We / Мы. Книга для чтения на английском языке

It was entirely clear, I said, that this contrast, this impassable abyss between the present and the past…

“But why impassable?” (What white teeth!) “A bridge can be thrown across an abyss. Just think: drums, battalions, ranks – all this has also existed in the past; and, consequently…”

“But of course!” I cried. (What an astonishing coincidence of ideas: she spoke almost my own words, the words I had written down before our walk.) “You understand, even ideas.

And this is because nobody is �one,’ but �one of.’ We are so alike…”

She: “Are you sure?”

I saw her eyebrows raised to her temples at a sharp angle, like the pointed horns of an X, and again I was confused. I glanced right, left, and…

On my right – she, slender, sharp, stubbornly pliant, like a whip, I-330 (I could see her number now); on my left – O, altogether different, all curves, with that childish fold on her wrist; and at the other end of our row, a male number I did not know – strange, doubly bent somehow, like the letter S.

All of us so different…

That one on the right, I-330, seemed to have intercepted my flustered glance, and with a sigh she said, “Yes… Alas!”

Actually, this “alas” was entirely appropriate. But again there was that something in her face, or in her voice… And with a sharpness unusual for me, I said, “No reason for �Alas.’ Science progresses, and it is obvious that, if not now, then in fifty or a hundred years…”

“Even everyone’s noses…”

“Yes,” I almost shouted, “noses.

If there is any ground for envy, no matter what it is… If I have a button-nose and another…”

“Oh, your nose is �classical,’ as they used to say in olden times. But your hands… No, let us see, let us see your hands!”

I detest to have anyone look at my hands: all hairy, shaggy – a stupid atavism.

I held out my hand and said, as indifferently as I could, “An ape’s hands.”

She glanced at my hands, then at my face. “A most interesting conjunction.” She weighed me with her eyes as on a scale, and the horns flicked again at the corners of her eyebrows.

“He is registered with me.” O-90’s lips opened rosily, with eager joy.

I wished she had kept silent – this was altogether out of place.