We / Мы. Книга для чтения на английском языке

Intolerably sweet lips (I suppose it must have been the taste of the “liqueur”) – and a mouthful of fiery poison flowed into me – then more, and more… I broke away from the earth and, like a separate planet, whirling madly, rushed down, down, along an unknown, uncalculated orbit…

What followed can be described only approximately, only by more or less close analogies.

It has never occurred to me before, but this is truly how it is: all of us on earth walk constantly over a seething, scarlet sea of flame, hidden below, in the belly of the earth.

We never think of it. But what if the thin crust under our feet should turn into glass and we should suddenly see… I became glass. I saw – within myself. There were two of me. The former one, D-503, number D-503, and the other… Before, he had just barely shown his hairy paws from within the shell; now all of him broke out, the shell cracked; a moment, and it would fly to pieces and… And then… what?

With all my strength, as though clutching at a straw, I gripped the arms of the chair and asked – only to hear myself, the other self, the old one, “Where… where did you get this… this poison?”

“Oh, this! A certain doctor, one of my…”

“ �One of my…’? �One of my’ – what?” And suddenly the other leaped out and yelled, “I won’t allow it! I want no one but me.

I’ll kill anyone who… Because I… Because you… I…”

I saw – he seized her roughly with his shaggy paws, tore the silk, and sank his teeth into… I remember exactly – his teeth…

I don’t know how, but I-330 managed to slip away.

And now – her eyes behind that damned impermeable shade – she stood leaning with her back against the wardrobe and listened to me.

I remember – I was on the floor, embracing her legs, kissing her knees, pleading, “Now, right this minute, right now…”

Sharp teeth, sharp mocking triangle of eyebrows. She bent down and silently unpinned my badge.

“Yes! Yes, darling, darling.” I hurriedly began to throw off my unif But I-330 just as silently showed me the watch on my badge. It was five minutes to twenty-two and a half.

I turned cold. I knew what it meant to be seen in the street after twenty-two and a half. My madness vanished as if blown away. I was myself. And one thing was clear to me: I hate her, hate her, hate her!

Without a good-by, without a backward glance, I rushed out of the room.