Page:Evgenii Zamyatin - We (Zilboorg translation).pdf/222

She said, without opening her eyes (I noticed this), “They say you went to see the Well-Doer yesterday; is it true?”

“Yes.”

Then her eyes opened widely and with delight I looked at her and saw that her face grew quickly paler and paler, that it effaced itself, disappearing—only the eyes remained.

I told her everything. Only for some reason, why I don’t know (no, that’s not true, I know the reason), I was silent about one thing: His assertion at the end that they needed me only in order . . .

Like the image on a photographic plate in a developing fluid, her face gradually reappeared: the cheeks, the white line of teeth, the lips. She stood up and went to the mirror door of the closet. My mouth was dry again. I poured water but it was revolting to drink it; I put the glass back on the table and asked:

“Did you come to see me because you wanted to inquire . . .?”

A sharp, mocking triangle of brows drawn to the temples looked at me from the mirror. She turned around to say something, but said nothing.

It was not necessary; I knew.

To bid her good-by, I moved my foreign limbs, struck the chair with them. It fell upside down, dead, like the just as cold was table in her room. Her lips were cold . . . once the floor, here, near my bed . . .

When she left I sat down on the floor, bent over the cigarette butt . . .

I cannot write any more—I no longer want to!