We - Yevgeny Zamyatin (whitelam books txt) 📗

I shall continue; tomorrow I shall see the same spectacle which we see year after year and which always awakes in us fresh emotions, as though we saw it for the first time: an impressive throng of piously lifted arms. Tomorrow is the day of the yearly election of the Well-Doer. Tomorrow we shall again hand over to our Well-Doer the keys to the impregnable fortress of our happiness. Certainly this in no way resembles the disorderly, unorganized election-days of the ancients, on which (it seems so funny!) they did not even know in advance the result of the election. To build a state on some non-discountable contingencies, to build blindly⁠—what could be more nonsensical? Yet centuries were required to pass before this was understood!

Needless to say, we in this respect as in all others have no place for contingencies; nothing unexpected can happen. The elections themselves have rather a symbolic meaning. They remind us that we are a united, powerful organism of millions of cells, that⁠—, to use the language of the “gospel” of the ancients, we are a united church. The history of the United State knows not a single case in which upon this solemn day even a solitary voice has dared to violate the magnificent unison.

They say that the ancients used to conduct their elections secretly, stealthily like thieves. Some of our historians assert even that they would come to the electoral celebrations completely masked. Imagine the weird, fantastic spectacle! Night. A plaza. Along the walls the stealthily creeping figures covered with mantles. The red flame of torches dancing in the wind.⁠ ⁠… Why was such secrecy necessary? It has never been satisfactorily explained. Probably it resulted from the fact that elections were associated with some mystic and superstitious, perhaps even criminal ceremonies. We have nothing to conceal or to be ashamed of; we celebrate our election openly, honestly, in daylight. I see them all vote for the Well-Doer and everybody sees me vote for the Well-Doer. How could it be otherwise, since “all” and “I” are one “we”? How ennobling, sincere, lofty, is this compared with the cowardly, thievish “secrecy” of the ancients! Moreover, how much more expedient! For even admitting for a moment the impossible, that is the outbreak of some dissonance in our customary unity, in that case our unseen Guardians are always right there among us, are they not, to register the Numbers who would fall into error and save them from any further false steps? The United State is theirs, the Numbers’! And besides.⁠ ⁠…

Through the wall to my left a she-number before the mirror-door of the closet; she is hastily unbuttoning her unif. For a second, swiftly⁠—eyes, lips, two sharp, pink⁠ ⁠… the curtains fell. Within me instantly awoke all that happened yesterday and now I no longer know what I meant to say by “besides.⁠ ⁠…” I no longer wish to;⁠—I cannot. I want one thing. I want I-330. I want her every minute, every second, to be with me, with no one else. All that I wrote about Unanimity is of no value; it is not what I want; I have a desire to cross it out, to tear it to pieces and throw it away. For I know (be it a sacrilege, yet it is the truth), that a glorious Day is possible only with her and only then when we are side by side, shoulder to shoulder. Without her the Sun of tomorrow will appear to me only as a little circle cut out of a tin sheet, and the sky a sheet of tin painted blue, and I myself⁠ ⁠… I snatched the telephone receiver.

“I-330, are you there?”

“Yes, it is I. Why so late?”

“Perhaps not too late yet. I want to ask you⁠ ⁠… I want you to be with me tomorrow⁠—dear!”

“Dear” I said in a very low voice. And for some reason a thing I saw this morning at the docks flashed through my mind: just for fun someone put a watch under the hundred-ton sledgehammer.⁠ ⁠… A swing, a breath of wind in the face and the silent hundred-ton, knife-like weight on the breakable watch.⁠ ⁠…

A silence. I thought I heard someone’s whisper in I-330’s room. Then her voice:

“No, I cannot. Of course you understand that I myself.⁠ ⁠… No, I cannot. ‘Why?’ You shall see tomorrow.”

Night.

The descent from heaven⁠—The greatest catastrophe in history⁠—The known ⸻ is ended.

At the beginning all arose, and the hymn, like a solemn mantle, slowly waved above our heads. Hundreds of tubes of the Musical Tower and millions of human voices. For a second I forgot everything; I forgot that alarming something at which I-330 hinted in connection with today’s celebration; I think I even forgot about her. At that moment I was the very same little boy who once wept because of a tiny ink-stain on his unif, which no one else could see. Even if it be so, if nobody sees that I am covered with black, ineffaceable stains, I know it, do I not? I know that there should be no place for a criminal like me among these frank open faces. What if I should rush forward and shout out all at once everything about myself! The end might follow. Let it! At least for a second I would feel myself clear and clean and senseless like that innocent blue sky.⁠ ⁠…

All eyes were directed upward; in the pure morning blue, still moist with the tears of night, a small dark spot appeared. Now it was dark, now bathed in the rays of the sun. It was He, descending to us from the sky, He⁠—the new Jehovah⁠—in an aero, He, as wise and as lovingly cruel as the Jehovah of the ancients. Nearer and nearer, and higher toward him were drawn millions of hearts. Already he saw us. And in my mind with Him I looked over everything from the heights: concentric circles of stands marked with dotted blue lines of unifs⁠—like