Speaker 1: Section sixteen of we Featuring Records thirty two and thirty three.
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Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot ORGUI by Jevgeny Zamyatin, translated by Gregory Zilberg,
Speaker 1: Record thirty two. I do not believe tractors a little
Speaker 1: human splinter? Do you believe that you will die? Oh? Yes,
Speaker 1: man is mortal? I am a man. Consequently, no, not
Speaker 1: that I know that you know that. But I ask,
Speaker 1: has it ever happened that you actually believed it? Believe,
Speaker 1: definitely believe, not with your reason, but with your body,
Speaker 1: that you actually felt that some day those fingers which
Speaker 1: now hold this page will become yellow. I see. No,
Speaker 1: of course, you cannot believe this. That is why you
Speaker 1: have not jumped from the tenth floor to the pavement before. Now,
Speaker 1: that is why you eat, turn over these pages, shave smile,
Speaker 1: write this very thing. Yes, exactly, this is alive in
Speaker 1: me to day. I know that the small black hand
Speaker 1: on the clock will slide down here towards midnight. Then
Speaker 1: again it will start to ascend, and it will cross
Speaker 1: some last border, and the improbable tomorrow will have arrived.
Speaker 1: I know it, but somehow I do not believe it,
Speaker 1: or perhaps I think that twenty four hours are twenty
Speaker 1: four years. Therefore, I am still able to act, to hurry,
Speaker 1: to answer questions, to climb the rope ladder to the integral.
Speaker 1: I am still able to feel how the latter is
Speaker 1: shaking the surface of the water, and I still understand
Speaker 1: that I must grasp the railing, and I am still
Speaker 1: able to feel the cold glass in my hand. I
Speaker 1: see the transparent living cranes bending their long necks, carefully
Speaker 1: feeding the integral with the terrible explosive food which the
Speaker 1: motors need. I still see below the river, the blue
Speaker 1: veins and knots of water swollen by the wind. Yet
Speaker 1: it all seems very distant from me, foreign flat, like
Speaker 1: a draft on a sheet of paper. And it seems
Speaker 1: to me strange when the flat draft like face of
Speaker 1: the second builder suddenly asks, well, then, how much fuel
Speaker 1: for the motor shall we load on? If we count
Speaker 1: on three or say three and a half hours, I
Speaker 1: see before me over a draft, my hand with the
Speaker 1: counter and the logarithmic dial at the figure fifteen fifteen tons,
Speaker 1: But you'd better take yes, better take a thousand. I
Speaker 1: said that, because I know that tomorrow. I noticed that
Speaker 1: my hands and the dial began to tremble. A thousand.
Speaker 1: What do you need such a lot for that would
Speaker 1: last a week? No more than a week? Well, nobody knows,
Speaker 1: I do know. The wind whistled, the air seemed to
Speaker 1: be stuffed to the limit with something invisible. I had
Speaker 1: difficulty in breathing, difficulty in walking, and with difficulty slowly,
Speaker 1: but without stopping for a second. The hand of the
Speaker 1: accumulating tower was crawling. At the end of the avenue.
Speaker 1: The peak of the tower reached into the very clouds,
Speaker 1: dull blue, groaning in a subdued way, sucking electricity from
Speaker 1: the clouds. The tubes of the musical tower resounded as always,
Speaker 1: bore a breast, but the rose did not seem as
Speaker 1: firm as usual. They were swinging, bending more and more,
Speaker 1: perhaps because of the wind. There they seemed to have
Speaker 1: stumbled upon something at the corner, and they drew back
Speaker 1: and stopped, congealed a close mass, a clot breathing rapidly.
Speaker 1: At once, all had stretched their necks like geese. Look, no, look,
Speaker 1: look there, quick they are those they ah never never,
Speaker 1: I'd rather put my head straight into the machine. Silence,
Speaker 1: are you crazy? On the corner the doors of the
Speaker 1: auditorium were ajar, a heavy column of about fifty people.
Speaker 1: The word people is not the right one. These were
Speaker 1: heavy wheeled automatons, bound in iron and moved by an
Speaker 1: invisible mechanism. Not people, but a sort of human like tractor.
Speaker 1: Over their heads, floating in the air, a white banner
Speaker 1: with a golden sun embroidered on it, and the rays
Speaker 1: of the sun. We are the first. We have already
Speaker 1: been operated upon. Follow us, all of you. They slowly,
Speaker 1: unhesitatingly mowed through the crowd, and it was clear that
Speaker 1: if they had had in their way a wall, a tree,
Speaker 1: a house, they would have moved on with no more hesitation,
Speaker 1: through wall, tree or house. In the middle of the avenue,
Speaker 1: they fused and stretched out into a chain, arm in arm.
Speaker 1: Their faces turned towards us, and we a human clot
Speaker 1: tens the hair pricking our heads. We waited. Our necks
Speaker 1: were stretched out goose fashion clouds. The wind whistled. Suddenly,
Speaker 1: the wings of the chain from right and left bent
Speaker 1: quickly around us, and faster faster, like a heavy engine
Speaker 1: descending a hill. They closed the ring and pulled us
Speaker 1: toward the yawning doors, and inside somebody's piercing cry, they
Speaker 1: are driving us in run. All ran close to the wall.
Speaker 1: There was still an open, living gait of human beings.
Speaker 1: Everybody dashed through it heads forward. Their heads became sharp wedges,
Speaker 1: so with their ribs, shoulders hips, like a stream of
Speaker 1: water compressed in a fire hose. They spurted out in
Speaker 1: the form of a fan, and all around me stamping feet,
Speaker 1: raised arms. Eunus, the double curved s with its transparent
Speaker 1: winglike ears, appeared for a moment close before my eyes.
Speaker 1: He disappeared as suddenly I was alone among arms and legs,
Speaker 1: appearing for a second and disappearing. I was running. I
Speaker 1: dashed to the entrance of a house to stop for
Speaker 1: a breath, my back close to the door, and immediately,
Speaker 1: like a splinter borne by the wind, a human being
Speaker 1: was thrown towards me. All the while I I have
Speaker 1: been following you. I do not want, do you see
Speaker 1: I do not want. I am ready to small round,
Speaker 1: hands on my sleeves, round dark blue eyes. It was
Speaker 1: O ninety. She just slipped along my body like a
Speaker 1: unuf which its hanger broken, slips along the wall to
Speaker 1: fall upon the floor like a little bundle. She crumbled
Speaker 1: below me on the cold doorstep, and I stood over her,
Speaker 1: stroking her head, her face. My hands were wet. I
Speaker 1: felt as if I were very big and she very small,
Speaker 1: a small part of myself. I felt something quite different
Speaker 1: from what I feel towards I three thirty. I think
Speaker 1: that the ancients must have had similar feelings toward their
Speaker 1: private children. Below, passing through her hands with which she
Speaker 1: was covering her face, A voice came to me. Every night,
Speaker 1: I I cannot if they cure me. Every night I
Speaker 1: sit in the darkness alone and think of him, and
Speaker 1: of what he will look like when I, if cured,
Speaker 1: I should have nothing to live with. Do you understand me?
Speaker 1: You must, You must an absurd feeling, Yet it was there.
Speaker 1: I really must absurd because this duty of mine was
Speaker 1: nothing but another crime. Absurd because white and black cannot
Speaker 1: be won. Duty and crime cannot coincide. Or perhaps there
Speaker 1: is no black and white in life. But everything depends
Speaker 1: upon the first logical premise. If the premise is that
Speaker 1: I unlawfully gave her a child, it is all right,
Speaker 1: but don't only don't, I said, of course, I understand.
Speaker 1: I must take you to I three thirty, as I
Speaker 1: once offered to so that she yes this in a
Speaker 1: low voice, without uncovering her face. I helped her rise silently.
Speaker 1: We went along the darkening street, each busy with his
Speaker 1: own thoughts, or perhaps with the same thought. We walked
Speaker 1: between silent leaden houses, through the tense whipping branches of
Speaker 1: the wind, through the whistling of the wind. All at
Speaker 1: once I heard, as if splashing through ditches, the familiar
Speaker 1: footsteps coming from some unseen point at the corner. I
Speaker 1: turned around, and among the clouds flying upside down, reflected
Speaker 1: in the dim glass of the pavement, I saw s.
Speaker 1: Instantly my arm became foreign, swinging out of time, and
Speaker 1: I began to tell O ninety in a low voice,
Speaker 1: that tomorrow, yes, tomorrow, was the day of the first
Speaker 1: flight of the integral, and that it was to be
Speaker 1: something that never happened before in all history, great miraculous
Speaker 1: think of it for the first time in life, to
Speaker 1: find myself outside the limits of our city and see,
Speaker 1: who knows what is beyond the green wall. Oh ninety
Speaker 1: looked at me, extremely surprised, her blue eyes trying to
Speaker 1: penetrate mine. She looked at my senselessly swinging arms. But
Speaker 1: I did not let her say a word. I kept talking, talking,
Speaker 1: and within me, apart from what I was saying, and
Speaker 1: audible only to myself, I thought, was feverishly buzzing and knocking. Impossible.
Speaker 1: You must somehow, you must not lead him to I
Speaker 1: three thirty. Instead of turning to the right, I turned
Speaker 1: to the left the bridge, which submissively bent its back
Speaker 1: in a slavish way, to all three of us, to me,
Speaker 1: to OH, to him. Behind lights were falling from the
Speaker 1: houses across the water, falling and breaking into thousands of sparks,
Speaker 1: which danced feverishly, sprayed with the mad white foam of
Speaker 1: the water. The wind was moaning like a tensely stretched
Speaker 1: string of a double basso somewhere not far away, through
Speaker 1: this baso behind. All the while the house where I live,
Speaker 1: at the entrance, Oh stopped and began, no, you promised,
Speaker 1: did you not? That I did not let her finish hastily.
Speaker 1: I pushed her through the entrance, and we found ourselves
Speaker 1: in the lobby, at the controller's desk, the familiar hanging excitedly,
Speaker 1: quivering cheeks. A group of numbers around. They were quarreling
Speaker 1: about something, heads bending over the banisters on the second floor.
Speaker 1: They were running downstairs one by one. But about that later.
Speaker 1: I at once drew O ninety into the opposite unoccupied
Speaker 1: corner and sat down with my back to the wall.
Speaker 1: I saw a dark, large headed shadow gliding back and
Speaker 1: forth over the sidewalk. I took out my note book.
Speaker 1: O ninety, in her chair was slowly sinking, as if
Speaker 1: she were evaporating from under her unuf, as if her
Speaker 1: body were thawing, as if only her empty unif were left,
Speaker 1: and empty eyes taking one into the blue emptiness in
Speaker 1: a tired voice, Why did you bring me here? You
Speaker 1: lied to me? No, not so loud. Look here? Do
Speaker 1: you see through the wall? Yes? I see a shadow.
Speaker 1: He is always following me. I cannot. Do you understand?
Speaker 1: I cannot? Therefore, I am going to write a few
Speaker 1: words to I three thirty. You take the note and
Speaker 1: go alone. I know he will remain here. Her body
Speaker 1: began again to take form and to move beneath the
Speaker 1: unuf on her face a faint sunrise dawn. I put
Speaker 1: the note between her cold fingers pressed her hand firmly,
Speaker 1: and with the last time, looked into her blue eyes
Speaker 1: good bye. Perhaps some day. She freed her hand slightly,
Speaker 1: bending over, she slowly moved away, made two steps, turned
Speaker 1: around quickly, and again we were side by side. Her
Speaker 1: lips were moving. With her lips and with her eyes,
Speaker 1: she repeated some inaudible word, what an unbearable smile? What suffering?
Speaker 1: Then the bent over human splinter went to the door,
Speaker 1: a bent over little shadow beyond the wall. Without turning around,
Speaker 1: she went on faster, still faster, I went to you desk.
Speaker 1: With emotion filling up her indignant gills, she said to me,
Speaker 1: they've all gone crazy. He, for instance, is trying to
Speaker 1: assure me that he himself saw a naked man covered
Speaker 1: with hair near the ancient house. A voice from the
Speaker 1: group of empty raised heads, Yes, I repeat it, yes,
Speaker 1: Well what do you think of that? Oh? What a delirium?
Speaker 1: The word delirium came out of her mouth, so full
Speaker 1: of conviction, so unbending, that I asked myself, perhaps it
Speaker 1: really was nothing but delirium all that has been going
Speaker 1: on around me of late. I glanced at my hairy hand,
Speaker 1: and I remembered there are undoubtedly some drops of that
Speaker 1: blood of the sun and woods in you. That is
Speaker 1: why perhaps you no, fortunately it was not delirium. Or no,
Speaker 1: unfortunately it was not delirium. Record thirty three, this without
Speaker 1: a synopsis. Hastily the last the day, quick to the newspaper.
Speaker 1: Perhaps there I read the paper with my eyes exactly.
Speaker 1: My eyes now are like a pen, or like a
Speaker 1: counting machine, which you hold and feel in your hands,
Speaker 1: like a tool, something foreign, an instrument. In the newspaper,
Speaker 1: on the first page, in large print, the enemies of
Speaker 1: happiness are awake. Hold to your happiness with both hands.
Speaker 1: Tomorrow all work will stop, and all the numbers are
Speaker 1: to come to be operated upon. Those who fail to
Speaker 1: come will be submitted to the machine of the well doer. Tomorrow.
Speaker 1: How can there be, how can there be any tomorrow?
Speaker 1: Following my daily habit, I stretched out my arm instant
Speaker 1: to the bookshelf to put to day's paper, with the
Speaker 1: rest in a cover ornamented with gold. While doing this,
Speaker 1: what for what does it matter? Never again shall I
Speaker 1: in this cover? Never? And out of my hands, down
Speaker 1: to the floor it fell. I stood, looking all around
Speaker 1: over all my room. Hastily I was taking away, feverishly,
Speaker 1: putting into some unseen valise everything I regretted, leaving here,
Speaker 1: my desk, my books, my chair. Upon that chair sat
Speaker 1: I three thirty that day. I was below on the
Speaker 1: floor my bed. Then, for a minute or two I
Speaker 1: stood and waited for some miracle to happen. Perhaps the
Speaker 1: telephone would ring, perhaps she would say that, But no,
Speaker 1: no miracle. I am leaving, going into the unknown. These
Speaker 1: are my last lines. Very well you, my unknown beloved ones,
Speaker 1: with whom I have lived through so many pages, before
Speaker 1: whom I have bared my diseased soul, my whole self,
Speaker 1: to the last broken little screw, to the last cracked spring,
Speaker 1: I am going. And a section sixteen