Page:Evgenii Zamyatin - We (Zilboorg translation).pdf/119

I felt . . . I, too, would soon . . . would . . . I put my hands behind my back and smiled.

“What? You desire to go under the Machine of the Well-Doer?”

Like a stream her words ran over the dam.

“I don’t care. I shall feel it for a while within me. I want to see, to see only once the little fold of skin here at the wrist, like that one on the table in the Auditorium. Only for one day!”

Three points: she, I, and a little fist with a fluffy fold of skin there on the table!

I remember how once when I was a child they took me up on the Accumulating Tower. At the very top I bent over the glass railing of an opening in the Tower. Below, people seemed like dots; my heart contracted sweetly. “What if . . .” On that occasion I only clenched my hands around the railing; now I jumped over.

“So you desire . . . being perfectly aware that . . .”

Her eyes were closed as if the sun were beating straight into her face. A wet, shining smile!

“Yes, yes! I want it!”

Quickly I took out the pink check of the other from under the manuscript and down I went to the controller on duty. O-90 caught my hand, screamed out something, but what it was I understood only later, when I returned.

She was sitting on the edge of the bed, hands firmly clasped about the knees.

“Is it, is it her check?”

“What does it matter? Well, it is hers, yes.”

Something cracked. It must have been the springs of the bed, for O-90 made a slight motion only. She remained sitting, her hands upon her knees.

“Well, quick . . .” I roughly pressed her hand. A red spot was left on her wrist (tomorrow it will become purple), where the fluffy, infantile fold . . . I turned the switch; my thoughts went out with the light. Darkness, a spark, and I had jumped over the railing, down. . . .