Page:Evgenii Zamyatin - We (Zilboorg translation).pdf/164

Rh “I-, dear, before it is too late If you want  I’ll leave everything, I’ll forget everything, and we’ll go there beyond the Wall, to them I do not even know who they are”

She shook her head. Through the dark windows of her eyes I saw within her a flaming oven, sparks, tongues of flame, and above them a heap of dry wood. It was clear to me that it was too late, my words could be of no avail.

She stood up. She would soon leave. Perhaps these were the last days, or the last minutes I grasped her hand.

“No, stay a little while longer for the sake  for the sake ”

She slowly lifted my hand toward the light, my hairy paw which I detest. I wanted to withdraw it, but she held it tightly.

“Your hand You undoubtedly don’t know, and very few do know, that women from here occasionally used to fall in love with them. Probably there are in you a few drops of that blood of the sun and the woods. Perhaps that is why I ”

Silence. It was so strange that because of that silence, because of an emptiness, because of a nothing, my heart should beat so wildly. I cried:

“Ah, you shall not go yet! You shall not go until you tell me about them, for you love them, and I don’t even know who they are, nor where they come from.”

“Where are they? The half we have lost. H2 and O, two halves, but in order to get water—H2O, creeks, seas, waterfalls, storms—those two halves must be united.”

I distinctly remember every movement of hers. I remember she picked up a glass triangle from my table, and while talking she pressed its sharp edge against her cheek; a white scar would appear, then it would fill again and become pink and disappear. And it is strange that I can-not remember her words, especially the beginning of the