Page:Evgenii Zamyatin - We (Zilboorg translation).pdf/70

ing. . . . Poisoning with what? With a sip of that green poison, or with her? It matters little. I write all this merely in order to demonstrate how strangely confused our precise and sharp human reason may become. This reason, strong enough to make infinity, which the ancients feared so much, understandable by means of . . . . The switch buzzes. “Number R-13.” Well, I am even glad; alone I should . . .

Twenty minutes later:

On the plane of this paper, in a world of two dimensions, these lines follow each other, but in another world they . . . I am losing the sense for figures. . . . Twenty minutes! Perhaps two hundred or two hundred thousand! . . .

It seems so strange, quietly, deliberately, measuring every word, to write down my adventure with R-. Imagine yourself sitting down at your own bed, crossing your legs, watching curiously how you yourself shrivel in the very same bed. My mental state is similar to that.

When R-13 came in I was perfectly quiet and normal. With sincere admiration I began to tell him how wonderfully he succeeded in versifying the death sentence of that insane man, and that his poem, more than anything else, had smothered and annihilated the transgressor of the law.

“More than that,” I said, “if I were ordered to prepare a mathematical draft of the Machine of the Weil-Doer, I should undoubtedly, undoubtedly, put on that draft some of your verses!” Suddenly I saw R-’s eyes becoming more and more opaque, his lips acquiring a gray tint.

“What’s the matter?”

“What? Well . . . Merely that I am dead sick of it. Everybody keeps on: ‘The death sentence, the death sentence!’ I want to hear no more of it! You understand? I do not want . . .” He became serious, rubbing his neck—that little valise filled with luggage which I cannot understand. A silence. There! He found something in that little valise of his, removed it, unwrapped it, spread it out; his eyes became covered with the varnish of laughter. He began: