We. Yevgeny Zamyatin
Eyelash. Taylor. Henbane and Lilies of the Valley.
Night. Green, orange, blue; a crimson ‘grand’ instrument; a dress, as yellow as an orange. Then the bronze Buddha suddenly raised its bronze eyelids and juice started pouring: out of the Buddha. And out of the yellow dress – juice, dripping out of the mirror, and the large bed began to soak through, and the children’s beds, and now me – a deathly sweet horror . . .
I woke up: even, bluish light; the glass of the walls, the glass chairs, the table all shining. That calmed me down. My heart stopped pounding. Juice, Buddha . . . what is this nonsense? Clearly: I’m sick. I never dreamed before. They say that this was a completely normal and everyday occurrence for the Ancients: dreaming. It makes sense: their whole lives were like a nightmarish carousel: green – orange – Buddha – juice. But we now know that dreams are a serious psychic illness. And I know: my mind has always been a chronometrically regulated, sparkling mechanism without a single bug, but now . . . Now: it’s like there is some kind of foreign object stuck in my brain, like when you get even the thinnest eyelash stuck in your eye: you’re fine, but that one eye with a lash in it doesn’t let you forget about it for a second . . .
The cheerful, crystal bell in the headboard: 7, time to get up. When I look left and right, it’s like I’m seeing myself, my room, my unif, my movements repeated one thousand times over through the glass walls. It’s invigorating: seeing yourself as part of an enormous, powerful whole. And such precise beauty: not a single extraneous gesture, bend or turn.
Yes, that Taylor was, indubitably, a genius among the Ancients. Although he didn’t reach the conclusion of applying his method to all of life, every step, day and night – he didn’t think to integrate his system from hour zero to twenty-four. But still, how did they manage to write entire libraries about some Kant while barely noticing Taylor, the visionary who managed to see ten centuries ahead of his time.
Breakfast is over. The Anthem of the One State sung in a uniform fashion. Uniformly, in fours, to the elevators. The barely perceptible hum of the motors – and rapidly, down, down, down – my heart sank a little . . . then, suddenly, I recalled my weird dream or maybe, some kind of vague, implicit function of it. Oh yes, on the aero yesterday – the descent. But all that is over now: period. And it’s very good I was so decisive and curt with her.
I got on the underground railway, flying to where the INTEGRAL’s elegant body stood gleaming on the dock, immobile, waiting for fire to breathe life into it. Closing my eyes, I daydreamed in formulas: once again mentally calculating the initial velocity needed to launch the INTEGRAL into space. With each fraction of a second, the mass of the INTEGRAL would change (consuming combustion fuel). The equation turned out very complicated, with transcendental quantities.
As though in a dream: but here, in the solid, numerical world, I felt someone sit down next to me, lightly bumping into me, and say, ‘Oh, sorry.’
I opened my eyes and at first (my mind still on the INTEGRAL), all I saw was something rapidly flying through space: a head – flying because it had protruding pink wings – ears – on either side of it. And then the curve of the drooping back of the head, the hunched back, double-bent – the letter S . . .
And through the glass walls of my algebraic world – the eyelash was back – the thought of that unpleasant task I have to do today.
‘No worries,’ I smiled at my neighbour, exchanging bows. The number S-4711 gleamed at me from his badge (no wonder I’d associated him with the letter S from the moment I saw him: it was a visual impression unregistered by my conscious mind). His eyes flashed – two sharp-pointed gimlets, spinning furiously, penetrating my gaze, going down deep into me – soon, they’ll hit the bottom and see what I can’t even admit to myself . . .
Suddenly, the eyelash was perfectly clear: here was one of them, one of the Guardians, and the easiest thing to do was not wait and just come out with everything now.
‘I have to tell you something. Yesterday, I went to the House of Antiquity,’ my voice was strange, tamped down, flattened. I tried clearing my throat.
‘Why, that’s excellent. Visiting the House of Antiquity often provides material for drawing very instructive conclusions.’
‘But wait – I wasn’t alone, I was accompanying number I-330, and then . . .’
‘I-330? I’m so happy for you. She’s a very interesting, talented woman. With many admirers.’
And of course . . . that time, on our walk . . . maybe he’s even registered to her? No, now I can’t tell him, it’s impossible: that much is clear.
‘Indeed! Yes, of course! Very,’ my smile stretched wider and wider as I felt more and more awkward and as if: this smile made me feel naked and stupid . . .
The gimlets reached down to my core, swirling, then zoomed back up into his eyes. S, with a double smile, nodded goodbye and slipped towards the exit. I hid behind my newspaper (I felt as though everyone was looking at me) and quickly forgot about the eyelash, gimlets and everything else because I was so shocked by what I read in the newspaper. A single, short line: ‘According to credible sources, there is new evidence of an elusive organisation striving for liberation from the beneficent yoke of the State.’
‘Liberation’? It was beyond belief: humanity’s criminal instincts were clearly alive and kicking. I intentionally use the word ‘criminal’. Freedom and crime are as inextricably linked as . . . well, the motion of an aero and its velocity: when an aero’s velocity = 0, it doesn’t move; when a person’s freedom = 0, he doesn’t commit any crimes. That much is clear. The only way to eradicate crime is to eradicate freedom. And now, when we’ve only just eliminated it (on the cosmic scale, centuries are, of course, ‘only just’), suddenly, some kind of miserable imbeciles . . .
No, it doesn’t make any sense: why didn’t I go to the Bureau of Guardians immediately, yesterday? Today, after 16, I will go without fail . . .
At 16:10, I went out and, right away, I ran into O on the corner. She was filled to the brim with pink glee at this chance encounter. ‘What a simple, round mind. Good for me: she’ll understand and support me . . .’ Although really, I didn’t need support: I had firmly decided.
The horns of the Music Factory boomed the March in unison – that same everyday March. It was all so ineffably wonderful – that everydayness, repetitiveness, mirroring!
O grabbed my hand. ‘Walk.’ Her round blue eyes were wide open to me – blue windows inside – and I penetrated within without getting caught on anything: nothing inside – i.e. nothing foreign or extra.
‘No, no walk. I need to . . .’ I told her where I needed to go. And to my surprise, I saw: the pink O of her lips slumped into a pink crescent moon, horns down – as though she’d got something sour in her mouth. It was infuriating.
‘You female numbers – incurably riddled with prejudice. All of you are completely incapable of thinking abstractly. Forgive me, but it’s simply stupid.’
‘You’re off to see the spies – yuck! And to think that I got you a sprig of lilies of the valley from the Botanical Museum . . .’
‘“To think”? Why “to think”? So typically feminine,’ I angrily (I admit) grabbed her lilies of the valley. ‘Here’s your lily of the valley, okay? Smell it: it’s nice, huh? I’m begging you to just have enough logic to understand. The lily of the valley smells nice: yes. But you can’t say that about smell itself, the concept of smell, can you? You can’t call smell good or bad. You cannot, okay? There is the smell of the lily of the valley, then there’s the horrible smell of henbane: both of them are smells. They had spies in the ancient state and yes, we have spies, too . . . yes, spies. I’m not afraid of words. But isn’t it clear that their spies were like henbane while ours are like lilies? Yes! Lilies of the valley!’
The pink crescent quivered. I now understand I was wrong, but at that moment, I was positive that she was about to burst into laughter. Which