Okay I feel it is an exclamation but I'm still not getting the sentence in English. Could you possibly translate into the most suiting english?

"Besides, it was also necessary to do it at night, when people wern't loafing around here and there and disturbing/hindering: but what it is to paint at night?! I still don't get it. Is it stating, and this is just how it is painting at night, or... how great it is to paint at night because these problems aren't there? Or that what is painting exactly when you can't even see because of the dark?? I'm not feeling it, apologies!

(And i didn't quite get the russian that you posted. These kind of expressions in Russian are so hard to me)