The Complete Works of Isaac Babel Reprint Edition by Isaac Babel, Nathalie Babel, Peter Constantine (11 page)

To start with, Hershele ate chopped liver with finely diced onions doused in fat. Then he had a glass of the best vodka (orange peels floated in it). Then he had fish, mashing soft potatoes into the aromatic broth, and he poured on the side of his plate half a jar of red horseradish—a horseradish that would have driven five fully decked-out counts to tears of envy.

After the fish, Hershele busied himself with the chicken, and spooned down the soup in which droplets of fat swam. The dumplings, dipped in melted butter, fled into Hersheles mouth like hares fleeing a hunter. I need not dwell on what happened to the pies—what else could have happened to them if one takes into account that at times a whole year would pass without Hershele ever seeing a pie?

After the meal, the woman collected all the things she wanted to send with Hershele to the other world for Papa, Auntie Golda, and Auntie Pesya. For her father she packed a new prayer shawl, a bottle of cherry liqueur, a jar of raspberry jam, and a pouch of tobacco. For Auntie Pesya she brought out some warm gray stockings. For Auntie Golda she packed an old wig, a large comb, and a prayerbook. She also gave Hershele some shoes for himself, a loaf of bread, fat cracklings, and a silver coin.

“Greet everyone from me, Mr. Shabos-Nakhamu! Greet everyone from me!” she called after Hershele as he left, carrying the heavy bundle. “Or why don’t you stay a little longer, until my husband comes back?”

“No,” Hershele said. “I must hurry! Do you think you are the only one I have to see?”

In the dark forest the trees were sleeping, the birds were sleeping, the green leaves were sleeping. The stars that stand watch over us had gone pale and began flickering.

After about a verst, Hershele stopped to catch his breath, heaved the bundle off his shoulder, sat on it, and thought things through.

“One thing I must tell you, Hershele!” he said to himself. “There’s no lack of fools in this world! The mistress of the inn is a fool, but her husband might well be a clever man with big fists and fat cheeks—and a long whip! What if he comes home and then hunts you down in the forest?”

Hershele did not waste time weighing the odds. He immediately buried his bundle and marked the place so that he could find it again.

Then he ran off toward the opposite side of the forest, took off all his clothes, threw his arms around the trunk of a tree, and waited. He did not have to wait long. As dawn approached he heard the lashes of a whip, the smacking lips of a horse, and the clattering of hooves. It was the innkeeper in full pursuit of Mr. Shabos-Nakhamu.

The innkeeper pulled his cart up to Hershele, who stood naked, hugging the tree. He reined in his horse and looked at Hershele with an expression as foolish as that of a monk coming face-to-face with the devil.

“What are you doing?” the innkeeper asked him in a cracked voice.

“I am a man from the other world,” Hershele told him dolefully. “I was robbed—they took some important papers which I was taking to Rabbi Boruchl.”

“I know who robbed you!” the innkeeper shouted. “I myself have some accounts to settle with him! Which way did he go?”

“I cannot tell you which way he went!” Hershele whispered bitterly. “But give me your horse, and I shall catch him in an instant! Just wait for me here. Undress, stand by the tree, hug it, and don’t move an inch until I return! This tree is a holy tree! Many things in our world depend on it!”

Hershele had been quick to size this man up. One glance had been enough to tell him that husband and wife were not all that far apart. And, sure enough, the innkeeper took off his clothes, went over to the tree, and stood by it. Hershele jumped into the cart and rode off. He dug up his things, put them in the cart, and rode to the edge of the forest.

Hershele left the horse, slung the bundle over his shoulder, and continued along the road that led to Rabbi Boruchl’s house.

The sun had already risen. The birds sang, closing their eyes. The innkeeper’s mare, her head hanging low, pulled the empty cart back to where she had left her master.

The innkeeper, naked beneath the rays of the rising sun, stood waiting for her huddled against the tree. He felt cold. He was shifting from one foot to the other.

The following stories are the beginning of my notes on the War. Their plots were taken from books written by French soldiers and officers who took part in the battles. In some passages I have altered the plot and the narrative form, in others I tried to stay as close as possible to the original.

The German batteries were shelling the villages with heavy artillery. The peasants were running for Paris. They dragged with them cripples, freaks, women in labor, dogs, sheep, goods and chattels. The sky, sparkling with heat and azure, slowly turned crimson, heavy, and clouded with smoke.

The sector near N was occupied by the Thirty-seventh Infantry Regiment. Losses were great. The regiment was preparing to counterattack. Captain Ratin was making his rounds of the trenches. The sun was at its zenith. The neighboring sector sent word that all the officers of the Fourth Company had fallen. The Fourth Company was continuing its resistance.

Ratin saw the shape of a man about three hundred meters from the trenches. It was private Bidou, Simpleton Bidou. He was cowering in a wet pit, which had been made by an exploding shell. The soldier was doing what obscene old men in villages and depraved boys in public lavatories do. I dont think I need say more.

“Bidou! Button yourself up!” the captain yelled in disgust. “Why are you here?”

“I ... I cant tell you . . . Im frightened, Captain!”

“You’ve found yourself a wife here, you swine! You have the gall to tell me to my face that you’re a coward? You have abandoned your comrades just when the regiment is about to attack?
Bien, mon cochon
!”

“I swear to you, Captain, I’ve tried everything! ‘Bidou!’ I said to myself. ‘Be reasonable!’ I drank a whole bottle of pure spirits for courage! Je nepeux pas, capitaine. I’m frightened, Captain!”

The simpleton lay his head on his knees, clutched it with both hands, and began to cry. Then he looked up at the captain, and through the slits of his porcine eyes flickered timid, tender hope.

Ratin was a quick-tempered man. He had lost two brothers in the war and had a wound in his neck that hadn’t healed. A wave of blasphemous abuse poured over the soldier, a dry hot torrent of the repulsive, frenzied, and nonsensical words that send blood pounding to the temples, and drive one man to kill another.

Instead of answering, Bidou quietly shook his round, red-haired, tousled head, the heavy head of the village idiot.

No power on earth could have made him stand up. The captain came right to the edge of the pit and whispered very quietly.

“Get up, Bidou, or I will piss on you from head to toe.”

He did as he said. Captain Ratin was not a man to joke with. A reeking stream splashed forcefully over the soldier’s face. Bidou was an idiot, a village idiot, but he could not bear this insult. He gave a long, inhuman howl. The miserable, solitary, forlorn howl spread over the harrowed fields. He jumped up, wrung his hands, and bolted over the field toward the German trenches. An enemy bullet struck him in the chest. Ratin finished him off with two shots from his revolver. The soldier’s body didn’t even twitch. It was left lying in no-man’s-land, between enemy lines.

Thus died Celestin Bidou, a Norman peasant from Ori, twenty-one years of age, on the bloodstained fields of France.

The story I have told here is true. Captain Gaston Vidal wrote of it in his book Figures et anecdotes de la Grand Guerre. He had witnessed the event. He also fought for France, Captain Vidal did.

***

Captain Gemier was an outstanding man, and a philosopher too. On the battlefield he never hesitated, in private life he was capable of overlooking minor offenses. It is no small thing for a man to be able to overlook minor offenses. He loved France with a soul-devouring fervor, and his hatred for the barbarians who were defiling her ancient soil was relentless, unquenchable, and lifelong.

What more can one say about Gemier? He loved his wife, brought up his children to be good citizens, was a Frenchman, a patriot, a Parisian, and a lover of books and beautiful things.

Then one fine rosy spring morning, Captain Gemier was informed that an unarmed soldier had been found between French and enemy lines. The soldier s intention to defect was obvious, his guilt clear, and he was brought back under guard.

“Is that you, Beauge?”

“Yes, Captain!” the soldier replied, saluting.

“I see you took advantage of the dawn to catch a breath of fresh air!”

Silence.

“
C'est bien
! You may leave the two of us alone!”

The other soldiers left. Gemier locked the door. The soldier was twenty years old.

“You know what awaits you! Voyons, explain yourself!”

Beauge told him everything. He said that he was sick of war.

Tm sick of war, mon capitaine. No sleep for six nights because of the shelling!”

He had a horror of war. He had not wanted to go to the other side as a traitor, but to give himself up.

In a word, our little Beauge was unexpectedly eloquent. He told the captain that he was only twenty—
mon dieu, cest nature
!' one makes mistakes at twenty. He had a mother, a fiancee, des bons amis. His whole life lay before him, before twenty-year-old Beauge, and he would have ample time to make up for his transgression against France.

“Captain, what would my mother say if she found out that I was shot like a wretched criminal?”

The soldier fell to his knees.

“Dont try that with me, Beauge!” the captain told him. “The other soldiers saw you. We get five soldiers like you, and the whole company is poisoned.
C’est la defaite. Cela jamais
* *“That would mean defeat. Never.”] You are going to die, Beauge, but I shall save your honor. The local authorities will not be informed of your disgrace. Your mother will be told that you fell on the field of honor. Lets go!”

The soldier followed his superior officer. When they got to the forest, the captain stopped, took out his revolver, and held it out to Beauge.

“This is how you can avoid a court-martial. You will shoot yourself! I will come back in five minutes. By then everything must be over!”

Gemier walked away. Not a sound interrupted the silence of the forest. The captain returned. Beauge was waiting for him, hunched over.

“I cant, Captain!” he whispered. “I dont have the strength.”

And he recommenced the same long story—his mother, his fiancee, his friends, the life that lay before him.

“I am giving you another five minutes, Beauge! Dont waste my time!”

When the captain returned, he found the soldier lying on the ground, sobbing, his fingers twitching weakly on the revolver.

Gemier helped the soldier to his feet and, looking him in the eye, said in a quiet, friendly voice, “Beauge, my friend. Could it be that you dont know how to do it?”

He slowly took the revolver from the young boys wet hands, walked away three paces, and shot him in the head.

• • •

This incident is also described in Gaston Vidals book. And the soldier was in actual fact called Beauge. I am not fully sure if this captains name really was Gemier. Vidals story is dedicated “with deep reverence” to a certain Firmin Gemier—and I believe this dedication might well indicate that the captains name was indeed Gemier. Furthermore, Vidal maintains that the captain was “a patriot, a soldier, a good father and a man who was capable of overlooking minor offences.” And that is quite a commendable trait in a man—being able to overlook minor offenses.

1

“Here and there.”

2

Izya Kremer, 1885-1956, Odessan Jewish folksinger.

^ Sergei Isayevich Utochkin, 1874-1916, aviation pioneer, was the first to fly from Moscow to St. Petersburg, in 1911.

3

Chernosotyensi (Black Hundred), a right-wing, anti-Semitic group responsible for pogroms.

4

Babel is implying that a cold, northern Petersburg frame of mind overpowered Gogols earlier brighter southern “Poltavan” style, and that the somber and tragic Akaki Akakiyevich, the protagonist of “The Overcoat,” superseded Gritsko, the lively and witty protagonist of “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka.” Father Matvei Konstantinovsky was a fanatical ascetic priest who influenced Gogol’s later writing. Taras is the protagonist of Gogol’s story “Taras Bulba.”

5

Constantinople’s Cathedral of Hagia Sophia, the seat of Russian and Greek Orthodox Christianity.

6

Maxim Moseyevich Vinaver, 1863-1923, Jewish politician, activist, and writer who emigrated to Paris, where he became the editor of the Russian-French Jewish journal Evreiskaya Tribuna. Nikolai Osipovich Linovsky, a Jewish writer who wrote under the pseudonym Pruzhansky.

^ An elegant and expensive Odessan cafe that attracted a wealthy international clientele.

We occupy a village that we have taken from the enemy. It is a tiny Picardy village, lovely and modest. Our company has been bivouacked in the cemetery. Surrounding us are smashed crucifixes and fragments of statues and tombstones wrecked by the sledgehammer of an unknown defiler. Rotting corpses have spilled out of coffins shattered by shells. A picture worthy of you, Michelangelo!

A soldier has no time for mysticism. A field of skulls has been dug up into trenches. War is war. Were still alive. If it is our lot to increase the population of this chilly little hole, we should at least make these decaying corpses dance a jig to the tune of our machine guns.

A shell had blown off the cover of one of the vaults. This so I could have a shelter, no doubt about it. I made myself comfortable in that hole, que voulez vous, on loge ou on peut.
¹

So—its a wonderful, bright spring morning. I am lying on corpses, looking at the fresh grass, thinking of Hamlet. He wasn’t that bad a philosopher, the poor prince. Skulls spoke to him in human words. Nowadays, that kind of skill would really come in handy for a lieutenant of the French army.