The Complete Works of Isaac Babel Reprint Edition by Isaac Babel, Nathalie Babel, Peter Constantine (40 page)

“I bet you you won’t be letting anyone before he’s fifteen,” Sashka muttered, and turned away. “And when he’s fifteen, you’ll be drooling bubbles, for all I know!”

She went over to her mare, tightened the saddle strap, and was about to ride off.

The spurs on her boots clattered, her lace stockings were full of straw and spattered with dirt, her monstrous breasts went swinging toward her back.

“And to think I brought a ruble with me,” Sashka said to herself, shoving her spurred boot into the stirrup. “I brought it with me but now I’ll have to take it away again.”

She took out two fifty-kopeck coins, jingled them in her palm, and hid them again in her cleavage.

“So well do it, or what?” Duplishchev said, his eyes fixed on the silver, and he brought over the stallion.

Sashka went to a sloping place in the clearing and had her mare stand there.

“You’d be amazed, but you’re the only one in these mudfields who’s got a stallion,” she said to Styopka, pushing Hurricane into position. “My mare’s a frontline war horse, two years now she hasn’t been humped, so I says to myself—why not get her some good blood?”

Sashka finished with the stallion, and then led her horse to the side.

“So, sweetie, we got our stuffing now,” she whispered, kissing her mare’s wet, skewbald lips from which slobbering strands of spittle hung. She rubbed her cheek against the mare’s muzzle, and suddenly noticed the noise thudding through the forest.

“The Second Brigade’s coming back,” Sashka said sternly, turning to me. “We must go, Lyutov!”

“Coming back, not coming back, I don’t give a damn!” Duplishchev shouted, the words getting stuck in his throat. “You’ve had your feast, now pay the priest!”

“My money’s nice and fine where it is!” Sashka muttered, and leaped onto her mare.

I dashed after her, and we rode off in full gallop. Duplishchev’s howl and the light thud of a gunshot rang out behind us.

“Just look at that!” the Cossack boy yelled as loudly as he could, running through the forest.

The wind hopped through the branches like a crazed rabbit, the Second Brigade went flying through the Galician oak trees, the placid dust of the cannonade rose above the earth as above a peaceful hut. And at a sign from the division commander, we launched our attack, the unforgettable attack on Czesniki.

The story of my fight with Akinfiev is as follows:

On the thirty-first came the attack on Czesniki. The squadrons had gathered in the forest next to the village, and hurled themselves at the enemy at six in the evening. The enemy was waiting for us on a hill three versts away. We galloped the three versts on our totally exhausted horses, and when we got to the hill we saw a deadly wall of black uniforms and pale faces. They were Cossacks who had betrayed us at the beginning of the Polish Campaign and had been rounded up into a brigade by Cossack Captain Yakovlev. The Cossack captain formed his horsemen into a square formation, and waited with his saber unsheathed. A gold tooth flashed in his mouth and his black beard lay on his chest like an icon on the chest of a corpse. The enemys machine guns fired at twenty paces; wounded men fell in our lines. We went trampling over them and hurled ourselves at the enemy, but his square formation did not waver, and we turned and ran.

So the Savinkov Cossacks gained a short-lived victory over the Sixth Division. They gained the victory because they did not turn their faces from the lava flow of our oncoming squadrons. The Cossack captain stood firm that time, and we ran without reddening our sabers with the traitors’ contemptible blood.

Five thousand men, our whole division, poured down the slope with no one in pursuit. The enemy stayed on the hill, unable to believe their illogical victory and muster their wits to set out in pursuit after us. That is why we survived and went bounding into the valley unharmed, where we were met by Vinogradov, our military commissar. Vinogradov was dashing about on his crazed horse trying to send the fleeing Cossacks back into battle.

“Lyutov!” he yelled when he saw me. “Get those fighters to turn around or 111 rip your soul out!”

Vinogradov pounded his tottering stallion with the butt of his Mauser, howled, and tried rounding up the men. I got away from him and rode up to Gulimov, a Kirghiz, who was galloping past.

“Gulimov! Get back up there!” I yelled to him. “Turn back your horse!”

“Turn back your own damn horse!” Gulimov yelled back. His eyes darted about thievishly and he fired a shot, singeing the hair above my ear.

“Turn your own horse back,” Gulimov hissed, grabbed my shoulder with one hand, and tried unsheathing his saber with the other. The saber was jammed in its sheath, the Kirghiz shuddered and looked around. He held my shoulder tightly and brought his head closer and closer.

“Yours first,” he whispered almost inaudibly, “and mine will follow.” And he tapped me lightly on the chest with the blade of his saber, which he had managed to unsheathe.

I felt a wave of nausea from deaths closeness and its tight grip. With the palm of my hand I pushed away the Kirghiz’s face, hot as a stone in the sun, and scratched it with all my might. Warm blood rippled under my nails, tickling them. I rode away from Gulimov, out of breath as after a long journey. My horse, my tormented friend, trotted slowly. I rode without looking where I was going, I rode without turning around, until I came across Vorobyov, the commander of the First Squadron. Vorobyov was looking for his quartermasters and couldn’t find them. He and I made our way to Czesniki and sat down on a bench along with Akinfiev, the former vehicular driver of the Revolutionary Tribunal. Sashka, the nurse of the Thirty-first Cavalry Regiment, came by, and two commanders sat down on the bench with us. The commanders sat there in silence, dozing. One of them was shell-shocked, shaking his head uncontrollably and winking with one bloated eye. Sashka went to tell the people at the field hospital about him, and then came back to us, dragging her horse behind her by the reins. Her mare resisted, her hooves skidding in the wet mud.

“So where are you sailing off to?” Vorobyov asked the nurse. “Sit down here with us, Sash!”

“I'm not sitting with you!” Sashka answered, and slapped her mare on the belly. “No way!”

“What d’you mean?” Vorobyov shouted, laughing. “Or have you had second thoughts about drinking tea with men?”

“Its you that IVe had second thoughts about!” she told the commander, hurling away the reins. “Yes, IVe had second thoughts about drinking tea with you, after I saw you all today and saw what heroes you all are, and how disgusting you are, Commander!”

“So when you saw it,” Vorobyov muttered, “how come you didnt join in the shooting?”

“Join in the shooting?” Sashka shouted in desperation, tearing off her nurses band. “What am I supposed to shoot with? This?”

Here Akinfiev, the former vehicular driver of the Revolutionary Tribunal, with whom I still had some unfinished business to settle, came up to us.

“You've got nothing to shoot with, Sash,” he said soothingly. “No ones blaming you for that! I blame those who get all mixed up in battle and forget to load cartridges in their revolvers!” A spasm suddenly shot over his face. “You rode in the attack!” he shouted at me. “You rode but didnt put any cartridges in! Why?”

“Back off, Ivan,” I said to Akinfiev. But he wouldn’t back off, and kept coming closer to me, an epileptic with a twisted spine and no ribs.

“The Pole shot at you, yes, but you didn’t shoot at him!” he muttered, twisting and turning with his shattered hip. “Why?”

“The Pole did shoot at me,” I told him brusquely, “but I didn’t shoot at the Pole!”

“So you’re a wimp, right?” Akinfiev whispered, stepping back.

“So I’m a wimp!” I said, louder than before. “What do you want?” “What I want is for you to be aware,” Akinfiev yelled in wild triumph, “aware that you’re a wimp, because in my books all wimps should be shot dead, they believe in God!”

A crowd gathered, and Akinfiev yelled on about wimps without stopping. I wanted to walk away, but he ran after me, and caught up with me, and punched me in the back with his fist.

“You didn’t put any cartridges in!” Akinfiev whispered in a breathless voice right next to my ear, and with his large thumbs began trying to wrench my mouth open. “You believe in God, you traitor!”

He tugged and tore at my mouth. I pushed the epileptic back and hit him in the face. He keeled over onto his side, hit the ground, and began to bleed.

Sashka went over to him with her dangling breasts. She poured water over him, and pulled out of his mouth a long tooth which was swaying in the blackness like a birch tree on a bare country road.

“These bantams know just one thing,” Sashka said, “and thats how to belt each other in the mouth. With a day like this and everything, I just want to shut my eyes!”

There was anguish in her voice, and she took wounded Akinfiev with her, while I staggered off into the village of Czesniki, which was sliding around in the relentless Galician rain.

The village floated and bulged, crimson clay oozing from its gloomy wounds. The first star flashed above me and tumbled into the clouds. The rain whipped the willow trees and dwindled. The evening soared into the sky like a flock of birds and darkness laid its wet garland upon me. I was exhausted, and, crouching beneath the crown of death, walked on, begging fate for the simplest ability—the ability to kill a man.

When we were quartered in the village of Budziatycze, it was my lot to end up with an evil landlady She was a widow, she was poor. I broke many locks on her storerooms, but found no provisions.

All I could do was to try and outsmart her, and one fine day, coming home early before dusk, I caught her closing the door of the stove, which was still warm. The hut smelled of cabbage soup, and there might well have been some meat in that soup. I did smell meat in her soup and laid my revolver on the table, but the old woman denied everything. Her face and black fingers were gripped by spasms, she glowered at me with fear and extraordinary hatred. Nothing would have saved her—I would have made her own up with my revolver if Sashka Konyayev, in other words Sashka Christ, hadn’t suddenly turned up.

He came into the hut with his concertina under his arm, his exquisite legs shuffling in battered boots.

“How about a song?” Sashka said, looking at me, his eyes filled with blue and dreamy ice crystals. “How about a song?” he said, and sat down on the bench and played a prelude.

The pensive prelude came as if from far away. He stopped, and his blue eyes filled with longing. He turned away, and, knowing what I liked, started off on a song from Kuban.

“Star of the fields,” he sang, “star of the fields over my native hut, and my mother’s hand, so sorrowful. . . .”

I loved that song. Sashka knew this, because both of us, both he

and I, had first heard this song back in
⁹
19 in the shallows of the Don in the Cossack village of Kagalnitskaya.

A hunter who poached in the protected waters there had taught it to us. There, in the protected waters, fish spawn and countless flocks of birds nest. The fish multiply in the shallows in incredible numbers, you can scoop them up with a ladle or even with your bare hands, and if you dip your oar in the water, it just stands there upright—a fish will have grabbed it and will carry it away. We saw this with our own eyes, we will never forget the protected waters of Kagalnitskaya. Every government has banned hunting there—a good ban—but back in ’19 a war was raging in the shallows, and Yakov the hunter, who plied his forbidden trade right before our eyes, gave Sashka Christ, our squadron singer, a concertina as a present so that we would look the other way He taught Sashka his songs. Many of them were soulful, old songs. So we forgave the roguish hunter, for we needed his songs: back then, no one could see the war ever ending, and Sashka covered our arduous paths with melody and tears. A bloody trail followed our paths. The songs soared over this trail. That is how it was in Kuban and on our campaigns against the Greens,
⁸
and that is how it was in the Urals and in the Caucasian foothills, and that is how it is to this very day. We need these songs, no one can see this war ever ending, and Sashka Christ, our squadron singer, is too young to die.

And this evening too, cheated of my landlady’s cabbage soup, Sashka calmed me with his soft, wavering voice.

“Star of the fields,” he sang, “star of the fields over my native hut, and my mothers hand, so sorrowful. . . .”

And I listened, stretched out in a corner on my rotting bedding. A dream broke my bones, the dream shook the putrid hay beneath me, and through the dreams burning torrent I could barely make out the old woman, who was standing by the wall, her withered cheek propped on her hand. She hung her ravaged head and stood fixed by the wall, not moving even after Sashka had finished playing. Sashka finished and put down his concertina, yawned, and burst out laughing as after a long

sleep, and then, noticing the chaos in the widow s hut, he wiped the debris from the bench and brought in a bucket of water.

“You see, deary, what your boss is up to?” the landlady said to him, pointing at me and rubbing her back against the door. “Your boss came in here, yelled at me, stamped his foot, broke all the locks in my house, and shoved his gun at me. It is a sin before the Lord to shove a gun at me—I’m a woman, after all!”

She rubbed her back against the door again and threw a sheepskin coat over her son. Her son lay snoring beneath an icon on a large bed covered with rags. He was a deaf-mute boy with a white, water-swollen head and gigantic feet, like those of a grown muzhik. His mother wiped the snot from his nose and came back to the table.

“Mistress,” Sashka said to her, caressing her shoulder, “if you wish, I could be really nice to you.”

But it was as if the woman hadn’t heard what he had said.

“I didnt see no cabbage soup at all,” she said, her cheek propped on her hand. “It ran away, my cabbage soup, and people shove their guns at me, so that even when a nice man comes along and I get a chance to tumble a little, IVe ended up feeling so drab, I cant even enjoy sinning!” She dragged out her mournful lament and, mumbling, rolled her deaf-mute son to the wall. Sashka lay with her on the rag-covered bed while I tried to sleep, conjuring up dreams so that I would doze off with pleasant thoughts.