We - Yevgeny Zamyatin (whitelam books txt) 📗

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. (Why in a moment? In fact I hated her all the time.)

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 (at this moment I see clearly) I could not myself have the desire to.⁠ ⁠…

Unbearably sweet lips. (I suppose it was the taste of the liqueur.) 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 (the arms of the chair), I asked loudly (so as to hear my first self), “Where, where did you get this poison?”

“Oh, this? A physician, one of my.⁠ ⁠…”

“ ‘One of my! one of my’ what?” And my other self jumped up suddenly and yelled: “I won’t allow it! I want no one but me.⁠ ⁠… I shall kill anyone who.⁠ ⁠… Because I.⁠ ⁠… You.”⁠ ⁠… I saw my other self grasp her rudely with his hairy paws, tear the silk, and put his teeth in her flesh!⁠ ⁠… I remember exactly, his teeth!⁠ ⁠…

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.

I became cold. I knew what it meant to be out in the street after twenty-two-thirty. My insanity disappeared at once. I was again I. I saw clearly one thing: I hated her, hated her, hated⁠—⁠ ⁠… Without saying goodbye, without looking back, I ran out of the room. Hurriedly trying to fasten the badge back in its place, I ran down the stairs (I was afraid lest someone notice me in the elevator), and jumped out into a deserted street.

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.

The night was full of torture. My bed seemed to lift itself under me, then to fall again, then up again! I used autosuggestion: “At night all the Numbers must sleep; sleeping at night is a duty just like working during the day. To sleep at night is necessary for the next day’s work. Not to sleep at night is criminal.” Yet I could not sleep⁠—I could not. I was perishing! I was unable to fulfill my duties to the United State! I.⁠ ⁠…

Record Eleven

No, I can’t; let it be without headings!

Evening. It is somewhat foggy. The sky is covered with a milky-golden tissue, and one cannot see what is there, beyond, on the heights. The ancients “knew” that the greatest, bored skeptic⁠—their God, lived there. We know that crystalline, blue, naked, indecent Nothing is there. I do not know any more what is there. I have learned too many things of late. Knowledge, self-confident knowledge which is sure that it is faultless, is faith. I had firm faith in myself; I believed that I knew all about myself. But then.⁠ ⁠… I look in the mirror. And for the first time in my life, yes, for the first time in my life, I see clearly, precisely, consciously and with surprise, I see myself as some “him!” I am “he.” Frowning, black, straight brows; between them like a scar, there is a vertical wrinkle. (Was there that wrinkle before?) Steel gray eyes encircled by the shadow of a sleepless