RE~INISCENCES
OF BABEL
395
husband in
an angry '
whisper for renting the room
to
him and
letting a stranger into the house.
"What will you get out of it, you skinflint? Perhaps another
hundred thousand
?II
But then he'll make you lose your best cus–
tomers." ...
The nights in the Moldavanka seemed long. The bleary light
of a distant street-lamp fell on the shabby wallpaper that had a
vinegary smell. Often from the street came the sound of business–
like steps, a shrill whistle and, once even, an actual gunshot followed
by hysterical female laughter. The sound came through the brick
wall and seemed to be sealed into it at once.
He longed to go back to Ekaterinskaya Street. There, behind
the thick walls of his apartment of the fourth floor, it was quiet,
dark and safe, and the manuscript of his latest story, corrected and
rewritten dozens of times, lay on the desk.
Babel would go up to his desk and stroke his manuscript cau–
tiously as though it were a wild creature which had still not been
properly domesticated. Often he would get up during the night
and reread three or four pages by the light of an oil lamp against
which he propped an enormous encyclopedia as a shade. He would
always find a few unnecessary words and throw them out with
malicious glee. He used to say "Your language becomes clear and
strong, not when you can no longer add a sentence, but when you
can no longer take away from it."
Everybody who saw Babel at work, particularly at night, (and
this was difficult because he always hid himself away to write) was
struck by his sad face and his peculiar expression of kindness and
sorrow.
Babel would have given a great deal during those barren nights
in
the Moldavanka to be able to return to his manuscripts. But as
a writer he felt like a soldier on reconnaissance patrol and thought
that in the name of literature he had to endure everything: the
loneliness, the stench of the extinguished kerosene lamp that caused
bad fits of asthma, the
sobs
and cries of women behind the walls of
the houses. No, he couldn't give up.
One night it suddenly occurred to Babel that Cires must be a
3. There was galloping inflation at that time.
