Page:Evgenii Zamyatin - We (Zilboorg translation).pdf/224

Rh And I did not think, perhaps I did not even see properly; I only registered impressions. There on the pavement, thrown from somewhere, branches were strewn; their leaves were green, amber, and cherry-red. Above, crossing each other, birds and aeros were tossing about. Here below heads, open mouths, hands waving branches All this must have been shouting, buzzing, chirping Then—streets empty as if swept by a plague. I remember I stumbled over something disgustingly soft, yielding yet motionless. I bent down—a corpse. It was lying flat, the legs apart. The face I recognized the thick Negro lips, which even now seemed to sprinkle with laughter. His eyes, firmly screwed in, laughed into my face. One second I stepped over him and ran: I could no longer  I had to have everything done as soon as possible, or else I felt I would snap, I would break in two like an overloaded sail

Luckily it was not more than twenty steps away; I already saw the sign with the golden letters: “The Bureau of Guardians.” At the door I stopped for a moment to gulp down as much air as I could, and I stepped in.

Inside, in the corridor, stood an endless chain of Numbers, holding small sheets of paper and heavy notebooks. They moved slowly, advancing a step or two and stopping again. I began to be tossed about along the chain; my head was breaking to pieces. I pulled them by the sleeves, I implored them as a sick man implores to be given something that would, even at the price of sharpest pain, end everything forever.

A woman with a belt tightly clasped around her waist and with two distinctly protruding, squatty hemispheres tossing about as if she had eyes on them, chuckled at me:

“He has a bellyache! Show him to the room second door to the right!”

Everybody laughed, and because of that laughter something rose in my throat; I felt I would either scream or or