Red Cavalry

by Isaac Babel

  ARGAMAK

  I DECIDED TO GO to the front. The division commander winced at the news.

  “Where you rushing off to?… You’ll stand and gape—they’ll nip you in the bud…”

  I insisted. And that’s not all. My choice fell on the division that saw the most action—the Sixth. I was assigned to the Fourth Squadron of the Twenty-Third Cavalry Regiment. The squadron was commanded by a metalworker of the Bryansk factory named Baulin, a boy in years. He grew out a beard as a warning. Ashen tufts curled on his chin. In his twenty-two years Baulin had let nothing unnerve him. This quality, inherent to thousands of Baulins, served as an important component in the victory of the revolution. Baulin was tough, taciturn, stubborn. His path in life was decided. He never doubted the correctness of this path. Privation came easy to him. He could sleep sitting up. He slept with one hand clutching the other, and woke up in such a way that the transition from slumber to wakefulness was imperceptible.

  You could expect no mercy under Baulin’s command. My service began with a rare omen of good fortune—I was given a horse. There were no reserve horses, no horses among the peasants. Chance came to the rescue. The Cossack Tikhomolov killed two captive officers without permission. He was ordered to accompany them to brigade headquarters; the officers might’ve had important information to give. Tikhomolov didn’t bring them all the way. They decided to try the Cossack before the Revolutionary Tribunal, then changed their minds. Squadron Commander Baulin imposed a punishment more terrible than the tribunal—he confiscated Tikhomolov’s stallion, who was called Argamak, and sent the Cossack to the unit transport.

  The torment I went through with Argamak nearly surpassed the limits of human strength. Tikhomolov had brought the horse from the Terek, from home. It was trained for the Cossack trot, that peculiar Cossack gallop—dry, furious, sudden. Argamak’s stride was long, extended, stubborn. With this diabolical stride he’d carry me out of the ranks; I’d fall away from the squadron and, losing my orientation, would wander for days in search of my unit, wind up behind enemy lines, sleep in the ravines, sidle up to other regiments and get chased away. My cavalry know-how was limited to having served in the artillery battalion of the Fifteenth Infantry Division during the German War. Most of the time I sat enthroned on an ammunition cart; every now and then we’d ride in gun teams. There was no place for me to get used to Argamak’s stiff, staggering trot. Tikhomolov had bequeathed to his horse all the devils of his downfall. I shook like a sack on the stallion’s long, dry back. I wore out his back. It broke out in sores. Metallic flies ate away at these sores. Hoops of clotted black blood girded the horse’s belly. Inept shoeing made Argamak overreach, and his hind legs swelled in the fetlock joint, becoming elephantine. Argamak was wasting away. His eyes were shot with a fire peculiar to the tormented horse—the fire of hysteria and perseverance. He wouldn’t let himself be saddled.

  “You abolished that horse, four-eyes,” said the platoon commander.

  The Cossacks kept silent around me; they were readying themselves behind my back, as predators do, in drowsy and treacherous stillness. They didn’t even ask me to write their letters any more…

  The Cavalry Army took Novograd-Volynsk. We had to cover sixty, eighty kilometres each day and night. We were nearing Rovno. Our day rests were pitiful. Night after night I dreamt the same dream. I’m racing along at a trot on Argamak. Bonfires line the road. Cossacks are cooking their food. I ride past them, and they don’t raise their eyes. Some greet me, others don’t even look—I’m of no concern. What does this mean? Their indifference signifies that there’s nothing special in my manner of riding; I ride like everyone else, and there’s no point in looking at me. I gallop on my way and am happy. My thirst for peace and happiness wasn’t quenched during waking hours, and so I dreamt dreams.

  Tikhomolov was nowhere to be seen. He kept watch over me from somewhere on the fringes of the march, from its sluggish tail end of carts crammed with rags.

  The platoon commander once said to me:

  “Pashka keeps asking after you, how you’re faring…”

  “What’s he need me for?”

  “Seems he needs you…”

  “He thinks I did him wrong, is that it?”

  “You’re saying you didn’t?…”

  Pashka’s hatred reached me through woods and rivers. I felt it on my skin and shivered. His bloodshot eyes were glued to my path.

  “Why’d you give me an enemy?” I asked Baulin.

  The squadron commander rode past and yawned.

  “That’s not my grief,” he said without looking back. “That’s your grief…”

  Argamak’s back would heal, then open up again. I’d put no fewer than three cloths under the saddle, but I couldn’t ride properly, and the weals wouldn’t close. The knowledge that I was sitting on an open wound kept nagging at me.

  One of the Cossacks from our platoon, Bizyukov by name, was a countryman of Tikhomolov’s. He knew Pashka’s father there, on the Terek.

  “So Pashka’s old man,” Bizyukov told me once, “he likes breeding horses… Gutsy rider, that one, stout… He comes to see a herd—gonna pick out a horse… They bring one out. He plants himself right in front of it, feet apart, looks straight at it… Whaddya need?… Here’s what he needs: he swings his fist, gives it to ’im right between the eyes—no more horse. Why’d you do it, Kalistrat—kill off the animal?… That horse ain’t to my terrible liking… Didn’t take a liking to that horse, wouldn’t ride… My liking, he says, is a deadly thing… Gutsy rider, that one, that’s for sure.”

  And so Argamak, whom Pashka’s father had left alive, whom he’d chosen, had ended up in my hands. What was I going to do? I turned over countless plans in my mind. War saved me from my worries.

  The Cavalry Army attacked Rovno. The city was taken. We stayed there two days. The next night the Poles drove us out. They gave battle so as to let their retreating units pass through. The manoeuvre worked. The Poles had a hurricane for cover—lashing rain, a heavy summer storm that toppled onto the world in streams of black water. We evacuated the city for a day. The Serb Dundić, the bravest of men, fell in this night-time battle.1 Pashka Tikhomolov fought in this battle too. The Poles swooped down on his transport. The field was flat, without any cover. Pashka arranged his wagons in a battle formation that he alone knew. This must have been how the Romans arranged their chariots. It turns out Pashka had a machine gun. One has to assume he stole it and hid it away just in case. With this machine gun Tikhomolov fought off the assault, saved our property and led out the whole transport, with the exception of two carts whose horses had been shot.

  “Keeping your fighters on ice?” they asked Baulin at brigade headquarters a few days after the battle.

  “If I am, I must have my reasons…”

  “Watch yourself, or you’ll get it…”

  Pashka hadn’t been granted a pardon, but we knew he’d be coming. He came wearing galoshes on his bare feet. His fingers had been chopped off, and ribbons of black gauze hung down from them. The ribbons trailed behind him like a mantle. Pashka came to the village of Budziatycze, to the square in front of the Catholic church, where our horses stood tethered to the hitching post. Baulin was sitting on the church steps, steaming his feet in a tub. His toes had started to rot. They were pink—the pink of iron when the tempering has just begun. Tufts of youthful straw hair stuck to Baulin’s forehead. The sun shone on the bricks and tiles of the church. Bizyukov, who was standing next to Baulin, stuck a cigarette in the squadron commander’s mouth and lit it. Tikhomolov, trailing his tattered mantle, went over to the hitching post. His galoshes flopped. Argamak stretched out his long neck and whinnied at his owner—whinnied softly and shrilly, like a horse in the desert. Ichor twisted like lace on his back between strips of torn flesh. Pashka stood beside the horse. The dirty ribbons lay motionless on the ground.

  “So that’s how it is,” the Cossack pronounced, almost inaudibly.

  I stepped forward.

/>   “Let’s make peace, Pashka. I’m glad the horse is going to you. I can’t cope with him… Let’s make peace, all right?…”

  “It’s not Easter, yet, to be making peace,” the platoon commander said, rolling a cigarette behind my back. His Cossack trousers were loosened, his shirt unbuttoned over his copper chest; he was resting on the church steps.

  “Give ’im three Easter kisses, Pashka,” muttered Bizyukov, Tikhomolov’s countryman, who knew Pashka’s father, Kalistrat. “He wants three kisses…”

  I was alone among these people, whose friendship I had failed to win.

  Pashka stood in front of the horse as if rooted to the spot. Argamak, breathing strongly and freely, stretched his muzzle towards him.

  “So that’s how it is,” the Cossack repeated, turned sharply towards me and said steadily: “I won’t be making peace with you.”

  Shuffling with his galoshes, he started off down the chalky, scorched road, sweeping the dust of the village square with his bandages. Argamak followed him like a dog. The reins swayed beneath his muzzle and his long neck hung low. Baulin kept rubbing the reddish, iron-coloured rot of his feet in the tub.

  “You’ve given me an enemy,” I said to him. “But how’s any of this my fault?”

  The squadron commander raised his head.

  “I see you,” he said. “I see you through and through… Aiming to live without enemies… That’s all you want—no enemies…”

  “Give ’im three kisses,” Bizyukov muttered, turning away.

  A fiery patch appeared on Baulin’s forehead. His cheek twitched.

  “You know what you get that way?” he said, unable to control his breathing. “What you get is boredom… Shove off back to your goddam mother…”

  So I had to leave. I transferred to the Sixth Squadron. Things went better there. Despite everything, Argamak had taught me Tikhomolov’s manner of riding. Months passed. My dream came true. The Cossacks stopped following me and my horse with their eyes.

  1924–30

  Notes

  1 Aleksa Dundić (1896 or 1897–1920) was most likely a Croat, not a Serb. He was recruited into the Austro-Hungarian Army during the First World War, taken prisoner by the Russian Imperial Army in 1916 and volunteered to fight on the Russian side in the Serbian Volunteer Corps. He joined the Red Army in 1917 and participated in the defence of Tsaritsyn with Voroshilov in 1918. He joined Budyonny’s troops in 1919, and was deeply admired by his fellow cavalrymen for his courage and skill. He fell at the Battle of Rovno, as described in this story, on 8 July 1920.

  APPENDIX: TOPONYMS

  Eastern and Central

  Europe Current Name and

  Location Nineteenth-Century

  Imperial Affiliation

  BELAYA TSERKOV Bila Tserkva, Ukraine Russia

  BELYOV Biliv, Ukraine Russia

  BERESTECHKO

  (BERESTECZKO) Berestechko, Ukraine Russia

  BREST Brest, Belarus Russia

  BRODY Brody, Ukraine Austria

  BUDZIATYCZE Budyatychi, Ukraine Austria

  BUSK Busk, Ukraine Russia

  CHERNOBYL Chernobyl or

  Chornobyl, Ukraine Russia

  CRACOW Kraków, Poland Austria, Duchy of

  Warsaw, Free City of

  Kraków

  CZEśNIKI Cześniki, Poland Austria

  DUBNO Dubno, Ukraine Austria

  FASTOV Fastiv, Ukraine Russia

  HUSIATYN Husiatyn, Ukraine Austria

  KHOTIN Khotyn, Ukraine Ottoman Empire, Russia

  KLEKOTÓW Klekotiv, Ukraine Austria

  KOVEL Kovel, Ukraine Russia

  KOZIN Kozyn, Ukraine Russia

  KRAPIVNO Kropyvnya, Ukraine Russia

  KREMENETS Kremenets, Ukraine Russia

  LUBLIN Lublin, Poland Austria

  LWÓW Lviv, Ukraine Austria

  NOVOGRAD-

  VOLYNSK Novohrad-Volynskyi,

  Ukraine Russia

  ODESSA Odessa, Ukraine Russia

  OSTROPOL Ostropol, Ukraine Russia

  RADZIECHÓW Radekhiv, Ukraine Austria

  RADZIVILOV Radyvyliv, Ukraine Russia

  ROVNO Rivne, Ukraine Russia

  SITANIEC Sitaniec, Poland Austria

  SOKAL Sokal, Ukraine Austria

  VILNA Vilnius, Lithuania Russia

  VITEBSK Vitebsk, Vitsebsk or

  Viciebsk, Belarus Russia

  WARSAW Warszawa, Poland Prussia, Duchy of

  Warsaw, Congress

  Poland, Russia

  ZAMOść Zamość, Poland Austria

  ZHITOMIR Zhytomyr, Ukraine Russia

  RUSSIAN CITIES

  General’s Bridge (now Generalskoye), Rodionovo-Nesvetaysky District, Rostov Oblast

  Grozny, Chechen Republic

  Kagalnitskaya, Kagalnitsky District, Rostov Oblast

  Kasimov, Ryazan Oblast

  Kastornaya (now Kastornoye), Kastorensky District, Kursk Oblast

  Krasnodar, Krasnodar Krai

  Maykop, Republic of Adygea

  Mozhaysk, Mozhaysky District, Moscow Oblast

  Nizhny Novgorod (often shortened to Nizhny; between 1932 and 1990, Gorky), Nizhny Novgorod Oblast

  Novorossiysk, Krasnodar Krai

  Platovskaya, Proletarsky District, Rostov Oblast

  Prikumsk (before 1921, Svyatoy Krest [Holy Cross]; since 1935, Budyonnovsk), Stavropol Krai

  Rostov, Yaroslavl Oblast

  Ryazan, Ryazan Oblast

  Shuya, Ivanovo Oblast

  Tambov, Tambov Oblast

  Temryuk, Temryuksky District, Krasnodar Krai

  Tsaritsyn (renamed Stalingrad in 1925; since 1961, Volgograd), Volgograd Oblast

  Uralsk (after 1991, Oral), Kazakhstan

  Voronezh, Voronezh Oblast

  REGIONS

  Krasnodar Region (Krai), Russia

  Kuban, Russia

  Stavropol Region (Krai), Russia

  Galicia / Halychyna / Galicja, Ukraine and Poland

  Volyn / Volhynia, Ukraine, Poland, and Belarus

  RIVERS

  Bug (Western Bug or Buh), Poland, Belarus and Ukraine

  Don, Russia

  Donets (Seversky Donets), Russia and Ukraine

  Terek, Georgia and Russia

  Teterev (now Teteriv), Ukraine

  Volga, Russia

  Zbrucz (now Zbruch), Ukraine

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  PASI ILMARI JÄÄSKELÄINEN

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  RED LOVE: THE STORY OF AN EAST GERMAN FAMILY

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  THE BREAK

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  FROM THE FATHERLAND, WITH LOVE

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  BUTTERFLIES IN NOVEMBER

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  BARCELONA SHADOWS

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