The Complete Works of Isaac Babel Reprint Edition by Isaac Babel, Nathalie Babel, Peter Constantine (52 page)
Authors: Peter Constantine Isaac Babel Nathalie Babel
Night in the wagon.
I chatted with some clerks by their tachanka on the edge of the forest.
August 2, 1920. Bielavtsy
The problem with my tachanka. Gowinski drives toward the shtetl, needless to say he hasn’t found a blacksmith. My shouting match with the blacksmith, he jostled a woman, shrieks and tears. The Galicians don’t want to fix the tachanka. A whole arsenal of devices, persuasion, threats, begging, what proved most effective was the promise of sugar. A long story, one smith is ill, I drag him over to another one, tears, they drag him home. They don’t want to wash my clothes, nothing will induce them to.
Finally they fix the tachanka.
I am tired. Alarm at the headquarters. We leave. The enemy is closing in, I run to warn Gowinski, heat, I’m afraid of being late, I run through sand, manage to warn him, catch up again with the headquarters staff outside the village, no one will take me, they leave, dejection, I ride for a while with Barsukov, we are rolling toward Brody.
I am given an ambulance tachanka from the Second Squadron, we drive to the forest, my driver Ivan and I wait there. Budyonny arrives, Voroshilov, it is going to be a decisive battle, no more retreating, all three brigades turn around, I speak with the staff commandant. The atmosphere at the start of a battle, a large field, airplanes, cavalry maneuvers on the field, our cavalry, explosions in the distance, the battle has begun, machine guns, the sun, somewhere the two armies clash, muffled shouts of “Hurrah!” Ivan and I move back, deadly danger, I do not feel fear, but passivity, he seems to be frightened, which way should we drive, Korotchayev’s
36
group turns to the right, we, for some reason, go left, the battle is raging, wounded men on horses catch up with us, one of them, deathly pale—“Brother, take me with you!”—his trousers soaked with blood, he threatens to shoot us if we dont take him, we rein in our horses, he is in a terrible state, Ivans jacket becomes soaked with blood, a Cossack, we stop, I will bandage him, his wound is light, in the stomach, a rib has been hit, we take another one whose horse has been killed. Describe the wounded man. For a long time we go roving through the fields under fire, we cant see a thing, these indifferent roads, the weeds, we send out horsemen, we come to a high road— which way should we go, Radzivillov or Brody?
The administrative staff is supposed to be at Radzivillov along with all the transport carts, but in my opinion, Brody would be more interesting, the battle is being fought for Brody. Ivans opinion prevails, some of the cart drivers are saying the Poles are in Brody, the transport carts are fleeing, the army staff has left, we drive to Radzivillov. We arrive in the night. All this time we’ve been eating carrots and peas, penetrating hunger, we re covered in dirt, haven’t slept. I took a hut on the outskirts of Radzivillov. Good choice, my knack for this sort of thing is getting better. An old man, a girl. The buttermilk is marvelous, we had all of it, they’re making tea with milk, Ivan is going to get some sugar, machine gun fire, the thunder of carts, we run out of the house, the horse is suddenly limping, that’s how things are sometimes, we are running in panic, we’re being shot at, we have no idea what’s going on, they’ll catch us any moment now, we make a dash for the bridge, pandemonium, we fall into the marshes, wild panic, a dead man lying
there, abandoned carts, shells, tachankas. Traffic jam, night, terror, carts standing in an endless line, we are moving, a field, we stop, we sleep, stars. What upsets me most in all of this is the lost tea, I’m so upset, its peculiar. I think about it all night and hate the war.
What a crazy life.
August 3, 1920
Night in the field, we are rolling toward Brody in a buggy. The town keeps changing hands. The same horrifying picture, the town, half destroyed, is waiting once more. The provision station, I run into Barsukov at the edge of town. I drive over to the headquarters. Deserted, dead, dismal. Zotov* is sleeping stretched out on some chairs, like a corpse. Borodulin and Poliak are also asleep. The building of the Bank of Prague, ransacked and gutted, water closets, those bank cashier windows, mirror glass.
Word has it that the division commander is in Klyokotovo, we spent about two hours in devastated Brody with its ominous air, tea in a barbershop. Ivan is standing outside the headquarters. Should we leave, shouldn’t we leave. We leave for Klyokotovo, we turn off the Leshniov high road, we don’t know—is it ours or Polish, we drive on feeling our way, the horses are exhausted, one of them is limping harder, we eat potatoes in the village, brigades show up, indescribable beauty, a frightful force is moving, endless lines, a big farm, everything in ruins, a thresher, a Clenton locomobile, a tractor, the locomobile is still working, it’s a hot day.
The battlefield, I meet the division commander, where is the staff, we’ve lost Zholnarkevich. The battle begins, artillery cover, explosions nearby, a grim moment, the decisive battle over whether we will stem the Polish offensive or not, Budyonny to Kolesnikov^ and Grishin: “I’ll shoot you!” They leave on foot, pale.
Before that, the terrible field sown with hacked-up men, an inhuman cruelty, inconceivable wounds, crushed skulls, young, white, naked bodies are gleaming in the sun, notebooks lying around, single pages, military booklets, Bibles, bodies in the rye.
* Commander of the Cavalry Field Headquarters.
Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny, the commander of the First Cavalry.
Knut Hamsun, the Norwegian novelist.
Talmud student.
Commander of the Cavalry Field Headquarters.
Ukrainian Cossacks shaved their heads, leaving only a forelock, known as a chub.
Zavalinka: a mound of earth around a hut that protects it from the weather and is often used for sitting on outside.
Konstantin Karlovich Zholnarkevich was the divisional chief of staff, and his brother, Mikhail, was a staff officer.
^ A staff officer in the Sixth Cavalry Division.
The polit-otdel was a political organ of the new Soviet government charged with the ideological education of the military during the Russian Civil War and the Russian-Polish War of 1920. The Revolutionary Tribunals, Revtribunaly, were the organs of military justice representing the Revolutionary Military Council. They investigated crimes committed by military personnel and dealt with prisoners of war. Detachments of the Revolutionary Tribunal were present in each army division and brigade.
A staff officer in the Sixth Cavalry Division.
Frank Mosher, the assumed name of Captain Merian Caldwell Cooper, the shot-down American pilot whom Babel interrogated in Belyov. He later achieved fame as the creator and producer of the motion picture King Kong.
Vasily Ivanovich Kniga was the commander of the First Brigade of the Sixth Cavalry Division.
Pavel Vasilevich Bakhturov, the military commissar of the Sixth Cavalry Division from February to August 1920. He had just been decorated with a Red Flag Medal.
^ Josef Pilsudski, the commander in chief of the Polish forces.
Ukrainian: “there isn’t any.”
The Southwestern Front was formed on January 10,1920, to fight the anti-Bolshevik White Polish Army in the Russian-Polish Campaign and the Imperialist forces of Generals Denikin and Wrangel.
^ Bogdan Khmelnitsky, the legendary seventeenth-century Cossack leader whose brutal raids in the region were still remembered.
Nikolai Petrovich Kolesov was commander of the Third Brigade, and Vasily Ivanovich Kniga was commander of the First Brigade of the Sixth Cavalry Division.
t The two founding members of the First Cavalry Army, Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny, its commander, and Kliment Efremovich Voroshilov, its commissar.
Ignacy Ledochowski, commander of the Polish Fourteenth Artillery Brigade.
Zholnarkevich, the chief of staff of the Sixth Cavalry Division.
The First World War.
Yiddish: “an uncouth individual.”
t German: “he is a . . .”
The Third Communist International, 1919-1943, an organization founded in Moscow by the delegates of twelve countries to promote Communism worldwide.
In Yiddish folklore, a trickster. See Babel’s story “Shabos-Nakhamu.”
Members of the Constitutional Democratic Party, liberal monarchists who were in favor of a more moderate bourgeois revolution as opposed to a proletarian revolution. After the October Revolution, the Kadety actively fought the Bolsheviks.
^ Shevel was Babel’s mother’s maiden name. His aunt, Katya Aronovna, had married into the Lyakhetsky family.
The author Mikhail Petrovich Artsybashev, 1878-1927.
^ The ninth day of the month Ab, a Jewish day of jaaourning commemorating the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem.
Local organs of the Soviet government.
^ Nonkosher.
Nadyezhda Plevitskaya, a celebrated Russian singer and actress.
t Baron Pyotr Nikolaevich Wrangel was the commander of the anti-Bolshevik armies in southern Russia.
The Ukrainian anarchist leader.
The military commissar of the Sixth Cavalry Division.
A staff officer in the Sixth Cavalry Division.
Evgenia Borisovna Babel, nee Gronfein, Babel’s wife.
^ Osobii Otdel (“Special Section”) was formed in December 1918 to identify and eradicate counterrevolutionary elements in the Red Army.
The Revolutionary Tribunals were the organs of military justice representing the Revolutionary Military Council.
£ The commander of the First Brigade of the Sixth Cavalry Division, who had been decorated with a Red Flag Medal.
Zholnarkevich, the chief of staff of the Sixth Cavalry Division.
A dynasty of medieval Polish kings.
Kazimierz Przerwa Tetmajer, 1865-1940, Polish poet and writer.
Commander of the Sixth Cavalry Division.
^ Polish: “Lords.”
Mikhail Karlovich Zholnarkevich, staff officer, and brother of Konstantin Karlovich, the divisional chief of staff.
The military commissar of the Sixth Cavalry Division.
A brigade commander of the Sixth Cavalry Division.
^ Actually Nikolai Petrovich Kolesov, commander of the Third Brigade.
I absorb these impressions mainly with my mind. The battle begins, I’m given a horse. I see columns forming, chains, they attack, I feel sorry for these poor men—they are not men, they are columns— the gunfire reaches maximum intensity, the carnage is carried out in silence. I ride on, rumors that the division commander is being recalled?
The beginning of my adventures, I ride with the transport carts toward the high road, the battle is growing fiercer, I find the provision station, we re being fired at on the high road, the whistling of shells, explosions a mere twenty paces away, the feeling of hopelessness, the transport carts are flying at full gallop, tag along with the Twentieth Regiment of the Fourth Division, wounded men, the querulous commander: No, he says, not wounded, just a little bang on the head. They’re professionals. And everywhere fields, sun, bodies, I sit by the field kitchen, hunger, peas, nothing to feed my horse with.
Field kitchen, talking, we sit on the grass, the regiment suddenly pulls out, I have to go to Radzivillov, the regiment heads for Leshniov and I feel helpless, I am afraid of getting cut off from them. An endless journey, dusty roads, I move to a cart, a Quasimodo, two donkeys, a grim spectacle: the hunchbacked driver, silent, his face dark like the forests of Murom.
We drive, I have a terrible feeling—I am getting farther and farther from the division. Hope flutters up—then suddenly the opportunity to take a wounded man to Radzivillov, the wounded man has a pale, Jewish face.
We ride into the forest, were fired at, shells a hundred paces away, endless rushing back and forth along the forest edge.
Thick sand, impassable. The ballad of the tortured horses.
An apiary, we search the hives, four huts in the forest—nothing there, everything ransacked, I ask a Red Army fighter for bread, he answers me, “I don’t want anything to do with Jews.” I’m an outsider, in long trousers, not one of them, I am lonely, we ride on, I am so tired I can barely stay on my mare, I have to look after her myself, we arrive at Konyushkovo, we steal some barley, they tell me: Go take whatever you want, take everything. I go through the village looking for a nurse, the womenfolk are hysterical, within five minutes of our arrival the looting begins, some women are beating their breasts, lamenting, sobbing unbearably, these never-ending horrors are hard to bear, I look for a nurse, insuperable sorrow, I swipe a jug of milk from the regimental commander, snatch a dough-bun out of the hands of a peasant woman s son.
Ten minutes later, were off. Who’d have thought it! The Poles are somewhere nearby. Back we go again, I dont think I can bear this for much longer, and at a fast trot at that, at first I ride with the commander, then I tag along with the transport carts, I want to move over onto a cart, they all give me the same answer: The horses are tired. You want me to get off so you can sit here, huh? Well, so get yourself up here, just mind the corpses! I look at the sackcloth, corpses are lying under it.
We come to a field, there are many transport carts from the Fourth Division, a battery, again a field kitchen, I look for some nurses, a difficult night, I want to sleep, I have to feed my horse, I lie down, the horses are eating the excellent wheat, Red Army fighters in the wheat, ashen, at the end of their tether. My mare is tormenting me, I run after her, I join a nurse, we sleep on a tachanka, the nurse is old, bald, most probably a Jewess, a martyr, unbearable cursing, the vehicular driver keeps trying to push her off, the horses roam about, the vehicular driver wont wake up, he is rough and foulmouthed, she says: Our heroes are terrible people. She covers him, they sleep in each other’s arms, the poor old nurse, that driver should be shot, the foul language, the cursing, this is not the nurses world—we fall asleep. I wake up two hours later—our bridle has been stolen. Despair. Dawn. We are seven versts away from Radzivillov. I ride off willy-nilly. The poor horse, all of us are poor, the regiment moves on. I get going.
