Page:Evgenii Zamyatin - We (Zilboorg translation).pdf/151

account would mean to consider as a part of a magnificent heroic symphony the accidental cough of a sick person who happened to be in the concert hall.”

Oh, great Sage! Is it really true that despite everything we are saved? What objection, indeed, can one find to this most crystalline syllogism? And further on a few more lines:

“Today at twelve o’clock a joint meeting of the Administrative Bureau, Medical Bureau, and Bureau of Guardians will take place. An important State decree is to be expected momentarily.”

No, the Walls still stand erect. Here they are! I can feel them. And that strange feeling of being lost somewhere, of not knowing where I am—that feeling is gone. I am no longer surprised to see the sky blue and the sun round and all the Numbers going to work as usual. . . .

I walked along the avenue with a particularly firm, resounding step. It seemed to me that everyone else walked exactly like me. But at the crossing, on turning the corner, I noticed people strangely shying away, going around the corner of a building sidewise, as if a pipe had burst in the wall, as if cold water were spurting like a fountain on the sidewalk and it was impossible to cross it.

Another five or ten steps and I, too, felt a spurt of cold water that struck me and threw me from the sidewalk; at a height of approximately two meters a quadrangular piece of paper was pasted to the wall, and on that sheet of paper, unintelligible, poisonously green letters:

And under the paper—an S-like curved back and wing ears shaking with anger or emotion. With right arm lifted as high as possible, his left arm hopelessly stretched out backward like a hurt wing, he was trying to jump high enough to reach the paper and tear it off, but he was unable to da so. He was a fraction of an inch too short.