Hush!
IVAN YEGORITCH KRASNYHIN, a fourth-rate journalist,
returns home late at night, grave and careworn, with a peculiar air of
concentration. He looks like a man expecting a police-raid or contemplating
suicide. Pacing about his rooms he halts abruptly, ruffles up his hair, and
says in the tone in which Laertes announces his intention of avenging his
sister:
“Shattered, soul-weary, a
sick load of misery on the heart . . . and then to sit down and
write. And this is called life! How is it nobody has described the agonizing
discord in the soul of a writer who has to amuse the crowd when his heart is
heavy or to shed tears at the word of command when his heart is light? I must
be playful, coldly unconcerned, witty, but what if I am weighed down with
misery, what if I am ill, or my child is dying or my wife in anguish!”
He says this, brandishing
his fists and rolling his eyes. . . . Then he goes into the bedroom
and wakes his wife.
“Nadya,” he says, “I am
sitting down to write. . . . Please don’t let anyone interrupt me. I
can’t write with children crying or cooks snoring. . . . See, too,
that there’s tea and . . . steak or something. . . . You
know that I can’t write without tea. . . . Tea is the one thing that
gives me the energy for my work.”
Returning to his room he
takes off his coat, waistcoat, and boots. He does this very slowly; then,
assuming an expression of injured innocence, he sits down to his table.
There is nothing casual,
nothing ordinary on his writing-table, down to the veriest trifle everything
bears the stamp of a stern, deliberately planned programme. Little busts and
photographs of distinguished writers, heaps of rough manuscripts, a volume of
Byelinsky with a page turned down, part of a skull by way of an ash-tray, a
sheet of newspaper folded carelessly, but so that a passage is uppermost,
boldly marked in blue pencil with the word “disgraceful.” There are a dozen
sharply-pointed pencils and several penholders fitted with new nibs, put in
readiness that no accidental breaking of a pen may for a single second
interrupt the flight of his creative fancy.
Ivan Yegoritch throws
himself back in his chair, and closing his eyes concentrates himself on his
subject. He hears his wife shuffling about in her slippers and splitting
shavings to heat the samovar. She is hardly awake, that is apparent from the
way the knife and the lid of the samovar keep dropping from her hands. Soon the
hissing of the samovar and the spluttering of the frying meat reaches him. His
wife is still splitting shavings and rattling with the doors and blowers of the
stove.
All at once Ivan Yegoritch
starts, opens frightened eyes, and begins to sniff the air.
“Heavens! the stove is
smoking!” he groans, grimacing with a face of agony. “Smoking! That
insufferable woman makes a point of trying to poison me! How, in God’s Name, am
I to write in such surroundings, kindly tell me that?”
He rushes into the kitchen
and breaks into a theatrical wail. When a little later, his wife, stepping
cautiously on tiptoe, brings him in a glass of tea, he is sitting in an easy
chair as before with his eyes closed, absorbed in his article. He does not
stir, drums lightly on his forehead with two fingers, and pretends he is not
aware of his wife’s presence. . . . His face wears an expression of
injured innocence.
Like a girl who has been
presented with a costly fan, he spends a long time coquetting, grimacing, and
posing to himself before he writes the title. . . . He presses his
temples, he wriggles, and draws his legs up under his chair as though he were
in pain, or half closes his eyes languidly like a cat on the sofa. At last, not
without hesitation, he stretches out his hand towards the inkstand, and with an
expression as though he were signing a death-warrant, writes the title.
. . .
“Mammy, give me some
water!” he hears his son’s voice.
“Hush!” says his mother.
“Daddy’s writing! Hush!”
Daddy writes very, very
quickly, without corrections or pauses, he has scarcely time to turn over the
pages. The busts and portraits of celebrated authors look at his swiftly racing
pen and, keeping stock still, seem to be thinking: “Oh my, how you are going
it!”
“Sh!” squeaks the pen.
“Sh!” whisper the authors,
when his knee jolts the table and they are set trembling.
All at once Krasnyhin draws
himself up, lays down his pen and listens. . . . He hears an even
monotonous whispering. . . . It is Foma Nikolaevitch, the lodger in
the next room, saying his prayers.
“I say!” cries Krasnyhin.
“Couldn’t you, please, say your prayers more quietly? You prevent me from
writing!”
“Very sorry.
. . . ” Foma Nikolaevitch answers timidly.
After covering five pages,
Krasnyhin stretches and looks at his watch.
“Goodness, three o’clock
already,” he moans. “Other people are asleep while I . . . I alone
must work!”
Shattered and exhausted he
goes, with his head on one side, to the bedroom to wake his wife, and says in a
languid voice:
“Nadya, get me some more
tea! I . . . feel weak.”
He writes till four o’clock
and would readily have written till six if his subject had not been exhausted.
Coquetting and posing to himself and the inanimate objects about him, far from
any indiscreet, critical eye, tyrannizing and domineering over the little
anthill that fate has put in his power are the honey and the salt of his
existence. And how different is this despot here at home from the humble, meek,
dull-witted little man we are accustomed to see in the editor’s offices!
“I am so exhausted that I
am afraid I shan’t sleep . . . ” he says as he gets into bed. “Our
work, this cursed, ungrateful hard labour, exhausts the soul even more than the
body. . . . I had better take some bromide. . . . God
knows, if it were not for my family I’d throw up the work. . . . To
write to order! It is awful.”
He sleeps till twelve or
one o’clock in the day, sleeps a sound, healthy sleep. . . . Ah! how
he would sleep, what dreams he would have, how he would spread himself if he
were to become a well-known writer, an editor, or even a sub-editor!
“He has been writing all
night,” whispers his wife with a scared expression on her face. “Sh!”
No one dares to speak or
move or make a sound. His sleep is something sacred, and the culprit who
offends against it will pay dearly for his fault.
“Hush!” floats over the
flat. “Hush!”
1886.
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