The Complete Works of Isaac Babel Reprint Edition by Isaac Babel, Nathalie Babel, Peter Constantine

by Nathalie Babel, Peter Constantine Isaac Babel

  “Darling,” the girl says to the Chinese man in a hoarse voice, “IVe got my godfather with me. Will you let him sleep in a corner?”

  The Chinese man slowly nods his head. O great wisdom of the East!

  “Aristarkh Terentich,” the girl yells casually, leaning against the smooth leather shoulder. “My acquaintance is inviting you to join us for company!”

  Aristarkh Terentich immediately livens up.

  “For reasons beyond the control of management, he is currently not employed,” she whispers, wriggling her shoulders. “But he had a past with meat and potatoes in it!”

  “Definitely. I am pleased to make your acquaintance. Aristarkh Terentich Sheremetsev.”

  At the hotel they were served Chinese liquor and weren’t even asked to pay.

  Late at night, the Chinese man slipped out of bed into the darkness of the room.

  “Where are you going?” Glafira asked gruffly, twisting her legs. There was a large sweat stain under her back.

  The Chinese man went over to Aristarkh, who was sleeping on the floor by the washstand. He shook the old mans shoulders and pointed to Glafira.

  “Oh, yes, yes, pal!” Aristarkh prattled from the floor, “A definite yes!” And with quick little steps he hobbled over to the bed.

  “Get away from me, you dog!” Glafira shouted. “Your Chinamans finished me off already!”

  “She wont do it, pal!” Aristarkh hissed quickly. “You ordered her to, but she isn’t obeying!”

  “He friend!” the Chinese man said. “He do! Big harlot!”

  “You are an elderly gentleman, Aristarkh Terentich,” the girl whispered, letting the old man climb into bed with her. “What’s got into your head?”

  Period.

  A TALE ABOUT A WOMAN

  Once upon a time there was a woman, her name was Xenia. Large bosom, round shoulders, blue eyes. That was the kind of woman she was. If only you and I had such a woman!

  Her husband was killed on the battlefield. Three years she lived without a husband, working in the house of a rich family. The rich family wanted a hot meal three times a day. Wood they never burned, nothing but coal. The heat from the coals was unbearable—in coals fiery roses glow.

  For three years the woman cooked for the rich family, and she was virtuous with the menfolk. But where do you hide a gigantic bosom like that? Can you tell me?

  The fourth year she goes to the doctor. “My head feels all heavy,” she says to him. “One minute Im ablaze with fire, the next Fm all weak.”

  And this, believe it or not, is what the doctor tells her: “Is there no menfolk running around in your courtyard? Oy, woman!”

  “I wouldn’t dare,” Xenia said, bursting into tears. “Fm a delicate girl!”

  And indeed she was a delicate girl. Xenias bitter tears made her eyes bluer.

  Old mother Morozikha took matters in hand.

  Old mother Morozikha was the midwife and potion-maker for the whole street. The likes of her are ruthless with a woman’s insides. Give her half a chance to steam them out, and you’ll be lucky if even a blade of grass will ever grow there again.

  “Xenia,” she says, “I'll fix things for you! A dryness has cracked the soil. All it needs is some God-sent rain. A mushroom needs to sprout up in a woman, all soggy and rank.”

  And she brought him. Valentin Ivanovich was his name. Not much to look at, but quite a joker, and he could make up nice ditties. He didn’t have a body worth mentioning, his hair was long, and he was covered with a rainbow scattering of pimples. But did Xenia need a bull? He was a man, and could make up nice ditties. Could you find anything better in the world? Xenia cooked a hundred blini and raisin pies. Three eiderdowns were laid on her bed, and six pillows, all nice and fluffy— all for you to roll around in, Valentin!

  Evening came, the guests squeezed into the tiny room behind the kitchen, everyone downed a glass of vodka. Old mother Morozikha had put on a silk kerchief, you wouldn’t believe how respectable she looked. And Valentin spoke wonderful words to Xenia: “Ah, Xenia, my sweet one! I am a neglected man in this world, a dog-tired youth! Do not think of me lackadaisically! Night will descend with stars and black fans—O can a man express his soul in a poem? O, timid man that I am!”

  Word upon word. Needless to say, they emptied two whole bottles of vodka and three of wine. Not to mention five rubles’ worth of food— no joke!

  Our Valentin’s face flushed to a dark maroon, and he began hollering poetry.

  Old mother Morozikha got up from the table.

  “Well, I’ll be off, may the Lord be with me!” she said. “There’ll be love between the two of you, so when you lie down together on the stove bench, pull off his boots. With men, you can wash sheets till you’re blue in the face.”

  But the liquor was beginning to kick in. Valentin grabbed his hair and started tearing at it. “I,” he shouts, “am having visions. The moment I have a few drinks, I start having visions. Xenia, I can see you lying dead, your face looks sickening. And I am the priest, I am walking behind your coffin, swinging the censer!”

  At this point, needless to say, he raised his voice.

  Well, Xenia was only human. She too had loosened her blouse, unfastening a button or two.

  “Dont shout, Valentin Ivanovich,” she whispered. “Dont shout, the master and mistress will hear.”

  But tell me, can you hold a man back once he is seized by melancholia?

  “You have offended me most deeply!” Valentin wept convulsively. “Oh, what snakes people are! What did they want? They wanted to buy my soul! I,” he went on, “was born out of wedlock, but I am still a noblemans son! Are you listening to me, you scullery maid, you?”

  “I will be sweet to you, Valentin Ivanovich.”

  “Leave me be!”

  He rose and flung open the door.

  “Leave me be! I am going out into the world!”

  But how was he to go out into the world, poor soul, soused out of his mind as he was? He collapsed onto the bed, puked on the, if you will pardon the expression, sheets, and fell asleep, the humble servant of God.

  Old mother Morozikha was already rolling up her sleeves.

  “Well, that’s the end of that,” she said. “We’d better carry him outside.”

  The women carried Valentin out into the street and laid him down outside the gate. They went back in, and there stood the mistress, in a nightcap and the most elegant pantaloons.

  “You entertain men here at night and act most scandalously!” she scolded her cook. “I want you to pack your bags and leave my Godfearing household by tomorrow morning! I have my unmarried daughter to think ofl”

  Xenia sat in the hall, weeping till dawn.

  “Grandma Morozikha, ah, Grandma Morozikha,” she whimpered, “what have you done to me, poor young woman that I am! Im ashamed of myself, how can I even dare look at Gods world, and what can I expect to see in God’s world now?”

  Xenia cried and carried on, surrounded by raisin pies, snowy featherbeds, holy icon lamps, and wine. And her warm shoulders shook.

  “It was a blunder,” old mother Morozikha said to her. “We should have gone for a simpler fellow, we should have gone for Mitya.”

  And morning set up shop once more. The girls carrying milk went from house to house. It was a blue and frosty morning.

  THE BATHROOM WINDOW

  I have an acquaintance, a Madam Kebchik. In her day, Madam Kebchik assures me, “nothing in the world” would have induced her to take less than five rubles.

  Now she has a nice, respectable apartment, and in this apartment she has two girls, Marusya and Tamara. There are more requests for Marusya than for Tamara. One of the windows of the girls’ room has a view of the street, the other window, just an air vent near the ceiling, has a view of the bathroom. When I realized this, I said to Fanya Osipovna Kebchik, “How about putting a ladder by the little window in the bathroom in the evenings, so I can climb up and peek into Marusya’s room? I’ll give you five r
ubles.”

  “You rogue, you!” Fanya Osipovna said, and agreed.

  She got her five rubles quite often. I made use of the little window when Marusya had clients.

  Everything went without a hitch, but one time an extremely foolish thing happened. I was standing on the ladder. Luckily, Marusya hadn’t turned off the light. Her guest was a pleasant, unassuming fellow with one of those large, harmless mustaches. He undressed in a prim and proper fashion: he took off his collar, looked in the mirror, noticed a pimple under his mustache, studied it, and pressed it out with a handkerchief. He took off a boot and examined it too—was there a scratch on the sole?

  They kissed, undressed, and smoked a cigarette. I got ready to climb down. At that moment I felt the ladder sliding away under me. I tried to grab hold of the window, but it gave way. The ladder fell with a crash and there I was, dangling in the air.

  Suddenly the whole apartment exploded with alarm. Everyone came running, Fanya Osipovna, Tamara, and an official I didnt know in a Ministry of Finance uniform. They helped me down. My situation was pitiful. Marusya and her lanky client came into the bathroom.

  The girl looked at me, froze, and said quietly, “What a bastard, oh, what a bastard!”

  She fell silent, stared at us foolishly, went over to the lanky man, and for some reason kissed his hand and started crying.

  “My dear, O God, my dear!” she said, between kisses and sobs.

  The lanky man stood there like a total idiot. My heart was pounding wildly. I dug my nails into my palms and went over to Madam Kebchik.

  Within a few minutes, Marusya knew everything. All was forgiven and forgotten. But I was still wondering why she had kissed the lanky fellow.

  “Madam Kebchik,” I said. “Put up the ladder one last time, and you can have ten rubles.”

  “Your minds even more unsteady than that ladder of yours!” the landlady answered, and agreed.

  So there I was again, standing by the little window. I looked through it and saw Marusya, her thin arms wrapped around her client, kissing him with slow kisses, tears flowing from her eyes.

  “My darling!” she whispered. “O God, my sweet darling!” And she gave herself to him with all the passion of a woman in love. She looked at him as if he, this lanky fellow, were the only man in the world.

  And the lanky fellow wallowed in businesslike bliss.

  BAGRAT-OGLY AND THE EYES OF HIS BULL

  I saw a bull of unparalleled beauty lying by the side of the road. A boy was bending over it, crying.

  “This boy is Bagrat-Ogly,” said a snake charmer who was eating his scanty meal nearby. “Bagrat-Ogly, son of Kazim.”

  “He is as exquisite as twelve moons,” I said.

  “The green cloak of the Prophet will never cover the rebellious whiskers of Kazim,” the snake charmer said. “He was a quarrelsome man, and left his son nothing but a pauper’s hut, his plump wives, and a bull that was unrivaled. But Allah is great!”

  “Allah UAllahr I said.

  “Allah is great,” he repeated, pushing away his basket of snakes. “The bull grew up to become the mightiest bull in Anatolia. Memed-khan, a neighbor, sick with envy, castrated it last night. Now no one will bring their cows to Bagrat-Ogly in the hope of conception. Now no one will pay Bagrat-Ogly a hundred piasters for the love of his bull. He is a pauper, Bagrat-Ogly. He weeps by the side of the road.

  The silence of the mountains unfurled its violet banners above us. The snows glittered on the peaks. Blood trickled down the legs of the mutilated bull and bubbled onto the grass. And, hearing the bull moan, I looked into its eyes and saw the bulls death and my own death, and I fell to the ground in measureless torment.

  “Traveler!” the boy then called, his face as rosy as the dawn. “You writhe, and foam bubbles from the corners of your lips. A black illness is fettering you with the ropes of its convulsions.”

  “Bagrat-Ogly!” I answered, sunk in exhaustion. “In the eyes of your bull I saw the reflection of the ever-watchful malice of our neighbors, the Memed-khans of this world. In the moist depths of its eyes I saw mirrors in which rage the green fires of the treachery of our neighbors, the Memed-khans of this world. In the eyes of the mutilated bull I saw my youth, barren and cut down, the prime of my life thrashing its way through the thorny undergrowth of indifference. The deserts of Syria, Arabia, and Kurdistan, which I have fathomed thrice, I saw within the eyes of your bull, O Bagrat-Ogly, and their flat sands leave me no hope. The hatred of the whole world has penetrated the eye sockets of your bull. Flee from the malice of our Memed-khan neighbors, O Bagrat-Ogly, and may the old snake charmer hoist his basket of pythons onto his back and flee at your side!”

  And filling the ravines with my moans, I rose to my feet. I drank in the fragrance of the eucalyptus and walked away. A many-headed dawn soared above the mountains like a thousand swans. The steel waters of the Bay of Trebizond sparkled in the distance, and I saw the sea and the yellow decks of the feluccas. The freshness of the grass poured over the ruins of a Byzantine wall. The bazaars of Trebizond and the carpets of Trebizond rose before me. I came across a young highlander at a fork in the road outside the city. On his outstretched hand sat a pigeon hawk chained by its talon. The highlander walked with a light gait. The sun surfaced above our heads. And a sudden calm descended on my wanderer's soul.

  LINE AND COLOR

  I first met Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky4 on December 20, 1916, in the dining room of the Ollila Spa. We were introduced by Zatsareni, a barrister from Turkestan. I had heard that Zatsareni had had himself circumcised at the age of forty. That disgraced imbecile Grand Duke Peter Nikolayevich, who was banished to Tashkent, prized Zatsarenis friendship very highly. The Grand Duke used to walk about Tashkent stark naked, married a Cossack woman, lit candles before a portrait of Voltaire as if it were an icon of Jesus Christ, and had the boundless flatlands of Amu-Dari drained. Zatsareni was a good friend to him.

  So, there we were at the Ollila Spa. Ten kilometers away shimmered the blue granite walls of Helsingfors.^ O Helsingfors, love of my heart! O sky, pouring down onto the esplanades and soaring high like a bird!

  So, there we were at the Ollila Spa. Northern flowers were withering in vases. Antlers spread across the murky ceilings. The air of the dining room was filled with the fragrance of pine trees, the cool breasts of Countess Tyszkiewicz, and the British officers’ silk underwear.

  At the table, a courteous converted Jew from the police department was sitting next to Kerensky. To his right, a Norwegian by the name of

  Nickelsen, the owner of a whaling vessel. To his left, Countess Tyszkiewicz, as beautiful as Marie Antoinette.

  Kerensky ate three pieces of cake and went with me for a walk in the forest. Froken Kristi hurried past us on skis.

  “Who was that?” Kerensky asked me.

  “That was Nickelsen’s daughter, Froken Kristi,” I said. “Shes beautiful, isn’t she?”

  Then we saw old Johannes’s sledge.

  “Who was that?” Kerensky asked.

  “That was old Johannes,” I said. “He brings cognac and fruit from Helsingfors. Can it be that you don’t know old Johannes the coachman?”

  “I know everyone here,” Kerensky replied, “but I cant see anyone.” “Are you nearsighted, Alexander Fyodorovich?”

  “Yes, I’m nearsighted.”

  “You need glasses, Alexander Fyodorovich.”

  “Never!”

  “If you think about it,” I said to him with the brashness of youth, “you are not merely blind, you are as good as dead. The line—that divine trait, that queen of the world—has escaped you forever. You and I are walking through this enchanted garden, this marvelous Finnish forest. To our dying day we will not encounter anything better, and you, you cannot even see the rosy, ice-crusted edges of the waterfall, over there, on the river. The weeping willow, leaning over the waterfall—you cannot see its Japanese delicacy. The red trunks of the pine trees heaped with snow! The granular sparkle that sci
ntillates over the snows! It begins as a frozen line above the tree’s wavy surface, like Leonardo’s line, crowned by the reflection of the blazing clouds. And what about Froken Kristi’s silk stockings, and the line of her maturing legs? I beg of you, Alexander Fyodorovich, buy some spectacles!”

  “My dear boy,” he answered, “don’t waste your gunpowder! That half-ruble coin you want me to squander on a pair of spectacles is the one coin that will never leave my pocket! You can keep that line of yours with its repulsive reality. You are living the sordid life of a trigonometry teacher, while I am enveloped by wonders, even in a hole like Klyazma! Why do I need the freckles on Froken Kristi’s face when I, who can barely make her out, can imagine everything I want to imagine about her? Why do I need these clouds in the Finnish sky, when I can see a dreamy ocean above my head? Why do I need lines when I have colors? For me the whole world is a gigantic theater in which I am the only spectator without opera glasses. The orchestra plays the prelude to the third act, the stage is far away as in a dream, my heart swells with delight, I see Juliet s crimson velvet, Romeos violet silk, and not a single false beard—and you want to blind me with a pair of half-ruble spectacles?”

  That evening I left for town. O Helsingfors, refuge of my dreams!

  I saw Alexander Fyodorovich again half a year later, in June of 1917, after he had become Supreme Commander of the Russian army and master of our fate.

  That day the Troitsky drawbridge had been lifted. The Putilov workers were heading for the arsenal. Burning tramcars lay in the streets like dead horses.

  The mass rally had gathered at the House of the People. Alexander Fyodorovich gave a speech on Russia, our mother and our wife. The crowd smothered him with its sheepskin-coat passion. Could he, the only spectator without opera glasses, even see the bristling passion of the sheepskin coats? I have no idea. But after him, Trotsky came to the podium, twisted his lips, and, in a voice that chased away ones last hopes, said: