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

by Nathalie Babel, Peter Constantine Isaac Babel

“You run for it, Til have you shot,” the general said with a smile, and he turned and looked at the commander of the special unit.

  “Yes, General!” the commander of the special unit said.

  “So start rolling, Koleso!”1 one of the Cossacks standing nearby shouted cheerfully.

  Budyonny swiftly turned on his heel and saluted his new brigade commander. The latter lifted five young red fingers to his cap, broke into a sweat, and walked along the plowed field. The horses were waiting for him fifty yards away He hung his head, placing one long and crooked leg in front of the other with agonizing slowness. The fire of the sunset swept over him, as crimson and implausible as impending doom.

  And suddenly, on the outstretched earth, on the yellow, harrowed nakedness of the fields, we saw nothing but Kolesnikovs narrow back, his dangling arms, and his hanging head with its gray cap.

  His orderly brought him his horse.

  He jumped into the saddle and galloped to his brigade without looking back. The squadrons were waiting for him on the main road, the high road to Brody.

  A moaning hurrah, shredded by the wind, drifted over to us.

  Aiming my binoculars, I saw the brigade commander on his horse circling through columns of thick dust.

  “Kolesnikov has taken over the brigade,” said our lookout, who was sitting in a tree above our heads.

  “So he has,” Budyonny answered, lighting a cigarette and closing his eyes.

  The hurrahs faded. The cannonade died down. Pointless shrapnel burst above the forest. And we heard the great, silent skirmish.

  “Hes a good boy,” Budyonny said, getting up. “Wants honors. Looks like he’ll make it.” And Budyonny had the horses brought over, and rode off to the battlefield. His Staff followed him.

  As it happened, I was to see Kolesnikov again that very night, about an hour after the Poles had been finished off. He was riding in front of his brigade, alone, on a brown stallion, dozing. His right arm was hanging in a sling. A cavalry Cossack was carrying the unfurled flag about ten paces behind him. The men at the head of the squadron lazily sang bawdy ditties. The brigade stretched dusty and endless, like peasant carts heading to a market fair. At the rear, tired bands were gasping.

  That evening, as Kolesnikov rode, I saw in his bearing the despotic indifference of a Tatar khan and saw in him a devotee of the glorified Kniga, the willful Pavlichenko, and the captivating Savitsky.

  SASHKA CHRIST

  ^ashka, that was his real name, and Christ is what we called him

  /because he was so gentle. He had been one of the shepherds of his

  Cossack village and had not done any heavy work since he was fourteen, when he had caught the evil disease.

  This is what had happened. Tarakanich, Sashkas stepfather, had gone to the town of Grozny for the winter, and had joined a guild there. The guild was working well—it was made up of Ryazan muzhiks. Tarakanich did carpentry for them, and his income increased. When he realized that he could not manage the work alone anymore, he sent home for the boy to come and be his assistant—the village could survive the winter well enough without him. Sashka worked with his stepfather for a week. Then Saturday came, and they put their tools away and sat down to drink some tea. Outside it was October, but the air was mild. They opened the window, and put on a second samovar. A beggar woman was loitering near the windows. She knocked on the frame and said, “A good day to you! I see you’re not from these parts. You can see what state I’m in, no?”

  “What is it about your state?” Tarakanich said. “Come in, you old cripple!”

  The beggar woman scrambled up and clambered into the room. She came over to the table and bowed deeply. Tarakanich grabbed her by her kerchief, pulled it off, and ruffled her hair. The beggar womans hair was gray, ashy, and hanging in dusty tatters.

  “Ooh, will you stop that, you naughty handsome man you!” she

  said. “You’re a joke a minute, you are! But please, don’t be disgusted by me just because I’m a little old woman,” she quickly whispered, scampering onto the bench.

  Tarakanich lay with her. The beggar woman turned her head to the side and laughed.

  “Ooh, luck is raining on this little old woman’s field!” she laughed. “I’ll be harvesting two hundred pood of grain an acre!”

  And she suddenly noticed Sashka, who was drinking his tea at the table, not looking up as if his life depended on it.

  “Your boy?” she asked Tarakanicth.

  “More or less mine,” Tarakanich answered. “My wife’s.”

  “Ooh, look at him staring at us,” the old woman said. “Hey, come over here!”

  Sashka went over to her—and he caught the evil disease. But the evil disease had been the last thing on their minds. Tarakanich gave the beggar woman some leftover bones and a silver fiver, a very shiny one.

  “Polish the fiver nicely with sand, holy sister,” Tarakanich said to her, “and it’ll look even better. If you lend it to the Almighty on a dark night, it will shine instead of the moon.”

  The old cripple tied her kerchief, took the bones, and left. And within two weeks the muzhiks realized what had happened. The evil disease made them suffer. They tried to cure themselves all winter long, dousing themselves with herbs. And in spring they returned to the Cossack village and their peasant work.

  The village was about nine versts from the railroad. Tarakanich and Sashka crossed the fields. The earth lay in its April wetness. Emeralds glittered in the black ditches. Green shoots hemmed the soil with cunning stitches. A sour odor rose from the ground, as from a soldiers wife at dawn. The first herds trickled down from the hills, the foals played in the blue expanse of the horizon.

  Tarakanich and Sashka walked along barely visible paths.

  “Let me be one of the shepherds, Tarakanich,” Sashka said.

  “What for?”

  “I can’t bear that the shepherds have such a wonderful life.”

  “I won’t allow it.”

  “Let me be one, Tarakanich, for the love of God!” Sashka repeated. “All the saints came from shepherds.”

  “Sashka the Saint!” the stepfather laughed. “He caught syphilis from the Mother of God!”

  They passed the bend in the road by Red Bridge, then the grove and the pasture, and saw the cross on the village church.

  The women were still puttering around in their vegetable gardens, and Cossacks were sitting among the lilacs, drinking vodka and singing. It was another half verst to Tarakanichs hut.

  “Let us pray that everything is fine,” Tarakanich said, crossing himself.

  They walked over to the hut and peeked in the little window. Nobody was there. Sashkas mother was in the shed milking the cow. They crept over to her silently. Tarakanich came up behind her and laughed out loud.

  “Motya, Your Excellency,” he shouted, “how about some food for your guests!”

  The woman turned around, began to shake, and rushed out of the shed and ran circling around the yard. Then she came back into the shed and, trembling, pressed her head on Tarakanichs chest.

  “How silly and ugly you look,” Tarakanich said, gently pushing her away. “Where are the children?”

  “The children have left the yard,” the woman said, her face ashen, and ran out again, throwing herself onto the ground.

  “Oh, Aleshonka!” she shrieked wildly. “Our babies have gone, feet first!”

  Tarakanich waved at her dismissively and went over to the neighbors. The neighbors told him that a week ago the Lord had taken the boy and the girl with typhus. Motya had written him a letter, but he probably hadn’t gotten it. Tarakanich went back to the hut. The woman was stoking the oven.

  “You got rid of them quite nicely, Motya,” Tarakanich said. “Rip you to pieces, thats what I should do!”

  He sat down at the table and fell into deep grief—and grieved till he fell asleep. He ate meat and drank vodka, and did not see to his work around the farm. He snored at the table, woke up, and snored again. Motya prep
ared a bed for herself and her husband, and another for Sashka to the side. She blew out the light, and lay down next to her husband. Sashka tossed and turned on the hay in his corner. His eyes were open, he did not sleep, but saw, as if in a dream, the hut, a star shining through the window, the edge of the table, and the horse collars under his mother’s bed. A violent vision took hold of him; he surrendered to it and rejoiced in his waking dream. It was as if two silver strings hung from the sky, entwined into a thick rope to which a cradle was fastened, a rosewood cradle with carvings. It swung high above the earth but far from the sky, and the silver rope swayed and glittered. Sashka was lying in this cradle, fanned by the air. The air, loud as music, rose from the fields, and the rainbow blossomed above the unripe wheat.

  Sashka rejoiced in his waking sleep, and closed his eyes so as not to see the horse collars under his mothers bed. Then he heard panting from the bed, and thought that Tarakanich must be pawing his mother.

  “Tarakanich,” he said loudly. “Theres something I need to talk to you about.”

  “In the middle of the night?” Tarakanich yelled angrily. “Sleep, you fleabag!”

  “I swear by the Holy Cross that there’s something I need to talk to you about,” Sashka said. “Come out into the yard!”

  And in the yard, beneath the unfading stars, Sashka said to his stepfather, “Don’t wrong my mother, Tarakanich, you’re tainted.”

  “You should know better than to cross me, boy!” Tarakanich said.

  “I know, but have you seen my mother’s body? She has legs that are clean, and a breast that is clean. Don’t wrong her, Tarakanich. We re tainted.”

  “Boy!” his stepfather said. “Avoid my blood and my wrath! Here are twenty kopeks, go to sleep and your head will be clearer in the morning.”

  “I don’t need the twenty kopeks,” Sashka muttered. “Let me go join the shepherds.”

  “I won’t allow that,” Tarakanich said.

  “Let me join the shepherds,” Sashka muttered, “or I’ll tell Mother what we are. Why should she suffer with such a body?”

  Tarakanich turned around and went into the shed to get an axe.

  “Saint Sashka,” he said in a whisper, “you wait and see, Y11 hack you to pieces!”

  “You’d hack me to pieces on account of a woman?” the boy said, barely audibly, and leaned closer to his stepfather. “Take pity on me and let me join the shepherds.”

  “Damn you!” Tarakanich said, and threw away the axe. “So go join the shepherds!”

  And Tarakanich went back into the hut and slept with his wife.

  That same morning Sashka went to the Cossacks to be hired, and from that day on he lived as a village shepherd. He became known throughout the whole area for his simple heart, and the people of the village gave him the nickname Sashka Christ, and he lived as a shepherd until he was drafted. The old men, who had nothing better to do, came out to the pasture to chat with him, and the women came running to Sashka for respite from their husbands’ rough ways, and were not put off by Sashkas love for them or by his illness. Sashkas draft call came in the first year of the war. He fought for four years, and then returned to the village, where the Whites were running the show. Sashka was urged to go to the village of Platovskaya, where a detachment was being formed to fight the Whites. A former cavalry sergeant-major—Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny—was running things in that detachment, and he had his three brothers with him: Emelian, Lukian, and Denis. Sashka went to Platovskaya, and there his fate was sealed. He joined Budyonny’s regiment, his brigade, his division, and finally his First Cavalry Army. He rode to the aid of heroic Tsaritsyn,2 joined with Voroshilov’s Tenth Army, and fought at Voronezh, Kastornaya, and at the Generalsky Bridge on the Donets. In the Polish Campaign, Sashka joined the cavalry transport unit, because he had been wounded and was considered an invalid.

  So that’s how everything had come about. I had recently met Sashka Christ, and took my little suitcase and moved over to his cart. Many times we watched the sunrise and rode into the sunset. And whenever the obdurate will of war brought us together, we sat in the evenings on a sparkling earth mound,^ or boiled tea in our sooty kettle in the woods, or slept next to each other on harvested fields, our hungry horses tied to our legs.

  THE LIFE OF MATVEY RODIONOVICH PAVLICHENKO

  Dear comrades, brothers, fellow countrymen! Hear in the name of mankind the life story of Red General Matvey Pavlichenko. This general had been a mere swineherd, a swineherd on the estate of Lidino of which Nikitinsky was master, and, until life gave him battle stripes, this swineherd tended his master s pigs, and then with those battle stripes our little Matvey was given cattle to herd. Who knows— had he been born in Australia, my friends, our Matvey, son of Rodion, might well have worked his way up to elephants, yes, our Matyushka would have herded elephants, but unfortunately there are no elephants to be found in our district of Stavropol. To be perfectly honest, there is no animal larger than a buffalo in all the lands of Stavropol. And the poor fellow would not have had any fun with buffaloes—Russians dont enjoy taunting buffaloes. Give us poor orphans a mare on Judgment Day, and I guarantee you we will know how to taunt her till her soul goes tearing out of her sides.

  So here I am, herding my cattle, cows crowding me from all sides, Im doused in milk, I stink like a slit udder, all around me calves and mouse-gray bullocks roam. Freedom lies all around me in the fields, the grass of all the world rustles, the skies above me open up like a many-buttoned concertina, and the skies, my brothers, the skies we have in the district of Stavropol, can be very blue. So there I am, herding the beasts and playing my flute to the winds with nothing better to do, when an old man comes up to me and tells me, “Go, Matvey,” he says to me, “go to Nastya.”

  “What for?” I ask him. “Or are you maybe pulling my leg, old man?”

  “Go to her,” he says. “She wants you.”

  So I go to her.

  “Nastya!” I say to her, and all my blood runs dark. “Nastya,” I say to her, “or are you making fun of me?”

  But she does not speak a word, runs straight past me, running as fast as her legs can carry her, and she and I run together until were out on the meadow, dead tired, flushed, and out of breath.

  “Matvey,” Nastya says to me at this point. “On the third Sunday before this one, when the spring fishing season began and the fishermen came back to shore, you were walking with them, and you let your head hang. Why did you let your head hang, or is it that a thought is squeezing down on your heart? Answer me!”

  And I answer her.

  “Nastya,” I say to her. “I have nothing to tell you, my head is not a gun, it has neither a fore-sight nor back-sight, and you know my heart full well, Nastya, it is empty, completely empty, except perhaps for being doused in milk—its a terrible thing how I stink of milk!”

  And I can see that Nastya is about to burst into laughter at my words.

  “I swear by the Holy Cross,” she says, bursting into laughter, laughing loudly, laughing with all her might, her laughter booming across the steppes as if she were pounding a drum, “I swear by the Holy Cross, you sure know how to sweet-talk a girl!”

  So we exchange a few foolish words, and soon enough were married. Nastya and me began living together as best we could, and we did our best. We felt hot all night, we felt hot all winter, all night we went naked and tore the hide off each other. We lived it up like devils, until the day the old man came to me again.

  “Matvey,” he says. “The other day the master touched your wife in all those places, and the master is going to have her.”

  And I say to him, “No,” I say to him, “it cannot be, and please excuse me, old man, or I shall kill you right here and now.”

  The old man rushed off without another word, and I must have marched a good twenty versts over land that day, yes, that day a good chunk of earth passed beneath my feet, and by evening I sprouted up in the estate of Lidino, in the house of my merry master Nikitinsky. The old man
was sitting in his drawing room busy taking apart three saddles, an English, a dragoon, and a Cossack saddle, and I stood rooted by his door like a burdock, I stood rooted there for a good hour. Then he finally clapped eyes on me.

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to quit.”

  “You have a grudge against me?”

  “I dont have a grudge, but I want to quit.”

  At this point he turned his eyes away, leaving the high road for the field path, put the red saddlecloths on the floor—they were redder than the Czars banners, his saddlecloths were—and old Nikitinsky stepped on them, puffing himself up.

  “Freedom to the free,” he tells me, all puffed up. “Your mothers, all Orthodox Christian women, I gave the lot of them a good plowing! You can quit, my dear little Matvey, but isnt there one tiny little thing you owe me first?”

  “Ho, ho!” I answer. “What a joker! May the Lord strike me dead if you’re not a joker! It is you who still owes me my wage!”

  “Your wage!” my master thunders, shoving me down onto my knees, kicking me and yelling in my ear, cursing the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. “You want your wage, but the bulls yoke you ruined seems to have slipped your mind! Where is my bulls yoke? Give me back my bulls yoke!”

  “I will give you back your bulls yoke,” I tell my master, raising my foolish eyes up at him as I kneel there, lower than the lowest of living creatures. Til give you back your bulls yoke, but dont strangle me with debts, master, just wait awhile!”

  So, my dear friends, my Stavropol compatriots, fellow countrymen, my comrades, my very own brothers: for five years the master waited with my debts, five years I lost, until, lost soul that I was, finally the year ’18 came!3 It rode in on merry stallions, on Kabardinian steeds! It brought big armies with it and many songs. O, my sweet year ’18! O, for us to dance in each other’s arms just one more time, my sweet darling year ’18! We sang your songs, drank your wine, proclaimed your

  truth, but all thats left of you now is a few scribblers! Yet, ah, my love, it was not the scribblers back then who came flying through Kuban, shooting the souls of generals to Kingdom Come! No! It was me, Matvey Rodionovich, who lay outside Prikumsk in a pool of my own blood, and from where I, Matvey Rodionovich, lay to the estate of Lidino was a mere five versts. And I rode to Lidino alone, without my regiment, and as I entered the drawing room, I entered peacefully. People from the local authorities were sitting there in the drawing room, Nikitinsky was serving them tea, groveling all over them. When he saw me his face tumbled to pieces, but I lifted my fur hat to him.