The Complete Works of Isaac Babel Reprint Edition by Isaac Babel, Nathalie Babel, Peter Constantine (50 page)

A little nook in Dubno, four synagogues, Friday evening, Jews and Jewesses by the ruined stones—all etched in my memory. Then evening, herring, I am sad because theres no one to copulate with. Prishchepa and the teasing and exasperating Zhenya, her sparkling Jewish eyes, fat legs, and soft breasts. Prishchepa, his hands slip deeper, and her unyielding gaze, while her fool of a husband is out in the tiny shed feeding his commandeered horse.

We stay the night with other Jews, Prishchepa asks them to play some music, a fat boy with a hard, idiotic face, gasping with terror, says that he is not in the mood. The horse is nearby in the yard. Grishchuk is only fifty versts from home. He does not run away.

The Poles attack in the area of Kozin-Boratin, they are at our rear lines, the Sixth Division is in Leshniov, Galicia. We re marching to

Brody, Radzivillov is in front and one brigade is in the rear. The Sixth Division is in hard fighting.

July 24, 1920

Morning at army headquarters. The Sixth Division is annihilating the enemy assaulting us in Khotin, the area of battle is Khotin-Kozin, and I think to myself, poor Kozin.

The cemetery, round stones.

Prishchepa and I ride from Krivikha to Leshniov by way of Demidovka. Prishchepa’s soul—an illiterate fellow, a Communist, the Kadety
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killed his parents, he tells me how he went about his Cossack village collecting his belongings. Colorful, wearing a hood, as simple as grass, will turn into a rag-looter, despises Grishchuk because he doesn’t love or understand horses. We ride through Khorupan, Smordva, and Demidovka. Remember the picture: transport carts, horsemen, half-wrecked villages, fields and forests, oak trees, now and then wounded men and my tachanka.

We arrive in Demidovka toward evening. A Jewish shtetl, I am on guard. Jews in the steppes, everything is destroyed. We are in a house with a horde of women. The Lyachetskys and the Shvevels,^ no, this isn’t Odessa. Dora Aronovna, a dentist, is reading Artsybashev,
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a Cossack rabble loitering about. She is proud, angry, says that the Poles destroyed all sense of self-respect, despises the Communists for their plebianism, a horde of daughters in white stockings, devout father and mother. Each daughter distinctly individual: one is pitiful, blackhaired, bowlegged, the other fleshy, a third housewifely, and all, doubtless, old maids.

The main friction: today is the Sabbath. Prishchepa wants them to roast potatoes, but tomorrow is a day of fasting, Tishah b'Ab^and I

say nothing because I am Russian. The dentist, pale with pride and self-respect, announces that nobody will dig up potatoes because it is a holy day.

I manage to restrain Prishchepa for quite a while, but then he explodes: Yids, sons-of-bitches, a whole arsenal of curses, all of them hate us and me, dig up potatoes, frightened in the garden that isnt theirs, they blame the Christians, Prishchepa is outraged. How painful it all is—Artsybashev, the orphaned schoolgirl from Rovno, Prishchepa in his hood. The mother wrings her hands: the stove has been lit on the Sabbath, curses fly. Budyonny was here and left again. An argument between a Jewish youth and Prishchepa. A youth with spectacles, black-haired, highly strung, scarlet, inflamed eyelids, inaccurate Russian speech. He believes in God, God is the ideal we carry in our souls, every person has their own God in their soul, if you act badly, God grieves, this nonsense is proclaimed with rapture and pain. Prishchepa is offensively idiotic, he talks of religion in ancient times, mixes Christianity and Paganism, his main point, in ancient times there was the commune, needless to say nothing but rubbish—you have no education whatsoever—and the Jew with his six years of Rovno high-school education quotes Platonov—touching and comical—the clans, the elders, Perun, paganism.

We eat like oxen, fried potatoes, and five glasses of coffee each. We sweat, they serve us everything, its all terrible, I tell fairy tales about Bolshevism, its blossoming, the express trains, the Moscow textile mills, the universities, the free food, the Revel Delegation, and, to crown it all, my tale about the Chinese, and I enthrall all these poor tortured people. Tishah bAb. The old woman sobs sitting on the floor, her son, who worships her, says that he believes in God to make her happy, he sings in a pleasant tenor and tells the story of the destruction of the Temple. The terrible words of the prophets: they will eat dung, the maidens will be defiled, the menfolk slaughtered, Israel crushed, angry and dejected words. The lamp smokes, the old woman wails, the youth sings melodiously, the girls in their white stockings, outside the window Demidovka, night, Cossacks, everything just as it had been in the days when the Temple was destroyed. I go to sleep in the wet, reeking yard.

Its a disaster with Grishchuk, he is in a daze, hovering around like

a sleepwalker, he is feeding the horses badly, informs me about problems postfactum, favors the muzhiks and their children.

Machine-gunners have come in from the front lines, they come over to our yard, it is night, they are wrapped in their cloaks. Prishchepa is courting a Jewess from Kremenets, pretty, fleshy, in a smooth dress. She blushes tenderly, her one-eyed father-in-law is sitting nearby, she blossoms, its nice talking with Prishchepa, she blossoms and acts coquettish—what are they talking about?—then, he wants to go to bed, spend some time with her, she is tormented, who understands her soul better than I? He: We will write to each other. I wonder with a heavy heart: surely she wont give in. Prishchepa tells me she agrees (with him they all agree). I suddenly remember that he seemed to have had syphilis, I wonder: was he fully cured?

The girl later on: I will scream. Describe their initial pussyfooting conversation—how dare you—she is an educated person, she served on the Revolutionary Committee.
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God almighty, I think, the women are hearing all these curses now, they live like soldiers, what happened to their tenderness?

At night rain and storm, we run over to the stable, dirty, dark, damp, cold, the machine-gunners will be sent back to the front lines at dawn, they assemble in the pouring rain, cloaks and freezing horses. Miserable Demidovka.

July 25, 1920

We pull out of Demidovka in the morning. A tortured two hours, they woke the Jewesses at four o’clock in the morning and had them boil Russian meat,^ and that on Tishah bAb. Half-naked and disheveled girls run through wet gardens, Prishchepa is in the grip of lust, he throws himself on the bride of the one-eyed mans son while their cart is being requisitioned, an incredible bout of cursing, the soldiers are eating meat out of the pots, she, I will scream, her face, he pushes her against the wall, a shameless spectacle. Under no circumstances does she want to hand over the cart, they had hidden it in the

loft, she will make a good Jewess. She wrangles with the commissar, who says that the Jews do not want to help the Red Army

I lost my briefcase and then found it at the headquarters of the Fourteenth Division in Lishnya.

We head for Ostrov—fifteen versts, there is a road from there to Leshniov, its dangerous there, Polish patrols. The priest, his daughter looks like Plevitskaya
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or a merry skeleton. She is a Kiev student, everyone yearns for civility, I tell my fairy tales, she cannot tear herself away. Fifteen dangerous versts, sentries gallop past, we cross the border, wooden planks. Trenches everywhere.

We arrive at the headquarters. Leshniov. The little town half destroyed. The Russians have fouled up the place pretty badly. A Catholic church, a Uniate church, a synagogue, beautiful buildings, miserable life, a few spectral Jews, a revolting landlady, a Galician woman, flies and dirt, a lanky, shy blockhead, second-grade Slavs. Convey the spirit of destroyed Leshniov, its enfeeblement and its depressing, semi-foreign dirt.

I sleep in the threshing shed. A battle is raging at Brody and at the Tsurovitse crossing. Leaflets about Soviet Galicia. Pastors. Night in Leshniov. How unimaginably sad this all is, and these pitiful Galicians gone wild, and the destroyed synagogues, and trickles of life against a backdrop of horrifying events, of which only reflections come through to us.

July 26, 1920. Leshniov

The Ukraine in flames. Wrangel^ has not been annihilated. Makhno
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is launching raids in the districts of Ekaterinoslav and Poltava. New gangs have appeared, a rebellion near Kherson. Why are they rebelling? Is the Communist jacket too short for them?

Whats going on in Odessa? Longing.

Much work, I’m remembering the past. This morning Brody was taken, again the surrounded enemy managed to get out, a sharp order from Budyonny, we’ve let them get away four times now, we are able to shake them loose but we don’t have the strength to hold them.

A meeting in Kozin, Budyonny’s speech: We’ve stopped all maneuvering, from now on frontal attacks, we are losing contact with the enemy, no reconnaissance, no defense, the division commanders shew no initiative, lifeless operations.

I talk with Jews, for the first time uninteresting Jews. Nearby, the destroyed synagogue, a red-haired man from Brody, some countrymen of mine from Odessa.

I move in with a legless Jew, affluence, cleanliness, quiet, marvelous coffee, clean children, the father lost both legs on the Italian Front, new house, they’re still building, the wife has an eye for profit but is decent, polite, a small shady room, I recover from the Galicians.

I am distressed, I must think things through: Galicia, the World War, and my own fate.

Life in our division. About Bakhturov,
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about our division commander, the Cossacks, the marauding, the vanguard’s vanguard. I don’t belong.

In the evening panic: the enemy pushed us back out of Churovitse, they were a verst and a half away from Leshniov. The division commander went galloping off and came galloping back. And our wanderings begin again, another night without sleep, transport carts, enigmatic Grishchuk, the horses walk quietly; cursing, forests, stars, we stop somewhere. Brody at dawn, all this is horrifying: barbed wire everywhere, burned-out chimneys, a bloodless city, drab houses, word has it there are goods to be had, our men won’t hold back, there were factories here, a Russian military cemetery, and, judging by the nameless lonely crosses on the graves, these were Russian soldiers.

The road is completely white, cut-down forests, everything disfigured, Galicians on the road, Austrian uniforms, barefoot with pipes in their mouths, what is in their faces, what mystery of insignificance, commonplaceness, submissiveness.

Radzivillov is worse than Brody, barbed wire on poles, pretty buildings, dawn, pitiful figures, fruit trees plucked bare, bedraggled, yawning Jews, destroyed roads, defiled crucifixes, sterile earth, shattered

Catholic churches, where are their priests, smugglers used to be here, and I can see how life used to be.

Khotin. July 27, 1920

After Radzivillov—endless villages, horsemen charging on, difficult after a sleepless night.

Khotin is the same village where we had been under fire. My quarters are horrifying: abject poverty, bathhouse, flies, an unruffled, gentle, well-built muzhik, a crafty woman, she won t give a thing, I get some lard, potatoes. They live absurdly, wild, the dingy room and the myriad flies, the terrible food, and they dont strive for anything better—and the greed, and the repulsive, immutable way their dwelling is set up, and the hides reeking in the sun, the limitless dirt, exasperate me.

There was a landowner here—Sveshnikov—the factory is destroyed, his manor is destroyed, the majestic skeleton of the factory, a red brick-building, cobbled paths, now no trace of them, the muzhiks indifferent.

Artillery supplies are lagging, Im immersing myself in headquarters work: the vile work of murder. What is to Communisms credit: at least it doesn’t advocate animosity toward the enemy, only toward Polish soldiers.

Prisoners were brought in, a Red Army fighter wounded a perfectly healthy man with two gunshots for no reason whatsoever. The Pole doubles over, moans, they put a pillow under his head.

Zinoviev was killed, a young Communist in red trousers, a rattle in his throat and blue eyelids.

Astonishing rumors are going around—on the 30th, discussions for an armistice will begin.

Night in a reeking hole they call a yard. I can t sleep, its late, I go over to the headquarters, the situation with the crossings is not all that good.

Late night, red flag, silence, Red Army fighters thirsting for women.

July 28, 1920. Khotin

The skirmish for the crossing at Churovitse. The Second Brigade is bleeding to death in Budyonny’s presence. The whole infantry battalion is wounded, almost completely destroyed. The Poles are in old reinforced trenches. Our men weren’t successful. Is the Poles’ resistance growing stronger?

There is no sign of slackening due to the prospect of peace.

I’m staying in a poor hut where a son with a big head plays the violin. I terrorize the mistress of the house, she won’t give me anything. Grishchuk, sullen as a stone, does not take good care of the horses, it turns out he was schooled by hunger.

A ruined estate, Sveshnikov the landowner, the majestic, destroyed distillery (the symbol of the Russian landed gentry?), when the alcohol was handed out all the fighters drank themselves into a stupor.

I am exasperated, I can’t contain my indignation: the dirt, the apathy, the hopelessness of Russian life are unbearable, the Revolution will do some good work here.

The mistress of the house hides the pigs and the cow, talks fast, sugary, and with impotent hatred, is lazy, and I have the impression she is running their household into the ground, her husband believes in a strong government, is charming, gentle, passive, resembles Stroyev.

The village is boring, living here is dreadful. I’m immersing myself in headquarters work. Describe the day, the reverberations of the battle raging only a few versts away from us, the orderlies, Lepin’s
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hand is swollen.

The Red Army fighters sleep with the women.