by Isaac Babel
EVENING
O CHARTER of the Russian Communist Party! You’ve laid headlong rails through the sour dough of Russian tales. You’ve turned three idle hearts, brimming with the passions of Ryazan Christs, into contributors to The Red Cavalryman—turned them so that each day they could compose the rollicking newspaper, full of courage and crude joy.
The wall-eyed Galin, the consumptive Slinkin and Sychov, with his ulcerated gut, roam about in the barren dust of the rear and spread the riot and fire of their leaflets through the ranks of hardy Cossacks relieved from the front, crooks in the reserve listed as Polish interpreters, and girls sent to our political-department train from Moscow for a good rest.
The newspaper—that detonating cord laid under the army—is only finished at nightfall. The squint-eyed lantern of the provincial sun goes out in the sky; the lights of the printing press, flying every which way, flare uncontrollably, like the passion of a machine. Then, at about midnight, Galin steps out of the carriage to shudder at the stings of his unrequited love for our train’s washerwoman, Irina.
“Last time,” says Galin, narrow-shouldered, pale and blind. “Last time, Irina, we covered the execution of Nicholas the Bloody, put to death by the Yekaterinburg proletariat. Now we’ll move on to other tyrants who died like dogs. Peter III was strangled by Orlov, his wife’s lover. Paul was torn apart by courtiers, and by his own son. Nicholas the Rod poisoned himself, his son fell on the first of March, his grandson died of drink… You need to know all this, Irina…”1
And fixing the washerwoman with his naked eye, full of adoration, Galin tirelessly stirs the crypts of fallen emperors. He stands stooped, doused by the moon that’s stuck up there like an insolent splinter; the printing machines clatter away somewhere close by and the radio station shines with a pure light. Nestling up against the cook Vasily’s shoulder, Irina listens to the dull and senseless muttering of love. Above her head, stars trudge through the sky’s black seaweed. The washerwoman dozes, makes the sign of the Cross over her puffy lips and looks at Galin wide-eyed. This is how a young girl who longs for the nuisance of conception looks at a professor devoted to science.
Next to Irina yawns the heavy-jowled Vasily, who, like all cooks, despises mankind. Cooks—they’re always dealing with the meat of dead animals and the greed of the living, which is why cooks look for things in politics that don’t concern them. So it was with Vasily, the heavy-jowled conqueror. Pulling his trousers up to his nipples, he asks Galin about the civil lists of various kings, about the dowry for the tsar’s daughter, and then he says, yawning:
“It’s night time, Rina. And we’ve got a day tomorrow. Let’s go crush some fleas…”
And they closed the door to the kitchen, leaving Galin alone with the moon, sticking up there like an insolent splinter… Facing the moon, on a slope by a sleeping pond, I sat in my glasses, with boils on my neck and bandaged legs. I was digesting the class struggle in my vague poetic brains when Galin came up to me with his gleaming wall-eyes.
“Galin,” I said, stricken with self-pity and loneliness. “I’m sick, seems my end is near, and I’m tired of living in our Red Cavalry…”
“You’re a wimp,” said Galin, and the watch on his skinny wrist showed one o’clock in the morning. “You’re a wimp, and we’re fated to suffer you wimps… The whole Party is walking around in aprons smeared with blood and excrement—we’re taking the shell off the kernel for you. Not long from now, you’ll see the shelled kernel, take your finger out of your nose and sing praises to the new life in extraordinary prose, but meanwhile sit quiet, wimp, and don’t get in the way with your whining…”
He leant closer to me, adjusted the bandages that had come loose on my scabby sores, and hung his head on his pigeon chest. Night comforted us in our sorrows, a light breeze fanned us like a mother’s skirt, and the grasses below glistened with freshness and moisture.
The machines thundering in the train’s printing press screeched and fell silent, dawn drew a line at the edge of the earth, and the door to the kitchen whistled and opened a crack. Four legs with fat heels were thrust out into the cool, and we saw Irina’s loving calves and Vasily’s big toe, with its crooked black nail.
“Vasilyok,” the woman whispered in an intimate, languishing Russian voice. “Get out of my bed, you troublemaker…”
But Vasily only jerked his heel and moved closer.
“The cavalry,” Galin then said to me. “The cavalry is a social trick effected by the Central Committee of our Party. The curve of the Revolution has thrown Cossack freebooters, soaked through with many prejudices, into the front rank, but the Central Committee, manoeuvring, will rake through them with an iron brush…”
And Galin started talking about the political education of the First Cavalry. He spoke for a long time, dully, with complete clarity. His lid twitched over his wall-eye and blood ran from his lacerated palms.
Kovel, 1920
Notes
1 Nicholas the Bloody refers to Nicholas II, the last tsar of the Romanov dynasty, who was executed by the Bolsheviks in Yekaterinburg in 1918; Peter III was murdered in 1762 by the Orlov brothers, who conspired with his wife, who would become Catherine II, the Great; Paul was Catherine’s son and was murdered by courtiers in 1801; Nicholas I, who was nicknamed “the Rod” for introducing harsh corporal punishment into the Imperial Army, was rumoured to have poisoned himself, depressed by the army’s losses in the Crimean War; Nicholas’s son Alexander II was assassinated by populist terrorists in 1881; Alexander’s son Alexander III was rumoured to have been an alcoholic.
AFONKA BIDA
WE WERE FIGHTING at Leszniów. The wall of the enemy’s cavalry kept appearing on all sides of us. The coiled spring of the fortified Polish strategy stretched out with an ominous whistle. We were being pressed. For the first time during the whole campaign we felt on our back the devilish sting of flank attacks and breaches in the rear—bites from the very same weapons that had served us so happily.
The infantry held the front at Leszniów. Along crookedly dug trenches hunkered the blond, barefoot peasants of Volyn. This infantry was taken from the plough the day before, so as to form a reserve for the Red Cavalry. The peasants went willingly. They fought with the utmost diligence. Even Budyonny’s men were amazed at their snorting peasant ferocity. Their hatred for the Polish landowner was built of plain but sturdy material.
In the second phase of the war, when whooping had ceased to affect the opponent’s imagination and horseback attacks on the entrenched enemy had become impossible, this home-made infantry would have proved of the utmost benefit to the Red Cavalry. But our poverty prevailed. The peasants were given one rifle between three, and cartridges that didn’t fit. The venture had to be abandoned, and this genuine people’s guard was disbanded and sent home.
Now let us turn to the fighting at Leszniów. The foot soldiers had dug in about three versts from town. Ahead of their frontline walked a stoop-shouldered young man wearing glasses. A sabre dragged at his side. He moved with a skipping step, looking displeased, as if his boots were pinching him. This peasant ataman,1 their chosen one, their favourite, was a Jew, a purblind youth with the sallow and focused face of a Talmudist. In battle he displayed a circumspect courage and composure that somewhat resembled the absent-mindedness of a dreamer.
It was the third hour of an expansive July afternoon. Heat’s iridescent gossamer shimmered in the air. Behind the hills flashed a festive stripe of full-dress uniforms and horses’ manes braided with ribbons. The young man gave the signal to get ready. The peasants ran to their positions, their bast shoes slapping on the ground, and held their guns at the ready. But the alarm turned out to be false. It was Maslak’s2 florid squadrons that came out on the Leszniów highway. Their emaciated but lively steeds moved at a round pace. Lush banners on gilt staffs burdened with velvet tassels swayed in fiery pillars of dust. The horsemen rode with majestic and insolent coldness. The shaggy foot soldiers crawled out of their trenches and stared, slac
k-jawed, at the taut elegance of this unhurried stream.
At the head of the regiment, on a bow-legged steppe nag, rode Brigade Commander Maslak, full of drunken blood and the rot of his own fatty juices. His belly lay on the silver-bound pommel like a big tomcat. Catching sight of the foot soldiers, Maslak flushed gaily and beckoned to Afonka Bida, the platoon commander. We had nicknamed the platoon commander “Makhno”, on account of his resemblance to the old man. They whispered for a moment, the brigade commander and Afonka. Then the platoon commander turned to the First Squadron, leant forward and quietly ordered: “Reins!” The Cossack platoon moved into a trot. They whipped up the horses and raced towards the trenches, from which the foot soldiers gaped, delighted by the spectacle.
“Prepare for battle!” Afonka’s mournful voice sang out, as if from far away.
Wheezing, coughing and enjoying himself, Maslak rode off to the side. The Cossacks rushed to the attack. The poor foot soldiers ran, but it was too late. The Cossack lashes had already fallen on their ragged sackcloth. The riders circled the field and twirled their whips with extraordinary artistry.
“What are you fooling around for?” I shouted to Afonka.
“For a laugh,” he replied, fidgeting in his saddle and pulling out a lad who’d been hiding in the bushes.
“For a laugh!” he cried, poking at the unconscious lad.
The fun ended when Maslak, grown soft and magnanimous, waved his plump hand.
“Stop your yawning, foot soldiers!” Afonka cried and haughtily straightened his feeble body. “Go and catch some fleas, foot soldiers…”
The Cossacks, exchanging smiles, assembled in ranks. The foot soldiers had vanished without a trace. The trenches were empty. And only the stoop-shouldered Jew remained standing in the same place, peering disdainfully at the Cossacks through his glasses.
There was no break in the shooting coming from Leszniów. The Poles were surrounding us. Through binoculars one could see the individual figures of mounted scouts. They’d hop out of the town and fall back in, like roly-polies. Maslak formed a squadron and scattered it on both sides of the highway. The sky that rose above Leszniów was brilliant and inexpressibly empty, as always in hours of peril. The Jew, throwing back his head, whistled mournfully and mightily on his metal pipe. And the foot soldiers, those unique, rough-hewn foot soldiers, returned to their places.
Bullets were flying thick in our direction. The brigade staff came under machine-gun fire. We bolted into the woods and began to claw our way through the bushes that lay to the right of the highway. Shot-up branches groaned above us. When we’d made it out of the bushes, the Cossacks were no longer where they’d been. By order of the division commander, they were retreating towards Brody. There was no one left but the peasants, snarling from their trenches with sparse rifle shots, and the straggler Afonka, chasing after his platoon.
He was riding on the very edge of the road, looking around and sniffing at the air. The shooting died down for a moment. The Cossack thought to take advantage of the lull and broke into a full gallop. At that instant a bullet pierced his horse’s neck. Afonka rode on another hundred paces or so, and then, right in our midst, his horse abruptly bent its forelegs and fell to the ground.
Afonka slowly pulled his crushed foot out of the stirrup. He squatted down and poked a copper-coloured finger into the wound. Then Bida straightened up and surveyed the gleaming horizon with agonized eyes.
“Goodbye, Stepan,” he said in a wooden voice, stepped away from the dying animal and bowed to it from the waist. “How will I come back to the quiet village without you?… What will I do with your embroidered saddle? Goodbye, Stepan,” he repeated more forcefully, choked up, squeaked like a trapped mouse and commenced wailing. The gurgling wail reached our ears, and we saw Afonka bowing and bowing, like a hysterical woman in church. “I won’t give in to greedy fate, damn it,” he shouted, removing his hands from his face, which was stiff with grief. “I’ll hack down the unspeakable Poles—no mercy! Till my heart gives out, till their last gasp and the Mother of God’s blood… I make you a promise before all the men from the village, all my dear brothers, Stepan…”
Afonka lay down with his face in the wound and fell silent. Fixing its deep, shining, violet eye on its master, the horse listened to Afonka’s broken wheezing. It drew its muzzle over the ground in gentle oblivion, and streams of blood, like two ruby breast-bands, trickled down the white muscles of its chest.
Afonka lay without stirring. Maslak minced over to the horse on his fat legs, placed a revolver in its ear, and fired. Afonka leapt up and turned his terrible, pockmarked face to Maslak.
“Gather up the harness, Afanasy,” Maslak said tenderly. “Head over to your unit…”
And from the slope we saw Afonka, bent beneath the saddle’s weight, with a face as wet and red as cleaved meat, plodding his way over to his squadron, immeasurably lonely in the dusty, blazing desert of the fields.
Late in the evening I came across him in the unit transport. He was sleeping on a cart that held all his possessions—sabres, service jackets and pierced gold coins. The platoon commander’s blood-caked head, with its lifeless, contorted mouth, lolled as if crucified on the bend of his saddle. Next to him lay the dead horse’s harness, the intricate and frilly garb of a Cossack racer—breast-collars with black tassels, pliant cruppers studded with coloured stones, and a bridle embossed with silver.
The darkness was bearing down on us, growing ever thicker. The transport dragged out along the Brody highway; simple little stars rolled through the milky ways of the sky, and far-off villages burnt in the cool depths of the night. Orlov, the squadron commander’s assistant, and the long-whiskered Bitsenko were sitting there on Afonka’s cart and discussing his grief.
“He brought that steed from home,” said the long-whiskered Bitsenko. “Where you gonna find a steed like that?”
“A steed’s a friend,” replied Orlov.
“A steed’s a father,” sighed Bitsenko. “Saves your life more’n you can count. Bida’s done for without a steed…”
And by the morning Afonka had disappeared. The fighting at Brody began and ended. Defeat gave way to temporary victory, we saw our division commander relieved and replaced, but Afonka was nowhere to be seen. And only the ominous grumbling hanging over the villages—the vicious, predatory trail of Afonka’s freebooting—pointed us to his difficult path.
“Procuring a steed,” the men in the squadron said about the platoon commander, and on the vast evenings of our wanderings I heard plenty of stories about this lonely, ferocious procurement.
Men from other units would stumble upon Afonka dozens of versts from our position. He’d be lurking in ambush for straggling Polish cavalrymen or scouring the woods for herds of horses hidden by peasants. He’d set villages on fire and shoot Polish headmen for concealment. Echoes of this furious solitary combat would reach our ears—echoes of a lone wolf’s desperate, thievish attacks on a colossus.
Another week passed. The bitter anger of the day drove stories of Afonka’s gloomy daring out of circulation, and we began to forget about “Makhno”. Then came a rumour that he’d been slaughtered by Galician peasants someplace in the woods. And on the day of our entry into Berestechko, Yemelyan Budyak of the First Squadron went to the division commander to ask for Afonka’s saddle with its yellow cloth. Yemelyan wanted to ride out for review with a new saddle, but this was not to be.
We entered Berestechko on 6 August. At the head of our division advanced the Asiatic tunic and red Cossack coat of the new division commander. Behind him came Lyovka, the crazed lackey, leading the stud mare. A battle march, full of prolonged menace, flew along the fanciful, beggarly streets. Tumbledown alleys, a painted forest of decrepit and trembling cross-beams, ran the length of the town. Its core, eaten away by time, breathed a melancholy decay upon us. The smugglers and hypocrites had taken refuge in their dark, spacious huts. Only Pan Ludomirski, the bell-ringer in his green frock coat, greeted us at the church.
We crossed the river and went deep into the tradesmen’s settlement. We were approaching the priest’s house when Afonka came riding round the corner on a strapping grey stallion.
“My respects!” he pronounced in a barking voice and, pushing the fighters aside, took his place in the ranks.
Maslak gazed off into the colourless distance. Without turning round, he wheezed:
“Where did you get the steed?”
“It’s my own,” replied Afonka, then rolled a cigarette and moistened it with a quick flick of his tongue.
The Cossacks were riding up to greet him one by one. On his charred face, a monstrous pink swelling gaped repulsively in place of a left eye.
And the next morning Bida went on a spree. He smashed St Valentine’s shrine in the church and tried to play the organ. He wore a jacket cut from a blue carpet, with a lily embroidered on the back, and his sweaty forelock was combed over his gouged-out eye.
After lunch he saddled his horse and fired his rifle at the broken windows of the castle of the Counts Raciborski. The Cossacks stood around him in a semicircle… They were lifting the stallion’s tail, groping its legs and counting its teeth.
“A solid steed,” said Orlov, the squadron commander’s assistant.
“A sound horse,” confirmed the long-whiskered Bitsenko.
Notes
1 ataman: Cossack chieftain. The origins of this term are disputed. It may derive from the German Hauptmann, via Polish hetman, meaning “captain”, or from the Turkish ataman, meaning “father of horsemen”.
2 Maslyakov: First Brigade commander of the Fourth Division, an incorrigible partisan who would soon betray Soviet power [author’s note].
IN ST VALENTINE’S