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

by Nathalie Babel, Peter Constantine Isaac Babel

  A library is already up and running. That’s good. Little evening concerts will begin next week to entertain the resting workers. For the time being, we subsist on durachok8 But, by God, with what fire, with what unspent ebullience and passion we play this endless, tender game that warms us like a grandfatherly sheepskin coat. I will never forget these simple, shining faces bent over the tattered cards, and for a long time to come I will carry within me the memory of the happy, restrained laughter ringing beneath the sound of the dying rain and the mountain winds.

  KAMO AND SHAUMIAN

  Were my heart not fluttering so wildly with joy, I would perhaps be better able to describe what happened in a clearer and more objective manner.

  First and foremost, the sentence of the Peoples Court of Ajaristan:9 Oh, what a sentence filled with dry erudition and fiery pathos, arrayed in the inexorable armor of law and frothing with the bile of indignation! The laws of the emperors now slumbering with their gods, the starched norms of international “courtesy,” the ancient dust of Roman Law, the Treaty of Krasin with Lloyd George,^ the ambiguous decrees of ambiguous conventions and conferences, and, finally, the Soviet decrees dripping with the red juice of revolt, were all contained within the incontrovertible verdict pronounced by an ordinary and grimy worker from Batum.10

  Why was this done? It was done to show the thrice-miraculous passing of the camel of justice through the needle s eye of bourgeois institutions. It was done in order to compel polyglot trickery to serve the cause of truth, and nimbly to push those evasive scoundrels loafing around the shores of Batum against the wall. Messrs. Christi and Papadopoulos—virtuosos of lyrical loquacity and maritime agents with a dexterity worthy of the Knights of Malta—and Messrs. Skrembi, the shipping magnates, are now writhing in a trap which the blunt hands of a laborer set up by mashing the twigs of our shadowy history with the tempestuous blood of the present (proving that you do not have to be a professor of international law to move mountains).

  At the Black Sea Transport docks the George and the Edwig are flying the red flag. The warehouses of the Knights of Malta have been requisitioned, and even the intervention of the Italian consul, appealing to the highest political echelons, has not managed to incite the clouds to release their salutary rain of transport payment.

  The George and the Edwig (formerly the Rossiya and the Maria) have been smuggled out of their Russian and Georgian ports in the most underhanded way in order to sail through the Suez Canal and into the Red Sea under a foreign flag. But the world closed in on the Maltese. Three hundred unemployed ships lie moored at the shores of Marseilles, millions of tons are idly rotting on the docks of London, Trieste, and Constantinople. Thousands of sailors are starving. The shipping routes of the world have fallen into disuse, smothered by the catastrophic sport of Parisian diplomacy.11 There is no cargo for Haifa, Jaffa, or San Francisco. Europe can only load cargo in Soviet ports. And so Messrs. Skrembi, having plucked up their courage and insured their stolen ships from Bolshevik seizure, set sail for Soviet ports.

  Messrs. Skrembi will receive their insurance money. We seized their ships.

  The red waterlines of Kamo and Shaumian blossom on the blue waters like the flames of the setting sun. The exquisite outlines of Turkish feluccas rock around them, green fezzes burn on the barges like boat lanterns, the smoke of the steamships is rising unhurriedly to the blinding skies of Batum.

  The mighty hulls of the Kamo and the Shaumian stand out like giants among the multicolored miniatures surrounding them, their snow-white decks shine and sparkle, and the slant of their masts cuts the horizon with an austere and powerful line.

  Were my heart not fluttering so persistently with joy, I would perhaps be better able to describe what happened in a clearer and more objective manner.

  But today we shall brush all orderliness aside, as we would brush away a midsummer fly.

  Groups of old Black Sea sailors are sitting cross-legged on the wooden piers. They sit, mellow and still, like Arabs at leisure, unable to tear their eyes from the black lacquered sides of the ships.

  A crowd of us climb on board the dethroned George. We are enthralled by its engine, fine-tuned like clockwork and sparkling with the red copper of its pipes and the pearly glaze of its cylinders. We are surrounded by mountains of crystal in the passenger lounge paneled with marble and oak, and by the severe cleanliness of the cabins and the aromatic paint of the walls.

  “It was completely remodeled only two months ago,” the old boatswain assigned to the Shaumian tells me. “It cost them forty thousand pounds sterling. If I die on this boat, more I cannot ask of the Lord! Forty thousand pounds—how much is that in our money, Yakov?”

  “Forty thousand pounds,” Yakov repeats pensively, swaying on his bare feet. “With our money, you cant even say.”

  “How right you are!” the boatswain exclaims triumphantly. “And the Edwig cost just as much. Try counting that up in our money!”

  “In our money,” swaying Yakov repeats stubbornly, “there is no way I can count that up.”

  And Yakovs blissful, crimson face, filled with sly delight and suppressed laughter, droops toward the deck. His fingers snap ecstatically in the air, and his shoulders keep sinking lower.

  “Could it be that you are three sheets to the wind today, Yakov?” the new captain of the Kamo asks him as he walks past.

  “I am not three sheets to the wind, Comrade Captain,” Yakov explains. “But in the case of a case such as todays, I am in full steam, as our vessel is preparing to embark for Odessa. Not to mention, I think this whole thing is terribly funny . . . its as if—for example, Comrade Captain—you were to wickedly snatch away my wife. It isn’t that she’s glamorous or anything, but, for me, poor man that I am, she’ll do. . . . Anyway, so you’ve taken her away from me, right? Well, a year goes by, and then, after that, another year goes by, and as I’m walking along I suddenly run into my old woman, and what do I see? She’s as smooth as a hog, dressed up and wearing shoes, nice and fat, with earrings,

  money in her pocket, and on her head the differentest hairdos, her face quite beckoning, an indescribable facade, and so impossibly impressive you wouldn’t believe it. So, Comrade Captain, in the case of such a case, cant I let off some steam now that the vessel is about to embark?” “Let off some steam, Yakov!” the captain answers, laughing. “But don’t forget to shut the valves.”

  “Aye-aye, Captain!” Yakov shouts.

  We all went back to the engine room, which was fine-tuned like clockwork.

  WITHOUT A HOMELAND

  During the Russian Civil War, many Russian crews stayed with their ships when the ship owners or captains defected, or when the ships were confiscated by foreign powers. In this piece, Babel describes the absurd situation of former Russian vessels being rerequisitioned by the new Soviet government, and the subsequent expatriation of the Russian crews, who were perceived as traitors to the Soviet cause.

  so it came to be that we did catch the thief. The thief’s pock-y [ ets turned out to be quite deep. In them we found two freighters. The robbers’ arrogant flag descended dolefully, and another flag, stained with the blood of battle and the purple of victory, soared to the top of the mast. Speeches were made and cannons were fired in celebration. Some people did grind their teeth. But let them grind them all they want.

  So let us continue. Once upon a time there were three oil tankers in the Black Sea: the Ray, the Light, and the Splendor,;12 The Light died of natural causes, but the Ray and the Splendor fell into the aforementioned pocket. And so it came to be that three days ago we pulled the Ray, now the Lady Eleonora, out of that pocket—a solid three-mast vessel carrying a hundred thousand poods^ of oil, with sparkling crystal in its cabins, a powerful black hull, and the red veins of its oil pipes and polished silver of its cylinders shining. A very useful Lady. One assumes she will be able refill the extinct furnaces of the Soviet shores with Soviet oil.

  The Lady is already waiting at the Black Sea transport dock, the ve
ry same spot where the Shaumian had been brought.13 There are still gentlemen in purple suspenders and lacquered shoes roaming around her flat decks. Their dry, shaven faces are twisted with grimaces of

  exhaustion and displeasure. Their toiletry cases and canary cages are being brought up from their cabins. The gentlemen curse each other in wheezing voices, and listen for automobile horns wafting through the rain and fog.

  The pale flame of crimson roses—the shapely legs in gray silk stockings—the chatter of faraway tongues—the mackintoshes of portly men and the steel columns of their pressed trousers—the shrill, boisterous scream of automobile engines.

  The canaries, the toiletry cases, and the passengers are packed into the automobiles and disappear. All that remains is the rain, the relentless rain of Batum, murmuring from the surface of the dark waters, covering the leaden swelling of the sky, and swarming beneath the pier like millions of angry, stubborn mice. A crowd of people also remains, huddling next to the Lady Eleonoras coal bunkers. A mute and gloomy snowdrift of wilting blue sailors’ shirts, extinguished cigarettes, callused fingers, and cheerless silence. These are the people no one cares about.

  The Russian consul in Batum told the former crew of the seized ships, “You call yourselves Russians, but I don’t know you from Adam! Where were you when Russia was tottering under the unbearable strain of a lopsided battle? You want to keep your old jobs, but weren’t you the ones who started the engines, raised the anchor, and swung the signal lights during those dark hours when enemies and mercenaries were stripping our devastated Soviet ports of their last possessions? One has to earn the honor of becoming a citizen of our Workers’ State! You have not earned this honor!”

  So there they are, huddling by the coal bunkers of the Lady Eleonora, locked in a cage of rain and solitude, these people without a homeland.

  “This is strange,” an old stoker says to me. “Who are we? We’re Russians, but we’re not citizens. Here they won’t allow us in, and there they chase us away. The Russians won’t have anything to do with me, and the English never had anything to do with me in the first place. Where should I go, and how can I start over again? Four thousand ships are lying idle in New York, and three hundred in Marseilles. Everyone tells me to go back where I came from. But I came from Ryazan* thirty years ago.”

  “You shouldn’t have made a run for it, you foolish stoker!” I tell him. “Who were you running from?”

  “I know, I know,” the old man answers. “You’re right.”

  In the evening, like a morose herd, they went with their knapsacks down to the port to board a foreign boat heading for Constantinople. They were pushed and jostled on the gangway by the gray mackintoshes and the trunks of the perfumed ladies. A crimson captain with gold brocade on his cap shouted at them from the bridge, “Get away from there, you dogs! I’ve had enough of you, you freeloading scum! Out of the way! Let the passengers pass!”

  They were standing next to a pile of ropes on the stern. Then the ropes were needed and they were driven to the other end of the ship. They loafed about on deck, stunned, timorous, silent, with their stained sailors’ shirts and their little waiflike bundles. When the ship whistled its departure, and the ladies on board started throwing flowers to the people who were seeing them off, the old stoker went to the railing and yelled over to me in despair, “If we were at least subjects of some country or other, that bald-headed dog wouldn’t be bullying us like this!”

  oaeo

  MUSLIM SEMINARIES AND SOVIET SCHOOLS

  A crucial and imperceptible battle is being waged with hidden and muffled doggedness. It is being waged everywhere, on the □leak slopes of inaccessible mountains and in the humid valleys of Lower Ajaria.14 One camp has a mosque and a fanatical hocha> a teacher of the Koran, the other an unprepossessing little hut with some of its doors and windows missing, and a red banner with “Workers’ School” written in faded lettering. In a few days I will head out into the mountains to take a close look at the tortuous tactics of the battle for cultural predominance. I will set out on the inscrutable zigzagging trek that one has to undertake to reach these muffled and remote villages that are still saturated with the blind and poisonous poetry of feudalism and religious stagnation. In the meantime, I will share with you a few facts that I have collected from my review of the work of the People’s Commissariat of Education.

  Influencing a persons soul requires vision and circumspection. Under the difficult conditions of the East, these qualities must be multiplied by ten and pushed to the limit. A situation that is crystal clear. But the Menshevik cavalry of enlightenment^ thought otherwise. They imported the guileless ardor of shortsighted national chauvinism into

  the tottering kingdom of the Ajarian Mullah. The results were not surprising. The population ended up ferociously despising anything that came from the government. The state school serving a dozen villages had ten to fifteen students, while the Muslim seminary was bursting at the seams with the sheer abundance of its pupils. The peasants brought the hochas money, food, and building supplies for repair work, while the Menshevik school deteriorated and emptied out, which undermined not only the authority of its founders (that would have been only a minor misfortune), but also gnawed away at the basic foundation of the culture that these prereform schools had brought with them.

  And so the Mensheviks left a legacy, a cursed legacy. Now we were faced with getting rid of it. Not an easy task. Mistrust had been fanned in the Muslim peasants, and passions burst into flame. The basic battle over alphabets wound its roots around the immense task of political education. The Congress of Ajarian Executive Committee Members was fully aware of this. It prescribed a method of careful gradualism and ideological competition which is now beginning to bear fruit.

  The Muslim seminaries were left alone. They coexisted with the Soviet schools. On top of this, the Peoples Commissariat of Education persistently set about opening schools in those places where religious schools already existed. It was not uncommon for hochas to be asked to teach the Turkish language in Soviet schools, and the hochas came and brought with them large crowds of children. The decree that Turkish had to be taught, while the official administrative language was to remain Georgian, played a decisive role.

  We have now had the experience of a year and a half of work. What are the results? They are highly propitious. The rift has been completed. The scholastic cadaver of the Muslim seminaries has been crushed by the vital workers’ system of teaching that is inherent in our schools. The children are literally running from the hochas classes, jumping out of windows, at times breaking down doors to run and hide from their severe tutors. The number of pupils studying in Soviet schools is sharply rising. And this victory was achieved without a single repressive measure, without a shadow of coercion. Unstoppable change and the power of the self-evident have brought this about with unparalleled speed and clarity. Our vital task is clear: we must fortify these bloodless and momentous conquests and expand them, but . . .

  there are so many “buts” at this point that I shall have to begin a new paragraph.

  The Ajaristan Peoples Commissariat of Education has no money. It wouldn’t even be worth touching on this routine fact had not the Ajaristan Peoples Commissariat of Educations lack of money reached legendary proportions. Suffice it to say that the teachers’ wages for the last seven months—from January through August—were only paid a few days ago, thanks to a four-billion-ruble credit that was finally allotted by the Ajarian Council of People’s Commissars after almost a year of reflection. If one considers the unbearable conditions that a cultural worker thrown into the wild gorges of Upper Ajaria has to endure, cut off from the outside world in the winter, trapped with distrustful peasants who are in need of tireless and drawn-out processing—all of this without any form of pay—then it is a true miracle that these cultural workers do not simply run away. The basic preparation of the teaching staff has been taken over by the People’s Commissariat of Education. There is now a Teacher’s Coll
ege in Khutsubani, where about two dozen Ajarian youths are studying, and very soon the first staff of Muslim teachers will graduate. These will be teachers equally proficient in Georgian and Turkish, imbued with belief in Soviet power and familiar with the basics of modern pedagogy. A pedagogical institute with the same goals will be opened in Batum in the coming school year. This institute will have to be given particular attention. Crumbs from the Menshevik pedagogical table have proved quite a hindrance to the work at hand, as has the problem of our workers having not yet adapted to the particular characteristics of the population. Everything will change the moment the true flesh-and-blood Ajarians return to their villages as teachers and propagandists. They will be welcomed with honor, trust, and love.

  They will return as teachers and propagandists. I use the word “propagandist” deliberately. It is not coincidental that to implement the new school system, our districts have welded together a triad made up of a local director from the People’s Education Committee, a representative of the Party Committee, and an instructor from the People’s Commissariat of Education. The little hut with its red banner with “Workers’ School” written in faded lettering is the core to which we must in the future attach a reading room, a model workshop, and a cultural movie theater. There is no better way of penetrating the halfopened hearts of these mountain people. In a village, a teacher must be, all in one, the Peoples Commissariat of Education, the Chief Political Educator, and the Agitation and Propaganda Minister of the Party Committee. In the coming year several schools are already beginning small model weaving workshops and courses in silkworm breeding. The success of these enterprises is preordained. Even women, veiled Ajarian women, are eagerly participating in these courses.