We

by Yevgeny Zamyatin

  My first impulse was to rush there and cry out, “Why are you with him today? Why didn’t you want me to… ?” But the invisible, beneficent cobweb tightly bound my hands and feet; with teeth clenched, I sat as stiff as iron, my eyes fixed on them. As now, I remember the sharp physical pain in my heart. I thought: If nonphysical causes can produce physical pain, then it is clear that…

  Unfortunately, I did not bring this to conclusion. I recall only that something flashed about a “soul,” and then the absurd ancient saying, “His heart dropped into his boots.” And I grew numb. The hexameters were silent. Now it will begin… But what?

  The customary five-minute pre-election recess. The customary pre-election silence. But now it was not the usual prayerlike, worshipful silence: now it was as with the ancients, when our Accumulator Towers were still unknown, when the untamed sky had raged from time to time with “storms.” This silence was the silence of the ancients before a storm.

  The air—transparent cast iron. It seemed one had to open the mouth wide to breathe. The ear, tense to the point of pain, recorded, somewhere behind, anxious whispers, like gnawing mice. With lowered eyes, I saw before me all the time those two, I-330 and R, side by side, shoulder to shoulder—and on my knees, my hateful, alien, shaggy, trembling hands…

  In everyone’s hand, the badge with the watch. One. Two. Three… Five minutes… From the stage—the slow, cast-iron voice:

  “Those in favor will raise their hands.”

  If only I could look into His eyes as in the past—directly and devotedly: “Here I am, all of me. Take me!” But now I did not dare. With a great effort, as though all my joints were rusty, I raised my hand.

  The rustle of millions of hands. Someone’s stifled “Ah!” And I felt that something had already begun, was dropping headlong, but I did not know what, and did not have the strength—did not dare-to look…

  “Who is against?”

  This always has been the most solemn moment of the ceremony: everyone continued sitting motionless, joyously bowing his head to the beneficent yoke of the Number of Numbers. But this time, with horror, I heard a rustling again, light as a sigh—more audible than the brass trumpets of the Hymn, Thus a man will sigh faintly for the last time in his life and all the faces around him turn pale, with cold drops on their foreheads.

  I raised my eyes, and…

  It took one-hundredth of a second: I saw thousands of hands swing up—“against”—and drop. I saw the pale, cross-marked face of I-330, her raised hand. Darkness fell on my eyes.

  Another hair’s breadth. A pause. Silence. My pulse. Then, all at once, as at a signal from some mad conductor, shouts, crashing on all the platforms, the whirl of unifs swept in flight, the figures of the Guardians rushing about helplessly, someone’s heels in the air before my eyes, and near them someone’s mouth wide open in a desperate, unheard scream. For some reason, this etched itself in memory more sharply than anything else: thousands of silently screaming mouths, as on some monstrous movie screen.

  And just as on a screen—somewhere far below, for a second—O’s whitened lips. Pressed to the wall of a passage, she stood shielding her stomach with crossed arms. Then she was gone, swept away, or I forgot her because…

  This was no longer on a screen—it was within me, in my constricted heart, in my hammering temples. Over my head on the left, R-13 jumped suddenly up on the bench—spluttering, red, frenzied. In his arms—I-330, her unif torn from shoulder to breast, red blood on white… She held him firmly around the neck, and he, repulsive and agile as a gorilla, was carrying her up, away, bounding in huge leaps from bench to bench.

  As during a fire in ancient days, everything turned red before me, and only one impulse remained—to jump, to overtake them. I cannot explain to myself where I found such strength, but, like a battering ram, I tore through the crowd, stepping on shoulders, benches—and now I was upon them; I seized R by the collar: “Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare, I say. Let her go. This very moment!” (My voice was inaudible—everyone shouted, everyone ran.)

  “Who? What is it? What?” R turned, his sputtering lips shaking. He must have thought he had been seized by one of the Guardians.

  “What? I won’t have it, I won’t allow it! Put her down—at once!”

  He merely slapped his lips shut in anger, tossed his head, and ran on. And at this point—I am terribly ashamed to write about it, but I feel I must, I must record it, so that you, my unknown readers, may learn the story of my sickness to the very end—at this point I swung at his head. You understand—I struck him! I clearly remember this. And I remember, too, the feeling of release, the lightness that spread throughout my body from this blow.

  I-330 quickly slipped down from his arms.

  “Get away,” she cried to R. “Don’t you see, he’s… Get away, R, go!”

  Baring his white, Negroid teeth, R spurted some word into my face, dived down, disappeared. And I lifted I-330 into my arms, pressed her firmly to myself, and carried her away.

  My heart was throbbing—enormous—and with each heartbeat, a rush of such a riotous, hot wave of joy. And who cared if something somewhere had been smashed to bits—what did it matter! Only to carry her so, on and on…

  Evening. 22 O’clock.

  It is with difficulty that I hold the pen in my hand: I am so exhausted after all the dizzying events of this morning. Is it possible that the sheltering, age-old walls of the One State have toppled? Is it possible that we are once again without house or roof, in the wild state of freedom, like our distant ancestors? Is there indeed no Benefactor? Against… On Unanimity Day? I am ashamed, I am pained and frightened for them. But then, who are “they”? And who am I? “They,” “We”—do I know?

  She sat on the sun-heated glass bench, on the topmost platform, where I had brought her. Her right shoulder and below—the beginning of the miraculous, incalculable curve—bare; the thinnest, serpentine, red trickle of blood. She did not seem to notice the blood, the bared breast… no, she saw it all—but this was precisely what she needed now, and if her unif were buttoned up, she would rip it open herself, she…

  “And tomorrow…” she breathed greedily through gleaming, clenched, sharp teeth. “No one knows what tomorrow will be. Do you understand— I do not know, no one knows—tomorrow is the unknown! Do you understand that everything known is finished? Now all things will be new, unprecedented, inconceivable.”

  Below, the crowds were seething, rushing, screaming. But all that was far away, and growing farther, because she looked at me, she slowly drew me into herself through the narrow golden windows of her pupils. Long, silently. And for some reason I thought of how once, long ago, I had also stared through the Green Wall into someone’s incomprehensible yellow eyes, and birds were circling over the Wall (or was this on some other occasion?).

  “Listen: if nothing extraordinary happens tomorrow, I will take you there—do you understand?”

  No, I did not understand. But I nodded silently. I was dissolved, I was infinitely small, I was a point…

  There is, after all, a logic of its own (today’s logic) in this condition: a point contains more unknowns than anything else; it need but stir, move, and it may turn into thousands of curves, thousands of bodies.

  I was afraid to stir: what would I turn into? And it seemed to me that everyone, like me, was terrified of the slightest movement.

  At this moment, as I write this, everyone sits in his own glass cage, waiting for something. I do not hear the humming of the elevator usual at this hour, I hear no laughter, no steps. Now and then I see, in twos, glancing over their shoulders, people tiptoe down the corridor, whispering…

  What will happen tomorrow? What will I turn into tomorrow?

  Twenty-sixth Entry

  TOPICS:

  The World Exists

  A Rash

  41° Centigrade

  Morning. Through the ceiling, the sky—firm, round, ruddy-cheeked as ever. I think I would be less astonished if I had see
n above me some extraordinary square sun; people in varicolored garments of animal skins; stone, untransparent walls, Does it mean, then, that the world—our world—still exists? Or is this merely by inertia? The generator is already switched off, but the gears still clatter, turning—two revolutions, three, and on the fourth they’ll stop…

  Are you familiar with this strange condition? You wake at night, open your eyes to blackness, and suddenly you feel you’ve lost your way—and quickly, quickly you grope around you, seeking something familiar, solid—a wall, a lamp, a chair. This was exactly how I groped around me, ran through the pages of the One State Gazette—quick, quick. And then:

  Yesterday we celebrated Unanimity Day, which everyone has long awaited with impatience. For the forty-eighth time, the Benefactor, who has demonstrated his steadfast wisdom on so many past occasions, was elected by a unanimous vote. The celebration was marred by a slight disturbance, caused by the enemies of happiness. These enemies have, naturally, forfeited the right to serve as bricks in the foundation of the One State—a foundation renewed by yesterday’s election. It is clear to everyone that taking account of their votes would be as absurd as considering the coughs of some sick persons in the audience as a part of a magnificent heroic symphony.

  Oh, all-wise! Are we, after all, saved in spite of everything? Indeed, what objection can be raised to this most crystal clear of syllogisms?

  And two lines further:

  Today at twelve there will be a joint session of the Administrative Office, the Medical Office, and the Office of the Guardians. An important state action will take place within the next few days.

  No, the walls are still intact. Here they are—I can feel them. And I no longer have that strange sensation that I am lost, that I am in some unknown place and do not know the way. And it’s no longer surprising that I see the blue sky, the round sun. And everyone—as usual—is going to work.

  I walked along the avenue with especially firm, ringing steps, and it seemed to me that everybody else walked with the same assurance. But when I turned at a crossing, I saw that everybody shied off sideways from the corner building, gave it a wide berth—as if a pipe had burst there and cold water were gushing out, making it impossible to use the sidewalk.

  Another five, ten steps, and I was also showered with cold water, shaken, thrown off the sidewalk… At the height of some two meters a rectangular sheet of paper was pasted on the wall, bearing an incomprehensible, venomously green inscription:

  MEPHI

  And beneath it, the S-shaped back, transparent wing-ears, quivering with anger, or excitement. His right hand raised, his left stretched helplessly back, like a hurt, broken wing, he was leaping up, trying to tear off the paper—and could not reach it, every time just short of touching it.

  Each passerby was probably deterred by the same thought: If I come over, just I of all these others—won’t he think I’m guilty of something and therefore trying…

  I confess to the same thought. But I recalled the many times when he was truly my Guardian Angel, the many times he saved me—and I boldly walked up to him, stretched my hand, and pulled off the sheet.

  S turned, quickly bored his gimlets into me, to the very bottom, found something there. Then he raised his left eyebrow and winked with it at the wall where MEPHI had just hung. And flicked a corner of a smile at me, which seemed somehow astonishingly gay. But then, it was really nothing to wonder at. A physician will always prefer a rash and a forty-degree fever to the tormenting, slowly rising temperature of the incubation period: at least, the nature of the illness is clear. The MEPHI scattered on the walls today is the rash. I understood the smile.[5]

  Steps down to the underground, and underfoot, on the immaculate glass of the stairs—again the white sheet: MEPHI. And on the wall below, on a bench, on a mirror in the car (evidently pasted hurriedly, awry), everywhere the same white, frightening rash.

  In the silence, the distinct hum of the wheels was like the noise of inflamed blood. Someone was touched on the shoulder; he started and dropped a roll of papers. And on my left, another—reading the same line in his newspaper over and over, the paper trembling faintly. I felt that everywhere—in the wheels, hands, newspapers, eyelashes—the pulse was beating faster and faster. And, perhaps, today, when I get there with I-330, the temperature will be thirty-nine, forty, forty-one degrees centigrade-marked on the thermometer by a black line…

  At the dock—the same silence, humming like a distant, invisible propeller. The machines stand glowering silently. And only the cranes are gliding, scarce audibly, as if on tiptoe, bending down, grasping in their claws the pale-blue blocks of frozen ah- and loading them into the tanks of the Integral: we are already preparing it for the test flight.

  “Well, do you think we’ll finish loading in a week?” I ask the Second Builder. His face is like fine china, embellished with sweet pale blue and delicately rosy flowers (eyes, lips); but today they are somehow faded, washed away. We calculate aloud, but I break off in the middle of a word and stand there, gaping: high under the cupola, on the blue block just lifted by the crane—a scarcely visible white square, a pasted sheet of paper. And all of me shakes—could it be with laughter? Yes, I hear myself laughing (do you know the feeling when you hear your own laughter?).

  “No, listen…” I say. “Imagine yourself in an ancient plane; the altimeter shows five thousand meters; the wing snaps, you plunge down like a tumbler pigeon, and on the way you calculate: ‘Tomorrow, from twelve to two… from two to six… at six—dinner…’ Isn’t that absurd? But that’s exactly what we are doing now!”

  The little blue flowers stir, bulge. What if I were made of glass, and he could see that in some three or four hours…

  Twenty-seventh Entry

  TOPICS: None—Impossible

  I am alone in endless corridors—the same ones, under the Ancient House. A mute, concrete sky. Water dripping somewhere on stone. Familiar, heavy, opaque door—and a muted hum behind it.

  She said she would come out to me exactly at sixteen. But it is already five minutes past sixteen, ten, fifteen—no one.

  For a second I am the old I, terrified that the door might open. Five more minutes, and if she does not come…

  Water dripping somewhere on stone. No one. With anguished joy I feel—I’m saved. I slowly walk back along the corridor. The quivering dotted line of bulbs on the ceiling grows dimmer and dimmer…

  Suddenly, a door clicks hastily behind me, the quick patter of feet, softly rebounding from the walls, the ceiling—and there she is—light, airy, somewhat breathless with running, breathing through her mouth.

  “I knew you would be here, you’d come! I knew— you, you…”

  The spears of her eyelashes spread open, they let me in—and… How describe what it does to me— this ancient, absurd, miraculous ritual, when her lips touch mine? What formula can express the storm that sweeps everything out of my soul but her? Yes, yes, my soul—laugh if you will.

  Slowly, with an effort, she raises her lids—and her words come slowly, with an effort “No, enough… later. Let us go now.”

  The door opens. Stairs—worn, old. And an in. tolerably motley noise, whistling, light…

  Nearly twenty-four hours have passed since then, and everything has settled down to some extent within me. And yet it is extremely difficult to describe what happened, even approximately. It is as if a bomb had been exploded in my head and open mouths, wings, shouts, leaves, words, rocks-piled, side by side, one after the other…

  I remember my first thought was: Quick, rush back! It seemed clear to me: while I had waited in the corridor, they had managed somehow to blow up or destroy the Green Wall. And everything from out there had swept in and flooded our city, which had long ago been purged of the lower world.

  I must have said something of the kind to I-330. She laughed. “Oh, no! We’ve simply come out beyond the Green Wall.”

  I opened wide my eyes: face to face with me, in wide-awake reality, was that w
hich hitherto had not been seen by any living man except diminished a thousandfold, muted and dimmed by the thick, cloudy glass of the Wall.

  The sun… this was not our sun, evenly diffused over the mirror-smooth surface of our pavements.

  These were living fragments, continually shifting spots, which dazed the eyes and made the head reel. And the trees, like candles—rising up into the sky itself; like spiders crouching on the earth with gnarled paws; like mute green fountains… And everything was crawling, stirring, rustling… Some shaggy little ball dashed out from underfoot. And I was frozen to the spot, I could not make a step, because under my feet was not a level surface— you understand—not a firm, level surface, but something revoltingly soft, yielding, springy, green, alive.

  I was stunned by it all, I gasped, I gagged— perhaps this is the most accurate word. I stood, clutching at some swaying bough with both hands.

  “It’s nothing, it’s nothing! It’s only in the beginning, it will pass. Don’t be afraid!”

  Next to I-330, against the green, dizzyingly shifting latticework, somebody’s finest profile, paper, thin… No, not somebody’s—I know him. I remember—it is the doctor. No, no, my mind is clear, I see everything. Now they are laughing; they have seized me by the arms and drag me forward. My feet get tangled, slip. Before us—moss, hillocks, screeching, cawing, twigs, tree trunks, wings, leaves, whistles…

  Then suddenly the trees spread out, run apart. A bright green clearing. In the clearing—people… Or—I don’t know what to call them—perhaps, more precisely, beings.

  And here comes the most difficult part of all, because this transcended every limit of probability. And now it was clear to me why I-330 had always stubbornly refused to speak about it: I should not have believed her anyway—not even her. Perhaps, tomorrow I will not believe even myself—even these notes.