The Complete Works of Isaac Babel Reprint Edition by Isaac Babel, Nathalie Babel, Peter Constantine (35 page)
Authors: Peter Constantine Isaac Babel Nathalie Babel
We crossed the river and entered deeper into the petit-bourgeois settlement. We were nearing the priests house when Afonka suddenly came riding around the corner on a large stallion.
“Greetings,” he called out in a barking voice, and, pushing the fighters apart, took his old position in the ranks.
Maslak stared into the colorless distance.
“Where did you get that horse?” he wheezed, without turning around.
“Its my own,” Afonka answered, and rolled himself a cigarette, wetting the paper with a quick dart of his tongue.
One after the other, the Cossacks rode up to greet him. A monstrous pink pustule shone repugnantly in his charred face where his left eye had been.
The following morning Bida went carousing. He smashed Saint Valentines shrine in the church and tried to play the organ. He was wearing a jacket that had been cut from a blue carpet and had an embroidered lily on its back, and he had combed his sweat-drenched forelock
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over his gouged-out eye.
After lunch he saddled his horse and fired his rifle at the knocked-out windows of the castle of the Count Raciborski. Cossacks stood around him in a semicircle. They tugged at the stallions tail, prodded its legs, and counted its teeth.
“A fine figure of a horse!” Orlov, the squadron subcommander, said.
“An exemplary horse,” big-mustached Bitsenko confirmed.
Our division occupied Berestechko yesterday evening. The head-quarters have been set up in the house of Father Tuzynkiewicz. Dressed as a woman, Tuzynkiewicz had fled Berestechko before our troops entered the town. All I know about him is that he had dealt with God in Berestechko for forty-five years, and that he had been a good priest. The townspeople make a point of this, telling us he was even loved by the Jews. Under Tuzynkiewicz, the old church had been renovated. The renovations had been completed on the day of the churchs three-hundredth anniversary, and the bishop had come from Zhitomir. Prelates in silk cassocks had held a service in front of the church. Potbellied and beatific, they stood like bells on the dewy grass. Faithful streams flowed in from the surrounding villages. The muzhiks bent their knees, kissed priestly hands, and on that day clouds never before seen flamed in the sky. Heavenly banners fluttered in honor of the church. The bishop himself kissed Tuzynkiewicz on the forehead and called him the Father of Berestechko, Pater Berestechkae.
I heard this tale in the morning at the headquarters, where I was checking over the report of our scout column that was on a reconnaissance mission near Lvov in the district of Radziekhov. I read the documents. The snoring of the orderlies behind me bespoke our never-ending homelessness. The clerks, sodden with sleeplessness, wrote orders to the division, ate pickles, and sneezed. It wasn’t until midday that I got away, went to the window, and saw the. church of Berestechko, powerful and white. It shone in the mild sun like a porcelain tower. Flashes of midday lightning sparkled on its shining flanks. The lightnings arcs began at the ancient green cupolas and ran lightly downward. Pink veins glimmered in the white stone of the portal, and above it were columns as thin as candles.
Then organ music came pouring into my ears, and that instant an old woman with disheveled yellow hair appeared outside the doors of the headquarters. She moved like a dog with a broken paw, hobbling in circles, her legs tottering. The pupils of her eyes, filled with the white liquid of blindness, oozed tears. The sounds of the organ, now drawn-out, now rapid, came fluttering over to us. Their flight was difficult, their wake reverberated plaintive and long. The old woman wiped her eyes with her yellow hair, sat on the floor, and began kissing the tops of my boots. The organ fell silent and then burst into a laughter of bass notes. I took the old woman by the arm and looked around. The clerks were pounding their typewriters and the orderlies snored ever louder, the spurs on their boots ripping the felt under the velvet upholstery of the sofas. The old woman kissed my boots tenderly, hugging them as she would an infant. I led her to the door and locked it behind me. The church towered strikingly before us, like a stage set. Its side doors were open, and on the graves of Polish officers lay horses’ skulls.
We hurried into the churchyard, went through a dark corridor, and arrived in a square-shaped room, which had been built as an extension to the chancel. Sashka, the nurse of the Thirty-first Regiment, was puttering about in there, rummaging through a pile of silk that somebody had thrown on the floor. The cadaverous aroma of brocade, scattered flowers, and fragrant decay seeped into her nostrils, tickling and poisonous. Then Cossacks entered the room. They burst into guffaws, grabbed Sashka by the arms, and flung her with gusto onto a pile of cloth and books. Sashkas body, blossoming and reeking like the meat of a freshly slaughtered cow, was laid bare, her raised skirts revealing the legs of a squadron woman, slim, cast-iron legs, and dim-witted Kurdyukov, the silly fool, sat on top of Sashka, bouncing as if he were in a saddle, pretending to be in the grip of passion. She pushed him off and rushed out the door. We passed the altar, and only then did we enter the nave of the church.
The church was filled with light, filled with dancing rays, columns of air, and an almost cool exultation. How can I ever forget Apoleks painting, hanging over the right side-altar? In this painting twelve rosy Paters are rocking a cradle girdled with ribbons, with a plump infant Jesus in it. His toes are stretched out, his body lacquered with hot morning sweat. The child is writhing on his fat, wrinkly back, and twelve apostles in cardinals’ miters are bending over the cradle. Their faces are meticulously shaven, flaming cloaks are billowing over their bellies. The eyes of the Apostles sparkle with wisdom, resolution, and cheer. Faint grins flit over the corners of their mouths, and fiery warts have been planted on their double chins—crimson warts, like radishes in May.
This church of Berestechko had its private and beguiling approach to the death agonies of the sons of man. In this church the saints marched to their deaths with the flair of Italian opera singers, and the black hair of the executioners shone like the beard of Holofernes. Here, above the altar, I saw the sacrilegious painting of John the Baptist, which had also sprung from Apoleks heretical, intoxicating brush. In this painting the Baptist was beautiful in the ambiguous and reticent way that drives the concubines of kings to shed their half-lost honor and their blossoming lives.
At first I did not notice the signs of destruction in the church, or didn’t think they looked too bad. Only the shrine of Saint Valentine had been smashed. Lying around it were shreds of decayed wadding and the saint’s ridiculous bones, which, if they resembled anything, looked like chicken bones. And Afonka Bida was still playing the organ. Afonka was drunk, wild, his body was lacerated. He had come back to us only yesterday with the horse he had seized from local farmers. Afonka was obstinately trying to play a march, and someone was badgering him in a sleepy voice, “Enough, Afonka, enough, let s go eat!” But Afonka wouldn’t give up. Many more of Afonka’s songs followed. Each sound was a song, and one sound was torn from the other. The song’s dense tune lasted for a moment and then crossed over into another. I listened, looked around—the signs of destruction didn’t look too bad. But Pan Ludomirski, the bell ringer of the Church of Saint Valentine and husband of the old blind woman, thought otherwise.
Ludomirsky had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. He walked through the church with measured steps, his head lowered. The old man could not bring himself to cover the scattered relics because a simple man, a lay person, may not touch what is holy. The bell ringer threw himself on the blue slabs of the floor, lifted his head, his blue nose jutting up above him like a flag above a corpse. His blue nose quivered above him and at that moment a velvet curtain by the altar swayed, rustled, and fell open. In the depths of the niche, against the backdrop of a sky furrowed with clouds, ran a bearded little figure wearing an orange Polish caftan—barefoot, his mouth lacerated and bleeding. A hoarse wail assailed our ears. The man in the orange caftan was being pursued by hatred, and his pursuer had caught up with him. The man lifted his arm to ward off the blow, and blood poured from it in a purple stream. The young Cossack standing next to me yelled out and, ducking, started to run, even though there was nothing to run from, because the figure in the niche was only Jesus Christ—the most unusual portrayal of the Son of God I have ever seen in my life.
Pan Ludomirskis Savior was a curly-headed Jew with a scraggly little beard and a low, wrinkled forehead. His sunken cheeks were tinted with carmine, and thin, red-brown eyebrows curved over eyes that were closed in pain.
His mouth was wrenched open, like a horses mouth, his Polish caftan fastened with a precious girdle, and from under the caftan jutted crooked little porcelain feet, painted, bare, pierced by silver nails.
Pan Ludomirski stood under the statue in his green frock coat. He stretched his withered arm toward us and cursed us. The Cossacks stared at him with wide eyes and let their straw-colored forelocks hang. In a thundering voice, the bell ringer of the Church of Saint Valentine cursed us in the purest Latin. Then he turned away, fell to his knees, and clasped the feet of the Savior.
Back at the headquarters, I wrote a report to the division commander about the insult to the religious feelings of the local population. A decree was issued that the church be closed, and the guilty parties were charged with a breach of discipline and sent before the military tribunal.
A pun: Koleso, short for Kolesnikov, means “wheel.”
Renamed Stalingrad in 1925 in honor of Joseph Stalin, who had played a major role in the defense of the city against General Denikin’s White Russian Army. Today Volgograd.
"I" Zavalinka: a mound of earth around a Russian peasant hut that protects it from the weather and is often used for sitting outside.
1918, the year following the Bolshevik Revolution.
From the Russian folktale The Little Humpbacked Horse, in which the hero summons his magic horse with, “Appear before me like a leaf before a blade of grass!”
Berestechko, 1820, my beloved Paul, I hear that Emperor Napoleon is dead. Is it true? I feel well; it was an easy birth, our little hero is already seven weeks old.
The Russian Communist Party
t The Red Cavalryman, the newspaper distributed to the Red Cavalry forces and for which Babel also wrote pieces. See The Red Cavalryman: Articles, Part V in this book.
The train belonging to the Polit-otdel, the political organ of the new Soviet government charged with the ideological education of the military.
Term for Cossack leader.
^ Maslakov, commander of the First Brigade of the Fourth Division, a relentless partisan who was soon to betray the Soviet regime. [Footnote by Isaac Babel.]
The Ukrainian anarchist leader.
Ukrainian Cossacks shaved their heads, leaving only a forelock, known as a chub.
At noon we brought the bullet-ridden body of Trunov, our squadron commander, back to Sokal. He had been killed that morning in a battle with enemy airplanes. All the hits had caught Trunov in the face; his cheeks were riddled with wounds, his tongue torn out. We washed the dead mans face as best we could so that he would look less horrifying, placed his Caucasian saddle at the head of his coffin, and dug him a grave in a stately spot—in the public park in the middle of the town, right by the fence. Our squadron rode there on horseback. The regimental staff and the divisional military commissar were also present. And at two in the afternoon, by the cathedral clock, our rickety little cannon fired the first shot. The cannon saluted Squadron Commander Trunov with its timeworn three-inch bore, did a full salute, and we carried the coffin to the open pit. The coffin was open, the clean midday sun lit the lanky corpse, lit his mouth filled with smashed teeth and his carefully polished boots, their heels placed together as at a drill.
“Fighters!” Regimental Captain Pugachov said, as he eyed the dead man and walked up to the edge of the pit. “Fighters!” he said, standing at attention, shaking with emotion. “We are burying Pashka Trunov, an international hero! We are according Pashka the final honor!”
Pugachov raised his eyes, burning with sleeplessness, to the sky and shouted out his speech about the dead fighters of the First Cavalry, that proud phalanx which pounds the anvil of future centuries with the hammer of history. Pugachov shouted out his speech loudly, clenched the hilt of his curved Chechen saber, and scuffed the earth with his tattered boots and their silver spurs. After his speech the orchestra played the “Internationale,” and the Cossacks took leave of Pashka Trunov. The whole squadron leaped onto their horses and fired a volley into the air, our three-inch cannon hissed toothlessly a second time, and we sent three Cossacks to find a wreath. They whirled off at full gallop, firing as they rode and plunging from their saddles in a display of acrobatics, and brought back armfuls of red flowers. Pugachov scattered the flowers around the grave, and we stepped up to Trunov for the last kiss. I touched my lips on an unblemished patch of forehead crowned by his saddle, and then left to go for a walk through the town, through gothic Sokal, which lay in its blue dust and in Galicia’s dejection.
A large square stretched to the left of the park, a square surrounded by ancient synagogues. Jews in long, torn coats were cursing and shoving each other on this square. Some of them, the Orthodox, were extolling the teachings of Adassia, the Rabbi of Belz, which led the Hasidim of the moderate school, students of Rabbi Iuda of Husyatyn, to attack them. The Jews were arguing about the Kabbala, and in their quarrel shouted the name of Elijah, Gaon of Vilna, the persecutor of the Hasidim.
Ignoring war and gunfire, the Hasidim were cursing the name of Elijah, the Grand Rabbi of Vilna, and I, immersed in my sorrow over Trunov, joined in the jostling and yelled along with them to ease my pain, until I suddenly saw a Galician before me, sepulchral and gaunt as Don Quixote.
