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

by Nathalie Babel, Peter Constantine Isaac Babel

  Kochetkov is standing guard at the door of a passenger car, the first car after the locomotive. Benya and Froim climb in. Kochetkov locks the door behind them. Froim hears the rasping of the key in the lock, turns, and peers through the window at Kochetkovs simple, highcheekboned face. Froim knocks on the window:

  “HEY, KOCHETKOV! WHAT IF I NEED TO GO FOR A YOU-

  KNOW-WHAT?”

  Kochetkov stands at attention with his rifle.

  “THERE’S NO TIME FOR YOU-KNOW-WHATS IN THE WAR!”

  Froim eyes Kochetkov and disappears into the depths of the railroad car.

  The boats, hurriedly hoisting their sails, pull out to sea. The drenched stevedores crawl onto the shore. Evening.

  Gas lamps have been lit on the platform. Lyovka Bik is dragging a pile of empty sacks to the train. Sobkov comes up to him and asks:

  “WHY SO MANY SACKS, LYOVKA?”

  Lyovka, bent beneath the weight of his load, looks at the slow-witted military commissar.

  “YOU NEED SACKS IF YOU’RE GOING TO FIGHT THE SMUGGLERS AND THEIR SACKS!”

  he answers, and hurries on. Old Manka, the matriarch of the Slobodka bandits, bustles after him carrying a basket.

  Benya is standing by a compartment window. Manka, gasping for breath, comes rushing up to him. She takes a quart of liquor and a mandolin out of her basket and gives them to him.

  The locomotive whistles.

  Benya Kriks men are pushing the railroad car loaded with watermelons along the track. They couple it to the train.

  The regiment has boarded. Red Army fighters from regular units are closing the doors of the boxcars. Slowly, unstoppably, the doors roll shut on their iron rollers. The jaws of the boxcars all close at the same instant. The Red Army fighters jump onto the brake platforms.

  The locomotive whistles one last time and begins to move.

  More Red Army fighters, hidden behind the warehouses, jump onto the brake platforms and climb onto the roofs of the railroad cars.

  Faraway sails on the nocturnal sea. The slashed moon in an avalanche of clouds.

  The train gathers speed.

  Odessa receding in the distance—the winding line of lights in the port, the winking eye of the lighthouse, the reflection of the moon on the black water, the swaying hulls of the fishing boats, and the gaps between their sails through which the stars shine.

  A private first-class railroad car. The roomy, frayed interior retaining signs of recent grandeur. A gilded bath adorned with imperial eagles stands in a corner, fixed to the floor. A quart of liquor and a suckling pig roasted whole are on the table. Sobkov pours vodka into

  cracked mugs. The midgets, dressed in their evening wear, are also present at the feast. There are no forks or knives to be seen. Froim is pulling the suckling pig apart with his hands.

  Kochetkov is making himself comfortable in a little anteroom outside the private compartment. He has put his rifle between his legs, spread a dirty tablecloth over a little table, laid out tobacco and cigarette papers, and carved a little rod for packing the tobacco into the cigarettes.

  Sobkov, Benya, Froim, and the midgets toast, clinking together their many-shaped mugs. The rims of the mugs have been smashed off and their bottoms secured with wire. Everyone has drunk down their liquor except for Sobkov, who has poured it down his shirt. Benya and Froim notice his ruse, glance at each other, and slip their revolvers under the area map lying on the table.

  Kochetkov is rolling cigarettes, his fingers moving unhurriedly. He stacks them in neat little piles.

  Froim pours vodka. The group toasts, their eyes fixed on one another. The revolvers are bulging beneath the area map.

  Only the midgets are drinking cheerfully and with gusto.

  The hurtling train. Night. The slithering silhouettes of the Red Army fighters glitter on the roofs of the railroad cars, on the brake platforms, and on the couplings. The last car uncouples from the train and rolls back, a spark flitting over the rails in its wake.

  In the private first-class car. The company is drinking. This time Benya and Froim have poured away their vodka, but they do it with more skill than Sobkov, and nobody sees them.

  Kochetkov, rolling cigarettes in the hall outside. Everyone in the compartment pretends to be drunk. Sobkov gives Benya and Froim flabby, slobbering kisses. The midgets, truly drunk, attempt to dance. Froim lifts them with outstretched arms and, jerking his legs in his big boots, dances a mysterious, somber, ponderous dance.

  A second railway car uncouples and rolls back into the night. A spark chases after it, sputtering over the rails.

  Benya is playing his mandolin, his head hanging low, his expression fixed. Sobkov, lolling in an armchair as if he were completely drunk, is clapping to the music. Froim is dancing with the midgets. The tiny woman flings her little arms around Froims brick-red neck and kisses him on the lips.

  A stream of poured-out vodka trickles out from under the table.

  Kochetkov, rolling cigarettes.

  The drunken midgets collapse. They embrace one another and fall asleep.

  Benya flings his mandolin to the side, and pours vodka. Froim, Sobkov, and Benya intertwine their arms and drink to brotherhood.

  “TO BROTHERHOOD!”

  The three men lift their mugs to their lips. At that instant the train stops. The sharp jolt makes the vodka spill, and the men slowly disentangle their intertwined arms. Sobkov rushes to the window and pulls back the curtains. The night is flooded with the flames of a large campfire. Crimson rays streak across the faces of Benya and Froim.

  The train has stopped in a field. All that is left of the train is the locomotive and the first-class car. All the other cars have been uncoupled. Red Army fighters are teeming over the roof of the first-class car—they are on the roof, the steps, the brake platforms, and the windows. The campfire is flaming fifty paces from the tracks^

  Two shepherds are boiling a peaceful stew in a sooty pot. Red Army fighters—shaggy, squat, barefoot muzhiks—crawl out of the ripened wheat and, their rifles at the ready, run toward the train.

  Sobkov steps away from the window and throws his mug of vodka into the gilded tub.

  “DONT BE ANGRY, BENYA.”

  he says, and leaves the compartment. Benya looks first at Froim, then at the bath, and then at the midgets, who are sleeping in the corner in each others arms. Froim makes a fist and sticks his thumb through his rough, scarred index and middle fingers, and raises it in front of the Kings face.

  Kochetkov is standing on the steps of the first-class car holding out his hat filled with cigarettes to the shaggy muzhiks. They eagerly snatch at them.

  Benya appears at the window.

  The muzhiks’ hands grappling for the cigarettes in Kochetkovs

  hat.

  Benya eyes the Red Army fighters swarming around the car, their rifle barrels pointing at him. He looks at a barefoot muzhik sitting on the coupling where the car is hooked to the train, and then at Sobkov, standing rigidly in front of the window, the receiver of a field telephone in his hands.

  Inside the compartment. Froim is smashing open the floor of the car with demonic speed. The one-eyed carter wants to make a getaway through a hole in the floor. Kochetkov creeps up to him and shoots him in the head. Froim turns his resigned, reproachful, blood-drenched face to him.

  Sobkov keeps his eyes fixed on the open window. He is still holding the field telephone in his hands. Benya slowly pulls the curtains shut. The midgets have jumped up, awakened by the shot. Kochetkov raises his finger to his lips. “Shh,” he says, and goes over to Benya, taking him by the hand.

  “WE’VE BEEN THROUGH THICK AND THIN TOGETHER!”

  Kochetkov says, and turns Benya around to face him. The Red Army fighters enter the compartment, their rifles aimed.

  The back of Benyas shaved neck. A spot appears on it, a gaping wound with blood spurting in all directions.

  FADEOUT

  In the study of the chairman of the Odessa Executive Committee. A ker
osene lamp is burning beneath a sumptuous dead chandelier. The chairman, a drowsy man wearing a loose-hanging white shirt, a scarf around his neck, and a tall sheepskin hat, is leaning over a diagram.

  “THE PRODUCTION CURVE OF ODESSAN LEATHER FACTORIES IN THE FIRST HALF OF 1919.”

  An engineer from the National Economics Council is explaining the diagram to him. The telephone rings and the chairman lifts the receiver.

  In the field by the campfire. Sobkov, lying on the ground, is speaking into the telephone. The bodies of Benya and Froim lie next to him, covered with a bast mat. Their bare feet are jutting out from under the mat.

  The chairman listens to the report and puts the receiver back on the hook. He raises his sleepy eyes to the engineer.

  “PLEASE CONTINUE, COMRADE.”

  Two heads, one close-cropped, the other in a shaggy sheepskin hat, lean over the diagram.

  THE CHINESE MILL

  (AN ATTEMPTED MOBILIZATION)

  The silent movie The Chinese Mill, directed by Levshin, premiered in July 1928. It is a comedy based on the misguided enthusiasm of a young provincial Egor Zhivtsov the secretary of the Young Communist League of his village, an outpost deep in the Russian hinterland. Zhivtsov hears that a revolution is brewing in capitalist China, and mobilizes the village yokels into a large, disorganized troop that is eager to set out to help bring Communism to China.

  ^art One

  The top of a haystack; an eagle of the steppes illuminated by the sun. Clouds. Their fringes are lit by the setting sun. Sasha Panyutin, a provincial enthusiast and inventor, is installing a wireless antenna on the rickety roof of a former manor house. On the roof there is a sign:

  “HOMETOWN OF EGOR ZHIVTSOV—THE VILLAGE OF

  POVARENSHINO.”

  The village, surrounded by forests through which a glistening river winds. Unharvested fields, haystacks.

  Panyutin has finished working—the antenna is installed, he has hammered the final nail.

  The antenna cuts into the fleecy clouds.

  The former manors main hall—now the village reading room.

  On the carved table legs are columns with cupids. The face of one of the cupids is half hidden by a copy of Pravda.

  On the table stands a wireless radio built into a metallic candy box, along with a loudspeaker.

  Peasants are sitting on benches, preparing to hear good tidings.

  The large callused hands of the peasants.

  Stacks of plows in the shed.

  Plow handles.

  On another bench sit the Komsomols,2 tousled hair, laughing eyes.

  In opposite corners are two rows of arms—young and old.

  Cherevkov, one of the Komsomols and the village librarian—a tall, good-natured fellow—is standing by the radio. He lifts his hand.

  “LISTEN TO MOSCOW, COMRADES!”

  The Moscow radio station—a web of steel crossbeams.

  The candy box, the spark indicator, and knobs. Panyutins hand is fiddling with them.

  A row of wrinkled old village women are sitting in the village reading room.

  The peasants are sitting restlessly on the benches.

  Village girls in their finery.

  Young men with accordions.

  An old, gray-haired man wearing bast sandals and a fur stands in the back by the wall where the newspaper is posted. He drags the fur along the floor behind him, like a Roman patrician.

  Cherevkov, inspired:

  “LISTEN TO MOSCOW, COMRADES!”

  The roofs of one of Moscow’s main streets. A forest of antennas.

  An old woman wearing a patched shawl is holding the headset to her ears. Her head is enclosed by the metallic hoop.

  “IT’S SPEAKING!”

  Large beads of sweat roll down the old womans face.

  The Bolshoi Theater in Moscow.

  The stage of the Bolshoi Theater.

  A Chinese orator has taken the stand. In front of him is the radio microphone.

  “THIS MEETING OF CHINESE NATIONALS LIVING IN

  MOSCOW IS A PROTEST AGAINST BRITISH VIOLENCE!”

  The theater is jam-packed with Chinese.

  Spotlights on high-cheekboned faces.

  A line of horn-rimmed spectacles.

  A row of Chinese students wearing horn-rimmed spectacles.

  The chandeliers of the Bolshoi Theater are mirrored in the spectacles.

  The Chinese orator. Above him a statue of Lenin with a raised arm. The light glows on Lenins bronze head.

  The eighty-year-old fingers of the old woman grip the radio headset.

  The old womans perturbed face.

  “THEY’RE SAYING SOMETHING HOLY, BUT I CAN’T TELL

  WHAT ABOUT!”

  The old woman crosses herself.

  The Chinese orator.

  A row of heavy village beards.

  A rake has gotten tangled in a beard.

  The hands of the Chinese students on the velvet balustrade of the balcony.

  Among the students, Zhivtsov, the secretary of the Komsomol cell of the village of Povarenshino, is applauding wildly. He is in Moscow as a delegate to the Congress of Aviakhim.* He has dropped by the Chinese gathering between meetings. His jacket, worn over a peasant blouse, flies open. The chain of his grandfathers pocket watch hangs across his chest.

  He is short, pimply, long-haired, wearing large, shabby shoes. His chest is covered with badges: from K.I.M.,t from AVIAKHIM, from M.O.P.R.,** a medal for rescuing someone from drowning, and many more.

  The Chinese orator is speaking passionately.

  Zhivtsov echoes all the orators gestures.

  “DOWN WITH WOR-R-R-LD IMPERIALISM!”

  * The Association for the Furthering of Chemistry and Aviation.

  ^ The International Communist Youth Movement.

  ** The International Revolutionary Aid Society.

  Zhivtsov shouts in a trance.

  Zhivtsov’s gaping, distorted mouth, his thirty-two flawless teeth.

  Zhivtsov s neighbor, a Chinese student, takes offhis glasses, wipes them, and with joyful, shortsighted eyes looks at Zhivtsov and grabs his hand.

  Zhivtsov and the Chinese student shake hands passionately.

  A street in Moscow. Thick steam pours from the window of a laundry. “All work performed on premises by Su Chi Fo.”

  A mountain of dazzling white linen rises out of the steam.

  The sunlight cuts through the moving clouds of steam and rests on the linen.

  The inside of the Chinese laundry. A Chinese man, stripped to the waist, with a scraggly Asiatic beard, is washing stacks of pretentious bloomers.

  Hanging in a golden frame above the Chinese man is an oleograph titled 4A Night in Venice.”

  Tears run down the cheeks of the gondolier. They are condensation from the steam.

  An airfield on the banks of the Moscow River.

  A sign: “Orientation flights for the delegates of the Aviakhim Congress.”

  A group of Kirghiz tribesmen wearing long robes enter the cabin of the airplane.

  The flap of a multicolored Kirghiz robe flutters over an airplane wheel.

  An old Chinese woman, Su Chi Fo’s wife, is ironing.Tears fall onto the linen.

  She irons them away.

  The wings of a flying airplane.

  Su Chi Fos son enters the laundry. He is the student who sat next to Zhivtsov at the Bolshoi Theater.

  Another teardrop falls onto the linen. The old woman irons it away.

  Su Chi Fo places a brand-new tin teapot in a suitcase.

  Moscow seen from an airplane.

  Su Chi Fo takes a train ticket from the labyrinthine pockets of his wife’s jacket and gives it to his son.

  The train ticket says “Moscow-Chita-Manchuria.”

  The quivering hand of the old Chinese woman is ironing lace.

  Zhivtsov ecstatic with joy in the cabin of the flying airplane.

  The Moscow River shot from above. Its banks are covered with newspapers.


  Swimmers sun themselves, reading newspapers.

  Zhivtsov knocks on the pilot s cabin door.

  “THIS IS SO INTERESTING, COMRADE, ABSOLUTELY FASCINATING! BUT I HAVE TO CATCH THE TRAIN TO POVARENSHINO!”

  The airplane descends.

  Lace hanging from the ironing board. The iron in the Chinese womans hand.

  A tear falls on the iron and sizzles.

  Su Chi Fos departing son bids his father farewell—he clasps his father s hand, which is covered in a cloud of soap suds.

  He goes over to his crying mother.

  The airplane touches down.

  The door opens, Zhivtsov jumps out.

  A soapy mark left on the Chinese womans shoulder.

  Airplane wheels.

  The turning wheels of a streetcar.

  Crutches on the steps of the streetcar.

  The turning wheels of a bus.

  Powerful locomotive wheels.

  A signal: a railroad worker swings a lantern three times.

  The wheels of the locomotive shake, begin moving.

  Zhivtsov s bags fly into the trains corridor and he jumps in behind them. Zhivtsov bumps into the Chinese student on the platform of the railway car.

  The switches are thrown. A multitude of tracks in the large Moscow station.

  Zhivtsov speaks:

  “ARE YOU GOING FAR?”

  The Chinese student is holding a foreign-made suitcase in one hand and the tin teapot in the other. He answers:

  “TO HANGCHOW.”

  Suburban buildings flow by the train.

  The switches are thrown. (The general plan.)

  Zhivtsov presses the accordion he bought in Moscow to his chest.

  He says:

  “AND I’M GOING TO POVARENSHINO—IT HAPPENS TO BE IN

  THE SAME DIRECTION.”

  The Chinese student smiles, showing his dazzling teeth.

  The train picks up speed.

  The moon has plunged into a lake, the reeds flicker.

  A bird swims in the middle of the lake.

  Zhivtsov and the Chinese student are sitting on the vestibule steps of the rushing train.

  A lively discussion.

  The Chinese student is talking to Zhivtsov.

  Dazzlingly lit, steeply rising mountains drenched by recent torrential downpours. With all his strength an old trembling coolie hauls a rickshaw up the mountain.