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

right to call me murderer. I know that I should have dealt the blow on her head had she not screamed:

“For⁠ ⁠… for the sake⁠ ⁠… I agree.⁠ ⁠… I⁠ ⁠… one moment.⁠ ⁠…” With trembling hands she tore off her unif;⁠—a large, yellow, drooping body, she fell upon the bed.⁠ ⁠…

Then I understood; she thought that I pulled the curtains⁠ ⁠… in order to⁠ ⁠… that I wanted.⁠ ⁠…

This was so unexpected and so stupid that I burst out laughing. Immediately the tense spring within me broke and my hand weakened and the piston fell to the floor.

Here I learned from personal experience that laughter is the most terrible of weapons; you can kill anything with laughter, even murder. I sat at my table and laughed desperately; I saw no way out of that absurd situation. I don’t know what would have been the end if things had run their natural course, for suddenly a new factor in the arithmetical chain: the telephone rang.

I hurried, grasped the receiver. Perhaps she⁠ ⁠… I heard an unfamiliar voice:

“Wait a minute.”

Annoying, infinite buzzing. Heavy steps from afar, nearer and louder like cast-iron, and.⁠ ⁠…

“D-503? The Well-Doer speaking. Come at once to me.”

Ding! He hung up the receiver. Ding! like a key in a keyhole.

U- was still in bed, eyes closed, gills apart in the form of a smile. I picked up her clothes, threw them on her and said through clenched teeth:

“Well. Quick! Quick!”

She raised her body on her elbow, her breasts hanging down to one side, eyes round. She became a figure of wax.

“What?”

“Get dressed, that is what!”

Face distorted, she firmly snatched her clothes and said in a flat voice, “Turn away.⁠ ⁠…”

I turned away, pressed my forehead against the glass. Light, figures, sparks, were trembling in the black, wet mirror.⁠ ⁠… No, all this was I, myself⁠—within me.⁠ ⁠… What did he call me for? Is it possible that he knows already about her, about me, about everything?

U-, already dressed, was at the door. I made a step toward her and pressed her hand as hard as though I hoped to squeeze out of it drop by drop what I needed.

“Listen.⁠ ⁠… Her name, you know whom I am talking of⁠—did you report her name? No? Tell the truth, I must.⁠ ⁠… I care not what happens, but tell the truth!”

“No.”

“No? But why not, since you.⁠ ⁠…”

Her lower lip turned out like the lip of that boy and her face⁠ ⁠… tears were running down her cheeks.

“Because I⁠ ⁠… I was afraid that if I did you might⁠ ⁠… you would stop lov⁠—Oh, I cannot, I could not!”

I understood. It was the truth. Absurd, ridiculous, human truth. I opened the door.

Record Thirty-Six

Empty pages⁠—The Christian god⁠—About my mother.

It is very strange that a kind of empty white page should be left in my head. How I walked there, how I waited (I remember I had to wait), I know nothing about it; I remember not a sound, not a face, not a gesture, as if all communicating wires between me and the world were cut.

When I came to, I found myself standing before Him; I feared to raise my eyes⁠—I saw only His enormous cast-iron hands upon His knees. Those hands weighed upon Him, bending His knees with their weight. He was slowly moving His fingers. His face was somewhere above as if in fog. And, only because His voice came to my ear from such a height, it did not roar like thunder, it did not deafen me but appeared to be an ordinary human voice.

“Then you too, you the Builder of the Integral! You, whose lot it was to become the greatest of all conquistadores! You whose name was to have been at the head of a glorious, new chapter of the history of the United State! You.⁠ ⁠…”

Blood ran to my head, to my cheeks⁠—and here again a white page; only the pulsation in my temples and the heavy voice from above; but I remember not a word. Only when He became silent I came to and noticed how His hand moved heavily like a thousand pounds, and crawled slowly⁠—a finger threatened me.

“Well! Why are you silent? Is it true, or not? Executioner? So!”

“So,” I repeated submissively. And then I clearly heard every word of His.

“Well then? Do you think I am afraid of the word! Did you ever try to take off its shell and look into its inner meaning? I shall tell you.⁠ ⁠… Remember a blue hill, a crowd, a cross? Some up on the hill, sprinkled with blood, are busy nailing a body to the cross; others below, sprinkled with tears, are gazing upward. Does it not seem to you that the part which those above must play is the more difficult, the most important part? If it were not for them, how could that magnificent tragedy ever have been staged? True, they were hissed by the dark crowd but for that the author of the tragedy, God, should have remunerated them the more liberally, should he not? And the Christian, most clement God himself, who burnt on a slow fire all the infidels, is he not an executioner? Was the number of those burned by the Christians less than the number of burned Christians? Yet (you must understand this!), yet this God was for centuries glorified as the God of love! Absurd? Oh, no. Just the contrary. It is rather a patent for the imperishable wisdom of man, written in blood. Even at the time when he still was wild and hairy man knew that real, algebraic love for humanity must inevitably be inhuman, and that the inevitable mark of truth is cruelty, just as the inevitable mark of fire is its property of causing the sensation of burning. Could you show me a fire that would not hurt? Well, prove now your point! Proceed! Argue!”

How could I argue? How could I argue when those thoughts were once mine, though I was never able to dress them in such a splendid, tempered armor. I remained