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In contrast to those previous questionnaires, this one was marked in the upper-right-hand-corner, in blue pencil, most probably by Comr. Pavlenda himself: DO NOT CROSS OUT! — an exhortation I considered highly significant, since nothing like it had appeared on any of the previous forms. In fact, I considered this bit of information extremely encouraging. When I first spotted the form in Comr. Pavlenda’s hand, my heart sank, but now I decided without hesitation to complete it.

After all, this was a message, an omen. None of the Comrs. (Comrades) with whom I had dealt before felt any need to elaborate on the bare questions or prescribe any particular method for filling out the form. They merely asked that I hand it in. In return, they generally sent me a curt notice two or three weeks later, that my application had been rejected.

True, in those previous questionnaires I had indulged in quite a bit of crossing out; e.g. in Question 19 (Public Functions) I always deleted “Lay Judge” as a function for which I had neither inclination nor opportunity. I also crossed out Question 27 (Names of Relatives Living Abroad). There were a few additional items I had been deleting because they referred to activities in a period when I had not yet been born or I had been too young to have possibly participated in the evens in question. I had always filled out all the questionnaires with a perfectly clear conscience, solemnly declaring each time that the information given was complete and correct to my best knowledge and belief, as attested by my handwritten signature.

This last questionnaire, however, was a challenge. An invitation.

The way that fellow Pavlenda kept looking at me with his blue-green eyes, the way he adjusted the cushion under his behind, the way he leaned toward me as I sat facing him in my chair (only on one other occasion had I ever been asked to sit down), the way he slid the questionnaire across the marble-top table (Form 01-240-0, Printed in Pilsen — I had grown familiar with those forms I practically knew them by heart), the way Comr. Pavlenda breathed almost in my face as he smiled — all this seemed extremely promising.

A woman came in from the hall carrying a folder with letters for signature, and as she opened the door the questionnaire, which had already been within reach of my fingertips, suddenly took off and with a loping glide landed on the office rug.

We rose to our feet, Comr. Pavlenda and I, and bowed deeply before the woman because the questionnaire was lying at her feet, but Comr. Pavlenda was quicker than I and reached for the form before I did. In the course of this effort his necktie flopped out and his hair lost its neat part. I examined him in this dis-officialed state and saw before me a flushed albinoid man more or less my own age. But a Comrade. That was promising, too.

He smiled a second time.

I accepted the smile along with the questionnaire.

Then I stepped past the lady with the folder and descended the granite steps of Granit — to have a dream, or vision, or premonitions as is my wont. The lady with a folder, or rather: a lady whose face remained hidden but who undoubtedly was the same person as the woman who had caused a gust of air to blow upon me in Comr. Pavlenda’s office — this lady was waiting for me on the first landing, where she told me to enter the elevator, even though Granit occupied only a small two-story rococo building. We rode the elevator high up, and as we stepped out of the cage we found ourselves in a pharmacy full of bottles and glasses. The bottles had labels in Latin and Greek, yet for all their high-flown names they were quite common drugs, at least according to the woman (still faceless), busily pouring and decanting, until at last she reached for a green fluorescent vital full of deep-green liquid labeled Pharmakon athanasis. But as she was about to pour me some of this elixir of immortality I shouted and begged her to stop, because inside the vital there was another me, in the shape of a homunculus. But the woman continued to drain me of a fluid until I felt myself gasping like a fish, suffocating.

And so I went to see Olin, who is my cousin but old enough to be my uncle, to ask him to explain this vision. For he also serves as interpreter of my dreams, diviner of my intuitions, and general prognosticator. This time, however, he turned me down derisively suggested that for the sake of sounder sleep I learn to stand on my head. I let it pass and asked him whether he agreed that things looked promising.

“Sure,” he nodded, “you’re turning into a nut.”

“True. You know what occurred to me? That I’ve been filling out these forms all wrong. For instance, the part about Lay Judge.”

“What’s that?”

“Lay Judge. You know — a judge picked from the people. I always crossed it out. But that hurt my chances, you understand?”

I glanced at Olin, and strangely enough, this time he seemed unable to follow my thought.

“They always took it to mean that I didn’t want to serve as a Lay Judge; in other words, that I was rejecting the honor. Otherwise, why did they keep the questionnaire if they had no intention of hiring me?”

“Because you’re not entitled,” replied Olin.

(Not entitled, in Olinian terminology: an expression denoting the ultimate degree of inadmissibility.)

“On the other hand,” said Olin, “if they take one questionnaire after another and note the trend of your X-ation, they will have to admit that you’re improving.”

“In other words, that document is really a message,” I said. “They’re actually hinting …”

“Go to sleep,” interrupted Olin. “Enough of this nonsense!”

I went to sleep with my dream still unclarified, I went to bed drunk and befuddled as always happens when Olin starts to drink and to sing … and to interpret dreams, especially his own, which are so totally different from mine. In his dreams there is always a river or a light or a woman who’s got one and knows what it’s for and lets Olin enjoy it. In my dreams there is always some kind of disk or wheel (anything circular) and it keeps turning.

Perhaps I should have mentioned that in the questionnaire. Or at least in my curriculum vitae. But I always attached my c.v.’s to the questionnaires quite mechanically, in the form of carbon copies, without the slightest change. I should have mentioned the dream with the circle, about the way it turns and about the faceless women and the women whose faces are made of layers of pink petals which I keep peeling off to get at the likeness underneath but the layers are without end and the petals circle as they spiral to the ground. Good Lord, this dream makes me dizzy, but I’d rather feel drunk than dead-tired. Though sometimes I even seem to die in this dream.