The Complete Works of Isaac Babel Reprint Edition by Isaac Babel, Nathalie Babel, Peter Constantine (63 page)

MOSAIC

On Sunday, a day of springtime celebration, Comrade Shpitsberg gives a speech in the grand hall of the Winter Palace.

The title of his speech is “The All-forgiving Persona of Christ and the Vomiting Up of the Anathema of Christianity.”

Comrade Shpitsberg calls God “Mr. God,” the priests “clerics,” “damn clericalists,” and, more often than not, “paunchists” (a term he has coined from the word “paunch”).

He defines all religions as the “market stalls of charlatans and quacks,” denounces the Pope, bishops, archbishops, Jewish rabbis, and even the Tibetan Dalai Lama, “whose excrement the foolish Tibetan democracy considers a medicinal balm.”

An attendant is sitting in a niche away from the hall. He is quiet, thin, and clean-shaven. He is surrounded by a horde of people: women, contented workers, unemployed soldiers. The attendant is telling them about Kerensky,* bombs exploding beneath the floors, ministers thrown against the smooth walls of dark, echoing corridors, of the feathers bursting from the pillows of Czar Alexander and Czarina Maria Fyodorovna.

A little old woman interrupts his tale. “Where are they giving the lecture, dearie?” she asked him.

“The Antichrist is in the Nikolayevsky Hall,” the attendant answers indifferently.

* Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky, 1881-1970, served as Minister of Justice, Minister of War, and provisional Prime Minister of Russia after the February 1917 Revolution.

A soldier standing nearby laughs. “The Antichrist is in the hall, and youre chattering away here?”

“Im not frightened,” the attendant says with the same indifference as before. “I live with him day and night.”

“So youre living it up, ha—”

“No,” the attendant says, fixing the soldier with his colorless eyes. “I’m not living it up. Life with him is boring.”

And the old man despondently tells the smiling crowd that his devil is short and bashful, walks about in galoshes, and ruins schoolgirls when no one is looking.

The old man doesn’t get to finish his tale. Two of his colleagues come and lead him away, saying that since October
¹³
he has “lost a few of his marbles.”

I walk off deep in thought. This old man had seen the Czar, the Revolt, blood, death, the feathers of the Imperial pillows. And the Antichrist had come to him—the Devil had nothing better to do on earth than to dream of schoolgirls and dodge the guards of the Admiralty Subdistrict.^

Our devils are a humdrum bunch.

• • •

Shpitsbergs sermon on the killing off of Mr. God does not seem to be going all that well. The crowd listens sluggishly, applauds feebly. Things were very different a week before at a similar discussion, which contained “a few short words, but anti-religious ones.” Four people were noteworthy: a church warden, a frail psalm reader, a retired colonel in a fez, and a stout storekeeper from the Gostiny Dvor Market. They marched up to the platform. Before them stood a crowd of women and taciturn, menacing shopkeepers.

The psalm reader began in an oily voice: “My friends, let us pray.” And ended in a little whisper: “Not everyone is asleep, my friends. Some of us have taken a solemn oath at the tomb of Father Ioann.
¹⁴
Set up your parishes once more, my friends!”

The psalm reader left the platform and, squinting with rage, his scrawny body quaking, added: “The whole thing stinks of rotten fish, my friends. The rabbis-—theyVe come out of this scot-free!”

Then the voice of the church warden thundered: “They slaughtered the spirit of the Russian army!” The colonel with the fez shouted: “We will not let them!” And the storekeeper gave a blunt and deafening roar: “Swindlers!”

Bareheaded women thronged around the meekly smiling priests and chased the speaker off the podium, jamming two workers, Red Guardsmen who had been wounded at Pskov, against the wall. One of them started yelling, shaking his fist: “We know your little tricks! In Kolpino* they hold evening masses till two in the morning now! TheyVe come up with a new service—a rally in a church! We’ll make those cupolas shake!”

“You wont shake nothing, you cursed wretch,” a woman said in a muffled voice, turning away from him and crossing herself.

At Easter, the crowds stand with burning candles in the Cathedral of our Lady of Kazan. The people’s breath makes the small yellow flames flutter. The immense cathedral is packed from wall to wall. The service is unusually long. Priests in sparkling miters proceed though the halls. There is an artful arrangement of electric lights behind the crucifix. It is as if Christ were stretched out across the starry dark blue sky.

In his sermon the priest speaks of the Holy Countenance that is once more averted in unbearable pain. He speaks of everything holy being spat upon, slapped, and of sacrileges committed by ignorant men “who know not what they do.” The words of the sermon are mournful, vague, and portentous. “Flock to the church, our last stronghold! The church will not betray you!”

A little old woman is praying by the portal of the cathedral. “How nicely the chorus is chanting,” she says to me tenderly. “What nice services these are! Last week the Metropolitan himself conducted the service—never before has there been such holy goodness! The workers from our factory, they too come to the services. The people are tired, they’re all crumpled up with worry, and in the church there’s quiet and there’s singing, you can get away from everything.”

QUITE AN INSTITUTION!

No one was filled with more admirable intentions than the Welfare Commissariat in the days of the “Social Revolution.” It started out on quite a grandiose note. It was assigned the most important of tasks: “The instantaneous uplifting of the soul, the decreeing of the realm of love, and the preparation of citizens for a lofty existence and a free commune.” The Commissariat headed straight for its goal without once straying from its path.

In the Welfare Commissariat there is a department that goes by the clumsy name of Refuges for Minors Accused of Socially Dangerous Deeds. These refuges were supposed to be established according to new guidelines based on the latest psychological and pedagogical data. And that was exactly how the Commissariat’s measures were implemented—according to the newest of guidelines.

One of the directors appointed was an unknown doctor from Murmansk. Another director was a minor railroad functionary—also from Murmansk. This latter social reformer is currently being tried for cohabiting with female wards and for freely spending the funds of the free commune. He writes semiliterate petitions (this director of a refuge for minors), full of backbiting insinuations, smacking of prison-guard penmanship. He writes that he has “dedicated body and soul to the Holy Cause of the people,” and that he was betrayed by “counterrevolutionaries.”

This man entered the service of the Welfare Commissariat describing himself politically as “a worker of the Party, a true Bolshevik.”

It seems that these were the only qualifications necessary to become an educator of juvenile delinquents.

The other educators:

A Latvian woman who knows very little Russian. She seems to have had four years of schooling of some kind.

An ex-dancer who was schooled by life and danced in the ballet for thirty years.

A former Red Army soldier who, prior to being a soldier, had been a sales clerk in a tea store.

A barely literate shop boy from Murmansk.

A shop girl from Murmansk.

There are also five “uncles” (what a knack these people have for Communist terminology!) appointed to look after the boys in the institution.

Their official job description reads: “On duty for a day, sleep for a day, take a day off, do whatever you think needs doing, have whoever shows up mop the floors.”

I must also add that in one of the refuges there are twenty-three attendants for forty children.

An audit revealed that the records kept by these attendants, many of whom have already been indicted, were found to be in the following state:

Most of the bills have not been signed, one cannot ascertain from these bills what the moneys were spent on, there are no receivers’ signatures. The receipts do not indicate the number of hours for which workers are being paid—a junior employee’s traveling expenses for this January alone amounted to 455 rubles!

If you visit the refuge, you will find that there is no schooling or instruction of any kind. Sixty percent of the children are barely literate. No work of any kind is being done. The children’s diet consists of root-vegetable soup and herring. A powerful stench has saturated the building, as the sewer pipes are broken. No disinfecting measures have been taken, even though there have already been ten cases of typhoid among the children. There is much illness. In one case, a boy with frostbite on his foot was brought in at eleven o’clock at night, and left to lie in the corridor until morning without receiving treatment of any kind. Escapes are frequent. At night they make the children go to the cold, wet bathrooms naked. They hide the childrens clothes out of fear they might escape.

Conclusion:

The Commissariat's Welfare Institution Refuges are nothing more than stinking holes that bear an uncanny resemblance to prereform police lockups. The administrators and educators are people of the past, who have jumped on the bandwagon of the “peoples cause” without having the slightest specialization in welfare, the majority of them having had no training whatever in this field. It is unclear what the basis was for them to be hired by the government of the workers and peasants of our nation.

I saw all this with my own eyes—the morose, barefoot children, the pimply, swollen faces of their doleful warders, and the cracked sewer pipes. Our poverty and wretchedness are truly beyond compare.

THE GEORGIAN, THE KERENSKY RUBLES, AND THE GENERAL’S DAUGHTER (A MODERN TALE)

Two sad Georgians are sitting in the Palmyra Restaurant. One of / them is old, the other young. The young one is named Ovanes.

•    •    •

Things aren’t going well for them. The tea they are served is watery. The young one is eyeing the Russian women. He is an aficionado. The old one is eyeing the gramophone. The old man feels morose, but warm.

The horizons are clearing. The Palmyra Restaurant offers to sell the young man almonds and raisins. Ovanes buys them. A woman he knows from the State Inspection Agency will cook guzinaki
¹⁵
 for them at her house.

The merchandise brings in a profit.

•    •    •

Days and weeks go by. Ovanes owns a store on Mokhovaya Street selling Oriental sweets.

•    •    •

Now Ovanes has a store on the Nevsky Prospekt. Petka, his assistant, struts around in shiny new galoshes. Ovanes does not bow to the servant girls he knows, but salutes them. His doorman gets a whole chocolate cake on his name day. Everyone respects Ovanes.

•    •    •

Meanwhile, General Orlov is living on Kirochnaya Street. His neighbor is Burishkin, a retired medical assistant.

•    •    •

When General Orlovs daughter, Galichka, graduated from the third class to the second at the institute, the Empress kissed her on the cheek. Friends and relatives were certain that Galichka would marry a communications engineer. Galichka has a slim, shapely foot in a delicate suede shoe.

Lightning strikes from a clear blue sky: Galichka moves in with Ovanes.

The general is so distraught that he starts a friendship with Burishkin. There is a lack of supplies. The government distributes Siberian salmon. The general doesn’t see his daughter.

One morning the general woke up and thought, “They’re all a bunch of dunderheads! The Bolsheviks are the real people!” Then he went back to sleep, happy with his thought.

Galichka sits at the cash register in Ovanes’s store. Her friends from the institute work as salesgirls at the store. They have fun. The customers come in droves. The store is just like Abrikosov’s. The customers are treated with disdain. Galichka’s friends are called Lida and Shurik. Shurik is very lively, she is cuckolding a second lieutenant. Galichka has set up daily hot breakfasts. At the Ministry of Food Provisions, where she worked before, the workers always set up hot breakfasts along Cooperative guidelines.

• • •

The general mulls things over some more.

The general and his daughter are reconciled. The general eats chocolates every day. Galichka is unusually pretty and tender. Ovanes has acquired a Nikolayevsky greatcoat.* The general is surprised that he has never taken an interest in Georgians. The general studies the history of Georgia and the Caucasian campaigns. Burishkin is forgotten.

The city government distributes Siberian salmon. Pensions are paid out in Kerensky rubles.^

It is spring. Galichka and her father ride along the Nevsky Prospekt in

* A military coat of the former Imperial Army.

t Rubles printed during Kerensky’s provisional government, which was in power between February and October 1917.

a carriage. Burishkin’s thoughts are rambling—if only he could find some food. There is no bread. The old man is desolate.

•    •    •

Burishkin decides to buy some guzinaki to quell his appetite.

•    •    •

Ovanes’s store is filled with customers. Burishkin stands in line. Lida and Shurik look at him disdainfully. The general is telling Ovanes a joke, and laughing. The Georgian smiles condescendingly. Burishkin is crushed.

•    •    •

Ovanes does not want to give Burishkin change for his Kerensky rubles. Even though Ovanes has change.

“Have you read the decree about change for Kerensky rubles?” Burishkin asks Ovanes.

“I spit on those decrees!” the Georgian answers.

“It’s the only money I have,” Burishkin whispers.

“Then give me back the guzinaki.”

“And what if I bring in the Red Army?”

“I spit on the Red Army!”

“I see!”

Ovaness store is searched. They find: flour, oatmeal, sugar, gold bars, Swedish crowns, “Eggo” egg-powder, shoe-sole leather, rice starch, ancient coins, decks of cards, and bottles of “Modern” perfume. Its all over.