We - Yevgeny Zamyatin (whitelam books txt) 📗

square position. Take the pink checks for instance, and all that goes with them: for me they are as natural as the equality of the four angles of the square. But for you they are perhaps more mysterious and hard to understand than the binom of Newton. Let me explain: an ancient sage once said a clever thing (accidentally, beyond doubt). He said, “Love and Hunger rule the world.” Consequently, to dominate the world, man had to win a victory over hunger after paying a very high price. I refer to the great Two Hundred Years’ War, the war between the city and the land. Probably on account of religious prejudices, the primitive peasants stubbornly held on to their “bread.”1 In the 35th year before the foundation of the United State, our contemporary petroleum food was invented. True, only about two-tenths of the population of the globe did not die out. But how beautifully shining the face of the earth became when it was cleared of its impurities!

Accordingly the 0.2 which survived, have enjoyed the greatest happiness in the bosom of the United State. But is it not clear that supreme bliss and envy are only the numerator and the denominator respectively, of the same fraction, happiness? What sense would the innumerable sacrifices of the Two Hundred Years’ War have for us if a reason were left in our life for jealousy? Yet such a reason persisted because there remained button-like noses and classical noses (cf.: our conversation during the promenade). For there were some whose love was sought by everyone and others whose love was sought by no one.

Naturally, having conquered hunger (that is, algebraically speaking, having achieved the total of bodily welfare), the United State directed its attack against the second ruler of the world, against love. At last this element also was conquered, that is, organized and put into a mathematical formula. It is already three hundred years since our great historic Lex Sexualis was promulgated: “A Number may obtain a license to use any other Number as a sexual product.”

The rest is only a matter of technique. You are carefully examined in the laboratory of the Sexual Department where they find the content of the sexual hormones in your blood, and they make out for you accordingly a Table of sexual days. Then you file an application to enjoy the services of Number so-and-so, or Numbers so-and-so. You get for that purpose a checkbook (pink). That is all.

It is clear that under such circumstances there is no more reason for envy or jealousy. The denominator of the fraction of happiness is reduced to zero and the whole fraction is thus converted into a magnificent infiniteness. The thing which was for the ancients the source of innumerable stupid tragedies has been converted in our time into an harmonious, agreeable and useful function of the organism, a function like sleep, like physical labor, the taking of food, digestion, etc., etc. Hence you see how the great power of logic purifies everything it happens to touch. Oh, if only you unknown readers can conceive this divine power! If you will only learn to follow it to the end!

It is very strange: while I was writing today of the loftiest summit of human history, all the while I breathed the purest mountain air of thought, but within me it was and remains cloudy, cobwebby, and there is a kind of cross-like, four-pawed X. Or perhaps it is my paws and I feel like that only because they are always before my eyes, my hairy paws. I don’t like to talk about them. I dislike them. They are a trace of a primitive epoch. Is it possible that there is in me⁠ ⁠… ?

I wanted to strike out all this because it trespasses on the limits of my synopsis. But then I decided: no, I shall not! Let this diary give the curve of the most imperceptible vibrations of my brain, like a precise seismograph, for at times such vibrations serve as forewarnings.⁠ ⁠… Certainly this is absurd! This certainly should be stricken out; we have conquered all the elements; catastrophes are not possible any more.

Now everything is clear to me. The peculiar feeling inside is a result of that very same square situation of which I spoke in the beginning. There is no X in me. There can be none. I am simply afraid lest some X will be left in you, my unknown readers. I believe you will understand that it is harder for me to write than it ever was for any author throughout human history. Some of them wrote for contemporaries, some for the future generations but none of them ever wrote for their ancestors, or beings like their primitive, distant ancestors.

Record Six

An accident⁠—The cursed “It’s clear”⁠—Twenty-four hours.

I must repeat, I made it my duty to write concealing nothing. Therefore I must point out now that sad as it may be, the process of hardening and crystallization of life has evidently not been completed even here in our State. A few steps remain to be made before we reach the ideal. The ideal (it’s clear), is to be found where nothing happens, but here.⁠ ⁠… I will give you an example: in the State paper I read that in two days the holiday of Justice will be celebrated on the Plaza of the Cube. This means that again some Number has impeded the smooth run of the great State machine. Again something that was not foreseen, or forecalculated happened.

Besides, something happened to me. True, it occurred during the personal hour, that is during the time specifically assigned to unforeseen circumstances, yet.⁠ ⁠…

At about sixteen (to be exact, ten minutes to sixteen), I was at home. Suddenly the telephone: “D-503?”⁠—a woman’s voice.

“Yes.”

“Are you free?”

“Yes.”

“It is I, I-330. I shall run over to you immediately. We shall go together to the Ancient House. Agreed?”

I-330!⁠ ⁠… This I- irritates me, repels me.