The Complete Works of Isaac Babel Reprint Edition by Isaac Babel, Nathalie Babel, Peter Constantine (119 page)

The Moscow River shot from above. Its banks are covered with newspapers.

Swimmers sun themselves, reading newspapers.

Zhivtsov knocks on the pilot s cabin door.

“THIS IS SO INTERESTING, COMRADE, ABSOLUTELY FASCINATING! BUT I HAVE TO CATCH THE TRAIN TO POVARENSHINO!”

The airplane descends.

Lace hanging from the ironing board. The iron in the Chinese womans hand.

A tear falls on the iron and sizzles.

Su Chi Fos departing son bids his father farewell—he clasps his father s hand, which is covered in a cloud of soap suds.

He goes over to his crying mother.

The airplane touches down.

The door opens, Zhivtsov jumps out.

A soapy mark left on the Chinese womans shoulder.

Airplane wheels.

The turning wheels of a streetcar.

Crutches on the steps of the streetcar.

The turning wheels of a bus.

Powerful locomotive wheels.

A signal: a railroad worker swings a lantern three times.

The wheels of the locomotive shake, begin moving.

Zhivtsov s bags fly into the trains corridor and he jumps in behind them. Zhivtsov bumps into the Chinese student on the platform of the railway car.

The switches are thrown. A multitude of tracks in the large Moscow station.

Zhivtsov speaks:

“ARE YOU GOING FAR?”

The Chinese student is holding a foreign-made suitcase in one hand and the tin teapot in the other. He answers:

“TO HANGCHOW.”

Suburban buildings flow by the train.

The switches are thrown. (The general plan.)

Zhivtsov presses the accordion he bought in Moscow to his chest.

He says:

“AND I’M GOING TO POVARENSHINO—IT HAPPENS TO BE IN

THE SAME DIRECTION.”

The Chinese student smiles, showing his dazzling teeth.

The train picks up speed.

The moon has plunged into a lake, the reeds flicker.

A bird swims in the middle of the lake.

Zhivtsov and the Chinese student are sitting on the vestibule steps of the rushing train.

A lively discussion.

The Chinese student is talking to Zhivtsov.

Dazzlingly lit, steeply rising mountains drenched by recent torrential downpours. With all his strength an old trembling coolie hauls a rickshaw up the mountain.

An Englishman and a bulldog sit in the rickshaw.

The thin lacquered wheels jiggle and stop.

The coolie is at the end of his tether.

Then the wheels start rolling up the mountain again—rolling slowly, with difficulty. The Chinese student goes on talking.

The Russian landscape flies past the train: a river bathed in moonlight, a hedge running up a hill.

On the trains vestibule step the Chinese student continues telling the amazed Zhivtsov about his country.

A cattle shed. A barrel full of water. The fires of the racing train in the water. A cow drinks from the water, scattering the flames. Drops fall from her hairy lips, and in the drops the trains fires still sparkle.

The agonizing climb of the coolie up the mountainside.

PartSwo

Cows in a river.

Above the surface of the water, a multitude of cows’ muzzles, tormented by the heat, turn up into the air.

A field. Intense heat. A flock of sheep covered in dust.

The sheep nestle their muzzles under each others bellies.

Midday. The burning sun. The sleepy kingdom of Povarenshino.

The deserted market square littered with vegetable skins, scraps of hay, manure.

The cooperative store is boarded up.

Theres a lock on the door.

A note hangs on the lock:

“I’M YONDER EATING.”

In the locked store a hog is digging his snout into a barrel of oatmeal. A passerby wearing a dolman tears off a corner of the sign, rolls himself a cigarette, and starts smoking.

A stream of smoke stretches up to the suns blinding disk.

An oncoming locomotive at full speed.

A train station in the hinterlands. Glimpses of railroad buildings.

The platform, filled with a mass of milk cans.

Local “society” girls walk up and down the platform.

Each of them has a conspicuous flaw: a large nose, bowed legs, pimples.

The train flies into the station. It towers and quivers above the small, dilapidated huts like a wonderful, intricate, glittering moutain.

The Chinese student bids Zhivtsov farewell.

Zhivtsov says:

“BROTHER! WRITE TO ME IF ANYTHING HAPPENS IN CHINA,

AND WE’LL THINK OF SOMETHING!”

The Chinese student takes off his Kuomintang
³
badge and pins it on Zhivtsov.

Zhivtsov instantly envisions himself as a helpless fighter under the Kuomintang flag.

He pulls the cherished accordion he bought in Moscow off his shoulder and hands it to the Chinese student. The student tries to refuse it, but it is too late—the train pulls out.

An Englishman in the window of the international trains car flows past the faces of the local girls.

The perplexed Chinese student holding the large accordion flows past.

The hitching post outside the tavern.

“SELF-SERVICE CANTEEN, FULL WAITER SERVICE. SECOND

CATEGORY.”

In the background of the interior shot of the tavern, an uneven, dilapidated, homemade billiard table with wooden billiard balls.

A muzhiks hand crushes a peeled egg.

Leaning over the billiard table is Yeryoma, a dreamy muzhik with a bald head fringed with apostolic hair . . .

... he throws the crushed egg at a brood of chicks gathered on the billiard table.

On the corner of the billiard table, the remains of Yeryomas meal.

A teapot is standing on three billiard balls with worn-off numbers.

Zhivtsov cheerfully rides to the tavern, pats the sleepy mare. He knocks on the window.

“YERYOMA!”

Yeryoma looks up, startled.

He runs out of the tavern.

The billiard table. The clatter of his steps sets one of the billiard balls under the teapot rolling and it falls into a pocket.

A worn-out drunkard lies sleeping in the dust in the middle of the market square.

A dog rubs itself against him as if he were a doorpost, yawns, lies down.

The serene Russian plain, crisscrossed by winding roads.

Yeryoma and Zhivtsov, talking energetically, rattle along the country road in a cart. A huge camellike horse is pulling it. It is harnessed to the tiny cart. It must be said of the horse that it is an old and thoughtful creature that looks askance at its flighty master, Yeryoma.

Zhivtsov asks Yeryoma:

“THE MILL—DID THE WORK GROUP FIX IT UP?”

Yeryoma answers, waving a billiard stick that has a strap tied to it, turning it into a whip:

“AN OWL, THEY SAY, HATCHED A BROOD OF OWLETS AT

THE MILL—SO HOW CAN WE FIX IT?”

A tarred log is lying on the square.

It is oozing beads of sweat.

The market square.

A little muzhik—bitterly poor—is milking a small mangy cow harnessed to a cart. The little muzhik is drunk and lies down to sleep under the cart.

Zhivtsov bursts in on the mans sleeping paradise.

With his whip he hits the man and the dog that are sleeping in the middle of the square.

“EVERYONE’S SNORING AWAY WHEN I’M NOT AROUND!”

Zhivtsov yells, waving the billiard stick.

The sleeping man and the dog roll over and scamper away.

Zhivtsov drums on the locked door of a store.

The watchman looks out the window of the village reading room and, seeing Zhivtsov, quickly starts running around.

The store assistants pudgy face, covered with feathers, emerges from inside the store, and immediately darts away again.

Anxious, scampering chickens.

The store assistant feverishly starts lowering the prices in the locked store. He tears off the price tags . . .

. . . and rewrites the prices, cutting them by ten percent.

Zhivtsov drums on the door of the village reading room.

The adept watchman cranks up the gramophone.

Anxious chickens flutter through the wicker fence.

A peasant woman lifts the hem of her skirt and runs across the square.

The gramophone record revolves.

Zhivtsov waves the billiard stick.

“EVERYONE’S SNORING AWAY WHEN I’M NOT AROUND!

DAMN THEM!”

The milked cow starts galloping.

Under the cart, the startled muzhik.

An endless chain of wagons carrying grain is rolling toward the cow and the muzhik.

The harvest, quite clearly, has been good.

On one wagon, on which the grain has been loaded without sacks, two round-bellied naked infants frolic in the rye that is glittering in the sun.

The chain of wagons crosses the market square.

“LORD IN HEAVEN! HOW MUCH MOONSHINE VODKA THIS COULD MAKE, OH, HOW MUCH MOONSHINE VODKA!”

Yeryoma says with emotion . . .

. . . following the flow of wagons.

The frolicking infants.

The grain in the sun.

“BUT WHO’LL GRIND ALL THIS NOW, THE LANDOWNING OGRES?”

Zhivtsov yells desperately.

“OFF TO THE MILL, YERYOMA!”

The revolving gramophone record.

Zhivtsov’s cart flies along the road to the mill at full speed.

The slow and majestic flow of wagons.

A strap tears in Yeryoma’s harness.

He doesn’t notice and keeps whipping his horse.

At the edge of the horizon, on the banks of a river, the dilapidated mill with its battered mill wheel.

On top of the mill’s attic sits a motionless owl.

“FASTER, YERYOMA!”

Zhivtsov shouts.

In front of the mill is a little plank bridge, which has been unreliable these past four years. The cart rushes toward the bridge.

Yeryoma crosses himself. . .

... the cart rushes onto the bridge . . .

. . . the planks break . . .

. . . Yeryomas sign of the cross flashes in the air.

Zhivtsov, the horse, the cart, all fall into the ditch.

The owl.

The loose wheel of the cart rolls across a swath dividing two unharvested fields.

The swath separates a field in which there is a tall thick wall of undulating wheat from a scraggly, poorly tended field.

The rolling wheel.

EXPERIMENTAL FIELD OF THE POVARENSHINO ALL-UNION LENINIST COMMUNIST YOUTH LEAGUE.

The harvest. In the experimental field, the ears are thick, heavy, tall. Two American harvesters are at work.

. On one of them sits young Cherevkov, the village librarian.

On the other, Panyutin.

Komsomol girls are tying the sheaves.

THE “EXPERIMENTAL” FIELD OF OLD GERASIM CHEREVKOV.

The poorly tended field has yielded a scraggly, sparse crop. Gerasim is a heated, anxious little muzhik and . . .

... Gerasim s father is a decrepit old man wearing a hemp shirt and wide pants. They are cutting with sickles.

The old man wields his sickle weakly.

Gerasims wife—a boisterous, large peasant woman—is tying sheaves.

She says to her husband venomously:

“YOUR SON’S WHEAT OVER THERE WILL BE A LOT WHEATER!”

The high wall of wheat, and Gerasims pitiful crop.

The sweeping and efficient work of the harvesters.

Gerasims fathers antiquated sickle moves feebly. The strain makes the old man keel over onto his back, he cannot get up, he only wiggles his feet. Gerasim looks at his father and spits spitefully.

His wife says viciously:

“YOUR SON’S WHEAT OVER THERE WILL BE A LOT

WHEATER!”

Gerasim furiously throws down his sickle and jumps across the swath.

He runs to the harvester on which his son is working and blocks its path.

“WHY DON’T YOU WORK FOR YOUR FATHER, INSTEAD OF

FOR OTHER PEOPLE, YOU SON-OF-A-BITCH? I’LL GIVE YOU A

GOOD WHIPPING!”

he shouts, pounding his pants.

Young Cherevkov, a hearty giant, grabs his small father, wedges him under his arm, and continues working.

Cherevkovs grandfather is sitting on his bony behind, his lips chewing. His faded eyes fill with tears. Gerasims wife is shouting at him.

One of Gerasims bast sandals flies off his dangling legs, as his son is still holding him under his arm.

Yeryoma, carrying the remains of his cart on his shoulders, approaches the working harvesters.

Zhivtsov, filthy and covered with scratches, and Yeryomas melancholic horse, dragging the wreckage of the shaft in which the billiard stick and the strap are tangled.

When they see Zhivtsov, the Komsomols come running over to him.

Young Cherevkov, forgetting his father, drops him.

“WHY DON’T YOU WORK FOR YOUR FATHER, YOU SON-OF-A-

BITCH, INSTEAD OF FOR OTHER PEOPLE!”

Gerasim, disheveled, attacks his son again.

The swath separates two fields.

“WORK WITH YOUR SON, YOU NUMBSKULL! YOU’D GET

MORE OUT OF IT!”

Zhivtsov says to Gerasim, as one by one he shakes the hands of all the Komsomols.

The grandfather sitting on the ground.

A row of cut stalks of wheat.

The undulating wall of wheat. . . .

In front of a herd walks Teryosha, a very blond shepherd.

The ripe ears of wheat beat against his chest, against his International Communist Youth League badge.

The shepherd is immersed in studying an arithmetic textbook.

A page of the arithmetic textbook moving through the tall wheat.

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The Komsomol cell is threshing the grain harvested from the experimental field.

The harmonious work of young frenzied hands.

The flying sheaves paint a rainbow in the sunset sky.

Arms swinging up.

Shirts sticking to sweating backs.

Young men, covered in thick dust, heaving the sheaves.

Girls on top of the threshing machine catching the sheaves.

Laughing among themselves, the girls jostle each other, spicing up their sheaf-catching with risque provincial jokes.

A girl throwing sheaves bungles a throw.

The sheaf flies over the threshing machine.