Page:Evgenii Zamyatin - We (Zilboorg translation).pdf/149

knows what . . . do you understand? Neither I nor anyone else knows; it is unknown! Do you realize what a joy it is? Do you realize that all that was certain has come to an end? Now . . . things will be new, improbable, unforeseen!”

Below the human waves were still foaming, tossing, roaring, but they seemed to be very far away, and to be growing more and more distant. For she was looking at me. She slowly drew me into herself through the narrow golden windows of her pupils. We remained like that, silent, for a long while. And for some reason I recalled how once I had watched some queer yellow pupils through the Green Wall, while above the Wall birds were soaring (or was this another time?).

“Listen, if nothing particular happens tomorrow, I shall take you there; do you understand?”

No, I did not understand, but I nodded in silence. I was dissolved, I became infinitesimal, a geometrical point . . .

After all, there is some logic—a peculiar logic of today—in this state of being a point. A point has more unknowns than any other entity. If a point should start to move, it might become thousands of curves, or hundreds of solids.

I was afraid to budge. What might I have become if I had moved? It seemed to me that everybody, like myself, was afraid now of even the most minute of motions.

At this moment, for instance, as I sit and write, everyone is sitting hidden in his glass cell, expecting something. I do not hear the buzzing of the elevators, usual at this hour, or laughter, or steps; from time to time Numbers pass in couples through the hall, whispering, on tiptoe . . .

What will happen tomorrow? What will become of me tomorrow?