The Complete Works of Isaac Babel Reprint Edition by Isaac Babel, Nathalie Babel, Peter Constantine (72 page)

If there is such a thing as national character, then the French, when seen from a broad perspective, are a philosophical people of clear, exact, elegant thought, with deep meanings often hidden behind jokes. Regardless of their reputation, the French are not an open people— they do not wear their hearts on their sleeves. The problem is that the power of the capitalists and the political system of capitalist government disfigure the wonderful face of this country, shattering its nerve centers.

FRENCH SCHOOLS

Seen from a Soviet viewpoint, French schools are badly organized.

Here France has lagged behind along with the most underdeveloped nations of Europe, with old, scholastic teaching methods, with cramming as the basis of teaching.

Children spend up to ten hours a day in school. They enter school when they are six. There is much homework and the requirements are harsh. Physical education is only now beginning to catch on. The French schoolboy is a puny, tormented creature. Our children differ very favorably from French children in strength and uncomplicated, healthy cheerfulness. The ancient French school buildings resemble bastions and fortresses. They are morose and prisonlike. These buildings, and the routine of school life, serve to smother and cow a child s imagination. Cramming for Latin and Greek begins already after the second school year. When the French have completed their education, they know the ancient languages and the classical authors, but the price is an overwhelming strain on their physical strength. And the French themselves are the first to confess that more than half of what they have studied in school is so inapplicable to life, so false and scholastic, that they regret the time and energy they have wasted all these years.

The teaching is better organized in the schools run by the Jesuit Order, one of the ablest, most persistent, and educated orders of the Catholic Church. The poison of religious education seeps into the chil-drens consciousness with such delicate furtiveness, through methods so wily and exhaustive, that its danger should not be underestimated. The

Jesuits have the best teachers, the best equipment, hot breakfasts, adept after-school programs, and a pleasant, soft countenance. Many working men and women become entangled in this trap and are molded in a spirit advantageous to the Jesuits.

A very different wind blows in schools of higher education. The Sorbonne, a network of Parisian universities, is made up of gigantic, gray, cold buildings, but inside bubbles a cheerful, multilingual, energetic crowd.

Anyone can walk into the Sorbonne, sign up for a course, pay a few dozen francs, and attend. Let us say you have studied archaeology or geography. At the Sorbonne you can walk up to a famous professor and tell him, “I would like you to examine me in the course you are teaching in geography.” This professor is then compelled to examine you and issue you a certificate. You needn’t even be signed up.

Is this a good system? That I do not know. But at least it is not weighed down by bureaucracy.

TOWN AND COUNTRY

I rode along on the surprising French highways, a map by my side.

Considering the number of kilometers I had put behind me, I should have been deep in the countryside by now. But on either side of the road stood dull, eyeless walls without windows or doors. I drove through this morose medley of warehouses or armories, and asked the first man I came across where the countryside might be.

“You’ve passed it,” he told me.

The walls I had taken to be those of armories or depots turned out to shelter living, breathing people, not plows and grain. Wealthy French farmers (kulaks, as good, honest people call them back home), build their houses with windows and doors that face the inner courtyards, raising self-contained fortresses that differ from medieval castles only in their commonplaceness and size. “Dog eat dog”—that is what is written in invisible letters on these walls. Each farmstead is an enemy of the next, each farm pitted against the other.

The soul delights when this somber vista changes into the panorama of a little town. One comes across them quite often, serene, both gothic and romantic, hidden in greenery and enveloped by flowers. Much in France is timeworn, but much has also been newly built. The earth has been worked and adorned by the hands of many generations. This labor was fostered by the blessed climate of the south.

I will never forget the days I spent in Marseilles, on the Mediterranean shore “beneath skies eternally blue,” beneath the brilliant, generous sun. The fresh sea breeze sways the branches of palms and of lemon, orange, and olive trees. The cheerful southern streets start by the sea. But Marseilles also has an old quarter where the sun does not seep through. The alleys there are narrow, and the houses medieval and six, seven stories high. The sun does not penetrate the tight shafts between these medieval bastions crowded close together in the damp, winding corridors of the little streets, where two vehicles cannot fit side by side, and the stench of the desolate apartments is stupefying. High up between the houses hangs the washing. Down below in the streets and the passageways, people cook food on little coal stoves, disseminating pungent, spicy odors. Moors, Arabs, and Negroes, the downtrodden workforce of the Port of Marseilles, live here in poverty. Five hundred meters away the emerald sea glitters, the water reflecting the nimble white hulls of the yachts, and above the sea rises the elegant quarter with its villas and palaces, while the powerful, surging bodies of expensive cars rocket through the streets. Comrades, thats capitalism for you!

COURT OF JUSTICE AND PARLIAMENT

The chambers of the criminal court. The judge is presiding, and around him is such a howl and din, such a racket, that it is impossible to figure out who the defendant is, who the counsel for the defense, or which side is which.

The sentence is passed in quite a casual, offhand manner: Two years. Three years. Six months. The defendant may leave!

At first one is amused by all this hullabaloo. But then, when it turns out that these sentences, passed with a casual flick of the wrist in this loud market-square jumble, send people to prison for years of hard labor, ones mood changes. There are a great number of cases, so the hearing moves forward with bulletlike speed, conducted by a presiding judge, to whom a lavish shower of witticisms appear the height of bon ton. A typical hearing:

“Bonjour, my friend. So we meet at last. I take it you have ended up here by mistake? You are completely innocent, am I right? But as we have all gathered here, would you perhaps be so kind as to give us a detailed account of how you pulled off all those low-down tricks?” Defense attorneys are second in order of importance in the French judicial system. Regardless of how insignificant a case may be, the defense attorney sees it as his duty to be as verbose as possible, brimming over with pathos and histrionic gestures as he delves into the mists of time. He is followed the way an actor is followed on the stage, and assessed by the audience as an actor might be. And what is more, this performance does not hinder the presiding judge from going on with other things, chatting with his colleagues, doing paperwork. Nor does the performance hinder the presiding judge at the end from leaning toward the other two judges, ancient men reminiscent of Egyptian mummies, one sitting to his right and one to his left, and casually saying, “Three years. You may go, my friend. Gendarmes, take him away.” There is not much more order in the French Parliament. A beautiful, semicircular hall, usually about three-quarters empty: The delegates do not listen to the speaker, but talk loudly among themselves, write letters, and read newspapers. The speaker is not talking to them, but to the stenographer. The parliamentary hall jumps to life when a renowned speaker takes the podium or if some scandal is under way— of which there never seems to be a lack.

THE POPULAR FRONT

The last elections strengthened the role and importance of the Communist faction in the French Parliament. The French Communists have been the architects of the Popular Front against Fascism. The parties of the Communists, Socialists, and Radicals have joined forces to mount a collective action in a united Popular Front.

The current French government is supported by the Popular Front. Socialists and Radicals are now represented in the government, and the Communists support it in the name of the struggle against the terrible menace hanging over the world, the struggle against Fascism. The Communists stand at the head of the peoples battle for peace, for a France that is happy and free.

I shall never forget July 14, 1935, Bastille Day, which I spent in Paris. The prison which the rebelling masses had torn down on July 14, 1789, had stood on the Place de la Bastille, an event which began the French Revolution that overthrew the king and toppled the feudal system, launching a new era in the history of man. This day is celebrated. The people of Paris pour into the streets, dance night and day, and rejoice as only children and sages can. On July 14, 1935, the old Place that has seen so much saw millions of proletarians pledging an oath of unity and battle.

In the first rows of the march were the leaders of the Popular Front. Sidewalks, windows, and window ledges were filled with hundreds of thousands of people. The French crowd brims over with mirth. It laughs and horses around; firecrackers crackle, joyful tunes roar out of key. After the leaders of the Popular Front came the Central Committees of the three parties, and after them, in a separate group, representatives of the Popular Front: writers, artists, and scientists.

The degree of applause and noise with which the crowd greeted each of the leaders of the three parties made it clear on whose side the people of Paris were. The Parisian workers’ most enthusiastic approbation, the most boisterous applause, was accorded to the Central Committee of the Communist Party.

It was a workers’ demonstration, a procession of men and women with rough, callused hands and with Phrygian caps on their heads. At the same time a second demonstration, with different people and different ideals, was marching up the Champs-Elysees. My comrades and I took a taxi and rode from the Place de la Bastille to the Champs-Elysees. The area between the two demonstrations seemed dead. There were no children or old men and women on the boulevards, the squares, or the embankments. Only rows of soldiers, their weapons stacked in racks, stood in the public gardens.

On the Champs-Elysees we saw another world, another state of mind. Here too the crowds were French. On the Place de la Bastille the masses were shouting, “Long live Soviet Russia!” while on the Champs-Elysees the frenzied crowd was yelling, “To the gallows with the Soviets!” and “Down with Soviet Russia!”

A cheerful crowd of laborers was marching on the Place de la Bastille, while here, on the Champs-Elysees, Fascists in black shirts and black caps were marching, stamping their boots in military fashion.

THE POWER OF MONEY

The workers are in support of the current French government because it is fighting for peace, against Fascism, and is in the process of strengthening its ties with the Soviet Union. And yet France is still a bourgeois country, and the main power behind it is the power of money. The government cannot abolish that power, but it has been endeavoring to loosen the grip that the bankers and financial bigwigs have over the country. This endeavor is supported not only by Frances workers and farmers, but also by a large section of the intelligentsia and a section of the petite bourgeoisie that is being smothered by bankers and factory magnates.

At the head of the French national bank, the main financial institution of the country, there had been a board of twelve directors. These twelve men had been the cornerstone of France s economy.

The government disbanded the board of twelve, appointed a new director of the bank, and so knocked the single most powerful weapon out of the hands of the bankers and speculators.

We have all heard the surprising reports about the extent to which the press is bribed in bourgeois countries. But on arriving here, we came face-to-face with this daily crime, and the only surprise was how simple the whole process was.

Someone found deposits of lead or zinc somewhere in Morocco or Algeria. They found about a hundred pounds of it—in other words, the deposits could in no way be considered of any industrial significance. The speculators, however, were not about to let such a chance slip through their fingers. This very moment a stock-trading enterprise is being launched with a capital of about a million francs, with the aim of putting new mines into operation. In order to raise the million francs, a hundred thousand pieces of paper have been issued— shares which have to be sold. But the whole thing is a sham, there is no zinc worth mentioning, and selling the stocks is difficult. So a phone call is made to a journalist, who is told, “Heres ten thousand francs. How about writing that you were there and saw the zinc pits with your own eyes?”

And within three days the following article appears in a newspaper:

“The richest deposits of lead, zinc, and copper . . . stunning landscape ... all those wishing to grow rich should buy these stocks.”

One article is published, a second, a third—all by the reporter “on location,” and there are lots of pictures. Anyone who buys bonds at a hundred francs will earn two hundred francs within a year. And the public rushes off to invest its last centime.

All this came about as a result of extensive and deceitful publicity. In France there are people known as rentiers, “pensioners.” More often than not these rentiers come in the form of a little old man and a little old woman who, having managed to amass a little capital, sit in the sun twiddling their thumbs without having to work, and spend their time hatching plans for how they can get rich. One newspaper tells them, “Invest all your money in zinc!” Another trumpets, “Invest in copper mines!” After much pondering, they make up their minds. They believe that their ten thousand francs will turn into twenty thousand within a year. But the truth is that they will never see those twenty thousand francs—nor the ten thousand they invested. I mentioned old-age pensioners. But needless to say, they are not the only ones affected. There are quite a few people here who believe that living at the expense of others is not only not criminal, but constitutes their most cherished dream.