The Complete Works of Isaac Babel Reprint Edition by Isaac Babel, Nathalie Babel, Peter Constantine (121 page)

“YERYOMA ISN’T HERE! BEAT IT!”

And the horse trots on.

Yeryoma has dug up something long from the grave, wrapped in a bast mat.

He is very pleased. He wipes his sweat away with his arm.

The horse, his bony friend, approaches him, dragging its shaft behind it. The horse has finally found him.

The horse looks at its master with reproachful eyes, as if to say: “Really, Yeryoma, you re out of your mind! Totally unreliable!”

The horse grabs him by the collar with its teeth and tugs at him.

“I’M COMING, I’M COMING!”

Yeryoma mumbles, ashamed.

Zhivtsov closes the book and slowly looks up again, his face lit with a sudden, happy thought that will settle everything. The model of the Volkhovstroi Power Station. Zhivtsov s face through the mica window. Panyutin sets down the chair, which stands soundly on its four legs. The four legs of the chair.

The new moon ripples in a puddle of rainwater among the flowers. In front of the paling sky, the chimneys of Povarenshino are smoking.

The sky. Sunrise.

A cock flies up onto a fence, crows.

The cocks claw with its spur.

A bast shoe with a spur.

Teryosha, wearing the bast shoe with the spur, is walking along the road.

In front of Teryoshas herd walks a new shepherd—he is old, sooty, and dirty.

An endless chain of carts is crossing the river.

The river seethes, glitters, flows between the wheels.

On one of the carts in the water, young peasant men and women. The girls’ ribbons flutter in the wind.

Flowers float in the river.

Three singing youths, their arms over each others shoulders, are on their way to “report for duty” at the gathering point. They are covered with weapons and accordions. On the edge of the horizon, crowds of peasants are flowing along the winding roads.

The young men are growing in number. There are now five.

They knock on the rich mans window.

“COME ALONG, MAX! WE HAVE TO REPORT FOR DUTY!”

In a locked chamber, stretched out on the floor, the son of a kulak. His deathly, contorted face.

The young men walk on, there are now seven of them.

There is a sign on a closed wine store:

“Because of civil war in China, the sale of Russian vodka is banned for three days.”

In front of the sign the blissfully drunk, disheveled heads of Cherevkov s father and grandfather.

“HEY, YOU, RUSSIA! YOU GREAT POWER, YOU! O RUSSIA, YOU GREAT POWER, YOU!”

The Cherevkovs dance wildly.

Crowds of people are streaming from the hills. A mass migration of the peoples of Povarenshino.

In the crowd, two giant peasants resembling each other, surely brothers.

“WOULD YOU GIVE ALL THIS BACK TO THE LANDOWNERS?”

one of them says, pointing at. . .

... the vast and beautiful expanse of Russia stretching before them.

“WE WILL NOT GIVE IT BACK!”

the other one answers.

Four strong feet strutting in bast shoes.

Cherevkovs old mother gives him a cross. The boy is ashamed—it is hard to turn it down, but there is no point in taking it.

“SEE YOU DONT HARM THE CHINESE.... JUST BRING BACK A PACKET OF TEA WITH YOU—THAT’LL BE ENOUGH!”

the old woman says to her son.

The young man surreptitiously slips the cross into his boot.

The road is filled with singing young men, their arms around each others shoulders.

There are no longer seven, but fifteen.

Flowers float on the river. Fadeout.

Egor, covered in every conceivable badge, holding his briefcase, a fiir hat on his head, is solemnly marching to the mill—the gathering point.

He is followed by an incalculably large army of men marching in orderly rows.

Among them are Komsomols carrying a banner, hunting rifles, and accordions.

Among them are also the bearded village infantry, marching in bast shoes, entangled with howling women, squawking infants, barking dogs.

Among them is also the cavalry: five mounted forest wardens with German helmets, remnants of the Great War.

Zhivtsov climbs onto a mound and lifts his arm majestically.

The troops fall silent.

All eyes are trained on Egor, the commander in chief.

Yeryoma, panting, pushes his way through the troops. He is holding in his arms the item wrapped in a bast mat that he dug up from the cemetery. With a sweeping gesture, he places it in front of Zhivtsov and unwraps it—it turns out to be a machine gun.

“I’VE KEPT IT FOR EIGHT YEARS—I SACRIFICE IT TO THE SOVIET STATE!”

Yeryoma says, his ecstatic words gushing out of him.

The troops present their arms.

The gypsy is galloping through the streets of a backwater town.

THE CHIEF OF POLICE OF THE DISTRICT OF “N,” BUSY FERVENTLY BUILDING THE PEACEFUL SOCIALIST FUTURE.

The courtyard of the towns police station.

The chief of police, in striped military pants and with galoshes on his bare feet, is shearing a sheep.

The gypsy gallops into the courtyard.

“WAR!”

he yells, and, turning around and around with his horse, informs the stunned chief of the developing military deployment in the neighboring district against the warmongers occupying Shanghai.

Zhivtsov by the mill on top of a mound.

Yeryoma is caressing the machine gun.

Zhivtsov raises his arm:

“CITIZEN VOLUNTEERS! LAST NIGHT I CONFERRED WITH THE CENTRAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. . . . OUR CHINESE BROTHERS ARE MANAGING WELL ENOUGH ON THEIR

OWN THE CENTRAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE

U.S.S.R. ADVISES US PLAIN AND SIMPLE TO TAKE CARE OF OUR OWN CURRENT AFFAIRS—SUCH AS THE HUNDRED-PERCENT FIX-UP OF THE MILL.”

Teryoshas dog yawns, wags its tail, leaves.

Yeryoma, deeply disappointed, moves his eyes from . . .

. . . the machine gun to Zhivtsov . . .

. . . from Zhivtsov to the machine gun.

A group of brightening old womens faces.

A row of Komsomol faces, their expressions: at first dumbfounded, then grinning.

“HE TRICKED US ... THE POCKMARKED DEVIL!”

In his shed, Panyutin is working with his tools: shovels, axes, saws, sacks of sand.

Teryosha, delighted, takes the spurs off his bast shoes and puts them in his pocket.

“HE TRICKED US ... IVANICH!”

Varya shouts at Teryosha:

“WHAT’RE YOU KEEPING THOSE FOR? THROW THEM OUT!”

Teryosha answers:

“THEY MAY COME IN HANDY...

A spur makes Teryoshas pocket protrude.

Cherevkov rushes to his mother.

“TAKE IT BACK, MAMA!”

He gives the old woman the cross—he has finally managed to get rid of it.

Yeryoma, indignant, in the company of drunken Gerasim Cherevkov, is dragging off the machine gun.

“I ABSOLUTELY MUST DEFEAT SOMEONE TODAY!”

Yeryoma yells.

CURRENT AFFAIRS OF THE CENTRAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE U.S.S.R.

An open shed next to the mill. The Komsomols are sorting out the tools: shovels, axes, saws, wheelbarrows.

Mounted policemen are riding along the road behind their chief. A half-shorn sheep.

Yeryoma and Gerasim Cherevkov are sitting at the bottom of the ditch.

They are trying out the machine gun.

The bullets hit the sheer walls of the ditch.

CURRENT AFFAIRS OF THE CENTRAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE U.S.S.R.

Shovels swinging up.

Arms swinging up.

Shovels swinging up.

Arms swinging up.

Tumbling soil.

The efficient work of the Komsomols by the millrace.

The spur has pierced Teryosha s pocket and is sticking out.

A pile of discarded accordions.

A pile of discarded weapons.

Shovels swinging up.

Arms swinging up.

Work at the mill—columns of dust—hammering.

Among the columns of dust, a frenzied Zhivtsov.

A thin stream of water is trickling into the dirty pond.

With adroit maneuvers, the police surround the ditch in which Yeryoma was shooting.

The police officers are crawling on their stomachs, pointing their rifles.

In the ditch, Yeryoma and his companion are in deep sleep in each others arms, the machine gun between them.

The police officers, pointing their rifles, reach the edge of the ditch.

They throw themselves on Yeryoma, who is fast asleep.

Yeryoma, buried under a pile of fluttering police officers.

“HURRAH!”

shouts Yeryoma, waking up, not realizing what is happening.

CURRENT AFFAIRS OF THE CENTRAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE U.S.S.R.

Cherevkov is nailing new planks to the dilapidated mill wheel.

The millrace is constantly growing, sacks of sand fall into the water.

The work inside the mill.

An agitated owl. . .

. . . flies away from its dark shelter.

The muzzle of a rifle—a shot.

A stream, formerly flowing to the side, now flows into the pond.

An increasingly powerful stream flows into the pond.

Rotten planks, heaps of rags, and all kinds of garbage from the village float up to the surface—clean water appears.

Yeryomas horse stands above the stream, waits, and, when the dirty water has receded, starts drinking.

The water has risen—the pond is full.

Zhivtsov lifts the barrier.

Sparkling water flows onto the mill wheel, which is covered with a mix of old and new planks. The wheel comes alive, moves, turns.

The dead owl. Fadeout.

CURRENT AFFAIRS OF THE CENTRAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE U.S.S.R.

The turning millstones, repaired.

The rotating mill wheel, the sparkling water glittering in the sun. Flour pours from the millstones.

The peasants are carrying the grain from the church that has been turned into a granary.

St. Nicholas is slowly uncovered.

“HEY, RUSSIA! YOU GREAT POWER, YOU!”

Father and grandfather Cherevkov are dancing.

Flour is flowing from the millstones.

A village street. Among the rows of thatched roofs, one new roof is glittering beneath the sun.

Flowers are floating down the river.

Through the spinning wheel, through the streams of water—the tired, sweating, happy faces of the Komsomols.

Babel wrote Number 4 Staraya Square a few months before his arrest.

It was a talkie for Soyuzdetfilm., the movie studio that was also bringing out the famous Gorky trilogy, which Babel hadjustfinished working on. After Babel's arrest, the movie did not go into production.

"'Number 4 Staraya Square” was the address in Moscow of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party. With his choice of title,

Babel indicated how deeply involved the Central Committee was in controlling all the elements of the Soviet Unions race for technical supremacy in the world. Although Communism triumphs in the end\ the screenplay takes dangerous digs at bureaucratic inefficiency and corruption in Stalinist Russia.

1.

A lean man in a leather coat came out of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party at number 4 Staraya Square.

Above his head in huge letters on the building: “CCSCP.”

The unblinking eyes of the man in the leather coat stared straight ahead.

A woman carrying a package bumped into him as she hurried past; without noticing, he slowly walked on toward a long line of cars parked across the street from the Central Committee building.

He found his car, opened the door, and got in next to his driver.

, The driver, a gangly man with a likable, snub-nosed, devil-may-care face, started the engine.

The car drove through Moscow.

Driving past the Kremlin, the driver threw a sidelong glance at the man in the leather coat.

“The outskirts?”

The lean man shook his head.

“No, Moscow.”

The car plunged into one side street after another.

“Well, Comrade Murashko, who are we now?” the driver asked without turning his head.

The man in the leather coat shook himself out of deep thought.

“Who are we now? We are the Airship Construction Team.”

“Great!” the driver said, nodding his head.

The lights of Moscow sparkled.

“How does an airship work, I mean scientifically?” the driver asked, looking straight ahead.

“Scientifically? Well, Vasya, it s lighter than air.”

“Great!” Vasya said, nodding his head again.

“Let s just hope this airship project wont have us ending up lighter than air!” Murashko said, shifting in his seat.

“Youre right, we might well end up lighter than air,” Vasya said, turning the steering wheel.

The car drove through the streets of Moscow.

“Which way should I head, Comrade Murashko?”

“Head to the highway we took to get to the dacha last summer, and we’ll go as far as the twelfth kilometer.”

The car left Moscow behind. On both sides of the highway the fields of early spring poured forth their emeralds.

Vasya stopped the car at the twelfth kilometer. Murashko got out and walked along the strip of wet grass lining the highway. Vasya followed him, his long legs stepping clumsily.

Murashko walked to the middle of a vast, empty field. The wet grass was sticking to his shoes. Vasya stood next to him.

Both men were silent. Murashko looked around, running his eyes over the field. The field was completely desolate. Only a single, bent willow tree and the ruins of an old barracks blackened the horizon.

“Our launch pad,” Murashko said.

Vasya stared at the “launch pad,” and said with a tone both commiserating and gloating, “Once a field, now a launch pad!”

“I see it all,” Murashko said. “The dock, the hangar, the gas purification unit, the gas reservoirs, the project design center—an entire airship construction complex!”

“So why are they stalling?” Vasya interrupted him, flaring up. “They sent you to take over Workshop 26, and you managed things quite well over there. Then you got to be deputy director of Workshop 24, and there too no one could hold a candle to you! So, what’s the problem? Even if the thing has to be lighter than air—”