Page:Evgenii Zamyatin - We (Zilboorg translation).pdf/145

Rh the intricate passages among the stands. S-, I-330,—there is some thread between them. I have always felt some thread between them. I don’t know yet what that thread is, but someday I shall untangle it. I fixed my gaze on him; he was rushing farther away, behind him that invisible thread There, he stopped there I was pierced, twisted together into a knot as if by a lightninglike, many-volted electric discharge; in my row, not more than 40° from me, S- stopped and bowed. I saw I-330, and beside her the smiling, repellent, Negro-lipped R-13.

My first thought was to rush to her and cry, “Why with him? Why did you not want ?” But the salutary, invisible spiderweb bound fast my hands and feet; so gritting my teeth, I sat stiff as iron, my gaze fixed upon them. A sharp physical pain at my heart. I remember my thought: “If non-physical causes produce physical pain, then it is clear that ”

I regret that I did not come to any conclusion. I remember only that something about “heart” flashed through my mind; a purely nonsensical ancient expression, “His heart fell into his boots,” passed through my head. My heart sank. The hexameter came to an end. It was about to start. What “It”?

The five-minute pre-election recess established by custom. The custom-established, pre-electional silence. But this time it was not that pious, really prayer-like silence that it usually was. This time it was like the ancient days when the sky, still untamed, would roar from time to time with its “storms.” It was like the “lull before the storm” of the ancient days. The air seemed to be made of transparent, vaporized cast iron. You wanted to breathe with your mouth wide open. My hearing, intense to the point of pain, registered from behind a mouse-like, gnawing, worried whisper. Without lifting my eyes I saw those two, I-330 and R-13, side by side, shoulder to shoulder—and on my knees my trembling, foreign, hateful, hairy hands

Everybody was holding a badge with a clock in his