Page:Evgenii Zamyatin - We (Zilboorg translation).pdf/117

Rh unif in its mouth, its little fist clenched firmly, its thumb squeezed into the fist, a light fluffy pleat of skin at the wrist. Like a photographic plate I was taking in the impression of all this. Now I saw how its naked leg hung over the edge of the platform, the pink fan of its finger waved in the air One minute more, one second, and the child would be on the floor!

A female’s scream, a wave of translucent wings, her unif on the platform! She caught the child, her lips clung to the fluffy pleat of the baby’s wrist; she moved the child to the middle of the table and left the platform. The imprints were registering in me: a pink crescent of a mouth, the horns downward! Eyes like small blue saucers filled with liquid! It was O-90. And as if reading a consequential formula, I suddenly felt the necessity, the naturalness of that insignificant occurrence.

She sat down behind me, somewhat to my left. I looked back. She quietly removed her gaze from the table and the child and looked straight into me. Within again: she, I, the table on the platform—three points. And through those three points lines were drawn, a projection of some as-yet-unforeseen events!

Later I went home through the green dusky street, which seemed many-eyed because of the electric lights. I heard myself tick-tocking like a clock. And the hands of that clock seemed to be about to pass a figure: I was going to do something, something that would cut off every avenue of retreat. She wants somebody, whom I do not know, to think she is with me. I want her; what do I care what she wants? I do not want to be alone behind the curtains, and that is all there is to it!

From behind came sounds of a familiar gait, like splashing in a ditch. I did not need to look back, I knew it was S-. He would follow me to the very door, probably. Then he would stay below on the sidewalk, and he would try to drill upward into my room with his boring eyes, until the curtains would fall, concealing something criminal.