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

by Nathalie Babel, Peter Constantine Isaac Babel

  Kikin grunted and fell silent. Barefoot, lanky, sad, his stomach bare, the glittering helmet on his straw-colored head, he lay down on the floor and stared into the distance.

  “The whole world reckons the Makhno gang is all heroic and everything!” he said morosely. “But when you start hanging out with them, you soon see that they all harbor some grudge or other!”

  The Jewess lifted her flushed face from the tub, glanced over at the boy, and left the kitchen with the heavy gait of a cavalryman whose numb legs have just touched the ground after a very long ride. Left alone, the boy looked dully around the kitchen, sighed, rested his palms on the floor, swung his legs in the air, and, with his heels together, quickly walked around on his hands.

  A HARDWORKING WOMAN

  Three Makhno fighters—Gniloshkurov and two others—had come to an agreement with a woman about her love services. For two pounds of sugar, she agreed to take on the three of them, but when the third ones turn came, she couldnt hold out and went reeling around the room. The woman scrambled out into the yard, where she ran straight into Makhno.* [The anarchist leader] He lashed her with his whip, tearing her upper lip, and Gniloshkurov got it too.

  This happened in the morning, at nine o’clock. After that the day went by with much activity, and now its night, the rain is drizzling, whispering and unyielding. It is rustling beyond the wall. In front of me, outside the window, hangs a single star. The town of Kamenka has drowned in the haze—the teeming ghetto is filled with teeming darkness and the inexorable bustling of the Makhno fighters. Someone’s horse neighs softly like a pining woman; beyond the edge of the shtetl sleepless tachankas [an open carriage or buggy with a machine gun mounted on the back] creak, and the cannonade, falling silent, lies down to sleep on the black, wet earth.

  Only Makhno’s window is ablaze in a faraway street. It cuts through the gloom of the autumn night like an exhilarated searchlight, flashing, drenched with rain. There, in Makhno’s headquarters, a brass band is playing in honor of Antonina Vasilevna, a nurse who was spending her first night with Makhno. The thick, melancholy trumpets blow louder and louder, and the partisans, huddled together beneath my window, listen to the thundering of old marches. Three partisans are sitting beneath my window—Gniloshkurov and his comrades—and then Kikin, a crazed Cossack, comes rushing over to join them. He kicks his legs up in the air, does a handstand, chirps and sings, and has difficulty calming down, like an epileptic after a fit.

  “Oat-head!” Gniloshkurov suddenly whispers to Kikin. “Oat-head,” he repeats morosely. “How can it be that she let two more have a go after me without so much as batting an eyelash? There I was, putting my belt back on, and she looks at me and says to me, ‘Merci for spending some time with me, Papa, you are so charming! My name is Anelya—that’s what I’m called, Anelya.’ So you see, Oat-head, I think to myself she must have been chewing some bitter herbs since the morning, and then Petka wanted to have a go at her too!”

  “Then Petka wanted to have a go at her too,” fifteen-year-old Kikin chimes in, sitting down and lighting a cigarette. “ ‘Young man/ she tells Petka, would you please be kind enough, I’m at the end of my rope!' And she jumps up and starts spinning like a top, and the boys spread their arms and wont let her out the door, and she keeps begging and begging.” Kikin stands up, his eyes flash, and he begins to laugh. “She escapes,” Kikin continues, “and then right there at the door, who does she run into? Makhno himself. ‘Halt!’ he yells. ‘I bet you have the clap! Im going to hack you up here and now!’ And he starts lashing her, and she—she still wants to give him some lip!”

  “It must also be said,” Petka Orlovs pensive and tender voice interrupts Kikin, “it must also be said, that there is greed among people, ruthless greed! I told her—‘Theres three of us, Anelya! Bring a girlfriend along, share the sugar with her, shell help you!’ ‘No/ she says, ‘I can cope well enough, I have three children to feed, its not like Im a virgin or something/ ”

  “A hardworking woman!” Gniloshkurov, still sitting beneath my window, assures Petka. “Hardworking to the last!”

  And he falls silent. I can still hear the sound of water. The rain is continuing to stutter, bubble, and moan on the roofs. The wind grabs the rain and shoves it to the side. The triumphant blowing of the trumpets falls silent in Makhnos courtyard. The light in his room has dimmed by half. Gniloshkurov rises from the bench, splicing the dim glimmer of the moon. He yawns, tugs his shirt up, and scratches his remarkably white stomach, and then goes over to the shed to sleep. Petka Orlovs tender voice floats after him.

  “In Gulya-Polye there was this out-of-town muzhik called Ivan Golub,” Petka says. “He was a quiet muzhik—no drinking, he was cheerful when he worked, lifted too much of a load, got himself a rupture, and died. The people of Gulya-Polye mourned him and the whole village walked behind his coffin. They walked, even though he was a stranger.”

  And at the door of the shed, Petka begins muttering the story of the late Ivan, muttering more and more softly and tenderly.

  “There is ruthlessness among people,” Gniloshkurov says to him, yawning, “there really is, I tell you.”

  Gniloshkurov falls asleep, and the two others with him, and I remain alone by the window. My eyes explore the soundless dark, the beast of memory tears at me, and sleep will not come.

  ... She had sat in the main street selling berries since the morning. The Makhno fighters had paid her in abolished banknotes. She had the plump, airy body of a blonde. Gniloshkurov, his stomach jutting out, was sunning himself on a bench. He dozed, waited, and the woman, anxious to sell off her wares, gazed at him with her blue eyes, and blushed slowly and tenderly.

  “Anelya,” I whisper her name. “Anelya.”

  GRISHCHUK

  Our second trip to the shtetl ended badly. We had set out in the cart to find some fodder, and were heading back around midday. Grishchuks back was bobbing gently up and down before my eyes. Right outside the village, he laid his reins carefully together, sighed, and slipped down from the box, crawled over my knees, and sprawled out across the cart. His cooling head rocked gently, the horses trotted on slowly, and a yellowing fabric of peace settled on his face like a shroud.

  “Didnt eat nothing,” he politely answered my cry of alarm, and wearily closed his eyelids.

  That was how we rolled into the village—the coachman sprawled out across the cart.

  At our lodgings I gave him some bread and a potato to eat. He ate sluggishly, dozing and shaking himself awake. Then he went out into the middle of the yard and lay down on his back, his arms spread wide.

  “If you never tell me anything, Grishchuk,” I said to him in exasperation, “how am I supposed to understand your pain?”

  He said nothing and turned away. It was only that night, as we lay warming each other in the hay, that he shared with me a chapter from his mute novel.

  Russian prisoners of war had worked building German fortifications along the North Sea coast. During the harvest season they were herded together and sent into the heart of Germany. A lone, crazed farmer took on Grishchuk. His madness consisted in his never speaking. He beat and starved Grishchuk until Grishchuk learned to communicate with him by hand signals. They lived together peacefully and in silence for four years. Grishchuk didn’t learn the language because he never heard it spoken. After the German Revolution2 he returned to Russia. His master had walked him to the edge of the village. They stopped at the side of the high road. The German pointed at the church, at his heart, at the boundless and empty blue of the horizon. He laid his gray, tousled head on Grishchuks shoulder. They stood in a silent embrace. And then the German, throwing up his arms, ran back to his house with quick, faltering, stumbling steps.

  ARGAMAK

  I decided to join the ranks at the front. The division commander grimaced when he heard this.

  “Why the hell dyou want to go there? If you let your mouth hang open for a second, they shoot you point-blank!”

  I held my groun
d. And that wasn’t all. My choice fell on the most active division, the Sixth. I was assigned to the Fourth Squadron of the Twenty-third Cavalry Regiment. The squadron was commanded by Baulin, a Bryansk factory metalworker, who was a mere boy. He had grown a beard to inspire respect. Ash-blond tufts covered his chin. In his twenty-two years, Baulin had let nothing ruffle him. This quality, found in thousands of Baulins, proved an important element in the victory of the Revolution. Baulin was hard, taciturn, and headstrong. The path of his life had been decided. He had no doubts about the rightness of this path. Deprivation came easy to him. He could sleep sitting up. He slept pressing one arm against the other, and when he woke, his path from oblivion to full alertness was seamless.

  One could expect no mercy under Baulins command. My service started with an unusual omen of success—I was given a horse. There weren’t any horses in the reserve stables or with the peasants. Chance helped. The Cossack Tikhomolov had killed two captured officers without authorization. He had been instructed to take them to the brigade headquarters, as enemy officers could give important information. Tikhomolov did not take them there. It was decided that he would be tried before the Revolutionary Tribunal,3 but then they changed their minds. Squadron Commander Baulin came up with a punishment much harsher than anything the tribunal could have inflicted—he took Tikhomolov’s stallion Argamak away from him, and sent Tikhomolov off to the transport carts.

  The agony I had to suffer with Argamak was beyond what a man can endure. Tikhomolov had brought his horse from the Terek, where he was from. The stallion had been trained in the Cossack trot, that specific Cossack hard trot—dry, violent, sudden. Argamaks stride was long, extended, obstinate. With this devilish stride he carried me off, out of the lines, separating me from the squadron. I lost my sense of direction, roamed for days on end looking for my unit, ended up in enemy territory, slept in ravines, tried to tag along with other regiments but was chased away by them. My horsemanship was limited to the fact that in the Great War I had served with an artillery unit in the Fifteenth Infantry Division. Most of the time we had spent sitting on ammunition carts; we rarely rode out on raids. I didn’t have an opportunity to get used to Argamaks cruel, bounding trot. Tikhomolov had bestowed on his horse all the devils of his downfall. I shook like a sack on the stallions long, dry spine. I rode his back to pieces. Sores appeared on it. Metallic flies preyed upon these sores. Hoops of baked black blood girded the horses flanks. Bad shoeing made Argamak trip, his hind legs became swollen at the breeching strap and turned elephantine. Argamak grew thin. His eyes filled with the fire one sees in tortured horses, the fire of hysteria and obstinacy. He no longer let me saddle him.

  “You’ve liquidated that horse, four-eyes!” my platoon commander said.

  The Cossacks said nothing in my presence, but behind my back plotted like plunderers in drowsy treachery. They didn’t even ask me to write letters for them anymore.

  The cavalry took Novograd-Volynsk. In a single day we had to cover seventy, eighty versts. We were getting close to Rovno. Rest days were annulled. Night after night I had the same dream: I am riding Argamak at full trot. Campfires are burning by the roadside. The Cossacks are cooking food. I ride past them, they dont even look up. A few call out a greeting, others dont even turn around, they re not interested in me. What does this mean? Their indifference indicates that there is nothing unusual in my horsemanship, I ride like everyone else, theres no reason for them to look at me. I gallop off and am happy. My thirst for peace and happiness was never quenched in my waking hours, which is why I dreamed these dreams.

  There was no sign of Pashka Tikhomolov. He was watching me from somewhere on the fringes of the march, in the bumbling tail of carts crammed full with looted rags.

  “Pashka keeps asking whats with you,” my platoon commander said to me one day.

  “Why, he has a problem with me?”

  “It looks like he does.”

  “I reckon he feels I’ve done him wrong.”

  “Why, you reckon you didn’t do him wrong?”

  Pashka’s hatred followed me through forests and over rivers. I felt it on my hide and shuddered. He nailed his bloodshot eyes on my path.

  “Why did you saddle me with an enemy?” I asked Baulin.

  Baulin rode past, yawning.

  “Not my problem,” he answered without looking back. “It’s your problem.”

  Argamak’s back healed a little, then his wounds opened up again. I put three saddlecloths under his saddle, but I could not really ride him, the wounds weren’t healing. The knowledge that I was sitting on an open wound made me cringe.

  A Cossack from our platoon, his name was Bizyukov, was Tikhomolov’s countryman from the Terek, and he knew Pashka’s father.

  “His father, Pashka’s father, he breeds horses for fun,” Bizyukov told me one day. “A rough rider, sturdy. He comes to a herd, he picks out a horse on the spot, and they bring it to him. He stands face-to-face with the horse, his legs planted firm, glares at it. What does he want? This is what he wants: he waves his fist and punches the horse right between the eyes—the horse is dead. ‘Why did you finish off the horse, Kalistrat?’—‘I had a terrible desire for this horse, but I wasn’t fated to ride it. The horse didnt take to me, but my desire for this horse was deadly!’ Hes a rough rider, let me tell you!”

  And then Argamak, who had survived Pashkas father, who had been chosen by him, fell into my hands. How was this to end? I weighed many plans in my mind. The war had released me from other worries. The cavalry attacked Rovno. The town was taken. We stayed there for two days. The following night the Poles pushed us out. They engaged us in a skirmish to get their retreating units through. Their maneuver worked. The Poles were covered by a storm, lashing rain, a violent summer storm that tumbled onto the world in floods of black water. We cleared out of Rovno for a day. During the nocturnal battle we lost Dundic, the Serb, one of our bravest men. Pashka Tikhomolov also fought in this battle. The Poles attacked his transport carts. The area there was flat, without any cover. Pashka lined up his carts in a battle formation known only to him. It was, doubtless, how the Romans lined up their chariots. Pashka had a machine gun. He had probably stolen it and hidden it, for an emergency. With this machine gun he repelled the attack, saved his possessions, and led the whole transport to safety, except for two carts whose horses had been shot.

  “What do you intend to do with your best fighters, marinate them?” they asked Baulin at headquarters a few days after the battle.

  “If I’m letting them marinate, there must be a reason, right?”

  “Careful, youll run into trouble.”

  No amnesty was proclaimed for Pashka, but we knew that he was coming back. He came wearing galoshes on his bare feet. His toes had been hacked off, ribbons of black gauze hung from them. The ribbons dragged behind him like a train. In the village of Budziatycze, Pashka appeared at the square in front of the church where our horses stood tied to the hitching post. Squadron Commander Baulin was sitting on the church, &eps, his feet soaking in a steaming bucket. His toes were rotting. They were pink, the way steel is pink before it is forged. Tufts of young straw-blond hair tumbled over Baulins forehead. The sun burned on the bricks and tiles of the church. Bizyukov, standing next to Baulin, popped a cigarette into Baulins mouth and lit it. Tikhomolov, dragging his tattered train behind him, went up to the hitching post. His galoshes shuffled. Argamak stretched his long neck and neighed to his master in greeting, a quiet, rasping neigh, like that of a horse in a desert. Pus coiled like lace between the strips of torn flesh on the horses back. Pashka stood next to the horse. The dirty ribbons lay still on the ground.

  “So thats how things stand,” the Cossack said, barely audibly.

  I stepped forward.

  “Lets make peace, Pashka. Tm glad the horse is going back to you. I cant handle him. Let’s make peace?”

  “Its not Easter yet, for people to make peace,” the platoon commander said from behind me, rolling a cigarette.
His Tatar trousers loose, his shirt open over his copper chest, he was resting on the church steps.

  “Kis^ him three times, Pashka,”4 mumbled Bizyukov,Tikhomolov’s countryman, who knew Kalistrat, Pashkas father. “He wants to kiss three times.”

  I was alone among these men whose friendship I had not managed to win.

  Pashka stood in front of the horse as if rooted there. Argamak, breathing strong and free, stretched his muzzle to him.

  “So that’s how things stand,” the Cossack repeated. He turned to me sharply, and said emphatically, “I will not make peace with you.”

  He walked away, dragging his galoshes down the chalk-white, heat-baked street, his bandages sweeping the dust of the village square. Argamak walked behind him like a dog. The reins swung beneath his muzzle, his long neck hung low. Baulin continued soaking the reddish steel of his feet’s rotting flesh in the tub.