Page:Evgenii Zamyatin - We (Zilboorg translation).pdf/215

Rh RECORD TWENTY-SEVEN

InfusorianDoomsdayHer Room

This morning while we were in the refectory my neighbor to my left whispered to me in a frightened tone:

“But why don’t you eat? Don’t you see, they are looking at you!”

I had to pluck up all my strength to show a smile. I felt it—like a crack in my face; I smiled, and the borders of the crack drew apart wider and wider; it was quite painful.

And then: no sooner had I lifted the small cube of paste upon my fork, than the fork jerked from my hand and tinkled against the plate. And at once the tables, the walls, the plates, even the air, trembled and rang; outside, too, an enormous, iron, round roar reaching the sky-floating over heads and houses, it died away in the distance in small, hardly perceptible circles like those upon water.

I saw faces instantaneously grow faded and bleached; I saw mouths filled with food suddenly motionless, and forks hanging in air. Then everything became confused, jumped off the centuries-old tracks; everybody jumped