Page:Evgenii Zamyatin - We (Zilboorg translation).pdf/213

twitching, brick-red gills, on that morning when both of them . . .

I remember now, clearly, how I raised my eyes and laughed. A Socrates-like, bald-headed man was sitting before me; and small drops of sweat dotted the bald surface of his head.

How simple, how magnificently trivial everything was! How simple . . . almost to the point of being ridiculous! Laughter was choking me and bursting forth in puffs; I covered my mouth with my hand and rushed wildly out. . . .

Steps. Wind. Damp, leaping fragments of lights and faces . . . And while running: “No! Only to see her! To see her once more!”

Here again an empty white page. All I remember is feet: not people, just feet, hundreds of feet, confusedly stamping feet, falling from somewhere in the pavement, a heavy rain of feet . . . And some cheerful, daring voice, and a shout that was probably for me: “Hey, hey! Come here! Come along with us!”

Afterward—a deserted square heavily overloaded with tense wind. In the middle of the square a dim, heavy, threatening mass—the Machine of the Well-Doer. And a seemingly unexpected image arose within me in response to the sight of the Machine: a snow-white pillow, and on the pillow a head thrown back, and half-closed eyes, and a sharp, sweet line of teeth. . . All this seemed so absurdly, so terribly connected with the Machine. I know how this connection has come about, but I do not yet want to see it nor to say it aloud—I don’t want to! I don’t!

I closed my eyes and sat down on the steps which led upward to the Machine. I must have been running hard, for my face was wet. From somewhere far away cries were coming. But nobody heard them; nobody heard me crying: “Save me from it—save me!”

If only I had a mother as the ancients had—my mother, mine, for whom I should be not the Builder of the Integral,