254
VLADIMIR DUDINTSEV
a better view of this majestically infinite spectacle.
"Very well then. Flesh will rot. Let it rot. But thought,
thought! Must it perish too?" I closed my eyes.
"I shall not perish," my thought declared in the dark. It
was calm, unlike one's emotions. "Look about you," its voice
said. "The world of civilized men is only a few thousand years
old. How long do objects manufactured by men last? Machines,
furniture, fabrics-all these fall to pieces within a few decades.
How did we manage to collect all the things around us? Very
simply. We first collected ideas: the secrets of smelting metal,
the formulas for medicine, the mystery of hardening cement.
Burn all the books, destroy all craft secrets, let a few dozen years
pass for them to be quite forgotten, and still mankind will start
again upon its ancient road from the stone axe. And your
son-not your grandson-having dug up a cog-wheel which you
had made in your youth, will begin worshipping it as a divinely
created miracle."
From an invisible loud speaker above the city came the
resonant and limpid strains of a waltz. I did not know the
composer. And I even did not seem to hear the music:
it
was
not a full orchestra, just brass; not the brass, but the strings;
not the strings, but the sound of my feelings. And when the
woodwinds raised their song, when the wood began to sing, it
was clear to me that these were firmly locked desires singing
gently inside their narrow box-desires that were strictly con–
fined within the boundaries of my short life.
"You wish to live," my anonymous composer told me.
"Look at the effect upon you of a few little notes, which I left
behind me a hundred years ago after my short and very onerous
sojourn among men. Listen; the man who is alotted little time,
loves life more passionately and fiercely. It is better not to
have but to desire than to have and not desire! I loved life pas–
sionately and I am passing on this love to you."
"But listen now," he continued, lowering his voice. "In
