You, readers of these records, whoever you be, you have the sun
above you. And if you ever were ill, as I am now, then you know
what kind of a sun there is or may be in the morning; you know
that pinkish, lucid, warm gold; the air itself looks a little
pinkish; everything seems permeated by the tender blood of the sun;
everything is alive; the stones seem soft and living; iron living
and warm; people all full of life and smiles. It may be that in a
short while all this will disappear, that in an hour the pinkish
blood of the sun will be drained out, but in the meantime everything
is alive. And I see how something flows and pulsates in the sides of
the _Integral_; I see the _Integral_ _think_ of its great and lofty
future, of the heavy load of inevitable happiness which it is to
carry up there into the heights, to you, unseen ones, to you who
seek eternally and who never find. You shall find! You shall be
happy! You must be happy, and you have now not very long to wait!
The body of the _Integral_ is almost ready; it is an exquisite,
oblong ellipsoid, made of our glass, which is everlasting like
gold and flexible like steel. I watched them within, fixing its
transverse ribs and its longitudinal stringers; in the stern they
were erecting the base of the gigantic motor. Every three seconds
the powerful tail of the _Integral_ will eject flame and gasses
into the universal space, and the _Integral_ will soar forward and
higher,--like a flaming Tamerlane of happiness! I watched how the
workers, true to the Taylor system, would bend down, then unbend
and turn around swiftly and rhythmically like levers of an enormous
engine. In their hands they held glittering glass pipes which
emitted bluish streaks of flame; the glass walls were being cut into
with flame; with flame there were being welded the angles, the ribs,
the bars. I watched the monstrous glass cranes easily rolling over
the glass rails; like the workers themselves they would obediently
turn, bend down and bring their loads inward into the bowels of the
_Integral_. All seemed one, humanized machine and mechanized humans.
It was the most magnificent, the most stirring beauty, harmony,
music!
Quick! Down! To them, and with them! And I descended and mingled
with them, fused with their mass, caught in the rhythm of steel and
glass. Their movements were measured, tense and round. Their cheeks
were colored with health, their mirror-like foreheads not clouded by
the insanity of thinking. I was floating upon a mirror-like sea. I
was reposing.... Suddenly one of them turned toward me his care-free
face.
"Well, better today?"
"What better?"
"You were not here yesterday. And we thought something serious...."
His forehead was shining; a childish and innocent smile.
My blood rushed to my face. No, I could not lie, facing those eyes.
I remained silent; I was drowning.... Above, the shiny round white
porcelain face appeared in the hatchway.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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