Speaker 1: Section seventeen of WE featuring Records thirty four and thirty five.
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. We by Yevgeny Zemyatin, translated by
Speaker 1: Gregory Zilberg. Record thirty four The Forgiven Ones A sunny night,
Speaker 1: a radio valkyrie. Oh, if only I actually had broken
Speaker 1: myself to pieces, If only I actually had to found
Speaker 1: myself with her in some place beyond the wall, among
Speaker 1: beasts showing their yellow tusks. If only I actually had
Speaker 1: never returned here, it would be a thousand a million
Speaker 1: times easier. But now what now to go and choke that?
Speaker 1: But would it help? No, no, no, Take yourself in
Speaker 1: hand D five O three. Set into yourself a firm
Speaker 1: logical hub, at least for a short while. Weigh heavily
Speaker 1: with all your might on the lever, and like the
Speaker 1: ancient slave, turned the millstones of syllogisms, until you have
Speaker 1: written down and understood everything that happened. When I boarded
Speaker 1: the Integral, everybody was already there, and everybody occupied his place,
Speaker 1: All the cells of the gigantic hive were filled through
Speaker 1: the glass of the decks. Tiny ant like people below
Speaker 1: at the telegraph, dynamo, transformers, altimeters, ventilators, indicators, motor pumps, tubes.
Speaker 1: In the saloon, people sitting over tables and instruments, probably
Speaker 1: those commissioned by the Scientific Bureau. Near them, the second
Speaker 1: builder and his two aids. All three had their heads
Speaker 1: down between their shoulders, like turtles, their faces gray autumnal rayless. Well,
Speaker 1: I asked, well, somewhat uncanny, replied one of them, smiling
Speaker 1: a gray rayless smile. Perhaps we shall have to land
Speaker 1: in some unknown place, and generally speaking, nobody knows. I
Speaker 1: hardly could bear a look at them, when in an
Speaker 1: hour or so I was to throw them out with
Speaker 1: my own hands, to cast them out from the cozy
Speaker 1: fingers of our tables of hours forever, to tear them
Speaker 1: away from the mother's breast of the United State. They
Speaker 1: reminded me of the tragic figures of the Three Forgiven Ones,
Speaker 1: a story known to all of our school children. It
Speaker 1: tells about three numbers who, by the way of experiment,
Speaker 1: were exempted for a whole month from any work. Footnote.
Speaker 1: It happened long ago in the third century at after
Speaker 1: the tables, go wherever you will, do what you will,
Speaker 1: they were told. The unhappy three wandered the whole time
Speaker 1: about the place of their usual work, and gazed within
Speaker 1: with hungry eyes. They would stop on the plazas and
Speaker 1: for hours, busy themselves repeating the motions which they were
Speaker 1: used to making. During certain hours of the day. It
Speaker 1: became a bodily necessity for them to do so. They
Speaker 1: would saw and plane the air with unseen sledgehammers. They
Speaker 1: would bang upon unseen stakes. Finally, on the tenth day,
Speaker 1: they could bear it no longer. They took one another
Speaker 1: by the hand, entered the river, and to the accompaniment
Speaker 1: of the march, they waited deeper and deeper until the
Speaker 1: water forever ended their sufferings. I repeat, it was hard
Speaker 1: for me to look at them, and I was anxious
Speaker 1: to leave them. I just want to take a glance
Speaker 1: into the engine room and then off, I said. They
Speaker 1: were asking me questions what voltage should be used for
Speaker 1: the initial spark, how much ballast water was needed in
Speaker 1: the a F tank, as if a phonograph were somewhere
Speaker 1: within me. I was giving quick and precise answers but I,
Speaker 1: my inner self, was busy with its own thoughts. In
Speaker 1: the narrow passage, gray units were passing gray faces, and
Speaker 1: for a second one face with its hair low over
Speaker 1: the forehead. I was gazing from deep beneath it. It
Speaker 1: was that same man. I understood they had come, and
Speaker 1: there was no escape from it for me. Only minutes remained,
Speaker 1: a few dozens of minutes, an infinite tesimal molecular quiver
Speaker 1: of my whole body. This did not ceased to the
Speaker 1: very end. It was as if an enormous motor were
Speaker 1: placed under the very foundations of my body, which was
Speaker 1: so light that the walls, partitions, cables, beams, lights, everything
Speaker 1: was quivering. I did not yet know whether she was there,
Speaker 1: but I had no time. They were calling me quick
Speaker 1: to the commander's bridge. Time to go where gray rayless
Speaker 1: faces below in the water, tense blue veins, heavy cast
Speaker 1: iron patches of sky. It was so difficult to lift
Speaker 1: my cast iron hand and take up the receiver of
Speaker 1: the Commander's telephone up forty five degrees. A heavy explosion,
Speaker 1: a jerk, A rabid greenish white mountain of water aft
Speaker 1: the deck beneath my feet began to move soft as rubber,
Speaker 1: and everything below, the whole life forever for a second,
Speaker 1: falling deeper and deeper into a sort of funnel, becoming
Speaker 1: more and more compressed. The icy blue relief map of
Speaker 1: the city, the round bubbles of cupolas, the lonely leaden
Speaker 1: finger of the accumulating tower. Then instantaneously a cotton curtain
Speaker 1: of cloud. We pierced it, and there was the sun
Speaker 1: and the blue sky. Seconds minutes miles. The blue was hardening, fast,
Speaker 1: filling with darkness, like drops of cold silver sweat appeared
Speaker 1: the stars, a sad, unbearably bright, black, starry sunny night,
Speaker 1: as if one had become deaf. One still saw that
Speaker 1: the pipes were roaring, but one only saw dead silence.
Speaker 1: All about. The sun was mute. It was natural, of course,
Speaker 1: one might have expected it. We were beyond the terrestrial atmosphere.
Speaker 1: The transition was so quick, so sudden, that everyone became
Speaker 1: timid and silent. Yet I thought I felt even easier
Speaker 1: under that fantastic mute sun. I had bounded over the
Speaker 1: inevitable border, having left my body somewhere there below, and
Speaker 1: I was soaring, bodyless, to a new world where everything
Speaker 1: was to be different, upside down, keep the same course,
Speaker 1: I shouted into the engine room. Or perhaps it was
Speaker 1: not I but a phonograph in me, and the same machine,
Speaker 1: with a mechanical hinge like movement, handed the commander's trumpet
Speaker 1: to the second builder, all permeated by that most delicate
Speaker 1: molecular quiver known only to me. I ran down the
Speaker 1: companionway to seek the door of the saloon. An hour
Speaker 1: later it was to latch and lock itself. At the
Speaker 1: door stood an unfamiliar number. He was small, with a
Speaker 1: face like a hundred or a thousand others which were
Speaker 1: usually lost in a crowd. But his arms were exceptionally long.
Speaker 1: They reached down to the knees, as though by mistake
Speaker 1: they had been taken from another set of human organs,
Speaker 1: and fastened to his shoulders. The long arm stretched out
Speaker 1: and barred the way, Where do you want to go?
Speaker 1: It was clear that he was not aware. I knew everything,
Speaker 1: all right. Perhaps it was necessary that it should be so.
Speaker 1: From above him, in a deliberately significant tone, I said,
Speaker 1: I am the builder of the integral, and I am
Speaker 1: directing the test flight. Do you understand? The arm drew away,
Speaker 1: The saloon heads covered with bristles gray iron bristles and
Speaker 1: yellow heads and bald ripe heads were bent over the
Speaker 1: instruments and maps. Swiftly with a glance, I gathered them
Speaker 1: in with my eyes off. I ran back along the
Speaker 1: long passage, then through the hatch into the engine room.
Speaker 1: There it was hot from the red tubes, overheated by
Speaker 1: the explosions, a constant roar. The levers were dancing their
Speaker 1: desperate drunken dance, quivering ceaselessly with a barely noticeable quiver
Speaker 1: the arrows on the dials. There, at last, near the
Speaker 1: tachometer a notebook in his hand, was that man with
Speaker 1: the low forehead. Listen, I shouted straight into his ear,
Speaker 1: because of the roar? Is she here? Where is she? She? There?
Speaker 1: At the radio? I dashed over. There. There were three
Speaker 1: of them, all with receiving helmets on, and she seemed
Speaker 1: a head taller than usual, wingy, sparkling, flying like an
Speaker 1: ancient valkyrie, and those bluish sparks from the radio seemed
Speaker 1: to em from her. From her, also that ethereal lightning
Speaker 1: like odor of ozone. Someone, well you, for instance, I
Speaker 1: said to her, panting from having run, I must send
Speaker 1: the message down to Earth, to the docks. Come, I
Speaker 1: shall dictate it to you. Close to the apparatus there
Speaker 1: was a small box like cabin. We sat at the table,
Speaker 1: side by side. I found her hand and pressed it hard. Well,
Speaker 1: what's going to happen? I don't know. Do you realize
Speaker 1: how wonderful it is to fly without knowing where, no
Speaker 1: matter where? It will soon be twelve o'clock and nobody
Speaker 1: knows what and when night? Where should you and I
Speaker 1: be tonight? Perhaps somewhere in the grass on dry leaves.
Speaker 1: Loose sparks emanated from her, and the odor of lightning
Speaker 1: and the vibration became more and more frequent within me.
Speaker 1: Right down, I said, loudly, panting from having run time
Speaker 1: eleven twenty speed fifty eight hundred last night. She came
Speaker 1: to me with your note. I know, I know everything.
Speaker 1: Don't talk, But the child is yours. I sent her over.
Speaker 1: She is already beyond the wall. She will live. I
Speaker 1: was back in the Commander's bridge, back in the delirious night,
Speaker 1: with its black, starry sky and its dazzling sun. The
Speaker 1: hands of the clock on the table were slowly moving
Speaker 1: from minute to minute. Everything was permeated by a thin
Speaker 1: hardly perceptible quivering. Only I noticed it. For some reason,
Speaker 1: a thought passed through my head. It would be better
Speaker 1: if all this took place not here, but somewhere below,
Speaker 1: nearer to earth. Stop, I commanded. We kept moving by inertia,
Speaker 1: but more and more slowly. Now the integral was caught
Speaker 1: for a second by an imperceptible little hair. For a
Speaker 1: second it hung motionless. Then the little hair broke, and
Speaker 1: the integral, like a stone, dashed downward with increasing speed.
Speaker 1: That way in silence. Minutes, tens of minutes passed. My
Speaker 1: pulse was audible. The hand of the clock before my
Speaker 1: eyes came close, closer and closer to twelve. It was
Speaker 1: clear to me I was a stone. I three point
Speaker 1: thirty the earth, and the stone was under irresistible compulsion
Speaker 1: to fall downward, to strike the earth and break into
Speaker 1: small particles. What if already the hard blue smoke of
Speaker 1: the clouds appeared below. What if? But the phonograph within me,
Speaker 1: with a hinge like motion and precision, took the telephone
Speaker 1: and commanded low speed. The stone ceased falling. Only the
Speaker 1: four lower tubes were growling, two ahead and two aft,
Speaker 1: only enough to hold the integral motionless. And the integral
Speaker 1: only slightly trembling, stopped in the air, as if anchored
Speaker 1: about one kilometer from the earth. Everybody came out on deck.
Speaker 1: It was shortly before twelve before the sounding of the
Speaker 1: dinner gong, and leaned over the glass, railing hastily in
Speaker 1: huge gulps. They swallowed the unknown world which lay below.
Speaker 1: Beyond the great wall, amber, blue green, the autumnal woods, prairies,
Speaker 1: a lake at the edge of a little blue saucer,
Speaker 1: some lone yellow debris, a threatening, dried out yellow finger.
Speaker 1: It must have been the tower of an ancient church,
Speaker 1: saved by a miracle. Look there, Look there, to the right, there,
Speaker 1: over the green desert, a brown blot was rapidly moving.
Speaker 1: I held a telescope in my hands, and automatically I
Speaker 1: brought it to my eyes. The grass reaching their chests.
Speaker 1: A herd of brown horses was galloping, and on their
Speaker 1: backs they black, white and dark. Behind me, I assure
Speaker 1: you I saw a face. Go away. Tell it to
Speaker 1: someone else, Well, look for yourself. Here's the telescope. They
Speaker 1: had already disappeared endless green desert, and in that desert,
Speaker 1: dominating it completely, and dominating me and everybody, the piercing
Speaker 1: vibrations of the gong dinner time one minute to twelve.
Speaker 1: For a second, the little world around me became incoherent, dispersed.
Speaker 1: Someone's brass badge fell to the floor. It mattered little.
Speaker 1: Soon it was under my heel a voice, and I
Speaker 1: tell you it was a face, a black square the
Speaker 1: open door of the main saloon, white teeth pressed together, smiling.
Speaker 1: And at that moment, when the clock began slowly holding
Speaker 1: its breath between beats to strike, and when the front
Speaker 1: rows began to move towards the dining saloon, the rectangle
Speaker 1: of the door was suddenly crossed by the two familiar,
Speaker 1: unnaturally long arms. Stop. Someone's finger sank, piercing into my palm.
Speaker 1: It was I three point thirty. She was beside me.
Speaker 1: Who is it? Do you know him? Is he not?
Speaker 1: Is he not? He was already lifted upon somebody's shoulders,
Speaker 1: above a hundred other faces, his face like hundreds, like
Speaker 1: thousands of other faces, yet unique among the rest. And
Speaker 1: the name of the guardians. You to whom I talk,
Speaker 1: they hear me, every one of them hears me. I
Speaker 1: talk to you. We know we don't know your numbers yet.
Speaker 1: But we know everything else. The integral shall not be yours.
Speaker 1: The test flight will be carried out to the end,
Speaker 1: and you, yourselves, you will not dare to make another move. You,
Speaker 1: with your own hands, will help to go on with
Speaker 1: the test and afterward, well I have finished silence. The
Speaker 1: glass plates under my feet seemed soft cotton like my feet, too,
Speaker 1: soft cotton like. Beside me, she with a dead white smile,
Speaker 1: angry blue smarks through her teeth, to me, Ah, it
Speaker 1: is your work, you did your duty well. She tore
Speaker 1: her hand from mine. The valkyrie helmet with indignant wings
Speaker 1: was soon to be seen some distance in front of me.
Speaker 1: I was alone, torpid, silent, like everyone else. I followed
Speaker 1: into the dining saloon. But it was not I, not I.
Speaker 1: I told nobody save these white, mute pages. I cried
Speaker 1: this to her within me, inaudibly, desperately, loudly. She was
Speaker 1: across the table, directly opposite me, and not once did
Speaker 1: she even touch me with her gaze beside her, someone's ripe,
Speaker 1: yellow bald head. I heard. It was I three point
Speaker 1: thirty's voice. Nobility of character, But my dear professor, even
Speaker 1: a superficial etymological analysis of the words shows that it
Speaker 1: is a superstition, a remnant of the ancient feudal epoch.
Speaker 1: We I felt I was growing pale and that they
Speaker 1: would soon notice it. But the phonograph within me performed
Speaker 1: the prescribed fifty chewing movements for every bite. I locked
Speaker 1: myself into myself, as though in into an opaque house.
Speaker 1: I threw up a heap of rocks before my door
Speaker 1: and lowered the window blinds. Afterwards, again the telephone of
Speaker 1: the commander was in my hands, and again we made
Speaker 1: the flight with icy supreme anxiety, through the clouds into
Speaker 1: the icy, starry sunny night. Minutes, hours passed, Apparently all
Speaker 1: that time the logical motor within me was working feverishly
Speaker 1: at full speed. For suddenly, somewhere, at a distant point
Speaker 1: of the dark blue space, I saw my desk and
Speaker 1: the gill like cheeks of you over it, and the
Speaker 1: forgotten pages of my records. It became clear to me,
Speaker 1: nobody but she. Everything was clear to me, if only
Speaker 1: I could reach the radio room soon, winglike helmets the
Speaker 1: odor of blue lightnings. I remember telling her something in
Speaker 1: a low voice, and I remember how she looked through me,
Speaker 1: and now her voice seemed to come from a distance.
Speaker 1: I am busy. I am receiving a message from below.
Speaker 1: You may dictate yours to her the small box like
Speaker 1: little cabin. I thought for a second, and then dictated
Speaker 1: in a firm voice, time fourteen forty going down. Motors
Speaker 1: stopped the end of all the commander's bridge, the machine
Speaker 1: heart of the integrals stop. We were falling. My heart
Speaker 1: could not catch up, and would remain behind and rise
Speaker 1: higher and higher into my throat. Clouds, and then a
Speaker 1: distant green spot, everything green, more and more distinct, running
Speaker 1: like a storm towards us. Soon the end, the porcelain
Speaker 1: like white, distorted face of the second builder. It was
Speaker 1: he who struck me with all his strength. I hurt
Speaker 1: my head on something, and through the approaching darkness, while falling,
Speaker 1: I heard full speed aft a brusque jolt upward, record
Speaker 1: thirty five in a ring a carrot, A murderer. I
Speaker 1: did not sleep all night, the whole night, but one thought,
Speaker 1: as a result of yesterday's mishap, my head is tightly bandaged.
Speaker 1: It seems to me not a bandage but a ring,
Speaker 1: a pitiless ring of glass iron riveted about my head,
Speaker 1: and I am busy with the same thought, always the
Speaker 1: same thought in my riveted circle, to kill you, to
Speaker 1: kill you, and then go to her and say, now,
Speaker 1: do you believe what is most disquieting is that to
Speaker 1: kill is dirty, primitive, to break her head with something.
Speaker 1: The thought of it gives me a peculiar sensation of
Speaker 1: something disgustingly sweet in my mouth, and I am unable
Speaker 1: to swallow my saliva. I am always spitting into my handkerchief,
Speaker 1: yet my mouth feels dry. I had in my closet
Speaker 1: a heavy piston rod, which cracked during the casting, in
Speaker 1: which I brought home. In order to find out the
Speaker 1: cause of the cracking with a microscope, I made my
Speaker 1: manuscript into a tube, let her read me to the
Speaker 1: last letter, pushed the broken piston into that tube, and
Speaker 1: went downstairs. The stairways seemed endless, the steps disgustingly slippery liquid.
Speaker 1: I had to wipe off moisture from my mouth very frequently. Downstairs,
Speaker 1: my heart dropped. I took out the piston and went
Speaker 1: to the controller's table, but she was not there, instead
Speaker 1: an empty icy desk with ink blots. I remembered that
Speaker 1: today all work was stopped. Everybody was to go to
Speaker 1: be operated upon. Hence there was no need for her
Speaker 1: to stay here. There was nobody to be registered street.
Speaker 1: It was windy, the sky seemed to be composed of
Speaker 1: soaring panels of cast iron, and exactly as it seemed
Speaker 1: for one moment yesterday, the whole world was broken up
Speaker 1: into separate, sharp, independent fragments, and each of these fragments
Speaker 1: was falling at full speed. Each would stop for a second,
Speaker 1: hang before me in the air, and disappear without trace.
Speaker 1: It was as if the black precise letters on this
Speaker 1: page should suddenly move apart and begin to jump hither
Speaker 1: and thither in fright, so that there was not a
Speaker 1: word on the page, only nonsensical ap jum word. The
Speaker 1: crowd seemed just as nonsensical, dispersed not in rows, going forward, backward, diagonally, transversely,
Speaker 1: then nobody. For a second, while I was dashing at
Speaker 1: full speed, suddenly stopping, I saw on the second floor,
Speaker 1: in the glass cage, hanging in the air, a man
Speaker 1: and a woman a kiss, She standing with her whole
Speaker 1: body bent backwards brokenly. This is for the last time forever.
Speaker 1: At a corner, a thorny moving bush of heads above
Speaker 1: the heads separate floating in the air, a banner, down
Speaker 1: with the machines, down with the operation, and distinct from
Speaker 1: my own self. I thought, is it possible that each
Speaker 1: one of us bears such a pain that it can
Speaker 1: be removed only with his heart? That something must be
Speaker 1: done to each one before he for a second, everything
Speaker 1: disappeared from me, from the world, except my beast like
Speaker 1: hand and the heavy cast iron package it held. A
Speaker 1: boy appeared. He was running a shadow under his lip.
Speaker 1: The lower lip turned out like the cuff of a
Speaker 1: rolled up sleeve. His face was distorted. He wept loudly.
Speaker 1: He was running away from somebody. Stamping of feet was
Speaker 1: heard behind him. The boy reminded me, you must be
Speaker 1: in school. I must hurry. I ran to the nearest
Speaker 1: opening of the underground railway. At the entrance, someone passed
Speaker 1: me and said, not running no trains today. There, I descended,
Speaker 1: a sort of general delirium was raining. The glitter of
Speaker 1: cut crystal suns, the platform packed closely with heads, an
Speaker 1: empty torpid train. In the silence a voice. I could
Speaker 1: not see her, but I knew. I knew that intense, living, flexible, whiplike,
Speaker 1: flogging voice. I felt that sharp triangle of brows drawn
Speaker 1: to the temples. Let me let me reach her. I must.
Speaker 1: Someone's tentacles caught my arm, my shoulders. I was nailed
Speaker 1: in the silence I heard. No, go up to them.
Speaker 1: There they will cure you. There they will overfeed you
Speaker 1: with that leavened happiness. Satiated, you will slumber peacefully, organized,
Speaker 1: keeping time and snoring sweetly. Is it possible that you
Speaker 1: do not yet hear that great symphony of snoring? Foolish people?
Speaker 1: Don't you realize that they want to liberate you from
Speaker 1: these gnawing, wormlike, torturing question marks. And you remain standing
Speaker 1: here and listening to me, quick up to the great operation?
Speaker 1: What is your concern if I remain here alone? What
Speaker 1: does it matter to you? If I want to struggle hopelessly,
Speaker 1: struggle so much the better? What does it matter to
Speaker 1: you that I do not want others to desire for me.
Speaker 1: I want to desire for myself. If I desire the impossible?
Speaker 1: Another voice, slow, heavy, ah, the impossible, which means to
Speaker 1: run after your stupid fancies. Those fancies would whirl from
Speaker 1: under your very noses like a tail. No, we shall
Speaker 1: catch that tail and then and then swallow it. And
Speaker 1: fall snoring. A new tail will become necessary, they say.
Speaker 1: The ancients had a certain animal, which they called ass.
Speaker 1: In order to make it go forward, they would attach
Speaker 1: a carrot to a bow held in front of its nose,
Speaker 1: so that it could not reach it if it had
Speaker 1: caught and swallowed it. The tentacle suddenly let me go.
Speaker 1: I threw myself towards the place she was speaking from.
Speaker 1: But at that very moment everything was brought to confusion.
Speaker 1: Shouts from behind, they are coming here, coming here. The
Speaker 1: lights twinkled and went out. Someone cut the cable, and
Speaker 1: everything was like a lava of cries, groaning heads, fingers.
Speaker 1: I did not know how long we were rolled about
Speaker 1: that way in the underground tube. I only remember that
Speaker 1: steps were felt, Dusk appeared, becoming brighter and brighter, and
Speaker 1: again we were in the street, dispersing fanwise in different directions.
Speaker 1: Again I was alone, wind, gray, low twilight crawling over
Speaker 1: my head in the damp glass of the sidewalk. Somewhere
Speaker 1: very deep there were light topsy turvy walls and figures
Speaker 1: moving along feet upward, and that terribly heavy package in
Speaker 1: my hands pulled me down to that depth, to the
Speaker 1: bottom at the desk again. You was not there. Her
Speaker 1: room was dark and empty. I went up to my
Speaker 1: room and turned on the light. My temples, tightly bound
Speaker 1: by the iron ring, were pulsating. I paced and paced,
Speaker 1: always in the same circle. My table, the white package
Speaker 1: on the table, the bed, my table, the white package
Speaker 1: on the table in the room to my left. The
Speaker 1: curtains were lowered. To my right, the knotty bald head
Speaker 1: over a book, the enormous parabolic forehead wrinkles on the
Speaker 1: forehead like a series of yellow, illegible lines. At times
Speaker 1: our eyes met, and then I felt that those lines
Speaker 1: were about me. It happened at twenty one o'clock exactly.
Speaker 1: You came in on her own initiative. I remember that
Speaker 1: my breathing was so loud that I could hear it,
Speaker 1: and that I wanted to breathe less noisily, but was
Speaker 1: unable to. She sat down and arranged the fold of
Speaker 1: her unif on her knees. The pinkish brown gills were waving. Oh, dear,
Speaker 1: is it true that you were wounded? I just learned
Speaker 1: about it, and at once I ran. The piston was
Speaker 1: before me on the table. I jumped up, breathing even louder.
Speaker 1: She heard and stop halfway through a word, and rose
Speaker 1: already I had located the place on her head. Something
Speaker 1: disgustingly sweet was in my mouth, my handkerchief. I could
Speaker 1: not find it. I spat on the floor the fellow
Speaker 1: with a yellow fixed wrinkles, which think of me. It
Speaker 1: was necessary that he should not see. It would be
Speaker 1: even more disgusting if he could. I pressed the button.
Speaker 1: I had no right to do that, but who cared
Speaker 1: about rights? Then the curtains fell. Evidently she felt and
Speaker 1: understood what was coming, for she rushed to the door.
Speaker 1: But I was quicker than she, and I locked the
Speaker 1: door with the key, breathing loudly and not taking my
Speaker 1: eyes for a second away from that place on her head.
Speaker 1: You you were mad? How dare you? She moved backwards
Speaker 1: towards the bed, put her trembling hands between her knees
Speaker 1: like a tense spring, holding her firmly with my gaze.
Speaker 1: I slowly stretched out my arm towards the table. Only
Speaker 1: one arm could move, and I snatched the piston. I
Speaker 1: implore you, one day, only one day tomorrow, I shall
Speaker 1: go and attend to the formalities. What was she talking about?
Speaker 1: I swung my arm, and I consider I killed her. Yes, you,
Speaker 1: my unknown readers, you have all the right to call
Speaker 1: me murderer. I know that I should have dealt the
Speaker 1: blow on her head had she not screamed. For for
Speaker 1: the sake, I agree. Why one moment, with trembling hands,
Speaker 1: she tore off her unuf, A large, yellow, drooping body.
Speaker 1: She fell upon the bed. Then I understood she thought
Speaker 1: that I pulled the curtains in order to that I wanted.
Speaker 1: This was so unexpected and stupid that I burst out laughing. Immediately,
Speaker 1: the tent spring within me broke, and my hand weakened,
Speaker 1: and the piston fell to the floor. Here I learned
Speaker 1: from personal experience that laughter is the most terrible of weapons.
Speaker 1: You can kill anything with laughter, even murdered. I sat
Speaker 1: at my table and laughed. Desperately. I saw no way
Speaker 1: out of that absurd situation. I don't know what would
Speaker 1: have been the end if things had run their natural course.
Speaker 1: For suddenly, a new factor in the arithmetical chain, the
Speaker 1: phone rang I hurried grasped the receiver. Perhaps she I
Speaker 1: heard an unfamiliar voice. Wait a minute, annoying, infinite buzzing,
Speaker 1: heavy steps from afar nearer and louder like cast iron,
Speaker 1: and D five O three the well doer speaking, come
Speaker 1: at once to me, ding. He hung up the receiver, ding,
Speaker 1: like a key in a key hole. You was still
Speaker 1: in bed, eyes closed, gills apart, in the form of
Speaker 1: a smile. I picked up her clothes, threw them on her,
Speaker 1: and said, through clenched teeth, well, quick, quick. She raised
Speaker 1: her body on her elbow, her breast hanging down to
Speaker 1: one side, eyes round, She became a figure of wax.
Speaker 1: What get dressed? That is what? Face distorted? She firmly
Speaker 1: snatched her clothes and said, in a flat voice, turn away.
Speaker 1: I turned away, pressed my forehead against the glass. Light figures,
Speaker 1: sparks were trembling in the black, wet mirror. No all,
Speaker 1: this was I myself within me. What did he call
Speaker 1: me for? Is it possible that he knows already about her,
Speaker 1: about me, about everything? You all already dressed was at
Speaker 1: the door. I made a step toward her and pressed
Speaker 1: her hand as hard as though I hoped to squeeze
Speaker 1: out of it. Brought by drop what I needed. Listen
Speaker 1: her name? You know who I'm talking of? Did you
Speaker 1: report her name? No? Tell the truth. I must. I
Speaker 1: care not what happens, but tell the truth. No, no,
Speaker 1: but why not since you Her lower lip turned out
Speaker 1: like the lip of that boy, and her face tears
Speaker 1: were running down her cheeks, because I was afraid that
Speaker 1: if I did, you might you would stop. Look. Oh
Speaker 1: I cannot, I could not. I understood. It was the truth, absurd,
Speaker 1: ridiculous human truth. I opened the door. End of section seventeen,
Speaker 1: read by sixty five Tucks Roswell, Georgia, February twenty twenty three,