REMINISCENCES OF BABEL
405
voice. "I'm a Jew, a kike. Sometimes I think there's nothing I
can't understand, but one thing I'll never understand: .the reason
for this black vileness which bears such a humdrum name as anti–
Semitism." He fell silent. I too was silent and waited for
him
to
calm down and for his hands to stop trembling.
"I went through a pogrom when I was a child and survived.
But they twisted the head off my dove. Why? . . . I hope my wife
doesn't come in," he whispered. "Lock the door. She doesn't like
this sort of talk. And she might easily cry all night. She thinks I'm
a very lonely man and perhaps she's right."
What could I say? I was silent.
"So there!" said Babel, bending myopically over his type–
script. "I work like a mule, but I'm not complaining. I chose this
forced labor myself. I'm like a galley slave, chained for life to his
oar and in love with it, with every detail of it, with the very wood
polished by his hands. After years of contact with human skin the
roughest wood takes on a fine color and becomes like ebony. It's
just the same with our words, with the Russian language. You
have only to put your warm hand to it and it becomes a living
and
precious thing.
"But one thing at a time. When I write down the first version
of a story, the manuscript looks disgusting, absolutely horrible! It's
a conglomeration of more or less successful bits, joined together by
the dreariest connecting links, what are called "transitions," but
which are really like dirty ropes. Read the first version of "Lyubka
the Cossack" and you will see that it is nothing but a futile, tooth–
less prattling, a clumsy assortment of words. It's at this point that
you have to get down to work. This is where it begins. I check
sentence after sentence and not once, but many times. First I throw
out the useless words. You need a sharp eye for that, because
language
is
very good at concealing its garbage of repetitions,
synonyms and outright absurdities; it seems to be trying to outwit
you all the time.
"After this, I retype the manuscript to see the text better and
I
put it aside for two or three days-that is, if my impatience doesn't
get the better of me-and then I check it again, sentence by sen–
tence, word by word. And again I'm certain to find a number of
weeds
and nettles I've missed. And thus I
go
on, retyping the text
