The Complete Works of Isaac Babel Reprint Edition by Isaac Babel, Nathalie Babel, Peter Constantine (34 page)

And raising his blank eye, filled with adoration, to the washerwoman, Galin rummages relentlessly through the crypts of murdered emperors. He is standing stoop-shouldered, bathed in the rays of the moon hovering high above like a nagging splinter, the printing presses are hammering somewhere nearby, and the radio station is shining with clear light. Irina nestles against the shoulder of Vasily the cook as she stands listening to Galin’s dull and nonsensical mutterings of love. Above her, the stars are dragging themselves through the black seaweed of the sky. The washerwoman yawns, makes the sign of the cross over her puffy lips, and stares wide-eyed at Galin.

Next to Irina, rough-faced Vasily yawns. Like all cooks he scorns mankind. Cooks: they constantly have to handle the meat of dead animals and the greed of the living, which is why, when it comes to politics, a cook always seeks things that have nothing to do with him. This goes for Vasily too. Hiking his pants up to his nipples, he asks Galin about the civil lists of various kings, the dowries of Czars’ daughters. Then he yawns and says, “It’s night, Irina, another day will be rolling in tomorrow. Let’s go crush some fleas.”

They closed the kitchen door, leaving Galin alone, with the moon hovering high above like a nagging splinter. I sat opposite the moon on the embankment by the sleeping pond, wearing my spectacles, with boils on my neck, my legs bandaged. My confused poetic brain was digesting the class struggle when Galin came up to me with his twinkling cataracts.

“Galin,” I said, overcome with self-pity and loneliness, “I am sick, my end is near, I am tired of life in the Red Cavalry!”

“You’re a wimp!” Galin said, and the watch on his bony wrist showed one in the morning. “You’re a wimp, and we end up having to put up with wimps like you! We’re cracking the nut for you, and soon enough you will be able to see the meat inside, at which point you’ll take your thumb out of your mouth and sing the glories of the new life in striking prose—but for the time being, just sit where you are, nice and quiet, you wimp, and stop getting in the way with all your whimpering!”

He came closer to me, fixed the bandages which had slipped off my itching sores, and let his head loll onto his pigeon breast. The night comforted us in our anguish; a light breeze rustled over us like a moth-ers skirt, and the weeds below us glittered with freshness and moisture.

The roaring machines of the trains printing press screeched and fell silent. Dawn drew a line across the edge of the earth, the kitchen door creaked and opened a crack. Four feet with fat heels came thrusting out into the coolness, and we saw Irinas loving calves and Vasily s big toe with its crooked black nail.

“Vasilyok,” the woman whispered in a throaty, expiring voice. “Get out of my bed, you troublemaker!”

But Vasily only jerked his heel and moved closer to her.

“The Red Cavalry,” Galin said to me, “the Red Cavalry is a public conjuring trick pulled off by our Party’s Central Committee. The curve of the Revolution has thrown the Cossack marauders, saddled with all kinds of prejudices, into the forefront, but the Central Committee is going to weed them out with its iron rake.”

Then Galin began talking about the political education of the First Cavalry. He spoke long, in a dull voice, with complete clarity. His eyelid fluttered over his cataract.

We were fighting by Leshniov. A wall of enemy cavalry rose all around us. The new Polish strategy was uncoiling like a spring, with an ominous whistle. We were being pushed back. It was the first time in our campaign that we felt on our own backs the devilish sharpness of flank attacks and breaches in the rear lines—slashes from the very weapons that had served us so well.

The front at Leshniov was being held by the infantry. Blond and barefoot, Volhynian muzhiks shuffled along crooked trenches. This infantry had been plucked from behind its plows the day before to form the Red Cavalrys infantry reserve. The peasants had come along eagerly. They fought with the greatest zeal. Their hoarse peasant ferocity amazed even the Budyonny fighters. Their hatred for the Polish landowners was built of invisible but sturdy material.

In the second phase of the war, when our whooping had lost its effect on the enemy’s imagination, and cavalry attacks on our opponents, burrowed in their trenches, had become impossible, this ragtag infantry could have proved extremely useful to the Red Cavalry. But our poverty got the upper hand: there were three muzhiks to every rifle, and the cartridges that were issued didn’t fit. The venture had to be dropped, and this true peasant home guard was sent back to its villages.

But back to the fighting at Leshniov. Our foot soldiers had dug themselves in three versts from the shtetl. A hunched youth with spectacles was walking up and down in front of them, a saber dangling at his side. He moved along in little hops, with a piqued look on his face, as if his boots were pinching him. This peasant ataman ,* chosen and cherished by the muzhiks, was a Jew, a half-blind Jewish youth, with the sickly, intent face of a Talmudist. In battle, he showed circumspect and coolheaded courage that reflected the absentmindedness of a dreamer.

It was after two o’clock on a crystalline July day. A gossamer rainbow of heat glittered in the air. A festive stripe of uniforms and horse manes braided with ribbons came sparkling from behind the hills. The youth gave the signal for the men to take their positions. The muzhiks, shuffling in their bast sandals, ran to their posts and took aim. But it turned out to be a false alarm. It was Maslaks^ colorful squadrons that came riding up the Leshniov high road, their emaciated but spirited horses trotting at a steady pace. In fiery pillars of dust, magnificent banners were fluttering on gilded poles weighed down by velvet tassels. The horsemen rode with majestic and insolent haughtiness. The tattered foot soldiers came crawling out of their trenches and, their mouths hanging open, watched the light-footed elegance of the unruffled stream.

In front of the regiment, riding a bowlegged steppe horse, was Brigade Commander Maslak, filled with drunken blood and the putridness of his fatty juices. His stomach lay like a big cat on the silver-studded pommel of his saddle. When Maslak saw the muzhik foot soldiers, his face turned a merry purple, and he beckoned Platoon Commander Afonka Bida to come over. We had given the platoon commander the nickname “Makhno”
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because he looked so much like him. Maslak and Bida whispered for about a minute. Then Bida turned toward the First Squadron, leaned forward, and in a low voice ordered, “Charge!” The Cossacks, one platoon after another, broke into a trot. They spurred their horses and went galloping toward the trenches from which the muzhik foot soldiers were peering, dazzled by the sight.

“Prepare to engage!” sang Afonkas voice, dismal and as if he were calling from far away.

Maslak, wheezing and coughing, relishing the spectacle, rode off to the side, and the Cossacks charged. The poor muzhik foot soldiers ran, but it was too late. The Cossack lashes were already cutting across their tattered jackets as the horsemen circled the field, twirling their whips with exquisite artistry.

“What’s all this nonsense about?” I shouted over to Afonka.

“Just a bit of fun,” he shouted back, fidgeting in his saddle, and he dragged a young man out of the bushes in which he was hiding.

“Just a bit of fun!” he yelled, clobbering away at the terrified young man.

The fun ended when Maslak, tired and majestic, waved his plump hand.

“Foot soldiers! Stop gawking!” Afonka yelled, haughtily straightening his frail body. “Go catch some fleas!”

The Cossacks grinned at each other and gathered into formation. The foot soldiers vanished without a trace. The trenches were empty. And only the hunched Jewish youth stood in the same spot as before, eyeing the Cossacks haughtily through his spectacles.

The gunfire from the direction of Leshniov did not let up. The Poles were encircling us. We could see the single figures of their mounted scouts through our binoculars. They came galloping from the shtetl and disappeared again like jack-in-the-boxes. Maslak gathered together a squadron and divided it on either side of the high road. A sparkling sky hung above Leshniov, indescribably void as always in hours of danger. The Jew threw his head back and blew mournfully and loud on his metallic pipe. And the foot soldiers, the battered foot soldiers, returned to their positions.

Bullets flew thickly in our direction. Our brigade staff came under machine gun fire. We rushed into the forest and fought our way through the bushes on the right side of the high road. Branches, hit, cracked heavily above us. By the time we had managed to cut our way through the bushes, the Cossacks were no longer positioned where they had been. The division commander had ordered them to retreat toward Brody. Only the muzhiks sent a few snarling shots out of their trenches, and Afonka, trailing behind, went chasing after his platoon.

He was riding on the outermost edge of the road, looking around him and sniffing at the air. The shooting died down for a few moments. Afonka decided to take advantage of the lapse and began galloping at full speed. At that moment a bullet plunged into his horses neck. Afonka galloped on another hundred paces or so, and then, right in front of our line, his horse abruptly bent its forelegs and sank to the ground.

Afonka casually pulled his wedged foot out of the stirrup. He sat on his haunches and poked about in the wound with his copper-brown finger. Then he stood up again and ran his agonized eyes over the glittering horizon.

“Farewell, Stepan,” he said in a wooden voice, and, taking a step away from the dying horse, bowed deeply to it. “How will I return to my quiet village without you? Who am I to throw your embroidered saddle on? Farewell, Stepan!” he repeated more loudly, then choked, squeaked like a mouse in a trap, and began wailing. His gurgling howls reached our ears, and we saw Afonka frantically bowing like a possessed woman in a church. “But youll see! I wont give in to goddamn fate!” he yelled, lifting his hands from his ashen face. “Youll see! From now on I’m going to hack those cursed Poles to pieces with no mercy at all! Right down to their gasping hearts, right down to their very last gasp, and the Mother of Gods blood! I swear this to you, Stepan, before my dear brothers back home!”

Afonka lay down with his face on the horses wound and fell silent. The horse turned its deep, sparkling, violet eye to its master, and listened to his convulsive wheezing. In tender oblivion it dragged its fallen muzzle over the ground, and streams of blood, like two ruby-red harness straps, trickled over its chest covered in white muscles.

Afonka lay there without moving. Maslak walked over to the horse, treading daintily on his fat legs, slid his revolver into its ear, and fired. Afonka jumped up and swung his pockmarked face to Maslak.

“Take the harness off, Afanasi, and go back to your unit,” Maslak said to him gently

And from our slope we saw Afonka, bent under the weight of the saddle, his face raw and red like sliced meat, tottering toward his squadron, boundlessly alone in the dusty, blazing desert of the fields.

Late that evening I saw him at the cavalry transport. He was sleeping on a cart which held all his “possessions”—sabers, uniform jackets, and pierced gold coins. His blood-caked head with its wrenched, dead mouth, lay as if crucified on the saddles bow. Next to him lay the harness of the dead horse, the inventive and whimsical raiment of a Cossack racer: breastplates with black tassels, pliant tail cruppers studded with colored stones, and the bridle embossed with silver.

Darkness thickened around us. The cavalry transport crawled heavily along the Brody high road. Simple stars rolled through Milky Ways in the sky, and distant villages burned in the cool depths of the night. Orlov, the squadron subcommander, and big-mustached Bitsenko were sitting right there on Afonka’s cart discussing his grief.

“He brought the horse all the way from home,” long-mustached Bitsenko said. “Wheres one to find another horse like that?”

“A horse—that’s a friend,” Orlov answered.

“A horse—that’s a father,” Bitsenko sighed. “The horse saves your life more times than you can count. Bida is finished without his horse.”

In the morning Afonka was gone. The skirmishes near Brody began and ended. Defeat was replaced by fleeting victory, we had a change of division commander, but Afonka was still nowhere to be seen. And only a terrible rumbling from the villages, the evil and rapacious trail of Afonka’s marauding, showed us his difficult path.

“He’s off somewhere getting a horse,” the men of the squadron said about him, and on the endless evenings of our wanderings I heard quite a few tales of this grim, savage pillaging.

Fighters from other units ran into Afonka about ten versts from our position. He lay in wait for Polish cavalrymen who had fallen behind, or scoured the forests looking for herds hidden by the peasants. He set villages on fire and shot Polish elders for hiding horses. Echoes of the frenzied one-man battle, the furtive ransacking robbery of a lone wolf attacking a herd, reached our ears.

Another week passed. The bitter events of the day crowded out the tales of Afonka’s sinister bravado, and we began to forget our “Makhno.” Then the rumor went round that Galician peasants had slaughtered him somewhere in the woods. And on the day we entered Berestechko, Yemelyan Budyak from the First Squadron went to the division commander to ask if he could have Afonka’s saddle and the yellow saddlecloths. Yemelyan wanted to ride in the parade on a new saddle, but it was not to be.

We entered Berestechko on August 6. Fluttering in front of our division was our new division commander’s Asiatic quilted jacket and his red Cossack coat. Lyovka, the division commanders brutal lackey, walked behind him leading his stud mare. A military march filled with protracted menace resounded through the pretentious, destitute streets. The town was a colorful forest of dead-end alleys and decrepit and convulsive planks and boards. The shtetls heart, corroded by time, breathed its despondent decay upon us. Smugglers and philistines hid in their large, shadowy huts. Only Pan Ludomirski, a bell ringer in a green frock coat, met us at the church.