We / Мы. Книга для чтения на английском языке

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.