Page:Evgenii Zamyatin - We (Zilboorg translation).pdf/201

Rh with a dead-white smile, angry blue sparks. Through her teeth to me:

“Ah! It is your work! You did your ‘duty’! Well ” She tore her hand from mine; the Valkyrie helmet with indignant wings was soon to be seen some distance in front of me. I was alone, torpid, silent. Like everyone else I followed into the dining saloon.

But it was not I, not I! I told nobody, save these white, mute pages I cried this to her within me, inaudibly, desperately, loudly. She was across the table, directly opposite me, and not once did she even touch me with her gaze. Beside her someone’s ripe, yellow, bald head. I heard (it was I-330’s voice):

“ ‘Nobility’ of character! But my dear professor, even a superficial etymological analysis of the word shows that it is a superstition, a remnant of the ancient feudal epoch. We ”

I felt I was growing pale, and that they would soon notice it. But the phonograph within me performed the prescribed fifty chewing movements for every bite. I locked myself into myself as though into an opaque house; I threw up a heap of rocks before my door and lowered the window blinds

Afterward, the telephone of the commander was again in my hands, and again we made the flight through the clouds with icy, supreme anxiety into the icy, starry, sunny night. Minutes, hours passed. Apparently all that time the motor of logic within me was working feverishly at full speed. For suddenly somewhere, at a distant point of the dark blue space, I saw my desk, and the gill-like cheeks of U- bent over it, and the forgotten pages of my records! It became clear to me; nobody but her everything was clear to me!

If only I could reach the radio room soon wing-like helmets, the odor of blue lightning  I remember telling her something in a low voice, and I remember how she