The night was full of torture. My bed seemed to lift itself under
me, then to fall again, then up again! I used autosuggestion: "At
night all the Numbers must sleep; sleeping at night is a duty just
like working during the day. To sleep at night is necessary for the
next day's work. Not to sleep at night is criminal." Yet I could
not sleep--I could not. I was perishing! I was unable to fulfill my
duties to the United State! I....
RECORD ELEVEN
No, I Can't; Let It Be without Headings!
Evening. It is somewhat foggy. The sky is covered with a
milky-golden tissue, and one cannot see what is there, beyond,
on the heights. The ancients "knew" that the greatest, bored
skeptic--their God, lived there. We know that crystalline, blue,
naked, indecent Nothing is there. _I_ do not know any more what
_is_ there. I have learned too many things of late. Knowledge,
self-confident knowledge which is sure that it is faultless, is
faith. I had firm faith in myself; I believed that I knew all about
myself. But then.... I look in the mirror. And for the first time
in my life, yes, _for the first time in my life_, I see clearly,
precisely, consciously and with surprise, I see myself as some
"him!" I am "he." Frowning, black, straight brows; between them
like a scar, there is a vertical wrinkle. (Was there that wrinkle
before?) Steel gray eyes encircled by the shadow of a sleepless
night. And behind that steel ... I understand; I never before knew
what there was behind that steel. From there (this "there" is at
once so near and so infinitely distant!) I look at myself--at "him."
And I know surely that "he" with his straight brows is a stranger,
that I meet him here for the first time in my life. The real I is
_not_ he.
No. Period. All this is nonsense. And all these foolish emotions are
only delirium, the result of last night's poisoning.... Poisoning
with what? With a sip of that green poison or with her? It matters
little. I write all this merely in order to demonstrate how
strangely the precise and sharp human reason may become confused.
This reason, strong enough to make infinity which the ancients
feared so much, understandable by means of.... The switch buzzes,
"Number R-13." Well, I am even glad; alone I should....
_Twenty minutes later_:
On the plane of this paper, in a world of two dimensions, these
lines follow each other, but in another world they.... I am losing
the sense for figures.... Twenty minutes! Perhaps two hundred or two
hundred thousand!...
It seems so strange, quietly, deliberately, measuring every word,
to write down my adventure with R-. Imagine yourself sitting down
at your own bed, crossing your legs, watching curiously how you
yourself shrivel in the very same bed. My mental state is similar to
that.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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