Anthem | Page 7

the Home of the Actors, which speak and answer all
together, in two great voices. The plays are about toil and how good it
is. Then we walk back to the Home in a straight column. The sky is like
a black sieve pierced by silver drops that tremble, ready to burst
through. The moths beat against the street lanterns. We go to our beds
and we sleep, till the bell rings again. The sleeping halls are white and
clean and bare of all things save one hundred beds.
Thus have we lived each day of four years, until two springs ago when
our crime happened. Thus must all men live until they are forty. At
forty, they are worn out. At forty, they are sent to the Home of the
Useless, where the Old Ones live. The Old Ones do not work, for the
State takes care of them. They sit in the sun in summer and they sit by
the fire in winter. They do not speak often, for they are weary. The Old
Ones know that they are soon to die. When a miracle happens and some
live to be forty-five, they are the Ancient Ones, and the children stare at
them when passing by the Home of the Useless. Such is to be our life,
as that of all our brothers and of the brothers who came before us.
Such would have been our life, had we not committed our crime which
changed all things for us. And it was our curse which drove us to our
crime. We had been a good Street Sweeper and like all our brother
Street Sweepers, save for our cursed wish to know. We looked too long
at the stars at night, and at the trees and the earth. And when we
cleaned the yard of the Home of the Scholars, we gathered the glass
vials, the pieces of metal, the dried bones which they had discarded.
We wished to keep these things and to study them, but we had no place

to hide them. So we carried them to the City Cesspool. And then we
made the discovery.
It was on a day of the spring before last. We Street Sweepers work in
brigades of three, and we were with Union 5-3992, they of the
half-brain, and with International 4-8818. Now Union 5-3992 are a
sickly lad and sometimes they are stricken with convulsions, when their
mouth froths and their eyes turn white. But International 4-8818 are
different. They are a tall, strong youth and their eyes are like fireflies,
for there is laughter in their eyes. We cannot look upon International
4-8818 and not smile in answer. For this they were not liked in the
Home of the Students, as it is not proper to smile without reason. And
also they were not liked because they took pieces of coal and they drew
pictures upon the walls, and they were pictures which made men laugh.
But it is only our brothers in the Home of the Artists who are permitted
to draw pictures, so International 4-8818 were sent to the Home of the
Street Sweepers, like ourselves.
International 4-8818 and we are friends. This is an evil thing to say, for
it is a transgression, the great Transgression of Preference, to love any
among men better than the others, since we must love all men and all
men are our friends. So International 4-8818 and we have never spoken
of it. But we know. We know, when we look into each other's eyes.
And when we look thus without words, we both know other things also,
strange things for which there are no words, and these things frighten
us.
So on that day of the spring before last, Union 5-3992 were stricken
with convulsions on the edge of the City, near the City Theatre. We left
them to lie in the shade of the Theatre tent and we went with
International 4-8818 to finish our work. We came together to the great
ravine behind the Theatre. It is empty save for trees and weeds. Beyond
the ravine there is a plain, and beyond the plain there lies the Uncharted
Forest, about which men must not think.
We were gathering the papers and the rags which the wind had blown
from the Theatre, when we saw an iron bar among the weeds. It was
old and rusted by many rains. We pulled with all our strength, but we
could not move it. So we called International 4-8818, and together we
scraped the earth around the bar. Of a sudden the earth fell in before us,
and we saw an old iron grill over a black hole.

International 4-8818 stepped back. But we pulled at the grill and it gave
way. And