We - Yevgeny Zamyatin (whitelam books txt) 📗

“If your silence is intended to mean that you agree with me, then let us talk as adults do after the children have gone to bed; let us talk to the logical end. I ask: what was it that man from his diaper age dreamed of, tormented himself for, prayed for? He longed for that day when someone would tell him what happiness is and then would chain him to it. What else are we doing now? The ancient dream about a paradise.⁠ ⁠… Remember: there in paradise they know no desires any more, no pity, no love; there they are all⁠—blessed. An operation has been performed upon their centre of fancy; that is why they are blessed, angels, servants of God.⁠ ⁠… And now, at the very moment when we have caught up with that dream, when we hold it like this”: (He clenched his hand so, that if he had held a stone in it sap would have run out!) “At the moment when all that was left for us was to adorn our prize and distribute it amongst all in equal pieces, at that very moment you, you.⁠ ⁠…”

The cast-iron roar was suddenly broken off. I was as red as a piece of iron on an anvil, under the moulding sledgehammer. This seemed to have stopped for a second, hanging in air, and I waited, waited⁠ ⁠… until suddenly:

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-two.”

“Just double the age, and as simple as at sixteen! Listen. Is it possible that it really never occurred to you that they (we do not yet know their names but I am certain you will disclose them to us), that they were interested in you only as the Builder of the Integral? only in order to be able through the use of you⁠—”

“Don’t! Don’t!” I cried. But it was like protecting yourself with your hands and crying to a bullet: you may still be hearing your own “don’t” but the bullet meanwhile has burned you through, and writhing with pain, you are prostrated on the ground.

Yes, yes; the Builder of the Integral.⁠ ⁠… Yes, yes.⁠ ⁠… At once there came back to me the angry face of U- with twitching, brick-red gills, on that morning when both of them.⁠ ⁠…

I remember now, clearly, how I raised my eyes and laughed. A Socrates-like, bald-headed man was sitting before me; and small drops of sweat dotted the bald surface of his cranium.

How simple, how magnificently trivial everything was! How simple! Almost to the point of being ridiculous. Laughter was choking me and bursting forth in puffs; I covered my mouth with my hand and rushed wildly out.⁠ ⁠…

Steps. Wind. Damp, leaping fragments of lights and faces.⁠ ⁠… And while running: “No! Only to see her! To see her once more!”

Here again, an empty white page. All I remember is feet; not people, just feet; hundreds of feet, confusedly stamping feet, falling from somewhere on the pavement; a heavy rain of feet.⁠ ⁠… And some cheerful, daring voice, and a shout that was probably for me: “Hey, hey! Come here! Come along with us!”

Afterward⁠—a deserted square heavily overloaded with tense wind. In the middle of the square a dim, heavy threatening mass⁠—the Machine of the Well-Doer; and a seemingly unexpected image arose within me in response to the sight of the Machine: a snow-white pillow and on the pillow a head thrown back, and half-closed eyes and a sharp, sweet line of teeth.⁠ ⁠… All this seemed so absurdly, so terribly connected with the Machine. I know how this connection has come about but I do not yet want to see it nor to say it aloud⁠—I don’t want to! I do not!

I closed my eyes, sat down on the steps which lead upwards to the Machine. I must have been running for my face was wet. From somewhere very far away cries were coming. But nobody heard them; nobody heard me crying: “Save me from it⁠—save me!”

If only I had a mother as the ancients had⁠—my mother, mine, for whom I should be not the Builder of the Integral and not D-530, not a molecule of the United State but merely a living human piece, a piece of herself, a trampled, smothered, a cast-off piece.⁠ ⁠… And though I were driving the nails into the cross or being nailed to it (perhaps it is the same), she would hear what no one else could hear; her old grown-together wrinkled lips.⁠ ⁠…

Infusorian⁠—Doomsday⁠—Her room.

This morning while we were in the refectory, my neighbor to my left whispered to me in a frightened tone:

“But why don’t you eat? Don’t you see, they are looking at you!”

I had to pluck up all my strength to show a smile. I felt it⁠—like a crack in my face; I smiled and the borders of the crack drew apart wider and wider; it was quite painful.

What followed was this: no sooner had I lifted the small cube of paste upon my fork, than my fork jerked from my hand and tinkled against the plate, and at once the tables, the walls, the plates, the air even, trembled and rang; and outside too, an enormous, iron, round roar reaching the sky⁠—floating over heads and houses it died away in the distance in small, hardly perceptible circles like those upon water.

I saw faces instantaneously grow faded and bleached; I saw mouths filled with food suddenly motionless and forks hanging in air. Then everything became confused, jumped off the centuries-old tracks, everybody jumped up from his place (without singing the Hymn!) and confusedly, in disorder, hastily finishing chewing, choking, grasping one another.⁠ ⁠… They were asking: “What? What happened? What?⁠ ⁠…” And the disorderly fragments of the Machine which was once perfect and great, fell down in all directions⁠—down the elevators, down the stairs.⁠ ⁠… Stamping of feet.⁠ ⁠… Pieces of words like pieces of torn letters carried by the wind.⁠ ⁠…

The same outpour from the neighboring houses. A minute later the avenue seemed like a drop of water under a microscope: the