Page:Evgenii Zamyatin - We (Zilboorg translation).pdf/62

the cupola of the auditorium had risen in slow, rolling clouds of smoke; or if the ripe moon had sent an inky smile, like that one at the little table this morning, or if in every house suddenly all the curtains had been lowered, and behind the curtains . . .

I felt something peculiar; my ribs were like iron bars that interfered, decidedly interfered, with my heart, giving it too little space. I stood at a glass door on which were the golden letters I-330. I-330 sat at the table with her back to me; she was writing something. I stepped in.

“Here”—I held out the pink check—“I received the notice this noon and here I am!”

“How punctual you are! Just a minute, please, may I? Sit down. I shall finish in a minute.”

She lowered her eyes to the letter. What had she there, behind her lowered curtains? What would she say? What would she do in a second? How to learn it? How to calculate it, since she comes from beyond, from the wild, ancient land of dreams? I looked at her in silence. My ribs were iron bars. The space for the heart was too small . . . When she speaks, her face is like a swiftly revolving, glittering wheel; you cannot see the separate bars. But at that moment the wheel was motionless. I saw a strange combination: dark eyebrows running right to the temples—a sharp, mocking triangle; and still another dark triangle with its apex upward—two deep .wrinkles from the nose to the angles of the mouth. And these two triangles somehow contradicted each other. They gave the whole face that disagreeable, irritating X, or cross—a face marked obliquely by a cross.

The wheel started to turn; its bars blurred.

“So you did not go to the Bureau of Guardians, after all?”

“I did . . . I did not feel well . . . I could not.”

“Yes? I thought so; something must have prevented you, it matters little what”—sharp teeth—a smile. “But now you are in my hands. You remember: ‘Any Number who