Speaker 1: Section eighteen of WE featuring records thirty six and thirty seven.
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Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. We by Yevgeny zem Yatten, translated
Speaker 1: by Gregory Zilberg, Record thirty six Empty Pages the Christian God,
Speaker 1: about my Mother. It is very strange that a kind
Speaker 1: of empty white page should be left in my head.
Speaker 1: How I walked there, How I waited? I remember I
Speaker 1: had to wait. I know nothing about it. I remember
Speaker 1: not a sound, not a face, not a gesture, as
Speaker 1: if all communicating wars between me and the world were cut.
Speaker 1: When I came to I found myself standing before him.
Speaker 1: I feared to raise my eyes. I saw only his
Speaker 1: enormous cast iron hands upon his knees. Those hands weighed
Speaker 1: upon him, bending his knees with their weight. He was
Speaker 1: slowly moving his fingers. His face was somewhere above, as
Speaker 1: if in fog. And only because his voice came to
Speaker 1: my ear from such a height. It did not roar
Speaker 1: like thunder, It did not deafen me, but appeared to
Speaker 1: be an ordinary human voice. Then you too, you the
Speaker 1: builder of the integral, you whose lot it was to
Speaker 1: become the greatest of all conquistadors, You whose name was
Speaker 1: to have been at the head of a glorious new
Speaker 1: chapter of the history of the United States. You blood
Speaker 1: ran to my head, to my cheeks, and here again
Speaker 1: a white page, only the pulsation in my temples, and
Speaker 1: the heavy voice from above. But I remember not a word.
Speaker 1: Only when he became silent, I came to and noticed
Speaker 1: how his hand moved heavily, like a thousand pounds, and
Speaker 1: crawled slowly. A finger threatened me, well, why are you silent?
Speaker 1: Is it true or not? Executioner? So so I repeated submissively,
Speaker 1: And then I clearly heard every word of his Well,
Speaker 1: then do you think I am afraid of the word?
Speaker 1: Did you ever try to take off its shell and
Speaker 1: look into its inner meeting? I shall tell you remember
Speaker 1: a blue hill, a crowd across. Some up on the hill,
Speaker 1: sprinkled with blood, are busy kneeling a body to the cross.
Speaker 1: Others below, sprinkled with tears, are gazing upward. Does it
Speaker 1: not seem to you that the part which those above
Speaker 1: must play is more difficult? The most important part if
Speaker 1: it were not for them, how could that magnificent tragedy
Speaker 1: ever have been staged? True, they were hissed by the
Speaker 1: dark crowd. But for that the author of the tragedy,
Speaker 1: God should have remunerated them more liberally, should he not?
Speaker 1: And the Christian most clement God himself, who burnt on
Speaker 1: a slow fire all the infidels, is he not an executioner?
Speaker 1: Was the number of those burned by the Christians less
Speaker 1: than the number of burned Christians? Yet you must understand this.
Speaker 1: Yet this God was for centuries glorified as the God
Speaker 1: of love absurd? Oh, no, just the contrary. It is
Speaker 1: rather a patent for the imperishable wisdom of man, written
Speaker 1: in blood. Even at the time when he still was
Speaker 1: a wild and hairy man, knew that real algebraic love
Speaker 1: for humanity must inevitably be inhuman, and that the inevitable
Speaker 1: mark of the truth is cruelty, just as the inevitable
Speaker 1: mark of fire is its property of causing the sensation
Speaker 1: of burning. Could you show me a fire that would
Speaker 1: not hurt? Well? Prove now your point? Proceed argue? How
Speaker 1: could I argue? How could I argue? When those thoughts
Speaker 1: were once mine? Though I was never able to dress
Speaker 1: them in such a splendid tempered armor, I remained silent.
Speaker 1: If your silence is intended to mean that you agree
Speaker 1: with me, then let us talk as adults do after
Speaker 1: the children have gone to bed. Let us talk to
Speaker 1: the logical end. I ask, what was it that man
Speaker 1: from his diaper age dreamed of, tormented himself for, prayed for.
Speaker 1: He longed for that day when someone would tell him
Speaker 1: what happiness is, and then would chain him to it.
Speaker 1: What else are we doing now the ancient dream about
Speaker 1: a paradise. Remember, there in paradise they know no desire anymore,
Speaker 1: no pity, no love. There they are all blessed. An
Speaker 1: operation has been performed on their center of fancy. That
Speaker 1: is why they are all blessed angels, servants of God.
Speaker 1: And now, at the very moment, when we have caught
Speaker 1: up with that dream, when we hold it like this,
Speaker 1: he clenched his hand so that if he had held
Speaker 1: a stone in its sap would have run out. At
Speaker 1: the moment when all that was left for us was
Speaker 1: to adorn our prize and distribute it amongst all unequal pieces.
Speaker 1: At that very moment, you you the cast iron roar
Speaker 1: was suddenly broken off. I was as red as a
Speaker 1: piece of iron on an anvil under the molding sledgehammer.
Speaker 1: This seemed to have stopped for a second, hanging in air,
Speaker 1: and I waited, waited, until suddenly, How old are you?
Speaker 1: Thirty two, just double the age and as simple as
Speaker 1: at sixteen? Listen? Is it possible that it really never
Speaker 1: occurred to you that they we do not yet know
Speaker 1: their names, But I am certain you will disclose them
Speaker 1: to us. That they were interested in you only as
Speaker 1: the builder of the integral, only in order to be
Speaker 1: able through the use of you. Don't don't, I cried,
Speaker 1: But it was like protecting yourself with your hands and
Speaker 1: crying to a bullet. You may still be hearing your
Speaker 1: own don't, but the bullet meanwhile has burned you through,
Speaker 1: and writhing with pain, you were prostrated on the ground. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: the builder of the integral. Yes, yes. At once there
Speaker 1: came back to me the angry face of you, with
Speaker 1: twitching brick red gills. On that morning when both of
Speaker 1: them I remember now clearly how I raised my eyes
Speaker 1: and laughed. A Socrates like bald headed man was sitting
Speaker 1: before me at small drops of sweat doted the bald
Speaker 1: surface of his cranium. How simple, how magnificently trivial everything was,
Speaker 1: how simple, almost to the point of being ridiculous. Laughter
Speaker 1: was choking me and bursting forth in puffs. I covered
Speaker 1: my mouth with my hand and rushed wildly out steps, wind, damp,
Speaker 1: leaning fragments of light and faces, and while running no
Speaker 1: only to see her, to see her once more, here again,
Speaker 1: an empty white page. All I remember is feet, not people,
Speaker 1: just feet, hundreds of feet, confused, stamping feet falling from
Speaker 1: somewhere on the pavement, a heavy rain of feet, and
Speaker 1: some cheerful, daring voice, and a shout that was probably
Speaker 1: for me, Hey, hey, come here, come along with us. Afterward,
Speaker 1: a deserted square, heavily overloaded with tense wind. In the
Speaker 1: middle of the square, a dim, threatening mass, the machine
Speaker 1: of the well doer, and a seemingly unexpected image arose
Speaker 1: within me in response to the sight of the machine,
Speaker 1: a snow white pillow, and on the pillow ahead, thrown
Speaker 1: back and half close eyed in a sharp, sweet line
Speaker 1: of teeth. All this remembered so absurdly, so terribly connected
Speaker 1: with the machine. I know how connection has come about
Speaker 1: but I do not yet want to see it, nor
Speaker 1: to say it out loud. I don't want to, I
Speaker 1: do not. I closed my eyes, sat down on the
Speaker 1: steps which lead upwards to the machine. I must have
Speaker 1: been running for My face was wet. From somewhere very
Speaker 1: far away. Cries were coming, but nobody heard them. Nobody
Speaker 1: heard me crying. Save me from it, Save me, if
Speaker 1: only I had a mother, as the ancients had, My
Speaker 1: mother mine for whom I should be, Not the builder
Speaker 1: of the integral, and not D five thirty, not a
Speaker 1: molecule of the United State, but merely a living human piece,
Speaker 1: a piece of herself, a trampled, smothered, a cast off piece.
Speaker 1: And though I were driving the nails into the cross,
Speaker 1: or being nailed to it, perhaps it is the same.
Speaker 1: She would hear what no one else could hear, her old,
Speaker 1: grown together, wrinkled lips, Record thirty seven Infusorian Doomsday. Her room.
Speaker 1: This morning, while we were in the refectory, a neighbor
Speaker 1: to my left whispered to me in a frightened tone,
Speaker 1: but why don't you eat? Don't you see they're looking
Speaker 1: at you. I had to pluck up all my strength
Speaker 1: to show a smile, I felt it like a crack
Speaker 1: in my face. I smiled, and the borders of the
Speaker 1: crack drew apart, wider and wider. It was quite painful.
Speaker 1: What followed was this. No sooner had I lifted the
Speaker 1: small cube of paste upon my fork, than my fork
Speaker 1: jerked from my hand and tinkled against the plate, and
Speaker 1: at once the tables, the walls, the plates, the air
Speaker 1: even trembled and rang, and outside too, an enormous iron
Speaker 1: round roar, reaching the sky, floating over heads and houses.
Speaker 1: It died away in the distance, in small, hardly perceptible circles,
Speaker 1: like those upon water. I saw faces instantaneously grow faded
Speaker 1: and bleached. I saw moos filled with food suddenly motionless,
Speaker 1: and forks hanging in air. Then everything became confused, jumped
Speaker 1: off the centuries old tracks. Everybody jump up from his
Speaker 1: place without singing the hem and confusedly in disorder, hastily finishing, chewing, choking,
Speaker 1: grasping one another. They were asking what, what happened? What?
Speaker 1: And the disorderly fragments of the machine, which was once
Speaker 1: perfect and great, fell down in all directions, down the elevators,
Speaker 1: down the stairs, stamping of feet, pieces of words, like
Speaker 1: pieces of torn letters carried by the wind. The same
Speaker 1: outpour from the neighboring houses. A minute later, the avenue
Speaker 1: seemed like a drop of water under a microscope. The
Speaker 1: infusoria locked up and the transparent glass like drop of
Speaker 1: water were tossing around to the sides, up and down. Ah,
Speaker 1: someone's triumphant voice. I saw the back of a neck
Speaker 1: and a finger pointing to the sky. I remember very
Speaker 1: distinctly a yellow, pinkish nail, and under the nail a
Speaker 1: crescent crawling out, as if from under the horizon. The
Speaker 1: finger was like a compass. All eyes were raised to
Speaker 1: the sky. There, running away from an invisible pursuit, masses
Speaker 1: of clouds rushing upon each other, and colored by the clouds.
Speaker 1: The arrows of the Guardians, with their tubes like antennae,
Speaker 1: were floating and farther to the west, something like. At first,
Speaker 1: nobody could understand what it was, even I who knew
Speaker 1: unfortunately more than the others. It was like a great
Speaker 1: hive of black arrows swarming somewhere at an extraordinary height.
Speaker 1: They looked like hardly noticeable, swiftly moving points nearer and nearer,
Speaker 1: hoarse guttural sounds began to reach the earth, and finally
Speaker 1: we saw birds just over our heads. They filled the
Speaker 1: sky with their sharp, black, descending triangles. The stormy wind
Speaker 1: drove them down, and they began to land on the cupolas,
Speaker 1: on the roofs, poles and balconies. Ah ah, And the
Speaker 1: triumphant back of the neck turned and I saw that
Speaker 1: man with the protruding forehead. But it seemed that the title,
Speaker 1: so to speak, was all that was left of him.
Speaker 1: He seemed to have crawled out from under his forehead
Speaker 1: and on his face. Around the eyes and lips, bunches
Speaker 1: of rays were growing through the noise of the wind,
Speaker 1: and wings and cawing. He cried to me, Do you realize?
Speaker 1: Do you realize they have blown up the wall? The
Speaker 1: wall has been blown up? Do you understand? Somewhere in
Speaker 1: the background, figures with their heads drawn in were hastily
Speaker 1: rushing by and into the houses in the middle of
Speaker 1: the pavement. A mass of those who had been already
Speaker 1: operated upon. They moved towards the west, Harry, bunches of
Speaker 1: rays around lips and eyes. I grasped his hands, Tell
Speaker 1: me where is she? Where is I? Three thirty? There
Speaker 1: beyond the wall or I must do you hear me
Speaker 1: at once? I cannot here, he shouted again, in a happy,
Speaker 1: drunken voice, showing strong yellow teeth. Here in town, and
Speaker 1: she is acting, Oh, we are doing great work. Who
Speaker 1: are those we? Who am I? There were about fifty
Speaker 1: around him, like him, They seem to have crawled out
Speaker 1: from under their foreheads. They were loud, cheerful, strong toothed,
Speaker 1: swallowing the stormy wind, and with their simple, not at
Speaker 1: all terrible looking electrocuters. Where did they get them? They
Speaker 1: started to the west towards the operated ones, encircling them,
Speaker 1: keeping parallel to forty eighth Avenue, stumbling against the tightly
Speaker 1: drawn ropes woven by the wind. I was running to
Speaker 1: her What for? I do not know? I was stumbling
Speaker 1: empty streets. The city seemed foreign, wild, filled with the ceaseless,
Speaker 1: triumphant hubbub of birds. It seemed like the end of
Speaker 1: the world, doomsday. Through the glass of the walls and
Speaker 1: quite a few houses this cut into my mind. I
Speaker 1: saw male and female numbers in shameless embraces, without curtains,
Speaker 1: lowered without pink checks, in the middle of the day.
Speaker 1: The house, her house, the door, ajar, the lobby, the
Speaker 1: control desk all was empty. The elevator had stopped in
Speaker 1: the middle of its shaft. I ran, panting up the
Speaker 1: endless stairs. The corridor, like the spokes of wheel figures
Speaker 1: on the doors dashed past my eyes. Three twenty three,
Speaker 1: twenty six, three thirty I three thirty Through the glass wall.
Speaker 1: Everything in her room was seemed to be upside down, confused, creased.
Speaker 1: The table overturned its legs in the air like a beast.
Speaker 1: The bed was absurdly placed away from the wall, obliquely
Speaker 1: strewn over the floor fallen, trodden petals of the pink checks.
Speaker 1: I bent over and picked up one to three of them.
Speaker 1: All bore the name D five O three. I was
Speaker 1: on all of them, drops of myself, of my molten
Speaker 1: poured out self, and that was all that was left.
Speaker 1: Somehow I felt they should not lie there on the
Speaker 1: floor and be trodden upon. I gathered a handful of them,
Speaker 1: put them on the table, and carefully smoothed them out,
Speaker 1: glanced at them and laughed aloud. I never knew it before,
Speaker 1: but now I know, and you too know, that laughter
Speaker 1: may be of different colors. It is but a distant
Speaker 1: echo of an explosion within us, maybe the echo of
Speaker 1: a holiday red, blue and golden fireworks, or at times
Speaker 1: it may represent pieces of human flesh exploded in the air.
Speaker 1: I noticed an unfamiliar name on some of the pink checks.
Speaker 1: I do not remember the figures, but I do remember
Speaker 1: the letter F. I brushed the stubs from the table
Speaker 1: to the floor, stepped on them on myself, stamped on
Speaker 1: them with my heels, and went out. I sat in
Speaker 1: the corridor on the window sill in front of her
Speaker 1: door and waited long and stupidly. An old man appeared.
Speaker 1: His face was like a pierced empty bladder with folds.
Speaker 1: From beneath the punctures, something transparent was still slowly dripping slowly, vaguely,
Speaker 1: I realized tears, and only when the old man was
Speaker 1: quite far off, I came to and exclaimed, please listen,
Speaker 1: do you know number I three thirty? The old man
Speaker 1: turned around, waved his hand in despair, and stumbled farther away.
Speaker 1: I returned home at dusk. On the west side. The
Speaker 1: sky was twitching every second in a pale blue electric convulsion.
Speaker 1: A subdued, heavy roar was proceeding from that direction. The
Speaker 1: roofs were covered with black charred sticks, birds. I lay down,
Speaker 1: and instantly, like a heavy beast, sleep came on and
Speaker 1: stifled me. End of Section eighteen, read by sixty five
Speaker 1: Tucks Roswell, Georgia, February twenty twenty three,