Page:Evgenii Zamyatin - We (Zilboorg translation).pdf/56

iniscence of the great days, years, of the Two Hundred Years’ War—a magnificent celebration of the victory of all over one, of the sum over the individual!

That one stood on the steps of the Cube which was filled with sunlight. A white, no not even white but already colorless, glass face, lips of glass. And only the eyes-thirsty, swallowing black holes leading into that dreadful world from which he was only a few minutes away. The golden badge with the number already had been taken off. His hands were tied with a red ribbon. (A symbol of ancient custom. The explanation of it is that in the old days, when this sort of thing was not done in the name of the United State, the convicted naturally considered that they had the right to resist, hence their hands were usually bound with chains.)

On the top of the Cube, next to the Machine, the motionless, metallic figure of him whom we call the Weil-Doer. One could not see his face from below. All one could see was that it was bounded by austere, magnificent, square lines. And his hands. . . . Did you ever notice how sometimes in a photograph the hands, if they were too near the camera, appear to be enormous? They then compel your attention, overshadow everything else. Those hands of his, heavy hands, quiet for the time being, were stony hands—it seemed the knees on which they rested must have ached in bearing their weight.

Suddenly one of those hands rose slowly. A slow, castiron gesture; obeying the will of the lifted hand, a Number came out on the platform. It was one of the State poets, whose fortunate lot it was to crown our celebration with his verses.

Divine, iambic brass verses thundered over the many stands. They dealt with the man who, his reason lost and lips like glass, stood on the steps and waited for the logical consequences of his own insane deeds.

. . . A blaze. . . . Buildings were swaying in those iambic lines, and sprinkling upward their liquefied golden sub-