“Here are three rubles for you, Margarita,” he said on his way out. “Believe me, rubles don’t come easy nowadays.”
Margarita smiled.
“You skinflint, you! So give me three. You coming back this evening?”
“Yes, I am.”
That evening Gershkovich brought dinner with him—a herring, a bottle of beer, sausages, apples. Margarita was wearing a dark, high-buttoned dress. They talked as they ate.
“Nowadays you can’t get by on fifty rubles a month,” Margarita said. “And what with this job, if you dont dress up, you dont get no cabbage soup. You have to take into account that I have to pay fifteen for this room.”
“Back in Odessa,” Gershkovich said pensively, straining to cut the herring into equal parts, “for ten rubles you can get a room in the Moldavanka fit for a Czar.”
“You have to take into account that people tumble all over the place in my room, what with the drunks and everything.”
“Every man must bear his burden,” Gershkovich said, and started talking about his family, his faltering business dealings, his son who had been called up by the army.
Margarita listened, resting her head on the table, and her face was attentive, quiet, and thoughtful.
After supper, he took off his jacket, painstakingly wiped his spectacles with a piece of cloth, and sat down at the table to write some business letters. Margarita washed her hair.
Gershkovich wrote unhurriedly, carefully, raising his eyebrows, stopping to think, and when he dipped his pen into the inkwell, he never once forgot to shake off the extra ink.
After he finishing writing he had Margarita sit down on his notebook.
“Well, Til be damned, but you sure are a lady with bulk! Do me a favor and keep sitting there, Margarita Prokofievna.”
Gershkovich smiled, his spectacles shimmered, and his eyes became small, more sparkling, full of laughter.
The next day he left town. As he paced up and down the platform, a few minutes before the train was to leave, Gershkovich noticed Margarita walking quickly toward him with a small parcel in her hands. There were pies in the parcel, and oily blotches had seeped through the paper.
Margaritas face was red, pitiful, her chest agitated from walking so quickly.
“Greetings to Odessa!” she said. “Greetings. . . .”
“Thank you,” Gershkovich answered. He took the pies, raised his eyebrows, thought about something for a moment, and bent forward.
The third bell rang. They stretched their hands out to each other.
“Good-bye, Margarita Prokofievna.”
“Good-bye, Elya Isaakovich.”
Gershkovich went inside the railway car. The train began moving.
1
Isaak Babel: Sochineniia, Moscow, Khudozhestvennaya Literatura, 1990-1991.
2
Boris Souvarine (1895-1984), historian and writer of Russian origin, who settled in Paris. On Lenins personal recommendation, he became a member of the Committee for the Third International (1919), later a member of the Executive Committee of the Komintern (1921-1924), and a member of the French Communist Party, which he helped to create and from which he was expelled in 1924. Author of Staline: Apergu historique du Bolchevisme (1935), the first biography and historical study of Joseph Stalin, and Dernieres conversations avec Babel, Ed. Counterpoint, 1979, later a chapter in his book Souvenirs sur Panait Istrati, Isaac Babel’ et Pierre Pascal, Ed. Gerard Lebovici, Paris, 1985. Souvarine was considered the foremost French specialist on Kremlin politics. The first monograph on his life and work, Boris Souvarine: le premier desenchante du commu-nisme, by Jean Louis Panne, was published in Paris in 1993 by Robert Laffont. The title speaks for itself.
^Yuri Pavlovich Annenkov (1889-1974), famous Russian portraitist, painter, printmaker, scientific draftsman, theater designer, cartoonist, writer, critic, stage manager. Left the USSR in 1924 and settled in Paris. His memoirs of his meetings with well-known artists, writers, and political figures were published in 1996 (People and Portraits: A Tragic Cycle, Vols. 1-2, published by the Inter-Language Literary Associates, New York, 1996).
3
Annenkov, pp. 305-306.
4
As above.
^Evgenia Borisovna Babel, born Gronfein. My parents were married on August 9,1919, in Odessa.
5
Annenkov, p. 307.
6
Excerpt from an autobiographical sketch by Babel that appeared in Lidin, Vladimir (ed.), “Pisateli: avtobiografii iportrety sovremennykh russkikhprozaikov” (“Authors: Autobiographies and Portraits of Contemporary Russian Writers”) Sovremennyie Problemi (Contemporary Problems), Moscow, 1926, pp. 27-29.
7
Isaac Babel: The Lonely Years 1925-1939. Unpublished Stories and Private Correspondence. Edited with an Intoduction by Nathalie Babel, published by Farrar, Straus and Co., 1964.
f Cynthia Ozick, “The Year of Writing Dangerously,” The New Republic, May 8,1995.
8
Boris Souvarine, Souvenirs sur Panait Istrati, Isaac Babel et Pierre Pascal, Ed. Gerard Lebovici, Paris 1985, p. 34.
9
Gap in manuscript.
MAMA, RIMMA, AND ALLA
From early in the morning the day had been going badly.
The day before, the maid had begun putting on airs and walked out. Barbara Stepanovna ended up having to do everything herself. Then the electric bill came first thing in the morning. And then the student boarders, the Rastokhin brothers, came up with a completely unexpected demand. They had allegedly received a telegram from Kaluga in the middle of the night informing them that their father had been taken ill, and that they had to come to him at all costs. They were therefore vacating the room, and could they have the sixty rubles back that they had given Barbara Stepanovna “on loan.”
To this Barbara Stepanovna answered that it was quite irregular to vacate a room in April, when there is no one to rent it to, and that it was difficult for her to return the money, as it was given to her not on loan but as a payment for the room, regardless of the fact that the payment had been made in advance.
The Rastokhin brothers disagreed with Barbara Stepanovna. The discussion became drawn-out and unfriendly. The students were stubborn, infuriating louts in long, clean frock coats. When they realized that getting their money back was a lost cause, the older brother suggested that Barbara Stepanovna give them her sideboard and pier glass as collateral.
Barbara Stepanovna turned purple, and retorted that she would not tolerate being spoken to in such a tone, that the Rastokhins’ suggestion was utter rubbish, that she knew the law, her husband being a member of the district court in Kamchatka, and so on. The younger Rastokhin flared up and told her that he didn’t give a hoot that her husband was a member of the district court in Kamchatka, that it was quite obvious that once she got her hands on a kopeck there was no prying it loose, that they would remember their stay at Barbara Stepanovnas—with all that clutter, dirt, and mess—to their dying day, and that although the district court in Kamchatka was quite far away, the Moscow Justice of the Peace was just around the corner.
And that was how the discussion ended. The Rastokhins marched out haughtily and in silent fury, and Barbara Stepanovna went to the kitchen to make some coffee for her other boarder, a student by the name of Stanislaw Marchotski. There had been loud and insistent ringing from his room for quite a few minutes.
Barbara Stepanovna stood in front of the spirit stove in the kitchen. A nickel pince-nez, rickety with age, sat on her fat nose; her graying hair was disheveled, her pink morning coat full of stains. She made the coffee, and thought how these louts would never have spoken to her in such a tone if there hadn’t been that eternal shortage of money, that unfortunate need to constantly snatch, hide, cheat.
When Marchotski’s coffee and fried eggs were ready, she brought his breakfast to his room.
Marchotski was a Pole—tall, bony, light blond, with long legs and well-groomed fingernails. That mornin
g he was wearing a foppish gray dressing gown with ornamental military clasps.
He faced Barbara Stepanovna with resentment.
“I’ve had enough of there never being a maid around!” he said. “I have to ring for a whole hour, and then I’m late for my classes.”
It was true that all too often the maid wasn’t there, and that Marchotski had to ring and ring, but this time he had a different reason for his resentment.
The evening before, he had been sitting on the living room sofa with Rimma, Barbara Stepanovna’s oldest daughter. Barbara Stepanovna had seen them kissing two or three times and hugging in the darkness. They sat there till eleven, then till midnight, then Stanislaw laid his head on Rimma’s breast and fell asleep. After all, who in his youth has not dozed off on the edge of a sofa with his head propped on the breast of a high school girl, met by chance on life’s winding path? It is not necessarily such a bad thing, and more often than not there are no consequences, but one does have to show a little consideration for others, not to mention that the girl might well have to go to school the next day.
It wasn’t until one-thirty in the morning that Barbara Stepanovna declared quite sourly that it was time to show some consideration. Marchotski, brimming with Polish pride, pursed his lips and took umbrage. Rimma cast an indignant look at her mother.
The matter had ended there. But the following morning it was quite clear that Stanislaw hadn’t forgotten the incident. Barbara Stepanovna gave him his breakfast, salted the fried eggs, and left.
It was eleven in the morning. Barbara Stepanovna opened the drapes in her daughters’ room. The gentle rays of the weak sun gleamed on the dirty floor, on the clothes scattered throughout the room, on the dusty bookshelf.
The girls were already awake. The eldest, Rimma, was thin, small, quick-eyed, black-haired. Alla was a year younger—she was seventeen—larger than her sister, pale, sluggish in her movements, with delicate, pudgy skin, and a sweetly pensive expression in her blue eyes.
When her mother left the room, she started speaking. Her heavy bare arm lay on the blanket, her little white fingers hardly moving.
“I had a dream, Rimma,” she said. “Imagine—a strange little town, small, Russian, mysterious. . . .The light gray sky is hanging very low, and the horizon is very close. The dust in the streets is also gray, smooth, calm. Everything is dead. Not a single sound can be heard, not a single person can be seen. And suddenly I feel like I’m walking down some side streets I dont know, past quiet little wooden houses. I wander into blind alleys, then I find my way out into the streets again, but I can only see ten paces ahead, and I keep walking on and on. Somewhere in front of me is a light cloud of whirling dust. I approach it and see wedding carriages. Mikhail and his bride are in one of them. His bride is wearing a veil, and her face is happy. I walk up to the carriages, I seem to be taller than everyone else, and my heart aches a little. Then they all notice me. The carriages stop. Mikhail comes up to me, takes me by the arm, and slowly leads me into a side street. Alla, my friend/ he says in a flat voice, all this is very sad, I know. But theres nothing I can do, because I don’t love you/1 walk next to him, my heart shudders, and more gray streets keep opening up before us.”
Alla fell silent.
“A bad dream,” she added. “But, who knows? Maybe because it’s bad, everything will turn out well and hell send me a letter.”
“Like hell he will!” Rimma answered. “You should have been a little more clever and not run off to see him. By the way, I intend to have a word or two with Mama today!” she said suddenly.
Rimma got up, dressed, and went over to the window.
Spring lay over Moscow. The long somber fence outside their window, which stretched almost the whole length of the side street, glistened with warm dampness.
Outside the church, in its front yard, the grass was damp, green. The sun softly gilded the lackluster chasubles, and twinkled over the dark face of the icon standing on the slanting column by the entrance to the churchyard.
The girls went into the dining room. Barbara Stepanovna was sitting there, carefully eating large portions of food, intently studying the rolls, the coffee, the ham, through her spectacles. She drank the coffee with loud short gulps, and ate the rolls quickly, greedily, almost furtively.
“Mama!” Rimma said to her severely, proudly raising her pretty little face. “I’d like to have a little chat with you. You needn’t blow up. We can settle this quietly, once and for all. I can no longer live with you. Set me free.”
“Fine,” Barbara Stepanovna answered calmly, raising her colorless eyes to look at Rimma. “Is this because of yesterday?”
“Not because of yesterday, but it has to do with yesterday. Fm suffocating here.”
“And what do you intend to do?”
“Fll take some classes, learn stenography, right now the demand—” “Right now stenographers are crawling out of the woodwork! You think the jobs will come running—”
“I wont come to you for help, Mama!” Rimma said shrilly. “I wont come to you for help. Set me free!”
“Fine,” Barbara Stepanovna said again. “Fm not holding you back.” “I want you to give me my passport.”
Tm not giving you your passport.”
The conversation had been unexpectedly restrained. Now Rimma felt that the passport matter gave her a reason to start yelling.
“Well, thats marvelous!” she shouted, with a sarcastic laugh. “I cant go anywhere without my passport!”
Tm not giving you your passport!”
“Ill go turn myself into a kept woman!” Rimma yelled hysterically. “I shall give myself to a policeman!”
“Who do you think will want you?” Barbara Stepanovna answered, critically eyeing her daughters shivering little body and flushed face. “You think a policeman cant find a better—”
Til go to Tverskaya Street!” Rimma shouted. “Ill find myself some old man—I don t want to live with her, with this stupid, stupid, stupid—”
“Ah, so this is how you speak to your mother,” Barbara Stepanovna said, standing up with dignity. “We cant make ends meet, everything is falling apart around us, we re short of everything, all I ask is for a few minutes of peace and quiet, but you ... Wait till your father hears about this!” Tm going to write him myself, to Kamchatka!” Rimma shouted in a frenzy. Til get my passport from him!”
Barbara Stepanovna walked out of the room. Rimma, small and disheveled, paced excitedly up and down the room. Angry, isolated phrases from her future letter to her father tore through her brain.
“Dear Papa!” she would write. “You are busy, I know, but I have to tell you everything. May the allegation that Stanny dozed on my breast lie heavy on Mamas conscience! It was an embroidered cushion that he was dozing on, but the center of gravity lies elsewhere. As Mama is your wife, you will doubtless side with her, but I cant stay here any longer, she is a difficult person! If you want, Papa, I can come to you in Kamchatka, but I will need my passport!”
Rimma paced up and down, while Alla sat on the sofa and watched her. Quiet and mournful thoughts lay heavily on her soul.
“Rimma is fussing about,” she thought, “while I am completely desolate! Everything is painful, nothing makes sense!”
She went to her room and lay down. Barbara Stepanovna came in wearing a corset. She was thickly and naively powdered, flushed, perplexed, and pitiful.
“I just remembered that the Rastokhins are leaving today. I have to give them back their sixty rubles. They threatened to take me to court. There are some eggs in the cupboard. Make some for yourself—I’m going down to the pawnbroker.
• • •
When Marchotski came home from his classes at around six in the evening, he found the entrance hall filled with packed suitcases. There was noise coming from the Rastokhins’ rooms—they were obviously arguing. Right there in the entrance hall Barbara Stepanovna, somehow, with lightning speed and desperate resolution, managed to borrow ten rubles from Marchotski
. It was only when he got back to his room that he realized how stupid he had been.
His room was different from all the other rooms in Barbara Stepanovnas apartment. It was neat, filled with bibelots, and covered with carpets. Drawing utensils, foppish pipes, English tobacco, ivory paper knives were carefully laid out on the tables.
Before Stanislaw even managed to change into his dressing gown, Rimma quietly slipped into his room. He gave her a chilly reception.
“Are you angry, Stanny?” the girl asked.
“I am not angry,” the Pole answered. “It is just that in the future I would prefer not to be encumbered with having to bear witness to your mothers excesses.”
“It’ll all be over very soon,” Rimma said. “Stanny, I’m going to be free!”
She sat down next to him on the sofa and embraced him.
“I am a man,” Stanny began. “This platonic business is not for me, I have a career before me.”
He gruffly told her the things that men more or less say to certain women when they’ve had enough. There’s nothing to talk to them about, and flirting with them is pointless, as it is quite obvious they are not prepared to get down to business.
Stanny said that he was consumed by desire; it was hampering his work, making him nervous. The matter had to be settled one way or the other—he didn’t care in the least which, as long as it was settled.
“Why are you saying such things to me?” Rimma asked him pensively. “What is all this ‘I am a man’ about, and what do you mean by ‘the matter has to be settlecT? Why is your face so cold and nasty? And why can we talk about nothing else but that one thing? This is so sad, Stanny! Spring is in the streets, its so beautiful, and we are in such an ugly mood.”
Stanny didnt answer. They both remained silent.
A fiery sunset was sinking over the horizon, flooding the distant sky with a scarlet glow. On the opposite horizon a volatile, slowly thickening darkness was descending. The room was illuminated by the last glowing light. On the sofa, Rimma leaned more and more tenderly toward the student. They were doing what they always did at this exquisite hour of the day.
The Complete Works of Isaac Babel Reprint Edition by Isaac Babel, Nathalie Babel, Peter Constantine Page 5
