Page:Evgenii Zamyatin - We (Zilboorg translation).pdf/161

Rh RECORD TWENTY-EIGHT

Both of ThemEntropy and EnergyThe Opaque Part of the Body

If your world is similar to the world of the ancients, then you may easily imagine that one day you suddenly come upon a sixth or a seventh continent, upon some Atlantis, and you find there unheard-of cities, labyrinths, people flying through the air without the aid of wings or aeros, stones lifted into the air by the power of a gaze—in brief, imagine that you see things that cannot come to your mind even if you suffer from dream sickness. That is how I feel now. For you must understand that no one has ever gone beyond the Green Wall since the Two Hundred Years’ War, as I have already told you.

I know it is my duty to you, my unknown friends, to give more details about that unsuspected, strange world which has opened to me since yesterday. But for the time being I am unable to return to that subject. Everything is so novel, so novel it is like a rainstorm, and I am not big enough to embrace it all. I spread out the folds of my unif, my palms—and yet pailfuls splash past me and only drops can reach these pages

At first I heard behind me, behind the door, a loud voice. I recognized her voice, the voice of I-330, tense,