“Then a train passed. It brushed by me, but I thrust my head and arms into the hole. I had done enough for one day, so I crawled back to the platform, went down in the lift, and summoned my bed. Ah what dreams! And again I called you, and again you refused.”
She shook her head and said:
“Don’t. Don’t talk of these terrible things. You make me miserable. You are throwing civilization away.”
“But I had got back the sense of space and a man cannot rest then. I determined to get in at the hole and climb the shaft. And so I exercised my arms. Day after day I went through ridiculous movements, until my flesh ached, and I could hang by my hands and hold the pillow of my bed outstretched for many minutes. Then I summoned a respirator, and started.
“It was easy at first. The mortar had somehow rotted, and I soon pushed some more tiles in, and clambered after them into the darkness, and the spirits of the dead comforted me. I don’t know what I mean by that. I just say what I felt. I felt, for the first time, that a protest had been lodged against corruption, and that even as the dead were comforting me, so I was comforting the unborn. I felt that humanity existed, and that it existed without clothes. How can I possibly explain this? It was naked, humanity seemed naked, and all these tubes and buttons and machineries neither came into the world with us, nor will they follow us out, nor do they matter supremely while we are here. Had I been strong, I would have torn off every garment I had, and gone out into the outer air unswaddled. But this is not for me, nor perhaps for my generation. I climbed with my respirator and my hygienic clothes and my dietetic tabloids! Better thus than not at all.
クーノーは人工呼吸装置（respirator）と衛生服（hygienic clothes）と栄養剤（dietetic tabloids）を持って暗闇の中へと入っていきます ―― 今となっては、地上は人間の身体では住めない状態になっていることが分かります。それでも人間は、裸で存在しているのだ、と、クーノーはうまく説明できないけれど、強い感情に襲われます。
“There was a ladder, made of some primaeval metal. The light from the railway fell upon its lowest rungs, and I saw that it led straight upwards out of the rubble at the bottom of the shaft. Perhaps our ancestors ran up and down it a dozen times daily, in their building. As I climbed, the rough edges cut through my gloves so that my hands bled. The light helped me for a little, and then came darkness and, worse still, silence which pierced my ears like a sword. The Machine hums! Did you know that? Its hum penetrates our blood, and may even guide our thoughts. Who knows! I was getting beyond its power. Then I thought: ‘This silence means that I am doing wrong.’ But I heard voices in the silence, and again they strengthened me.” He laughed. “I had need of them. The next moment I cracked my head against something.”
She sighed.
「・・・それよりこわいのは沈黙だった。それはまるで剣のようにぼくの耳に突き刺さったんだ」（… and, worse still, silence which pierced my ears like a sword） この「沈黙が耳に突き刺さる」という表現、 ふつうなら、 A sudden scream pierced the silence. （突然の悲鳴が静けさを破った）とでもなりますが、クーノーたちの暮らす世界では、マシーンがいつも音をたてている（The Machine hums!）ために、沈黙のほうが耳に刺激を与えていることが分かります。