The Complete Works of Isaac Babel Reprint Edition by Isaac Babel, Nathalie Babel, Peter Constantine (116 page)

The office of the chief of police. Tsitsin, a brown-haired man with a haggard, aristocratic face, is holding forth before three crippled war veterans, the same three men for whose benefit the shackles had been auctioned off at Cafe Fankoni. A stream of flowery words washes over

the war veterans. Shpilgagen enters. At first the chief does not pay attention to what Shpilgagen is saying, but then he becomes extremely agitated.

The chief runs down the corridor, waving his arms.

The old man with the hernia is pouring water out of a brass teapot over the fainted cashier, who has fainted. She covers the brooch with her hand.

A tank slowly rolls out of the courtyard of the police headquarters. Tsitsin’s inspired face is peeking out of one of the tanks embrasures.

The bakers, with Sobkov at their head, come running toward Tartakovsky’s office.

A crowd of thousands in Tartakovsky s yard: women, crawling children, idlers, orators. The tank rolls with arduous slowness. Tsitsin jumps out of the tank. Sobkov calls out to him:

“GIVE ME A FEW FIGHTING MEN AND WE’LL GRAB THE

KING!”

Tsitsin waves him away and runs off, the crowd trailing behind him. Only a watchmaker in tattered shoes stays behind. With a bored expression he raises his eyes, fortified with a watchmakers glass, to the sky. The sun with its flaming rays pierces the glass.

A room in the Kriks’ house. Framed portraits of Tolstoy and General Skoblev are hanging on the wall. Old Reizl is serving soup to Benya and Froim Grach. Grach dips a large piece of bread into the soup and devours it with gusto. Benya pushes his plate away. Reizl places roasted gizzards and sliced eggs in front of him, but Benya refuses everything—his mind is not on gizzards. Sobkov comes bursting into the room.

“WE DON’T NEED NO CRIMINALS!”

the baker shouts, and fires at Benya. He misses. Grach throws himself on Sobkov, pushes him down under him, and begins strangling him. Benya pulls Grach off Sobkov.

“LET HIM GO, FROIM! TRY FIGURING OUT THESE BOLSHEVIKS AND WHAT THEY WANT!”

Grach gets up. Sobkov, half strangled, remains lying on the floor. Reizl brings in the main course, stepping over Sobkovs sprawled-out body without bothering to glance down, and pours some stew onto their plates. Benya drums his fingers on the table.

FADEOUT

Two days later Muginshteins funeral took place. Such a funeral Odessa had never seen, nor will the world ever see the like of it

A cantor in somber raiment. Behind him march the little synagogue choirboys in black overcoats and tall velvet hats.

An opulent carriage, three pairs of horses with plumes on their heads, and men from the Funeral Brotherhood in top hats.

The crowd walking behind the coffin. In the first row, Tartakovsky and another reputable merchant are propping up old Auntie Pesya, the mother of the murdered man.

The crowd: lawyers, members of the Society of Jewish Shop Assistants, and women wearing earrings.

Benya Kriks red automobile is tearing through the streets of Odessa.

Tartakovsky and the coworkers of the deceased, among them the old man with the hernia and the Englishman, are carrying the coffin along the cemetery path. Benya Kriks automobile pulls up at the gates of the cemetery. Benya, Kolka Pakovsky, Lyovka Bik, and the Persian jump out. Benya is carrying a wreath.

Tartakovsky and the other men carrying the coffin. Benya and his associates catch up with them. The gangsters push away Tartakovsky, the old man with the hernia, and the Englishman, and slide their steel shoulders under the coffin. The procession collapses in disorder. Tartakovsky disappears. The gangsters carrying the coffin tread slowly, sorrowfully, with fiery eyes.

The whole screen is filled with the coffin swaying on the gangsters’ shoulders.

By the cemetery gates. Tartakovsky s coachman has left his post to answer the call of nature. His broad back is looming by the corner of the cemetery wall. Tartakovsky comes running out through the gateway. He jumps into his carriage and whips the horses.

The cantor is praying above the grave. Benya is propping up Auntie Pesya. The cantor takes a handful of earth to throw onto the coffin, but his hand suddenly stops cold. Two fellows come trudging toward him, carrying the deceased Savka Butsis. Benya turns to the cantor:

“PLEASE PERFORM THE LAST RITES FOR SAVELI BUTSIS, A

MAN UNKNOWN TO YOU, BUT ALREADY DECEASED.

The cantor, his whole body shaking, his eyes darting left and right in search of an escape, totters toward Savkas coffin. The gangsters have surrounded the corpse and warily follow the prayers, ready to stave off any attempts the cantor might make to cut corners in the funeral service. The crowd is receding. The people fall back to about ten paces or so from the coffins, and then turn and run.

Tartakovsky is whipping the horses. His coachman is running after the carriage.

The cemetery path. Tombstones, praying angels, pyramids, marble Stars of David. The running, panicking crowd.

The cantor is stammering over Savkas coffin, Auntie Pesya is crying bitter tears, and the gangsters are praying in the tradition of their fathers.

By the cemetery gates the crowd is trampling down every obstacle in its path: carriages, a tram, even transport wagons are taken by storm.

The worn-out coachman has given up all hope of catching up with his carriage. He parts the flaps of his padded coat and sits down on the ground to catch his breath.

The stream of buggies and carts. People are standing on the carts, swaying as if they were standing on the deck of a ship during a storm.

Two elegantly dressed ladies standing on a coal cart.

The red automobile plunges into the running crowd and disappears.

FADEOUT

The bare backs of Sobkov and his lanky neighbor. The movement of their back muscles.

In the bakery. Kochetkov is throwing firewood into the blazing oven and the head baker is pulling out finished loaves. Benya enters. He takes Sobkov aside.

The storeroom. Loaves of bread are cooling in long rows on shelves. Benya and Sobkov enter.

“TAKE ME TO YOUR COMRADES, SOBKOV, AND I SWEAR ON

MY MOTHER’S HAPPINESS THAT I’LL GIVE UP GANGSTER-

ING!”

Sobkov runs his fingers over the crust of a steaming loaf.

“WORDS, NOTHING BUT WORDS!”

He looks at Benya and immediately looks away again. The King comes up very close to him and lays his delicate, ring-covered hand on the bakers bare, dirty shoulder.

“I SWEAR TO YOU ON MY MOTHER’S HAPPINESS!” he repeats forcefully.

The long rows of bread cooling on the shelves. The breads perfume rolls like a green wave through the storeroom. A ray of sunlight cuts through the mist.

Benyas and Sobkov s heads close together behind a hedge of lacquered loaves.

1

Slobodka was a rough shantytown neighborhood on the outskirts of Odessa.

2

A comic twist in the invitation is that the couple marrying is announced with Russian patronymics, although the parents have clearly Jewish names. Though Veras father is called Mendel, she is referred to as Vera Mikhailovna, and though Lazar s father is called Tevya, Lazar is referred to as Lazar Timofeyevich.

3

The Provisional Government came to power after the Russian Revolution of February 17, and introduced freedom of speech, assembly, press, and religion, and instituted universal suffrage and equal rights for women.

4

Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky, 1881-1970, was a leading figure in the Provisional Government, and served as Prime Minister of Russia from June 1917 until the Bolsheviks seized power four months later in the October Revolution.

5

Prince Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov, the governor-general of Novorossia and Odessa from 1823 to 1844, had commissioned the building of this palace in the 1820s. By the time of the screenplay the palace had become an engineering institute.

6

A humorous, irreverent reference to Kerensky, Prime Minister of the provisional government in the four months leading up to the Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917. He had been a lawyer by profession.

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The End of the King

A telegram ribbon is unfurling against a black background.

The ribbon is sliding out of the telegraph apparatus:

“IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD, 1919.”

The telegraph operator is receiving a direct dispatch. Sobkov, now a military commissar, is leaning over the unfurling ribbon. A loaf of black bread, threaded through with veins of straw, lies on a table next to the apparatus, and ration-issue herring is soaking in a basin of water. The telegraph operator is wearing the kind of woolen hat that skiers and skaters wear, and his torn coat is tied over his belly with a wide, monkish cord. He is wearing a backpack filled with provisions, indicating that he was just about to leave.

The loaf of bread, the soaking herring. The telegraph operator s fingers dig into the loaf.

Sobkov reads the ribbon that is uncoiling over the machine gun next to the telegraph apparatus. Sobkov is also digging his fingers deep into the loaf, trying to fish out the doughy inside.

The telegram ribbon:

“TO MILITARY COMMISSAR SOBKOV STOP. ANITICIPATING

ENEMY PRESSURE STOP. FIND A PRETEXT TO LURE ...”

The machine gun tangled in the telegram ribbon. Kochetkov is sitting in a corner, mending a tattered boot. Without taking it off, he is trying to reattach the flapping sole with a piece of wire.

The continuation of the telegram:

“... TO LURE BENYA KRIK’S UNITS OUT OF ODESSA AND DISARM THEM STOP.”

Kochetkovs boot: Neatly twisted and clipped wire knots run the whole length of the sole along the welt.

Sobkov stuffs the telegraph ribbon into his pocket. He tears a chunk off the loaf and chews it as he walks away. He leaves the telegraph room with Kochetkov.

The dazzling telegraph ribbon is continuing to unfurl against a black background. The ribbon s end slides . . .

. . . into an uncovered car engine.

In the yard of the telegraph office. A graveyard of trucks and countless mobile field kitchens. One field kitchen is operating. A Red Army fighter is boiling cabbage soup. He is stoking the oven, using wooden wheels torn off other field kitchens. Sobkov s driver, also in the yard, is struggling to start the battered, dilapidated car. The hood is missing. The driver is trying to fix the engine, but all his efforts seem to be in vain.

The car s engine: a smoking 1919 contraption, held together with wires and straps.

Sobkov and Kochetkov enter the yard. They get into the car. Sobkov tells his driver:

“TO THE BARRACKS, ON THE DOUBLE!”

The driver turns the crank, but the engine will not start. He wipes streams of sweat from his crimson face. He glares with hatred at the engine, fiddles with some valves, and suddenly spits with all his might into the heart of the motor. Sobkov and the cook come to help him. They turn the crank, but to no avail. Finally Kochetkov manages to crank up the engine. The driver jumps into his seat, steps on the gas pedal, a gigantic cloud of smoke pours from the exhaust, and the car moves off with a groan.

The car rolls out through the gates. The driver yanks the steering wheel convulsively. The cloud of smoke grows thicker and fills the screen. Well-thumbed playing cards fanned out in a sinewy hand emerge with unusual clarity from the yellowish fog. One of the fingers on the hand is broken and crooked. A ray of sunlight pierces the cards.

The N. “Revolutionary” Regiment is preparing for the final battle

The barracks of Benya Kriks “revolutionary” regiment. The soldiers’ underwear is hanging to dry on ropes strung across the whole length of the barracks. The underwear has government stamps on it. A crooked card game is under way beneath the ropes where the govern-ment-issue underwear is hanging most densely. The two players are the goggle-eyed Persian and Papa Krik, who has donned a minute military cap with a Red Army star on it. The crowd of gangsters we have already met at Dvoira Kriks wedding is standing around the table. The Persian, convinced that his trumps are unbeatable, is dealing the cards with triumph and passion. Meek gloom is on Papa Kriks face. He deliberates for a long time, wrinkles his forehead, closes one eye, and finally “kills” one of the Persians cards.

The sun-drenched cards in old Kriks hand.

The old man despondently “kills” the Persians second card. Kolka Pakovsky s bare back leans toward him.

Kolka Pakovsky is sitting, stripped to the waist, on a high stool next to Mendel Krik. An old Chinese man is giving him a tattoo. He has already etched a mouse onto Kolkas right shoulder blade, and is now coiling a long and limber mouse tail over the shoulder.

Mendel Krik is “killing” his opponent s cards one after another. The Persians face has darkened. He pays Mendel with new gunmetal watches. On the table next to him lies a heap of new watches, fresh from a store shelf and still in their boxes.

The barracks filled with drying underwear. In the far corner stands Lyovka Bik in a blood-smeared leather apron, cutting up a recently butchered bull. He plies his trade even in the barracks. He is surrounded by “Red Army fighters” waiting for their portion. The heads of market women standing in line outside the window. They are also waiting for their portions. Lyovka hands out meat dripping with blood to the Red Army men. From time to time he skewers a monstrous piece of meat with his knife and, without turning around, hurls it out the window, as a lion tamer might hurl a chunk of horsemeat into a lions cage.

The card game is continuing. It is now the Persians turn to triumph. Twitching, guffawing, trembling with excitement, he trumps the old mans cards and demands his winnings. Papa Krik pays with new banknotes, which he pulls out of a packet tied together as they are in banks. Two notes turn out to be blank on one side, only their tops are printed. The old man calls over one of the gangsters and gives him the worthless notes.

“TELL YUSSIM HE’LL BE WASHING HIS FACE IN BLOOD IF HE

KEEPS CHURNING OUT BILLS LIKE THESE! TELL HIM TO FIX

THESE!”