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

by Nathalie Babel, Peter Constantine Isaac Babel

  We set out for Boratin by way of Dobryvodka, forests, fields, soft outlines, oak trees, again music and the division commander, and, nearby, the war. A rest stop in Zhabokriki, I eat white bread. Grishchuk sometimes seems dreadful to me—downtrodden. The Germans: that grinding jaw.

  Describe Grishchuk.

  In Boratin, a hardy, sunny village. Khmil, smiling at his daughter, he is a closemouthed but wealthy peasant, eggs fried in butter, milk, white bread, gluttony, sun, cleanliness, I am recuperating from my illness, to me all these peasants look alike, a young mother. Grishchuk is beaming, they gave him fried eggs with bacon, a wonderful, shadowy threshing shed, clover. Why doesn’t Grishchuk run away?

  A wonderful day. My interview with Konstantin Karlovich [Zholnarkevich]. What kind of men are our Cossacks? Many-layered: rag-looting, bravado, professionalism, revolutionary ideals, savage cruelty. We are the vanguard, but of what? The population is waiting for liberators, the Jews for freedom—but who arrives? The Kuban Cossacks. . . .

  The army commander summons the division commander for a meeting in Kozin. Seven versts. I ride. Sand. Every house remains in my heart. Clusters of Jews. Faces, ghetto, and we, an ancient people, tormented, we still have strength, a store, I drink excellent coffee, I pour balm on the storekeepers soul as he listens to the rumpus in his store. The Cossacks are yelling, cursing, climbing up to the shelves, the poor store, the sweaty, red-bearded Jew. ... I wander endlessly, I cannot tear myself away, the shtetl was destroyed, is being rebuilt, has existed for four hundred years, the ruins of a synagogue, a marvelous destroyed old temple, a former Catholic church, now Russian Orthodox, enchanting whiteness, three wings, visible from afar, now Russian Orthodox. An old Jew—I love talking with our people—they understand me. A cemetery, the destroyed house of Rabbi Azrail, three generations, the tombstone beneath the tree that has grown over it, these old stones, all of the same shape, the same contents, this exhausted Jew, my guide, some family of dim-witted, fat-legged Jews living in a wooden shed by the cemetery, the coffins of three Jewish soldiers killed in the Russian-German war.18 The Abramoviches of Odessa, the mother had come to bury him, and I see this Jewess, who is burying her son who perished for a cause that to her is repulsive, incomprehensible, and criminal.

  The old and the new cemetery, the shtetl is four hundred years old.

  Evening, I walk among the buildings, Jews and Jewesses are reading the posters and proclamations: Poland is the dog of the bourgeoisie, and so on. Insects bring death, and dont remove heaters from the railroad cars.

  These Jews are like paintings: lanky, silent, long-bearded, not like ours, fat and jovial. Tall old men hanging around with nothing to do. Most important: the store and the cemetery.

  Seven versts back to Boratin, a marvelous evening, my soul is full, our landlord rich, sly girls, fried eggs, lard, our men are catching flies, the Russo-Ukrainian soul. All in all, uninteresting.

  July 22, 1920. Boratin

  Before lunch, a report to army field headquarters. Nice, sunny weather, rich, solid village, I go to the mill, describe what a water mill is like, Jewish workman, then I bathe in the cold, shallow stream beneath the weak sun of Volhynia. Two girls are playing in the water, a strange, almost irrepressible urge to talk dirty, rough slippery words.

  Sokolov is doing badly. I give him horses to get him to the hospital. The staff leaves for Leshniov (Galicia, we cross the border for the first time). I wait for the horses. It is nice here in the village, bright, stomach full.

  Two hours later I leave for Khotin. The road goes through the forest, anxiety. Grishchuk is dull-witted, frightening. I am on Sokolovs heavy horse. I am alone on the road. Bright, clear, not hot, a light warmth. A cart up ahead, five men who look like Poles. A game: we ride, we stop, where are you from? Mutual fear and anxiety. By Khotin we can see our troops, we ride off, gunfire. A wild gallop back, I yank the horses reins. Bullets buzz, howl. Artillery fire. At times Grishchuk gallops with dark and taciturn energy, and then at dangerous moments he is unfathomable, limp, black, a heavy growth of beard on his jaw. There’s no longer anyone in Boratin. Our transport carts have passed beyond it, a mess begins. The transport-cart saga, aversion and vileness. Gusev is in charge. We wait outside Kozin half the night, gunfire. We send out a scout, nobody knows anything, horsemen ride about the place with an intent air, tall German fellow from the district commander s, night, want to sleep, the feeling of helplessness—you don’t know where they’re taking you, I think it’s the twenty or thirty men we chased into the woods, an assault. But where did they get the artillery from? I sleep for half an hour, they say there was an exchange of fire, a line of our men advanced. We move farther. The horses are exhausted, a terrible night, we move in a colossal train of transport carts through the impenetrable darkness, we don’t know which villages we’re passing through, there’s a great blaze to one side, other trains of transport carts cross our path. Has the front collapsed or is this just a transport-cart panic?

  Night drags on endlessly, we fall into a ditch. Grishchuk drives strangely, were rammed from behind by a shaft, there are yells from somewhere far away, we stop every half verst and stand around futilely and for an agonizingly long time.

  A rein tears, our tachanka no longer responds, we drive off into a field, night, Grishchuk has an attack of savage, blunt, hopeless despair

  that infuriates me: O may these reins burn in hell, burn, burn! Grishchuk is blind, he admits it, at night he cant see a thing. The train of transport carts leaves us behind, the roads are harsh, black mud, Grishchuk, clutching the remnants of the reins, with his surprising jangling tenor: Were done for, the Poles are going to catch up with us, they’re shelling us from all around, our cavalry transport is surrounded. We drive off at random with torn reins. Our tachanka screeches, in the distance a heavy gloomy dawn, wet fields. Violet streaks in the sky.with black voids. At dawn the shtetl of Verba. Railroad tracks—dead, frail— the smell of Galicia. 4 o’clock in the morning.

  July 23, 1920. In Verba

  Jews, who have been up all night, stand pitiful, like birds, blue, disheveled, in vests and without socks. A wet and desolate dawn, all of Verba crammed with transport carts, thousands of them, all the drivers look alike, first-aid units, the staff of the Forty-fifth Division, depressing rumors and doubtless absurd, and these rumors are circulating despite our chain of victories. . . . Two brigades of the Eleventh Division have been taken prisoner, the Poles have captured Kozin, poor Kozin, I wonder what will happen there? The strategic position is interesting, the Sixth Division is at Leshniov, the Poles are at Kozin, at Boratin, at our rear lines, we are like squashed pies. We are waiting on the road from Verba. We stand there for two hours, Misha in a tall white cap with a red ribbon gallops over the field. Everyone eats bread with straw, green apples, with dirty fingers and reeking mouths. Dirty, disgusting food. We drive on. Amazing, we come to a standstill every five steps, an endless line of provision carts of the Forty-fifth and the Eleventh Divisions, at times we lose our transport unit, then we find it again. The fields, the trampled rye, villages stripped of food and others not yet completely stripped of food, a hilly region, where are we going? The road to Dubno. Forests, wonderful, ancient, shadowy forests. Heat, shade in the forest. Many trees have been felled for military purposes, a curse upon them, the bare forest clearings with their protruding stumps. The ancient Volhynian forests of Dubno—must find out where they get that fragrant black honey.

  Describe the forests.

  Krivikha: ruined Czechs, a tasty-looking woman. The horror that follows, she cooks for a hundred men, flies, the commissar’s moist and rattled woman, Shurka, wild game with potatoes, they take all the hay, reap the oats, potatoes by the ton, the girl at the end of her tether, the vestiges of a prosperous farm. The pitiful, lanky, smiling Czech, the nice, fleshy foreign woman, his wife.

  A bacchanalia. Gusev’s tasty-looking Shurka with her retinue, the Red Army scum, cart drivers, everyone tramping about in the kitchen, grabbing potatoes,
ham, pies are being baked for them. The heat is unbearable, you cant breathe, clouds of flies. The tortured Czechs. Shouting, coarseness, greed. And yet my meal is marvelous: roast pork with potatoes and marvelous coffee. After the meal I sleep under the trees—a quiet, shady slope, swings are swaying before my eyes. Before my eyes lie quiet green and yellow hills drenched in sunlight, and forests. The forests of Dubno. I sleep for about three hours. Then were off to Dubno. I ride with Prishchepa, a new acquaintance, caftan, white hood, illiterate Communist, he takes me to see Zhenya. Her husband— a grober mensh19—rides on his little horse from village to village buying up produce from the peasants. The wife a tasty-looking, languorous, sly, sensual young Jewess, married five months, doesn’t love her husband, and, by the way, she’s flirting with Prishchepa. I’m the center of attention—er ist ein [illegible]^—she keeps staring at me, asks me my surname, doesn’t take her eyes off me, we drink tea, I’m in an idiotic bind, I am quiet, slack, polite, and thank her for every gesture. Before my eyes: the life of a Jewish family, the mother comes by, some young ladies or other, Prishchepa is quite the ladies’ man. Dubno has changed hands quite a few times. Our side, it seems, didn’t plunder it. So once again they are all shivering, once again degradation without end and hatred toward the Poles who tear out their beards. The husband: Will there be freedom to trade, to buy a few things and then sell them right away, no speculating? I tell him yes, there will, everything will be for the better— my usual system—in Russia wondrous things are happening: express trains, free food for children, theaters, the International.20 They listen with delight and mistrust. I think to myself: a sky full of diamonds will be yours, everything will be turned upside down, everyone will be uprooted yet again, I feel sorry for them.

  The Dubno synagogues. Everything destroyed. Two small anterooms remain, centuries, two minute little rooms, everything filled with memories, four synagogues in a row, and then the pasture, the fields, and the setting sun. The synagogues are pitiful, squat, ancient, green and blue little buildings, the Hasidic one, inside, no architecture whatsoever. I go into the Hasidic synagogue. Its Friday. What stunted little figures, what emaciated faces, for me everything that existed for the past 300 years has come alive, the old men bustle about the synagogue, there is no wailing, for some reason they all run back and forth, the praying is extremely informal. It seems that Dubno s most repulsive-looking Jews have gathered. I pray, rather, I almost pray, and think about Hershele,21 this is how I should describe him. A quiet evening in the synagogue, this always has an irresistible effect on me, four synagogues in a row. Religion? No decoration at all in the building, everything is white and plain to the point of asceticism, everything is incorporeal and bloodless to a monstrous degree, to grasp it fully you have to have the soul of a Jew. But what does this soul consist of? Is it not bound to be our century in which they will perish?

  A little nook in Dubno, four synagogues, Friday evening, Jews and Jewesses by the ruined stones—all etched in my memory. Then evening, herring, I am sad because theres no one to copulate with. Prishchepa and the teasing and exasperating Zhenya, her sparkling Jewish eyes, fat legs, and soft breasts. Prishchepa, his hands slip deeper, and her unyielding gaze, while her fool of a husband is out in the tiny shed feeding his commandeered horse.

  We stay the night with other Jews, Prishchepa asks them to play some music, a fat boy with a hard, idiotic face, gasping with terror, says that he is not in the mood. The horse is nearby in the yard. Grishchuk is only fifty versts from home. He does not run away.

  The Poles attack in the area of Kozin-Boratin, they are at our rear lines, the Sixth Division is in Leshniov, Galicia. We re marching to

  Brody, Radzivillov is in front and one brigade is in the rear. The Sixth Division is in hard fighting.

  July 24, 1920

  Morning at army headquarters. The Sixth Division is annihilating the enemy assaulting us in Khotin, the area of battle is Khotin-Kozin, and I think to myself, poor Kozin.

  The cemetery, round stones.

  Prishchepa and I ride from Krivikha to Leshniov by way of Demidovka. Prishchepa’s soul—an illiterate fellow, a Communist, the Kadety22 killed his parents, he tells me how he went about his Cossack village collecting his belongings. Colorful, wearing a hood, as simple as grass, will turn into a rag-looter, despises Grishchuk because he doesn’t love or understand horses. We ride through Khorupan, Smordva, and Demidovka. Remember the picture: transport carts, horsemen, half-wrecked villages, fields and forests, oak trees, now and then wounded men and my tachanka.

  We arrive in Demidovka toward evening. A Jewish shtetl, I am on guard. Jews in the steppes, everything is destroyed. We are in a house with a horde of women. The Lyachetskys and the Shvevels,^ no, this isn’t Odessa. Dora Aronovna, a dentist, is reading Artsybashev,23 a Cossack rabble loitering about. She is proud, angry, says that the Poles destroyed all sense of self-respect, despises the Communists for their plebianism, a horde of daughters in white stockings, devout father and mother. Each daughter distinctly individual: one is pitiful, blackhaired, bowlegged, the other fleshy, a third housewifely, and all, doubtless, old maids.

  The main friction: today is the Sabbath. Prishchepa wants them to roast potatoes, but tomorrow is a day of fasting, Tishah b'Ab^and I

  say nothing because I am Russian. The dentist, pale with pride and self-respect, announces that nobody will dig up potatoes because it is a holy day.

  I manage to restrain Prishchepa for quite a while, but then he explodes: Yids, sons-of-bitches, a whole arsenal of curses, all of them hate us and me, dig up potatoes, frightened in the garden that isnt theirs, they blame the Christians, Prishchepa is outraged. How painful it all is—Artsybashev, the orphaned schoolgirl from Rovno, Prishchepa in his hood. The mother wrings her hands: the stove has been lit on the Sabbath, curses fly. Budyonny was here and left again. An argument between a Jewish youth and Prishchepa. A youth with spectacles, black-haired, highly strung, scarlet, inflamed eyelids, inaccurate Russian speech. He believes in God, God is the ideal we carry in our souls, every person has their own God in their soul, if you act badly, God grieves, this nonsense is proclaimed with rapture and pain. Prishchepa is offensively idiotic, he talks of religion in ancient times, mixes Christianity and Paganism, his main point, in ancient times there was the commune, needless to say nothing but rubbish—you have no education whatsoever—and the Jew with his six years of Rovno high-school education quotes Platonov—touching and comical—the clans, the elders, Perun, paganism.

  We eat like oxen, fried potatoes, and five glasses of coffee each. We sweat, they serve us everything, its all terrible, I tell fairy tales about Bolshevism, its blossoming, the express trains, the Moscow textile mills, the universities, the free food, the Revel Delegation, and, to crown it all, my tale about the Chinese, and I enthrall all these poor tortured people. Tishah bAb. The old woman sobs sitting on the floor, her son, who worships her, says that he believes in God to make her happy, he sings in a pleasant tenor and tells the story of the destruction of the Temple. The terrible words of the prophets: they will eat dung, the maidens will be defiled, the menfolk slaughtered, Israel crushed, angry and dejected words. The lamp smokes, the old woman wails, the youth sings melodiously, the girls in their white stockings, outside the window Demidovka, night, Cossacks, everything just as it had been in the days when the Temple was destroyed. I go to sleep in the wet, reeking yard.

  Its a disaster with Grishchuk, he is in a daze, hovering around like

  a sleepwalker, he is feeding the horses badly, informs me about problems postfactum, favors the muzhiks and their children.

  Machine-gunners have come in from the front lines, they come over to our yard, it is night, they are wrapped in their cloaks. Prishchepa is courting a Jewess from Kremenets, pretty, fleshy, in a smooth dress. She blushes tenderly, her one-eyed father-in-law is sitting nearby, she blossoms, its nice talking with Prishchepa, she blossoms and acts coquettish—what are they talking about?—then, he wants to go to bed,
spend some time with her, she is tormented, who understands her soul better than I? He: We will write to each other. I wonder with a heavy heart: surely she wont give in. Prishchepa tells me she agrees (with him they all agree). I suddenly remember that he seemed to have had syphilis, I wonder: was he fully cured?

  The girl later on: I will scream. Describe their initial pussyfooting conversation—how dare you—she is an educated person, she served on the Revolutionary Committee.24

  God almighty, I think, the women are hearing all these curses now, they live like soldiers, what happened to their tenderness?

  At night rain and storm, we run over to the stable, dirty, dark, damp, cold, the machine-gunners will be sent back to the front lines at dawn, they assemble in the pouring rain, cloaks and freezing horses. Miserable Demidovka.

  July 25, 1920

  We pull out of Demidovka in the morning. A tortured two hours, they woke the Jewesses at four o’clock in the morning and had them boil Russian meat,^ and that on Tishah bAb. Half-naked and disheveled girls run through wet gardens, Prishchepa is in the grip of lust, he throws himself on the bride of the one-eyed mans son while their cart is being requisitioned, an incredible bout of cursing, the soldiers are eating meat out of the pots, she, I will scream, her face, he pushes her against the wall, a shameless spectacle. Under no circumstances does she want to hand over the cart, they had hidden it in the

  loft, she will make a good Jewess. She wrangles with the commissar, who says that the Jews do not want to help the Red Army

  I lost my briefcase and then found it at the headquarters of the Fourteenth Division in Lishnya.

  We head for Ostrov—fifteen versts, there is a road from there to Leshniov, its dangerous there, Polish patrols. The priest, his daughter looks like Plevitskaya25 or a merry skeleton. She is a Kiev student, everyone yearns for civility, I tell my fairy tales, she cannot tear herself away. Fifteen dangerous versts, sentries gallop past, we cross the border, wooden planks. Trenches everywhere.