he became so savage that he dashed the alarm clock against the floor. His wife fell on him, curses mingled with her putrid morning breath.
That day, at work, while automatically performing endless calculations, he noticed in himself an unhealed sense of outrage forced awakening. Never before had this been so strong. Gradually his excitement waned, but his thoughts would not turn away form the dream of freedom in waking up. It seemed to Hero that if he could but attain his freedom, he would also become free in all other respects. And really he asked so little: nine hours of sleep, but not timed to a required waking-up time – and thus obliging him to go to sleep at ten in the evening if he needed to get up at seven in the morning – but always at his own disposal at any time of day.
Every morning, each awakening seemed to him a whole new birth into the world. And continuing the analogy between awakening and birth, he imagined premature awakening as akin to premature birth. Nine hours of sleep – nine months of pregnancy. A premature baby – a sleep of seven hours – may grow up into a healthy child (a day worth living), but only if it is cared for with special love. In the same way the day following a seven-hour sleep might turn out all right, if the two unslept hours were compensated for by love for a woman or for one’s work. But if sleep is limited to two or three hours, then awakening after such sleep is like abortion. And there will be no new life for you until you make up this deficit at a later time.
In the course of the day copulation occurs between body and soul, so that conception takes place toward evening. Sleep brings you forth for a new life, and every morning you are born anew, a new person, wiser for the experience of the preceding day – the previous life. Sleep is the mother of whom you are born, and on how she is permitted to bring you forth depends on your life – the life of the next day.
Now Hero waited for days off and holidays with a special feeling, not so that he could sleep late, but so that he could wake up by himself. Voluntary awakening had become something sacred for him; and when his wife rudely shook him awake on one of his Sundays, demanding that he start doing some household chore, he hit her in the face with his full strength. His wife was extremely frightened, since he had never even raised his hand against her before. He had enjoyed cultivating in himself a feeling of tormented pride because he had never hit a woman. Now, however, after the first slap in the face, Hero enjoyed the loss of this burdensome innocence; and for the first time his wife did not begin a quarrel, but, seeing that that her husband did not respond to the test stone she threw, again went into the same old routine of insults and shrieks, and only voluntary awakening on days off remained inviolate.
Having gained his first victory over the external world, Hero began to think intently of his weekdays. The sweeter his free awakenings on Sundays became, the more humiliating and intolerable became the forced awakening on weekdays. His work seemed to him a sharp implement with the help of which society intruded upon his spiritual life. Only in time of illness did society agree to give a person the freedom to fall asleep and awaken as his soul required – and then only for the mercenary reason that sleep at such time will serve as medicine, and consequently will return the person to the ranks of the able-bodied.
Hero remembered how sometimes he had wanted to wake up at a particular hour. It had been this way on the morning when he had wanted to meet his wife at the airport after her week-long business trip in the second month of their marriage. He had set the alarm for five a. m., but woke up of his own accord at one minute before five. And thus it always happened when his soul made an effort to participate in his physical life. And only a soulless life was making his awakening forced.
In order to justify a disdainful attitude toward sleep, people reduce it to the supposedly elementary repose of the body form righteous labors. But in reality, sleep is the necessary “repose” of the soul from the unbearable materialism of the world. The body – the heart, for example – has demonstrated that it can work without any repose whatever in the course of its entire life.
How funny would seem the rebellion of a person who did not want to wake up on command and did not respond to efforts to awaken him. But if we suppose that all people might decide to wake up of their own accord, we will have to rebuild the whole system of interrelationships in human society, since society will henceforth be founded on spiritual relations. This means that there will be a sorting of people into those who put their souls onto work which interests them and those whose soul is not in the work which has been foisted on them. Once this last group of people has resolved on voluntary awakening, their souls will not allow their lives to be squandered in work alien to them – the soul will put the body to sleep at the most natural time, the time allotted for this uncongenial work; or the soul will delay its return to the body when hated work demands attention. Then it will be discovered that the great majority of people would not wish to wake up, were no one to awaken them.
This thought stupefied Hero. He suddenly saw sleep as a hopeful refuge from life, which was often so unappealing. But the feeling of protest no sooner arose in him that Hero’s brain quickly analyzed and destroyed its power. And the only occasion on which the brain had not managed to attend had been during half-sleep, when he had struck his wife because she had awakened him. “That means that I can find strength in feelings from the realm of sleep, and it means that the domain of sleep is inaccessible to the destructive work of the brain. And if I were able not to react either to noise or pain during sleep, and to wake only at the wish of my soul – it would be the most serious step of my life,” Hero thought.
When on coming home from work he did not turn on the television, his wife asked tauntingly whether he wasn’t sick. Hero gave no answer and went into the bedroom. He undressed, lay down in bed and lay for a long time, mulling over his pleasant resolution, which did not weaken, as his resolutions always did, but only grew stronger.
He heard his wife putting their son to bed. This was a nightly ritual of weeping, threats, storytelling, more weeping and more threats, which occupied no less than an hour. The son demanded a light burning in his room – he was afraid to go to sleep in dark – and he always insisted on having his own way. Hero’s wife could not endure the hysterical crying of her son and returned to turn on the light.
“To fall asleep so that not even his screaming could wake me – ” thought Hero. His wife came in, undressed and lay down, the air current from her act of lying down carried smell of sweat to him. He lay with his back to her and pretended to be asleep.
“What, sleeping already?” asked his wife, but Hero made no reply. Lately this question exhausted their relations in bed. But now Hero was thinking of only one thing – how to enter into sleep. He heard his wife open the drawer of the night-table, fish out the vibrator and set it to her favorite speed. The drone of the vibrator sank Hero into his longed-for sleep.
When he woke up he saw the face of a man bending over him. The man was dressed in a business suit, and a stethoscope hung around his neck. At his side appeared the frightened face of Hero’s wife.
“How do you feel?” asked the man, and Hero understood that he was a doctor but still could not understand why he was there.
The doctor shook Hero by shoulder and repeated his question.
“Great,” replied Hero and sat up in bed, “but what exactly is the matter?”
The doctor was about to open his mouth, but the wife interrupted him:
“I couldn’t wake you up, you were sleeping like the dead.”
“For how long?” asked Hero.
“It’s three in the afternoon,” replied the doctor.
Hero smiled triumphantly. His dream was coming true – he was becoming invulnerable.
“What are you smiling about?” The worry on his wife’s face was quickly replaced by irritation. “You’ve already overslept for
