Even at school some of the other boys snored, though only softly, and it wasn’t many of them. Life was already painful for some of them, but the pain melted away through their whole sleep instead of pushing its way into their throat. Plus, back then we slept much deeper and our sleep could still hold back any kind of pain. Though I’d still sometimes wake up, even if someone was only snoring ever so slightly.
Later on, after I started working and I was mostly living with much older men, snoring became a nightly torment. Honestly, I was afraid of every coming night. We’d be getting ready for bed, but me, instead of starting to feel sleepy I’d be gripped by fear. Of course, I could wake one guy or another if his snoring got really unbearable. But he’d just turn over from his back to his side, or from one side to the other, and a short while later he’d be snoring again. I tried thinking about something, hoping it might stop me from hearing so intently, but I didn’t have a thought in my head. I’d lie there like I was in a torture chamber. Hell could well be like that — not any of the stuff the priests frighten you with, but rather you’re just lying there being tortured by someone else’s snoring. It fills your ears, your lungs, your throat, your powerlessness, so you’re unable to call out a single word. On top of that, it’s as if you yourself were snoring, though it’s not you who’s doing the snoring. That’s how it is — there are times when other people’s pain is worse than your own.
In fact, at times I lived with guys you might call powerhouses of snoring. In waking life a guy like that was tiny, like a little dried-up pear. Anything that weighed a bit, you’d have to pick it up and carry it for him. If a screw got stuck you’d have to unscrew it for him because he didn’t have the strength. But when it came to snoring he was a powerhouse. It felt like the ceiling was about to lift off and the walls were collapsing, that any minute now the whole place would come crashing down around us as we slept. In other men it was like gelatin boiling, and I’d be boiling along with it. Actually, there were lots of different ways they snored. Some moaned, some squeaked, some gurgled, some rumbled, and once in a while there’d be one who would keep exploding like a shell. You’d jerk awake thinking another war was starting.
In the lodgings the men were always older than me, like I said. Sometimes a lot older. They hadn’t slept properly all through the war, they were still filled to bursting with war, so it was hardly surprising. Sometimes, over vodka one of them would tell a story that in itself stopped you from sleeping, and as if that weren’t bad enough, the other guys would be snoring away. I tried plugging my ears with cotton wool or plasticine, or I’d put my head under my pillow instead of on top of it. None of it did much good. The snoring seemed not to be coming in through my ears, it felt as if it was flowing from someone else’s sleep directly into mine. It was like somebody else’s sleep took over the rhythm of my own. What, you didn’t know that sleep has its rhythm? Everyone’s is different. But everybody sleeps to a rhythm, the same way we live to a rhythm. You can’t separate sleep from life. Things’d be a whole lot easier if you could, if life was here and sleep was over there. Life here, sleep there.
Pardon me for asking, but do you snore? You don’t know. You’ve never shared a bed with anyone who could tell you. I’m sorry to bring up such a question, but it’s a normal human thing. A woman would tell you most honestly. Women sleep differently. Not to mention that they can hear in their sleep.
One time I was living with four older guys in the house of this widow; they put me in there as a fifth. The oldest of them could have been more than three times my age, or so I thought at the time. He was gray as a pigeon. True, much younger men went gray during the war. Often, at a meeting of the workforce I’d look around at everyone’s heads and it was like a field of cabbage that had been blighted by frost. Why is it that most often it’s a person’s hair that shows what they’ve lived through? As I look at you, I don’t see a single gray hair. I wonder how you’ve gone through life. You can see what happened with my hair. These days men go bald instead. And that too, there’s no telling why. Even really young guys. Here in the cabins, you wouldn’t believe how many young men are already bald, or balding. And there hasn’t been a war in a long time, hardly anyone remembers the last one.
At the widow’s place all the men had hair, but they were all going gray, and the oldest one was totally gray. And all four of them snored like the blazes, and when the four of them started up at the same time the widow would pound on the wall from her room. Especially when they’d been drinking.
One time I was so set on edge by it that I thought the only thing to do was smother them. But I got up and went outside instead. I sat on the stoop and lit a cigarette. It was summertime, the air was warm, dawn was beginning to break. I was intending to just sit there till it was time to get ready for work. The widow joined me outside. She hadn’t been able to sleep either, even though there was a thick wall with plastering on both sides between her room and ours, not just a thin partition.
“They’re snoring, huh?” she asked. “Yeah, they woke me up too. In the war I’d even sleep through the bombings. But I’m sensitive to snoring. Do you snore?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “No one ever told me.”
“You’re so young, at the most you might make a little bit of noise when you’re dreaming. Give me a cigarette. I don’t smoke, but I feel like one right now.”
“I left them inside.”
“Too bad. On a close night like this I feel like smoking.” She fanned herself with her nightshirt, she’d come out in the nightshirt with a kind of shawl thrown over it.
“You can finish mine if you like, ma’am,” I said. “There’s enough for a few drags. If you don’t mind.”
“Why should I mind?” she retorted. “Women kiss men and they don’t mind that.” She drew on the cigarette and coughed so violently her breasts almost fell out of her nightshirt. “Ugh, these cigarettes are disgusting. How can you smoke them? Don’t they make you sick? You’re not even a full-grown man yet. And you work too much. I see when you go to work and when you come back. Plus, you never get a decent night’s sleep from all their snoring. At your age you need more sleep. Later on you won’t need as much. Today I can see you’re going to go to work tired. And you work with electricity. Just be careful you don’t get a shock. I admit it is pretty convenient with the electricity, but when I turn it on I’m always afraid.”