Page:Evgenii Zamyatin - We (Zilboorg translation).pdf/118

Was he my Guardian Angel? No! My decision was made.

When I came into my room and turned on the light, I could not believe my eyes! O-90 stood at my table, or, to be more exact, she was hanging like a creased empty dress. She seemed to have no tensity, no spring beneath the dress; her arms and legs were springless, her voice was hanging and springless.

“About my letter, did you receive it? Yes? I must know your answer, I must—today”.

I shrugged my shoulders. I enjoyed looking into her blue eyes which were filled with tears as if she were the guilty one. I lingered over my answer. With pleasure I pricked her:

“Answer? Well . . . You are right. Undoubtedly. In everything”

“Then . . .” (She tried to cover the minute tremor with a smile, but it did not escape me.) “Well, all right. I shall . . . I shall leave you at once.”

Yet she remained drooping over the table. Drooping eyelids, drooping arms and legs. The pink check of the other was still on the table. I quickly opened this manuscript, We, and with its pages I covered the check, trying to hide it from myself, rather than from O-.

“See, here, I am still busy writing. Already 101 pages! Something quite unexpected comes out in this writing.”

In a voice, in a shadow of a voice, “And do you remember how the other day I . . . on the seventh page . . .and it dropped. . . .”

The tiny blue saucers filled to the borders; silently and rapidly the tears ran down her cheeks. And suddenly, like the dropping of the tears, rushing forth, words:

“I cannot . . . I shall leave you in a moment. I shall never again . . . and I don't care. . . . Only I want, I must have a child! From you! Give me a child and I will leave. I will!”

I saw she was trembling all over beneath her unif, and