Excerpt from 'The Complete Works of Isaac Babel'
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| Chapter One
Contents
Introduction by Cynthia Ozick.......................................13
Editor's Preface....................................................19
Translator's Foreword...............................................29
Acknowledgments.....................................................35
I. Early Stories....................................................41
OLD SHLOYME.....................................................43
AT GRANDMOTHER'S................................................47
ELYA ISAAKOVICH AND MARGARITA PROKOFIEVNA.......................53
MAMA, RIMMA, AND ALLA...........................................57
THE PUBLIC LIBRARY..............................................67
NINE............................................................71
ODESSA..........................................................75
THE AROMA OF ODESSA.............................................80
INSPIRATION.....................................................83
DOUDOU..........................................................86
SHABOS-NAKHAMU..................................................88
ON THE FIELD OF HONOR...........................................95
ON THE FIELD OF HONOR.......................................95
THE DESERTER................................................97
PAPA MARESCOT'S FAMILY......................................99
THE QUAKER.................................................101
THE SIN OF JESUS...............................................104
AN EVENING WITH THE EMPRESS
CHINK..........................................................112
A TALE ABOUT A WOMAN...........................................114
THE BATHROOM WINDOW............................................117
BAGRAT-OGLY AND THE EYES OF HIS BULL...........................119
LINE AND COLOR.................................................121
YOU MISSED THE BOAT, CAPTAIN!..................................124
THE END OF ST. HYPATIUS........................................126
II. The Odessa Stories.............................................129
THE KING.......................................................133
JUSTICE IN PARENTHESES.........................................140
HOW THINGS WERE DONE IN ODESSA.................................146
LYUBKA THE COSSACK.............................................155
THE FATHER.....................................................161
FROIM GRACH....................................................170
THE END OF THE ALMSHOUSE.......................................176
SUNSET.........................................................185
III. The Red Cavalry Stories.......................................197
CROSSING THE RIVER ZBRUCZ......................................203
THE CHURCH IN NOVOGRAD.........................................205
A LETTER.......................................................208
THE RESERVE CAVALRY COMMANDER..................................213
PAN APOLEK.....................................................216
ITALIAN SUN....................................................223
GEDALI.........................................................227
MY FIRST GOOSE.................................................230
THE RABBI......................................................234
THE ROAD TO BRODY..............................................237
THE TACHANKA THEORY............................................239
DOLGUSHOV'S DEATH..............................................242
THE COMMANDER OF THE SECOND BRIGADE............................246
SASHKA CHRIST..................................................248
THE LIFE OF MATVEY RODIONOVICH PAVLICHENKO.....................253
THE CEMETERY IN KOZIN..........................................259
PRISHCHEPA.....................................................260
THE STORY OF A HORSE...........................................262
KONKIN.........................................................266
BERESTECHKO....................................................270
SALT...........................................................273
EVENING........................................................277
AFONKA BIDA....................................................280
AT SAINT VALENTINE'S...........................................286
SQUADRON COMMANDER TRUNOV......................................290
IVAN AND IVAN..................................................297
THE CONTINUATION OF THE STORY OF A HORSE.......................304
THE WIDOW......................................................306
ZAMOSC.........................................................311
TREASON........................................................315
CZESNIKI.......................................................320
AFTER THE BATTLE...............................................324
THE SONG.......................................................328
THE RABBI'S SON................................................331
IV. The Red Cavalry Cycle: Additional Stories......................335
MAKHNO'S BOYS..................................................337
A HARDWORKING WOMAN............................................339
GRISHCHUK......................................................342
ARGAMAK........................................................344
THE KISS.......................................................350
AND THEN THERE WERE NINE.......................................356
AND THEN THERE WERE TEN........................................360
A LETTER TO THE EDITOR.........................................362
V. The Red Cavalryman: Articles....................................363
WHAT WE NEED IS MORE MEN LIKE TRUNOV!..........................365
THE KNIGHTS OF CIVILIZATION....................................367
DISPATCH OFFICE, SHAPE UP!.....................................369
MURDERERS WHO HAVE YET TO BE CLUBBED TO DEATH..................371
HER DAY........................................................374
VI. 1920 Diary.....................................................377
VII. Sketches for the Red Cavalry Stories..........................473
VIII. Reports from Petersburg, 1918................................485
FIRST AID......................................................487
HORSES.........................................................490
PREMATURE BABIES...............................................493
THE DEAD.......................................................495
THE PALACE OF MOTHERHOOD.......................................498
EVACUEES.......................................................501
MOSAIC.........................................................503
QUITE AN INSTITUTION!..........................................506
THE GEORGIAN, THE KERENSKY RUBLES, AND THE GENERAL'S
DAUGHTER (A MODERN TALE).......................................509
THE BLIND......................................................514
THE EVENING....................................................518
I WAS STANDING AT THE BACK.....................................521
A BEAST CAN'T TALK.............................................524
FINNS..........................................................527
A NEW LIFE.....................................................530
AN INCIDENT ON THE NEVSKY PROSPEKT.............................534
THE MOST HOLY PATRIARCH........................................536
AT THE STATION: A SKETCH FROM LIFE.............................539
ON PALACE SQUARE...............................................541
THE CONCERT IN KATERINENSTADT..................................543
IX. Reports from Georgia, 1922-1924................................547
AT THE WORKERS' RETREAT........................................549
KAMO AND SHAUMIAN..............................................552
WITHOUT A HOMELAND.............................................556
MUSLIM SEMINARIES AND SOVIET SCHOOLS...........................559
TOBACCO........................................................563
GAGRY..........................................................567
IN CHAKVA......................................................569
RENOVATIONS AND REFURBISHMENT..................................573
PARIS AND JULIET...............................................576
X. Reports from France, 1935.......................................579
THE CITY OF LIGHT..............................................581
FRENCH SCHOOLS.................................................584
TOWN AND COUNTRY...............................................586
COURT OF JUSTICE AND PARLIAMENT................................588
THE POPULAR FRONT..............................................590
THE POWER OF MONEY.............................................592
THE RED BELT...................................................595
XI. Stories, 1925-1938.............................................599
THE STORY OF MY DOVECOTE.......................................601
FIRST LOVE.....................................................612
KARL-YANKEL....................................................619
THE AWAKENING..................................................628
IN THE BASEMENT................................................635
GAPA GUZHVA....................................................644
KOLYVUSHKA.....................................................652
THE ROAD.......................................................659
THE IVAN AND MARIA.............................................667
GUY DE MAUPASSANT..............................................679
PETROLEUM......................................................687
DANTE STREET...................................................693
DI GRASSO......................................................699
SULAK..........................................................703
THE TRIAL......................................................706
MY FIRST FEE...................................................709
XII. Variations and Manuscripts....................................719
ROAMING STARS: A MOVIE TALE....................................721
A STORY........................................................729
INFORMATION....................................................732
THREE IN THE AFTERNOON.........................................736
THE JEWESS.....................................................740
XIII. Plays........................................................753
SUNSET.........................................................755
MARIA..........................................................800
XIV. Screenplays...................................................843
ROAMING STARS..................................................845
BENYA KRIK.....................................................896
THE CHINESE MILL (AN ATTEMPTED MOBILIZATION)...................941
NUMBER 4 STARAYA SQUARE........................................969
TWO SCENES FROM THE FORGING OF STEEL..........................1016
THE GERMANS IN THE UKRAINE................................1016
IN PETLYURA'S PRISON......................................1022
Afterword: A Personal Memoir by Nathalie Babel....................1025
Isaac Emmanuelovich Babel: A Chronology by Gregory Freidin........1052
Notes.............................................................1059
Maps:
Babel's Russia..................................................18
Babel's Odessa..............................................130-31
Volhynia, 1920..............................................198-99
Chapter One Early Stories
When the twenty-one-year-old Isaac Babel arrived in St. Petersburg in 1916, he found the city in wild but stimulating upheaval. It was still the capital of Russia and the center of Russian literature and art, where the foremost writers of the day lived and published. But the city was shaken by World War I. The Imperial government was losing control, and calls for change, which were to lead to the Revolution and Civil War, were in the air. Perhaps most important for a young writer was that the Czarist censorship was crumbling, which meant that daring new subjects could be treated in new ways, a characteristic that was to stay with Babel throughout his writing career. His first published story, "Old Shloyme" (1913), dealt with the subversive subject of Jews forced by officially sanctioned anti-Semitism to renounce their religion. In the story, a young Jew gives in to the pressure to Russianize himself, "to leave his people for a new God," while the old Jew, though never interested in religion or tradition, cannot bring himself to give them up. In the subsequent stories, Babel touches on other taboo subjects: Jewish men mixing with Christian women, prostitution, teenage pregnancy, and abortion. These early stories also reveal Babel's growing interest in using language in new and unusual ways. He has a young woman offer herself to her lover, "and the lanky follow wallowed in businesslike bliss." Odessa matrons, "plump with idleness and naively corseted are passionately squeezed behind bushes by fervent students of medicine or law." Babel describes the Czarina as "a small woman with a tightly powdered face, a consummate schemer with an indefatigable passion for power." In a forest scene, "green leaves bent toward one another, caressed each other with their flat hands." We also see the recurring motifs of sun and sunset, which are to play an important role in Babel's later writing. Babel's piquant brand of realism soon caught the eye of Maxim Gorky, who was to be the single most influential literary figure in the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s, and who was particularly instrumental in helping young Soviet writers. Gorky published Babel's stories "Elya Isaakovich and Margarita Prokofievna," and "Mama, Rimma, and Alla" in 1916 in his literary magazine Letopis, which marked the beginning of Gorky's mentoring of Babel's career. This mentoring was to last until Gorky's death exactly twenty years later.
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OLD SHLOYME
Although our town is small, its inhabitants few in number, and although Shloyme had not left this town once in sixty years, you'd be hard-pressed to find a single person who was able to tell you exactly who Shloyme was or what he was all about. The reason for this, plain and simple, is that he was forgotten, the way you forget an unnecessary thing that doesn't jump out and grab you. Old Shloyme was precisely that kind of thing. He was eighty-six years old. His eyes were watery. His face—his small, dirty, wrinkled face—was overgrown with a yellowish beard that had never been combed, and his head was covered with a thick, tangled mane. Shloyme almost never washed, seldom changed his clothes, and gave off a foul stench. His son and daughter-in-law, with whom he lived, had stopped bothering about him—they kept him in a warm corner and forgot about him. His warm corner and his food were all that Shloyme had left, and it seemed that this was all he needed. For him, warming his old broken bones and eating a nice, fat, juicy piece of meat were the purest bliss. He was the first to come to the table, and greedily watched every bite with unflinching eyes, convulsively cramming food into his mouth with his long bony fingers, and he ate, ate, ate till they refused to give him any more, even a tiny little piece. Watching Shloyme eat was disgusting: his whole puny body quivered, his fingers covered with grease, his face so pitiful, filled with the dread that someone might harm him, that he might be forgotten. Sometimes his daughter-in-law would play a little trick on Shloyme. She would serve the food, and then act as if she had overlooked him. The old man would begin to get agitated, look around helplessly, and try to smile with his twisted, toothless mouth. He wanted to show that food was not important to him, that he could perfectly well make do without it, but there was so much pleading in the depths of his eyes, in the crease of his mouth, in his outstretched, imploring arms, and his smile, wrenched with such difficulty, was so pitiful, that all jokes were dropped, and Shloyme received his portion. And thus he lived in his corner—he ate and slept, and in the summer he also lay baking in the sun. It seemed that he had long ago lost all ability to comprehend anything. Neither his son's business nor household matters interested him. He looked blankly at everything that took place around him, and the only fear that would flutter up in him was that his grandson might catch on that he had hidden a dried-up piece of honey cake under his pillow. Nobody ever spoke to Shloyme, asked his advice about anything, or asked him for help. And Shloyme was quite happy, until one day his son came over to him after dinner and shouted loudly into his ear, "Papa, they're going to evict us from here! Are you listening? Evict us, kick us out!" His son's voice was shaking, his face twisted as if he were in pain. Shloyme slowly raised his faded eyes, looked around, vaguely comprehending something, wrapped himself tighter in his greasy frock coat, didn't say a word, and shuffled off to sleep. From that day on Shloyme began noticing that something strange was going on in the house. His son was crestfallen, wasn't taking care of his business, and at times would burst into tears and look furtively at his chewing father. His grandson stopped going to high school. His daughter-in-law yelled shrilly, wrung her hands, pressed her son close to her, and cried bitterly and profusely. Shloyme now had an occupation, he watched and tried to comprehend. Muffled thoughts stirred in his long-torpid brain. "They're being kicked out of here!" Shloyme knew why they were being kicked out. "But Shloyme can't leave! He's eighty-six years old! He wants to stay warm! It's cold outside, damp .... No! Shloyme isn't going anywhere! He has nowhere to go, nowhere!" Shloyme hid in his corner and wanted to clasp the rickety wooden bed in his arms, caress the stove, the sweet, warm stove that was as old as he was. "He grew up here, spent his poor, bleak life here, and wants his old bones to be buried in the small local cemetery!" At moments when such thoughts came to him, Shloyme became unnaturally animated, walked up to his son, wanted to talk to him with passion and at great length, to give him advice on a couple of things, but... it had been such a long time since he had spoken to anyone, or given anyone advice. And the words froze in his toothless mouth, his raised arm dropped weakly. Shloyme, all huddled up as if ashamed at his outburst, sullenly went back to his corner and listened to what his son was saying to his daughter-in-law. His hearing was bad, but with fear and dread he sensed something terrifying. At such moments his son felt the heavy crazed look of the old man, who was being driven insane, focused on him. The old man's two small eyes with their accursed probing, seemed incessantly to sense something, to question something. On one occasion words were said too loudly--it had slipped the daughter-in-law's mind that Shloyme was still alive. And right after her words were spoken, there was a quiet, almost smothered wail. It was old Shloyme. With tottering steps, dirty and disheveled, he slowly hobbled over to his son, grabbed his hands, caressed them, kissed them, and, not taking his inflamed eyes off his son, shook his head several times, and for the first time in many, many years, tears flowed from his eyes. He didn't say anything. With difficulty he got up from his knees, his bony hand wiping away the tears; for some reason he shook the dust off his frock coat and shuffled back to his corner, to where the warm stove stood. Shloyme wanted to warm himself. He felt cold. From that time on, Shloyme thought of nothing else. He knew one thing for certain: his son wanted to leave his people for a new God. The old, forgotten faith was kindled within him. Shloyme had never been religious, had rarely ever prayed, and in his younger days had even had the reputation of being godless. But to leave, to leave one's God completely and forever, the God of an oppressed and suffering people--that he could not understand. Thoughts rolled heavily inside his head, he comprehended things with difficult, but these words remained unchanged, hard, and terrible before him: "This mustn't happen, it mustn't!" And when Shloyme realized that disaster was inevitable, that his son couldn't hold out, he said to himself, "Shloyme, old Shloyme! What are you going to do now?" The old man looked around helplessly, mournfully puckered his lips like a child, and wanted to burst into the bitter tears of an old man. But there were no relieving tears. And then, at the moment his heart began aching, when his mind grasped the boundlessness of the disaster, it was then that Shloyme looked at his warm corner one last time and decided that no one was going to kick him out of here, they would never kick him out. "They will not let old Shloyme eat the dried-up piece of honey cake lying under his pillow! So what! Shloyme will tell God how he was wronged! After all, there is a God, God will take him in!" Shloyme was sure of this. In the middle of the night, trembling with cold, he got up from his bed. Quietly, so as not to wake anyone, he lit a small kerosene lamp. Slowly, with an old man's groaning and shivering, he started pulling on his dirty clothes. Then he took the stool and the rope he had prepared the night before, and, tottering with weakness, steadying himself on the walls, went out into the street. Suddenly it was so cold. His whole body shivered. Shloyme quickly fastened the rope onto a hook, stood up next to the door, put the stool in place, clambered up onto it, wound the rope around his thin, quivering neck, kicked away the stool with his last strength, managing with his dimming eyes to glance at the town he had not left once in sixty years, and hung. There was a strong wind, and soon old Shloyme's frail body began swaying before the door of his house in which he had left his warm stove and the greasy Torah of his forefathers.
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The Complete Works of Isaac Babel
