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

by Nathalie Babel, Peter Constantine Isaac Babel

  There was a change at the front. Stones division was relocated to a more dangerous position. His religious beliefs did not permit him to kill, but they did permit him to be killed. The Germans were advancing on the Isere. Stone was transporting the injured. All around him, men of various nationalities were dying at an incredible rate. Old generals, spotlessly clean, their faces swollen, stood on hilltops and monitored the area with field glasses. There was a ceaseless barrage of cannon fire. A stench rose from the earth, the sun rummaged through the mangled corpses.

  Stone forgot his horse. But within a week his conscience began gnawing at him, and he found an opportunity to return to the area where he had been stationed before. He found the horse in a dark shed made of a few rickety planks. The mare was so weak she could barely stand. Her eyes were covered with a grimy film. She neighed weakly when she saw her true friend, and lay her faltering muzzle on his hand.

  “It isn't my fault,” the stableboy told Stone cheekily. “Were not being given any oats.”

  “Fine,” Stone said. Til go get some oats.”

  He looked up at the sky that shone through a hole in the roof, and went outside.

  I came across him a few hours later and asked him whether the road he was driving down wasn’t too dangerous. He seemed more intense than usual. The last few blood-drenched days had left a deep mark on him, it was as if he were in mourning for himself.

  “I haven’t run into any trouble this far,” he mumbled. “But things might well end up badly.” And suddenly he added, Tm heading for the forage stores. I need some oats.”

  The following morning a search party of soldiers that was sent out to look for him found him dead at the wheel of his car. A bullet had penetrated his forehead. The car had crashed into a ditch.

  Thus died Stone, the Quaker, on account of his love for a horse.

  THE SIN OF JESUS

  Arina had a little room by the grand stairway near the guestrooms, and Sergei, the janitors assistant, had a room near the service entrance. They had done a shameful deed together. Arina bore Sergei twins on Easter Sunday. Water flows, stars shine, muzhiks feel lust, and Arina again found herself in a delicate condition. She is in her sixth month, the months just roll by when a woman is pregnant, and Sergei ends up being drafted into the army—a fine mess! So Arina goes to him and says, “Listen, Sergunya, theres no point in me sitting around waiting for you. We wont see each other for four years, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I had another brood of three or four by the time you come back. Working in a hotel, your skirt is hitched up more often than not. Whoever takes a room here gets to be your lord and master, Jews or whatever. When you come back from the army my womb will be worn out, I’ll be washed up as a woman, I don’t think I’ll be of any use to you.”

  “True enough,” Sergei said, nodding his head.

  “The men who want to marry me right now are Trofimich the contractor, he’s a rude roughneck, Isai Abramich, a little old man, and then there’s the warden of Nilolo-Svyatskoi Church, he’s very feeble, but your vigor has rattled my soul to pieces! As the Lord is my witness, I’m all chewed up! In three months I’ll be rid of my burden, I’ll leave the baby at the orphanage, and I’ll go marry them.”

  When Sergei heard this he took off his belt and gave Arina a heroic beating, aiming for her belly.

  “Hey!” the woman says to him. “Don t beat me on the gut, remember it’s your stuffing in there, not no one else’s!”

  She received many savage wallops, he shed many a bitter tear, the womans blood flowed, but thats neither here nor there. The woman went to Jesus Christ and said:

  “This and that, Lord Jesus. Me, I’m Arina, the maid from the Hotel Madrid & Louvre on Tverskaya Street. Working in a hotel, your skirt is hitched up more often than not. Whoever takes a room there gets to be your lord and master, Jews or whatever. Here on earth walks a humble servant of Yours, Sergei the janitors assistant. I bore him twins last year on Easter Sunday.”

  And she told him everything.

  “And what if Sergei didn’t go to the army?” the Savior pondered. “The constable would drag him off.”

  “Ah, the constable,” the Savior said, his head drooping. “I’d forgotten all about him. Ah!—and how about if you led a pure life?”

  “For four years!” the woman gasped. “Do you mean to say that everyone should stop living a life? You’re still singing the same old tune! How are we supposed to go forth and multiply? Do me a favor and spare me such advice!”

  Here the Savior’s cheeks flushed crimson. The woman had stung him to the quick, but he said nothing. You cannot kiss your own ear, even the Savior knew that.

  “This is what you need to do, humble servant of the Lord, glorious maidenly sinner Arina!” the Savior proclaimed in all his glory. “I have a little angel prancing about up in heaven, his name is Alfred, and he’s gotten completely out of hand. He keeps moaning, ‘Why, O Lord, did you make me an angel at twenty, a fresh lad like me?’ I’ll give you, Arina, servant of God, Alfred the angel as a husband for four years. He’ll be your prayer, your salvation, and your pretty-boy, too. And there’s no way you’ll get a child from him, not even a duckling, because there’s a lot of fun in him, but no substance.”

  “That’s just what I need!” maid Arina cried. “It’s their substance that has driven me to the brink of the grave three times in two years!” “This will be a sweet respite for you, child of God, a light prayer, like a song. Amen.”

  And thus it was decided. Alfred, a frail, tender youth, was sent down, and fluttering on his pale blue shoulders were two wings, rippling in a rosy glow like doves frolicking in the heavens. Arina hugged him, sobbing with emotion and female tenderness.

  “My little Alfredushka, my comfort and joy, my one-and-only!” The Savior gave her instructions that, before going to bed, she had to take off the angels wings, which were mounted on hinges, just like door hinges, and she had to take them off and wrap them in a clean sheet for the night, because at the slightest frolic the wings could break, as they were made of infants’ sighs and nothing more.

  The Savior blessed the union one last time, and called over a choir of abbots for the occasion, their voices thundering in song. There was nothing to eat, not even a hint of food—that wouldn’t have been proper—and Arina and Alfred, embracing, descended to earth on a silken rope ladder. They went to Petrovka, that’s were the woman dragged him to, she bought him lacquered shoes, checkered tricot trousers (by the way, not only was he not wearing pants, he was completely in the altogether), a hunting frock, and a vest of electric-blue velvet.

  “As for the rest, sweetie,” she said, “we’ll find that at home.”

  That day Arina did not work in the hotel, she took the day off. Sergei came and made a big to-do outside her room, but she wouldn’t open, and called out from behind her door, “Sergei Nifantich, I’m busy washing my feet right now and would be obliged if you would distance yourself without all that to-do!”

  He left without saying a word. The angelic power was already taking effect.

  Arina cooked a meal fit for a merchant—ha, she was devilishly proud, she was! A quart of vodka, and even some wine, Danube herring with potatoes, a samovar filled with tea. No sooner had Alfred eaten this earthly abundance than he keeled over into a deep sleep. Arina managed to snatch his wings off their hinges just in time. She wrapped them up, and then carried Alfred to her bed.

  Lying on her fluffy eiderdown, on her frayed, sin-ridden bed, is a snow-white wonder, an otherworldly brilliance radiating from him. Shafts of moonlight mix with red rays and dart about the room, trip-pling over their feet. And Arina weeps, rejoices, sings, and prays. The unheard of, O Arina, has befallen you in this shattered world, blessed art thou among women!

  They had drunk down the whole quart of vodka. And it was pretty obvious, too. As they fell asleep, Arina rolled over onto Alfred with the hot, six-month gut that Sergei had saddled her with. You can imagine the weight! It wasn’t enough that she was sleeping n
ext to an angel, it wasn’t enough that the man next to her wasnt spitting on the wall, or snoring, or snorting—no it wasnt enough for this lusty, crazed wench! She had to warm her bloated, combustible belly even more. And so she crushed the Lord s angel, crushed him in her drunken bliss, crushed him in her rapture like a week-old infant, mangled him beneath her, and he came to a fatal end, and from his wings, wrapped in the sheet, pale tears flowed.

  Dawn came, the trees bowed down low. In the distant northern woods, every fir tree turned into a priest, every fir tree genuflected.

  The woman comes again before the throne of the Savior. She is strong, her shoulders wide, her red hands carrying the young corpse.

  “Behold, Lord!”

  This was too much for Jesus’ gentle soul, and he cursed the woman from the bottom of his heart.

  “As it is in the world, Arina, so it shall be with you!”

  “But Lord!” the woman said to him in a low voice. “Was it I who made my body heavy, who brewed the vodka, who made a womans soul lonely and stupid?”

  “I do not wish to have anything further to do with you,” Lord Jesus exclaimed. “You have crushed my angel, you trollop, you!” And Arina was hurled back down to earth on a purulent wind, to Tverskaya Street, to her sentence at the Madrid & Louvre. There all caution had been thrown to the winds. Sergei was carousing away the last few days before he had to report as a recruit. Trofimich, the contractor, who had just come back from Kolomna, saw how healthy and red-cheeked she was.

  “Ooh what a nice little gut!” he said, among other things.

  Isai Abramich, the little old man, came wheezing over when he heard about the little gut.

  “After all that has happened,” he said, “I cannot settle down with you lawfully, but I can definitely still lie with you.”

  Six feet under, that’s where he should be lying, and not spitting into her soul like everyone else! It was as if they had all broken loose from their chains—dishwashers, peddlers, foreigners. A tradesman likes to have some fun.

  And here ends my tale.

  Before she gave birth—the remaining three months flew by quickly—Arina went out into the backyard behind the janitors room, raised her horribly large belly to the silken skies, and idiotically uttered, “Here you are, Lord, here is my gut! They bang on it as if it were a drum. Why, I don’t know! And then, Lord, I end up like this again! IVe had enough!”

  Jesus drenched Arina with his tears. The Savior fell to his knees.

  “Forgive me, my Arinushka, sinful God that I am, that I have done this to you!”

  “I will not forgive you, Jesus Christ!” Arina replied. “I will not!”

  AN EVENING WITH THE EMPRESS

  Siberian salmon caviar and a pound of bread in my pocket. Nowhere to go. I am standing on Anichkov Bridge, huddling against Klodt’s horses. A heavy evening is descending from Morskaya. Orange lights wrapped in gauze roam along the Nevsky Prospekt. I need shelter. Hunger is plucking at me the way a clumsy brat plucks at the strings of a violin. My mind skims over all the apartments abandoned by the bourgeoisie. The Anichkov Palace shimmers into view in all its squat splendor. Theres my shelter!

  It isn’t hard to slip into the entrance hall unnoticed. The palace is empty. An unhurried mouse is scratching away in one of the chambers. I am in the library of the Dowager Empress Maria Fyodorovna.2 [ Empress Maria Fyodorovnas daughter-in-law, Empress Alexandra, 1872-1918, wife of Czar Nicholas II.] An old German is standing in the middle of the room, stuffing cotton wool in his ears. He is about to leave. Luck kisses me on the lips! I know this German! I once typed a report for him, free of charge, about the loss of his passport. This German belongs to me, from his puffy head to his good-natured toes. We decide that I have an appointment with Lunacharsky [Anatoly Lunacharsky, 1875-1933, Marxist critic and playwright, was USSR's first commissar of Education] in the library, and that I am waiting for him.

  The melodic ticking of the clock erases the German from the room. I am alone. Balls of crystal blaze above me in the silky yellow

  light. A warmth beyond description rises from the steam pipes of the central heating. The deep divans wrap my frozen body in calm.

  A quick inspection yields results. I discover a potato pie in the fireplace, a saucepan, a pinch of tea and sugar. And behold! The spirit stove just stuck its bluish little tongue out.

  That evening I ate like a human being. I spread the most delicate of napkins on an ornate little Chinese table glittering with ancient lacquer. I washed down each piece of my brown ration bread with a sip of sweet, steaming tea, its coral stars dancing on the faceted sides of the glass. The bulging velvet palms of the cushion beneath me caressed my bony hips. Outside the windows, fluffy snow crystals fell on the Petersburg granite deadened by the hard frost.

  Light streamed down the warm walls in glittering lemon torrents, touching book spines that responded with a bluish gold twinkle.

  The books, their pages molding and fragrant, carried me to faraway Denmark. Over half a century ago they had been given to the young princess as she left her small, chaste country for savage Russia. On the austere title pages, the ladies of the court who had raised her bade her farewell in three slanting lines, in fading ink, as did her friends from Copenhagen, the daughters of state councilors, her tutors, parchment professors from the Lycee, and her father, the King, and her mother, the Queen, her weeping mother. Long shelves of small plump books with blackened gilt edges, childrens Bibles speckled with timid ink splotches, clumsy little prayers written to Lord Jesus, morocco-leather volumes of Lamartine and Chenier containing dried flowers crumbling to dust. I leaf through the gossamer pages that have survived oblivion, and the image of a mysterious country, a thread of exotic days, unfurls before me: low walls encircling the royal gardens, dew on the trimmed lawns, the drowsy emerald canals, the tall King with chocolate sideburns, the calm ringing of the bell above the palace cathedral and, maybe, love—a young girl s love, a fleeting whisper in the heavy halls. Empress Maria Fyodorovna, a small woman with a tightly powdered face, a consummate schemer with an indefatigable passion for power, a fierce female among the Preobrazhensky Grenadiers, a ruthless but attentive mother, crushed by the German woman,* unfurls the scroll of her long, somber life before me.

  It was very late that night when I tore myself from this sorrowful and touching chronicle, from the specters with their blood-drenched skulls. The balls of crystal covered in swirls of dust were still blazing peacefully above me on the ornate brown ceiling. Next to my tattered shoes, leaden rivulets had crystallized on the blue carpet. Exhausted by my thoughts and the silent heat, I fell asleep.

  In the depths of the night I made my way toward the exit over the dully glinting parquet of the corridors. Alexander Ills study was a high-ceilinged box with boarded-up windows facing the Nevsky Prospekt. Mikhail Alexandrovichs3 rooms were the lively apartment of a cultivated officer who likes his exercise. The walls were decorated with bright, pink-patterned wallpaper. Little porcelain bibelots, of the naive and redundantly fleshy genre of the seventeenth century, lined the low mantelpieces.

  Pressed against a column, I waited for a long time for the last court lackey to fall asleep. He dropped his wrinkled jowls, clean-shaven out of age-old habit, the lantern weakly gilding his high, lolling forehead.

  At one in the morning I was out in the street. The Nevsky Prospekt welcomed me into its sleepless womb. I went to the Nikolayevsky Station to sleep. Let those who have fled this city know that there is still a place in Petersburg where a homeless poet can spend the night.

  CHINK

  A vicious night. Slashing wind. A dead mans fingers pluck at the y I frozen entrails of Petersburg. The crimson pharmacies on street corners freeze over. A pharmacist’s prim head lolls to the side. The frost grips the pharmacy by its purple heart. And the pharmacy’s heart dies.

  The Nevsky Prospekt is empty. Ink vials shatter in the sky. It is two in the morning. The end. A vicious night.

  A young girl and a gentleman are
sitting by the railing of the Cafe Bristol. Two whimpering backs. Two freezing ravens by a leafless bush.

  “If, with the help of Satan, you manage to succeed the deceased Czar, then see if the masses will follow you, you mother-killers! Just you try! The Latvians will back them, and those Latvians are Mongols, Glafira!”

  The mans jowls hang on both sides of his face like a rag peddler’s sacks. In the mans reddish brown pupils wounded cats prowl.

  “I beg you, for the love of Christ, Aristarkh Terentich! Please go to Nadezhinskaya Street! Who will walk up to me if I’m sitting with a man?”

  A Chinese in a leather jacket walks past. He lifts a loaf of bread above his head. With his blue fingernail he draws a line across the crust. One pound. Glafira raises two fingers. Two pounds.

  A thousand saws moan in the ossified snow of the side streets. A star twinkles in the hard, inky firmament.

  The Chinese man stops and mumbles to her through clenched teeth, “You a dirty one? Huh?”

  “Im a nice clean girl, comrade!”

  “Pound.”

  On Nadezhinskaya Street, Aristarkh looks back with sparks in his eyes.