We, Yevgeny Zamyatin [read a book .TXT] 📗

from getting up and, and.⁠ ⁠… I don’t remember exactly; probably I wanted to tell her a number of disagreeable things. But she had already appeared.

She was dressed in a short bright-yellowish dress, black hat, black stockings. The dress was of light silk⁠—I saw clearly very long black stockings above the knees, an uncovered neck and the shadow between.⁠ ⁠…

“It’s clear that you want to seem original. But is it possible that you⁠—?”

“It is clear,” interrupted I-330, “that to be original means to stand out among others; consequently to be original means to violate the law of equality. What was called in the language of the ancients ‘to be common’ is with us only the fulfilling of one’s duty. For⁠—”

“Yes, yes, exactly,” I interrupted impatiently, “and there is no use, no use.⁠ ⁠…”

She came near the bust of the snub-nosed poet, lowered the curtains on the wild fire of her eyes and said, this time I think she was really in earnest, or perhaps she merely wanted to soften my impatience with her, but she said a very reasonable thing:

“Don’t you think it surprising that once people could stand types like this? Not only stand them but worship them. What a slavish spirit, don’t you think so?”

“It’s clear⁠ ⁠… that is⁠ ⁠… !” I wanted⁠ ⁠… (damn that cursed “it’s clear!”).

“Oh, yes, I understand. But in fact these were rulers stronger than the crowned ones. Why were they not isolated and exterminated? In our State⁠—”

“Oh, yes, in our State⁠—” I began.

Suddenly she laughed. I saw the laughter in her eyes. I saw the resounding sharp curve of that laughter, flexible, tense like a whip. I remember my whole body shivered. I thought of grasping her⁠ ⁠… and I don’t know what.⁠ ⁠… I had to do something, mattered little what; automatically I looked at my golden badge, glanced at my watch⁠—ten minutes to seventeen!

“Don’t you think it is time to go?” I said in as polite a tone as possible.

“And if I should ask you to stay here with me?”

“What? Do you realize what you are saying? In ten minutes I must be in the auditorium.”

“And ‘all the Numbers must take the prescribed courses in art and science,’ ” said I-330 with my voice.

Then she lifted the curtain, opened her eyes⁠—through the dark windows the fire was blazing.

“I have a physician in the Medical Bureau; he is registered to me; if I ask him, he will give you a certificate declaring that you are ill. All right?”

Understood! At last I understood where this game was leading.

“Ah, so! But you know that every honest Number as a matter of course must immediately go to the office of the Guardians and⁠—”

“And as a matter not of course?” (Sharp smile-bite) “I am very curious to know; will you or will you not go to the Guardians?”

“Are you going to remain here?”

I grasped the knob of the door. It was a brass knob, a cold, brass knob and I heard, cold like brass, her voice:

“Just a minute, may I?”

She went to the telephone, called a Number⁠—I was so upset it escaped me⁠—and spoke loudly: “I shall be waiting for you in the Ancient House. Yes, yes, alone.”

I turned the cold brass knob.

“May I take the aero?”

“Oh yes, certainly, please!”

In the sunshine at the gate the old woman was dozing like a plant. Again I was surprised to see her grown-together mouth open, and to hear her say:

“And your lady, did she remain alone?”

“Alone.”

The mouth of the old woman grew together again; she shook her head; apparently even her weakening brain understood the stupidity and the danger of the behaviour of that woman.

At seventeen o’clock exactly, I was at the lecture. There I suddenly realized that I did not tell the whole truth to the old woman. I-330 was not there alone now. Possibly this fact, that I involuntarily told the old woman a lie, was torturing me now and distracting my attention. Yes, not alone⁠—that was the point.

After twenty-one-thirty o’clock I had a free hour. I could therefore have gone to the office of the Guardians to make my report; but after that stupid adventure I was so tired⁠—besides, the law provides two days. I shall have time tomorrow; I have another twenty-four hours.

Record Seven

An eyelash⁠—Taylor⁠—Henbane and lily of the valley.

Night. Green, orange, blue. The red royal instrument. The yellow dress. Then a brass Buddha. Suddenly it lifted the brass eyelids and sap began to flow from it, from Buddha. Sap also from the yellow dress. Even in the mirror⁠—drops of sap, and from the large bed and from the children’s bed and soon from myself.⁠ ⁠… It is horror, mortally sweet horror!⁠ ⁠…

I woke up. Soft blue light, the glass of the walls, of the chairs, of the table was glimmering. This calmed me. My heart stopped palpitating. Sap! Buddha! How absurd! I am sick, it is clear; I never saw dreams before. They say that to see dreams was a common normal thing with the ancients. Yes, after all, their life was a whirling carousel: green, orange, Buddha, sap⁠—but we, people of today, we know all too well that dreaming is a serious mental disease. I.⁠ ⁠… Is it possible that my brain, this precise, clean, glittering mechanism, like a chronometer without a speck of dust on it, is⁠ ⁠… ? Yes it is, now. I really feel there in the brain some foreign body like an eyelash in the eye. One does not feel one’s whole body but this eye with a hair in it, one cannot forget it for a second.⁠ ⁠…

The cheerful, crystalline sound of the bell at my head. Seven o’clock. Time to get up. To the right and to the left as in mirrors, to the right and to the left through the glass walls I see others like myself, other rooms like my own, other clothes like my own, movements like mine, duplicated thousands of times. This invigorates me; I see myself as a part of an enormous, vigorous, united body; and what