We - Yevgeny Zamyatin (whitelam books txt) 📗

my life, I wept bitterly because there was an ink-stain on my unif⁠—on such a holy day!

I-330 lifted her head. She leaned on her elbow. In the corners of her lips two long, sharp lines and the dark angle of lifted eyebrows⁠—a cross.

“Perhaps on that day⁠ ⁠…” her brow grew darker; she took my hand and pressed it hard. “Tell me, will you ever forget me? Will you always remember me?”

“But why such talk? What is it, I-, dear?”

She was silent. And her eyes were already sliding past me, through me, away into the distance. I suddenly heard the wind beating the glass with its enormous wings. Of course it had been blowing all the while but I had not noticed it until then. And for some reason those cawing birds over the Green Wall came to my mind.

I-330 shook her head with a gesture of throwing something off. Once more she touched me for a second with her whole body, as an aero before landing touches the ground for a second with all the tension of a recoiling spring.

“Well, give me my stockings, quick!”

The stockings were on the desk, on the open manuscript, on page 124. Being in haste I caught some of the pages and they were scattered over the floor so that it was hard to put them back in the proper order. Moreover, even if I put them in that order there will be no real order; there are obstacles to that anyway, some undiscoverable unknowns.

“I can’t bear it,” I said, “You are here, near me, yet you seem to be behind an opaque ancient wall; through that wall I hear a rustle and voices; I cannot make out the words, I don’t know what is there. I cannot bear it. You seem always to withhold something from me; you have never told me what kind of a place it was where I found myself that day beneath the Ancient House. Where did those corridors lead? Why was the doctor there⁠—or perhaps all that never happened?”

I-330 put her hands on my shoulders and slowly entered deeply into my eyes.

“You want to know all?”

“Yes, I do.”

“And you would not be afraid to follow me anywhere? Wherever I should lead you?”

“Anywhere!”

“All right then. I promise you, after the holiday, if only.⁠ ⁠… Oh yes, there is your Integral. I always forget to ask; will it soon be completed?”

“No. ‘If only’ what? Again! ‘If only’ what?”

She, already at the door: “You shall see.”

I was again alone. All that she left behind her was a barely perceptible scent, similar to that of a sweet, dry, yellow dust of flowers from behind the Green Wall; also, sunk deeply within me, question marks like small hooks similar to those the ancients used for fishing (vide the Prehistoric Museum).

… Why did she suddenly ask about the Integral?

Record Twenty-Four

The limit of the function⁠—Easter⁠—To cross out everything.

I am like a motor set in motion at a speed of too many revolutions per second, the bearings have become too hot and in one more minute the molten metal will begin to drip and everything will go to the devil. Cold water! Quick! Some logic! I pour pailfuls of it, but my logic merely sizzles on the hot metal and disappears in the air in the form of vapor.

Of course it is clear that in order to establish the true meaning of a function, one must establish its limit. It is also clear that yesterday’s “dissolution in the universe” taken to its limit is death. For death is exactly the most complete dissolution of the self in the universe. Hence: L = f (D), love is the function of death.

Yes, exactly, exactly! That is why I am afraid of I-330; I struggle against her, I don’t want.⁠ ⁠… But why is it that within me “I don’t want to” and “I want to” stand side by side? That is the chief horror of the matter; I continue to long for that happy death of yesterday. The horror of it is that even now, when I have integrated the logical function, when it becomes evident that the latter contains death hidden in it, nevertheless I long for it with my lips, arms, breast, with every millimeter.⁠ ⁠…

Tomorrow is the Day of Unanimity. She will certainly be there and I shall see her, though from a distance. That distance will be painful to me, for I must be, I am inevitably drawn, close to her, so that her hands, her shoulder, her hair.⁠ ⁠… I long for even that pain.⁠ ⁠… Let it come.⁠ ⁠… Great Well-Doer! How absurd to desire pain! Who is ignorant of the simple fact that pains are negative items which reduce that sum total we call happiness? Consequently⁠ ⁠… Well, no “consequently”⁠ ⁠… Emptiness.⁠ ⁠… Nakedness!

The Same Evening.

Through the glass wall of the house I see a disquieting, windy, feverishly pink, sunset. I move my armchair to avoid that pinkness and turn over these pages, and I find I am forgetting that I write this not for myself but for you unknown people whom I love and pity, for you who still lag centuries behind, below. Let me tell you about the Day of Unanimity, about that Great Day. I think that day for us is what Easter was for the ancients. I remember I used to prepare an hour-calendar the eve of that day; solemnly I would cross out every time the figure of the hour elapsed; nearer by one hour! one hour less to wait!⁠ ⁠… If I were certain that nobody would discover it, I assure you I should now too, make out such a calendar and carry it with me, and I should watch how many hours remain until tomorrow, when I shall see, at least from a distance.⁠ ⁠…

(I was interrupted. They brought me a new unif from the shop. As is customary, new unifs are given to us for tomorrow’s celebration. Steps in the hall, exclamations of