We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
“I serve and will continue to serve knowledge.” I clouded over: I don’t like or understand jokes, but R-13 has an idiotic habit of joking.
“Oh come on—knowledge! This knowledge of yours is utter cowardice. Yes, that’s it—really. You just want to build a little wall around infinity—and you’re afraid to look behind it! Yes. Peek over it and you’ll have to squeeze your eyes shut—ha!”
“Walls are the foundation of anything and everything human …” I began.
R sprayed a fountain, O laughed pinkly, roundly. I waved them away: go ahead, laugh, it doesn’t matter. I wasn’t up to this. I needed something to eat, to stifle this damned √-1.
“You know what,” I suggested, “why don’t you come over and spend some time at my place, we can solve problems.” (I recalled that quiet hour yesterday—perhaps it could be the same again today.)
O cast a glance at R, then cast a clear, round glance at me, cheeks tinting a little with the soft, exciting color of our tickets.
“Well, today I … today I have—a ticket to go to him,” she nodded toward R. “And in the evening he is busy … so …”
The wet, lacquered lips smacked good-naturedly: “Well, okay. We only need half an hour together—right, O? And as to your math puzzles—I’m not a great puzzle enthusiast, but basically—well, let’s go to my place and sit for a while.”
I was terrified of being left with myself—with this new stranger, I mean, who, by some strange coincidence, has my digits: D-503. And so I went with them to R-13’s. True, he is not precise or rhythmic and he has a kind of twisted, laughable logic, but we are friends all the same. It was not just an accident that he and I both chose sweet, pink O three years ago. This binds us together somehow even more strongly than our years together at school.
Next, we were in R’s room. It was as if—well, everything was exactly like mine: the Table, the glass of the chairs, table, closet, and bed. But as soon as R walked in, he moved one of the chairs, then the other—and all perspectives became displaced, everything departed from the regulation dimensions, became non-Euclidean. R is still the same, hasn’t changed. When it comes to Taylor and mathematics—he always lagged behind.
We reminisced about old Pliapa: how we, as little boys, would sometimes glue little thank-you notes all over his glass legs (we really loved Pliapa). We reminisced about the Scripture-instructor.3 The Scripture-instructor was exceptionally loud-spoken—wind would even blow from his loudspeaker as he instructed—and we children yelled the text after him at the top of our voices. And about the time when reckless R-13 stuffed balled-up paper into his mouthpiece: instead of the prepared text, crumpled paper shot out. R was punished, of course. His deed was nasty, of course, but we chuck-led about it now—our whole triangle—and, I’ll admit, I did, too.
“And what if he had been an actual human—like the instructors of the Ancients? It would’ve been …” (a “b” fountain from the thick, smacking lips … ).
The sun came through the ceiling and the walls; sun from above, from all sides, reflecting up from below. O was sitting on R’s lap with minute droplets of sun in her blue eyes. I had somehow warmed up, recovered: √-1 was stifled, had ceased to stir…
“So, how then is that Integral of yours? Will we be flying off to enlighten those planet-dwellers soon, eh? Well, get on with it, get on with it! Otherwise, we poets will scribble so much that your Integral won’t be able to lift off for the weight of it all. Every day from eight to eleven …” R shook his head, scratched the back of his head—the back of his head was like a squarish little suitcase attached from behind (I was reminded of that old painting “In the Carriage”).
I brightened up: “So, you too are writing for the Integral? Well, tell me, what about it? What, at least, for example, did you write today?”
“Today—about nothing. I was busy with other things …” The “b” sprayed straight at me.
“What other things?”
R grimaced: “Thing things! Well, if you want to know, there was a conviction. I was waxing poetic on the occasion of a conviction. One idiot, one of our own poets … he sat among us for two years as though everything was normal. And then suddenly—get this—‘I,’ he says, ‘I am a genius, a genius—above the law.’ And blathered on like that … so you see, that’s what … ugh!”
His thick lips hung, the lacquer was stripped from his eyes. R-13 leapt up, turned, and fixed his gaze somewhere on the other side of the wall. I watched his tightly locked little suitcase and thought: what is he now mulling over in that little suitcase of his?
There was a minute of awkward, asymmetrical silence. It was not clear to me what was going on, but there was something going on.
“Happily, the antediluvian times of the omnipotent Shakespeares and Dostoevskys—or whoever they were—have passed,” I said loudly, on purpose.
R turned his face. Just as before, his words sprayed me, gushed from him, but it seemed to me that the joyful lacquer in his eyes was long gone.
“Yes, dear mathematician, happily, happily, happily! We are the happiest, arithmetical mean … what is it you people say: to integrate from zero to infinity, from the cretin to Shakespeare … that’s it!”
I don’t know why—it was a completely inappropriate moment— but I was reminded of that woman, her voice, and some kind of fine thread was extending itself between her and R. (What was this thread?) And again, √-1 took control. I opened my badge: 16:25. They had forty-five minutes left on their pink ticket.
“Well, time for me to go …” I kissed O, shook hands with R, and went to the elevator.
On the avenue, having already crossed to the other side, I looked around: there were gray-blue, opaque cages of lowered blinds in the light, sun-pervaded glass block of buildings—cages of rhythmical Taylorized happiness. On the seventh floor, my eyes found R-13’s cage: he had already lowered the blinds.
Sweet O… Dear R … There is something about them that is also (why “also” I don’t know, but let the words come as they will)—there is something about them that is not totally clear to me. But nonetheless: I, he, and O—we are a triangle, perhaps not equilateral, but a triangle nonetheless. We, in the language of our forebears (it may be that to you, my planetary readers, this language is more understandable), we are a family. And how good it is sometimes to relax for a short time in this simple strong triangle, to lock oneself away from all that …
RECORD NINE
KEYWORDS: A Liturgy. Iambs and Trochees. The Cast-Iron Hand.
A solemn, bright day. On days like these you forget about all your weaknesses, imprecisions, sicknesses, and everything is crystalfixed and eternal—like our new glass …
Cube Plaza. Sixty-six powerful concentric circles: the stands. And sixty-six rows: quiet, bright faces and eyes reflecting the radiance of the skies—or, maybe, the radiance of the One State. Crimson flowers, like blood: the lips of women. The soft garlands of children’s faces in the first few rows, near the center of the action. Profound, strict, gothic silence.
According to descriptions that have been handed down to us, the Ancients experienced something like this during their “services.” They, however, worshipped their absurd, unknown God whereas we worship a non-absurd one—one with a very precise visual appearance. Their God didn’t give them anything except an eternal, torturous journey; their God didn’t think up anything more clever than that. And there’s no apparent reason why it sacrificed itself. We, on the other hand, make sacrifices to our God, the One State— calm, carefully considered, reasonable sacrifices. Yes, this was the solemn liturgy to the One State, a remembrance of the crusades— the years of the Two-Hundred-Year War—this was the grand celebration of the victory of the many over the one, the sum over the unit …
Here, one such sacrifice stood on the steps of the sun-drenched Cube. A white … and yet not—not white, but colorless—a glass face, glass lips. He was all eyes—black, absorbing, swallowing holes—with that terrible world but several minutes away. His
But above, on the Cube, by the Machine: the immobile, metallic figure of Him whom we call the Benefactor. From here, from below, you couldn’t make out His face: you could only see that it was described by severe, majestic, quadratic outlines. But then, His hands … Sometimes this very thing happens in photographs: the hands are placed too close, in the foreground—and they come out enormous, riveting your gaze, pushing everything into the background. These heavy hands, still calmly lying on His knees—it was clear: they were stone. And the knees only barely supported their weight …
And all of a sudden, one of these colossal hands slowly began to rise—a slow, cast-iron gesture—and from the stands, acknowledging the raised hand, a cipher walked up to the Cube. He was one of the State Poets, whose happy lot it was to adorn the celebration with his verses. And above the stands, divine, brass iambs began to thunder—about the madman with the glassy eyes who was standing up there on the steps, waiting for the logical conclusion to his craziness.
… A blaze. Inside the iambs, buildings are rocking and liquid gold is bursting upward, then tumbling down. Green trees are twisting in convulsions, dripping sap—then only the black crosses of their skeletons remain. Then Prometheus appears (referring to us, of course):
Suddenly, the fire in the machine, the steel, And the chaos, by the Law, were brought to heel.
Everything was new and steeled: a steel sun, steel trees, steel people. Then suddenly some madman “the fire set free,” and again everyone perished …
I have, unfortunately, a bad memory for poetry, but I do remember one thing: he couldn’t have chosen more instructive and beautiful images.
Again, the slow, severe gesture: a second poet approached the steps of the Cube. I even half-rose from my seat: was it possible? Yes: those thick African lips, it’s him … Why didn’t he say something earlier about the honorable task before him? His lips were trembling, gray. I can understand it: in the face of the Benefactor, in the face of the whole assembly of Guardians. But really: to be so nervous …
Sharp, rapid trochees—as though delivered with a sharp ax. About an unheard-of crime: about blasphemous poems, in which the Benefactor was called … no, I won’t even raise my pen to repeat it.
R-13, pale, went and sat down, not looking at anyone (I hadn’t expected this shyness from him). In one negligible differential of a second, someone’s face flashed past me—a sharp, black triangle— and immediately faded: my eyes and a thousand others were focused up above, toward the Machine. Up there, a third cast-iron gesture was made by the inhuman hand. And, fluttering in an invisible wind, the criminal walked, slowly—a step up, and another, and then a pace, the last of his life—and he, with his face to the sky, his head thrown back, stood on his very own final plot.
The Benefactor circled around the Machine, as gravely and stony as fate, and put His enormous hand on the lever… . There was neither a rustle, nor a breath: all eyes were on the hand. This must be a thrilling fiery whirlwind, to be the instrument, the potential force behind hundreds and thousands of volts. What a great charge!
An immeasurable second. The hand, applying the current, descends. The unbearably sharp blade of a beam flashes, then a barely audible crackle—like a tremor—in the pipes of the Machine. A prostrate body—suffused in a faint luminescent smoke—melting, melting, dissolving with horrifying quickness before our eyes. And then nothing: just a puddle of chemically pure water that only a minute ago swilled tempestuously and redly in his heart.
All this was straightforward; every one of us knew it already: it was the dissociation of matter, yes. It was the fission of the atoms of the human body, yes. And, moreover, each time it was like a miracle, it was like an affirmation of the superhuman might of the Benefactor.
Up above, in front of Him, were the flushed faces of a dozen female ciphers, their lips half-open from excitement, their flowers fluttering in the wind.4
According to old custom, a dozen women adorned the unif of the Benefactor—not yet dry from the spray—with flowers. With the majestic stride of a high priest, He slowly descended, crossing slowly among the stands—and, after Him, the soft white branches of female hands and a uni-million storm of cries arose. And then those same cries were raised in honor of the assembly of Guardians, invisibly present somewhere here, in our rows. Who knows: it may be that the Guardians were foreseen in the fantasy of the ancient person, which conceived of gentle-terrible “archangels,” assigned to each person at birth.
Yes, there was something of the ancient religions, something as purifying as thunderstorms and gales, about the whole celebration. You, to whom it falls to read this—are you familiar with moments like these? If not, I am sorry for you.
RECORD TEN
KEYWORDS: A Letter. A Membrane. My Shagginess.
That day, yesterday, was like the paper through which chemists filter their solutions: all suspended particles, everything that was superfluous, remained on the paper. And this morning I went downstairs thoroughly distilled, transparent.
Downstairs, in the vestibule, behind a small desk, the monitor was glancing at her timepiece and noting down the digits of entering ciphers. Her name was U… but then again, I’d better not give her digits, because I am afraid of the possibility that I’ll write something bad about her. Though, in reality, she is a very respectable elderly lady. The only thing that you might dislike about her was that her cheeks droop somewhat—like fish gills (but, you might think: so what?).
Her pen squeaked and I saw myself on her page: “D-503.” And next to it: a smudge.
Just as I was going to draw her attention to it, she suddenly lifted her head and dripped an inky sort of grin onto me: “There’s a letter. Yes. You’ll get it, my dear—yes, yes, it will get to you.”
I knew: the letter, having been read by her, would still have to pass through the Bureau of Guardians (I think it would be redundant to explain this natural procedure) and it would get to me not later than 12:00. But I was bothered by that grin; an ink droplet had clouded my transparent solution. So much so that later, at the building site of the Integral, I simply could not concentrate and at one point I even made a mistake in my calculations, which never happens to me.
At 12:00 the pinkish-brown fish gills and the little grin appeared again and finally, the letter was in my hands. Not knowing why, I didn’t read it there, but stuck it into my pocket and hurried to my room. I unfolded it, ran through it with my eyes, and then sat down … It was official notification that cipher I-330 had registered me and that today at 21:00 I was to go to her—to the address below …
No: after everything that has happened, after I very unambiguously indicated my attitude toward her … Furthermore, she couldn’t have known: if I had gone to the Bureau of Guardians or not. You see, there was no way she could have known that I had been sick—well, that basically I wasn’t able to go … And despite all that …
In my head, a dynamo spun and droned. The Buddha— yellow—lily of the valley—a pink half-moon … Yes, and then there was the fact that—the fact was: O wanted to come to me today. Could I show her this notification—regarding I-330? I don’t know. She wouldn’t believe it (yes, and how, really, could anyone believe it?), she wouldn’t believe that it has nothing to do with me, that I am completely … And I know: it will be a difficult, absurd, absolutely illogical conversation … Please, anything but that. Let it resolve itself mechanically: I’ll simply send her a copy of the notification.
I was sticking the notification in my pocket hurriedly—and I caught a glimpse of my horrible monkey hand. I was reminded of how she, I-330, on the walk that day, took my hand and looked at it. Surely, she doesn’t actually …
A strange feeling: my ribs felt something like iron twigs and they were obstructing—they were positively obstructing my heart, and tightening, so there wasn’t enough space for it. I stood at the glass door with the golden digits I-330. She was bent over a table with her back to me, writing something. I walked in …
“Here …” I extended the pink ticket to her. “I received a notification today and I am now presenting myself.”
“How precise you are! Give me a minute—will you? Have a seat; I am just finishing.”
Again she looked down at the letter—and what was there behind her lowered blinds? What will she say—what will she do in the next second? How could I find out, calculate it, when the whole of her is from that other place, from the wild, ancient land of dreams?
I silently watched her. My ribs were iron twigs, tightly … When she speaks, her face is like a rapidly glittering wheel: you can’t make out the separate spokes. But, at that point, the wheel was immobile. And I saw a strange combination: her dark eyebrows hitched up high to the temples—a mocking, sharp triangle, pointing upward— and two deep wrinkles, from her nose to the corners of her mouth. And these two triangles somehow contradicted each other, imposing on her whole face this unpleasant, irritating X—like a cross. A face crossed out with a cross.
The wheel began to turn; the spokes merged …
“So you didn’t go to the Bureau of Guardians?”