Red Cavalry

by Isaac Babel

  “The hell with it, Spirka,” I say. “I’ll still get their robes dirty… We’ll die for a pickle and world revolution…”

  And off we went. There were eight sabres in all. We picked two of ’em off right away with our rifles. I see Spirka’s dragging a third to Dukhonin’s headquarters to check his papers.1 But I’m aiming for the ace. He was a crimson ace, boys—gold watch on a chain and everything. I run him down to a farm. Farm had apples and cherries all over it. My ace has a horse under him like a merchant’s daughter, but it’s worn out. So the Pan General drops the reins, trains his Mauser on me and makes a hole in my leg.

  “All right,” I think, “you’re mine, sweetheart—you’ll spread those legs.”

  I go flat out and plant two rounds in the little horse. I was sorry about that stallion. A little Bolshevik, that stallion was—a regular little Bolshevik. All coppery like a coin, tail like a bullet, legs like bowstrings. Thought I’d bring him to Lenin alive, but it didn’t work out. I liquidated that little horse. It tumbled like a bride, and my ace came out of the saddle. He took off running, but then he turned around again and made another draught-hole in my figure. So now I’ve got three decorations for action against the enemy.

  “Jesus,” I think. “He might go and kill me on accident…”

  So I gallop up to him, and he’s already got his sword out, tears running down his cheeks, white tears, human milk.

  “You’re gonna get me the Order of the Red Banner!” I shout. “Surrender, Most Illustrious, while I’m still alive!…”

  “Nie mogę, Pan,”2 the old man answers. “You’ll cut me down…”

  And suddenly Spiridon’s in my face, like a leaf in the grass. He’s all lathered up, with his eyes dangling on strings from his mug.

  “Vasya,” he shouts to me, “you won’t believe how many I’ve finished off today! But that’s a general you’ve got, he’s got the trimmings on him, and I’d like to finish him off.”

  “Go to the Turk!” I tell Zabuty, getting cross. “Those trimmings of his cost me blood.”

  And I run the general into a barn with my mare. There was hay in there or something. It was quiet there, dark, cool.

  “Pan,” I say, “calm your old self down, surrender, for God’s sake, and you and I can both have a rest, Pan…”

  But he’s panting against the wall, rubbing his forehead with a red finger.

  “Nie mogę,” he says. “You’ll cut me down. I’ll only give up my sabre to Budyonny…”

  I should get him Budyonny. Just my luck! And I see the old man’s done for.

  “Pan,” I shout, wailing and gnashing my teeth, “I give you a proletarian’s word, I’m commander-in-chief around here. Don’t look for the trimmings on me, but I’ve got the title. Here’s the title: musical eccentric and salon ventriloquist from Nizhny… The town of Nizhny on the Volga River…”

  And the devil worked me up into a lather. The general’s eyes blinked like lanterns in front of me. A red sea opened up in front of me. Resentment worked its way into my wound like salt, ’cause I see that grandpa don’t believe me. So I closed my mouth, boys, pulled in my belly, took in some air, and heaped it on ’im the old fashioned way, our way, the fighters’ way, the Nizhny Novgorod way, and I proved to that Polish scum what a ventriloquist I was.

  So then the old man went white, grabbed at his heart and sat down on the ground.

  “Now d’you believe Vaska the eccentric, commissar of the Third Invincible Cavalry Brigade?…”

  “Commissar?” he shouts.

  “Commissar,” I say.

  “Communist?” he shouts.

  “Communist,” I say.

  “In my dying hour,” he shouts, “as I take my final breath, tell me, my Cossack friend—are you a communist or are you lying?”

  “I’m a communist,” I say.

  So my grandpa sits on the ground, kisses some sort of amulet, breaks his sabre in half and two lamps go on in his eyes, two lanterns above the dark steppe.

  “Forgive me,” he says. “I cannot surrender to a communist.” And he shakes my hand. “Forgive me,” he says, “and hack me down like a soldier…”

  This story was told to us during a halt, by Konkin, political commissar of the N—— Cavalry Brigade and three-time recipient of the Order of the Red Banner, with all his usual buffoonery.

  “And what did you and the Pan agree to, Vaska?”

  “What can you agree to, with a fellow like that?… Had too much honour in him. I even bowed to him, but he wouldn’t give. So we took whatever papers he had on him, took the Mauser—the old crank’s saddle’s still under me to this day. And then I see more and more blood’s dripping out of me, there’s an awful sleepiness coming over me, my boots are full of blood—I’m not thinking of him…”

  “So you put the old man out of his misery then?”

  “Sad to say.”

  Notes

  1 “Checking his papers” is a euphemism for execution or shooting at close range. Nikolai Nikolayevich Dukhonin (1876–1917) was the last commander-in-chief of the Russian Imperial Army after Kerensky’s flight. He surrendered to the Bolsheviks but was bayoneted to death by a mob of soldiers and sailors, who then used his body for target practice.

  2 Nie mogę, Pan: “I can’t, Pan” (Polish).

  BERESTECHKO

  WE WERE MARCHING over from Khotin to Berestechko. The fighters dozed in their high saddles. A song gurgled in the air like a creek running dry. Monstrous corpses littered millennia-old burial mounds. White-shirted peasants pulled off their caps and bowed as we passed. Division Commander Pavlichenko’s felt cloak fluttered over the staff like a sombre flag. His downy hood was thrown over his cloak, and his curved sabre hung at his side as if it were glued there.

  We rode past the Cossack burial mounds and Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s tower. An old man crept out from behind a gravestone with a bandura and, in a childlike voice, sang of bygone Cossack glory. We listened to his song in silence, then unfurled our banners and burst into Berestechko to the sound of a thundering march. The residents had put iron bars over their shutters; sovereign silence ascended her shtetl throne.

  I found myself billeted with a red-headed widow, who reeked of a widow’s grief. I washed off the road’s dust and went out into the street. Announcements were posted that Vinogradov, the division’s military commissar, would read a report that evening on the Second Congress of the Comintern. Right in front of my window some Cossacks were trying to shoot an old Jew with a silvery beard for espionage. The old man was squealing, struggling to break free. Then Kudrya from the machine-gun detachment took his head and stuck it under his arm. The Jew went quiet and spread his legs. Kudrya drew his dagger with his right hand and carefully stabbed the old man, without splattering himself. Then he knocked on the closed window frame.

  “If anyone’s interested,” he said, “let ’em come and get ’im. Fine by me…”

  Then the Cossacks turned the corner. I followed them and began roaming Berestechko. It’s mostly Jews here, but Russian tradesmen—leather-tanners—have settled on the outskirts. They live neatly, in white houses behind green shutters. Instead of vodka, the tradesmen drink beer or mead; they grow tobacco in their front gardens and smoke it in long, bent chibouks, like Galician peasants. Living in close quarters with three tribes, all industrious and businesslike, awoke in them a stubborn diligence, which is sometimes characteristic of the Russian, when he has not yet gone lousy, given in to despair and lost himself to drink.

  The old way of life had been driven out of Berestechko, but it was steadfast here. Shoots three centuries old still grew green with the warm rot of antiquity in Volyn. Here, with the thread of profit, Jews bound the Russian peasant to the Polish Pan, the Czech settler with the factory in Łódź. These were smugglers, the finest on the frontier, and almost always warriors for the faith. Hasidism held this bustling population of tavern keepers, pedlars and brokers in stifling captivity. Boys in kaftans still trampled the age-old road to the Hasidic
cheder, and old women still brought brides to the tsaddik with fervent prayers for fertility.

  Jews live here in spacious houses smeared with white or watery-blue paint. The traditional poverty of this architecture goes back centuries. Behind each house is a shed, reaching two, sometimes three, storeys in height. It never lets in any sun. These indescribably gloomy sheds take the place of our yards. Secret passages lead to cellars and stables. In wartime these catacombs hide people from bullets and looting. Over many days, human waste and cattle dung pile up. Despondency and terror fill the catacombs with the acrid stench and foul sourness of excrement.

  Berestechko stinks inviolably to this day. All the people here give off the stench of rotten herring. The shtetl reeks in anticipation of a new era; what one sees isn’t people, but faded schemes of frontier misfortunes. I was sick of them by the end of the day. I walked past the city limits, climbed a hill and penetrated the devastated castle of the Counts Raciborski, the recent owners of Berestechko.

  The calm of sunset turned the grass around the castle blue. The moon, green as a lizard, rose over the pond. From the window I could see the estate of the Counts Raciborski—meadows and plantations of hops, concealed by the moiré ribbons of dusk.

  A mad ninety-year-old countess used to live in the castle with her son. She plagued her son for not giving the vanishing clan any heirs, and—the peasants told me—the countess would beat her son with a coachman’s whip.

  A rally was gathering on the square below. It drew peasants, Jews and tanners from the outskirts. Above them flared Vinogradov’s enthusiastic voice and the clank of his spurs. He spoke of the Second Congress of the Comintern, while I roamed along walls on which nymphs with gouged-out eyes performed an ancient round dance. Then, in a corner, on the muddied floor, I found a fragment of a yellowed letter. Its faded ink read:

  Berestetchko, 1820. Paul, mon bien aimé, on dit que l’empereur Napoléon est mort, est-ce vrai? Moi, je me sens bien, les couches ont été faciles, notre petit héros achève sept semaines… 1

  Down below, the voice of the division’s military commissar blares on. He is passionately trying to convince the puzzled tradesmen and plundered Jews:

  “You are the power. Everything here is yours. There are no Pans. I now proceed to the election of the Revolutionary Committee…”

  Notes

  1 Berestetchko… sept semaines: “Berestechko, 1820. Paul, my beloved, they say the Emperor Napoleon is dead, is this true? I’m well, the birth was easy, our little hero is already seven weeks old” (French).

  SALT

  “DEAR COMRADE EDITOR. I want to describe a thing or two about thoughtless women, who do us harm. The boys trust that when you were making your rounds on the Civil Front, which you took note of, you didn’t pass over the hopeless station of Fastov, which sits at the end of the earth, in a land far, far away, address unknown—sure enough I was there, drank home-brewed beer, got my whiskers all wet, but my mouth’s still dry. Now, I could write plenty about this above-mentioned station, but as they say in our simple way—you won’t clear the master’s shit pile. So I’ll describe to you only what my own eyes have seen first-hand.

  “It was a nice, quiet little night seven days ago, when our esteemed Red Cavalry train stopped there, loaded up with fighting boys. We were all fired up to contribute to the common cause and had Berdichev as our destination. Only we notice our train’s not moving, our little rascal’s not turning, and the fighters get to doubting, talking—what’s this stop all about? And sure enough this turned out to be one hell of a stop for the common cause, all on account of the profiteers, those evil enemies with untold numbers of the female sex among them, who were getting impudent with the railroad authorities. Without a hint of fear, they latched onto the handrails, yes, these evil enemies darted across the iron roofs, running riot and stirring up trouble, and each hand featured the notorious salt, up to five poods a sack. But the capitalist profiteers’ triumph didn’t last long. The initiative of the fighting boys, who came climbing out of the carriages, gave the outraged railroad authorities a chance to breathe. Only the female sex stuck around, with its sacks. The fighters took pity—they put some women in the goods vans, some they didn’t. That’s how two girls ended up with us, in the Second Platoon’s carriage. And as soon as we hear the first bell, up comes a respectable-looking woman with a child, saying:

  “‘Let me on, kind Cossack boys. This whole war I’ve suffered at railroad stations, with a nursing child in my arms, and now I want to see my husband, but you can’t get anywhere on account of the railroad. Don’t I deserve better, Cossack boys?’

  “‘Let me tell you, woman,’ I say, ‘whatever the platoon agrees to, that’ll be your fate.’ And, turning to the platoon, I argue that a respectable-looking woman is asking to see her husband at our destination, and that she really has a child with her, and what will you agree to—let her on or no?

  “‘Let her on,’ the lads yell. ‘After we’re through, she won’t be wanting her husband!…’

  “‘No,’ I tell the lads quite politely. ‘I bow to you, platoon, but I’m surprised to hear that kind of horseplay out of you. Remember your lives, platoon, and how you too were children in your mothers’ arms, and talk like this—well, it just won’t do…’

  “And the Cossacks—after talking it over some, saying what a persuasive fellow that Balmashov is—start letting the woman into the carriage, and she clambers up gratefully. And they’re all worked up by my truth, trying to help her up, vying with one another:

  “‘Please sit, woman, in the corner there, and tend to your child the way mothers do, no one will touch you in the corner, and you’ll get to your husband untouched, just like you wanted, and we’re depending on your conscience to bring up some new blood for us, ’cause the old are getting older and the young, you see, are hard to come by. We’ve seen plenty of grief, woman, when we were drafted and when we re-enlisted, pressed by hunger, blistered by the cold. But you sit here, woman, and don’t you worry…’

  “And when the third bell sounded, the train moved. And the nice little night pitched its tent. And in that tent hung star-lanterns. And the boys remembered the Kuban night and the green Kuban star. And a song flew by, like a bird. And the wheels went on rumbling, rumbling…

  “After some time, when the night was relieved from its post and the red drummers were tapping out reveille on their red drums, the Cossacks came up to me, because they saw I was sitting there, sleepless and sad as can be.

  “‘Balmashov,’ the Cossacks say, ‘what’s got you so sad, sitting there sleepless?’

  “‘I bow low to you, fighters, and ask a little forgiveness, but let me have a few words with that nursing citizen there…’

  “And I get up from my resting place, from which sleep ran like a wolf from a pack of villainous dogs, and I walk up to her, trembling from head to toe, and I take her child from her hands and tear the swaddling clothes off it, and I see it’s a good pood of salt.

  “‘Now here’s a curious child, comrades, that don’t ask for the teat, don’t pee on the skirt and don’t trouble your sleep…’

  “‘Forgive me, kind Cossack boys,’ the woman butts into our conversation, all cool-headed. ‘I didn’t lie to you; it’s my grief that lied to you…’

  “‘Balmashov, he’ll forgive your grief,’ I answer the woman. ‘It doesn’t cost him much. Balmashov sells it for what he bought it. But take a look at the Cossacks, woman, who raised you up as a toiling mother of the republic. Take a look at these two girls, who’re crying now, on account of how they suffered from us in the night. Take a look at our wives, wasting their womanly strength out in the Kuban wheat fields, with their husbands gone, and those husbands, just as lonely, forced by evil need to rape girls that cross their path… But you—they didn’t touch you, though you’re just the one they should’ve touched, you wretch. Take a look at Russia, crushed by pain…’

  “And she says to me:

  “‘I’ve lost my salt, and truth don
’t scare me. You don’t care a thing about Russia, you’re saving those Yids, Lenin and Trotsky…’

  “‘We aren’t talking Yids, vile citizen. Yids have nothing to do with it. By the way, I don’t know about Lenin, but Trotsky’s the daredevil son of a Tambov governor, and he went over to the working class, though he comes from another. They drag us out—Lenin and Trotsky—like condemned convicts onto the free path of life, but you, foul citizen, are more counter-revolutionary than that White general who threatens us with his sharp sabre on his thousand-rouble horse… That general, you can see him on every road, and the worker dreams of cutting him down, but you, deceitful citizen, with your curious children who don’t ask for bread and don’t do their business—you’re hard for the eye to see, like a flea, and you bite, and bite, and bite…’

  “And I admit it, I do—I tossed that citizen off the moving train, right on the embankment, but being a rough one, she just sat there a while, flapped her skirts and went on her crooked little way. And seeing this unharmed woman, with unspeakable Russia all around her, and peasant fields without an ear of wheat, and the outraged girls, and my comrades who ride off to the front all the time but don’t come back much, I had a mind to jump from the carriage and either finish myself off or finish her off. But the Cossacks had pity on me and said:

  “‘Hit her with the rifle.’

  “And taking my trusty rifle off the wall, I washed that shame from the face of the workers’ land and of the republic.

  “And we, the fighters of the Second Platoon, swear to you, dear Comrade Editor, and to you, dear comrades of the editorial board, to deal mercilessly with all the traitors who drag us into the pit, who want to turn back the river and pave Russia with corpses and dead grass.

  “For all the fighters of the Second Platoon—Nikita Balmashov, soldier of the revolution.”