We - Yevgeny Zamyatin (whitelam books txt) 📗

Yesterday was her day and again she did not come. Again there came her incoherent note, explaining nothing. But I am tranquil, perfectly tranquil. If I do act as I am told to in the note, if I do go to the controller on duty, produce the pink check and then, having lowered the curtains if I do sit alone in my room, I do all this of course not because I have no power to act contrary to her desire. It seems funny? Decidedly not! It is quite simple: separated from all curative, plaster-like smiles I am enabled quietly to write these very lines. This first. And second: I am afraid to lose in her, in I-330, perhaps the only clue I shall ever have to the understanding of all the unknowns, like the story of the cupboard, or my temporary death, for instance. To understand, to discover these unknowns as the author of these records, I feel it simply my duty. Moreover, the unknown is naturally the enemy of man. And Homo Sapiens only then becomes Man in the complete sense of the word, when his punctuation includes no question marks, only exclamation points, commas and periods.

Thus, guided by what seems to me simply my duty as an author, I took an aero today at sixteen o’clock and went to the Ancient House. A strong wind was blowing against me. The aero advanced with difficulty through the thicket of air, its transparent branches whistling and whipping. The city below seemed a heap of blue blocks of ice. Suddenly⁠—a cloud, a swift, oblique shadow. The ice became leaden; it swelled. As in springtime when you happen to stand at the shore and wait; in one more minute everything will move and pull and crack! But the minute passes and the ice remains motionless; you feel as though you yourself are swelling, your heart beats more restlessly, more frequently.⁠ ⁠… But why do I write about all this? And whence all these strange sensations? For is there such an iceberg as could ever break the most lucid, solid crystal of our life?

At the entrance of the Ancient House I found no one. I went around it and found the old janitress near the Green Wall. She held her hand above her eyes, looking upward. Beyond the Wall, sharp black triangles of some birds; they would rush, cawing, in onslaught on the invisible fence of electric waves, and as they felt the electricity against their breasts, they would recoil and soar once more beyond the Wall.

I noticed oblique, swift shadows on the dark, wrinkled face, a quick glance at me.

“Nobody here, nobody, nobody! No! And no use coming here.⁠ ⁠…”

In what respect is it “no use” and what a strange idea, to consider me somebody’s shadow. Perhaps all of you are only my shadows. Did I not populate these pages which only recently were white quadrangular deserts, with you? Without me would they whom I shall guide over the narrow paths of my lines, could they ever see you?

Of course I did not say all this to the old woman. From experience I know that the most torturing thing is to inoculate someone with a doubt as to the fact that he or she is a three-dimensional reality and not some other reality. I remarked only, quite drily, that her business was to open the gate, and she let me into the courtyard.

It was empty. Quiet. The wind remained beyond the walls, distant as on that day, when shoulder to shoulder, two like one, we came out from beneath, from the corridors⁠—if it ever really happened. I walked under stone arches, my steps resounded against the damp vaults and fell behind me, sounding as though someone were continually following me. The yellow walls with patches of red brick were watching me through their square spectacles, windows⁠—watching me open the squeaky doors of a barn, look into corners, nooks and hidden places.⁠ ⁠… A gate in the fence and a lonely spot. The monument of the Two Hundred Years’ War. From the ground naked, stone ribs were sticking out. The yellow jaws of the wall. An ancient oven with a chimney like a ship petrified forever among redbrick waves.

It seemed to me that I had seen those yellow teeth once before. I saw them still dimly in my mind, as at the bottom of a barrel, through water. And I began to search. I fell into caves occasionally; I stumbled over stones; rusty jaws caught my unif a few times; salt drops of sweat ran from my forehead into my eyes.

Nowhere! I could find that exit from below, from the corridors, nowhere! There was none. Well, perhaps it was better that it happened so. Probably that all was only one of my absurd “dreams.”

Tired out, covered with cobweb and dust, I opened the gate to return to the main yard, when suddenly⁠ ⁠… a rustle behind me, splashing steps, and there before me were the pink winglike ears and the double-curved smile of S-. Half closing his eyes, he bored his little drills into me and asked:

“Taking a walk?”

I was silent. My arms were heavy.

“Well, do you feel better now?”

“Yes, thank you. I think I am getting normal again.”

He let me go. He lifted his eyes, looked upward, and I noticed his Adam’s apple for the first time; it resembles a broken spring, sticking out from beneath the upholstery of a divan.

Above us, not very high (about 50 meters) aeros were buzzing. By their low, slow flight and by the observation tubes which hung down, I recognized them. They were the aeros of the Guardians. But there were not two or three, as usual, there were about ten or twelve (I regret to have to confine myself to an approximate figure).

“Why are there so many today?” I dared to ask S-.

“Why? Hm.⁠ ⁠… A real physician begins to treat a patient when he is still well but on the way