Yevgeny Zamyatin

“ Now I Noticed that the blue smoke came from a cigarette. She brought the cigarette to her lips, and eagerly drew in and swallowed the smoke as I did water; then she said:
“Don’t. Be silent. Don’t you see it matters very little? I came, anyway. They are waiting for me below. . . . Do you want these minutes, which are our last . . .?”
Abruptly she threw the cigarette on the floor and bent backward, over the side of the chair, to reach the button in the wall (it was quite difficult to do) , and I remember how the chair swayed slightly, how two of its legs were lifted. Then the curtains fell. ”

“ You! I have been . . . I saw your room. . . . I thought you . . .” But midway I hurt myself upon the sharp, motionless spears of her eyelashes, and I stopped. I remembered: she had looked at me in the same way before, in the Integral I felt I had to tell her everything in one split second, and in such a way that she would surely believe, or she would never . . .
“Listen, I-330, I must . . . I must . . . everything! ”

“ Layout 2
⁠Record Thirty-Eight
⁠I Don’t Know What Title-Perhaps the Whole
⁠Synopsis May Be Called a Castoff Cigarette Butt
I awoke. A bright glare painful to look at. I half-closed my eyes. My head seemed filled with some caustic blue smoke. Everything was enveloped in fog, and through the fog:
“But I did not turn on the light . . . then how is it . . .” ”