Speaker 1: Section fourteen of we featuring Records twenty eight and twenty nine.
Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. Wei by Yevgenizamutin, translated by Gregory Zilberg,
Speaker 1: Record twenty eight. Both of them entropy and energy the
Speaker 1: opaque part of the body. If your world is similar
Speaker 1: to the world of the ancients, then you may easily
Speaker 1: imagine that one day you suddenly come upon a sixth
Speaker 1: or seventh continent, upon some atlantis, and you find they
Speaker 1: are unheard of cities, labyrinths, people flying through the air
Speaker 1: without the aid of wings or arrows, stones lifted into
Speaker 1: the air by the power of a gaze. In brief,
Speaker 1: imagine that you see things that cannot come to your mind,
Speaker 1: even if you suffer from dreamsickness. That is how I
Speaker 1: feel now. For you must understand that no one has
Speaker 1: ever gone beyond the Green Wall since the two hundred
Speaker 1: Years War. As I already have told you, I know
Speaker 1: that it is my duty to you, my unknown friends,
Speaker 1: to give more details about that unsuspected, strange world which
Speaker 1: opened to me yesterday. But for the time being, I
Speaker 1: am unable to return to that subject. Everything is so novel,
Speaker 1: so novel. It is like a rainstorm, and I am
Speaker 1: not big enough to collect it all. I spread out
Speaker 1: the folds of my unif my palms, and yet palefuls
Speaker 1: splashed past me, and only drops can reach these pages.
Speaker 1: At first I heard behind me behind the door a
Speaker 1: loud voice. I recognized her voice, the voice of I
Speaker 1: three thirty, tense, metallic, and another one almost inflexible, like
Speaker 1: a wooden ruler, the voice of you. Then the door
Speaker 1: came up and with a crack, and both of them
Speaker 1: shot into the room. Shot is the right word. I
Speaker 1: three thirty put her hand on the back of my
Speaker 1: armchair and smiled over her shoulder, but only with her
Speaker 1: teeth at you. I should not care to stand before
Speaker 1: such a smile. Listen, she said to me. This woman
Speaker 1: seems to have made up her business to guard you
Speaker 1: from me like a little child. Is it with your permission?
Speaker 1: But he is a child, Yes, that is why he
Speaker 1: does not notice that you that it is only in
Speaker 1: order that all this is only a foul game. Yes,
Speaker 1: and it is my duty. For a second, in the mirror,
Speaker 1: the broken, trembling line of brows. I leaped, controlling with difficulty,
Speaker 1: the other self within me, the one with the hairy fists,
Speaker 1: with difficulty, pushing every word through my teeth. I cried
Speaker 1: straight into her face, into her very gills, Get out
Speaker 1: of here at once, Out at once. The gills swelled,
Speaker 1: it first into brick red lumps, then fell and became gray.
Speaker 1: She opened her mouth to say something, but without a word,
Speaker 1: she slammed it shut and went out. I threw myself
Speaker 1: towards I three thirty. Never, never will I forgive myself.
Speaker 1: She dared you, But you don't think to you that
Speaker 1: you that she This is all because she wants to
Speaker 1: register on me, But I fortunately she will not have
Speaker 1: time for that now. Besides, even a thousand like her,
Speaker 1: I don't care. I know you will not believe that thousand,
Speaker 1: but only me, for after all that happened yesterday, I
Speaker 1: am all yours, all to the very end, as you
Speaker 1: wanted it. I am in your hands. You can now
Speaker 1: at any moment what, At any moment, but at once
Speaker 1: I understood what. My blood rushed to my ears and cheeks.
Speaker 1: Don't speak about that. You must never speak about that.
Speaker 1: The other I my former self. But now how do
Speaker 1: I know? Man is like a novel up to the
Speaker 1: last page, one does not know what the end will be.
Speaker 1: It would not be worth reading otherwise. She was stroking
Speaker 1: my head. I could not see her face, but I
Speaker 1: could tell by her voice that she was looking somewhere,
Speaker 1: very far into the distance. She hooked herself to that
Speaker 1: cloud which was floating silently slowly, no one knows where to.
Speaker 1: Suddenly she pushed me away with her hand, firmly but tenderly. Listen,
Speaker 1: I came to tell you that perhaps we are now
Speaker 1: our last days. You know, don't you? That all auditoriums
Speaker 1: are to be closed after tonight closed. Yes, I passed
Speaker 1: by and saw that in all auditoriums preparations are going on, tables,
Speaker 1: medics in all white. But what does it all mean?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Nobody knows as yet. That is the
Speaker 1: worst of it. I only feel the current is on,
Speaker 1: the spark is jumping, and if not today then tomorrow. Yet,
Speaker 1: perhaps they will not have time for a long while.
Speaker 1: I have ceased to understand who are they and who we?
Speaker 1: I do not understand what I want. Do I want
Speaker 1: them to have or not to have? Enough? Time. One
Speaker 1: thing is clear to me. I three point thirty is
Speaker 1: now on the very edge, on the very edge, and
Speaker 1: in one second more. But it is folly, I said,
Speaker 1: you versus the United State. It is the same as
Speaker 1: if you should cover the muzzle of a gun with
Speaker 1: your hands and expect that way to prevent the shot.
Speaker 1: It is absolute folly. A smile. We must all go
Speaker 1: insane as soon as possible, go insane. It was yesterday,
Speaker 1: do you remember. Yes, she was right. I had even
Speaker 1: written it down. Consequently, it really took place in silence.
Speaker 1: I looked into her face at that moment. The dark
Speaker 1: cross was especially distinct. I dear, before, it is too late.
Speaker 1: If you want, I'll leave everything. I'll forget everything and
Speaker 1: will go there beyond the wall, to them. I do
Speaker 1: not even know who they are. She shook her head.
Speaker 1: Through the dark windows of her eyes, I saw within
Speaker 1: her a flaming oven sparks, tongues of flame, and above
Speaker 1: them a heap of dry tari wood. It was clear
Speaker 1: to me that it was too late. My words could
Speaker 1: be of no avail. She stood up, She would soon leave.
Speaker 1: Perhaps these were the last days or the last minutes,
Speaker 1: asked her hand, No stay a little while longer, for
Speaker 1: the sake. For the sake, she slowly lifted my hand
Speaker 1: towards the light, my hairy paul, which I detest. I
Speaker 1: wanted to withdraw it, but she held it tightly your hand.
Speaker 1: You undoubtedly don't know, and very few do that women
Speaker 1: from here occasionally used to fall in love with them.
Speaker 1: Probably there are in you a few drops of that
Speaker 1: blood of the sun and the woods. Perhaps that is
Speaker 1: why I silence. It was so strange that because of
Speaker 1: that silence, because of an emptiness of nothing, my heart
Speaker 1: should beat so wildly. I cried, Ah, you shall not
Speaker 1: go yet, you shall not go until you tell me
Speaker 1: about them, For you love them. And I do not
Speaker 1: even know who they are, nor where they come from.
Speaker 1: Who were they? The half we have lost h two
Speaker 1: and oh two halves. But in order to get water
Speaker 1: h two oh creeks, seas, waterfalls, storms, it is necessary
Speaker 1: that those two halves be united. I distinctly remember every
Speaker 1: movement of hers. I remember she picked up a glass
Speaker 1: triangle from my table, and while she talked, she pressed
Speaker 1: its sharp edge against her cheek. A white scar would appear,
Speaker 1: then it would fill again and become pink and disappear,
Speaker 1: And it is strange that I cannot remember her words,
Speaker 1: especially the beginning of the story. I remember only different
Speaker 1: images and colors. At first, I remember she told me
Speaker 1: about the two hundred years war. Red color on the
Speaker 1: green of the grass, on the dark clay, on the
Speaker 1: pale blue of the snow, everywhere, red ditches that would
Speaker 1: not become dry. Then yellow yellow grass burned by the sun.
Speaker 1: Yellow naked wild men and wild dogs side by side,
Speaker 1: near swollen cadavers of dogs or perhaps of men. All
Speaker 1: this certainly beyond the walls, for the city was already
Speaker 1: the victor, and it possessed already our present day petroleum food.
Speaker 1: And at night, down from the sky, heavy black folds.
Speaker 1: The folds would swing over the woods, the villages blackish red,
Speaker 1: slow columns of smoke, a dull, moaning, endless strings of
Speaker 1: people driven into the city to be saved by force
Speaker 1: and to be whipped into happiness. You knew almost all this,
Speaker 1: yes almost, But you did not know, and only a
Speaker 1: few did that A small part of them remained together
Speaker 1: and stayed to live beyond the wall. Being naked, they
Speaker 1: went into the woods. They learned there from the trees, beasts, birds,
Speaker 1: flowers and sun hair soon grew over their bodies, but
Speaker 1: under that hair they preserved their warm red blood. With you,
Speaker 1: it was worse. Numbers covered your bodies, Numbers crawled over
Speaker 1: you like lice. One ought to strip you of everything,
Speaker 1: and naked you ought to be driven into the woods.
Speaker 1: You ought to learn how to tremble with fear, with joy,
Speaker 1: with wild anger, with cold. You should pray to fire.
Speaker 1: And we Mefi, we want Oh, wait a minute, MEPhI,
Speaker 1: what does it mean, MEPhI? It is from Mephisto, you
Speaker 1: remember there on the rock the figure of the youth?
Speaker 1: Or no, I shall explain it to you in your
Speaker 1: own language, and you will understand better. There are two
Speaker 1: forces in the world, entropy and energy. One leads into
Speaker 1: blessed quietude, to happy equilibrium. The other did the destruction
Speaker 1: of equilibrium to torturingly perpetual motion. Are, or rather your ancestors,
Speaker 1: the Christians worshiped entropy like a god, But we are
Speaker 1: not Christians. We at that moment a slight whisper was
Speaker 1: suddenly heard a knock at the door, and rushed that
Speaker 1: flattened man with the forehead low over his eyes, who
Speaker 1: several times had brought me notes from I three thirty.
Speaker 1: He ran straight to us, stopped, panting like an air pump,
Speaker 1: and could say not a word, as he must have
Speaker 1: been running at top speed. But tell me what has happened.
Speaker 1: I three thirty grasped him by the hand. They are
Speaker 1: coming here, panted the air pump, with guards and with them. Now,
Speaker 1: what's his name? The hunchback s, yes, they are in
Speaker 1: the house by this time. They'll be here soon, quick, quick, nonsense,
Speaker 1: we have time. I three thirty was laughing, cheerful sparks
Speaker 1: in her eyes. It was either absurd senseless courage, or
Speaker 1: else there were something I did not yet understand. Ay, dear,
Speaker 1: for the sake of the well doer, you must understand
Speaker 1: that this for the sake of the well doer, the
Speaker 1: sharp triangle smile. Well, well, for my sake, I implore you. Oh, yes,
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk to you about some other matters. Well,
Speaker 1: never mind, we'll talk about them tomorrow. And cheerfully, Yes, cheerfully,
Speaker 1: she nodded to me. The other came out for a
Speaker 1: second from under his forehead's awning and nodded also. I
Speaker 1: was alone. Quick to my desk, I opened this manuscript
Speaker 1: took the pin so that they should find me at
Speaker 1: this work, which is for the benefit of the United States.
Speaker 1: Suddenly I felt every hair on my head living, separated, moving,
Speaker 1: What if they should read even one page of these
Speaker 1: most recently written motionless? I sat at the table, but
Speaker 1: everything around me seemed to be moving, as if the
Speaker 1: less than microscopic movements of the atoms suddenly were magnified
Speaker 1: millions of times. And I saw the walls trembling, my
Speaker 1: pen trembling, and the letters swinging and fusing together to
Speaker 1: hide them, but where glass all around to burn them,
Speaker 1: but they would notice the fire through the corridor and
Speaker 1: in the neighboring room. Besides, I felt unable, I felt
Speaker 1: too weak to destroy this torturing and perhaps the dearest
Speaker 1: piece of my own self voices from a distance from
Speaker 1: the corridor and steps. I had only time to snatch
Speaker 1: a handful of pages and put them under me, and then,
Speaker 1: as if soldered to the armchair, every atom of which
Speaker 1: was quivering, I remained sitting while the floor on my
Speaker 1: feet rolled like the deck of a ship, up and down,
Speaker 1: all shrunk together and hidden under the awning of my
Speaker 1: own forehead. Like that messenger, I watched them stealthily. They
Speaker 1: were going from room to room, beginning right at the
Speaker 1: end of the corridor. Nearer nearer. I saw that some
Speaker 1: sat in their rooms torpid like me. Others would jump
Speaker 1: up and open their doors wide, lucky ones. Only I
Speaker 1: could too. The well doer is the most perfect fumigation
Speaker 1: humanity needs. Consequently, no peristalsis in the organism of the
Speaker 1: United States. Could I was writing this nonsense, pressing my
Speaker 1: trembling pin hard and lower and lower, my head bent
Speaker 1: over the table, and within me some sort of crazy forge.
Speaker 1: With my back I was listening, and I heard the
Speaker 1: click of the doorknob, a current of fresh air. My
Speaker 1: armchair was dancing a mad dance. Only then, and even then,
Speaker 1: with difficulty, I tore myself away from the page, turned
Speaker 1: my head in the direction of the newcomers. How difficult
Speaker 1: it is to play a foul game. In front of
Speaker 1: all was s morose, silent, swiftly drilling with his eyes
Speaker 1: deep shafts within me, within my armchair, within the pages
Speaker 1: which were twitching in my hands. Then, for a second,
Speaker 1: familiar every day faces at the door. One of them
Speaker 1: separated itself from the rest with its bulging pinkish brown gills.
Speaker 1: At once I recalled everything that happened in the same
Speaker 1: room half an hour ago, and it was clear to
Speaker 1: me that they would Presently. All my being was shriveling
Speaker 1: and pulsating in that fortunately opaque part of my body
Speaker 1: with which I was covering the manuscript. You came up
Speaker 1: to s gently plucked his sleeve and said, in a
Speaker 1: low voice, this is D five O three, the builder
Speaker 1: of the integral. You have probably heard of him. He
Speaker 1: is always like that at his desk, does not spare
Speaker 1: himself at all. And I thought, what a dear, wonderful woman.
Speaker 1: S slid up to me, bent over my shoulder towards
Speaker 1: the table. I covered the lines I had written with
Speaker 1: my elbow, but he shouted severely, show us at once
Speaker 1: what you have there, please. Dying with shame, I held
Speaker 1: out the sheet of paper. You read it over, and
Speaker 1: I noticed a tiny smile jump out of his eyes,
Speaker 1: jumped down his face, and slightly wagging it tail perched
Speaker 1: upon the right angle of his mouth. Somewhat ambiguous. Yet well,
Speaker 1: you may continue. We shall not disturb you anymore. He
Speaker 1: went splashing towards the door, as if in a ditch
Speaker 1: of water, and with every step of his I felt
Speaker 1: coming back to me my legs, my arms, my fingers,
Speaker 1: My soul again distributed itself evenly over my whole body.
Speaker 1: I breathed the last thing. You lingered in my room
Speaker 1: to come back to me and say in my very
Speaker 1: ear in a whisper, it is lucky for you that
Speaker 1: I I did not understand what did she mean by that?
Speaker 1: The same evening I learned that they led away three numbers.
Speaker 1: Although nobody speaks out loud about that, or about anything
Speaker 1: that happened, this substensible silence is due to the educational
Speaker 1: influence of the Guardians, who were ever present among us.
Speaker 1: Conversations deal chiefly with the quick fall of the barometer
Speaker 1: and the forthcoming change in the weather record. Twenty nine
Speaker 1: threads on the face sprouts a natural compression. It is
Speaker 1: strange the barometer continues to fall, yet there is no wind.
Speaker 1: There is quiet above. The storm, which we do not
Speaker 1: yet hear, has begun. The clouds are rushing with a
Speaker 1: terrific speed. There are few of them as yet separate fragments.
Speaker 1: It is as if there above us an unknown city
Speaker 1: were being destroyed, and pieces of walls and towers were
Speaker 1: rushing down, coming nearer and nearer with terrific speed. But
Speaker 1: it will take some days of rushing through the blue
Speaker 1: infinite before they reached the bottom, that is us. Below,
Speaker 1: and below there is silence. There are thin, incomprehensible, almost
Speaker 1: invisible threads in the air every autumn. They are brought
Speaker 1: here from beyond the wall. They float slowly, and suddenly
Speaker 1: you feel something foreign and invisible in your face. You
Speaker 1: want to brush it off, but no, you cannot rid
Speaker 1: yourself of it. You feel it especially near the green wall,
Speaker 1: where I was this morning, I three point thirty made
Speaker 1: an appointment with me to meet her in the ancient house,
Speaker 1: in that apartment of ours. I was not far from
Speaker 1: the rust red, opaque mass of the ancient house when
Speaker 1: I heard behind me, short hasty steps and rapid breathing.
Speaker 1: I turned around and saw ninety trying to catch up
Speaker 1: to me. She seemed strangely, imperfectly rounded her arms and breast.
Speaker 1: Her whole body so familiar to me, was rounded out,
Speaker 1: stretching her unif. It seemed as though it would soon
Speaker 1: tear the thin cloth and come out into the sun,
Speaker 1: into the light. I think that there in the green
Speaker 1: debris in springtime, the unseen sprouts try thus to tear
Speaker 1: their way through the ground in order to emit their
Speaker 1: branches and leaves and to bloom. For a few seconds,
Speaker 1: she shone into my face with her blue eyes in silence.
Speaker 1: I saw you on the day of unanimity. I saw
Speaker 1: you too, I at once remembered below, in a narrow passage,
Speaker 1: she had stood, pressing herself to the wall, protecting her
Speaker 1: abdomen with her arms, and automatically I glanced now at
Speaker 1: her abdomen, which rounded the unuf. She must have noticed,
Speaker 1: for she became pink and with a rosy smile. I
Speaker 1: am so happy, so happy. I am so full of you,
Speaker 1: understand I am. I walk and I hear nothing around me,
Speaker 1: and all the while I listen within within me, I
Speaker 1: was silent. Something foreign was shadowing my face, and I
Speaker 1: was unable to rid myself of it. Suddenly, all shining
Speaker 1: light blue, she caught my hand. I felt her lips
Speaker 1: upon it. It was for the first time in my life.
Speaker 1: It was some ancient caress as yet unknown to me.
Speaker 1: And I was so ashamed, and it pained me so
Speaker 1: much that I swiftly, I think, even roughly, pulled my
Speaker 1: hand away. Listen, you are crazy, it seems in anyway
Speaker 1: you What are you happy about? Is it possible that
Speaker 1: you forget what is ahead of you? If not now,
Speaker 1: then within a month or two, her light went out,
Speaker 1: her roundness sagged and shrank, and in my heart an unpleasant,
Speaker 1: even a painful compression mixed with pity. Our heart is
Speaker 1: nothing less than an idea. Pump a compression i e.
Speaker 1: A shrinking at the moment of pumping is a technical absurdity.
Speaker 1: Hence it is clear how essentially absurd, unnatural, and pathological
Speaker 1: all these loves and pities, et cetera, et cetera, which
Speaker 1: create that compression. Silence to the left, the cloudy green
Speaker 1: glass of the wall, and just ahead the dark red mass.
Speaker 1: Those two colors combined gave me as the resultant what
Speaker 1: I thought was a splendid idea. Wait, I know how
Speaker 1: to save you. I shall save you from to see
Speaker 1: one's own child for only a few moments and then
Speaker 1: be sent to death. No, you shall be able to
Speaker 1: bring it up. You shall watch it and see it
Speaker 1: grow in your arms and ripen like a fruit. Her
Speaker 1: body quivered, and she seemed to have changed herself to me.
Speaker 1: Do you remember that woman I three thirty, that of
Speaker 1: of long ago, who during that walk, while she is
Speaker 1: now right here in the ancient house, Let us go
Speaker 1: to her, and I assure you that I shall arrange
Speaker 1: matters at once. I already pictured us I three thirty,
Speaker 1: and I leading O ninety through the corridors. Then how
Speaker 1: she would be brought amidst flowers, grass and leaves. But
Speaker 1: oh ninety stepped back, the little horns of her rosy
Speaker 1: crescent trembling and bending downwards. Is she that same one?
Speaker 1: She asked? That is I was confused for some reason? Yes,
Speaker 1: of course that very same? And do you want me
Speaker 1: to go to her to ask her to? Don't you
Speaker 1: ever dare to say another word about it? Leaning over,
Speaker 1: she walked away. Then, as if she remembered something, she
Speaker 1: turned round and cried, I shall die. Be it so?
Speaker 1: And it is none of your business? What do you care? Silence?
Speaker 1: From above, pieces of blue towers and walls were falling
Speaker 1: downward with terrific speed. They will have perhaps hours or
Speaker 1: days to fly through the infinite unseen threads were slowly
Speaker 1: floating through the air, planting themselves upon my face, and
Speaker 1: it was impossible to brush them off. Impossible to rid
Speaker 1: myself of them. I walked slowly toward the ancient house,
Speaker 1: and in my heart I felt that absurd, tormenting compression.
Speaker 1: End of Section fourteen.