Page:Evgenii Zamyatin - We (Zilboorg translation).pdf/20

saw white, very white, sharp teeth, and an unfamiliar female face.

“I beg your pardon,” she said, “but you looked about you like an inspired mythological god on the seventh day of creation. You look as though you are sure that I, too, was created by you, by no one but you. It is very flattering.”

All this without a smile, even with a certain degree of respect (she may know that I am the builder of the Integral). In her eyes, nevertheless, and on her brows, there was a strange irritating X, and I was unable to grasp it, to find an arithmetical expression for it. Somehow I was confused; with a somewhat hazy mind, I tried logically to explain my laughter.

“It was absolutely clear that this contrast, this impassable abyss, between the things of today and of years ago—”

“But why impassable?” (What bright, sharp teeth!)

“One might throw a bridge over that abyss. Please imagine: a drum battalion, rows—all this existed before and consequently—”

“Oh, yes, it is clear,” I exclaimed.

It was a remarkable intersection of thoughts. She said almost in the same words the things I had written down before the walk! Do you understand? Even the thoughts! It is because nobody is one, but one of. We are all so much alike—

“Are you sure?” I noticed her brows that rose to the temples in an acute angle—like the sharp corners of an X. Again I was confused, casting a glance to the right, then to the left. To my right—she, slender, abrupt, resistantly flexible like a whip, I-330 (I saw her number now). To my left, O—, totally different, all made of circles with a childlike dimple on her wrist; and at the very end of our row, an unknown he-Number, double-curved like the letter S. We were all so different from one another. . . .

The one to my right, I-330, apparently caught the confusion in my eye, for she said with a sigh, “Yes, alas!”

I don’t deny that this exclamation was quite in place,