Speaker 1: Section thirteen of we featuring Records twenty six and twenty seven.
Speaker 1: This is LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the
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Speaker 1: LibriVox dot org. Wei by Yevgen Nizamitan, translated by Gregory Zilberg,
Speaker 1: Record twenty six. The World does exist rash forty one
Speaker 1: degrees centigrade morning through the ceiling. The sky is as usual, firm, round,
Speaker 1: red cheeked. I think I should have been less surprised
Speaker 1: had I found above some extraordinary quadrangular sun, or people
Speaker 1: clad in many colored dresses made of the skins of animals,
Speaker 1: or opaque walls of stone. Then the world, our world
Speaker 1: does still exist? Or is it only inertia? Is the
Speaker 1: generator already switched out while the armature is still roaring
Speaker 1: and revolving? Two more revolutions or three? And at the
Speaker 1: fourth will it die away? Are you familiar with that
Speaker 1: strange state in which you wake up in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night, open your eyes into the darkness, and
Speaker 1: then suddenly feel you are lost in the dark. You
Speaker 1: quickly quickly begin to feel around, to seek something familiar
Speaker 1: and solid, a wall, a lamp a chair in exactly
Speaker 1: the same way I felt around. Seeking in the Journal
Speaker 1: of the United States. Quickly, quickly I found this. The
Speaker 1: celebration of the day of Unanimity, long awaited by all,
Speaker 1: took place yesterday. The same well doer, who so often
Speaker 1: proved his unshakable wisdom was unanimously re elected for the
Speaker 1: forty eighth time. The celebration was clouded by a little
Speaker 1: confusion created by the enemies of happiness, who, by their
Speaker 1: action naturally lost the right to be the bricks for
Speaker 1: the foundation of the renovated United State. It is clear
Speaker 1: to everybody that to take into consideration their votes would
Speaker 1: mean to consider as a part of a magnificent, heroic symphony,
Speaker 1: the accidental cough of a sick person who happened to
Speaker 1: be in the concert hall. Oh, great sage, is it
Speaker 1: really true that despite everything we are saved? What objection
Speaker 1: indeed can one fine to this most crystalline silologism? And
Speaker 1: further on a few more lines. Today, at twelve o'clock,
Speaker 1: a joint meeting of the Administrative Bureau, Medical Bureau, and
Speaker 1: Bureau of Guardians will take place. An important state decrees
Speaker 1: to be expected shortly no The walls still stand erect.
Speaker 1: Here they are I can feel them, and that strange
Speaker 1: feeling of being lost somewhere, of not knowing where I am,
Speaker 1: that feeling is gone. I am not surprised any longer
Speaker 1: to see the sky blue and the sun round, and
Speaker 1: all the numbers going to work as usual. I walked
Speaker 1: along the avenue with a particularly firm, resounding step. It
Speaker 1: seemed to me that everyone else walked exactly like me.
Speaker 1: But at the crossing, on turning the corner, I noticed
Speaker 1: people rangely shying away going around the corner of a
Speaker 1: building sidewise, as if a pipe had burst in the wall,
Speaker 1: as if cold water were spurting like a fountain on
Speaker 1: the sidewalk, and it was impossible to cross it. Another
Speaker 1: five or ten steps, and I too felt a spurt
Speaker 1: of cold water that struck me and threw me from
Speaker 1: the sidewalk at a height of approximately two meters. A
Speaker 1: quadrangular piece of paper was pasted to the wall, and
Speaker 1: on that sheet of paper unintelligible poisonously green letters methy
Speaker 1: and under the paper an S like curved back and
Speaker 1: wing ears shaking with anger or emotion. His right arm
Speaker 1: lifted as high as possible his left arm hopelessly stretched
Speaker 1: out backwards like a hurt wing. He was trying to
Speaker 1: jump high enough to reach the paper and tear it off,
Speaker 1: but he was unable to do so. He was a
Speaker 1: fraction of an inch too short. Probably every one of
Speaker 1: the passers by had the same thought. If I go
Speaker 1: to help him, I only one of the many. Will
Speaker 1: he not think that I am guilty of something, and
Speaker 1: that I am therefore anxious to I must confess. I
Speaker 1: had that thought, But remembering how many times he had
Speaker 1: proved my real guardian angel, and how often he had
Speaker 1: saved me, I stepped towards him, and with courage and
Speaker 1: warm assurance, I stretched out my hand and tore off
Speaker 1: the sheet. S turned around. The little drill sank quickly
Speaker 1: into me to the bottom, and found something there. Then
Speaker 1: he lifted his left brow winked towards the wall where
Speaker 1: MEPhI had been hanging a minute ago. The tail of
Speaker 1: his little smile twinkled even with a certain pleasure, which
Speaker 1: greatly surprised me. But why should I be surprised? A
Speaker 1: doctor always prefers a temperature of forty degrees centigrade and
Speaker 1: a rash to the slow languid rise of temperature during
Speaker 1: the period of incubation of a disease. It enables him
Speaker 1: to determine the character of the disease. MEPhI broke out
Speaker 1: to day on the walls like a rash I understood
Speaker 1: his smile. In the passage to the underground whaleway under
Speaker 1: our feet, on the clean glass of the steps, again
Speaker 1: a white sheet, Mefi. And also on the walls of
Speaker 1: the tunnel, and on the benches, and on the mirror
Speaker 1: of the car, apparently pasted on in some haste, as
Speaker 1: some were hanging on a slant. Everywhere the same white,
Speaker 1: gruesome rash I must confess that the exact meaning of
Speaker 1: that smile became clear to me only after many days,
Speaker 1: which were overfilled with the strangest and most unexpected events.
Speaker 1: The roaring of the wheels, distinct in the general silence,
Speaker 1: seemed to be the noise of infected streams of blood.
Speaker 1: Some number was inadvertently touched on the shoulder, and he
Speaker 1: started so that a package of papers fell out of
Speaker 1: his hands. To my left, another number was reading a paper,
Speaker 1: his eyes fixed always on the same line. The paper
Speaker 1: perceptibly trembled in his hands. I felt that everywhere, in
Speaker 1: the wheels, in the hands, in the newspapers, even in
Speaker 1: the eyelashes, the pulse was becoming more and more rapid.
Speaker 1: And I thought it probable that today, when I three
Speaker 1: thirty and I should find ourselves there, the temperature would
Speaker 1: rise to thirty nine forty perhaps forty one degrees. And
Speaker 1: at the docks the same silence filled with the buzzing
Speaker 1: of an invisible propeller. The lays were silent, as if brooding.
Speaker 1: Only the cranes were moving, almost inaudibly, as if on tiptoe, gliding,
Speaker 1: bending over, picking up with their tentacles the lumps of
Speaker 1: frozen air, and loading the tanks of the integral. We
Speaker 1: were already preparing the Integral for a trial flight. Well
Speaker 1: shall we have her up in a week? This was
Speaker 1: my question addressed to the second builder. His face is
Speaker 1: like porcelain, painted with sweet blue and tender pink flowers,
Speaker 1: eyes and lips. But today those little flowers looked faded
Speaker 1: and washed out. We were counting aloud when suddenly I
Speaker 1: broke off in the midst of a word, and stopped
Speaker 1: my mouth wide open above the cupola, above the blue
Speaker 1: lump lifted by the crane there's a scarcely noticeable, small
Speaker 1: white square. I felt my whole body trembling, perhaps with laughter. Yes,
Speaker 1: I myself heard my own laughter. Did you ever hear
Speaker 1: your own laughter? No, listen, I said, Imagine you're in
Speaker 1: an ancient aeroplane. The altimeter shows five thousand meters a
Speaker 1: wing breaks. You're dashing down like and on the way
Speaker 1: you calculate tomorrow from twelve to two, from two to six,
Speaker 1: and dinner at five. Would it not be absurd? The
Speaker 1: little blue flowers began to move and bulge out. What
Speaker 1: if I were made of glass and you could have
Speaker 1: seen what was going on within me at that moment?
Speaker 1: If he knew that, some three or four hours later,
Speaker 1: record twenty seven no headings, it is impossible. I was
Speaker 1: alone in the endless corridors. In those same corridors, a
Speaker 1: mute concrete sky water was dripping somewhere upon a stone,
Speaker 1: the familiar, heavy, opaque door and the subdued noise from
Speaker 1: behind it. She said she would come out at sixteen sharp.
Speaker 1: It was already five minutes, and then ten, then fifteen,
Speaker 1: pasted sixteen. No one appeared for a second. I was
Speaker 1: my former self horrified at the thought that the door
Speaker 1: might open five minutes more, and if she does not
Speaker 1: come out, water was dripping somewhere upon a stone, no
Speaker 1: one about. With melancholy pleasure. I felt saved, and slowly
Speaker 1: I turned and walked back along the corridor, the trembling
Speaker 1: dots of the small lamps. When the ceiling became dimmer
Speaker 1: and dimmer. Suddenly a quick rattle of a door behind me,
Speaker 1: quick steps softly echoing from the ceiling and the walls.
Speaker 1: It was she, light as a bird, panting somewhat from running.
Speaker 1: I knew you would be here, you would come. I
Speaker 1: knew you you. The spears of her eyelashes moved apart
Speaker 1: to let me in. And how can I describe what
Speaker 1: effect that ancient, absurd and wonderful right has upon me?
Speaker 1: When her lips touched mine? Can I find a formula
Speaker 1: to express that whirlwind which seeps out of my soul, everything, everything,
Speaker 1: save her? Yes, yes, from my soul. You may laugh
Speaker 1: at me if you will. She made an effort to
Speaker 1: raise her eyelids, and her slow words, too came with
Speaker 1: an effort. No, now we must go. The door opened,
Speaker 1: old worn steps, an unbearably multi colored noise whistling in
Speaker 1: light twenty four hours have passed since then, and everything
Speaker 1: seems to have settled in me. Yet it is most
Speaker 1: difficult for me to find words for even unapproximate description.
Speaker 1: It is as though a bomb had exploded in my head.
Speaker 1: Open mouths, wings, shouts, leaves, words, stones, all these one
Speaker 1: after another in a heap. I remember my first thought
Speaker 1: was fast back. But it was clear to me that
Speaker 1: while I was waiting there in the corridors, they somehow
Speaker 1: had blasted and destroyed the green Wall, and from behind
Speaker 1: it everything rushed in and splashed over our city, which
Speaker 1: until then had been kept clean of that lower world.
Speaker 1: I must have said something of this sort to I
Speaker 1: three thirty. She laughed, No, we have simply come out
Speaker 1: beyond the green wall. Then I opened my eyes, and
Speaker 1: close to me, actually I saw those very things which
Speaker 1: until then not a single living number had ever seen,
Speaker 1: otherwise than depreciated a thousand times, dimmed and hazy through
Speaker 1: the cloudy glass of the wall. The sun it was
Speaker 1: no longer our light evenly diffused over the mirror surface
Speaker 1: of the pavements. It seemed like an accumulation of living fragments,
Speaker 1: of incessantly oscillating dizzy spots which blinded the eyes, and
Speaker 1: the trees like candles rising into the very sky, or
Speaker 1: like spiders which squatted upon the earth, supported by their
Speaker 1: clumsy paws, or like mute green fountains. And all this
Speaker 1: was moving, jump, rustling. Under my feet, some strange little
Speaker 1: ball was crawling. I stood as though rooted to the ground.
Speaker 1: I was enabled to take a step because under my
Speaker 1: foot there was not even a plane, but imagine something
Speaker 1: disgustingly soft, yielding, living, springy green. I was dazed. I
Speaker 1: was strangled. Yes, strangled, it is the best word to
Speaker 1: express my state. I stood, holding fast with both hands
Speaker 1: to a swinging branch. It is nothing, It is all right,
Speaker 1: it is natural. For the first time, it will pass
Speaker 1: courage at I three point thirty side, bouncing dizzily on
Speaker 1: a green net. Someone's thinnest profile cut out of paper. No,
Speaker 1: not someone's. I recognized him. I remembered it was the doctor.
Speaker 1: I understood everything very clearly. I realized that they both
Speaker 1: caught me beneath the arms and laughingly dragged me forward.
Speaker 1: My legs twisted. It glided, terrible noise, cawing stumps, yelling branches,
Speaker 1: tree trunks, wings, leaves, whistling, the trees ran apart a
Speaker 1: bright clearing. In the clearing, people, or perhaps, to be
Speaker 1: more exact, beings, now comes the most difficult part to describe,
Speaker 1: For this was beyond any bounds of probability. It is
Speaker 1: clear to me now my I three point thirty was
Speaker 1: stubbornly silent about it before. I should not have believed it,
Speaker 1: should not have believed even her. It is possible that
Speaker 1: tomorrow I shall not believe myself, shall not believe my
Speaker 1: own description in these pages. In the clearing around a
Speaker 1: naked skull like rock, a noisy crowd of three or
Speaker 1: four hundred people, well, let's call them people. I find
Speaker 1: it difficult to coin new words. Just as on the stands,
Speaker 1: you recognize in the general accumulation of faces only those
Speaker 1: which are familiar to you. So at first I recognized
Speaker 1: only our gish blue unifs. But one second later and
Speaker 1: I saw distinctly and clearly among the unifs dark red, golden, black, brown,
Speaker 1: and white humans. Apparently they were humans. None of them
Speaker 1: had any clothes on, and their bodies were covered with short,
Speaker 1: glistening hair, like that which may have been seen on
Speaker 1: the stuffed horse in the prehistoric museum. But their females
Speaker 1: had faces exactly, just exactly like the faces of our women,
Speaker 1: tender rosy and not overgrown with hair. Also, their breasts
Speaker 1: were free of hair, firm breasts, of wonderful geometrical form.
Speaker 1: As to the males. Only a part of their faces
Speaker 1: were free from hair like our ancestors, and the organs
Speaker 1: of reproduction similar to ours. All of this was so unbelievable,
Speaker 1: so unexpected, that I stood there quietly. I assert positively
Speaker 1: that I stood quietly and looked around like a scale.
Speaker 1: Overload one side sufficiently, and then you made put on
Speaker 1: the other as much as you will, the arrow will
Speaker 1: not move. Suddenly I felt alone. I three thirty was
Speaker 1: no longer with me. I don't know how nor where
Speaker 1: she disappeared. Around me were only those with their hair
Speaker 1: glistening like silk in the sunlight. I caught someone's warm, strong,
Speaker 1: dark shoulder. Listen, please, in the name of the well doer,
Speaker 1: could you tell me where she went? Awhile a minute ago,
Speaker 1: she long haired, austere eyebrows turned towards me. Sh sh silence.
Speaker 1: He made a sign with his head towards the center
Speaker 1: where there stood the yellow skull like stone there above
Speaker 1: the heads of all. I saw her. The sun beat
Speaker 1: straight into my eyes, and because of that, she seemed
Speaker 1: coal black, standing out on the blue cloth of the sky,
Speaker 1: a coal black silhouette on a blue background. A little higher,
Speaker 1: the clouds were floating, and it seemed that not the clouds,
Speaker 1: but the rock itself, and she herself upon that rock,
Speaker 1: and the crowd and the clearing all were silently floating
Speaker 1: like a ship, and the earth was light and glided
Speaker 1: away from under the feet. Brothers, it was she, Brothers.
Speaker 1: You all know that there inside the wall in the city,
Speaker 1: they are building the Integral. And you know also that
Speaker 1: the day has come for us to destroy that wall
Speaker 1: and all other walls, so that the green wind may
Speaker 1: blow all over the earth from end to end. But
Speaker 1: the Integral is going to take these walls up into
Speaker 1: the heights, to the thousands of other worlds, which every
Speaker 1: evening whisper to us with their lights through the black
Speaker 1: leaves of night. Waves and foam and wind were beating
Speaker 1: the rock down with the Integral down, No, brothers, not down.
Speaker 1: The Integral must be ours, and it shall be ours
Speaker 1: on the day when it first sets sail into the sky.
Speaker 1: We shall be on board, for the Builder of the
Speaker 1: Integral is with us. He left the walls. He came
Speaker 1: with me here in order to be with us. Long
Speaker 1: live the Builder. A second and I was somewhere above
Speaker 1: everything under me heads heads, heads wide open, yelling mouths,
Speaker 1: arms rising and falling. There was something strange and intoxicating
Speaker 1: in it all. I felt myself above everybody. I was
Speaker 1: I a separate world. I ceased to be the usual item.
Speaker 1: I became unity again. I was below near the rock,
Speaker 1: my body happy, shaken and rumpled as after an embrace
Speaker 1: of love, sunlight, voices, and from above the smile of
Speaker 1: I three thirty. A golden haired woman, her whole body silky,
Speaker 1: golden and diffusing an odor of different herbs, was nearby.
Speaker 1: She held a cup apparently made of wood. She drank
Speaker 1: a little from it with her red lips, and then
Speaker 1: offered the cup to me. I closed my eyes, and
Speaker 1: with a vide, I drank the sweet, cold, prickly sparks,
Speaker 1: pouring them down on the fire which burned within me.
Speaker 1: Soon afterward, my blood and the whole world began to
Speaker 1: circulate a thousand times faster. The earth seemed to be
Speaker 1: flying light as down and within me everything was simple,
Speaker 1: light and clear. Only then I noticed on the rock
Speaker 1: the familiar, enormous letters MEFI, and for some reason the
Speaker 1: inscriptions seemed to me necessary. It seemed to be a
Speaker 1: simple thread binding everything together. A rather rough picture hewn
Speaker 1: in the rock, this too seemed comprehensible. It represented a
Speaker 1: youth with wings and with a transparent body, and in
Speaker 1: the place ordinarily occupied by the heart, a blinding red,
Speaker 1: blazing coal. Again I understood that coal or no, I
Speaker 1: felt it as I felt, without hearing every word of eye.
Speaker 1: She continued to speak from above from the rock, and
Speaker 1: I felt that all of them breathed one breath, and
Speaker 1: that they were all ready to fly somewhere, like the
Speaker 1: birds over the wall. From behind, from the confusion of
Speaker 1: breathing bodies, a loud voice. But this is folly. It
Speaker 1: seems to me that it was I. Yes, I am
Speaker 1: certain it was I who then jumped on the rock,
Speaker 1: and from there I saw the sun heads a green
Speaker 1: sea on a blue background, and I cried, yes, yes, precisely,
Speaker 1: all must become insane. We must become insane as soon
Speaker 1: as possible, we must. I know it. I three thirty
Speaker 1: was at my side, her smile, two dark lines from
Speaker 1: the angles of her mouth, directed upward, and within me
Speaker 1: a blazing coal. It was momentary light, a little painful, beautiful,
Speaker 1: and later only stray fragments that remained sticking in me,
Speaker 1: very low and slowly. A bird was moving. I saw
Speaker 1: it was living like me. It was turning its head
Speaker 1: now to the right and then to the left like
Speaker 1: a human being, and its round black eyes screwed themselves
Speaker 1: into me. Then a human back glistening with fur the
Speaker 1: color of ancient ivory. A mosquito crawling on that back,
Speaker 1: a mosquito with tiny transparent wings. The back twitched to
Speaker 1: chase the mosquito away. It twitched again, and yet another thing,
Speaker 1: a shadow from the leaves, a woven netlike shadow. Some
Speaker 1: lay in that shadow, chewing something, something similar to the
Speaker 1: legendary food of the ancients, a long yellow fruit and
Speaker 1: a piece of something dark. They put some of it
Speaker 1: in my hand, and it seemed droll to me, for
Speaker 1: I did not know whether I might eat it or not.
Speaker 1: And again a crowd heads, legs, arms, mouths, faces, appearing
Speaker 1: for a second and then disappearing like bursting bubbles. For
Speaker 1: a second, appeared or perhaps it was only a hallucination.
Speaker 1: The transparent flying wing ears. With all my might, I
Speaker 1: pressed the hand of I three thirty. She turned to me.
Speaker 1: What is the matter? He is here? I thought, I whew. Yes.
Speaker 1: A second ago in the crowd, the ends of the
Speaker 1: thin coal black brows moved the temples a smile, like
Speaker 1: a sharp triangle. I could not see clearly why she smiled?
Speaker 1: How could she smile? But you understand I three thirty.
Speaker 1: Don't you? You understand what it means if he or
Speaker 1: one of them is here? He were funny. How could
Speaker 1: it ever enter the heads of those within the wall
Speaker 1: that we are here? Remember, take yourself, did you ever
Speaker 1: think it was possible? They are busy hunting us there?
Speaker 1: Let them? You were delirious. Her smile was light and cheerful,
Speaker 1: and I too was smiling, And the earth was drunken, cheerful, light, floating.
Speaker 1: End of section thirteen.