We - Yevgeny Zamyatin (whitelam books txt) 📗

with her crossed arms. She disappeared as if washed away by a wave, or else I simply forgot her because.⁠ ⁠…

This not on the screen any more but within me, within my compressed heart, within the rapidly pulsating temples; over my head, somewhat to the left, R-13 suddenly jumped upon a bench, all sprinkling, red, rabid. In his arms was I-330, pale, her unif torn from shoulder to breast, red blood on white. She firmly held him round the neck, and he with huge leaps from bench to bench, repellent and agile, like a gorilla, was carrying her away upward.

As if it were in a fire of ancient days, everything became red around me. Only one thing in my head: to jump after them, to catch them. At this moment I cannot explain to myself the source of that strength within me, but like a battering-ram I broke through the crowd, over somebody’s shoulders, over a bench and I was there in a moment and caught R-13 by the collar:

“Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare, I say! Immediately⁠—”

Fortunately no one could hear my voice, as everyone was shouting and running.

“Who is it? What is the matter? What⁠—” R-13 turned around; his sprinkling lips were trembling. He apparently thought it was one of the Guardians.

“What? I do not want⁠—I won’t allow⁠—Put her down at once!”

But he only sprinkled angrily with his lips, shook his head and ran on. Then I⁠ ⁠… I am terribly ashamed to write all this down but I believe I must, so that you, my unknown readers, may make a complete study of my disease.⁠ ⁠… Then I hit him over the head with all my might. You understand? I hit him. This I remember distinctly. I remember also a feeling of liberation that followed my action, a feeling of lightness in my whole body.

I-330 slid quickly out of his arms.

“Go away!” she shouted to R-, “Don’t you see that he⁠—? Go!”

R-13 showed his white negro teeth, sprinkled into my face some word, dived down and disappeared. And I picked up I-330, pressed her firmly to myself and carried her away.

My heart was beating forcibly. It seemed enormous. And with every beat it would splash out such a thundering, such a hot, such a joyful wave! A flash: “Let them, below there, let them toss and rush and yell and fall; what matter if something has fallen, if something has been shattered to dust?⁠—Little matter! Only to remain this way and carry her, carry and carry.⁠ ⁠…”

The Same Evening, Twenty-Two O’Clock.

I hold my pen with great difficulty. Such an extraordinary fatigue after all the dizzying events of this morning. Is it possible that the strong, salutary, centuries-old walls of the United State have fallen? Is it possible that we are again without a roof over our heads, back in the wild state of freedom like our remote ancestors? Is it possible that we have lost our Well-Doer? “Opposed!” On the Day of Unanimity⁠—opposed! I am ashamed of them, painfully, fearfully ashamed.⁠ ⁠… But who are “they”? And who am I? “They,” “We”⁠ ⁠… ? Do I know?

I shall continue.

She was sitting where I had brought her on the uppermost glass bench which was hot from the sun. Her right shoulder and the beginning of the wonderful and incalculable curve were uncovered⁠—an exceedingly thin serpent of blood. She seemed not to be aware of the blood, or that her breast was uncovered. No, I will say rather: she seemed to see all that and seemed to feel that it was essential to her, that if her unif were buttoned she would have torn it, she would have.⁠ ⁠…

“And tomorrow!” She breathed the words through sparkling white clenched teeth, “Tomorrow, nobody knows what⁠ ⁠… do you understand? Neither I nor anyone else knows; it is unknown! Do you realize what a joy it is? Do you realize that all that was certain has come to an end? Now⁠ ⁠… things will be new, improbable, unforeseen!”

Below the human waves were still foaming, tossing, roaring, but they seemed to be very far away, and to be growing more and more distant. For she was looking at me. She slowly drew me into herself through the narrow, golden windows of her pupils. We thus remained silent for a long while. And for some reason I recalled how once I watched some queer yellow pupils through the Green Wall, while above the Wall birds were soaring (or was this another time?).

“Listen, if nothing particular happens tomorrow, I shall take you there; do you understand?”

No, I did not understand but I nodded in silence. I was dissolved, I became infinitesimal, a geometrical point.⁠ ⁠…

After all, there is some logic⁠—a peculiar logic of today, in this state of being a point. A point has more unknowns than any other entity. If a point should start to move, it might become thousands of curves, or hundreds of solids.

I was afraid to budge. What might I have become if I had moved? It seemed to me that everybody like myself was afraid now of even the most minute of motions.

At this moment, for instance, as I sit and write, everyone is sitting hidden in his glass cell, expecting something. I do not hear the buzzing of the elevators, usual at this hour, or laughter or steps, from time to time Numbers pass in couples through the hall, whispering, on tiptoe.⁠ ⁠…

What will happen tomorrow? What will become of me tomorrow?

Record Twenty-Six

The world does exist⁠—Rash⁠—Forty-one degrees centigrade.

Morning. Through the ceiling the sky is as usual firm, round, red-cheeked. I think I should have been less surprised had I found above some extraordinary quadrangular sun, or people clad in many-colored dresses made of the skins of animals, or opaque walls of stone. Then the world, our world, does still exist? Or is it only inertia? Is the generator already switched out, while the armature is still roaring and revolving;⁠—two more revolutions, or three, and at the