my eyes; 320, 326, 330,--I-330! Through the glass wall everything in her room was seen to be upside down, confused, creased. The table overturned, its legs in the air like a beast. The bed was absurdly placed away from the wall, obliquely. Strewn over the floor--fallen, trodden petals of the pink checks. I bent over and picked up one, two, three of them; all bore the name D-503. I was on all of them, drops of myself, of my molten, poured-out self. And that was all--that was left.... Somehow I felt they should not lie there on the floor and be trodden upon. I gathered a handful of them, put them on the table and carefully smoothed them out, glanced at them and ... laughed aloud! I never knew it before but now I know, and you too, know, that laughter may be of different colors. It is but a distant echo of an explosion within us; it may be the echo of a holiday, red, blue and golden fireworks, or at times it may represent pieces of human flesh exploded into the air.... I noticed an unfamiliar name on some of the pink checks. I do not remember the figures but I do remember the letter--F. I brushed the stubs from the table to the floor, stepped on them, on myself, stamped on them with my heels,--and went out.... I sat in the corridor on the window-sill in front of her door and waited long and stupidly. An old man appeared. His face was like a pierced, empty bladder with folds; from beneath the puncture something transparent was still slowly dripping. Slowly, vaguely I realized--tears. And only when the old man was quite far off I came to and exclaimed: "Please ... listen.... Do you know ... Number I-330?" The old man turned around, waved his hand in despair and stumbled farther away.... I returned home at dusk. On the west side the sky was twitching every second in a pale blue electric convulsion:--a subdued, heavy roar was proceeding from that direction. The roofs were covered with black charred sticks,--birds. I lay down; and instantly like a heavy beast sleep came and stifled me.... RECORD THIRTY-EIGHT I Don't Know What Title--Perhaps the Whole Synopsis May Be Called a Cast-off Cigarette-butt. I awoke. A bright glare painful to look at. I half closed my eyes. My head seemed filled with some caustic blue smoke. Everything was enveloped in fog and through the fog: "But I did not turn on the light ... then how is it...." I jumped up. At the table, leaning her chin on her hand and smiling, was I-330, looking at me.