We: New Edition Read online

Down in the vestibule the controller was sitting at her little desk looking at her watch and jotting down the Numbers who were coming in. Her name is U ... but maybe I’d better not give her numbers. I’m afraid I might write something bad about her. Though in fact she really is a quite decent old woman. The one thing I don’t like about her is the way her cheeks hang down—they look like gills. (Though what’s wrong with that?)

  She made a scratch with her pen, and I saw myself on the page: D-503. And right next to it an inkblot.

  I was just about to point this out to her when suddenly she raised her head and dribbled one of her inky little smiles at me: “Oh, yes. There’s a letter for you, dear. You’ll get it, you’ll get it.”

  I knew that the letter, which she’d already read, still had to go through the Bureau of Guardians (I don’t suppose there’s any need to explain this natural procedure), and I’d get it by 12:00. But that little smile worried me. The drop of ink in it made my pure solution all cloudy. It got so bad that later on, at the building site of the INTEGRAL, I couldn’t concentrate and even made a computational error, something that never happens with me.

  At 12:00 I had to face the pinkish-brown gills and the little smile again and finally got to hold my letter in my own hands. I don’t know why, but I didn’t read it right away. I stuck it in my pocket and hurried off to my room. I opened it, skimmed through it quickly, and sat down. It was an official notification that I-330 had been assigned to me and that today at 21:00 hours I was to report to her at ... and the address was given.

  No. After all that had happened, after I’d gone out of my way to make it perfectly clear to her how I felt. What’s more, she didn’t even know if I’d been to the Bureau of Guardians or not. She had no way of knowing I’d been sick. Or at least that I couldn’t... And in spite of everything...

  A dynamo was whirling and humming in my head. Buddha ... yellow ... lily-of-the-valley ... pink crescent moon. Yes, and what about ... How about O, who was supposed to drop by today? Should I show her this notification about I-330? I don’t know. She wouldn’t believe it. (And how could anybody believe it, anyway?) She wouldn’t believe that I had nothing to do with it, that I was completely ... And I knew there’d be a hard, stupid, totally illogical conversation. Oh no, spare me that. Let’s just settle the whole thing mechanically: I’ll simply send her a copy of the notice.

  I was hurrying to stick the notice in my pocket when I caught sight of my horrible, ape-like hand. I remembered how 1-330 had taken my hand that time on the walk and looked at it. Surely she couldn’t really ...

  And then it was 20:45. A white night. Everything greenish, glassy. But it was some other kind of glass, sort of fragile, not ours, not real glass. It was a thin glass shell, and under the shell was twisting, hurrying, buzzing. And I wouldn’t have been surprised if the cupolas of the auditoriums had suddenly shot up into the air in slow, round puffs of smoke, and the old moon had given me an inky smile like that woman at her little desk this morning, and the blinds had suddenly gone down in every building, and behind the blinds...

  I felt strange. I felt my own ribs, like they were iron rods, and they were in the way, they were actually in the way of my heart, it was too close, there wasn’t enough room. I was standing in front of the glass door with the golden numbers I-330. , She was bent over her desk writing something, her back to me. I went in.

  “Here you are,” I said, and I handed her the pink ticket. “I got the notice today and I’m reporting for duty.”

  “How punctual you are! Just a minute—do you mind? Have a seat, I’ll just finish this.”

  She lowered her eyes again to what she was writing. And what, I wondered, was there inside her head, behind the lowered blinds? What would she say, and what was I to do, after that minute? How could you know, how compute it, when every bit of her came from ... there, from the land of dreams?

  I watched her without saying a word. My ribs were iron rods, there was no room.... When she talks, her face is like a quick, flashing wheel—you can’t see the separate spokes. I saw a strange configuration: Her dark eyebrows pulled up high toward her temples, they made a sardonic sharp triangle; and the two deep lines running from her nose to the corners of her mouth made another, this time with the point up. And these two triangles somehow canceled each other out, made an unpleasant, irritating X on her face, like a cross. Her face was crossed out.

  The wheel began to turn, the spokes blurred together: “You didn’t really go to the Bureau of Guardians, did you?”

  “I was ... I couldn’t. I was sick.”

  “Yes. Well, it’s about what I expected-something was bound to stop you, no matter what [sharp teeth, smile]. But now you are ... in my hands. You remember: Any Number failing to report within 48 hours to the Bureau is to be considered ...”

  My heart was beating so hard that the rods bent. Like a kid—I’d gotten caught like a dumb kid. I kept my dumb mouth shut. And I felt I was trapped hand and foot.

  She stood up and stretched herself lazily. She pressed a button, and the blinds on all sides went down with a light rushing noise. I was cut off from the world—and one on one with her.

  1-330 was somewhere behind my back near the wardrobe. Her yuny made a rustling noise and fell. I listened. My whole body listened. And I recalled ... no. Something flashed by my mind for the hundredth part of a second.

  I recently had to work out the curvature of a new type of street membrane (these membranes, elegantly decorated, are now on all the avenues and record street conversations for the Bureau of Guardians). And I remembered: It was a concave, pink, trembling tympanum—a strange creature with only the one organ—an ear. I was at that moment such a membrane.

  Now the button at the collar snapped, then the one on the breast, then lower ... The glassy silk rustled from her shoulders, round her knees, onto the floor. I heard—and I could hear clearer than I could see—how one foot, then the other, stepped out of the pile of bluish-gray silk.

  The tightly stretched membrane trembles and records the silence. No, make that the sharp striking of a hammer on rods, with interminable pauses. And I hear, I see, that behind me she’s thinking for a second.

  -There ... those were the wardrobe doors ... that was ... some sort of lid closing ... and still silk and more silk ...

  “There now ... it’s okay.”

  I turned around. She had on a light dress of an old-fashioned cut, saffron-yellow. This was a thousand times more evil than wearing nothing at all. Through the thin material you could see two pointed tips that glowed pink like coals seen through ashes. Her knees were tender, round....

  She was sitting in a low armchair. On the little square table in front of her was a flask full of some poisonous-looking green stuff. Two tiny stem glasses. In the corner of her mouth something was giving off fumes, a thin little paper tube, which the ancients used for smoking (can’t remember at the moment what it was called).

  The membrane was still trembling. Inside me the hammer was beating the rods, now heated red-hot. I clearly heard every single blow ... but, what if she heard them, too?

  But she went on calmly smoking and calmly glancing at me and ... knocked off some ashes on my pink ticket.

  As nonchalantly as possible, I asked: “Listen, if that’s how it is, how come you registered for me? And why’d you have me come here?”

  Pretended not to hear. Poured herself a drink and sipped it.

  “Charming liqueur. Have some?”

  This was when I finally understood: It was alcohol. All that had happened yesterday flashed before me: the stone hand of the Benefactor, the unbearable blade of light, and up there on the Cube, the spread-eagled body with the head thrown back. I shuddered.

  “Listen,” I said, “you know it yourself, whoever shall poison himself with nicotine, and especially with alcohol, need expect no mercy from OneState. ...”

  “To destroy a few quickly makes more sense than to allow the many to ruin themselves, to degenerate, etc., etc. That is indecent
ly true.”

  “Yes ... indecently. ”

  “And just you take this little grouplet of truths, all naked and bald, and let them out on the street.... No, really, just imagine. Take that most constant of all my admirers—you know who I mean—and let him divest himself of that lie known as clothing, let him appear in his true form before the public.... Oh, my god!”

  She laughed. But I could see quite clearly that lower of her two triangles, the sorrowful one, the two deep lines from her nose to the corners of her mouth. And somehow these lines made me understand something: that double-bowed, hunch-backed, wing-eared ... he’d embraced her ... and just as she was now ... he’d ...

  By the way, right now I’m trying to convey the feelings I had at that time, which were not normal. Now, though, when I am writing this, I realize perfectly that all that was as it should be, that he’s just as entitled to happiness as every other honest Number, and it wouldn’t be fair ... but that’s all clear enough.

  1-330’s very strange laughing went on for a long time. Afterward she looked hard at me, right into me, and said, “But the main thing is that I’m not worried about you. You’re so nice. Oh, I’m certain you would not even think of going to the Bureau and informing about my drinking liquor and smoking. You’ll be sick, or you’ll be busy, or you’ll be ... I don’t know what. What is more, I’m certain that right now you are going to drink some of this charming poison with me.... ”

  Her tone was so impudent, so full of mockery. I definitely felt: Now I hate her again. But why again? I always hated her.

  She drained one of the little glasses of green poison, stood up, and, glowing pink through the saffron, took several steps that brought her up behind my chair.

  Suddenly her arm crept round my neck, lips touched lips, went deeper, things got even scarier.... I swear, this was a total surprise for me, and maybe that’s the only reason why ... Because I could not have ... I now understand this with absolute clarity ... I could not possibly have desired what happened next.

  Unbearably sweet lips (the liqueur, I suppose) ... and I tasted a swallow of burning poison, and another, and another, and I broke free of the earth, a free planet, whirling furiously, down, down, along some orbit yet to be calculated.

  The rest I can describe only approximately, only with the help of more or less close analogies.

  Somehow this never entered my head before, but this is really how it is: We on this earth are walking the whole time above a boiling crimson sea of fire, hidden down there in the bowels of the earth. But we never think of it. And then suddenly the thin shell beneath our feet seems to turn to glass, and suddenly we see....

  I became glass. I saw into myself, inside.

  There were two me’s. One me was the old one, D-503, Number D-503, and the other ... The other used to just stick his hairy paws out of his shell, but now all of him came out, the shell burst open, and the pieces were just about to fly in all directions ... and then what?

  Like grasping at a straw with all my strength, I grasped the arms of the chair and asked, just to hear what that old me sounded like: “Where ... where’d you get this ... poison?”

  “Oh, this? Just a doctor. One of my ...”

  “My! One of my!? Who?”

  It was that other me. He suddenly jumped out and started screaming: “I won’t stand for it! I don’t want anyone but me to ... I’ll kill anyone who ... Because I lo ... I ...”

  I saw it. I saw how he grabbed her with his hairy paws, tore the thin silk from her, sank his teeth ... I remember it clearly: his teeth.

  I don’t remember how it happened, but 1-330 slipped away. And then (her eyes were behind those damned blinds) she was standing there, her back against the wardrobe, listening to me.

  I remember I was on the floor hugging her legs, kissing her knees. And I was begging, “Now, right now, this minute ...”

  The sharp teeth, the sharp mocking triangle of her brows. She leaned over and undid my badge, not saying a word.

  “Yes! Yes, darling ... darling.” I started throwing my yuny off. But she, still without saying a word, brought the watch in my badge right up to my eyes. In five minutes it would be 22:30.

  That put a chill on me. I knew what it meant to show yourself on the street after 22:30. All my madness seemed to be blown away from me all of a sudden. I was me again. One thing was clear: I hated her, I hated her, I hated her!

  Without saying good-bye or looking back, I rushed out of the room. Pinning my badge back on as I ran down the steps (taking the emergency stairs for fear of running into somebody in the elevator), I ran out onto the empty avenue.

  Nothing was out of place—the usual simple, customary, normal scene: glass buildings shining with lights, pale glass sky, the greenish quiet night. But underneath this quiet cool glass something wild, crimson, and hairy was silently rushing along. And I was racing along, fighting for breath, trying not to be late.

  Suddenly I felt that the badge I’d stuck back on so hastily was coming ofF—it came off, and clattered as it hit the glass sidewalk. I bent over to retrieve it, and in the momentary silence I heard someone’s footsteps behind me. I turned.

  Something small and bent was rounding the corner, or at least that’s how it seemed to me at the time.

  I took off as fast as 1 could and heard nothing but the wind rushing past my ears. At the entrance I stopped: The clock showed one minute remaining before 22:30. I listened hard -no one back there. Stupid ... I’d imagined the whole thing. Effect of the poison.

  That night was torture. The bed under me rose and fell and rose again-sailing along a sinusoid. I kept repeating to myself: “At night the Number’s duty is to sleep. This is just as much an obligation as work during the day. It is required so that one can work during the day. Not to sleep at night is unlawful.” And still I could not, I just could not.

  I’m done for. I’m in no condition to fulfill my obligations to OneState. I ...

  RECORD 11

  No, I Can’t ... Skip the Contents

  Evening. A light mist. The sky is covered over with some milky gold fabric, and you can’t see what’s up there, beyond, higher. The ancients knew what was up there: their magnificent, bored sceptic—God. We know that it’s a crystalline blue, naked, indecent nothing. Now I don’t know what’s there. I’ve learned too much. Knowledge that is absolutely sure it’s infallible—that’s faith. I had a firm faith in myself, I believed I knew everything about myself. And now ...

  I’m in front of a mirror. And for the first time in my life, I swear it, for the very first time in my life, I get a clear, distinct, conscious look at myself; I see myself and I’m astonished, like I’m looking at some “him.” There I am-or rather, there he is: He’s got straight black eyebrows, drawn with a ruler, and between them, like a scar, is a vertical crease (I don’t know if it was there before). Gray, steel eyes, with the circle of a sleepless night around them; and behind that steel-it turns out I never knew what was there. And from that “there” (a “there” that is here and at the same time infinitely far away)-I am looking at myself, at him, and I am absolutely certain that he, with his ruler-straight eyebrows, is a stranger, somebody else, I just met him for the first time in my life. And I’m the real one. I AM NOT HIM.

  No. Period. That’s all nonsense, all those stupid sensations ... they’re phantasms, they come from being poisoned yesterday. Poisoned with what, the swallow of green poison, or her? It doesn’t matter. The only reason I’m writing this down is to show how human reason, even very sharp and exact human reason, can get crazily confused and thrown off the track. This same reason, which has managed to make even infinity, the terror of the ancients, easily digestible by using ...

  The intercom screen clicks. I see the numbers R-13. Good—I’m even glad. For me right now, being alone would ...

  20 minutes later.

  On the surface of the paper, in the two-dimensional world, these lines are right next to each other, but in another world ... I’m starting to lose my fe
el for figures: 20 minutes could be 200 or 200,000. And it’s just as weird to sit here calmly, reasonably, thinking over every word, and write down what just happened between R and me. It’d be just the same as you sitting down in the chair next to your own bed, crossing your legs, and looking with some curiosity at yourself, your very own self, twisting and turning on that bed.

  When R-13 came in, I was completely quiet and normal. I was quite sincere when I began to carry on about what a magnificent job he did of putting the verdict into trochees and how it was his poem more than anything that made mincemeat of that lunatic and destroyed him.

  “And I’ll even say this,” I wound up, “if I got the job of making schematic drawings of the Benefactor’s Machine, I would somehow, without fail, I would somehow work your trochees into that drawing.”

  Suddenly I notice R’s eyes have gone dull and his lips gray.

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  “What do you mean, what? It’s just ... just that I’m bored. You’d think the verdict is all there is. I don’t want to hear about it anymore, that’s all. I don’t want to.”

  He frowned and scratched the back of his head, that little suitcase of his with the strange baggage that I can’t understand. A pause. Then he suddenly located something in that little bag, pulled it out, unfolded it, smoothed it out, and jumped up, his eyes all shiny and laughing:

  “But for your INTEGRAL I am writing something! For that I am writing!”

  His old self again: His lips smacked, he sprayed you, the words welled up in him.

  “Paradise,” he began, and the p meant a spray. “The old legend about Paradise—that was about us, about right now. Yes! Just think about it. Those two in Paradise, they were offered a choice: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness, nothing else. Those idiots chose freedom. And then what? Then for centuries they were homesick for the chains. That’s why the world was so miserable, see? They missed the chains. For ages! And we were the first to hit on the way to get back to happiness. No, wait ... listen to me. The ancient God and us, side by side, at the same table. Yes! We helped God finally overcome the Devil—because that’s who it was that pushed people to break the commandment and taste freedom and be ruined. It was him, the wily serpent. But we gave him a boot to the head! Crack! And it was all over: Paradise was back. And we’re simple and innocent again, like Adam and Eve. None of those complications about good and evil: Everything is very simple, childishly simple —Paradise! The Benefactor, the Machine, the Cube, the Gas Bell, the Guardians: All those things represent good, all that is sublime, splendid, noble, elevated, crystal pure. Because that is what protects our nonfreedom, which is to say, our happiness. Here’s where the ancients would stand around discussing things, weighing this and that, racking their brains: Is it ethical, unethical? ... Well, you get the point. What I’m saying is, there’s this great poem of Paradise, right? Extremely serious in tone, of course ... You understand, don’t you? Isn’t it something?”