The Complete Works of Isaac Babel Reprint Edition by Isaac Babel, Nathalie Babel, Peter Constantine (100 page)

EVSTIGNEVICH [Hides loaves of bread in the wall’]: My wife toiled over the oven to bake these. She sends her regards.

DIMSHITS: How re the kids? Doing well?

BISHONKOV: The kids are doing well. Very well indeed. They’re all wearing fur coats, they re rich. . . . The wife asks if youll come and visit.

DIMSHITS: Like I have nothing else to do. [Heflips the beads on the abacus.] Bishonkov!

BISHONKOV: Yes?

DIMSHITS: I dont see no profits.

BISHONKOV: Getting our hands on food is getting tougher.

DIMSHITS: I dont see no profits.

BISHONKOV: You wont see no profits. Me and Evstignevich, weVe been thinking that we should start handling some other product. Theres a lot of bulk to this merchandise here: flour is bulky, grain is bulky, leg of veal is also bulky. WeVe got to move over to something else, saccharine, or gems. Diamonds are great. You pop them in your mouth and they’re gone!

DIMSHITS: Filips disappeared. . . . Im worried about him.

EVSTIGNEVICH: I guess they must have broken all his bones by now.

BISHONKOV: Before the Revolution you could live quite well as a crippled veteran, but now . . .

EVSTIGNEVICH: Now you can forget it—its all about education! In the past, soldiers got a hell of a lot of respect—now its zilch. “How come you’re an invalid?” this fellow asks me. “A shell blew both my legs off,” I tell him. “What’s so special about that?” he asks me. “Your legs got blown off right away without no suffering. You didn’t have no suffering.” So I ask him, “What d’you mean, no suffering?” “Well,” he says, “it’s common knowledge: you were chloroformed when they took your legs off, you didn’t feel nothing. It’s just that you can’t come to grips with your toes—your toes kind of act up, itch, even though they’ve been chopped off, that’s the only problem.” “And how,” I ask him, “do you happen to know all this?” “It’s easy enough,” he tells me, “everyone’s educated now, thanks to those sons-of-bitches in charge.” “Ha! I can tell how educated everyone is now, the way they kick crippled veterans off trains. . . . What do you want to kick me off the train for? I’m a cripple!” “We’re throwing you off because goddamn Russia’s sick and tired of all the cripples!” And he throws me off

the train like a bundle of rags. Im really upset at what our people have turned into.

[VISKOVSKY enters in riding breeches and a jacket.

His shirt is unbuttoned,’]

DIMSHITS: Is that you?

VISKOVSKY: Its me.

DIMSHITS: So you forgot how to say hello?

VISKOVSKY: Did Ludmila Nikolayevna come to see you, Dimshits?

DIMSHITS: Did the dog grab your “hello” and run away with it? So whats it to you if she came to see me?

VISKOVSKY: I know youVe got Mukovnin’s ring, and her sister, Maria Nikolayevna, couldn’t have given it to you—

DIMSHITS: Who says it had to be people who gave it me?

VISKOVSKY: How d’you get that ring, Dimshits?

DIMSHITS: I was given it to sell.

VISKOVSKY: So sell it to me.

DIMSHITS: Why should I sell it to you?

VISKOVSKY: Ever tried your hand at being a gentleman, Dimshits?

DIMSHITS: Im always a gentleman.

VISKOVSKY: Gentlemen dont ask questions.

DIMSHITS: Those people want hard currency for the ring.

VISKOVSKY: You owe me fifty pounds sterling.

DIMSHITS: What for, if I may ask?

VISKOVSKY: For the thread deal.

DIMSHITS: You mean the deal you messed up?

VISKOVSKY: In the Cavalry Guard they didn’t teach us the ins and outs of the thread trade.

DIMSHITS: You messed up the deal because you’re hotheaded.

VISKOVSKY: So give me forty, Maestro, and 111 mend my ways.

DIMSHITS: How are you going to mend your ways if you never listen? Youre told to do one thing, and you go do something completely different. In the war you were a captain or a count, whatever you were—maybe its good to be hotheaded in war, but when pulling off a deal, a merchant has to watch where he puts his foot.

VISKOVSKY: Yessir!

DIMSHITS: And theres something else Im pissed off about, Viskovsky! What was that trick you pulled with bringing me that princess?

VISKOVSKY: I thought the more refined, the better.

DIMSHITS: Didn’t you know Ludmila Nikolayevna was a virgin?

VISKOVSKY: The best tsimmes you can get your hands on.

DIMSHITS: Thank you, I don’t need that kind of tsimmes. I am a humble man, Captain Viskovsky, and I wouldn’t want the princess to come to me like the Mother of God from an icon and look at me with eyes like silver spoons. Remember what we’d agreed on? Yes or no? I don’t mind if it’s a woman pushing thirty, that’s what we agreed on, or thirty-five, a housewife who’s having a hard time making ends meet and who’d take the grain and the bread I’d give her, along with the pound of cocoa for her kids, without yelling, “You goddamn bootlegger, you dirtied me, you used me!”

VISKOVSKY: There’s still the younger Mukovnina.

DIMSHITS: That one’s a liar. I don’t like women who are liars. . . . Why don’t you introduce me to the older one?

VISKOVSKY: Maria Nikolayevna has joined the army.

DIMSHITS: Now, Maria Nikolayevna, that’s some woman! A feast for the eyes, a person you can talk to.... Why did you wait till she was gone?

VISKOVSKY: It’s a tough call with her, Dimshits. Very tough.

EVSTIGNEVICH: “You got blown up without even getting shook up!” he said to me. “No suffering for you!” That’s the kind of crap he was saying to me.

[A shot is heardfar away, then nearer. The shots become more frequent.

DIMSHITS turns out the light and locks the doors.

Light shining through the windows, green glass, frost.]

EVSTIGNEVICH [In a whisper.]: You call this a life?

BISHONKOV: Goddamn it!

EVSTIGNEVICH: The damn sailors are on the loose again.

BISHONKOV: This is no life, Isaac Markovich.

[There is a knock at the door. Silence. VISKOVSKY takes a revolver out of his pocket and releases the safety catch. A second knock.]

BISHONKOV: Who’s there?

FILIP [From outside.]: Its me.

EVSTIGNEVICH: Me who? Your name!

FILIP: Open up!

DIMSHITS: Its Filip.

[BISHONKOV opens the door. An enormous, shapeless man enters the room and slumps wordlessly against the wall. A light flares up.

Half of FILIP s face is scarred with burnedflesh. His head has lolled onto his chest, his eyes are closed.]

DIMSHITS: You been shot?

FILIP: No.

EVSTIGNEVICH: You look wasted, Filip.

[EVSTIGNEVICH and BISHONKOV help FILIP out of his sheepskin coat and his outer clothes, and then take off his rubber suitfilled with bootlegged vodka and throw it on the floor. The armless rubber dummy—a second FILIP—is lying on the floor. FILIP s fingers are lacerated, covered in blood.]

EVSTIGNEVICH: TheyVe really worked him over! And they call themselves human beings!

FILIP [His head still lolling on his chest.]: A man was following me ... following me . . .

EVSTIGNEVICH: Following you?

FILIP: Yeah.

EVSTIGNEVICH: A man wearing leggings?

FILIP: Yeah.

EVSTIGNEVICH: Were done for____

DIMSHITS: What, you brought him all the way here?

FILIP: No I didnt bring him all the way here. There was shooting, so he ran off to see what was up.

[BISHONKOV and EVSTIGNEVICH lift up the wounded man and lay him on the bed.]

EVSTIGNEVICH: I told you we’d have got through with no hassle.

[FILIP is groaning. Faraway shots, machine gun fire, then silence.]

EVSTIGNEVICH: You call this a life?

BISHONKOV: Goddamn it!

VISKOVSKY: Wheres the ring, Maestro?

DIMSHITS: That rings got you champing at the bit!

Scene Two

A room in the apartment ofMukovnin, a former aristocrat and quartermaster general in the Czars army. The room serves as bedroom, dining room, and office—a typical room of the 1920s. Elegant antiquefurniture, but next to it a little makeshift tin stove, its pipes extending through the whole room. A pile of thinly chopped logs are stashed beneath the stove. Behind a screen, LUDMILA, his daughter, is dressing for the theater. Curling tongs are heating over an oil lamp. KATYA (KATERINA VYACHESLAVOVNA), also a former aristocrat, is ironing a dress.

LUDMILA: Darling, you are behind the times! Nowadays the audience at the Marinsky Theater is extremely elegant. The Krimov sisters and Varya Meindorf look as if they’ve just stepped out of a fashion magazine, and I can assure you that they live in the lap of luxury. KATYA: No one is living well nowadays. No one.

LUDMILA: There you are wrong. You are behind the times, Katya, darling. The gentlemen of the proletariat are acquiring a taste for style. They want a woman to be elegant. Why, do you think Redko likes it when you run around dressed like a fishwife? You can bet your life he doesn’t! No, Katya, darling, the gentlemen of the proletariat are definitely acquiring a taste for style!

KATYA: I wouldn’t overdo the mascara if I were you, and I’m not at all sure about that sleeveless dress.

LUDMILA: You seem to be forgetting that I am being escorted by a gentleman.

KATYA: Well, your gentleman friend wouldn’t know the difference. LUDMILA: There you are wrong. He does have taste, and he is passionate too!

KATYA: Redheaded fellows are hot-blooded, everyone knows that. LUDMILA: What do you mean, redheaded! My Dimshits’s hair is chocolate brown.

KATYA: Does he really have that much money? I think Viskovsky is mistaken.

LUDMILA: Dimshits has six thousand pounds sterling to his name.

KATYA: What? He s conned all that from the cripples?

LUDMILA: He has conned nothing from the cripples! That is merely hearsay. They have formed a cooperative association, and all the profits are shared. Until recently, no crippled veteran was ever searched, so it was easier for them to carry things.

KATYA: Only a Jew could come up with a scheme like that!

LUDMILA: Oh, Katya, darling. Better a Jew than a cocaine addict, like most of the men of our set. This one is a cocaine addict, another has gotten himself shot, another has ended up as a coachman standing outside the Europa waiting for fares. Par le temps qui court
²
Jews have become the safest bet.

KATYA: I suppose you will not find a safer bet than Dimshits.

LUDMILA: Do not forget we are women, ma chere. We are just women, tired of “trolloping around,” as the janitors wife downstairs always says. We cannot just sit here twiddling our thumbs, can we? We cant—

KATYA: Are you thinking of having children?

LUDMILA: I shall have two little redheads.

KATYA: So we are talking marriage?

LUDMILA: You have to with these Jews, Katya, darling. They are obsessed with family—they lean on their wives, and their children are everything to them. Not to mention that a Jew is always grateful to the woman who has given herself to him. Its a really noble trait, this respect they have for women.

KATYA: How is it that you know the Jews so well?

LUDMILLA: Well, you know—from back then. When Papa commanded the troops back in Vilna, the whole place was full of Jews. Papa had a rabbi as a friend. They are all philosophers, these rabbis of theirs.

KATYA [Hands her the ironed dress over the screen.]: Youll be dining after the theater?

LUDMILA: I wouldn’t be surprised.

KATYA: I’m sure youll have a drink or two, Ludmila Nikolayevna, passions will be excited, and the mists will engulf you.

LUDMILA: No mists will engulf me, ma chere. I shall let him call on me for a month, maybe two—that is how one handles Jews. I have not come to a decision yet as to whether I shall allow myself to be kissed.

[GENERAL MUKOVNIN enters, wearing felt boots. His greatcoat with a red lining has been refashioned into a dressing gown.

He is wearing two pairs of spectacles.]

MUKOVNIN [Reads.]: “On the sixteenth day of October, in the year 1820, in the reign of our blessed Czar Alexander, a company of Life Guards from the Semyonovsky Regiment, forgetting their oath of allegiance and the military obedience they owed their commanders, had the effrontery to gather together without authorization at an advanced nocturnal hour. “ [He raises his head.] And how did they forget their oath of allegiance? They forgot it by going out into the corridors after roll call with the intention of asking the company commander to call off the upcoming routine inspections of all the barracks. The regimental commander sometimes ordered these strict inspections. For this so-called mutiny, they were punished. And do you know how? [He reads.] “The men of lower rank, the ones considered ringleaders, were deprived of their lives, and the men of the first and second companies were sentenced to hang for setting a bad example, and the private soldiers that were specified in paragraph three had to run the gauntlet through the battalion six times, as an example to their peers.”

LUDMILA: Oh, that’s awful!

KATYA: We all know that there was much cruelty in the old days.

LUDMILA: If you ask me, the Bolsheviks would love Papas book. They can use it most effectively to rant against the old army.

KATYA: All the Bolsheviks care about is the here and now.

MUKOVNIN: I am dividing the Semyonovsky tragedy into two chapters: the first is an analysis of the reasons for the mutiny, and the second a description of the insurrection, the torture, and banishment to the mines. My book will be a history of the barracks. It wont be a history of nations, but a history of all the Ivans and Sergeys that were handed over to Arakcheyev and sent off for twenty years of hard labor in military camps.*

LUDMILA: Papa, you must read Katya the chapter on Czar Paul. If Tolstoy were alive today, he’d be impressed. I am sure of it.

KATYA: All the newspapers care about is the here and now.

MUKOVNIN: Without knowledge of the past there is no road to the future. The Bolsheviks are continuing the work of Grand Prince Ivan Kalita,unifying the Russian lands. They need skilled officers like myself, even if only to inform them of the mistakes we made.

[The doorbell rings. There is bustling in the font hall.