tired of pacing, I sit down at my desk. I sit motionless, not thinking about anything and not feeling any desires; if there’s a book lying in front of me, I mechanically draw it towards me and read without any interest. Thus, recently, in a single night I mechanically read an entire novel with the strange title
What the Swallow Sang
. 4 Or else, to occupy my attention, I make myself count to a thousand or picture the face of one of my colleagues and begin recalling: in what year and under what circumstances did he take up his post? I like listening to sounds. Two doors away my daughter Liza says something rapidly in her sleep, or my wife crosses the living room with a candle and unfailingly drops the box of matches, or a cupboard creaks from dryness, or the lamp flame suddenly starts to hum—and for some reason all these sounds trouble me.
Not to sleep during the night means to be aware every moment of your abnormality, and therefore I wait impatiently for morning and daylight, when I have the right not to sleep. A long, wearisome time goes by before the cock crows in the yard. He is my first bearer of good tidings. Once he crows, I know that in an hour the hall porter will wake up below and, coughing gruffly, come upstairs for something. And then little by little the air outside the windows will turn pale, voices will be heard in the street …
My day begins with the coming of my wife. She enters my room in a petticoat, her hair not yet done, but already washed, smelling of flower cologne, and with the air of having come in by chance, and each time she says one and the same thing:
“Excuse me, I’ll only stay a moment … You didn’t sleep again?”
Then she puts out the lamp, sits down by the desk and begins to talk. I’m no prophet, but I know beforehand what the talk will be about. It is the same every morning. Usually, after anxious inquiries about my health, she suddenly remembers our son, an officer serving in Warsaw. After the twentieth of each month we send him fifty roubles—that mainly serves as the theme of our conversation.
“Of course, it’s difficult for us,” my wife sighs, “but until he finally gets on his feet, it’s our duty to help him. The boy is in aforeign land, his pay is small … However, if you like, next month we’ll send him not fifty but forty What do you think?”
Everyday experience might have convinced my wife that expenses are not diminished by our frequent talking about them, but my wife does not recognize experience and tells me regularly each morning about our officer, and that the price of bread has gone down, thank God, but sugar has gone up two kopecks—and all this in such a tone as if she were telling me some news.
I listen, mechanically saying yes, and strange, useless thoughts come over me, probably because I haven’t slept all night. I look at my wife and am astonished, like a child. In perplexity, I ask myself: Can it be that this old, very stout, ungainly woman with a dull expression of petty care and fear over a crust of bread, with eyes clouded by constant thoughts of debt and poverty, only capable of talking about expenses and only smiling at bargains—can it be that this woman was once that same slender Varya whom I passionately loved for her good, clear mind, her pure soul, her beauty, and, as Othello loved Desdemona, “that she did pity” my science? Can this be that same wife Varya who once bore me a son?
I peer intently into the flabby, ungainly old woman’s face, searching for my Varya in her, but nothing has survived from the past except her fear for my health and her way of calling my salary our salary and my hat our hat. It pains me to look at her, and to comfort her at least a little I let her say whatever she likes, and even say nothing when she judges people unfairly or chides me for not having a practice or publishing textbooks.
Our conversation always ends in the same way. My wife suddenly remembers that I have not had my tea yet and
What the Swallow Sang
. 4 Or else, to occupy my attention, I make myself count to a thousand or picture the face of one of my colleagues and begin recalling: in what year and under what circumstances did he take up his post? I like listening to sounds. Two doors away my daughter Liza says something rapidly in her sleep, or my wife crosses the living room with a candle and unfailingly drops the box of matches, or a cupboard creaks from dryness, or the lamp flame suddenly starts to hum—and for some reason all these sounds trouble me.
Not to sleep during the night means to be aware every moment of your abnormality, and therefore I wait impatiently for morning and daylight, when I have the right not to sleep. A long, wearisome time goes by before the cock crows in the yard. He is my first bearer of good tidings. Once he crows, I know that in an hour the hall porter will wake up below and, coughing gruffly, come upstairs for something. And then little by little the air outside the windows will turn pale, voices will be heard in the street …
My day begins with the coming of my wife. She enters my room in a petticoat, her hair not yet done, but already washed, smelling of flower cologne, and with the air of having come in by chance, and each time she says one and the same thing:
“Excuse me, I’ll only stay a moment … You didn’t sleep again?”
Then she puts out the lamp, sits down by the desk and begins to talk. I’m no prophet, but I know beforehand what the talk will be about. It is the same every morning. Usually, after anxious inquiries about my health, she suddenly remembers our son, an officer serving in Warsaw. After the twentieth of each month we send him fifty roubles—that mainly serves as the theme of our conversation.
“Of course, it’s difficult for us,” my wife sighs, “but until he finally gets on his feet, it’s our duty to help him. The boy is in aforeign land, his pay is small … However, if you like, next month we’ll send him not fifty but forty What do you think?”
Everyday experience might have convinced my wife that expenses are not diminished by our frequent talking about them, but my wife does not recognize experience and tells me regularly each morning about our officer, and that the price of bread has gone down, thank God, but sugar has gone up two kopecks—and all this in such a tone as if she were telling me some news.
I listen, mechanically saying yes, and strange, useless thoughts come over me, probably because I haven’t slept all night. I look at my wife and am astonished, like a child. In perplexity, I ask myself: Can it be that this old, very stout, ungainly woman with a dull expression of petty care and fear over a crust of bread, with eyes clouded by constant thoughts of debt and poverty, only capable of talking about expenses and only smiling at bargains—can it be that this woman was once that same slender Varya whom I passionately loved for her good, clear mind, her pure soul, her beauty, and, as Othello loved Desdemona, “that she did pity” my science? Can this be that same wife Varya who once bore me a son?
I peer intently into the flabby, ungainly old woman’s face, searching for my Varya in her, but nothing has survived from the past except her fear for my health and her way of calling my salary our salary and my hat our hat. It pains me to look at her, and to comfort her at least a little I let her say whatever she likes, and even say nothing when she judges people unfairly or chides me for not having a practice or publishing textbooks.
Our conversation always ends in the same way. My wife suddenly remembers that I have not had my tea yet and
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