We. Yevgeny Zamyatin
if you really need to, it was a death sentence. I was poeticising the verdict. This idiot, one of us poets . . . Sat next to me for two years and seemed totally normal. Suddenly, out of nowhere, he goes and declares, “I am a genius! – A genius! – Above the law!” And the things that he wrote . . . if you could have seen them . . . It’s just too bad!’
His thick lips hung low, the lacquer drained out of his eyes. R-13 hopped up, turned away, and stared off somewhere through the wall. I looked at his tightly shut little suitcase and wondered: what is he going over in there, in that suitcase of his?
A minute of awkward, asymmetrical silence. I didn’t know what was wrong, but there was something.
‘Luckily, the antediluvian era of all those Shakespeares and Dostoevskys and whoever else is far behind us,’ I said intentionally loudly.
R turned back to face me. His words were still spraying and spilling out of him, but, it seemed to me, the lacquer of cheer in his eyes had vanished.
‘Yes, my dear mathematician, we’re so very lucky! We are the luckiest arithmetical average . . . or, as your people say: fully integrated from zero up to infinity, from cretins to Shakespeare . . . exactly like that!’
I don’t know why – it seemed to come out of nowhere, but suddenly, I remembered her, her tone of voice, some very thin thread stretched between her and R (what was it?). The √−1 stirred inside me. I opened my badge: twenty-five minutes past 16. They had forty-five minutes left in their pink ticket.
‘Well, I’ll get going now,’ and with that I kissed O, shook R’s hand, and went to the elevator.
Out on the avenue, after crossing to the other side, I turned to look back: in the light-filled, sun-drenched glass hulk of the building, here and there, I could see blue-grey, opaque cells with their blinds lowered – cells of rhythmic, Taylorised happiness. I found R-13’s on the seventh floor: he’d already lowered his blinds.
Darling O . . . Dear R . . . He also (I don’t know why ‘also’, but I am writing whatever I’m writing) – he also has something inside him that isn’t completely clear to me. But still, he, O and I – we are a triangle – even if it’s not equilateral, it’s still a triangle. We are, to put it in the terms of our ancestors (perhaps you, my planetary readers, will understand this language better), we are a family. And it’s so nice to rest sometimes, even for a little while, to shut oneself off in a simple, sturdy triangle, shutting out everything that . . .
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4 Here, we are speaking not of ‘God’s Law’ of the Ancients, but of the Law of the One State.
LOG 9
BRIEF:
Liturgy. Iambs and Trochees. The Iron Hand.
A bright, solemn day. On days like this, you forget your weaknesses, imprecisions, illnesses – everything turns crystal, faithful, eternal – like our new glass . . .
Cube Square. Sixty-six mighty concentric circles: the tribunes. In sixty-six rows: mute lanterns of faces with eyes reflecting the radiance of the heavens – or perhaps, the radiance of the One State. Blood-crimson flowers – women’s lips. The tender garlands of children’s faces – in the front rows, up close to the action. Deep, solemn, gothic silence.
Judging by the surviving descriptions, the Ancients felt something similar during their ‘services’. But they were serving their irrational, unknowable God – we are serving our rational and, in the most precise sense, knowable one. Their God gave them nothing but endless, torturous searching: He didn’t come up with anything better than sacrificing Himself for some unknown reason. We sacrifice to our God, the One State, offering a calm, thoughtful, rational sacrifice. Yes, this was the solemn liturgy to the One State, in remembrance of the Two Hundred Years’ War, our baptism by fire, the great celebration of the momentous victory of all over one, of the sum over the unit . . .
Here was one – on the steps of the sun-filled Cube. White . . . and not even white but actually colourless – a glass face with glass lips. He was all eyes – black, sucking, swallowing holes – on the precipice of that terrible world. The golden badge bearing his number had already been stripped away. His hands were tied with a purple ribbon (an ancient custom: apparently because in ancient times, when people would do this not in the name of the One State, the accused would, understandably, feel that it was within their rights to resist, and so their hands were usually fettered with chains). Up above, on the Cube, beside the Machine stood the metallic, motionless figure of the one whom we call the Benefactor. It’s impossible to make out His face from down here: all you can tell is that it is delineated by stately and stern quadrilinear contours. But then, the hands . . . You see it in photographs: they are too close, hands in the foreground turn out gigantic, arresting the gaze – blocking out everything else. Those heavy hands, still calmly lying in His lap, for now – clearly: they were like stones and His knees could barely bear their weight . . .
Then, suddenly, one of these giant hands slowly rose – a slow, iron gesture – and from the tribune, obeying the lifted hand, a number approached the Cube. This was one of the State Poets – he’d drawn the golden ticket: to adorn the celebration with his verse. Divine bronze iambs began thundering down over the tribunes – about the madman with glassy eyes who now stood on the steps awaiting the logical consequence of his insanity.
. . . Fire. In the iambs, buildings roiled, spewing up molten gold, before toppling. Green trees writhed in the flames, bleeding sap – until only black, skeletal crosses remained. But then, Prometheus (meaning us) appeared and he:
Yoked fire to the machine, in steelAnd fettered chaos in the chains of law.
Everything was reborn in steel: a steel sun, steel trees, steel people. Until suddenly some madman ‘let fire off the chain again and set it free’, and everything died . . .
Unfortunately, I don’t have a good memory for poetry, but I remember one thing: it would have been impossible to choose more educational and beautiful images.
Another slow and heavy gesture – a second poet appeared on the steps of the Cube. I even rose up out of my seat: I couldn’t believe my eyes! But it really was: his thick lips – it was him! Why hadn’t he said anything, revealing that he was about to receive this high . . . His lips trembled, they were grey. I understood: standing in front of the Benefactor, in front of the entire legion of Guardians – but still: letting yourself get that nervous . . .
Swift, trenchant trochees, as sharp as axes. About an unfathomable crime: blasphemous verses calling the Benefactor . . . no, I couldn’t bear to repeat it.
Afterwards, a pallid R-13 returned to his seat without looking at anyone (I would have never expected him to be this shy). For an infinitesimal differential of a second, someone’s face flashed next to his – a sharp, black triangle – and was instantly erased: my eyes – thousands of eyes – looked up towards the Machine. Up there – the third, iron gesture of the inhuman hand. Then, stirred by an invisible wind – the criminal began his slow ascent – one step, the next – and finally, the last step of his life – his face to the sky, head thrown back – he’d arrived at his final resting place.
The leaden Benefactor, stony as fate itself, circled the Machine then laid His giant hand on the lever . . . Not a thing stirred, no one dared to breathe: all eyes were on His hand. What a cyclone of flame must be blazing inside Him – the instrument, with the force of hundreds of thousands of volts. What a magnificent destiny!
An immeasurable second. The hand, releasing the current, fell. The unbearably sharp blade of the ray sparked – like a shudder, a barely perceptible crackling in the Machine’s inner workings. The prostrate body – enveloped in faint, glowing smoke – dissolving, melting right before our eyes, with horrifying speed. Then – nothing. All that’s left: a puddle of chemically pure water, which, just a moment ago, was red, beating furiously inside a heart . . .
All of this was simple, each of us knew it all: yes, the dissociation of matter –