Page:Evgenii Zamyatin - We (Zilboorg translation).pdf/156

Rh I was unable to take a step because under my foot there was not an even plane, but (imagine!) something disgustingly soft, yielding, living, springy, green!

I was dazed; I was strangled—yes, strangled; it is the best word to express my state. I stood holding fast with both hands to a swinging branch.

“It is nothing. It is all right. It is natural, the first time. It will pass. Courage!”

At I-330’s side, bouncing dizzily on a green net, someone’s thinnest profile, cut out of paper. No, not “someone’s.” I recognized him. I remembered. It was the doctor. I understood everything very clearly. I realized that they both caught me beneath the arms and laughingly dragged me forward. My legs twisted and glided Terrible noise, cawing, stumps, yelling, branches, tree trunks, wings, leaves, whistling

The trees drew apart. A bright clearing. In the clearing, people, or perhaps, to be more exact, beings. Now comes the most difficult part to describe, for this was beyond any bounds of probability. It is clear to me now why I-330 was stubbornly silent about it before; I would not have believed it, would not have believed even her. It is even possible that tomorrow I shall not believe myself, shall not believe my own description in these pages.

In the clearing, around a naked, skull-like rock, a noisy crowd of three or four hundred people. Well, let’s call them people. I find it difficult to coin new words. Just as on the stands you recognize in the general accumulation of faces only those which are familiar to you, so at first I recognized only our grayish-blue unifs. But one second later and I saw distinctly and clearly among the unifs dark, red, golden, black, brown, and white humans—apparently they were humans. None of them had any clothes on, and their bodies were covered with short, glistening hair, like that which may be seen on the stuffed horse in the Prehistoric Museum. But their females had faces