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

through the avenue, I saw a man walking ahead of me. His shadow stretched along the pavement and think of it! his shadow was luminous! I think, more than that, I am absolutely certain that tomorrow all shadows will disappear. Not a shadow from any person or anything! The sun will be shining through everything.”

She, gently and earnestly:

“You are a dreamer! I should not allow my children in school to talk that way.”

She told me something about the children; that they were all led in one herd to the Operation; that it was necessary to bind them afterward with ropes; and that one must love pitilessly, “yes, pitilessly,” and that she thought she might finally decide to.⁠ ⁠…

She smoothed out the grayish-blue fold of the unif that fell between her knees, swiftly pasted her smiles all over me and went out.

Fortunately the sun did not stop today. The sun was running. It was already sixteen o’clock.⁠ ⁠… I was knocking at the door, my heart was knocking.⁠ ⁠…

“Come in!”

I threw myself upon the floor near her chair, to embrace her limbs, to lift my head upward and look into her eyes, first into one then into the other, and in each of them to see the reflection of myself in wonderful captivity.⁠ ⁠…

There beyond the wall it looked stormy, there the clouds were leaden⁠—let them be! My head was overcrowded with impetuous words, and I was speaking aloud, and flying with the sun I knew not where.⁠ ⁠… No, now we know where we are flying; planets were following me, planets sparkling with flame and populated with fiery, singing flowers and mute planets, blue ones where rational stones were unified into one organized society, and planets which like our own earth had reached already the apex of one hundred percent happiness.

Suddenly from above:

“And don’t you think that at the apex are, precisely, stones unified into an organized society?” The triangle grew sharper and sharper, darker and darker.

“Happiness⁠ ⁠… well?⁠ ⁠… Desires are tortures, are they not? It is clear therefore, that happiness is where there are no longer any desires, not a single desire any more. What an error, what an absurd prejudice it was, that formerly we would mark happiness with the sign ‘plus’! No, absolute happiness must be marked ‘minus,’⁠—divine minus!”

I remember I stammered unintelligibly:

“Absolute zero!⁠—minus 273° C.”

“Minus 273°⁠—exactly! A somewhat cool temperature. But does it not prove that we are at the summit?”

As before she seemed somehow to speak for me and through me, developing to the end my own thoughts. But there was something so morbid in her tone that I could not refrain⁠ ⁠… with an effort I drew out a “No.”

“No,” I said, “You, you are mocking.⁠ ⁠…”

She burst out laughing loudly, too loudly. Swiftly, in a second, she laughed herself to some unseen edge, stumbled and fell over.⁠ ⁠… Silence.

She stood up, put her hands upon my shoulders and looked into me for a long while. Then she pulled me toward her and everything seemed to have disappeared save her sharp, hot lips.⁠ ⁠…

“Goodbye.”

The words came from afar, from above, and reached me not at once, only after a minute, perhaps two minutes later.

“Why⁠ ⁠… why ‘goodbye’?”

“You have been ill, have you not? Because of me you have committed crimes. Has not all this tormented you? And now you have the Operation to look forward to. You will be cured of me. And that means⁠—goodbye.”

“No!” I cried.

A pitilessly sharp black triangle on a white background.

“What? Do you mean that you don’t want happiness?”

My head was breaking into pieces; two logical trains collided and crawled upon each other, rattling and smothering.⁠ ⁠…

“Well, I am waiting. You must choose; the Operation and hundred percent happiness, or.⁠ ⁠…”

“I cannot⁠ ⁠… without you.⁠ ⁠… I must not⁠ ⁠… without you.⁠ ⁠…” I said, or perhaps I only thought, I am not sure which, but I-330 heard.

“Yes, I know,” she said. Then, her hands still on my shoulders and her eyes not letting my eyes go, “Then⁠ ⁠… until tomorrow. Tomorrow at twelve. You remember?”

“No, it was postponed for a day. Day-after-tomorrow!”

“So much the better for us. At twelve, day-after-tomorrow!”

I walked alone in the dusky street. The wind was whirling, carrying, driving me like a piece of paper; fragments of the leaden sky were soaring, soaring⁠—they had to soar through the infinite for another day or two.⁠ ⁠…

Unifs of Numbers were brushing my sides⁠—yet I was walking alone. It was clear to me that all were saved but that there was no salvation for me. For I do not want salvation.⁠ ⁠…

Record Thirty-Two

I do not believe⁠—Tractors⁠—A little human splinter.

Do you believe that you will die? Oh, yes, “Man is mortal. I am a man, consequently.⁠ ⁠…” No, not that; I know that; you know it. But I ask: has it ever happened that you actually believed it? Believed definitely, believed not with your reason but with your body, that you actually felt that some day those fingers which now hold this page, will become yellow, icy?⁠ ⁠…

No, of course you cannot believe this. That is why you have not jumped from the tenth floor to the pavement before now, that is why you eat, turn over these pages, shave, smile, write.

This very thing, yes, exactly this is alive in me today. I know that that small black hand on the clock will slide down here towards midnight, then again it will start to ascend, and it will cross some last border and the improbable tomorrow will have arrived. I know it, but somehow I do not believe it, or perhaps I think that twenty-four hours are twenty-four years. Therefore I am still able to act, to hurry, to answer questions, to climb the rope-ladder to the Integral. I am still able to feel how the latter is shaking the surface of the water, and I still understand that I must grasp the railing, and I am still able to feel the cold glass in my hand. I see the transparent, living cranes, bending their long necks, carefully feeding the Integral with the