Page:Evgenii Zamyatin - We (Zilboorg translation).pdf/100

Rh RECORD SEVENTEEN

Through GlassI DiedThe Corridor

I am puzzled. Yesterday, at the very moment when I thought everything was untangled, and that all the X’s were at last found, new unknowns appeared in my equation. The origin of the coordinates of the whole story is of course the Ancient House. From this center the axes of all the X’s, Y’s, and Z’s radiate, and recently they have entered into the formation of my whole life.

I walked along the X-axis (Avenue 59) toward the center. The whirlwind of yesterday still raged within me: houses and people upside down; my own hands torturingly foreign to me; glimmering scissors; the sharp sound of drops dripping from the faucet; all this existed, all this existed once! All these things were revolving wildly, tearing my flesh, rotating wildly beneath the molten surface, there where the “soul” is located.

In order to follow the instructions of the doctor I chose the road that followed not the hypotenuse but the two legs of a triangle. Soon I reached the road running along the Green Wall. From beyond the Wall, from the infinite ocean of green, there arose toward me an immense wave of roots, branches, flowers, leaves. It rose higher and higher; it seemed as though it would splash over me and that from a man, from the finest and most precise mechanism which I am, I would be transformed into But for