We: New Edition Read online

  Tomorrow is the Day of Unanimity. She’ll be there, too, of course, and I’ll see her, only from far away. From far away: That’s going to be painful, because I need her, I’m drawn irresistibly to be ... next to her, to have her hands, her shoulder, her hair.... But I want even that pain ... let it happen.

  Great Benefactor! How absurd—to want pain! Can there be anyone who doesn’t know that pain is a negative quantity, and that if you add them up it reduces the sum we call happiness? So, it follows ...

  But ... nothing follows. The slate’s clean. Naked.

  Evening.

  A windy, feverishly pink, alarming sunset comes through the glass walls of the building. I turn my chair so that this pinkness won’t stick up in front of me, and I leaf through these notes. What I see is that once more I’ve forgotten that I’m not writing for myself but for you, you unknown ones that I love and pity, for you, who are still trudging somewhere in distant centuries, down below.

  About the Day of Unanimity, that great day. I’ve always loved it, ever since I was a child. For us I think it’s something like what “Easter” was for the ancients. I remember how on the eve you’d make yourself a little calendar of hours and grandly cross them off, one at a time: one hour closer, one hour less to wait. Honestly, if I were sure nobody would see, I’d carry a little calendar like this around with me everywhere even now and mark off how much time was left until tomorrow, when I’d see ... even if from far away.

  (I was interrupted. They just brought me the new yuny, straight from the shop. It’s the custom to issue new yunies for the big day tomorrow. You hear footsteps in the hallway, noise, happy shouting.)

  To go on. Tomorrow I’ll see the same sight that’s repeated from one year to the next, bringing new excitement each time: the mighty chalice of harmony, the people’s arms reverently uplifted. Tomorrow is the day for the annual election of the Benefactor. Tomorrow we once more place the keys to the unshakable fortress of our happiness into the hands of the Benefactor.

  It goes without saying that this has no resemblance to the disorderly, unorganized elections in ancient times, when—it’s hard to say this with a straight face—they couldn’t even tell before the election how it would come out. To establish a state on the basis of absolutely unpredictable randomness, blindly—could there be anything more idiotic? Still, it looks like centuries had to pass before this was understood.

  I don’t suppose it’s necessary to say that here, as in everything else, we have no place for randomness; there can’t be any surprises. And even the elections amount to little more than symbolism, to remind us that we are one, powerful, million-celled organism, that we are, in the words of the ancient “Gospel,” one Church. Because the history of OneState does not know of a single instance when so much as one voice dared to violate the majestic unison of that glorious day.

  They say the ancients somehow carried out their elections in secret, hiding like thieves. Some of our historians even say they carefully masked themselves before turning up at the election ceremonies. (I can just picture that fantastically gloomy spectacle: night, a city square, figures in dark capes creeping along the walls, the crimson flame of the torches guttering in the wind.) Why all this secretiveness was needed has never yet been fully explained. Most probably the elections were connected with some mystical, superstitious, or maybe even criminal rites.

  But we have nothing to hide or be ashamed of; we celebrate our elections openly, honestly, in the daylight. I see how everybody votes for the Benefactor and everybody sees how I vote for the Benefactor. And how else could it be, since everybody and I add up to the one We? How much more uplifting, sincere, lofty this is than the cowardly, thievish “secret” of the ancients! And how much more expedient it is, too. Because even if you suppose the impossible, by which I mean some kind of dissonance in our usual monophony, you’ve still got the concealed Guardians right there in our ranks ready at a moment’s notice to stop any Numbers that might have gotten out of line and save them from making any other false steps—as well as save OneState from them. And finally there’s one more thing....

  I’m looking through the wall to the left. I see a woman in front of the mirror in the closet door hurrying to unbutton her yuny. I get a quick hazy glimpse of eyes, lips, the tips of two pink buds. Then the blinds go down and in an instant all of yesterday floods back over me and I forget what the “one more thing” was and I don’t care, I don’t want it! All I want is one thing: 1-330. I want her to be with me every minute, each and every minute, only with me. And all that stuff I just wrote about the Day of Unanimity—nobody needs it, it’s all wrong, I want to cross it out, tear it up, throw it out. Because I know (maybe this is blasphemy, but it’s true) that the only holiday for me is being with her, only if she’s there next to me, shoulder to shoulder.

  Without her the sun tomorrow won’t be anything more than a disk cut out of tin and the sky will just be tin painted blue, and I myself ...

  I grab the telephone: “I-330! Is that you?”

  “Yes. Do you realize how late it is?”

  “Maybe it isn’t too late. I want to ask you ... I want you to be with me tomorrow. Darling ...”

  I said “darling” very softly. And for some reason this made me think of a thing that happened this morning at the hangar: For a joke somebody had put a watch under a hundred-ton sledge. They’d swung the sledge with all their might, it made a wind in your face, and then stopped, a hundred tons of gentleness, just short of the little watch.

  There was a pause. I imagine I hear someone in her room whispering. Then her voice says: “No, I can’t. Listen, you know I’d also like ... But no, I can’t. Don’t ask why. You’ll see tomorrow.”

  Night.

  RECORD 25

  Descent from Heaven History’s Greatest Catastrophe End of the Known

  Before the proceedings got under way, when everyone rose and the slow majestic canopy of the anthem began to sway above our heads (hundreds of the Musical Factory’s pipes and millions of human voices), I forgot, for a moment, about everything. I forgot the disturbing things that 1-330 had said about today’s celebration, and I think I even forgot about her. All over again I was that little boy who had once burst into tears on this day when he found a tiny spot, visible to no one but himself, on his yuny. Maybe no one around me now can see the black indelible blotches all over me, but I know—I know that a criminal like me has no business being among all these wide innocent faces. Oh, if only I could stand up right this minute and—even if it choked me—scream out the whole truth about myself. So it would be the end of me, so what! At least for one second I’d feel that I was clean, I’d feel that all the thoughts had been swept out of my head, and I’d be like that tender blue sky.

  All eyes were lifted upward into the blue immaculate morning still damp with the tears of night and focused on a barely visible dot that was dark at times and at others clad in the rays of the sun. It was He. He was descending from the heavens in His aero to be among us, the new Jehovah, as wise and as cruel in his love as the Jehovah of the ancients. Closer and closer He comes with every minute, while higher and higher reach millions of hearts to greet Him, and at last He sees us. In my thoughts I am up there with Him looking down: The concentric circles of the stands are traced by light blue rows of dots, like the circles of a spiderweb besprinkled with microscopic suns (our shining badges), a spiderweb in whose center the wise white Spider will now alight, the Benefactor, in white raiment, binding us hand and foot in His wisdom with the beneficial snares of contentment.

  But now His majestic descent from the heavens had been accomplished, the brass anthem had fallen silent, everyone had sat down—and I instantly understood: All this in reality was an immensely delicate spiderweb, stretched to its limit and trembling, and at any moment it would snap and something beyond all imagining would happen....

  I rose slightly from my seat and looked round. My gaze met that of many other eyes, looking from face to face with love and terror. There’s
one who just raised his hand and made a sign to someone with a very slight movement of his fingers. And there’s the answer in the same way. And another ... Now I understood: These are Guardians. I understood that something’s upset them. The web is stretched, it’s trembling. And there’s a responsive shudder inside me, like a radio receiver set on the same wavelength.

  On the stage a poet was reading the pre-election ode, but I didn’t hear a word of it, only the measured back and forth of the hexameter’s pendulum, every swing of which brought nearer some fatal hour. And I’m still feverishly leafing through face after face in the ranks as if they were pages, though I still can’t see that one thing I’m looking for, but I’d better find it quick, because one more tick of the pendulum and ...

  Him! It was him, of course. Down below, past the stage, slipping above the gleaming glass, rushed the pink ear-wings; the body reflected there was the dark double-looped letter S, hurrying somewhere in the maze of passages among the stands.

  S, I-330—there is some sort of thread (between them; for me there’s always been some sort of thread running between them—what kind I still don’t know, but one day I’ll untangle it). I clamped my eyes on him. He rolled on like a ball of wool, one thread paying out behind him. Now he’s stopped, now ...

  I was shot through, tied into a knot, as though I’d been hit by a high-voltage bolt of lightning. S had stopped at our row, no more than 40 degrees away from me, and bent down. I saw 1-330 and, next to her, the disgustingly grinning African lips of R-13.

  My first thought was to tear down there and yell at her: “Why are you with him today? Why didn’t you want me ... ?” But some lucky spiderweb that I couldn’t see held me tight, hand and foot. Gritting my teeth, I sat there like a lump of iron, keeping my eyes on them. I can feel the sharp, physical pain in my heart as though it were happening right now. I remember thinking, “If a nonphysical stimulus can produce the physical reaction of pain, it’s clear that ...”

  Unfortunately, I didn’t work the conclusion all the way out: All I remember is some passing thought about the “soul,” and the pointless old proverb flashed through my mind: “His heart sank into his boots.” And I froze as the hexameters went silent. Now it was starting ... but what?

  Custom called for a five-minute break before the election. Custom also called for silence before the election. But this was not the same genuinely prayerful, reverent silence as usual; this was the way it was in ancient times when they had no knowledge of our Accumulator Towers, when the untamed heaven still raged at times with “thunderstorms.” This was the way it was for the ancients before a storm.

  The air was like cast iron you could see through. You felt you had to hold your mouth wide open to breathe. Your hearing was so keen it hurt, and it registered from somewhere in the rear a kind of excited whispering, like mice gnawing. Without lifting my eyes all this time, I could still see those two—I-330 and R—next to each other, shoulder to shoulder, and those strange, shaggy, hateful hands of mine were trembling on my knees.

  Everyone is holding his badge with his watch in his hands. One. Two. Three. Five minutes ... and from the stage there comes a slow, cast-iron voice.

  “Please raise your hands, those who vote Yes.”

  If only I could look him in the eye as before, I’d say, directly and devotedly, “Here am I. All of me. Take me!” But now I couldn’t. My limbs felt all rusty. It was only with an effort that I raised my hand.

  The rustle of millions of arms. I hear a smothered groan, “Oh!” I feel something has started, fallen, headlong, but I have no idea what, and I don’t have the strength, or the courage, to look....

  “Those opposed?”

  This was always the grandest moment of the celebration: Everyone would go on sitting quite still, bowing his head in joy to the beneficent yoke of the Number of all Numbers. But right at this point, to my horror, I heard another rustle, infinitely delicate, like a sigh. It was more audible than the brass pipes of the anthem had been. It was like the last sigh that a man breathes out in his life, almost inaudible, but everyone standing around him goes pale and cold drops start out on their brow.

  I raise my eyes and ...

  All this took the hundredth part of a second, a hair’s breadth in time. I saw a thousand hands shoot up—“opposed”—and come down. I saw the pale face of 1-330, the cross on her brow, her raised hand. Things went black before my eyes.

  Another hair’s breadth, a pause, silence, heartbeat. Then —as though some insane director had given the cue—there was an instant uproar in all the stands, shouting, Numbers running, their yunies flying, Guardians tearing about in a frenzy, someone’s heels in the air right in front of my face, next to the heels someone’s wide face, his mouth stretched in a silent scream. That’s the image that burnt itself into me deepest of all: thousands of silent mouths, screaming—like something projected on a monstrous screen.

  And on another part of the screen, somewhere far down below, visible only for a second, the pale lips of O. She was pressed against a wall, standing with her arms crossed over her belly, trying to protect it. And she was gone, wiped out, or I forgot about her, because ...

  This now was no screen—this was inside me, this squeezed heart, these pounding temples. R-13 had suddenly jumped up on a bench that was above me, to the left; he was red, spitting, in a rage. He was carrying 1-330 in his arms. She was pale, her yuny ripped open from her shoulders to her breast, blood showing on the white part. She had her arms round his neck and he was jumping from bench to bench in huge leaps, repulsive and agile as a gorilla, and carrying her toward the top.

  Everything went red. It was like some ancient fire. And there was nothing for me to do but jump up and try to catch them. To this day I couldn’t explain even to myself where I got the strength, but I blasted through the crowd like a battering ram, on people’s shoulders, on benches, and as soon as I was close enough I grabbed R by the collar:

  “Oh no you don‘t!” I yelled. “Oh no you don’t! Put her ...” (nobody could hear me, fortunately—they were all running and yelling themselves).

  “Who the ... ? What’s happening? What?” R turned around, his lips wet and trembling. He probably thought one of the Guardians had grabbed him.

  “What? I’ll show you what! I won’t stand for it. Put her down at once!”

  But he only made an angry sound with his lips, shook his head, and started to run on. But at this point—it’s incredibly embarrassing for me to write this down, but I’ve got to. It seems to me I’ve got to write it down so that you, my unknown readers, can make a full study of the history of my illness—at this point I let him have it with a blow to the head. You understand? I hit him! That I remember distinctly. And I also remember something else: something like liberation, a kind of lightness all through my body from this blow.

  1-330 quickly slipped down out of his arms. “Get out of here!” she shouted to R. “You see he’s ... he’s ... Get out of here, R, get away!”

  R bared his white, African teeth, splashed some word in my face, dived downward, and vanished. And I picked 1-330 up in my arms, held her tightly against me, and carried her off.

  My heart felt huge inside me. It was pounding, and with each beat a wave of hot, wild joy whipped through me. And what did it matter that something had been smashed to pieces—who cared? Just so I could carry her like this, and carry and carry ...

  Evening. 22:00 Hours.

  I can hardly hold the pen in my hands; there’s no describing how tired I am after the dizzying events of this morning. Surely it can’t be true that our salvation, the age-old walls of OneState, have fallen? I can’t believe we’re homeless again, like our distant ancestors, living in the wild state called freedom. No Benefactor ... it can’t be. “Opposed”?—on the Day of Unanimity—“opposed”? I feel the shame they ought to feel, the pain, the terror. But who are they, anyway? And who am I? “They” ... “We” ... How am I to know?

  Here she was, sitting on a glass bench, one hot fro
m the sun, at the very top of the stands, where I carried her. Her right shoulder and, below it, the beginning of that marvelous incalculable curve, were all bare; there was a tiny little red snake of blood. She pretends not to notice the blood, or that her breast is bare—or rather, she sees it all, but it’s just the way she wants it at the moment, and if her yuny had been buttoned up, she would have ripped it open, she ...

  “And tomorrow ... ” She was hungry to breathe through her shining white teeth, clenched tightly. “And tomorrow ... what? Nobody knows. You understand? Neither I nor anyone else knows. It’s unknown. You understand it’s come to an end, everything that was known? Now it’ll be new, never before seen, or imagined.”

  Down below us they were on the boil, rushing about and screaming. But all that was far away, and it got even farther away when she looked at me, slowly drawing me into herself through the narrow golden windows of her eyes. This went on for a long time, in silence. And for some reason I thought of how I once looked through the Green Wall and saw someone’s incomprehensible yellow eyes, while birds whirled above the Wall (or was that at some other time?).

  “Listen, if nothing out of the way happens tomorrow, I’ll take you there. You know what I mean?”

  No, I don’t. But I nod my head slowly. I’ve dissolved, I’m infinitely small, I’m a point....

  When all is said and done, this being a point has its own logic (modern): A point contains more unknowns than anything else. All it has to do is move, budge a bit, and it can transform into thousands of different curves, hundreds of solid shapes.