Page:Evgenii Zamyatin - We (Zilboorg translation).pdf/225

Suddenly from behind me someone touched my elbow. I turned around. Transparent wing ears! But they were not pink as usual; they were purplish red; his Adam’s apple was tossing about as though ready to tear the covering . . .

Quickly boring into me: “What are you here for?”

I seized him.

“Quickly! Please! Quickly! . . . into your office . . . I must tell everything . . . right away . . . I am glad that you . . . It may be terrible that it should be you to whom . . . But it is good, it is good. . . .”

He, too, knew her; this made it even more tormenting for me. But perhaps he, too, would tremble when he heard . . . And we would both be killing . . . And I would not be alone at that, my supreme second . . .

The door closed with a slam. I remember a piece of paper was caught beneath the door, and it rustled on the floor when the door closed. And then a strange, airless silence covered us as if a glass bell had been put over us. If only he had uttered a single, most insignificant word, no matter what, I would have told him everything at once. But he was silent. So keyed up that I heard a noise in my ears, I said without looking at him:

“I think I always hated her from the very beginning . . . I struggled . . . Or, no, no, don’t believe me; I could have, but I did not want to save myself. I wanted to perish; this was dearer to me than anything else . . . and even now, even this minute, when I already know everything . . . Do you know that I was summoned to the Well-Doer?”

“Yes, I do.”

“But what he told me! Please realize that it was equivalent to . . . it was as if someone should remove the floor from under you this minute, and you and everything here on the desk, the papers, the ink . . . the ink would splash out and cover everything with blots . . .”

“What else? What further? Hurry up, others are waiting!”