We: New Edition Read online

  Suddenly the clamp let me go and I pitched forward into the middle, where she was speaking—and just at that moment everyone shoved forward, there was a crush, and from behind someone shouted: “They’re coming! They’re headed this way!” The light surged and went out—someone had cut the wire—and there was an avalanche, screams, howling, heads, fingers....

  How long we were rolling along like this in the underground tube I do not know. Finally we came to some steps, a dim twilight, it got lighter, and we fanned out on the street again, everyone going in different directions....

  And here I am alone. Wind and, just above my head, a low gray twilight. Very deep in the wet glass of the sidewalk are reflections of lights, walls, and people walking with their legs in the air. And the incredibly heavy paper roll in my hand is pulling me downward toward the bottom.

  Again U was not at the desk downstairs, and her room was dark and empty.

  I went up to my place and turned on the light. Compressed inside the tight hoop, my temples were pounding, and I was still walking locked into the same circle: table, on the table the white rolled paper, bed, door, table, white roll ... The blinds were down in the room to the left. In the one to the right, bent over a book, was the bumpy bald spot and the forehead like a huge yellow parabola. The wrinkles on the forehead make a row of yellow illegible lines. At times, when our eyes meet, I have the feeling that these yellow lines are about me.

  ... It happened precisely at 21:00. U herself walked in. I remember with clarity only one thing: I was breathing so loud that I could hear it and kept trying to turn it down—but couldn’t.

  She sat down and smoothed out her yuny on her knees. The pinkish brown gills trembled.

  “Oh, my dear, so it’s true—you were hurt? As soon as I heard about it, just now...”

  The rod was in front of me on the table. I jumped up, breathing even louder. She heard this, stopped in the middle of what she was saying, and also, for some reason, stood up. I could already see the spot on her head, it was disgustingly sweet in my mouth, I reached for my handkerchief, had no handkerchief, and spat on the floor.

  He was there beyond the wall on the right, with his yellow intense wrinkles—about me. He mustn’t see it. It would be even more repulsive if he was watching.... I pressed the button—so what if I had no right, what difference could that make now?—and the blinds went down.

  She evidently sensed something, understood, and threw herself toward the door. But I beat her to it, still breathing loudly, and never for a moment took my eyes off that spot on her head....

  “You ... you’ve gone crazy! Don’t you dare ...” She backed away and sat or rather fell down on the bed and put her clasped hands, trembling, between her knees. I was pure compression. Still holding her tethered with my eyes, I slowly stretched my hand out to the table—only one arm moved—and closed it on the rod.

  “I’m begging you! A day—just one day! Tomorrow, I promise you, tomorrow, I’ll go and do everything....”

  What was she talking about? I swung the rod....

  And I consider that I killed her. That’s right, my unknown readers, you have every right to call me a murderer. I know I would have brought the rod down on her head, if she hadn’t shouted: “In the name of ... don’t ... I agree ... Give me a second ...”

  And with shaking hands she tore off her yuny—and her large, yellow, flabby body fell over backward on the bed. ... And only then did I understand. She thought the blinds ... that I’d let them down to ... that I wanted to ...

  This was such a shock, so stupid, that I suddenly howled with laughter. And the tight spring that I’d become suddenly burst, my arm lost all its strength, the rod clattered on the floor. And that was when I learned from my own experience that a laugh can be a terrifying weapon. With a laugh you can kill even murder itself.

  I sat at the table and laughed—a desperate, ultimate laugh. I couldn’t see any way out of this whole idiotic situation. I don’t know how it would have ended if it had taken its natural course—but at this point a new, external ingredient suddenly popped up: The phone rang.

  I dashed to the phone and lifted the receiver—maybe it was her. Someone’s unfamiliar voice said: “One moment, please....”

  A merciless eternal hum. From somewhere far off I could hear heavy footsteps coming nearer, more resonant, more cast iron ... and then: “D-503? Ah ... You’re speaking to the Benefactor. Report to me immediately!” Dink: He hung up. Dink.

  U was still lying on the bed, her eyes closed, her gills spread wide in a smile. I swept her clothes up off the floor, flung them to her, and said, through my teeth: “Come on! Hurry up!”

  She lifted herself on her elbows, her breasts flopped to the sides, her eyes were round and the rest of her waxy.

  “What ...?”

  “Never mind what. Come on, get dressed!”

  Clutching her clothes, she went through contortions, and said in a crushed voice: “Turn away....”

  I turned away and leaned against the glass with my forehead. Lights, figures, sparks trembled on the black, wet mirror. No, it’s not the mirror trembling, it’s me. Why’d He call me? Could He already know about her, about me, about everything?

  U is at the door, already dressed. In two steps I’m by her side, squeezing her hand as if I could squeeze out of it, drop by drop, what I needed: “Listen to me.... Her name—you know who—did you give them her name? No? Tell me the truth, I’ve got to know. It doesn’t matter, just tell me the truth....”

  “No.”

  “No? Then how come ... once you’d already gone there to report ... ?”

  Her lower lip suddenly turns inside out, like that boy’s, and down her cheeks ran drops....

  “Because I ... I was afraid that if I gave them her ... that you might ... that you’d stop lov ... Oh, I can’t—I couldn’t have!”

  I understood. This was the truth. The stupid, ridiculous human truth! I opened the door.

  RECORD 36

  Blank Pages The Christian God About My Mother

  Here’s something strange. My head’s like a blank, white page. How I went there, how I waited (I know I waited)—none of that do I remember, not a sound, not a face, not a gesture. As if all the lines between me and the world had been cut.

  When I came to myself, I was already standing in front of Him, and I was too terrified to raise my eyes. All I could see were His huge cast-iron hands, resting on His knees. These hands were heavy even on Him, His knees gave under them. He moved His fingers slowly. His face was up there somewhere in a mist, and the only reason why His voice didn’t roar like thunder, didn’t deafen me, and sounded like an ordinary human voice, was that it reached me from such a height.

  “So ... you too? You, the Builder of the INTEGRAL? You, to whom it was given to become greatest among the conquistadors. You, whose name was to have begun a new, brilliant chapter in the history of OneState.... You?”

  The blood rushed into my head, my cheeks—and again the page is blank except for a beating pulse in my temples and, above, that echoing voice—but not a word remains. Only when he’d stopped talking did I come to. I saw the hand move as though it weighed a thousand pounds, slowly creep up, and point a finger at me.

  “Well? Why are you silent? Is it so or isn’t it? Is executioner the word?”

  “It is,” I answered meekly. And from that point I clearly heard His every word.

  “What? You think I fear this word? But have you ever made the experiment of removing its outer shell to examine what is inside? I shall now show you. Remember the scene: a blue hill, a cross, a crowd. Some are up on top, bespattered with blood, nailing the body to the cross; others are below, bespattered with tears, looking on. Does it not strike you that those above are playing the most difficult, the most important role of all? If it weren’t for them, would this magnificent tragedy ever have been mounted? They were hissed by the vulgar crowd, but this very fact should earn them even more munificent rewards from God, the author of the tragedy. An
d this same Christian, all-merciful God—the one who slowly roasts in the fires of Hell all those who rebel against him—is he not to be called executioner? And those whom the Christians burned at the stake, are they fewer in number than the Christians who were burnt? But, all of this notwithstanding, you see, this is still the God who has been worshipped for centuries as the God of love. Absurd? No, on the contrary. It is the patent, signed in blood, of man’s indelible good sense. Even then, in his savage, shaggy state, he understood: A true algebraic love of mankind will inevitably be inhuman, and the inevitable sign of the truth is its cruelty. Just as the inevitable sign of fire is that it burns. Can you show me a fire that does not burn? Well? Prove it! Put up an argument!”

  How could I argue? How could I dispute what were (formerly) my own thoughts? Not that I would ever have been able to clothe them in such forged, gleaming armor. I didn’t say anything....

  “If this means you agree with me, then let’s talk like grown-ups after the children have gone to bed, holding nothing back. I ask this question: What is it that people beg for, dream about, torment themselves for, from the time they leave swaddling clothes? They want someone to tell them, once and for all, what happiness is—and then to bind them to that happiness with a chain. What is it we’re doing right now, if not that? The ancient dream of paradise ... Remember: In paradise they’ve lost all knowledge of desires, pity, love—they are the blessed, with their imaginations surgically removed (the only reason why they are blessed)—angels, the slaves of God.... And now, at the very moment when we’ve achieved this dream, when we have seized it like this (He squeezed his hand shut so tight that if a rock had been in it, juice would have shot out), when all that remained was to dress the kill and divide it into portions—at this very moment you—you ...”

  The cast-iron rumble suddenly broke off. I was red as a lump of pig-iron on the anvil under a striking hammer. The hammer drew back in silence and ... the wait is more agoniz ...

  Suddenly: “How old are you?”

  “Thirty-two.”

  “And as naive as a sixteen-year-old-half your age! Listen—did it really never once cross your mind that they—we don’t know their names yet but we’re certain to get them out of you—that they need you only as the Builder of the INTEGRAL, only so that through you ...”

  “Don‘t! Don’t!” I shouted.

  Like hiding behind your hands and shouting “don‘t” to a bullet: You could still hear your “don’t” after the bullet’s gone through and you’re twitching on the floor.

  Yes, yes. Builder of the INTEGRAL ... Yes, yes ... and immediately I had a picture of the infuriated face of U with its trembling brick-red gills—that morning when both of them were together in my room....

  I remember it very clearly: I burst out laughing and lifted my eyes. In front of me sat a bald man who resembled Socrates and whose bald pate was covered over with tiny drops of sweat.

  How simple it all was. How magnificently banal and ludicrously simple it all was.

  Laughter was choking me, tearing itself out of me in clumps. I clamped my hands over my mouth and rushed out in headlong confusion.

  Steps, wind, wet, leaping fragments of lights, faces, and, on the run, I think: “No! To see her! To see her just once more!”

  Another blank white page comes right here. All I remember is—feet. Not people but just—feet, hundreds of feet, a heavy rain of feet, falling out of somewhere onto the sidewalk, stamping every which way. And some sort of song, playful, not very nice, and a shout: “Hey! You! C’mon over here!”

  After this comes a deserted square, filled to the top with a tense wind. In the middle of it: a dim, ponderous, ominous mass—the Machine of the Benefactor. And from it—there is a sort of surprising echo in me: a blindingly white pillow; on the pillow is a reclining head with half-closed eyes; a sharp, sweet band of teeth ... And this is all somehow idiotically, horribly connected with the Machine—I know how it is connected, but I still don’t want to see it, to say it aloud—I don’t want to, I mustn’t.

  I closed my eyes and sat down on the steps leading up to the Machine. It must have been raining: my face was wet. Somewhere far off I hear muffled shouting. But no one hears me, no one hears me shouting: Save me from this—Help!

  If only I had a mother, the way the ancients had. I mean my own mother. And if for her I could be—not the Builder of the INTEGRAL, and not Number D-503, and not a molecule of OneState, but just a piece of humanity, a piece of her own self—trampled, crushed, outcast.... And suppose I do the nailing or they nail me—maybe that’s all the same —but she would hear me, she would hear what no one else hears, and her old lips, her old wrinkled lips ...

  RECORD 37

  Infusorian Doomsday Her Room

  In the morning in the dining room my neighbor to the left whispered to me in a frightened voice: “Eat, will you! They’re watching you!”

  It took all my strength to smile. And at that it felt like some kind of rupture across my face: I smile, the rupture cracks open wider, and it hurts all the worse....

  So it went. I’d just manage to spear a cube on my fork when the fork would start shaking in my hand and clink against the plate—whereupon everything started shaking and ringing, the tables, walls, dishes, air, and outside a huge round iron clamor reached all the way, over heads, over houses, to the sky, and then petered out far away in barely noticeable little rings like ripples on water.

  I looked up to see faces instantly drained of all color, mouths paralyzed in mid-action, forks frozen in the air.

  Then everything went haywire, shot off the familiar rails, everybody jumped up from his place (without singing the Hymn) every which way, out of time, still chewing, choking, groping one another: “What was that? What happened? What?” And these disorderly splinters of the once-great sleek Machine—they all scattered downstairs, to the elevators—down the stairs—steps—stamping—fragments of words—like bits of a shredded letter whipped away by the wind....

  From all the neighboring buildings they came scattering out in the same way, and after a minute the avenue looked like a drop of water under the microscope: infusoria locked in the transparent glassy droplet going berserk—sideways, up, down.

  “Aha!” goes this triumphant voice, and I see in front of me the back of someone’s head and a finger pointed up at the sky. I very vividly remember the yellow-pink fingernail and at the base of the nail a white crescent, like the moon creeping above the horizon. And this finger was like a compass: Hundreds of eyes followed it and looked at the sky.

  There, rainclouds were tearing along trying to escape some invisible thing chasing them, crushing and leaping across one another, and, tinted with the color of the clouds, the dark aeros of the Guardians, dangling the black elephant snouts of their spy-tubes, and farther still, in the west, something that looked like ...

  At first nobody understood what it was. Even I, who’d found out a lot more (alas) than anyone else, didn’t understand. It looked like a huge swarm of black aeros—quick little dots that you could hardly see at some incredible altitude. They get closer and closer. Hoarse, guttural droplets of sound come down to us. Finally there are birds overhead. They fill the sky: sharp, black, piercing, falling triangles. Beaten down by a storm, they swarm on cupolas, on roofs, on pillars, on balconies.

  “Aha-a.” The triumphant head turned round, and I saw who it was—him, the beetle-browed one. But little remained of his old self—he was like a book that had vanished except for the title. He had somehow crawled out from underneath that eternal overhanging brow and now on his face around his eyes and his lips lines were sprouting like hairs and he was—smiling.

  “Do you understand?” he shouted to me through the whistling of the wind, the wings, the cawing. “Do you understand? They’ve broken through the Wall! The Wall, I’m telling you!”

  Somewhere off in the background, figures with their heads stretched out were flitting past and hurrying to get inside the buildings. In the middle of the sidew
alk there was a quick avalanche of postoperative cases (who nevertheless seemed slowed by their weight); they were headed over there, to the west.

  ... Hairy tufts of rays around his lips, his eyes. I grabbed his hand: “Listen! Where is she—where is I-330? Is she on the other side of the Wall? I need to—do you hear what I’m saying? Right now, I can’t ...”

  “Here!” he shouted through his strong yellow teeth, like a grinning drunk. “She’s here in the city, she’s doing it! Hooha! We’re pulling it off!”

  Who is this “we”? Who am I?

  Around this one were some fifty others, exactly like him, who had crept out from underneath their brows—loud, happy, with sets of strong teeth. Their mouths open to gulp down the storm, waving around their lethal electric weapons (inoffensive enough to look at, but where did they find them?), they were moving west, the same as the postoperatives, but flanking them along Avenue 48, which ran parallel.

  I was stumbling over taut hawsers woven out of wind and running toward her. Why? I don’t know. I was stumbling, the streets were empty, the city was strange and wild, the triumphant clamor of the birds would never cease—it was Doomsday. In several buildings I could see through the glass walls (this sank in) that male and female Numbers were copulating without the least shame, without even lowering the blinds, without so much as a ticket, in broad daylight....

  The building ... her building. The door seemed lost and was standing wide open. The control desk downstairs was empty. The elevator was stuck somewhere in the middle of the shaft. I ran gasping for breath up the endless stairwell. The hallway. The numbers of the doors fly past like the spokes of a wheel: 320, 326, 330 ... I-330!

  Through the glass door. Everything in the room was scattered, mixed up, crushed. Someone in a hurry had flipped a chair over and it was lying there with its four legs in the air like a dead cow. The bed was crazily pulled out at an angle from the wall. Pink tickets were scattered around the floor like fallen petals that had been trampled on.