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

by Nathalie Babel, Peter Constantine Isaac Babel

  ( he Reds have been forced to the border. Helsingfors, Abo, and J Vyborg* have fallen. It became apparent that things were going badly for the Reds. Then headquarters sent to the far north for help.

  A month ago, at a deserted Finnish station where the sky is translucent and tall pine trees stand motionless, I saw the men that had been gathered together for the final battle.

  They had come from Kom and Murmansk, from the frozen lands on the edge of the tundra.

  They gathered in a low wooden shed filled with damp gloom.

  Black bodies, side by side, lay motionless on the ground. A hazy light strayed over hairless Tatar faces. The men wore elk-skin boots, and black furs covered their shoulders.

  A curved dagger hung from each mans waistband. Taut fingers rested on the tarnished barrels of archaic weapons.

  Turkic elders were lying in front of me—round-headed, dispassionate, silent.

  A Finnish officer was giving a speech.

  “Tomorrows battle will be at Belo-Ostrova by the last bridge!” he said. “There we shall find out who will be master in our land!”

  The officer was not very convincing. He was thinking aloud, slowly grinding out his words with painful thoroughness.

  He fell silent, stepped back, and, lowering his head, listened to the others.

  A discussion began, a peculiar discussion. I had never heard anything like it in Russia.

  Silence reigned in the wooden shed filled with damp gloom. Beneath black fur hats, hard faces, spectrally distorted in the haze, were gazing down, vacantly silent.

  Slowly and arduously, soft voices began permeating the morose silence. A fifteen-year-old boy spoke with the cold gravity of an old man, and the old men resembled the youth in every way.

  “Let’s go help them,” some of the Finns said.

  They left the shed and, their weapons rattling, gathered into formation by the forest.

  The others stayed put where they were. A pale boy of about sixteen held out to the officer a newspaper in which Russia’s order for all Reds crossing the border to disarm was printed.

  The boy handed him the newspaper and quietly muttered a few words.

  “What did he just say?” I asked the Finnish interpreter.

  The Finn turned to me, fixed me with his cold eyes, and said point-blank, “I wont tell you! Im not telling you anything anymore!”

  The Finns who had stayed back with the boy got up.

  In place of an answer they shook their shaven heads, went outside, and, crestfallen, huddled together in a silent group by the low wall.

  The officer, his face ashen, crept out after them, fumbling for his revolver with trembling hands. He pointed it at the lifeless, yellow, high-cheeked face of the youth standing in front of the group. The youth peered at him through his narrow eyes, turned away, and crouched down.

  The officer walked away, slumped down onto a tree stump, threw away his revolver, and covered his eyes with his hands.

  Evening descended on the earth. A red flush lit up the edges of the sky. The silence of spring and night enveloped the forest. The discarded revolver lay on the ground. The officer stood at the edge of the forest, handing out cartridges to whomever passed by.

  I saw a little muzhik in a heavy cloth coat not far from the detachment that was preparing for battle. He was sitting on a thick tree stump. In front of him stood a bowl of kasha, a mess tin full of borscht, and a loaf of bread.

  The muzhik was eating, choking with greed. He moaned, leaned back, wheezed, and dug his black fingers into the gnarled lumps of hardened kasha. There was enough food for three.

  Realizing that I was Russian, the muzhik lifted his dull blue eyes up to me. His eyes squinted, slithered over the loaf of bread, and winked at me.

  “They gave me kasha and some dry tea. They want to sweet-talk me into taking them to the position, as I’m from Petrozavodsk.2 But what for? These Finns know whats what, and they know what they’re doing. They won’t come out of this alive. The Reds brought in all those damn roughnecks who can’t wait to arrest everyone—Why else did you bring us here? they ask. Those Finns, they know what’s what. I’m sure the Germans^ will kill everyone.

  I saw all of this at a deserted Finnish railroad station a month ago.

  A NEW LIFE

  We are in a damp, dark barn. Kosarenko is slicing potatoes with a small knife. A fat-legged, barefoot girl raises her moist, freckled face, heaves a sack filled with seedlings onto her back, and leaves. We follow her.

  Midday, blindingly blue, resounds with the silence of the intense heat. The circling flight of swallows is lightly silhouetted against the shining puffs of white cloud. Flower beds and little paths, eagerly engulfed by the whispering grass, are outlined with austere sharpness.

  The girl presses the potatoes with a nimble hand into the furrowed earth. Kosarenko turns his head to the side, and his thin lips curl into a smile. Soft shadows flit over his dry skin and cover his yellowish face with a faint ripple of wrinkles. His bright eyes narrow pensively as they skim blankly over flowers, grass, a log lying to the side.

  “The Czars own regiment wasn’t too far away from where we were/’ Kosarenko whispers in my direction. “More princes than you could shake a stick at! Sukhikh was the colonel of the guard, he went to school with the Czar himself! He was given our regiment and the title of aide-de-camp—now he could pay off one or two of his debts, as he wasn’t really one of the rich ones!”

  Kosarenko had already told me all about the great princes, about Skoropadsky,3 the general he had served under, about the battles in which the Russian guard had perished.

  We are sitting on a bench adorned with a smiling, potbellied little Cupid. A gilt inscription shines on the facade of the airy building in front of us: “Officers’ Club of the Finland Life-Guard Regiment.” A stained-glass mosaic has been nailed over with planks. A bright hall glimmers through a crack. Its walls are covered with paintings, and white, carved furniture has been stacked in a corner.

  “Comrade,” the fat-legged girl says to Kosarenko. “The delegate said I was to plant the garden beds. I planted the garden beds.”

  The girl leaves. Her blouse stretches tightly over her fleshy back, her powerful nipples bounce energetically beneath the calico, protruding like quivering hillocks. The empty sack in the girls hands shows the sun its black holes.

  • • •

  The camp of the Finland Regiment had been turned into a wasteland. Now the land belongs to the Red Army. It decided to turn this wasteland into a vegetable garden, and has sent ten Red Army fighters to do it. This is what I was told about these men: “They are lazy, finicky, insolent, and loud. They don’t know how to work, they don’t want to work, and they will not work. So we sent them back and hired some civilians instead.”

  There were a thousand healthy young men in the regiment without anything better to do than eat and talk all day. The garden that belongs to these thousand men is being tended by two underfed Finns, as impassive as death, and by a few girls from the Petersburg outskirts.

  They are being paid eleven rubles a day, and they also get a pound of bread. They are supervised by an agronomist. The agronomist keeps looking people in the eye and saying, “We destroyed everything, but now we’ve begun to rebuild, even though everything isn’t perfect, we are rebuilding. Next week we’ll buy forty cows!”

  Having mentioned the cows, the agronomist will quickly flit away, but then slowly come sidling back and, suddenly, with a malevolent wheezing whisper, mumble into one’s ear, “It’s tragic. There are no workers. It’s tragic.”

  I’m in the field. The heat has cracked the earth. The sun is above me. Next to me are cows—real ones, not Red Army ones. I am happy. I roam about just like a spy, stamping my boots into the crumbling earth.

  The Finns bounce behind the plow.

  Of the ten Red Army fighters, only one has remained. He is harrowing the soil. The harrow is being wielded by clumsy, perplexed hands, the horses are trotting, the barbs are merel
y skimming over the surface of the soil.

  The Red Army fighter is a muzhik with quite a few tricks up his sleeve. They wanted to restation him in town along with the others. He resisted—here the mutton soup wasn’t bad, and life was free and easy.

  Now he is running after the galloping horses and the somersaulting harrow. Sweating but pompous, his eyes bulging, he yells at me hotly, “Out of the way!”

  And the girls: they’re watering the beds, working unhurriedly, taking breaks, clasping their hands around their knees, and with sly, singsong whispers bandying shameless urban ditties among themselves.

  “I’ve put on ten pounds,” one of the girls said, her eyes darting about. She was a little hunchback with a thin, grayish face. “It’s not worth running away to work at some factory on Grebetskaya Street. If state work was always available in the country, then maybe I’d have had some milk for my baby.”

  • • •

  Lunch break. The sun is high. The walls are white. The flies are buzzing lazily. Kosarenko and I are lying on the trampled grass.

  The girls heave the spades onto their shoulders and slowly leave the garden. A Finn, puffing at his pipe, his watery blue eyes darting about, unharnesses one of the horses. The Red Army fighter is sleeping in the sun, his leg with its bast shoe lolling to the side, his twisted black mouth hanging open.

  Silence. Kosarenko stares at the ground deep in thought, and slowly whispers, “I’ve been a sergeant major for twenty-two years, and I can safely say that nothing surprises me no more. But I will tell you that I myself wasn’t sure if I was dreaming or if what my eyes were seeing was really true. I was in the barracks with them—nothing to do, everyone

  sleeping, the floor covered with herring, trash, spilled cabbage soup! How long can we go on like this?”

  He stares at me with unblinking eyes.

  “I dont know, Kosarenko, I guess for as long as we can.”

  “There’s no one to work with, look!”

  I look. The Finn has unharnessed the horses and is sitting on a tree stump, vacantly arranging his foot wrappings, the Red Army fighter is sleeping, the deserted yard is bathed in white sultriness, the long line of stables boarded up.

  At a distance from us, on the facade of the airy building, the gilt letters shine: “Officers’ Club ...” Next to me Kosarenko is snoring. He has already forgotten what he was talking about. The sun has overpowered him.

  AN INCIDENT ON THE NEVSKY PROSPEKT

  I turn from the Liteiny Prospekt onto the Nevsky Prospekt. In front of me walks a young, one-armed man, swaying. He is in uniform. His empty sleeve is pinned to the black cloth of his jacket.

  The young man sways. He looks cheerful to me. It is three in the afternoon. Soldiers are selling lilies of the valley, and generals are selling chocolate. It is spring, warm, bright.

  I had been mistaken, the one-armed man is not cheerful. He walks up to the wooden fence, which is brightly decorated with posters, and sits down on the hot asphalt of the sidewalk. His body slides down, saliva dribbles out of his distorted mouth, his head, narrow and yellow, lolls to the side.

  Slowly people start gathering. They have gathered. We stand there sluggish, whispering, eyeing each other with dull, dumbfounded eyes.

  A golden-haired lady is quicker than the rest. She is wearing a wig, has light-blue eyes, bluish cheeks, a powdered nose, and bouncing false teeth. She has fully grasped the situation: the poor invalid has fainted from hunger after returning from a German prison camp.

  Her blue cheeks bob up and down. “Ladies and gentlemen!” she says. “The Germans are filling the streets of our capital with their cigar smoke while our poor martyrs . . .”

  We all gather around the outstretched body in an unhurried but attentive herd. We are all touched by the ladys words.

  Prostitutes drop little sugar cubes into the soldier’s cap with anxious haste, a Jew buys potato pancakes from a stand, a foreigner throws a bright stream of new ten-kopeck coins, a young lady from one of the stores brings out a cup of coffee.

  The invalid writhes on the asphalt, drinks the coffee from the Chinese cup, and chews sweet pies.

  “Like a beggar on a church porch!” he mutters, hiccuping, his cheeks flooding with bright tears. “Just like a beggar, just like they’ve all come to a circus, my God!”

  The lady asks us to go on our way. She asks us to show some tact. The invalid rolls onto his side. His stretched-out leg pops up into the air like the leg of a toy clown.

  At that moment a carriage pulls up at the curb. A sailor climbs out, followed by a blue-eyed girl with white stockings and suede shoes. She is pressing an armful of flowers to her breast.

  The sailor stands in front of the wooden fence, his legs apart. The invalid raises his limp neck and peers timidly at the sailors bare neck, his carefully curled hair, and his drunk and joyful face covered with specks of powder.

  The sailor slowly takes out his wallet and throws a forty-ruble note into the hat. The young man scrapes it up with his rigid, black fingers and raises his watery, canine eyes to the sailor.

  The sailor sways on his long legs, takes a step backward, and winks slyly and tenderly at the soldier on the ground.

  Stripes of flame light up the sky. An idiot’s smile stretches the soldier’s lips, we hear a wheezing, yowling laugh, and a stifling stench of alcohol pours from his mouth.

  “Lie where you are, Comrade,” the sailor tells him, “lie where you

  are!

  It is spring on the Nevsky Prospekt, warm, bright.The sailors wide back slowly recedes. The blue-eyed girl, leaning against his round shoulder, smiles quietly. The cripple, wriggling on the asphalt, is overcome by an abrupt, joyous, and nonsensical fit of laughter.

  THE MOST HOLY PATRIARCH

  Two weeks ago Tikhon,* the Patriarch of Moscow, received a group of delegations from the parochial councils, the ecclesiastical academy, and religious-educational societies. [* Tikhon of Moscow became the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. He was canonized in 1989.]

  Representatives of the delegations—monks, clergymen, and laymen—made speeches. I recorded the speeches and am reporting them here.

  “Socialism is the religion of swine groveling in the mud!”

  “Ignorant men are marauding through towns and villages, pyres are smoking, the blood of those slaughtered for their faith is flowing! They tell us, 'This is socialism!’ Our response is, ‘This is robbery, the destruction of the Russian land, the challenging of the Holy Eternal Church!’ ”

  “Ignorant men are proclaiming brotherhood and equality. They stole these slogans from Christianity and have heinously distorted them to the utmost, shameful degree.”

  There is a quick procession of curly-haired priests, black-bearded church wardens, short, breathless generals, and little girls in white dresses.

  They prostrate themselves before the Patriarch, striving to kiss the beloved boot hidden beneath the cassock’s sweeping purple silk, and grapple for the patriarchal hand, unable to muster the strength to tear themselves from the faltering, bluish fingers.

  The Patriarch is sitting in a gilded armchair. He is surrounded by bishops, archbishops, archimandrites, and monks. White flower petals are caught in the silk of his sleeves. The tables and the carpet runners are covered with flowers.

  Reams of titles flow with sugary clarity from the lips of the generals—“Your Holiness, Holy Father beloved of God, Czar of Our Church.” Following ancient custom, they bow deeply before the Patriarch, awkwardly touching the floor with their hands. The monks watch the procession of reverence with stern discretion, and make way for the delegates with haughty apprehension.

  The people crane their trembling necks. They are standing trapped in the vise of steaming bodies, singing hymns and breathing heavily in the stifling heat. The priests flit about in all directions, pressing their flapping cassocks between their boots.

  The golden chair is hidden by the round priestly backs. A timew
orn lassitude rests on the Patriarchs thin wrinkles, lighting up the yellowness of his quietly shivering cheeks, which are sparsely covered with silver hair.

  Strident voices thunder with unrelenting fervor. The mounting ecstasy of the word torrents pours forth unimpeded. The archimandrites rush up to the podium, hastily bowing their wide backs, and a wall of black grows silently and swiftly, coiling around the holy chair. The white miter is hidden from the fervent eyes. A harsh voice pierces the ears of the congregation with impatient words: “The restoration of the Patriarchy to Moscow is the first sign that the state of Russia will once again arise from the ashes. The church believes that her true sons, led in the name of the Lord by Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia, will tear the mask from the blood-drenched face of our motherland!

  “As in ancient times of trouble, Russia lifts her tortured eyes with hope to her one true leader, who in these days of anarchy has shouldered the holy burden of unifying the shattered church!”

  Strident voices thunder. Upright and frail, his head high, the Patriarch trains his unflinching gaze on the speakers. He listens with the dispassion and alacrity of a condemned man.

  Around the corner lies a dead horse, its four legs pointing straight up to the sky.

  The evening is flushed.

  The street is silent.

  Orange streams of heat flow between the smooth houses.

  Sleeping cripples lie on the church porch. A wrinkled official is chewing an oat cake. The nasal tones of blind men ring out in the crowd huddling in front of the church. A fat woman is lying flat on the ground before the crimson glimmer of the icons. A one-armed soldier, his immobile eyes staring into space, mutters a prayer to the Virgin Mary. He discreetly brushes his hand over the icons, and with nimble fingers swipes the fifty-ruble notes.