The Complete Works of Isaac Babel Reprint Edition by Isaac Babel, Nathalie Babel, Peter Constantine
Page 88
592. “AYE-AYE, CAPTAIN!”
593. Outside Rogdais dressing-room door. An attendant stops Rachel, who is trying to enter.
594. “I WANT TO SEE ROGDAI!”
595. she shouts, pushing back the attendant. He raises his arm threateningly. Maffi juts his head out of the dressing room.
596. “WHAT’S ALL THIS RACKET?”
597. Rachel rushes to Maffi, begging him to let her in. Maffi bows to her. His bow is very refined, elegant, and barely perceptible.
598. “MAY I BE SO BOLD AS TO ASK YOUR NAME, MADEMOISELLE?”
599. Rachel:
600. “I AM RACHEL MONKO, A ... A COMPATRIOT OF ROGDArS.”
601. The Italian bows to her a second time, takes her rough, red hand with its badly cut fingernails, and, before lifting it to his lips, glances at her slyly, holding her shivering fingers in his large, calm hand. She tugs her hand away, he kisses her wrist, bows a third time, and says:
602. “WE MUST NOT PERTURB ROGDAI DURING HIS CONCERT. IF YOU WOULD NOT MIND COMING TO MY PLACE, HE SHOULD BE THERE IN ABOUT AN HOUR....”
603. Rachel presses Maffis hands. He takes a powder box and some lipstick out of his vest pocket and hands them to Rachel, who looks at him in dismay.
604. “WOULD YOU NOT LIKE TO FIX YOUR FACE A LITTLE?”
605. Rachel shrinks back. A pocket in her dress opens and the muzzle of a small Browning peers out.
606. Maffis fingers snap the powder box shut.
607. The muzzle of the Browning, peering out of Rachels pocket.
608. Maffi slips the powder and the lipstick back into his vest pocket, and accompanies Rachel out.
609. The main entrance of the theater. Maffi s car. The driver is dozing inside—neither his face nor his hands are visible. The driver
is wrapped in a fur coat that rises above the steering wheel like a formless, furry lump. It is hard to guess if there is a man hidden beneath that rough, protruding mound. Maffi and Rachel walk up to the car. Maffi helps her into the car and slams the door shut, waking up the driver. The drivers small, wrinkled, and surprisingly indifferent face slowly emerges out of the incredible heap of fur. Maffi tells him where to drive to and jumps into the car. The cars lights flare up. Two swift rays light up the street. The car drives off.
610. Night. A Berlin street. High up, dazzling electric lights are gyrating in the form of a violin and the letters “LEO ROGDAI.”
611. The car. It is leaving the city center, weaving its way through carts carrying butchered pigs to market.
612. The walk lined with plane trees outside Villa Grennier. Night. The swaying treetops. Below, Maffis car is flying through the streets, its headlights’ two fiery shafts flying before it.
613. The baronesss salon. Night. A Venetian window. The moon, floating past the window, casts its deathly rays on a statue standing in a niche by the window, on the eyeless marble face of Apollo.
614. Maffi and Rachel get out of the car. The Italian takes a rose from a little vase fixed to the inside of the car and offers it to Rachel.
615. The lobby of the Villa Grennier. The bell rings. The doorman opens the door. Maffi takes him aside and, with a severe air, orders him to do something. The doorman, a well-built fellow with a handsome, dubious face, gives Rachel a sidelong glance.
616. The Grennier salon. The doorman turns on the light. Maffi points Rachel to a chair next to the statue of Apollo, and makes himself comfortable in a chair opposite her. He lights a cigar. Rachel:
617. “I THINK WE HAVE TO GET ROGDAI TO END HIS CONTRACT WITH HIS IMPRESARIO. HE IS ILL, HE HAS TO RECUPERATE! DONT YOU AGREE?”
618. Maffi nods his head. The door of the salon opens a crack. Rachel jumps up and stands rigidly by the statue.
619. A police officer enters the room. Rachel, ready to bolt, sees the policeman and the parting of his hair, combed down to a meticulous shine. Maffi bows to the policeman, pulls the revolver out of Rachels pocket, lays it on the table, and, pointing at Rachel, says:
620. “ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE YOU TO RACHEL MONKO, A CRIMINAL FUGITIVE FROM RUSSIA WHO IS TO BE IMMEDIATELY DELIVERED INTO THE HANDS OF THE RUSSIAN AUTHORITIES.”
621. Rachels face, turned toward Maffi. She throws away the flower that Maffi had given her. The crushed rose falls onto the Browning.
622. The rose and the revolver.
Part fit
623. A platter with a roasted fowl exquisitely laid out with its plumage. The fowl has been used as an ashtray by a group of drinkers, cigarette butts sticking out all over it.
624. The platter is lying in the middle of the table, which is covered with plates and spilled wine. Rogdais hand stubbing out a smoking cigarette in the fowl.
625. A private room in the restaurant. Dawn. The remains of the shameful banquet. Rogdai, swaying, takes a few steps.
626. He steps over the unconscious body of a man lying on the floor. The mans legs are bent in a sitting position: he had been about to bite into a chunk of beefsteak speared on the end of his fork when he fell asleep and off his chair.
627. The sky lights up. The sun is rising.
628. A street in Berlin. A lone janitor is sweeping the sidewalk outside the Hotel Imperial. He leans on his broom, pulls up his shirt and scratches his belly, and, raising his tousled head to the sky, opens his mouth in a long, obstinate, shuddering yawn.
629. The barrel of a cement mixer can be seen through branches lit by the sun. A group of homeless children are sleeping in the barrel, their filthy little bodies in a tangle. One of them wakes up, sneezes, stretches his thin blackened hands to the sky, and winks at a drunkard who is leaning against the barrel. The drunkard is Rogdai. He is wearing a coat and tails, elegant shoes, and a battered top hat that is slipping off his head.
630. Rogdai lifts his top hat, his dull eyes fixed vacantly on the winking boy. He walks off, swaying.
631. Baulins cramped little room next to the boiler. Bloated veins—the boiler pipes—cut through Baulins room; the room is clenched between the pipes’ dusty paws. A shabby, bearded man, obviously Russian, is pacing up and down the room. His endless pacing smacks of lengthy imprisonment. He has worn a path from one corner to the other. This polished path shines against the rough-hewn floor. Next to the room is the boiler for central heating. Baulin is shoveling coal into the boiler.
632. Baulin lights the fire and crushes some coal with a hammer. He is working absentmindedly, and by mistake keeps hitting an old shoe lying next to the coal. Sadness has made him incapable of work. He has battered the shoe to a pulp without even noticing. He throws down the hammer and heads back to his room. The bearded man stops pacing the room and, looking Baulin in the eye, says:
633. “WELL, COMRADE BAULIN, WE HAVE NO OBJECTION TO YOUR RETURNING TO RUSSIA TO UNDERTAKE CLANDESTINE WORK FOR OUR CAUSE.”
634. Baulin nods his head. He walks over toward the window located high up, right under the ceiling. Outside the window, stumbling feet in elegant shoes—Rogdai’s feet.
635. The laundry in the Hotel Imperial. A Chinese man has fallen asleep on a heap of starched mens shirts he has ironed. A thin stream of spittle is trickling from the sleeping mans mouth and onto a shining shirtfront. Rachels workbench is empty. Baulin enters the laundry. He leans over Rachels workbench, looks at the clock. It is three in the morning.
636. The sun is rising above the walk lined with plane trees leading to the Villa Grennier.
637. Rogdai, bumping into trees, is stumbling toward the villa.
638. The lobby in the baroness’s home. The furniture is in complete disorder. The house is being cleaned. Chairs are standing on tables, the coat stand has been moved to the side. Rogdai is creeping along a wall.
639. In the hallway. Rogdai stumbles into the velvet curtain separating one of the rooms from the hallway. Loud voices are coming from the room. Rogdai listens, becomes rigid.
640. Baroness Grennier’s room. Maffi, in a rage, strikes the table with his whip. The baroness, Count San Salvador, and Baron S
ant’ Iago stand cowering and servile before him. Maffi shouts:
641. “YOUR STINKING DUMP HERE IS SWALLOWING EVERY LAST PENNY I EARN FROM ROGDAI’S CONCERTS! STARTING SUNDAY I WANT YOU TO RAISE THE PRICES ON THE GIRLS, ESPECIALLY HELENE!”
642. Maffi swishes his whip a few inches from the baronesss nose.
643. Rogdai has entangled himself in the curtain.
644. Maffi is shaking Count San Salvador.
645. TM GOING TO SEND YOU PACKING AND HIRE THE EX-KING OF PORTUGAL INSTEAD!”
646. The winding and flapping curtain. Rogdais body struggling among its heavy folds.
647. The disheveled Count San Salvador staggers back from his infuriated master. The old man, frightened to death, keeps crossing himself delicately.
648. Rogdai creeps along the wall. Only his hunched-over back is visible.
649. An ancient cuckoo clock in the hallway strikes four. The cuckoo waggles its head boisterously.
650. Rogdai opens the door to Helene’s room and staggers back.
651. A patch of sky in the window. The sun is rising.
652. Helenes room. Helene is lying asleep in bed with Kalnischker.
653. Rogdai creeps to the nightstand, where Kalnischkers false teeth are lying in a glass of water. He picks up the false teeth, his fingers clenching them tightly.
654. Rogdai s fingers clenching Kalnischkers false teeth. Fadeout into:
655. The eyeless marble face of Apollo.
656. An escritoire arranged with unusual thoroughness and love: an inkwell, a pen-and-pencil holder, a piece of cloth for wiping pen nibs, neatly cut paper, a paperweight, and a machine for sharpening pencils.
657. The baronesss salon. Rachel is being questioned by the policeman. Rachel is huddling against the statue. The policeman has
spent hours writing out a statement. He is writing slowly, calligraphically, forgetting everything else in the world. His handwriting is of diabolical beauty.
658. “SO YOU’RE A POLITICAL FUGITIVE, NOT A CRIMINAL ONE?”
659. the policeman asks, and, receiving a positive answer, begins once more decorating the filled sheets of paper, which look more like Japanese etchings than sheets of paper filled with writing.
660. Rachel embraces Apollo’s marble legs. The statue moves very slightly on its wooden podium.
661. Rogdai enters Helene’s boudoir. He opens her closet and riffles through the gowns hanging on clothes hangers.
662. Helene’s open closet. The personal toilette of a young woman of the world: shoes, dresses, perfume bottles, and gloves.
663. Rogdai finds the dress that Helene was wearing when they first met, the dress with the long sash embroidered with gold thread.
664. Baroness Grennier and the old gentlemen come shuffling out of the room one after the other. The infuriated Italian hurls the whip after them, and it lands on San Salvador’s bent back.
665. In Helene’s boudoir. Rogdai takes down the portrait of him that was painted in the days when he was young and strong.
666. The hook on the wall on which the portrait had hung.
667. In the salon. The policeman has finished the fourth page and is about to embark on the fifth. He unhurriedly blots the ink on the sheet filled with writing, eyes it with admiration, shakes it. Maffi enters the room.
668. “WHAT? YOU’RE STILL HERE?”
669. The policeman, hurled down from the heights of heaven:
670. “THE FRAULEIN MAINTAINS THAT SHE HAS THE HONOR OF BEING A POLITICAL CRIMINAL. THIS BEING SO, I AM WRITING A SMALL SUMMING-UP OF HER STATEMENT.”
671. Maffi yawns and waves his hands dismissively.
672. “FINISH WHAT YOU’RE DOING AND TAKE HER AWAY. IT’S TIME TO GO TO BED.”
673. Maffi takes off his evening jacket and shakes it out. It gets caught on Apollo’s hand and hangs there. A bed has been made up for
Maffi on the sofa. Arranged on a nightstand are all the things that a forty-year-old man might need during the night: wafers, a bottle of soda water, a French novel, a dressing gown, and so on. Maffi unbuttons his collar. He grimaces—the collar is too tight.
674. Rachel, still huddling next to the statue, asks Maffi:
675. “WHERE IS ROGDAI?”
676. Maffi hurls the collar away, pours himself some soda water, and says:
677. “YOU THINK FM MY BROTHER ABEL’S KEEPER?”
678. The statue of Apollo moves. Rachel, leaning against it with her shoulder, topples the enormous statue from its pedestal. The statue tumbles over, falling onto the sofa, fracturing Maffi’s skull, shattering into a thousand pieces.
679. Rachel pushes Maffi onto his back. She claws at his face, yelling:
680. “WHERE IS ROGDAI?”
681. Maffis skull is fractured, his eyes bloody. Rachel begins strangling him, but the police officer lunges at her and puts handcuffs on her.
682. Maffi, covered in blood, his eyes unseeing, is waving his arms in the air. He slumps off the sofa and crawls on all fours toward Rachel.
683. The policeman drags Rachel, who is struggling hysterically, across the floor. He pushes open a door and at the curtain separating the rooms bumps into someone’s legs.
684. Rogdai’s body, hanging from the gold-embroidered sash, has been set swaying by the policeman’s bumping into it. Rogdai’s asphyxiated face turns toward the viewer.
685. Rachel looks into the dead man’s face, throws her handcuffed hands into the air, and collapses on the floor.
686. Maffi comes crawling in after Rachel. He gropes for the revolver in his pocket, takes it out, and shoots without aiming.
687. Rogdai’s hand clutching Kalnischker’s false teeth. The bullet pierces the dead man’s hand and the fingers unclench, dropping the false teeth. The hanging man’s body turns its back to the viewer. Cut.
688. Baulin’s dingy little room. His bearded companion, crouching between the pipes, is mending his pants with stitches that are clumsy, masculine, and soldierly. From time to time he looks over to the boiler where Baulin is stoking the furnace.
689. Baulin in front of the blazing furnace. Rachel quietly comes into the cellar. She takes off her kerchief. Her hair has turned gray. She steadies herself on the wall. After a few moments of silence she asks without raising her head:
690. “WHERE SHALL WE GO TO NOW?”
691. The flame of the burning coals. Baulin answers:
692. “BACK TO RUSSIA!”
693. Among the tangle of pipes, the bearded mans face bent over his pants. His eyes dart in Baulins direction and then back.
694. The polished strip of floor, trodden by Baulin and his bearded comrade.
BENYA KRIK
A TREATMENT FOR A FILM
The silent movie Benya Krik, directed by Vilner; premiered in January 1927. The screenplay is based on the Odessa stories, and is divided into sections that bear the names of individual stories. As in Babel's other screenplays, the writing style in Benya Krik reads more like a literary work than a scenario. “Dvoira throws herself onto the cringing groom, drags him toward her as a dockworker might drag a sack of flour down a gangplank, and devours him with a long, wet, predatory kiss. ” It is particularly interesting to read this screenplay in connection with the Odessa stories and the play Sunset, as it develops and varies their themes. The Odessa story “How Things Were Done in Odessa" opens with, “Let's talk about Benya Krik. Let's talk about his lightning-quick beginning and his terrible end. ” But the screenplay Benya Krik is the only surviving work in which wefind out what his terrible end is after the Bolsheviks take over Odessa in 1919.
(Part One
The King
Chief of Police Sokovich, off Duty
Chief of Police Sokovichs room. A canary is swinging in a cage, which is hanging from the ceiling near a window lined with potted geraniums.
An old woman in a cap is sitting by the grand piano, knitting. The needles move quickly. The piano is partially visible, its lacquered cover glistening.
The chie
f of police plays with unusual pathos—he moves his lips, lifts his shoulders, and opens his mouth.
The keyboard. Sokovichs fingers, covered in rings in the shape of skulls, hooves, and Assyrian seals, are racing over the keys.
The canary in its cage is bursting with song. Sokovich is swaying as he plays, and with him sway the room, the canary, the knitting needles, and the old woman.
Marantz, a Jew in a tattered suit, emerges from the depths of the room. He coughs, shuffles, and scrapes his feet, but the enraptured chief of police doesn’t hear him.
Sokovichs fingers pound the keys tempestuously. Marantzs doleful, indecisive face bends down toward the keyboard.
The chief of police begins playing in a tender piano. Marantz cannot contain himself. Overcome with emotion, he grabs Sokovichs head and presses it against his chest.
Sokovich jumps up. Marantz whispers something into his ear, or, to be more precise, he whispers something somewhere below Sokovichs ear.
“MAY I NOT LIVE TO SEE THE DAY I LEAD MY OWN DAUGHTER UNDER THE FLOWER CANOPY ... IF ... IF I AM NOT ...
TODAY...”
Marantz steps back, cowers, swivels on his shaky feet. Sokovich looks at him gravely. Marantz:
“THE KING IS GIVING AWAY HIS SISTER TODAY. EVERYONE
WILL GET BLIND DRUNK, AND YOU CAN PULL OFF AN
EXCELLENT RAID!”
Sokovich slams down the piano cover. He peers at the Jews grimacing, twitching face.
A young gypsy woman with layers of tattered skirts is sitting on the edge of the sidewalk in front of the chief of police s house. She is covered in ribbons and coin necklaces. She is eating bread rolls and taking swigs from a wine bottle. Next to her a monkey on a chain is jumping up and down. Excited children are running in circles around her.
Sokovichs front door opens and Marantz sneaks out into the street. He looks around furtively, and walks away along the wall.
The gypsy grabs the monkey and runs after Marantz. She catches up with him and starts begging and coaxing him for money.
“GIVE US SOMETHING, YOUR EXCELLENCY! GIVE US SOMETHING, YOU HANDSOME MAN!”
Marantz spits and walks on. The gypsy stands looking after him for a long time. The monkey jumps onto her shoulder, and also watches Marantz walk away.