Page:Evgenii Zamyatin - We (Zilboorg translation).pdf/170

Rh RECORD TWENTY-NINE

Threads on the FaceSproutsAn Unnatural Compression

It is strange: the barometer continues to fall, yet there is no wind. There is quiet. Above, the storm which we do not yet hear has begun. The clouds are rushing with terrific speed. There are few of them as yet, separate fragments; it is as if above us an unknown city were being destroyed and pieces of walls and towers were rushing down, coming nearer and nearer with tremendous speed, but it will take some days of rushing through the blue infinite before they reach the bottom, that is us, below. And below there is silence.

There are thin, incomprehensible, almost invisible threads in the air; every autumn they are brought here from beyond the Wall. They float slowly, and suddenly you feel something foreign and invisible on your face; you want to brush it off, but no, you cannot rid yourself of it. You feel it especially near the Green Wall, where I was this morning. I-330 made an appointment with me to meet her in the Ancient House in that “apartment” of ours.

I was not far from the rust-red, opaque mass of the Ancient House when I heard behind me short, hasty steps and rapid breathing. I turned around and saw O-90 trying to catch up to me. She seemed strangely and perfectly rounded. Her arms and breast, her whole body, so familiar to me, was rounded out, stretching her unif.