The Complete Works of Isaac Babel Reprint Edition by Isaac Babel, Nathalie Babel, Peter Constantine (61 page)

1. Description of the family. 2. Potatoes, scandal, we eat,

Prishchepa with eyes clouded with caresses. They are pitiful. We speak about the Poles. Dora Aronovna dreams of W[estern] Eu[rope], in Kiev she had been part of various circles, I tell fairytales,—Prishchepa and the high-school boy.—Evening. The weather is a little gloomy. The shtetl is inexpressibly sad, the bent father-in-law, machine-gunners come, Prishchepa courts the girl, the high-school boy goes to the syn-agogue.—3. Tishah b’Ab.—The wailing of Jeremiah. Night in the yard. Morning. The machine-gunners leave, carts, the girl from Kremenets. Ida Aronovnas pride is crushed.—What is read on Tishah bAb?

Simple. Briefly. A description of the damp evening.—A description of the shtetl.—Fright in the synagogue.—Prishchepas courting.

About the bees. A story? The figure of the old Czech. He died— stung all over.

The division commanders day. A conference day. Narrative.

1. The Frenchman. 2. The dispatch bag from the Economic Council. 3. The division commanders morning. At the headquarters. The division commanders lackeys.

Budyatichi. The meeting with the Forty-fourth Division]. The doctor, the nurse [. . .] A proud nurse, good organization of medical setup, the brigade is well organized. Orlov. Get out of here ... At that moment, elegant Sheko. A scandal with Orlov. The nurse, like a greeting from Russia, things have changed there if such women are coming to the army. A new army, a real one.—A characterization of Orlov. He throws things away.—They pack their things—culture—thermos, blanket, fold-up cots.

Isaac Babel’s reports from Petersburg—stark belletristic articles and short stories—were published in 1918, the first year of Soviet rule. Russia had been devastatednot only by World War 1’ but also by the February and October Revolutions of 1911, and the Civil War (1918—22) against the White pro-Monarchist forces. The Bolsheviks had come to power with the October Revolution, just five months before Babel’s first “Report from Petersburg” appeared in Maxim Gorky’s new magazine Novaya Zhizn (New Life). Years later, Babel remembered Gorky saying to him, an unknown twenty~one~year-old writer, the harsh words that were to have such a formative effect on him: “It is very clear that you don’t really know anything, but that you are good at guessing quite a lot. What you must now do is go out into the world.”

Babel took Gorky’s words to heart. He set out in these Petersburg reports to record with candor and specificity the overwhelming problems faced by different sectors of Russian society as the country endeavored to rebuild itself along Soviet lines. Imperialist censorship was suddenly gone, and Babel was among the first writers to address previously unmentionable subjects: the piles of the murdered overwhelming the morgues, the panicking blind and disabled war veterans, the high incidence of infant mortality, the starvation of animals at the Petersburg Zoo. “My journalistic work gave me a lot, especially in the sense of material,” Babel said in an interview fourteen years later in Literaturnaya Gazeta* “I managed to amass an incredible number of facts, which proved to be an invaluable creative tool. I struck up friendships with morgue attendants, criminal investigators, and government clerks. Later, when I began writingfiction, I found myself always returning to these ‘subjects’ which were so close to me, in order to put character types, situations, and everyday life into perspective. Journalistic work is full of adventure.” We do not think of Babel as a journalist, but in writing these probing reports, he was among the pioneers of investigative journalism—“writing pieces on a range of subjects ’’ as he himself put it, “that was to set a precedent for later journalism.”

Babel did not hesitate to criticize the weaknesses of the new Soviet government, but he maintained that it was not the socialist ideal that was at fault, but the incompetent people whom “the curve of the Revolution has thrown . . . into the for front.” As always, Babel calls things here as he sees them. He is particularly unforgiving of the “people of the past, who have jumped onto the bandwagon of the people’s cause! ”

The first seventeen pieces in this section were published in Gorky’s newspaper Novaya Zhizn, until the Bolshevik censor’s office closed it down in July 1918, an action that suggested that the newly gained freedom of the press would prove ephemeral.

The reports from Petersburg present one of the most striking pictures of life in the Soviet Union in the days following the Revolution.

FIRST AID

Every day people stab each other, throw each other off bridges into the black Neva, hemorrhage from hapless or wretched childbirth. Thats how things are, that’s how they’ve always been.

In order to save the little man in the street, who pounds the sidewalks of big cities, first-aid centers have been set up.

That is what they call it, “first” or “quick” aid. If you want to know what help you can expect in Petrograd, and how quickly you can expect it, then I can tell you.

A heavy silence hangs over the office of the “first” aid center. There are large rooms, gleaming typewriters, piles of papers, clean-swept floors. There is also a startled young lady who, about three years ago, frantically began writing pamphlets and magazine articles, and who cant be stopped, by fair means or foul. And it might well be better if she did manage to stop, because for quite a while now people have had absolutely no need for pamphlets or magazines. There is no one else in the office besides the young lady. The young lady is the staff. One could even say she is both the regular and part-time staff in one. As there are no horses, no gasoline, no work, no doctors, no caretakers, and no one to be taken care of, one asks oneself why one would need a staff.

There is really nothing available. There used to be three ambulances, “lie-downers” or “non-lie-downers,” as the crew calls them. The ambulances are still here, but they are not sent out on calls because there’s no gasoline. There hasn’t been any gasoline for ages. Recently, one of the people here finally had had enough of this dead-end situation, stuck a badge on his jacket, and marched over to the authorities at Smolny.
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The authorities responded, “The maximum quantity of gasoline dispensed to urban depots is two and a half poods It is possible that the authorities were mistaken. But what is the point of objecting?

There are also six carts at the fire station that could be used. But at the present time they are not in use. The fire department refuses to provide horses—“We dont even have enough for ourselves!”

So all they have is a single cart. To pull it, they hire two horses from a carter at a cost of a thousand rubles a month.

Of the countless emergency calls that come in, only two or three a day are dealt with. That is all that can be handled. The distances are great and the horses gaunt. To get to an accident—in Vasilevsky, for instance—takes two to three hours. The person has already died, or simply isn’t there anymore, having vanished into thin air. If the victim does happen to still be around, he is carted over to the hospital at a leisurely pace, and the cart, after a little rest, sets out again to an accident that was called in five or six hours ago. There is a special book in which all of the center’s activities are recorded—the rejection book. When a call cannot be answered, it is entered in this book. It is a thick book, a hefty book, the only book. Other books are not necessary.

The only working cart is manned by a crew of twenty-two—eleven are medical attendants, and eight are medical assistants. It is quite likely that all of them receive wages based on complex pay scales, with increases reflecting the rising cost of living.

The center has no institutions connected with its functions, no exhibits, no hospitals. In many Western European cities, such exhibits hold particular interest as a doleful chronicle of city life. They display instruments of murder and suicide and letters left by suicide victims, silent and eloquent testimonies to human hardship, to the disastrous influence of city and stone.

We don’t have that. We have nothing—neither quickness nor aid.

All we have is an undernourished city of three million, rocking wildly on the foundations of its existence. Much blood is shed on its streets and in its houses.

The center, formerly run by the Red Cross, has now been taken over by the city. It is clear that the city will have to do something.

HORSES

What used to be called the Petrograd Slaughterhouses no longer exist. Not a single bull, not a single calf is sent to the cattle yard. The only bulls there now are those outside the entrance of the magnificent, architecturally grand and resplendent main wing—the bronze bulls, symbols of power, abundance, and wealth. These symbols are now orphaned and live their own separate existence. I wander through the cattle yard. It is bizarrely, lethally empty. The white snow shines beneath the bright cold sun of Petropol.
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Faintly trodden paths lead in various directions. Powerful, squat buildings, silent and swept clean. Not a single person is around, not a single voice, not a single blade of grass on the ground. Only ravens hover above the places where blood once steamed and freshly expired entrails quivered.

I look for the place where horses are slaughtered, but for a whole quarter of an hour I cannot find a single person in the vast yards who can tell me where it is. Finally I find it. Here the picture is very different. This place is not deserted. Quite the opposite. Dozens of horses—hundreds—stand crestfallen in stalls. They are somnolent with exhaustion, and chew at their own dung and the wooden posts of the fence. The fence is now protected by iron rails. This was done to keep the posts that have already been half eaten by the horses from total destruction.

Wood, half chewed to pieces by starving animals. A nice modern symbol compared to the symbol of bygone days: bronze bulls filled with hearty red meat.

Dozens of Tatars are busy slaughtering the horses. It has become a typical Tatar occupation. Our soldiers, sitting around unemployed, cannot bring themselves to do this kind of work. They cannot, their soul rebels.

This causes damage. The Tatars are completely untrained in their trade. No less than a quarter of all the hides go to waste. The Tatars dont know how to skin horses. There aren’t enough old slaughterers left. You’ll immediately see why.

A doctor walks with me past the building where the horses are being slaughtered. Butchers carry steaming carcasses, horses fall onto the stone floor and die without a sound. The doctor feeds me boring platitudes about how there is chaos everywhere right now, and chaos in the slaughterhouses too. This and that needs to be done, all kinds of measures are in the offing.

I am aware of the terrible statistics. In the past, thirty to forty horses a day were slaughtered—now the slaughterhouse accommodates five hundred to six hundred horses daily. In January a thousand horses were slaughtered, for March we anticipate ten thousand. The reason: no fodder. The Tatars will pay a thousand, fifteen hundred, two thousand rubles for an emaciated horse. The quality of the slaughtered horses has risen dramatically. In the past, only old and dying horses came to the slaughterhouse. Now you see magnificent working steeds, three- and four-year-olds, being brought in’ for slaughter. Everyone is selling off their horses: cabbies, carters, private horse owners, local peasants. The “dehorsification” process is advancing with incredible speed, and this before spring, before the work season has begun. We have been losing our steam-power capacity at a catastrophic rate, and animal power, so vital to us, is going the same way. Will anything be left?

Figures show that since October (the month in which the great increase of slaughtering was first registered), enough horses were killed to keep slaughterers busy under normal circumstances for a period of twelve to fifteen years.

I leave the horses’ place of rest and head over to the Khutorok Tavern, which is across from the slaughterhouses. It is lunchtime. The tavern is full of Tatars—slaughterers and merchants. The scent of blood, strength, and contentment emanates from them. The sun shines outside the window, thawing the dirty snow and dancing on the dull panes. The sun pours its rays over the scraggly Petrograd market, over the small frozen fish, over the frozen cabbages, over the Yu-Yu cigarettes and the Oriental guzinaki
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In the tavern, strapping Tatars chatter in their own language and order two rubles’ worth of preserves with their tea. A little muzhik squeezes in next to me. He winks at me, and says that nowadays a Tatar earns himself around five thousand rubles a month, even ten. “They’ve bought up every single horse, down to the last one!”

Later, I find out that the Russians too are beginning to wise up. They are also joining in. “What d’you expect? In the old days it was the Tatars who ate horses, now the whole country is eating horses, even the masters!”

The sun is shining. A strange thought enters my head: Everyone’s doing badly, we’re all at the end of our tether. Only the Tatars are doing fine—the merry gravediggers of prosperity! But then the thought vanishes. These Tatars? They’re nothing but gravediggers.

PREMATURE BABIES

Heated white walls shine with an even light.

* The Fontanka River, meager pools seeping over its marshy bed, cannot be seen. The heavy brocade of the embankment, swamped with swollen heaps of pulpy, loose, black, snowy filth, cannot be seen.

Women in gray or black dresses are shuffling about noiselessly in the warm, high-ceilinged rooms. Along the walls, in small metal tubs, lie silent little monsters with wide, serious eyes, the dwarfed fruit of corroded, soulless, stunted women, women from the wood-and-plank outskirts immersed in fog.

When they are brought in, the premature babies weigh a pound, a pound and a half. A chart hangs on each tub—the infant’s life curve. These days it isnt really a curve. The lines are leveled out. Life in the one-pound bodies flickers spectrally and despondently.

Another imperceptible facet of our decline: the women who breastfeed the children keep giving them less and less milk.