She said (not opening her eyes, I noticed this): “They say that you were with the Benefactor yesterday. Is this true?”
“Yes, it’s true.”
And then the eyes flew open—and I watched with pleasure how quickly her face paled, faded, and disappeared: she was all eyes.
I told her everything. Except (I don’t know why … no, that’s not true, I do know why), except one thing: what he said at the very end, about the fact that they had only needed me because …
Gradually, like photographic paper in the developing tray, her face emerged: cheeks, a white stripe of teeth, lips. She got up and walked over to the mirrored door of the closet.
Again, it was dry in my mouth. I poured myself some water but drinking it was unpleasant. I put the glass down on the table and asked: “Is that why you came—because you needed to know about that?”
From the mirror to me: a sharp, mocking triangle of eyebrows, lifted slightly, to her temples. She turned around to say something to me but said nothing.
She didn’t need to. I know.
Say good-bye to each other? I moved my extraneous legs and they grazed the chair—it fell facedown, dead, like the one in her room. Her lips were cold—at one time the floor had been just as cold, here, in my room, by the bed.
When she left, I sat on the floor, bent over the cigarette she’d thrown away—I can’t take it anymore—I don’t want to anymore!
RECORD THIRTY-NINE
KEYWORDS: The End.
All this was like the last grain of salt thrown into a saturated solution: quickly, prickling with needles, crystals began to crawl, harden, freeze. And it was clear to me: everything had been decided and tomorrow morning I would do it. It was just like deciding to kill yourself—perhaps it’s only then that I will rise again. Because only that which killed can rise again.
In the west, the sky shook in blue spasms every second. My head was burning and banging. That is how I sat through the whole night and fell asleep at about seven in the morning, when darkness was already sagging, beginning to turn green, and the roofs, studded with birds, were becoming visible …
I woke up: it was already ten (obviously there hadn’t been a bell this morning). On the table stood the glass of water—still from yesterday. I greedily swallowed all the water and ran off: I needed to do all this quickly, as quickly as possible.
The sky: desert-like, pale blue, completely eaten away by the storms. The thorny angles of shadows, everything is chiseled in the blue autumn air—thin—frightening to touch in case it snaps, shatters, and flies apart as glass dust. And the same inside me: I shouldn’t think, mustn’t think, mustn’t think, otherwise—
And I didn’t think, perhaps I wasn’t actually seeing either, but was recording everything. Here on the street: branches from somewhere with green, amber, crimson leaves on them. Up above: aeros and birds intersecting and rushing about. Nearby: heads, open mouths, arms waving like branches. They must have been the source of this howling, cawing, buzzing …
Then: empty streets, as though they’d been swept by some sort of plague. I remember: I stumbled over something unbearably soft, yielding, and yet immobile. I bent over: a corpse. He lay on his back, his bent legs spread apart like a woman’s. His face …
I recognized the thick African lips and it was as if his teeth were spraying with laughter even now. His eyes tightly screwed up, he laughed right at me, in the face. A second later, I stepped over him and ran off because I couldn’t stand it; I needed to do everything quickly, otherwise I felt I would break, I would cave in, like overloaded train tracks …
Happily, it took only twenty steps until the sign appeared with its gold letters: BUREAU OF GUARDIANS. I stopped on the threshold, drank down some air—as much as I could—and went in.
Inside, in the corridor, ciphers were standing in a line, in an endless chain, with pieces of paper, with fat notebooks in their hands. Slowly they moved a step, another step, and stopped again.
I started to rush along the length of the chain; my head was fragmenting, I was grasping at sleeves, I was begging them, like a sick person begs to be given something that, with a second of the sharpest agony, would end it all immediately.
Some woman, with a tautly drawn belt over her unif and two sciatic hemispheres distinctly sticking out, which she moved from side to side the whole time as if they were, in fact, her eyes. She snorted at me: “His stomach hurts! Take him to the bathroom—there, the second door on the right …”
And, directed at me: laughter. And from this laughter, something came up to my throat, and I would now scream or … or …
Suddenly someone grabbed my elbow from behind. I turned around: it was transparent, wing-ears. They weren’t pink, as usual, but crimson. The Adam’s apple on his neck fidgeted—it was about to rip through his thin neck skin.
“Why are you here?” he asked, quickly drilling into me.
I seized hold of him, too: “Quickly, into your office … I have to tell you everything—right now! It’s good that it is you in particular … It, maybe it is horrible that it’s you but it’s good, it’s good …”
He also knew her, which tormented me even more, but maybe he would shudder, too, when he heard it all, and then we would be killing her together and I wouldn’t be alone in my final second …
The door slammed. I remember: some sort of piece of paper was stuck down under the door and it scraped along the floor when the door was closing. Then we were covered with some kind of special, airless silence, like a cap. If he had said just one word— didn’t matter which, the most nonsensical word—I would have disgorged everything immediately. But he said nothing.
I was so tense all over that there was a buzzing in my ear. I said (not looking): “It seems to me that I always hated her, from the very beginning. I struggled … But, however—no, no, don’t believe me: I could have saved myself but didn’t want to, I wanted to die, this was more valuable to me than anything … that is, not to die, but that she … And even now—even now that I already know everything … You know, do you know, that the Benefactor summoned me?”
“Yes, I know.”
“But what He told me … You see—this all doesn’t really matter, it’s like having the rug pulled out from under you—and you, along with everything that is here on the table—the paper, the ink … The ink spills and everything is smudged …”
“Go on, go on! And hurry up. Others are waiting.”
And I—choking, getting mixed up—recounted everything that had happened, everything that I’ve written here. About my real self, about my shaggy self, and what she said then about my hands—yes, that was exactly how everything started—and how I didn’t want to fulfill my duty then, and how I lied to myself, and how she got counterfeit certificates of illness, and how I was rusting from one day to the next, and about the corridors down below, and how there, behind the Wall …
All this: in senseless lumps, balls. I was choking, I didn’t have enough words. He nudged me the words I needed with crooked twice-bent lips and a smirk. I gratefully nodded: yes, yes …
And then (what was going on?) he had started speaking for me, and I was only listening … “Yes, and then … That’s exactly how it was, yes, yes!”
I feel: it started to get colder under my collar as if from ether alcohol, and I asked with difficulty: “But how do you … ? But there is no way you could have …”
He had a smirk on his face, he was saying nothing, curving more and more and then: “But you know—you’ve been attempting to conceal something from me, and here, while you’ve enumerated everything you noticed behind the Wall, you’re forgetting one thing. You were saying … no? But don’t you remember, what you saw there in passing, for a second—you saw … me? Yes, yes: me.”
A pause.
And suddenly, like a lightning strike to the head, it was shamelessly clear: he is also them … And my whole self, all my agonies, all that I, exhausted, with my last strength, brought here, like a victory—all this was
simply funny, like the ancient anecdote about Abraham and Isaac. Abraham, in a cold sweat, was already waving the knife over his son—over his own self—and then suddenly there was a voice from above: “Don’t bother! I was just joking …”
Not moving my eyes from his ever-curving smirk, I propped myself up against the edge of the table with my hands and slowly, slowly, slid back with the armchair. Then I grasped all of myself in an armful and ran headlong past the screams, the steps, the mouths.
I don’t remember how I came to find myself downstairs in one of the public latrines by the station of the subterranean rail. Up at ground level, everything was perishing, the greatest and most intelligent civilization in all history was collapsing, but down here, by some irony, everything had stayed like it was: splendid. And to think: all this is condemned, all this will grow over with grasses, and there will only be “myths” about all this …
I started to groan loudly. And at that very moment I felt someone tenderly stroking me on the shoulder.
It was my neighbor, from the room to the left of mine who was always busy at his desk. His forehead was an enormous bald parabola, and on his forehead were the yellow, illegible lines of wrinkles. And these lines were about me.
“I understand you, totally understand you,” he said. “But still, be calm: it isn’t necessary. Everything will return, inevitably return. The only important thing is that everyone finds out about my discovery. I am telling you this first: I have calculated that there is no infinity!”
I looked at him wildly.
“Yes, yes I am telling you: there is no infinity. If the world is infinite—then the average density of matter in it must be exactly zero. And since it is not zero—this we know—then, consequently, the universe is finite, it is of a spherical form and the average density = the inverse of the universal radius squared, multiplied by … Wait, I just have to calculate the numerical coefficient, and then … You understand: everything is finite, everything is simple, everything is calculable. Then we will conquer, in the philosophical sense—do you understand? But you, with all due respect, are hindering me from finishing this calculation, you—are screaming …”
I don’t know what I was more amazed by: his disclosure or his firmness in this apocalyptic hour. In his hands (I saw this only now) was a notebook and a logarithmic dial. And I understood: even if everything perishes, it is my duty (before you, my unknowns, my beloveds) to leave my records in finished form.
I asked him for some paper and, on it, I wrote these final lines …
I just wanted to mark a period, like the Ancients put crosses over the holes where they sank their dead, but suddenly my pencil shook and fell from my fingers …
“Listen.” I tugged at my neighbor. “Yes, listen now, I’m talking to you! You must—you must answer me: and so, where does your finite universe end? What is there—and what is next?”
He didn’t manage an answer: from above, down the stairs, there was stomping—
RECORD FORTY
KEYWORDS: Facts. The Bell Jar. I Am Certain.
Day. Clear. Barometer: 760. Is it possible that I, D-503, wrote these 200 pages? Is it possible that I, at one time, felt—or imagined that I felt—any of this?
The handwriting is mine. And this now is the exact same handwriting, but, happily, it is only the handwriting that is similar. None of the ravings, none of the ridiculous metaphors, none of the feelings: only the facts. Because I am healthy, I am completely, absolutely healthy. I smile—I can’t not smile: some kind of splinter has been dragged from my head and my head is light, empty. More precisely: not empty, but there isn’t anything extraneous that hinders smiling (the smile is the normal condition of the normal person).
The facts are these. On that evening, my neighbor, having discovered the finiteness of the universe, and I, and everyone who was with us, were taken, since we did not have Operation certificates, and carried off to the nearest auditorium (the number of the auditorium is familiar for some reason: 112). There, we were bound to tables and subjected to the Great Operation.
The next day, I, D-503, appeared to the Benefactor and told Him everything that I knew about the enemies of happiness. How could this have seemed so hard to do before? Incomprehensible. The only explanation: my former sickness (a soul).
In the evening of that day I sat at one table with Him, with the Benefactor (for the first time) in the famous Gas Room. They brought in that woman. In my presence she was supposed to give her testimony. This woman stubbornly said nothing and was smiling. I noticed that she had sharp and very white teeth and that this was beautiful.
Then they led her under the Bell Jar. Her face became very white and since her eyes were dark and big, this was very beautiful. When they started to pump air out from under the Bell Jar, she threw back her head, half-closed her eyes, and squeezed her lips— this reminded me of something. She was looking at me, strongly gripping the armrests of the chair and looking, until her eyes closed completely. Then they dragged her out, quickly brought her back to her senses with the help of electrodes, and then put her back under the Bell Jar. They repeated this three times and she still didn’t say a word. Others, who had been brought in together with this woman, turned out to be more honorable: many of them started to talk after the first time. Tomorrow they will all mount the steps of the Machine of the Benefactor.
Postponing it would be impossible because there is still chaos, howling, corpses, wild beasts, and—unfortunately—a significant amount of ciphers betraying reason in the western quarters.
But, across the city, on the fortieth avenue, they have managed to construct a temporary wall of high-voltage waves. And I hope we will win. More than that: I know we will win. Because reason should win.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
NATASHA RANDALL makes her living as a translator and writer in New York City. She completed her studies in Russian literature and language at the University of Edinburgh, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, St. Petersburg Times, Strad magazine, and on National Public Radio.
THE MODERN LIBRARY EDITORIAL BOARD
Maya Angelou
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Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
Carolyn See
William Styron
Gore Vidal
1 It is unlikely this comes from the ancient word Uniforme.
2 This word has been preserved only in the form of a poetic metaphor. The chemical composition of this material is not known.
3 Of course, the discourse was not about “God’s commandments” of the Ancients but about the commandments of the One State.
4 They were, of course, from the Botanical Museum. I personally do not see anything beautiful in flowers and the same goes for everything that belongs to the wild world, which was chased off long ago beyond the Green Wall. Only the rational and the useful are beautiful: machines, boots, formulas, food, etc.
5 I should say that I only discovered the exact grounds of this smile after many days, after being filled to the brim with events both strange and unexpected.
6 This fragment is missing from the most reliable Russian manuscript of We in existence. A very good translation of We, completed by B. Cahvet Duhmal in 1929 and given the title Nous Autres, has it as “J’apercevais déjà de loin la masse opaque et rouge,” from which this English translation was derived.—trans.
7 This was long ago, back in the third century after the Table.
2006 Modern Library Paperback Edition
Translation and introduction copyright © 2006 by Natasha S. Randall
&
nbsp; Foreword copyright © 2006 by Bruce Sterling
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Modern Library, an imprint of The
Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
MODERN LIBRARY and the TORCHBEARER Design are registered
trademarks of Random House, Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Zamiatin, Evgenii Ivanovich, 1884–1937
[My. English]
We/Yevgeny Zamyatin; a new translation by Natasha Randall;
with an introduction by Bruce Sterling.—Modern Library paperback ed.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-0-307-43286-5
I. Randall, Natasha. II. Title.
PG3476.Z34M913 2006
891.73’42—dc21 2006042032
.modernlibrary.com
www.randomhouse.com
v1.0
Yevgeny Zamyatin, We
(Series: # )
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