The Complete Works of Isaac Babel Reprint Edition by Isaac Babel, Nathalie Babel, Peter Constantine (112 page)

638. The lobby in the baroness’s home. The furniture is in complete disorder. The house is being cleaned. Chairs are standing on tables, the coat stand has been moved to the side. Rogdai is creeping along a wall.

639. In the hallway. Rogdai stumbles into the velvet curtain separating one of the rooms from the hallway. Loud voices are coming from the room. Rogdai listens, becomes rigid.

640. Baroness Grennier’s room. Maffi, in a rage, strikes the table with his whip. The baroness, Count San Salvador, and Baron Sant’ Iago stand cowering and servile before him. Maffi shouts:

641. “YOUR STINKING DUMP HERE IS SWALLOWING EVERY LAST PENNY I EARN FROM ROGDAI’S CONCERTS! STARTING SUNDAY I WANT YOU TO RAISE THE PRICES ON THE GIRLS, ESPECIALLY HELENE!”

642. Maffi swishes his whip a few inches from the baronesss nose.

643. Rogdai has entangled himself in the curtain.

644. Maffi is shaking Count San Salvador.

645. TM GOING TO SEND YOU PACKING AND HIRE THE EX-KING OF PORTUGAL INSTEAD!”

646. The winding and flapping curtain. Rogdais body struggling among its heavy folds.

647. The disheveled Count San Salvador staggers back from his infuriated master. The old man, frightened to death, keeps crossing himself delicately.

648. Rogdai creeps along the wall. Only his hunched-over back is visible.

649. An ancient cuckoo clock in the hallway strikes four. The cuckoo waggles its head boisterously.

650. Rogdai opens the door to Helene’s room and staggers back.

651. A patch of sky in the window. The sun is rising.

652. Helenes room. Helene is lying asleep in bed with Kalnischker.

653. Rogdai creeps to the nightstand, where Kalnischkers false teeth are lying in a glass of water. He picks up the false teeth, his fingers clenching them tightly.

654. Rogdai s fingers clenching Kalnischkers false teeth. Fadeout into:

655. The eyeless marble face of Apollo.

656. An escritoire arranged with unusual thoroughness and love: an inkwell, a pen-and-pencil holder, a piece of cloth for wiping pen nibs, neatly cut paper, a paperweight, and a machine for sharpening pencils.

657. The baronesss salon. Rachel is being questioned by the policeman. Rachel is huddling against the statue. The policeman has

spent hours writing out a statement. He is writing slowly, calligraphically, forgetting everything else in the world. His handwriting is of diabolical beauty.

658. “SO YOU’RE A POLITICAL FUGITIVE, NOT A CRIMINAL ONE?”

659. the policeman asks, and, receiving a positive answer, begins once more decorating the filled sheets of paper, which look more like Japanese etchings than sheets of paper filled with writing.

660. Rachel embraces Apollo’s marble legs. The statue moves very slightly on its wooden podium.

661. Rogdai enters Helene’s boudoir. He opens her closet and riffles through the gowns hanging on clothes hangers.

662. Helene’s open closet. The personal toilette of a young woman of the world: shoes, dresses, perfume bottles, and gloves.

663. Rogdai finds the dress that Helene was wearing when they first met, the dress with the long sash embroidered with gold thread.

664. Baroness Grennier and the old gentlemen come shuffling out of the room one after the other. The infuriated Italian hurls the whip after them, and it lands on San Salvador’s bent back.

665. In Helene’s boudoir. Rogdai takes down the portrait of him that was painted in the days when he was young and strong.

666. The hook on the wall on which the portrait had hung.

667. In the salon. The policeman has finished the fourth page and is about to embark on the fifth. He unhurriedly blots the ink on the sheet filled with writing, eyes it with admiration, shakes it. Maffi enters the room.

668. “WHAT? YOU’RE STILL HERE?”

669. The policeman, hurled down from the heights of heaven:

670. “THE FRAULEIN MAINTAINS THAT SHE HAS THE HONOR OF BEING A POLITICAL CRIMINAL. THIS BEING SO, I AM WRITING A SMALL SUMMING-UP OF HER STATEMENT.”

671. Maffi yawns and waves his hands dismissively.

672. “FINISH WHAT YOU’RE DOING AND TAKE HER AWAY. IT’S TIME TO GO TO BED.”

673. Maffi takes off his evening jacket and shakes it out. It gets caught on Apollo’s hand and hangs there. A bed has been made up for

Maffi on the sofa. Arranged on a nightstand are all the things that a forty-year-old man might need during the night: wafers, a bottle of soda water, a French novel, a dressing gown, and so on. Maffi unbuttons his collar. He grimaces—the collar is too tight.

674. Rachel, still huddling next to the statue, asks Maffi:

675. “WHERE IS ROGDAI?”

676. Maffi hurls the collar away, pours himself some soda water, and says:

677. “YOU THINK FM MY BROTHER ABEL’S KEEPER?”

678. The statue of Apollo moves. Rachel, leaning against it with her shoulder, topples the enormous statue from its pedestal. The statue tumbles over, falling onto the sofa, fracturing Maffi’s skull, shattering into a thousand pieces.

679. Rachel pushes Maffi onto his back. She claws at his face, yelling:

680. “WHERE IS ROGDAI?”

681. Maffis skull is fractured, his eyes bloody. Rachel begins strangling him, but the police officer lunges at her and puts handcuffs on her.

682. Maffi, covered in blood, his eyes unseeing, is waving his arms in the air. He slumps off the sofa and crawls on all fours toward Rachel.

683. The policeman drags Rachel, who is struggling hysterically, across the floor. He pushes open a door and at the curtain separating the rooms bumps into someone’s legs.

684. Rogdai’s body, hanging from the gold-embroidered sash, has been set swaying by the policeman’s bumping into it. Rogdai’s asphyxiated face turns toward the viewer.

685. Rachel looks into the dead man’s face, throws her handcuffed hands into the air, and collapses on the floor.

686. Maffi comes crawling in after Rachel. He gropes for the revolver in his pocket, takes it out, and shoots without aiming.

687. Rogdai’s hand clutching Kalnischker’s false teeth. The bullet pierces the dead man’s hand and the fingers unclench, dropping the false teeth. The hanging man’s body turns its back to the viewer. Cut.

688. Baulin’s dingy little room. His bearded companion, crouching between the pipes, is mending his pants with stitches that are clumsy, masculine, and soldierly. From time to time he looks over to the boiler where Baulin is stoking the furnace.

689. Baulin in front of the blazing furnace. Rachel quietly comes into the cellar. She takes off her kerchief. Her hair has turned gray. She steadies herself on the wall. After a few moments of silence she asks without raising her head:

690. “WHERE SHALL WE GO TO NOW?”

691. The flame of the burning coals. Baulin answers:

692. “BACK TO RUSSIA!”

693. Among the tangle of pipes, the bearded mans face bent over his pants. His eyes dart in Baulins direction and then back.

694. The polished strip of floor, trodden by Baulin and his bearded comrade.

A TREATMENT FOR A FILM

The silent movie Benya Krik, directed by Vilner; premiered in January 1927. The screenplay is based on the Odessa stories, and is divided into sections that bear the names of individual stories. As in Babel's other screenplays, the writing style in Benya Krik reads more like a literary work than a scenario. “Dvoira throws herself onto the cringing groom, drags him toward her as a dockworker might drag a sack of flour down a gangplank, and devours him with a long, wet, predatory kiss. ” It is particularly interesting to read this screenplay in connection with the Odessa stories and the play Sunset, as it develops and varies their themes. The Odessa story “How Things Were Done in Odessa" opens with, “Let's talk about Benya Krik. Let's talk about his lightning-quick beginning and his terrible end. ” But the screenplay Benya Krik is the only surviving work in which wefind out what his terrible end is after the Bolsheviks take over Odessa in 1919.

(Part One

The King

Chief of Police Sokovich, off Duty

Chief of Police Sokovichs room. A canary is swinging in a cage, which is hanging from the ceiling near a window lined with potted geraniums.

An old woman in a cap is sitting by the grand piano, knitting. The needles move quickly. The piano is partially visible, its lacquered cover glistening.

The chief of police plays with unusual pathos—he moves his lips, lifts his shoulders, and opens his mouth.

The keyboard. Sokovichs fingers, covered in rings in the shape of skulls, hooves, and Assyrian seals, are racing over the keys.

The canary in its cage is bursting with song. Sokovich is swaying as he plays, and with him sway the room, the canary, the knitting needles, and the old woman.

Marantz, a Jew in a tattered suit, emerges from the depths of the room. He coughs, shuffles, and scrapes his feet, but the enraptured chief of police doesn’t hear him.

Sokovichs fingers pound the keys tempestuously. Marantzs doleful, indecisive face bends down toward the keyboard.

The chief of police begins playing in a tender piano. Marantz cannot contain himself. Overcome with emotion, he grabs Sokovichs head and presses it against his chest.

Sokovich jumps up. Marantz whispers something into his ear, or, to be more precise, he whispers something somewhere below Sokovichs ear.

“MAY I NOT LIVE TO SEE THE DAY I LEAD MY OWN DAUGHTER UNDER THE FLOWER CANOPY ... IF ... IF I AM NOT ...

TODAY...”

Marantz steps back, cowers, swivels on his shaky feet. Sokovich looks at him gravely. Marantz:

“THE KING IS GIVING AWAY HIS SISTER TODAY. EVERYONE

WILL GET BLIND DRUNK, AND YOU CAN PULL OFF AN

EXCELLENT RAID!”

Sokovich slams down the piano cover. He peers at the Jews grimacing, twitching face.

A young gypsy woman with layers of tattered skirts is sitting on the edge of the sidewalk in front of the chief of police s house. She is covered in ribbons and coin necklaces. She is eating bread rolls and taking swigs from a wine bottle. Next to her a monkey on a chain is jumping up and down. Excited children are running in circles around her.

Sokovichs front door opens and Marantz sneaks out into the street. He looks around furtively, and walks away along the wall.

The gypsy grabs the monkey and runs after Marantz. She catches up with him and starts begging and coaxing him for money.

“GIVE US SOMETHING, YOUR EXCELLENCY! GIVE US SOMETHING, YOU HANDSOME MAN!”

Marantz spits and walks on. The gypsy stands looking after him for a long time. The monkey jumps onto her shoulder, and also watches Marantz walk away.

A street in the Moldavanka, the Jewish quarter of Odessa. Mendel Kriks cart comes charging around the corner. The old man is drunk. He whips the horses, and they gallop with thundering hooves. Pedestrians scramble out of the way.

Mendel Krik, known as a ruffian even in carting circles

Mendel Krik brandishes his whip. Legs astride, the old man stands upright in the cart. Crimson sweat steams on his face. He is tall, stout, drunk, and jolly.

The cart flies at full speed. “Look out!” the drunk old man yells to the pedestrians. The gypsy girl, singing, swaying her hips, comes toward him. On her shoulder the monkey is busy cracking one nut after another. The gypsy gives the old man a slight, barely visible sign.

The reins in Mendels hands. Clenched in his iron grip, they stop the horses in full gallop.

Mendels face, suddenly sober, turns toward the gypsy.

The gypsy walks past Mendel. She throws him a sidelong glance, and sings:

“MARANTZ! A HUNDRED DEVILS UPON HIS MOTHER!”

The gypsy sways her hips, pets the monkey, and sings:

“MARANTZ HAS SEEN THE CHIEF OF POLICE...

Mendel jerks the reins and drives on. Now the horses are trotting slowly.

A close-up of a flaking sign: “Horse-Carting Establishment, Mendel Krik 8c Sons.” Painted on the sign are a chain of horseshoes, and an English lady in riding habit holding a whip. The lady is cavorting on a cart horse—the cart horse is flinging its front legs high in the air.

Under the sign, two young men sit cracking sunflower seeds on a bench in front of a shabby one-story house. They sit in deep silence, staring blankly in front of them. One is a young Persian with an olive-brown face and bushy eyebrows. The other is Savka Butsis. Butsis is missing an arm, and a flapping sleeve has been sewn over the stump. With his other arm, his good arm, he scoops the sunflower seeds with unusual dexterity and bravura out of his pocket and, without even aiming, slings them into his mouth. He never misses.

Mendel Krik drives up to the house. The young men, Savka and the Persian, salute Mendel Krik silently and without turning their heads. The gates open for Mendel. The man opening them is hidden from view.

The courtyard of Mendel Kriks house is wide, and edged with old, squat buildings cluttered with dovecotes, carts, and unharnessed horses. Young women are milking cows in a corner.

Three pink, spotted udders, and womens hands, pulling at the teats. Spurts of milk splutter into the pails.

One of the girls has finished milking. She straightens her back and stretches. A ray of sun illuminates the freckled skin of her lively face. She narrows her eyes. Mendel flies into the yard with his heated stallions. He jumps down from the cart, throws the reins to the girl, and, his fat legs stumbling, rushes to the house.

The girl unharnesses the stallions with nimble fingers and slaps the muzzles of the playful ones.

His Majesty, the King

A double or, to be more precise, quadruple bed fills the room of the bride-to-be, Dvoira Krik. This giant contraption is covered with a countless number of embroidered pillows. Benya Krik is leaning with his back against the bed. The back of his shaved neck is visible.

Benya Krik is playing the mandolin. He is wearing slick, lacquered shoes, and his feet are resting on a stool. His suit bears the mark of refined gangster chic.

The voluminous bed—the cradle of the clan, of battle and love. Old Krik bursts into the room. He pulls off his boots. He unwinds his unbelievably dirty foot bindings, and stares at them in disbelief. He thinks to himself, “I cant believe how dirty some people are!” Mendel stretches his hot, sticky toes and, slightly intimidated in his sons “kingly” presence, mutters: