Page:Evgenii Zamyatin - We (Zilboorg translation).pdf/101

tunately there was the Green Wall between me and that wild green sea. Oh, how great and divinely limiting is the wisdom of walls and bars! This Green Wall is, I think, the greatest invention ever conceived. Man ceased to be a wild animal the day he built the first wall; man ceased to be a wild man only on the day when the Green Wall was completed, when by this wall we isolated our machine-like, perfect world from the irrational, ugly world of trees, birds, and beasts. . . .

The blunt snout of some unknown beast was to be seen dimly through the glass of the Wall; its yellow eyes kept repeating the same thought which remained incomprehensible to me. We looked into each other’s eyes for a long while. Eyes are shafts which lead from the superficial world into a world which is beneath the surface. A thought awoke in me: “What if that yellow-eyed one, sitting there on that absurd dirty heap of leaves, is happier than I, in his life which cannot be calculated in figures!” I waved my hand. The yellow eyes twinkled, moved back, and disappeared in the foliage. What a pitiful being! How absurd the idea that he might be happier! Happier than I he may be, but I am an exception, am I not? I am sick.

I noticed that I was approaching the dark red walls of the Ancient House, and I saw the grown-together lips of the old woman. I ran to her as fast as I could.

“Is she here?”

The grown-together lips opened slowly.

“Who is ‘she’?”

“Who? I-330, of course. You remember we came together, she and I, in an aero the other day.”

“Oh, yes, yes, yes—yes.”

Ray wrinkles around the lips, artful rays radiating from the eyes. They were making their way deeper and deeper into me.

“Well, she here, all right. Came in a while ago.”

“Here!” I noticed at the feet of the old woman a bush of silver—bitter wormwood. (The court of the Ancient