The Complete Works of Isaac Babel Reprint Edition by Isaac Babel, Nathalie Babel, Peter Constantine (60 page)

5. Lyovka.

6. Konkin.

7. The nurse.

The battle near Brody II

On Ivans tachanka. Wounded men. Lyovka? Brody or Radzivillov. Buttermilk manque.

The battle by Klyokotovo. Budyonny with his staff. Got cut off from my unit. Roaming about with the Fourth Division.—The nurse.

The end of the battle. A new division commander
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with his retinue. K.K.t in Radzivillov.

Lyovka.

Short chapters?

1. On Ivans tachanka. Death.—Describe the wounded.—Budyonny. Kolesnikov. Grishin.—Roaming about in circles. [. . .]

Immediately a description of the battle—dust, sun, details, a picture of a Budyonny battle.—Specifics—the killing of the officer, and so on.—After that we are on our tachanka, dead men.—Brody or Radzivillov.

II. The field. Waiting to move to our night camp. The nurse.—The horses are pulling the men.

1. Decamp from Belavtsy. The battle near Brody. On Ivans tachanka.

2. Radzivillov.

3. Entry into Brody. The field by Klyokotovo. A farm. A field sown with corpses. Pilsudski’s declarations.—A meeting with the division commander.

4. The battle by Klyokotovo.—Konkin.—The death of the Polish general.

5. Roaming around in circles with the Fourth Division. Night in the field.—The Jewish nurse.

6. In Radzivillov. K.K. [Zholnarkevich]. Sheko.

August 3. The battle near B[rody]. The battle near Brody. My roaming around.

1. The Jewish nurse. What does this mean? I sleep in the field tying the stirrup to my foot. I want to kill my vehicular driver!—The main thing: about the nurse.

2. In Radzivillov.—The visit of K.K. and Timoshenko,
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The battle ended with a change in the command staff.

3. Rest. New men. Night in the field. The horses, I tie myself to the stirrup.—Night, corn on the cob, nurse. Dawn. Without a plot.

Dialogues. The battle near Brody

Rest stops. Hay. Threshing sheds. Horses.

Topics?

The cunning orderly.—Arrival at the night camp. Feeding the horses. We drag away the peasants’ hay.

Night.—We rested for two hours. On our horses. The battle near Brody.—Our bridle has been stolen.

Chapter about Brody—in separate fragments—I’ve been cut off from my division, what that means.

Vasili Rybochkin.

Style: “In Belyov.”—Short chapters saturated with content.

Konkin. I find the brigade waiting in suspense. Introduction at the priests place. What do you want, Moseika? News of heroic Vasili Rybochkin. The army commanders order. The other Rybochkin.—Plays the Cossack—Then, returning from batde: a gold watch, trunks, a horse.—When I get to Nizhny, ha, will I show them... The sister of mercy on the horse. A bitch. The commissar has made a nice profit.—His picture as a clown.—Greetings from Nizhny.—The internationally renowned miracle clown and overseas circus rider.—The procession moves off.

The battle near Lvov

Day by day. Briefly. Dramatic.—Include: the Polish air force. Zadvurdze.

The Polish air force. The battle near Lvov.

The Red Cavalry is retreating. What from? From twenty airplanes.

The secret is out in the open, the cure has been found. Mosher* was right. The airplanes are having a strong demoralizing effect. The wounding of Korotchayev.^—Major Fauntleroys letter to his headquarters in New York.—First encounter with Wes [tern] European technology.—The planes take off in the mornings.

The battle near Lvov.—Describe the battle with the airplanes.— Then development.—The battle.—The air squadron sends us packing, follows us, we squirm, relocate from one place to another. The battle near Lvov.—Describe the day.—Development after the story.—The two phases of war.—Our victories, the fruitlessness of our efforts, but the failure is not obvious.

Brody

I have never seen a sadder town.—The origins of Jewry, an impres-

* Frank Mosher, the assumed name of Captain Merian Caldwell Cooper, the shot-down American pilot that Babel interrogated in Belyov.

t A brigade commander of the Sixth Cavalry Division.

sion that will last my whole life. The Brodsky synagogue in Odessa, aristocracy.—Friday evening. The town—a quick walk around the center, it is destroyed. The outskirts, a Jewish town.—A description of the synagogues: the main thing.

1. At the Galicians. Polite death. 2. Synagogues. 3. Night, in the room next door. Talmudists.—Hasidism with blind eye sockets. A vision of ancient times: for the Rabbi of Belz and for the Rabbi of Husyatin. Chandeliers, old men, children. Talmudists.—I have lived through many nights shivering in corridors, but never have I lived through such a damp, boring, dirty night.—She is a nurse, he is from the quartermasters office.—Through the crack. The womans foul language.—The history of the synagogue.—Find out about the history of Brody.—They are hiding a shriveled-up little old man—The Rabbi of Belz. [...]. Without comparison or historical counterpart.—Simply a story.

Sokal 1.

In the square in front of the synagogue. The quarreling of the Jews. The Cossacks digging a grave. Trunovs body. Timoshenko. An airplane?—An airplane chased the Jews away, then I went up to Tim[oshenko]. A phrase from Melnikovs
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letter—and I understand the suffering felt within this army.

The sequence: Jews. Airplane. Grave. Timoshenko. The letter. Trunov s burial, the salute.

The Orthodox Jews, the Rabbi of Belz. IVe lost you, Sasha.— Religious carnage, you’d think you were in the eighteenth century, Ilya-Gaon, Baal Shem, if the Cossacks didnt dig the grave (description). The Uniate cleric, his leg like an arc.—The Uniate cleric, what ruin, what ruin, say I there are more important things to think about, an airplane is coming, a spot in the distance, the Cossacks, and you wont even have to go out. Do you all remember Melnikov, his white stallion? His petition to the army. He sends you his greetings and his love.

Tim[oshenko] rests his military notebook on the coffin cover to write in it.

Sokal 2.

Go to hell with your “what ruin,” we have more important things to deal with here.—Trunov s body with his neatly placed legs and his carefully polished boots.—His head on the saddle, the stirrups around his chest.

—I have lost you, Pava—

Very simple, a factual account, no superfluous descriptions.—Stand to attention. We are burying Pavel Trunov. Military commissar, give your speech. And the military commissar gave a speech about Soviet power, about the constitution of the Union of Soviet Republics, and about the blockade.

The past.

I remember, said Tim[oshenko], right now is when we could use him.—We are burying Pavel Trunov, the international hero.—The military commissar, honor the memory of this hero in the presence of the fighters.

Trunovs death

I too would believe in the resurrection of Elijah if it weren’t for that airplane that came floating toward us, etc. It dropped bombs with soft thuds. Art[illery] harnesses.

The airplane, the Cossack from inside the grave: I inform you, Comr. Division Commander, that it is highly possible jhat we will all end up here.—Right you are.—and he went to get the dead man ready. His saddle, stirrups, the band and the delegations from the regiments. We are burying Trunov, the international hero, the military commissar gives a speech that expresses this.

Com[rades], the Communist Party is an iron column, pouring out its blood in the front line. And when blood flows from iron, that is no laughing matter, Comrades, but victory or death. A subject: the military commissars speech.

Gowinski

A Polish deserter. Where in the world is there an army like ours?

They took him in and sent him right over to me as my coachman. He is shaken, then suddenly whips the horses and sings at the top of his voice.

Rev. chapter.—Af[onka] Bida. They caught him, wanted to kill him—the main thing: why didn’t they kill him?—Then they forgot about him, then they put him on the rations list. A subject: how Gowinski was placed on the rations list.

The fire in Lashkov

Galician culture.—The cler[gyman] Szeptycki, description of the icons, chasubles, the womenfolk, how they bury, the church.—Apanasenko at the fire, he looks like Utochkin.*—The Cossacks are ransacking.—All night long my room is brightly lit.—My landlord in Lashkov.—Kuban Cossacks beneath my window.—Also there—the band—the nurse. A proposal? The Galicians are putting out the fire with detestable slackness, they cannot.— Burned horses, singed cows.—The Galicians’ apathy.—Apanasenko.

Briefly.—Immediately the fire, Ap[anasenko], the Galicians, the Cossacks.—The pile outside the church, the conversation with the clergyman, Count Szeptycki.—The Metropolitan of Galicia.

Page 1. A miniature.

The books.

Style, scope.—The cemetery in Kozin . . .

The estate of Kulaczkowski, horses in the drawing room—a listing of the books.

A poem in prose.

Books—I grabbed as many as I could, they keep calling me—I cannot tear myself away.—We gallop off—I keep throwing books away—a piece of my soul—I’ve thrown them all away.—The core—a listing of the books.—Books and battle—Heloise and Abelard. Napoleon.—Anatole France.

Leshniov. July 29, 1920

The vicissitudes of a cavalry campaign.—Rain is the victor, a

* Sergei Utochkin, a celebrated Russian aviation pioneer from Odessa.

Gal[ician] shtetl through a sheet of rain.—Night at Froim’s.—A night of anxiety.—Gowinski and Grishchuk.—The highroad to Brody.

Describe the night simply. Beginning: the night will be one of anxiety. The condition of waiting and fatigue.

Milatin

Right away a description of the monastery.—The Catholic priest. Burials. The Polish woman.—Korotchayev. Remembering the days of marching. The horses chomping, the sky shimmers through, we are lying in the hay.—Then at the Jews. Korotchayev acts like a country squire. The Jew has no revolutionary tendencies.—The demoted division commander.—Then, Korotchayev s star—the Jewish adjutant of the squadron commander.—Kniga.—A tall, immovable man, bulky, like the inspector in Korolenko,
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he sits on the sofa, is silent, vodka—a mute scene—a figure behind the enclosure, a Basilian monastery, the monk in a gray cassock, tall, broad-shouldered, fingers his rosary—I stand there—bewitched—then noise, the thunder of transport carts.— A Pole lying in a coffin.—Two orderlies—one of them, Borisov, tiptoes through the yard, his head down, the other—a Kirghiz . . . the body is slashed—uncovered—covered again.—I feel sorry for the Polish woman—I want to be graceful, gallant.—They return from battle—a special calm, their usual way of riding, professionalism! Separate: Milatin, Korotchayev. [. . .]

Milatin 2.

The maid—a tiny, brown, ugly Polish woman—a cow with teats, a young mother. The cool luxury of the room.—The empty, shriveled teats.

The sequence'. A sultry, dusty, golden evening.—Transport carts.— Right away a description of the monastery. The Pater and his niece, the roads to the monastery.—He conducts burials in secret... I make my way to the monastery. The masterful voice of the Catholic priest. (Pay no attention to continuity in the story.) The funeral rites.—A new military order, the arrival of the Cossacks, I leave.—The Cossacks return from battle in businesslike fashion.

Second chapter about Korotchayev.

The maid by the gate—the main figure of trust.

Belyov—Boratin.

A four-day march. Diary. A simple, lengthy narration.—Begin—a marvelous march?—I saw, I remembered—marching in the forests with the division commander, rest stop with Germans, then with the cleric. The regimental clergyman. K[onstantin] K[arlovich Zholnarkevich]. Nighttime at headquarters . . . Headquarters, symbol ... A battle by Smordva.—My illness. Night in Smordva. A rest stop in Zhabokriki.— Grishchuk.—A meeting in Kozin.

Apanasenko's life story.

Noncommissioned officer. Four St. George Crosses. Son of a swineherd.—Got the village together. He stuck out his neck.—He joined forces with Budyonny.—The Astrakhan campaign.

His epistle to the Poles, which starts out like this: You damn bastards. Compose his epistle.

Lepin

His soul rebels. Wanted to go to the Latvians.
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His petition. Demidovka

Briefly.—Naked Prishchepa.—The blood-drenched pig.— Barsukov.—The synagogue.—The kitchen.

I ride with Prishchepa, Prishchepa s tale, a Jewish shtetl, I prick up my ears (my father is in the Brodsky Synagogue, surrounded by merchants in the choir. Women weep). The father deaf.—A stately old man. The anxious stateliness of the deaf.

Prishchepa, argument with the high school student or with Ida Aronovna.

Chapters'. Prishchepa.—The old woman, prayer, the pig.—Ida Aronovna. The rape.—The synagogue.

The form?

'Demidovka

The beginning: a description of the family, an analysis of their feelings and beliefs.—How do I come to find out all this? A universal phenomenon. (Their) political Weltanschauung. They have orphans in their house.

2. Our arrival. Potatoes, coffee. Prishchepa s argument with the youth. My tale about Soviet power.—Evening. The shtetl beyond the windows. Tishah bAb.—The destruction of Jerusalem. A description of the girl from Kremenets. In the house of her future father-in-law. In the morning she is in complete disarray, ashen, she defends the cart, a conversation with the commissar. Prishchepa walks around her, presses against her, our girls cook pork, the Kremenets girl is sewing.—Demidovka medical externs.— A dentist—the pride of the family. A description of the family—the father is of the old school, a venerable Jew, new shoots, [...], listens to modern ideas, does not interfere, the mother a go-between, the children disperse, life filled with tradition, there’s a hunchbacked one, a proud one (the dentist), there’s a plump one (married), one has dedicated herself to her family and the household, another is a midwife helping the womenfolk, she will grow old in Demidovka.—Describe each sister separately. (Chekhov’s Three Sisters?).—A lyrical prelude.—Into this family, which still hasn’t broken up, Prishchepa and I have intruded.—The hunchbacked one serves us, then toward morning Dora Aronovna softens up too, how painful it is to see this broken feminine pride. A pretty girl, the only beautiful one, which is why it is so hard for her to get married—she is a blend of shtetl health, very black, moist eyes, Polish slyness, and Warsaw slippers, her ever-anxious parents conceived her in a simple moment of joy, the rest are complex, proud—the only son, sixteen years old, in other words six years of war, is nervous, a dreamer, his mother’s favorite.—The wailing of Jeremiah.—The son is reading, the daughters lie on their beds in white stockings.—They bring us everything.—About Tishah bAb— build on the correspondence of the prayers with what is going on outside the walls.—Shots—the lock, machine-gunners returning from their positions, the Cossacks are out and about.—Dora Aronovna—for us this is a holiday—she is pale with pride.—Prishchepa—we will spill blood.—I capture their attention with a tale—the longest to resist is Dora Aronovna.