We

by Yevgeny Zamyatin

I brightened up: “So, you too are writing for the Integral? Well, tell me, what about it? What, at least, for example, did you write today?” “Today—about nothing. I was busy with other things . . .” The “b” sprayed straight at me. “What other things?” R grimaced: “Thing things! Well, if you want to know, there was a conviction. I was waxing poetic on the occasion of a conviction. One idiot, one of our own poets . . . he sat among us for two years as though everything was normal. And then suddenly—get this—‘I,’ he says, ‘I am a genius, a genius—above the law.’ And blathered on like that . . . so you see, that’s what . . . ugh!”