Read Ebook: We by Zamiatin Evgenii Ivanovich Zilboorg Gregory Translator

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Ebook has 1012 lines and 53044 words, and 21 pages

"How punctual you are! Just a minute please, may I? Sit down. I shall finish in a minute."

She lowered her eyes to the letter. What had she there, behind her lowered curtains? What would she say? What would she do in a second? How to learn it? How to calculate it, since she comes from beyond, from the wild ancient land of dreams? I looked at her in silence. My ribs were iron bars. The space for the heart was too small.... When she speaks her face is like a swiftly revolving, glittering wheel; you cannot see the separate bars. But at that moment the wheel was motionless. I saw a strange combination: dark eyebrows running right to the temples--a sharp, mocking triangle; and still another dark triangle with its apex upward--two deep wrinkles from the nose to the angles of the mouth. And these two triangles somehow contradicted each other. They gave the whole face that disagreeable, irritating X, or cross; a face obliquely marked by a cross.

The wheel started to turn; its bars blurred.

"So you did not go to the Bureau of Guardians after all?"

"I did ... I did not feel well ... I could not."

My heart banged so forcibly that the iron bars bent. If I were not sitting ... like a little boy, how stupid! I was caught like a little boy and stupidly I kept silent. I felt I was in a net; neither my legs nor my arms....

She stood up and stretched herself lazily. She pressed the button and the curtains on all four walls fell with a slight rustle. I was cut off from the rest of the world, alone with her.

Now the "click" of the snap-button at her collar, at her breast, and ... lower. The glassy silk rustled over her shoulders and knees, over the floor. I heard--and this was clearer than actual seeing--I heard how one foot stepped out of the grayish-blue heap of silk, then the other.... Soon I'd hear the creak of the bed and ...

The tensely stretched membrane trembled and registered the silence,--no, the sharp hammer-like blows of the heart against the iron bars and endless pauses between beats. And I heard, saw, how she, behind me hesitated for a second, thinking. The door of the closet.... It slammed; again silk ... silk....

"Well, all right."

I turned around. She was dressed in a saffron-yellow dress of an ancient style. This was a thousand times worse than if she had not been dressed at all. Two sharp points, through the thin tissue glowing with rosiness, two burning embers piercing through ashes; two tender, round knees....

She was sitting in a low armchair. In front of her on a small square table, I noticed a bottle filled with something poisonously green and two small glasses on thin legs. In the corner of her mouth she had a very thin paper tube; she was ejecting smoke formed by the burning of that ancient smoking substance whose name I do not now remember.

The membrane was still vibrating. Within the sledge-hammer was pounding the red-hot iron bars of my chest. I heard distinctly every blow of the hammer, and ... what if she too heard it?

But she continued to produce smoke very calmly; calmly she looked at me; and nonchalantly she flicked ashes on the pink check!

With as much self-control as possible I asked, "If you still feel that way, why did you have me assigned to you? And why did you make me come here?"

As if she had not heard at all, she poured some of the green liquid from the bottle into a small glass and sipped it.

"Wonderful liqueur! Want some?"

Then I understood; alcohol! Like lightning there came to memory what I saw yesterday: the stony hand of the Well-Doer, the unbearable blade of the electric ray; there on the Cube, the head thrown backward, the stretched-out body! I shivered.

"Please listen," I said, "You know, do you not, that any one who poisons himself with nicotine, more particularly with alcohol, is severely treated by the United State?"

Dark brows raised high to the temples, the sharp mocking triangle.

"'It is more reasonable to annihilate a few than to allow many to poison themselves.... And degeneration,' ... etc.... This is true to the point of indecency."

"Indecency?"

"Yes. To let out into the street such a group of bald-headed naked little truths. Only imagine please. Imagine, say, that persistent admirer of mine, S-, well, you know him. Then imagine: if he should discard the deception of clothes and appear in public in his true form ... oh!" She laughed. But I clearly saw her lower, sorrowful triangle; two deep grooves from the nose to the mouth. And for some reason these grooves made me think: that double-curved being, half-hunched, with wing-like ears,--he embraced her? her, such ... Oh!

Naturally, I try now merely to express my abnormal feelings of that moment. Now, as I write, I understand perfectly that all this is as it should be; that he, S-4711, like any other honest Number has a perfect right to the joys of life and that it would be unjust.... But I think the point is quite clear.

I-330 laughed a long, strange laugh. Then she cast a look at me, into me.

"The most curious thing is that I am not in the least afraid of you. You are such a dear, I am sure of it! You would never think of going to the Bureau and reporting that I drink liqueurs and smoke. You will be sick or busy, or I don't know what.... Furthermore, I am sure you will drink this charming poison with me."

What an impertinent, mocking tone! I felt definitely that in a moment I should hate her.

I-330 turned over the little glass of green poison straight into her mouth. Then she stood up, and all rosy through the translucent saffron-yellow tissue, she made a few steps and stopped behind my chair.... Suddenly her arms were about my neck ... her lips grew into mine, no, even somewhere much deeper, much more terribly.... I swear all this was very unexpected for me. That is why perhaps ... for I could not I could not myself have the desire to....

Unbearably sweet lips. It was as though burning poison were being poured into me, and more and more....

I tore away from the earth and began revolving as an independent planet,--down--down--following an uncalculable curve....

What happened next I am able to describe only in an approximate way, only by way of more or less corresponding analogies.

It never occurred to me before but it is true: we who live on the earth, we are always walking over a seething red sea of fire which is hidden in the womb of the earth. We never think of it. But imagine the ground under our feet suddenly transformed into a thin glass shell; suddenly we should behold...!

I became glass-like and saw within myself. There were two selves in me. One, the former D-503, Number D-503; and the other.... Before, that other used only to show his hairy paws from time to time, but now the whole other self left his shell. That shell was breaking, and in a moment....

Grasping with all my strength the last straw , I asked loudly , "Where, where did you get this poison?"

"Oh, this? A physician, one of my...."

I do not remember how, but I-330 slipped away and I saw her straightened, her head raised high, her eyes overlain by that cursed impenetrable curtain. She stood leaning with her back against the closet door and listening to me.

I remember I was on the floor; I embraced her limbs, kissed her knees and cried supplicatingly, "At once, right away, right away."

Sharp teeth.... The sharp mocking triangle of the brows.... She bent over and in silence unbuttoned my badge.

"Yes, yes, dear--dear."

I began hastily to remove my unif. But I-330, silent as before, lifted my badge to my eyes, showing me the clock upon it. It was twenty-two-twenty-five.

Everything was in its place; life so simple, ordinary, orderly. Glittering glass houses, pale glass sky, a greenish, motionless night. But under that cool glass something wild, something red and hairy, was silently seething. I was gasping for breath but I continued to run, so as not to be late.

Suddenly I felt that my badge which I had hurriedly pinned on, was detaching itself; it came off and fell to the sidewalk. I bent over to pick it up and in the momentary silence I heard somebody's steps. I turned. Someone small and hunched was disappearing around the corner. At least so it seemed. I started to run as fast as I could. The wind whistled in my ears. At the entrance of my house I stopped and looked at the clock; one minute to twenty-two-thirty! I listened; nobody behind. It was my foolish imagination, the effect of the poison.

RECORD ELEVEN

No, I Can't; Let It Be without Headings!

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....

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.

When R-13 came in I was perfectly quiet and normal. I began with sincere admiration to tell him how wonderfully he succeeded in versifying the death sentence of that insane man, and that his poem more than anything else had smothered and annihilated the transgressor of the law.

"More than that," I said, "if I were ordered to prepare a mathematical draught of the Machine of the Well-Doer, I should undoubtedly,--undoubtedly, put on that draught some of your verses!"--Suddenly I saw R-'s eyes becoming more and more opaque, his lips acquiring a gray tint.

"What is the matter?"

"What?--Well.... Merely that I am dead sick of it; everybody keeps on: 'the death-sentence, the death-sentence!' I want to hear no more of it! You understand? I do not want...." He became serious, rubbing his neck--that little valise filled with luggage which I cannot understand. A silence. There! He found something in that little valise of his, removed it, unwrapped it, spread it out; his eyes became covered with the varnish of laughter. He began:

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