The Complete Works of Isaac Babel Reprint Edition by Isaac Babel, Nathalie Babel, Peter Constantine (30 page)
Authors: Peter Constantine Isaac Babel Nathalie Babel
For Dyakov, see 1920 Diary, entries 7/13/20, and 7/16/20.
Luca della Robbia, 1399-1482, Florentine sculptor.
Polish: “Oh, this man!”
Polish: “Yes, yes, gentlemen.”
Nestor Ivanovich Makhno, 1889-1934, the Ukrainian anarchist leader.
^ A pun: the Tsekists are members of the Tseka, the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party. A “tsekh,” however, is a simple guild.
Today, Kharkiv, a city in northeastern Ukraine. The “self-proclaimed” capital in the sense that Kharkiv replaced Kiev as the capital of the Ukrainian S.S.R from 1917 until 1934.
The Odessa branch of the “Extraordinary Commission” set up in 1917 to investigate counterrevolutionary activities. The Cheka later became the KGB.
The Star of David.
^ A reference to Charles Dickens’s novel The Old Curiosity Shop.
The Third Communist International, 1919-1943, an organization founded in Moscow by the delegates of twelve countries to promote Communism worldwide.
A pun on “truth,” Pravda, which is also the name of the Russian daily that the narrator is reading to the Cossacks.
In Yiddish folklore, a trickster. See Babels story “Shabos-Nakhamu.”
The newspaper The Red Cavalryman.
The Third Communist International, 1919-1943, an organization founded in Moscow by the delegates of twelve countries to promote Communism worldwide, t An open carriage or buggy with a machine gun mounted on the back.
General Budyonny, in his red trousers with the silver stripes, stood by a tree. The commander of the Second Brigade had just been killed. The general had appointed Kolesnikov to replace him.
Only an hour ago, Kolesnikov had been a regimental captain. A week ago Kolesnikov had been a squadron leader.
The new brigade commander was summoned to General Budyonny. The general waited for him, standing by the tree. Kolesnikov came with Almazov, his commissar.
“The bastards are closing in on us,” the general said with his dazzling grin. “We win, or we die like dogs. No other options. Understood?”
“Understood,” Kolesnikov answered, his eyes bulging from their sockets.
“You run for it, Til have you shot,” the general said with a smile, and he turned and looked at the commander of the special unit.
“Yes, General!” the commander of the special unit said.
“So start rolling, Koleso!”
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one of the Cossacks standing nearby shouted cheerfully.
Budyonny swiftly turned on his heel and saluted his new brigade commander. The latter lifted five young red fingers to his cap, broke into a sweat, and walked along the plowed field. The horses were waiting for him fifty yards away He hung his head, placing one long and crooked leg in front of the other with agonizing slowness. The fire of the sunset swept over him, as crimson and implausible as impending doom.
And suddenly, on the outstretched earth, on the yellow, harrowed nakedness of the fields, we saw nothing but Kolesnikovs narrow back, his dangling arms, and his hanging head with its gray cap.
His orderly brought him his horse.
He jumped into the saddle and galloped to his brigade without looking back. The squadrons were waiting for him on the main road, the high road to Brody.
A moaning hurrah, shredded by the wind, drifted over to us.
Aiming my binoculars, I saw the brigade commander on his horse circling through columns of thick dust.
“Kolesnikov has taken over the brigade,” said our lookout, who was sitting in a tree above our heads.
“So he has,” Budyonny answered, lighting a cigarette and closing his eyes.
The hurrahs faded. The cannonade died down. Pointless shrapnel burst above the forest. And we heard the great, silent skirmish.
“Hes a good boy,” Budyonny said, getting up. “Wants honors. Looks like he’ll make it.” And Budyonny had the horses brought over, and rode off to the battlefield. His Staff followed him.
As it happened, I was to see Kolesnikov again that very night, about an hour after the Poles had been finished off. He was riding in front of his brigade, alone, on a brown stallion, dozing. His right arm was hanging in a sling. A cavalry Cossack was carrying the unfurled flag about ten paces behind him. The men at the head of the squadron lazily sang bawdy ditties. The brigade stretched dusty and endless, like peasant carts heading to a market fair. At the rear, tired bands were gasping.
That evening, as Kolesnikov rode, I saw in his bearing the despotic indifference of a Tatar khan and saw in him a devotee of the glorified Kniga, the willful Pavlichenko, and the captivating Savitsky.
SASHKA CHRIST
^ashka, that was his real name, and Christ is what we called him
/because he was so gentle. He had been one of the shepherds of his
Cossack village and had not done any heavy work since he was fourteen, when he had caught the evil disease.
This is what had happened. Tarakanich, Sashkas stepfather, had gone to the town of Grozny for the winter, and had joined a guild there. The guild was working well—it was made up of Ryazan muzhiks. Tarakanich did carpentry for them, and his income increased. When he realized that he could not manage the work alone anymore, he sent home for the boy to come and be his assistant—the village could survive the winter well enough without him. Sashka worked with his stepfather for a week. Then Saturday came, and they put their tools away and sat down to drink some tea. Outside it was October, but the air was mild. They opened the window, and put on a second samovar. A beggar woman was loitering near the windows. She knocked on the frame and said, “A good day to you! I see you’re not from these parts. You can see what state I’m in, no?”
“What is it about your state?” Tarakanich said. “Come in, you old cripple!”
The beggar woman scrambled up and clambered into the room. She came over to the table and bowed deeply. Tarakanich grabbed her by her kerchief, pulled it off, and ruffled her hair. The beggar womans hair was gray, ashy, and hanging in dusty tatters.
“Ooh, will you stop that, you naughty handsome man you!” she
said. “You’re a joke a minute, you are! But please, don’t be disgusted by me just because I’m a little old woman,” she quickly whispered, scampering onto the bench.
Tarakanich lay with her. The beggar woman turned her head to the side and laughed.
“Ooh, luck is raining on this little old woman’s field!” she laughed. “I’ll be harvesting two hundred pood of grain an acre!”
And she suddenly noticed Sashka, who was drinking his tea at the table, not looking up as if his life depended on it.
“Your boy?” she asked Tarakanicth.
“More or less mine,” Tarakanich answered. “My wife’s.”
“Ooh, look at him staring at us,” the old woman said. “Hey, come over here!”
Sashka went over to her—and he caught the evil disease. But the evil disease had been the last thing on their minds. Tarakanich gave the beggar woman some leftover bones and a silver fiver, a very shiny one.
“Polish the fiver nicely with sand, holy sister,” Tarakanich said to her, “and it’ll look even better. If you lend it to the Almighty on a dark night, it will shine instead of the moon.”
The old cripple tied her kerchief, took the bones, and left. And within two weeks the muzhiks realized what had happened. The evil disease made them suffer. They tried to cure themselves all winter long, dousing themselves with herbs. And in spring they returned to the Cossack village and their peasant work.
The village was about nine versts from the railroad. Tarakanich and Sashka crossed the fields. The earth lay in its April wetness. Emeralds glittered in the black ditches. Green shoots hemmed the soil with cunning stitches. A sour odor rose from the ground, as from a soldiers wife at dawn. The first herds trickled down from the hills, the foals played in the blue expanse of the horizon.
Tarakanich and Sashka walked along barely visible paths.
“Let me be one of the shepherds, Tarakanich,” Sashka said.
“What for?”
“I can’t bear that the shepherds have such a wonderful life.”
“I won’t allow it.”
“Let me be one, Tarakanich, for the love of God!” Sashka repeated. “All the saints came from shepherds.”
“Sashka the Saint!” the stepfather laughed. “He caught syphilis from the Mother of God!”
They passed the bend in the road by Red Bridge, then the grove and the pasture, and saw the cross on the village church.
The women were still puttering around in their vegetable gardens, and Cossacks were sitting among the lilacs, drinking vodka and singing. It was another half verst to Tarakanichs hut.
“Let us pray that everything is fine,” Tarakanich said, crossing himself.
They walked over to the hut and peeked in the little window. Nobody was there. Sashkas mother was in the shed milking the cow. They crept over to her silently. Tarakanich came up behind her and laughed out loud.
“Motya, Your Excellency,” he shouted, “how about some food for your guests!”
The woman turned around, began to shake, and rushed out of the shed and ran circling around the yard. Then she came back into the shed and, trembling, pressed her head on Tarakanichs chest.
“How silly and ugly you look,” Tarakanich said, gently pushing her away. “Where are the children?”
“The children have left the yard,” the woman said, her face ashen, and ran out again, throwing herself onto the ground.
“Oh, Aleshonka!” she shrieked wildly. “Our babies have gone, feet first!”
Tarakanich waved at her dismissively and went over to the neighbors. The neighbors told him that a week ago the Lord had taken the boy and the girl with typhus. Motya had written him a letter, but he probably hadn’t gotten it. Tarakanich went back to the hut. The woman was stoking the oven.
“You got rid of them quite nicely, Motya,” Tarakanich said. “Rip you to pieces, thats what I should do!”
He sat down at the table and fell into deep grief—and grieved till he fell asleep. He ate meat and drank vodka, and did not see to his work around the farm. He snored at the table, woke up, and snored again. Motya prepared a bed for herself and her husband, and another for Sashka to the side. She blew out the light, and lay down next to her husband. Sashka tossed and turned on the hay in his corner. His eyes were open, he did not sleep, but saw, as if in a dream, the hut, a star shining through the window, the edge of the table, and the horse collars under his mother’s bed. A violent vision took hold of him; he surrendered to it and rejoiced in his waking dream. It was as if two silver strings hung from the sky, entwined into a thick rope to which a cradle was fastened, a rosewood cradle with carvings. It swung high above the earth but far from the sky, and the silver rope swayed and glittered. Sashka was lying in this cradle, fanned by the air. The air, loud as music, rose from the fields, and the rainbow blossomed above the unripe wheat.
Sashka rejoiced in his waking sleep, and closed his eyes so as not to see the horse collars under his mothers bed. Then he heard panting from the bed, and thought that Tarakanich must be pawing his mother.
“Tarakanich,” he said loudly. “Theres something I need to talk to you about.”
“In the middle of the night?” Tarakanich yelled angrily. “Sleep, you fleabag!”
“I swear by the Holy Cross that there’s something I need to talk to you about,” Sashka said. “Come out into the yard!”
And in the yard, beneath the unfading stars, Sashka said to his stepfather, “Don’t wrong my mother, Tarakanich, you’re tainted.”
“You should know better than to cross me, boy!” Tarakanich said.
“I know, but have you seen my mother’s body? She has legs that are clean, and a breast that is clean. Don’t wrong her, Tarakanich. We re tainted.”
“Boy!” his stepfather said. “Avoid my blood and my wrath! Here are twenty kopeks, go to sleep and your head will be clearer in the morning.”
“I don’t need the twenty kopeks,” Sashka muttered. “Let me go join the shepherds.”
“I won’t allow that,” Tarakanich said.
“Let me join the shepherds,” Sashka muttered, “or I’ll tell Mother what we are. Why should she suffer with such a body?”
Tarakanich turned around and went into the shed to get an axe.
“Saint Sashka,” he said in a whisper, “you wait and see, Y11 hack you to pieces!”
“You’d hack me to pieces on account of a woman?” the boy said, barely audibly, and leaned closer to his stepfather. “Take pity on me and let me join the shepherds.”
“Damn you!” Tarakanich said, and threw away the axe. “So go join the shepherds!”
And Tarakanich went back into the hut and slept with his wife.
That same morning Sashka went to the Cossacks to be hired, and from that day on he lived as a village shepherd. He became known throughout the whole area for his simple heart, and the people of the village gave him the nickname Sashka Christ, and he lived as a shepherd until he was drafted. The old men, who had nothing better to do, came out to the pasture to chat with him, and the women came running to Sashka for respite from their husbands’ rough ways, and were not put off by Sashkas love for them or by his illness. Sashkas draft call came in the first year of the war. He fought for four years, and then returned to the village, where the Whites were running the show. Sashka was urged to go to the village of Platovskaya, where a detachment was being formed to fight the Whites. A former cavalry sergeant-major—Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny—was running things in that detachment, and he had his three brothers with him: Emelian, Lukian, and Denis. Sashka went to Platovskaya, and there his fate was sealed. He joined Budyonny’s regiment, his brigade, his division, and finally his First Cavalry Army. He rode to the aid of heroic Tsaritsyn,
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joined with Voroshilov’s Tenth Army, and fought at Voronezh, Kastornaya, and at the Generalsky Bridge on the Donets. In the Polish Campaign, Sashka joined the cavalry transport unit, because he had been wounded and was considered an invalid.
