Page:Evgenii Zamyatin - We (Zilboorg translation).pdf/196
In the narrow passage gray unifs were passing, gray faces, and, for a second, one face with its hair low over the forehead, eyes gazing from deep beneath it—it was that same man. I understood: they had come, and there was no escape from it for me; only minutes remained, a few dozen minutes. . . . An infinitesimal, molecular quiver of my whole body. This quivering did not stop to the very end—it was as if an enormous motor had been placed under the very foundation of my body, which was so light that the walls, partitions, cables, beams, lights—everything was quivering. . . .
I did not yet know whether she was there. But I had no time . . . They were calling me: quick! To the commander’s bridge; time to go . . . where?
Gray, rayless faces. Below in the water—tense blue veins. Heavy, cast-iron patches of sky. It was so difficult to lift my cast-iron hand and take up the receiver of the commander’s telephone! . . . “Up! Forty-five degrees!”
A heavy explosion—a jerk—a rabid, greenish-white mountain of water aft—the deck beneath my feet began to move, soft as rubber; and everything below, my whole life, forever . . . For a second, falling deeper and deeper into a sort of funnel, becoming more and more compressed—the icy-blue relief map of the City, the round bubbles of cupolas, the lonely leaden finger of the Accumulating Tower. . . . Then, instantaneously, a cotton curtain of cloud . . . We pierced it, and there was the sun and the blue sky! Seconds, minutes, miles—the blue was hardening, fast filling with darkness; like drops of cold, silver sweat the stars appeared. . . .
A sad, unbearably bright, black, starry, sunny night. . . . As if one had become deaf, one still saw that the pipes were roaring, but one only saw; dead silence all about. The sun was mute. It was natural, of course. One might have expected it; we were beyond the terrestrial atmosphere. The transition was so quick, so sudden, that everyone became timid and silent. Yet I . . . I thought I felt