Page:Evgenii Zamyatin - We (Zilboorg translation).pdf/66

Rh Unbearably sweet lips. (I suppose it was the taste of the liqueur.) It was as though burning poison were being poured into me, and more, and more

I tore away from the earth and began revolving as an independent planet, down, down, following an incalculable curve

What happened next I am able to describe only in an approximate way, only by way of more or less suitable analogies.

It never occurred to me before but it is true: we who live on the earth, we are always walking over a seething red sea of fire which is hidden in the womb of the earth. We never think of it. But imagine the ground under our feet suddenly transformed into a thin glass shell; suddenly we should behold !

I became glass-like and saw within myself. There were two selves in me. One, the former D-503, Number D-503; and the other Before, that other used only to show his hairy paws from time to time, but now that whole other self left his shell. That shell was breaking, and in a moment

Grasping the last straw (the arms of the chair) with all my strength, I asked loudly (so as to hear my first self), “Where, where did you get this poison?”

“Oh, this? A physician, one of my”

“‘One of my! one of my’ what?” And my other self jumped up suddenly and yelled: “I wont allow it! I want Because no one but me  I shall kill anyone who You ” I saw my other self grasp her rudely with I his hairy paws, tear the silk, and put his teeth in her flesh! I remember exactly, his teeth!

I do not remember how, but I-330 slipped away and I saw her straighten, her head raised high, her eyes overlaid by that cursed, impenetrable curtain. She stood leaning with her back against the closet door and listening to me.