Page:Evgenii Zamyatin - We (Zilboorg translation).pdf/94

Rh would rush out into the hall at every sound of the elevator. The door of the latter would open heavily. Pale, tall, blond, and dark they would come out of the elevator, and here and there curtains were falling But she was not there. She did not come. And it is quite possible that now, at this minute, as I write these lines, at twenty-two o’clock exactly, with her eyes closed she is pressing her shoulder against somebody else in the same way, and in the same way she may be asking someone: “Do you love me?” Whom? Who is he? That one with raylike fingers, or that thick-lipped, sprinkling R-? Or S-? S-l Why is it that I have heard his steps splashing behind me as though in a ditch all these days? Why has he been following me all these days like a shadow? Ahead of me, to my side, behind me, a grayish-blue, two-dimensional shadow; people cross it, people step on it, but it remains nearby, attached to me by unseen ties. Perhaps that tie is I-330. I do not know. Or perhaps they, the Guardians I mean, already know that I

If someone should tell you your shadow sees you, sees you all the time, would you understand? All at once peculiar sensations arise in you; your arms seem to belong to someone else; they are in the way. That is how I feel; very frequently now I notice how absurdly I wave my hands without any rhythm. I have an irresistible desire to glance behind me, but I am unable to do so; my neck might as well be forged of iron. I flee, I run faster and faster, and even with my back I feel that shadow following me as fast as I can run; and there is no place to hide myself—no place!

At length I reach my room. Alone at last! But here I find another thing, the telephone. I pick up the receiver. “Yes, I-330, please.” And again I hear a light noise through the receiver; someone’s step in the hall there, passing the door of her room, and—silence I drop the receiver. I cannot, cannot bear it any longer, and I run to see her!

This happened yesterday. I ran there and for a whole