We - Yevgeny Zamyatin (whitelam books txt) 📗

door firmly. One step! The floor shook under my feet. Slowly and softly I floated somewhere downward; my eyes were dimmed⁠—I died!

Later when I sat down to describe all these adventures, I sought in my memory and consulted some books; and now I understand, of course! I was in a state of temporary death. This state was known to the ancients, but as far as I am informed it is unknown to us. I have no conception of how long I was dead, probably not longer than five or ten seconds, but after awhile I arose from the dead and opened my eyes. It was dark. But I felt I was falling down⁠—down⁠—down. I stretched out my hand to attach myself to something but the rough wall scratched my fingers; it was running away from me, upward. I felt blood on my fingers. It was clear that all this was not merely a play of my sick imagination. But what was it? What?

I heard my own frequent, trembling breaths. (I am not ashamed to confess this, it was all unexpected and incomprehensible.) A minute, two, three passed; I was still going down. Then a soft bump. The thing that had been falling away from under my feet was motionless. I found in the darkness a knob, and turned it; a door opened; there was a dim light. I now noticed behind me a square platform, travelling upward. I tried to run back to it but it was too late. “I am cut off here,” I thought. Where “here” might be, I did not know.

A corridor. A heavy silence. The small lamps on the vaulted ceiling resembled an endless, twinkling, dotted line. The corridor was similar to the “tube” of our underground railways but it was much narrower, and made not of our glass but of some other, very ancient material. For a moment I thought of the underground caves where they say many tried to save themselves during the Two Hundred Years’ War. There was nothing to do but to walk ahead.

I walked, I think, for about twenty minutes. A turn to the right, the corridor became wider, the small lamps brighter. There was a dim droning somewhere.⁠ ⁠… Was it a machine or voices? I did not know. I stood before a heavy, opaque door, from behind which came the noise. I knocked. Then I knocked again, louder. Now there was silence behind the door. Something clanked; the door opened slowly and heavily.

I don’t know which of us was the more dumbfounded; the thin blade-like doctor stood before me!

“You here!” his scissors opened and remained open.

And I, as if I did not know a human word, stood silent, merely stared, without comprehending that he was talking to me. He must have told me to leave, for with his thin paper stomach he slowly pressed me to the side, to the more brightly lighted end of the corridor and poked me in the back.

“Beg your pardon⁠ ⁠… I wanted⁠ ⁠… I thought that she, I-330⁠ ⁠… but behind me.⁠ ⁠…”

“Stay where you are,” said the doctor brusquely, and he disappeared.

At last! At last she was nearby, here, and what did it matter where “here” was? I saw the familiar saffron-yellow silk, the smile-bite, the eyes with their curtains drawn.⁠ ⁠… My lips quivered, so did my hands and knees, and I had a most stupid thought: “Vibrations make sounds. Shivering must make a sound. Why then don’t I hear it?”

Her eyes opened for me widely. I entered into them.

“I could not⁠ ⁠… any longer!⁠ ⁠… Where have you been?⁠ ⁠… Why?⁠ ⁠…”

I was unable to tear my eyes away from her for a second, and I talked as if in a delirium, fast and incoherently, or perhaps I only thought without speaking out: “A shadow⁠ ⁠… behind me. I died. And from the cupboard.⁠ ⁠… Because that doctor of yours⁠ ⁠… speaks with his scissors.⁠ ⁠… I have a soul⁠ ⁠… incurable⁠ ⁠… and I must walk.⁠ ⁠…”

“An incurable soul? My poor boy!” I-330 laughed. She covered me with the sparkles of her laughter; my delirium left me. Everywhere around her little laughs were sparkling! How good it was!

The doctor reappeared from around the turn, the wonderful, magnificent, thinnest doctor.

“Well?” He was already beside her.

“Oh, nothing, nothing. I shall tell you later. He got here by accident. Tell them that I shall be back in about a quarter of an hour.”

The doctor slid around the corner. She lingered. The door closed with a heavy thud. Then slowly, very slowly, piercing my heart with a sharp sweet needle, I-330 pressed against me with her shoulder and then with her arm, with her whole body, and we walked away as if fused into one.

I do not remember now where we turned into darkness; in the darkness we walked up some endless stairway in silence. I did not see but I knew, I knew that she walked as I did, with closed eyes, blind, her head thrown a little backward, biting her lips and listening to the music, that is to say, to my almost audible tremor.

I returned to consciousness in one of the innumerable nooks in the courtyard of the Ancient House. There was a fence of earth with naked stone ribs and yellow teeth of walls half fallen to pieces. She opened her eyes and said, “Day-after-tomorrow at sixteen.” She was gone.

Did all this really happen? I do not know. I shall learn day-after-tomorrow. One real sign remains: on my right hand the skin has been rubbed from the tips of three fingers. But today, on the Integral the Second Builder assured me that he saw me touch the polishing wheel with those very same fingers. Perhaps I did. It is quite probable. I don’t know. I don’t know anything.

Record Eighteen

Logical debris⁠—Wounds and plaster⁠—Never again.

Last night as soon as I had gone to bed, I fell momentarily to the bottom of the ocean of sleep like an overloaded ship which has been wrecked. The heavy thicket of wavy