258
VLADIMIR DUDINTSEV
was waiting not only for the notebook. From the very instant
I first saw that woman, I felt gently and imperceptibly drawn
towards her, just as a floating twig is drawn from afar towards
a waterfall. Was this not a second grain of gold dust that had
come near the throat of the hour-glass only to fly over it
in
an instant? "Well, go on and fly," I thought. "These things do
not exist for me any more.... For, my beauties, don't you love
to be pursued long and stubbornly, and how right you are. And
you above all, for you have not yet forgotten him for whom you
shouted: 'Yes, yes, yes!' And you will hardly forget him, for
how could my not-so-distinguished person exclude from your
memory that exotic, improbable man with the borrowed face? 1
am dead to love. I am non-existent."
At this point she opened the door and entered-a smail,
gentle beauty with sloping shoulders. "I love you!" everything
alive in me shouted. I realized that, in my new life, my child–
hood was over and early youth had begun. But then I heard
a chilling peck at the window. I did not even glance at it: every–
thing was immediately clear.
Barely greeting the woman, I snatched the notebook from
her hands, turned my back on my guest, opened the notebook
and saw the designs, plans, notes and calculations-they were
identical with those which, over a period of several years, I had
freely strewn about and burned. I thumbed through the note–
book. Aha! I now needed eight, not ten years! I would work
at the Institute and at home, and that would give me two more
years. I would arrange things so that experiments would be
conducted in several directions at the same time. Day and
night!
"What's the hurry?" the woman asked, noticing my haste
to connect the wires and plug in the apparatus.
"I have very little time left ..." I replied, then stopped my–
self. "Life is short, and there is a lot of work. I am in a hurry."
I plugged in every piece of apparatus, and gay little flames
kindled in the flasks and the retorts, transparent bubbling
