Red Cavalry

by Isaac Babel

  On the small sheet of paper a red pencil—a pencil red and soft, like clay—had sketched the laughing face of Pani Brajna, encircled with copper curls.

  “My money!” Shmerel cried, seeing his wife’s portrait. He grabbed a stick and set off in pursuit of the guests. But along the way Shmerel remembered Apolek’s pink body, drenched with water, and the sun in his yard, and the accordion’s soft jangle. The tavern keeper lost his nerve and, putting the stick aside, returned home.

  The next morning Apolek presented the Novograd priest with his diploma from the Munich Academy and spread out before him twelve pictures on Biblical themes. These pictures were painted in oil on thin panels of cypress wood. The pater saw upon his desk the fiery purple of mantles, the lustre of emerald fields and flowery veils cast over the plains of Palestine.

  Pan Apolek’s saints, this whole collection of rejoicing and simple-minded elders—grey-bearded, red-faced—were crammed into torrents of silk and magnificent evenings.

  That same day Pan Apolek was commissioned to decorate the new church. And over some Bénédictine the pater said to the artist:

  “Santa Maria, my beloved Pan Apolinary, from what wondrous realms has so joyous a grace descended upon us?…”

  Apolek worked with zeal, and within a month the new church was full of bleating herds, the dusty gold of sunsets and straw-coloured cow udders. Buffaloes with worn hides were drawn in harness, dogs with pink snouts ran ahead of the flock and corpulent infants rocked in cradles suspended from the straight trunks of palm trees. The brown rags of Franciscan monks surrounded a cradle. The crowd of magi was carved with glittering bald spots and wrinkles as bloody as wounds. Within the crowd flickered the foxy grin of Leo XIII’s hag-like little face, and the Novograd priest himself, telling the beads of a Chinese carved rosary with one hand, blessed the newborn Jesus with the other.

  For five months Apolek, ensconced in his wooden seat, crept along the walls, along the dome and through the gallery.

  “You have a passion for familiar faces, my beloved Pan Apolek,” the priest once remarked, recognizing himself in one of the magi and Pan Romuald in the baptist’s severed head. He smiled, the old pater, and sent a glass of brandy up to the artist, who was working under the dome.

  Then Apolek completed the Last Supper and the stoning of Mary Magdalene. One Sunday he uncovered the decorated walls. The eminent citizens the priest had invited recognized Janek, the lame convert, in the apostle Paul, and in Mary Magdalene—the Jewish girl Elka, daughter of unknown parents and mother of many a stray. The eminent citizens demanded that the profane images be covered up. The priest brought down threats upon the blasphemer. But Apolek did not cover the decorated walls.

  So began the unprecedented war between the all-mighty body of the Catholic Church on the one hand, and the carefree icon-dauber on the other. It lasted three decades—a war as merciless as a Jesuit’s passion. The incident nearly made the meek reveller into the founder of a new heresy. And he would surely have proved the most baffling and ridiculous warrior that the Church of Rome had faced in all its tortuous and turbulent history—a warrior wandering the earth in blissful drunkenness with two white mice under his shirt and a set of the finest brushes in his pocket.

  “Fifteen złotys for the Mother of God, twenty-five złotys for the holy family and fifty złotys for the Last Supper depicting all of the customer’s relatives. For ten złotys extra, the customer’s enemy can be depicted as Judas Iscariot,” Apolek announced to the neighbouring peasants after he was driven out of the temple.

  There was no shortage of orders. And when the commission from the bishop of Zhitomir, summoned by the Novograd priest’s frantic missives, finally arrived the next year, they found these monstrous family portraits—sacrilegious, naive and vivid, like the flowering of a tropical garden—in the most run-down and foul-smelling huts. Josephs with grey hair parted in the middle, pomaded Jesuses, multiparous village Marys with knees set wide apart—these icons hung in the red corners, surrounded by wreaths of paper flowers.

  “He has promoted you to sainthood while you still live!” exclaimed the vicar of Dubno and Novo-Konstantinov, responding to the crowd that had gathered to defend Apolek. “He has surrounded you with the unutterable trappings of sanctity—you, who have fallen thrice into the sin of disobedience, you moonshiners, ruthless usurers, makers of false weights and sellers of your own daughters’ innocence!”

  “Your Holiness,” responded the hobbling Witold, receiver of stolen goods and cemetery watchman. “Who’s to say where the all-merciful Lord God sees the truth? How could we ignorant folk know that? And isn’t there more truth in the paintings of Pan Apolek, who flatters our pride, than in your words, full of scorn and a master’s wrath?…”

  The crowd’s whoops had the vicar on the run. The people’s state of mind in the surrounding towns threatened the churchmen’s safety. The artist invited to replace Apolek didn’t dare to paint over Elka and lame Janek. They can be seen even now in the bye-altar of the Novograd church: Janek-Paul, a timorous cripple with a ragged black beard, a village apostate, and her, the harlot of Magdala, sickly and crazed, with a dancing body and sunken cheeks.

  The battle with the priest lasted three decades. Then the Cossack flood drove the old monk from his fragrant, stony nest, and Apolek—O the vicissitudes of fate!—took up residence in Pani Eliza’s kitchen. And here I am, a momentary guest, drinking the wine of his evening talks.

  Talks—about what? About the romantic days of the Polish gentry, about the furious fanaticism of women, about the artist Luca della Robbia and about the family of the carpenter from Bethlehem.

  “I have something to tell the Pan Clerk…” Apolek informs me mysteriously before supper.

  “Yes,” I say. “Yes, Apolek, I’m listening…”

  But the church lay brother, Pan Robacki—stern and grey, bony and big-eared—is sitting too close. He hangs up before us faded canvases of silence and hostility.

  “I have to tell the Pan,” whispers Apolek, leading me aside, “that Jesus, son of Mary, was wed to Deborah, a Jerusalem maiden of common birth…”

  “Oj, ten człowiek!”2 Pan Robacki cries in despair. “Ten człowiek won’t die in his own bed… Tego człowieka, folks will do him in…”

  “After supper,” Apolek rustles in a disappointed voice. “After supper, if it pleases the Pan Clerk…”

  It pleases me. Kindled by the start of Apolek’s story, I pace the kitchen and await the promised hour. Outside the window, night has descended like a black column. Outside the window, the dark, living garden has turned numb with cold. The road to the church flows like a milky, sparkling stream beneath the moon. The land is draped with a murky radiance, and necklaces of glowing fruits hang on the bushes. The scent of lilies is pure and strong, like alcohol. This fresh poison bites into the fatty, roiling breath of the stove and deadens the resinous stuffiness of the spruce scattered around the kitchen.

  Wearing a pink bow and threadbare pink trousers, Apolek potters about in his corner like a gentle, graceful animal. His table is smeared with glue and paint. The old man works with minute, frequent movements. His corner emits the quietest of melodic drumbeats. Old Gottfried is tapping it out with his trembling fingers. The blind man sits motionless in the yellow and oily glare of the lamp. Bowing his bald forehead, he listens to the endless music of his blindness and the muttering of Apolek, his eternal friend.

  “…And what the priests and the Evangelist Mark and the Evangelist Matthew tell you, Pan—it isn’t true… But the truth can be revealed to the Pan Clerk, and for fifty marks I’m ready to make a portrait of the Pan in the guise of the blessed Francis, on a background of greenery and sky. He was a very simple saint, Pan Francis. And if the Pan Clerk has a bride in Russia… Women love the blessed Francis, although not all women, Pan…”

  And so, in a corner smelling of spruce, began the story of Jesus’ marriage to Deborah. This girl had a bridegroom, according to Apolek. Her bridegroom was a young Israelite w
ho sold elephant tusks. But Deborah’s wedding night ended in confusion and tears. The woman was gripped with fear when she saw her husband approaching her bed. Hiccups puffed out her throat. She threw up everything she had eaten at the wedding feast. Shame fell upon Deborah, upon her father, her mother and all her kin. Her bridegroom left her, jeering, and summoned all the guests. And so Jesus, seeing the anguish of the woman who yearned for her husband and feared him, put on the newlywed’s garb and, full of compassion, united with Deborah, lying in her vomit. Then she went out to the guests, exulting noisily and slyly averting her gaze, like a woman proud of her fallenness. And only Jesus stood to the side. A deathly perspiration broke out over his body; the bee of sorrow stung his heart. He left the banquet hall, unseen by anyone, and withdrew to the desert country east of Judea, where John awaited him. And Deborah brought forth her first-born…

  “Where is he, then?” I cried.

  “The priests hid him,” Apolek pronounced with significance, raising a light, chilly finger to his drunkard’s nose.

  “Pan Artist,” Robacki suddenly cried, rising out of the darkness, his grey ears twitching. “Co wy mówicie?3 That’s unthinkable…”

  “Tak, tak,” Apolek cringed and grabbed Gottfried. “Tak, tak, Panie…”4

  He dragged the blind man towards the door, but paused on the threshold and beckoned me with his finger.

  “Blessed Francis,” he whispered, winking, “with a bird on his sleeve, a dove or a goldfinch, whatever pleases the Pan Clerk…”

  And then he disappeared with the blind and eternal friend.

  “Oh, what foolishness!” pronounced Robacki, the church lay brother. “Ten człowiek won’t die in his own bed…”

  Pan Robacki opened his mouth wide and yawned like a cat. I said good night and set off for home, to my pillaged Jews.

  A homeless moon drifted about the town. And I walked along with her, nursing impossible dreams and discordant songs.

  Notes

  1 zrazy: stuffed meat cutlets, eaten throughout Eastern Europe.

  2 Oj, ten człowiek!: “Oh, that man!” (Polish).

  3 Co wy mówicie?: “What are you saying?” (Polish).

  4 Tak, tak… Panie: “Yes, yes… yes, yes, sir…” (Polish).

  THE ITALIAN SUN

  YESTERDAY I AGAIN sat in Pani Eliza’s rooms, beneath a hot wreath of green spruce branches. I sat near the warm, live, grumbling stove and then walked home in the dead of night. Down at the precipice the noiseless Zbrucz rolled a dark, glassy wave. My soul, suffused with the wearisome drunkenness of yearning, smiled to no one in particular, and my imagination, a blind, happy woman, swirled before me like a summertime fog.

  It seemed to me that the charred town—the broken columns and the hooks of wicked old women’s fingers sticking from the earth—had been raised up into the air, as snug and fanciful as a dream. The naked brilliance of the moon bathed it with an inexhaustible force. The damp mould of the ruins bloomed like a marble bench in an opera. And I waited with an anxious soul for Romeo to step out from behind the clouds, a satin Romeo singing of love while a glum electrician stands in the wings with his finger on the moon’s off-switch.

  Blue roads ran past me like streams of milk, flowing from many breasts. Walking home, I dreaded meeting Sidorov, my neighbour, who would drape the hairy paw of his misery over me at night. Luckily, on this night, rent by the milk of the moon, Sidorov didn’t utter a word. He wrote, surrounded by books. A humpbacked candle—the sinister bonfire of dreamers—smoked on the table. I sat off to the side, dozing, dreams prancing around me like kittens. And it wasn’t until late at night that I was awakened by an orderly who had come to summon Sidorov to headquarters. They left together. I then ran over to the table where Sidorov had been writing and leafed through the books. There was a teach-yourself-Italian course, a print of the Roman Forum and a plan of the city of Rome. The plan was all marked up with crosses and dots. My vague drunkenness fell from me. I leant over a sheet covered with writing and, with a sinking heart, wringing my fingers, read another man’s letter. Sidorov, the miserable killer, tore the pink wool of my imagination to shreds and pulled me into the corridors of his clear-headed madness. The letter began on the second page—I didn’t dare look for the first:

  …lung’s shot through and I’m a little cracked or, as Sergei says, flew off my nut. You don’t just step off that nut, you fly. At any rate, jokes aside and tail out of the way… Let’s get down to business, my friend Victoria…

  I did a three-month stint with the Makhno campaign—tiresome swindling, that’s all… Only Volin’s still back there.1 Volin struts around in apostolic vestments and aims to become the Lenin of anarchism. Awful. And old man Makhno listens to him, strokes the dusty wires of his curls and lets the long snake of his peasant grin slip through his rotten teeth. And now I don’t know if there isn’t a weed seed of anarchy in all this, and if we won’t be wiping your lucky noses, you self-proclaimed Tsekists from your self-proclaimed Tsek, “made in Kharkov”, your self-proclaimed capital.2 Your good old boys don’t like to recall the sins of their anarchist youth nowadays and laugh at them from the heights of statesmanship—to hell with them…

  And then I got to Moscow. How did I get to Moscow? The boys were stepping on someone’s toes in terms of requisition and otherwise. And I, ditherer that I am, stuck up for him. They really gave it to me—and rightly so. The wound was a trifle, but in Moscow, oh, Victoria, in Moscow I was struck dumb with misery. Every day the hospital nurses brought me grain porridge. Bridled with awe, they hauled it in on a big tray, and I grew to hate this urgent porridge, these above-plan supplies and this planned Moscow. Then I came across a handful of anarchists in the soviet. Show-offs and half-crazed old men, the whole lot of them. Poked my nose in at the Kremlin with a plan for real work. They patted me on the head and promised to make me a deputy, if only I’d mend my ways. I didn’t mend my ways. What came next? Next came the front, the Cavalry and the soldiery, reeking of damp human blood and corpses.

  Save me, Victoria. Statesmanship is driving me crazy, and I’m cockeyed with boredom. If you don’t help—I’ll up and die without any plan. And who’d want a soldier boy to up and die in so disorganized a way—certainly not you, Victoria, a bride who’ll never be a wife. Here’s sentimentality for you, the devil take it…

  Now let’s talk business. I’m bored in the army. I can’t ride on account of the wound, and that means I can’t fight. Using your influence, Victoria—let them send me to Italy. I’m learning the language and I’ll be speaking in two months’ time. The land’s smouldering in Italy. Much of the work is done. All it needs is a couple of shots. I’ll take one of them. Their king should be sent up to his forefathers. This is very important. That king of theirs is a nice old fellow, plays to the crowd and has pictures taken with tame socialists for the family journals.

  But don’t you mention shots or kings at the Tseka or the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. They’ll pat you on the head and mumble, “A romantic.” Just tell them that he’s sick, angry, drunk with despair, he wants the Italian sun and bananas. I’ve earned it, after all—or maybe I haven’t? Just to get cured—and basta. And if not—let them send me to the Odessa Cheka… It’s a very sensible outfit and…

  How foolish, how wrong and foolish it is of me to write you this, my friend Victoria…

  Italy has entered my heart like an obsession. The thought of that country, which I’ve never seen, is as sweet to me as a woman’s name, as your name, Victoria…

  I read through the letter and lay down in my sagging, unclean bed, but sleep wouldn’t come. Behind the wall a pregnant Jewess was crying in earnest; her lanky husband replied with a groaning murmur. They were recalling their looted possessions and blaming each other for ill luck. Then, sometime before dawn, Sidorov returned. The burnt-out candle was gasping for breath on the table. Sidorov took another candle-end out of his boot and, with unusual thoughtfulness, pressed it down onto the guttering wick. Our room was dark, gloomy,
everything in it breathed with the damp stench of night, and only the window, filled with the moon’s fire, shone like deliverance.

  He came in and hid the letter, my wearisome neighbour. He sat down at the table, stooping, and opened the album of the city of Rome. The magnificent gilt-edged books stood before his expressionless olive face. Over his round back glimmered the jagged ruins of the Capitoline and the arena of the Circus, lit up by sunset. A photo of the royal family had been inserted there, between the large glossy pages. A scrap of paper torn from a calendar bore the image of friendly, feeble King Victor Emmanuel and his dark-haired wife, with Crown Prince Umberto and a whole brood of princesses.

  …And so it’s night, full of distant and painful chimes, a square of light in the damp darkness—and in this square, Sidorov’s deathly face, a lifeless mask hovering over a candle’s yellow flame.

  Notes

  1 Nestor Ivanovych Makhno, called “Old Man” (1888–1934), was a Ukrainian anarcho-communist who commanded his own independent Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine during the Civil War. Volin—or Voline, as he himself spelt it—was the nom de guerre of Vsevolod Mikhaylovich Eikhenbaum (1882–1945), a prominent Russian Jewish anarchist who collaborated with Makhno, helped organize his army and wrote many of his manifestos. Both Makhno and Volin were driven into exile in 1921.

  2 “Tsek” is Sidorov’s corruption of the abbreviation TsK (pronounced “tse-ka”)—which stands for Central Committee, the chief administrative body of the Communist Party. “Tsekist” is a member of the Central Committee. Later in the letter, Sidorov uses the correct form of the abbreviation (Tseka), and also refers to the Cheka, the secret police, itself an acronym (ChK) for Emergency Commission.