Page:Evgenii Zamyatin - We (Zilboorg translation).pdf/64

Rh ing embers piercing through ashes; two tender, round knees

She was sitting in a low armchair. In front of her on a small square table I noticed a bottle filled with something poisonously green, and two small glasses with thin stems. In the corner of her mouth she had a very thin paper tube; she was ejecting smoke formed by the burning of that ancient smoking substance whose name I do not now remember.

The membrane was still vibrating. Within, the sledge hammer was pounding the red-hot iron bars of my chest. I heard distinctly every blow of the hammer, and What if she, too, heard it?

But she continued to produce smoke very calmly; calmly she looked at me; and nonchalantly she flicked ashes on the pink check!

With as much self-control as possible I asked, “If you still feel that way, why did you have me assigned to you? And why did you make me come here?”

As if she had not heard at all, she poured some of the green liquid from the bottle into one of the small glasses, and sipped it.

“Wonderful liqueur! Want some?”

Then I understood: alcohol! Like lightning there came to memory what I had seen yesterday: the stony hand of the Well-Doer, the unbearable blade of the electric ray; there on the Cube, the head thrown back, the stretched-out body! I shivered.

“Please listen,” I said. “You know, do you not, that anyone who poisons himself with nicotine, and more particularly with alcohol, is severely treated by the United State?”

Dark brows raised high to the temples, the sharp mocking triangle.

“‘It is more reasonable to annihilate a few than to allow many to poison themselves And degeneration,’ etc This is true to the point of indecency.”