Page:Evgenii Zamyatin - We (Zilboorg translation).pdf/105

merely stared, without comprehending that he was talking to me. He must have told me to leave, for with his thin paper stomach he slowly pressed me to the side, to the more brightly lighted end of the corridor, and poked me in the back.

“Beg your pardon . . . I wanted . . . I thought that she, I-330 . . . but behind me . . .”

“Stay where you are,” said the doctor brusquely, and he disappeared.

At last! At last she was nearby, here, and what did it matter where “here” was? I saw the familiar saffron-yellow silk, the smile bite, the eyes with their curtains drawn. . . . My lips quivered, so did my hands and knees, and I had a most stupid thought: “Vibrations make sounds. Shivering must make a sound. Why, then, don’t I hear it?”

Her eyes opened for me widely. I entered into them.

“I could not . . . any longer! . . . Where have you been? . . . Why? . . .”

I was unable to tear my eyes away from her for a second, and I talked as if in a delirium, fast and incoherently, or perhaps I only thought without speaking out: “A shadow . . . behind me. I died. And from the cupboard . . . Because that doctor of yours . . . speaks with his scissors . . . I have a soul . . . incurable . . . and I must walk . . .”

“An incurable soul? My poor boy!” I-330 laughed. She covered me with the sparkles of her laughter; my delirium left me. Everywhere around her little laughs were sparkling! How good it was!

The doctor reappeared from around the turn, the wonderful, magnificent, thinnest doctor.

“Well?” He was already beside her.

“Oh, nothing, nothing. I shall tell you later. He got here by accident. Tell them that I shall be back in about a quarter of an hour.”

The doctor slid around the corner. She lingered. The door closed with a heavy thud. Then slowly, very slowly,