The Complete Works of Isaac Babel Reprint Edition by Isaac Babel, Nathalie Babel, Peter Constantine (68 page)

Three old tailors, gentle as nursemaids, the charming M. who not too long ago lost an eye at his loom, and I who am worn out by the bitter, agonizing dust of our towns, are sitting on the veranda that extends into the night, the boundless, aromatic night. An ineffable calm rubs our sore, exhausted muscles with its maternal palms, and we sip our tea, unhurriedly and dreamily—three gentle tailors, the charming M., and I, a downtrodden but enthusiastic workhorse.

You petite bourgeoisie, as talentless and hopeless as a storekeeper’s paunch, who built these “little dachas” for yourselves, if only you could see us rest in them! If only you could see our faces, ravaged by the steel-jawed machines, brighten up!

This silent, masculine kingdom of peace, these vulgar dachas that the miraculous power of events transformed into Workers’ Retreats, embody the elusive and noble essence of careful, silent indolence, so revitalizing and peaceful. Oh, the peerless gesture of a worker’s resting hands chastely frugal and wisely deliberate! I watch with fixed rapture these unswerving, convulsive black hands, used to the complex and unflagging soul of the machine. It is the machine that has given the exhausted body its resigned, silent, and deliberate immobility. How much I learned of the philosophy of respite and the principles of resuscitating depleted energy on that noisy, clear evening, as the tailors and metal workers drank tea on the terrace in the Workers’ Retreat in Mtskhet.
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Tipsy with tea, the boisterous champagne of the poor, we slowly and fervently sweat as we lovingly exchange subdued words and reminisce about how the Workers’ Retreats came to be.

A year has passed since their birth. It was only last February that the Georgian Trade Union Commission came to Mtskhet for an initial survey. They found the dachas in a terrible state, uninhabitable, filthy, dilapidated. The Trade Union went to work with unflagging zeal to launch this blessed undertaking, the bourgeoisie pitching in to the extent its modest means allowed. As is well known, the penalties the Trade Union has imposed on storekeepers of every kind for violating labor laws have reached the comforting sum of six hundred million rubles. So a hundred and fifty million of this sum was spent turning the tumbledown dachas into Workers’ Retreats—from which it clearly follows that the bourgeoisie’s money, for which it had spat blood (emphasis on the blood), is supporting Georgia’s first workers’ spas, for which we bow our heads in thanks. There is an unshakable confidence in the air that, due to the intrinsic nature of the bourgeoisie, the influx of enforced donations will not flag, and will allow the Trade Union to unfurl a model Workers’ Town over the blossoming slopes of Mtskhet in lieu of the present dachas. Unfortunately, the grandiloquent compliments paid the bourgeoisie above are tainted by the memory of the astonishing and heroic battles the owners of the dachas fought in their war against the Trade Union. The owners threatened to go “all the way to the Czar.” And they did. Their path was long, and paved with the delicate poison of juridical pettifoggery. But “the Czar” (spelled VZIK^ in the new orthography) was prompt and just. The petitioners departed with a speed inversely proportional to the slowness of their arrival. The lesson that the dacha owners learned in their tireless quest for truth was that they had been born a good twenty years too late. An insightful lesson.

The dachas are set up to hold sixty people. The Department of Labor Protection intends to increase their capacity to a thousand, a thousand five hundred people per season, calculating a two-week stay per worker. In certain cases this stay can be extended up to a month. But one does have certain reservations, since in the overwhelming majority of cases a two-weeks’ stay is not enough for our workers’ worn-out constitutions.

The period of construction and reconstruction of the Mtskhet dachas is still continuing. Thus advice proffered with goodwill and love can be quite beneficial. For instance, the food which is, all told, healthy and abundant, should be increased at breakfast and dinnertime. Not to mention that it would be nice if they could eradicate the god-awful dormitory structure of these Workers’ Retreats. We get sick and tired of it, we who have to live in furnished rooms, offices, and barracks. What we need in the blissful two weeks in which we get to stretch our wracked and wheezing chests is a little corner of cleanliness, coziness, and with a modicum of seclusion.

A library is already up and running. That’s good. Little evening concerts will begin next week to entertain the resting workers. For the time being, we subsist on durachok
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But, by God, with what fire, with what unspent ebullience and passion we play this endless, tender game that warms us like a grandfatherly sheepskin coat. I will never forget these simple, shining faces bent over the tattered cards, and for a long time to come I will carry within me the memory of the happy, restrained laughter ringing beneath the sound of the dying rain and the mountain winds.

KAMO AND SHAUMIAN

Were my heart not fluttering so wildly with joy, I would perhaps be better able to describe what happened in a clearer and more objective manner.

First and foremost, the sentence of the Peoples Court of Ajaristan:
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Oh, what a sentence filled with dry erudition and fiery pathos, arrayed in the inexorable armor of law and frothing with the bile of indignation! The laws of the emperors now slumbering with their gods, the starched norms of international “courtesy,” the ancient dust of Roman Law, the Treaty of Krasin with Lloyd George,^ the ambiguous decrees of ambiguous conventions and conferences, and, finally, the Soviet decrees dripping with the red juice of revolt, were all contained within the incontrovertible verdict pronounced by an ordinary and grimy worker from Batum.
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Why was this done? It was done to show the thrice-miraculous passing of the camel of justice through the needle s eye of bourgeois institutions. It was done in order to compel polyglot trickery to serve the cause of truth, and nimbly to push those evasive scoundrels loafing around the shores of Batum against the wall. Messrs. Christi and Papadopoulos—virtuosos of lyrical loquacity and maritime agents with a dexterity worthy of the Knights of Malta—and Messrs. Skrembi, the shipping magnates, are now writhing in a trap which the blunt hands of a laborer set up by mashing the twigs of our shadowy history with the tempestuous blood of the present (proving that you do not have to be a professor of international law to move mountains).

At the Black Sea Transport docks the George and the Edwig are flying the red flag. The warehouses of the Knights of Malta have been requisitioned, and even the intervention of the Italian consul, appealing to the highest political echelons, has not managed to incite the clouds to release their salutary rain of transport payment.

The George and the Edwig (formerly the Rossiya and the Maria) have been smuggled out of their Russian and Georgian ports in the most underhanded way in order to sail through the Suez Canal and into the Red Sea under a foreign flag. But the world closed in on the Maltese. Three hundred unemployed ships lie moored at the shores of Marseilles, millions of tons are idly rotting on the docks of London, Trieste, and Constantinople. Thousands of sailors are starving. The shipping routes of the world have fallen into disuse, smothered by the catastrophic sport of Parisian diplomacy.
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There is no cargo for Haifa, Jaffa, or San Francisco. Europe can only load cargo in Soviet ports. And so Messrs. Skrembi, having plucked up their courage and insured their stolen ships from Bolshevik seizure, set sail for Soviet ports.

Messrs. Skrembi will receive their insurance money. We seized their ships.

The red waterlines of Kamo and Shaumian blossom on the blue waters like the flames of the setting sun. The exquisite outlines of Turkish feluccas rock around them, green fezzes burn on the barges like boat lanterns, the smoke of the steamships is rising unhurriedly to the blinding skies of Batum.

The mighty hulls of the Kamo and the Shaumian stand out like giants among the multicolored miniatures surrounding them, their snow-white decks shine and sparkle, and the slant of their masts cuts the horizon with an austere and powerful line.

Were my heart not fluttering so persistently with joy, I would perhaps be better able to describe what happened in a clearer and more objective manner.

But today we shall brush all orderliness aside, as we would brush away a midsummer fly.

Groups of old Black Sea sailors are sitting cross-legged on the wooden piers. They sit, mellow and still, like Arabs at leisure, unable to tear their eyes from the black lacquered sides of the ships.

A crowd of us climb on board the dethroned George. We are enthralled by its engine, fine-tuned like clockwork and sparkling with the red copper of its pipes and the pearly glaze of its cylinders. We are surrounded by mountains of crystal in the passenger lounge paneled with marble and oak, and by the severe cleanliness of the cabins and the aromatic paint of the walls.

“It was completely remodeled only two months ago,” the old boatswain assigned to the Shaumian tells me. “It cost them forty thousand pounds sterling. If I die on this boat, more I cannot ask of the Lord! Forty thousand pounds—how much is that in our money, Yakov?”

“Forty thousand pounds,” Yakov repeats pensively, swaying on his bare feet. “With our money, you cant even say.”

“How right you are!” the boatswain exclaims triumphantly. “And the Edwig cost just as much. Try counting that up in our money!”

“In our money,” swaying Yakov repeats stubbornly, “there is no way I can count that up.”

And Yakovs blissful, crimson face, filled with sly delight and suppressed laughter, droops toward the deck. His fingers snap ecstatically in the air, and his shoulders keep sinking lower.

“Could it be that you are three sheets to the wind today, Yakov?” the new captain of the Kamo asks him as he walks past.

“I am not three sheets to the wind, Comrade Captain,” Yakov explains. “But in the case of a case such as todays, I am in full steam, as our vessel is preparing to embark for Odessa. Not to mention, I think this whole thing is terribly funny . . . its as if—for example, Comrade Captain—you were to wickedly snatch away my wife. It isn’t that she’s glamorous or anything, but, for me, poor man that I am, she’ll do. . . . Anyway, so you’ve taken her away from me, right? Well, a year goes by, and then, after that, another year goes by, and as I’m walking along I suddenly run into my old woman, and what do I see? She’s as smooth as a hog, dressed up and wearing shoes, nice and fat, with earrings,

money in her pocket, and on her head the differentest hairdos, her face quite beckoning, an indescribable facade, and so impossibly impressive you wouldn’t believe it. So, Comrade Captain, in the case of such a case, cant I let off some steam now that the vessel is about to embark?” “Let off some steam, Yakov!” the captain answers, laughing. “But don’t forget to shut the valves.”

“Aye-aye, Captain!” Yakov shouts.

We all went back to the engine room, which was fine-tuned like clockwork.

WITHOUT A HOMELAND

During the Russian Civil War, many Russian crews stayed with their ships when the ship owners or captains defected, or when the ships were confiscated by foreign powers. In this piece, Babel describes the absurd situation of former Russian vessels being rerequisitioned by the new Soviet government, and the subsequent expatriation of the Russian crews, who were perceived as traitors to the Soviet cause.

so it came to be that we did catch the thief. The thief’s pock-y [ ets turned out to be quite deep. In them we found two freighters. The robbers’ arrogant flag descended dolefully, and another flag, stained with the blood of battle and the purple of victory, soared to the top of the mast. Speeches were made and cannons were fired in celebration. Some people did grind their teeth. But let them grind them all they want.

So let us continue. Once upon a time there were three oil tankers in the Black Sea: the Ray, the Light, and the Splendor,;
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The Light died of natural causes, but the Ray and the Splendor fell into the aforementioned pocket. And so it came to be that three days ago we pulled the Ray, now the Lady Eleonora, out of that pocket—a solid three-mast vessel carrying a hundred thousand poods^ of oil, with sparkling crystal in its cabins, a powerful black hull, and the red veins of its oil pipes and polished silver of its cylinders shining. A very useful Lady. One assumes she will be able refill the extinct furnaces of the Soviet shores with Soviet oil.

The Lady is already waiting at the Black Sea transport dock, the very same spot where the Shaumian had been brought.
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There are still gentlemen in purple suspenders and lacquered shoes roaming around her flat decks. Their dry, shaven faces are twisted with grimaces of

exhaustion and displeasure. Their toiletry cases and canary cages are being brought up from their cabins. The gentlemen curse each other in wheezing voices, and listen for automobile horns wafting through the rain and fog.

The pale flame of crimson roses—the shapely legs in gray silk stockings—the chatter of faraway tongues—the mackintoshes of portly men and the steel columns of their pressed trousers—the shrill, boisterous scream of automobile engines.

The canaries, the toiletry cases, and the passengers are packed into the automobiles and disappear. All that remains is the rain, the relentless rain of Batum, murmuring from the surface of the dark waters, covering the leaden swelling of the sky, and swarming beneath the pier like millions of angry, stubborn mice. A crowd of people also remains, huddling next to the Lady Eleonoras coal bunkers. A mute and gloomy snowdrift of wilting blue sailors’ shirts, extinguished cigarettes, callused fingers, and cheerless silence. These are the people no one cares about.

The Russian consul in Batum told the former crew of the seized ships, “You call yourselves Russians, but I don’t know you from Adam! Where were you when Russia was tottering under the unbearable strain of a lopsided battle? You want to keep your old jobs, but weren’t you the ones who started the engines, raised the anchor, and swung the signal lights during those dark hours when enemies and mercenaries were stripping our devastated Soviet ports of their last possessions? One has to earn the honor of becoming a citizen of our Workers’ State! You have not earned this honor!”