Page:Evgenii Zamyatin - We (Zilboorg translation).pdf/61

Rh ceive it not later than twelve o’clock. But that tiny smile confused me; the drop of ink clouded the transparency of the distilled solution. At the Integral’s dock I could not concentrate; I even made a mistake in my calculations, something that had never happened to me before.

At twelve o’clock, again the rosy-brown fish gills’ smile, and at last the letter was in my hands. I cannot say why I did not read it right there; instead, I put it in my pocket and ran into my room. I opened it, scanned it quickly, and sat down. It was an official notice to the effect that Number I-330 had had me assigned to her, and that today at twenty-one o’clock I was to go to her. Her address was given.

“No! After all that had happened! After I had shown her frankly my attitude toward her! Besides, how could she know that I did not go to the Bureau of Guardians? She had no way of knowing that I have been ill and could not And despite all this ”

A dynamo was whirling and buzzing in my head. Buddha yellow  lilies of the valley  rosy crescent Besides—besides, O- wanted to come to see me today! I was sure she would not believe (how could one believe?) that I had absolutely nothing to do with the matter, that I was also sure that we (O- and I) would have a difficult, foolish, and absolutely illogical conversation. No, anything but that! Let the situation solve itself mechanically; I would send her a copy of the official communication.

While I was hastily putting the paper in my pocket, I noticed my terrible ape-like hand. I remembered how that day, during our walk, she had taken my hand and looked at it. Is it possible that she really that she

A quarter to twenty-one. A white northern night. Everything was glass, greenish. But it was a different kind of glass, not like ours, not genuine but very breakable, a thin glass shell, and within that shell things were flying, whirling, buzzing. I wouldn’t have been surprised if suddenly