Page:Evgenii Zamyatin - We (Zilboorg translation).pdf/82

70 sharply pointed, glittering blade of a nose, and lips like scissors.

I could not hear what I-330 told him. I merely saw her lips when she was talking, and I felt that I was smiling, irrepressibly, blissfully. The scissors-like lips glittered and the doctor said, “Yes, yes, I see. A most dangerous disease. I know of nothing more dangerous.” And he laughed. With his thin, flat, papery hand he wrote something on a piece of paper and gave it to I-330; he wrote on another piece of paper and handed it over to me. He had given us certificates, testifying that we were ill, that we were unable to go to work. Thus I stole my work from the United State; I was a thief; I deserved to be put beneath the Machine of the Well-Doer. Yet I was indifferent to this thought; it was as distant from me as though it were written in a novel. I took the certificate without an instant’s hesitation. I, all my being, my eyes, my lips, my hands, knew it was as it should be.

At the corner, from a half-empty garage, we took an aero. I-330 took the wheel as she had done before, pressed the starter, and we tore away from the earth. We soared. Behind us the golden haze, the sun. The thin, blade-like profile of the doctor seemed to me suddenly so dear, so beloved. Formerly I knew everything revolves around the sun. Now I knew everything was revolving around me. Slowly, blissfully, with half-closed eyes

At the gate of the Ancient House we found the same old woman. What a dear mouth, with lips grown together and raylike wrinkles around it! Probably those lips have remained grown together all these days; but now they parted and smiled.

“Ah! you mischievous girl, you! Work is too much for you? Well, all right, all right. If anything happens, I’ll run up and warn you.”

A heavy, squeaky, opaque door. It closed behind us, and at once my heart opened painfully, widely, still wider My lips hers I drank and drank from