We / Мы. Книга для чтения на английском языке

I wished she had kept silent – this was altogether out of place. Generally, this dear O… how shall I put it… her tongue is wrongly timed; the speed of the tongue should always be some seconds behind the speed of thought, but certainly not the other way around.

At the end of the avenue, the bell on the Accumulator Tower was loudly striking seventeen. The personal hour was over. I-330 was leaving with the S-shaped male number. His face somehow inspired respect, and now it seemed familiar. I must have met him somewhere, but where?

In parting, I-330 said with another of her X-smiles, “Come to auditorium 112 the day after tomorrow.”

I shrugged. “If I am assigned to that auditorium…”

And she, with an odd certainty, “You will be.”

The woman affected me as unpleasantly as an irresolvable irrational member that has somehow slipped into an equation. And I was glad to remain for at least a few moments alone with dear O.

Hand in hand, we crossed four lines of avenues. At the corner she had to turn right, and I, left.

“I’d like so much to come to you today and let down the blinds. Today, right now…” O timidly raised her round, blue-crystal eyes to me.

How funny she is. What could I say to her? She had come to me only the day before, and she knew as well as I did that our next sexual day was the day after tomorrow. It was simply a case of her usual “words ahead of thought” – like the occasional (and sometimes damaging) premature supply of a spark to a motor.

Before we parted, I kissed her lovely blue eyes, unshadowed by a single cloud, two – no, let me be precise – three times.

Third Entry

I have just looked over what I had written yesterday, and I see that I did not express myself clearly enough. Of course, it is all entirely clear to any of us. But perhaps you, the unknown readers to whom the Integral will bring my notes, have reached only that page in the great book of civilization that our ancestors read some nine hundred years ago. Perhaps you do not know even about such elementary things as the Table of Hours, the Personal Hour, the Maternity Norm, the Green Wall, and the Benefactor. It seems to me ridiculous yet very difficult to speak about all this. It is as if a writer of, say, the twentieth century had to explain in his novel the meaning of “coat,” or “apartment,” or “wife.” Yet, if his novel were to be translated for savages, how could he avoid explaining what a “coat” meant?

I am certain that a savage would look at the “coat” and wonder, “What is it for? It’s only a hindrance.” It seems to me that your response may be exactly the same when I tell you that none of us has been beyond the Green Wall since the Two Hundred Years’ War.

But, my dear readers, a man must think, at least a little. It helps. After all, it is clear that the entire history of mankind, insofar as we know it, is the history of transition from nomadic to increasingly settled forms of existence. And does it not follow that the most settled form (ours) is at the same time the most perfect (ours)? People rushed about from one end of the earth to the other only in prehistoric times, when there were nations, wars, commerce, discoveries of all sorts of Americas. But who needs that now? What for?

I admit, the habit of such settled existence was not achieved easily, or all at once. During the Two Hundred Years’ War, when all the roads fell into ruin and were overgrown with grass, it must at first have seemed extremely inconvenient to live in cities cut off from one another by green jungles. But what of it? After man’s tail dropped off, it must have been quite difficult for him at first to learn to drive off flies without its aid. In the beginning he undoubtedly missed his tail. But now – can you imagine yourself with a tail? Or can you imagine yourself in the street naked, without a coat? (For you may still be trotting about in “coats.”) And so it is with me: I cannot imagine a city that is not dad in a Green Wall; I cannot imagine a life that is not regulated by the figures of our Table.

The Table… At this very moment, from the wall in my room, its purple figures on a field of gold stare tenderly and sternly into my eyes. Involuntarily, my mind turns to what the ancients called an “icon,” and I long to compose poems or prayers (which are the same thing). Oh, why am I not a poet, to render fitting praise to the Table, the heart and pulse of the One State!

As schoolchildren we all read (perhaps you have, too) that greatest literary monument to have come down to us from ancient days – “The Railway Guide.” But set it side by side with our Table, and it will be as graphite next to a diamond: both consist of the same element – carbon – yet how eternal, how transparent is the diamond, how it gleams! Whose breath will fail to quicken as he rushes clattering along the pages of “The Railway Guide”? But our Table of Hours! Why, it transforms each one of us into a figure of steel, a six-wheeled hero of a mighty epic poem. Every morning, with six-wheeled precision, at the same hour and the same moment, we – millions of us – get up as one. At the same hour, in million-headed unison, we start work; and in million-headed unison we end it And, fused into a single million-handed body, at the same second, designated by the Table, we lift our spoons to our mouths. At the same second, we come out for our walk, go to the auditorium, go to the hall for Taylor exercises, fall asleep…

I shall be entirely frank: even we have not yet found an absolute, precise solution to the problem of happiness. Twice a day, from sixteen to seventeen, and from twenty-one to twenty-two, the single mighty organism breaks up into separate cells; these are the Personal Hours designated by the Table. In these hours you will see modestly lowered shades in the rooms of some; others will walk with measured tread along the avenue, as though climbing the brass stairs of the March; still others, like myself now, are at their desks. But I am confident – and you may call me an idealist and dreamer – I am confident that sooner or later we shall fit these Personal Hours as well into the general formula. Some day these 86,400 seconds will also be entered in the Table of Hours.

I have read and heard many incredible things about those times when people still lived in a free, i.e., unorganized, savage condition. But most incredible of all, it seems to me, is that the state authority of that time – no matter how rudimentary – could allow men to live without anything like our Table, without obligatory walks, without exact regulation of mealtimes, getting up and going to bed whenever they felt like it Some historians even say that in those times the street lights burned all night, and people walked and drove around in the streets at all hours of the night.

Try as I may, I cannot understand it. After all, no matter how limited their intelligence, they should have understood that such a way of life was truly mass murder – even if slow murder. The state (humaneness) forbade the killing of a single individual, but not the partial killing of millions day by day. To kill one individual, that is, to diminish the total sum of human lives by fifty years, was criminal. But to diminish the sum of human lives by fifty million years was not considered criminal. Isn’t that absurd? Today, any ten-year-old will solve this mathematical-moral problem in half a minute. They, with all their Kants taken together, could not solve it (because it never occurred to any of the Kants to build a system of scientific ethics, i.e., ethics based on subtraction, addition, division, and multiplication).

And wasn’t it absurd that the state (it dared to call itself a state!) could leave sexual life without any semblance of control? As often and as much as anyone might wish… Totally unscientific, like animals. And blindly, like animals, they bore their young. Isn’t it ridiculous: to know agriculture, poultry-breeding, fish-breeding (we have exact information that they knew all this), yet fail to go on to the ultimate step of this logical ladder – is child-breeding; fail to establish such a thing as our Maternal and Paternal Norms.

It is so absurd, so unbelievable, that I am afraid, as I write this, that you, my unknown readers, will think me a malicious joker. I am afraid you may decide that I am merely trying to mock you, telling you utter nonsense with a straight face.

But, to begin with, I am incapable of jokes, for every joke contains a lie as an implicit function. Secondly, our One State Science asserts that this was how the ancients lived, and our State Science never errs. Besides, where would state logic have come from at a time when men were living in the condition of freedom – the condition of animals, apes, the herd? What could be expected of them, when even in our time the wild, apelike echo still occasionally rises from somewhere below, from some shaggy depth?

Fortunately, only on rare occasions. Fortunately, they are only breakdowns of minor parts which can easily be repaired without halting the eternal, grandiose movement of the entire Machine. And to expel the warped bolt, we have the skilled, heavy hand of the Benefactor and the experienced eyes of the Guardians.

And, by the way, I’ve just remembered. That number I saw yesterday, bent like an S – I think I’ve seen him coming out of the Office of the Guardians. Now I understand that instinctive feeling of respect I had for him, and the sense of awkwardness when the strange I-330 spoke before him… I must confess that this I-330…

The bell for bedtime: it is past twenty-two. Until tomorrow.

Fourth Entry

Until now, everything in life was clear to me (no wonder I seem to have a predilection for the very word “clear”). Yet today… I cannot understand it.

First: I was, indeed, assigned to auditorium 112, as she had told me. Although the probability was

(1500 being the number of auditoriums; 10,000,000, the number of numbers).

And, second… But let me tell it in order, as it happened.

The auditorium – an enormous, sun-drenched hemisphere of massive glass. Circular rows of nobly spherical, smooth-shaven heads. With a slightly palpitating heart I looked around me. I think I was searching for the sight of a rosy crescent – O’s sweet lips – over the blue waves of unifs. A flash of someone’s extraordinarily white, sharp teeth, like… No, but it wasn’t that. O was to come to me at twenty-one that evening. It was entirely natural for me to wish to see her there.

The bell rang. We stood up and sang the Hymn of the One State. And then, from the stage, the voice of the phono-lecturer, glittering with its golden loud-speakers and wit.

“Respected numbers! Our archeologists have recently dug up a certain twentieth-century book in which the ironic author tells the story of a savage and a barometer. The savage noticed that every time the barometer indicated ‘rain’ it actually rained. And since he wanted it to rain, he picked out exactly enough mercury from the column to leave it at ‘rain.’ ” (On the screen – a savage, dressed in feathers, picking out the mercury. Laughter.) “You are laughing. But does it not seem to you that the European of that period was even more ridiculous? Like the savage, the European wanted ‘rain’ – rain with a capital letter, algebraic rain. But all he did was stand before the barometer like a limp wet hen. The savage, at least, had more courage and energy and logic, if only primitive logic He had been able to discover that there was a connection between effect and cause. Picking out the mercury, he was able to take the first step on that great road along which…”

At this point (I repeat, I write these notes without concealing anything) – at this point I became as though impermeable to the vitalizing stream that flowed from the loud-speakers. I was suddenly overcome by the feeling that I had come there for nothing (why “for nothing,” and how could I not have come, since I had been assigned there?). Everything seemed empty to me, nothing but mere husks. And when, by dint of a considerable effort, I managed to switch on my attention again, the phono-lecturer had already gone on to his main topic: our music, mathematical composition. (The mathematician as the cause, music as the effect.) He was describing the recently devised musicometer.

“Simply by turning this handle, any of you can produce up to three sonatas an hour. Yet think how much effort this had cost your forebears! They were able to create only by whipping themselves up to fits of ‘inspiration’ – an unknown form of epilepsy. And here you have a most amusing illustration of what they produced: Scriabin, the twentieth century. They called this black box” (a curtain parted on the stage, revealing their most ancient instrument) “a ‘grand,’ a ‘royal’ instrument, which only shows once more to what extent their entire music…”

And then I lost the thread again, perhaps because… Yes, I will be frank, because she, I-330, came out to the “royal” box. I suppose I was simply startled by her sudden appearance on the stage.

She wore the fantastic costume of the ancient epoch: a closely fitting black dress, which sharply emphasized the whiteness of her bare shoulders and breast, with that warm shadow, stirring with her breath, between… and the dazzling, almost angry teeth…

A smile – a bite – to us, below. Then she sat down and began to play. Something savage, spasmodic, variegated, like their whole life at that time – not a trace of rational mechanical method. And, of course, all those around me were right, they all laughed.

Except for a few… but why was it that I, too… I?

Yes, epilepsy, a sickness of the spirit, pain… Slow, sweet pain – a bite – and you want it still deeper, still more painful. Then, slowly, the sun. Not ours, not that bluish, crystal, even glow through glass bricks, no – a wild, rushing, scorching sun – and off with all your clothing, tear everything to shreds.

The number next to me glanced to the left, at me, and snorted. Somehow, a vivid memory remains: a tiny bubble of saliva blew out on his lips and burst. The bubble sobered me. I was myself again.

Like all the others, I now heard only senseless, hurried clattering. I laughed. There was a feeling of relief; everything was simple. The clever phono-lecturer had given us too vivid a picture of that primitive age. That was all.

With what enjoyment I listened afterward to our present music! (It was demonstrated at the end, for contrast.) The crystalline chromatic measures of converging and diverging infinite series and the synthesizing chords of Taylor and McLauren formulas; the full-toned, square, heavy tempos of “Pythagoras’ Trousers”; the sad melodies of attenuating vibrations; vivid beats alternating with Frauenhofer lines of pauses – like the spectroscopic analysis of planets… What grandeur! What imperishable logic! And how pathetic the capricious music of the ancients, governed by nothing but wild fantasies…

As usual, we walked out through the wide doors of the auditorium in orderly ranks, four abreast. The familiar, doubly bent figure flashed past; I bowed respectfully.

O was to come in an hour. I felt pleasantly and beneficially excited. At home I stepped hurriedly into the office, handed in my pink coupon, and received the certificate permitting me to lower the shades. This right is granted only on sexual days. At all other times we live behind our transparent walls that seem woven of gleaming air – we are always visible, always washed in light We have nothing to conceal from one another. Besides, this makes much easier the difficult and noble task of the Guardians. For who knows what might happen otherwise? Perhaps it was precisely those strange, opaque dwellings of the ancients that gave rise to their paltry cage psychology. “My (sic!) home is my castle.” What an idea!

At twenty-two I lowered the shades, and at the same moment O entered, slightly out of breath. She held up to me her pink lips and her pink coupon. I tore off the stub – and could not tear myself away from her pink mouth until the very last second – twenty-two-fifteen.

Afterward I showed her my “notes” and spoke (I think I spoke very well) about the beauty of the square, the cube, the straight line. She listened with such enchanting pink attention, and suddenly a tear dropped from the blue eyes, then a second, a third, right on the open page (page 7). The ink ran. Now I shall have to copy the page.

“Darling D, if only you – if…”

“If” what? If… Her old song again about a child? Or, perhaps, something new – about… about the other one? But this would… No, really, it would be too absurd.