Page:Evgenii Zamyatin - We (Zilboorg translation).pdf/146

hands. One. . . . Two. . . . Three. . . . Five minutes. From the main platform a cast-iron, slow voice:

“Those in favor shall lift their hands.”

If only I dared look straight into his eyes as I always had! If only I could think devotedly: “Here I am, my whole self! Take me!” But now I did not dare. I had to make an effort to raise my hand, as if my joints were rusty.

The whisper of millions of hands. Someone’s subdued “Ah,” and I felt something was coming, falling heavily, but I could not understand what it was, and I did not have the strength or courage to take a look. . . .

“Those opposed?” . . .

This was always the most magnificent moment of our celebration: all would remain sitting motionless, joyfully bowing their heads under the salutary yoke of that Number of Numbers. But now, to my horror again I heard a rustle—light as a sigh, yet it was even more distinct than the brass tube of the Hymn. Thus the last sigh in a man’s life, around him people with their faces pale and with drops of cold sweat upon their foreheads. . . . I lifted my eyes, and . . .

It took one hundredth of a second only; I saw thousands of hands arise “opposed” and fall back. I saw the pale, cross-marked face of I-330 and her lifted hand. Darkness came upon my eyes.

Another hundredth of a second, silence. Quiet. The pulse. Then, as if at the sign of some mad conductor, from all over the stands a rattling, a shouting, a whirlwind of unifs lifted by the rush, the perplexed figures of the Guardians running to and fro. Someone’s heels in the air near my eyes, and close to those heels someone’s wide-open mouth tearing itself in an inaudible scream. For some reason this picture remains particularly distinct in my memory: thousands of mouths noiselessly yelling as if on the screen of a monstrous cinema. Also, as if on a screen, somewhere below at a distance, for a second, O-90, pressed against the wall in a passage, her lips white, de-