Emma K. Thomas

“I-330, darling, before it’s too late…. If you want, I’ll throw it all away, I’ll forget about it… and we’ll go together, over there, beyond the Wall, to those…I don’t know who they are.”

She shook her head. Through the dark windows of her eyes, there, on the inside, I see the stove burning, sparks, tongues of flames leaping up, piles of dry, resinous wood. And I see that it’s already too late. My words can no longer do any…

She got up. She’s about to leave. It may be that these are the final days…or final minutes. I grabbed her by the hand.

“No! Just a little while longer… for the sake of….”

Slowly she lifted my hand up into the light, my shaggy hand, which I so detested. I tried to pull back, but she held on tight.

“Your hand… You don’t know, there are few who do know, that there are women from here, from the city, who have come to love those others over there. You, too, probably have a drop or two of that sunny forest blood. Maybe that’s why I…”

There was a pause, and strangely enough, the pause, the blank, the nothing, made my heart race. And I shout:

“Oh good! You aren’t leaving yet! You won’t leave until you tell me about them, because you love…them, and I don’t even know who they are, where they come from. Who are they? Are they the half we’ve lost – the H2 to our O, that have to be joined as H2O to make streams, seas, waterfalls, waves, storms?”

From We by Yevgeny Zamyatin.

Published by Penguin Classics.