The Complete Works of Isaac Babel Reprint Edition by Isaac Babel, Nathalie Babel, Peter Constantine (5 page)

I always walked down the main street—that is where most of the people were.

The Sabbath I want to tell you about was a Sabbath in early spring. At that time of year, our air does not have the quiet tenderness, so sweet in central Russia, resting upon its peaceful streams and modest valleys. Our air has a sparkling, light coolness that blows with a shallow, chilly passion. I was no more than a young boy then and didnt understand a thing, but I felt the spring, and I blossomed and reddened in the chill.

The walk lasted a long time. I stared at the diamonds in the jew-elers window, read the theater posters from A to Z, and once I even studied the pale pink corsets with their long, wavy suspenders in Madam Rosalie s store. As I was about to walk on, I collided with a tall student who had a big black mustache. He smiled at me and asked, “So you’re examining these closely, are you?” I was mortified. Then he patronizingly patted me on the back and said in a superior tone, “Keep up the good work, dear colleague! My compliments! All the best!” He roared with laughter, turned, and walked away. I felt very flustered, avoided looking at Madam Rosalies display window, and quickly headed for home.

I was supposed to spend the Sabbath at my grandmothers. She had her own room at the very end of the apartment, behind the kitchen. A stove stood in the corner of this room, Grandmother always felt cold. The room was hot and stuffy, which made me feel melancholy and want to escape, to get out into the open.

I dragged my belongings over to Grandmother’s, my books, my music stand, and my violin. The table had already been set for me. Grandmother sat in the corner. I ate. We didnt say a word. The door was locked. We were alone. There was cold gefilte fish for dinner with horseradish (a dish worth embracing Judaism for), a rich and delicious soup, roasted meat with onions, salad, compote, coffee, pie, and apples. I ate everything. I was a dreamer, it is true, but a dreamer with a hearty appetite. Grandmother cleared away the dishes. The room became tidy. There were wilting flowers on the windowsill. What grandmother loved best among all living things were her son, her grandson, Mimi her dog, and flowers. Mimi came over, rolled herself up on the sofa, and immediately fell asleep. She was kind of a lazy pooch, but a splendid dog, good, clever, small, and pretty. Mimi was a pug dog. Her coat was light-colored. Even in old age she didnt get flabby or heavy, but managed to remain svelte and slim. She lived with us for a long time, from birth to death, the whole fifteen years of her dog life, and, needless to say, she loved us, and most of all our severe and unbending grandmother. I shall tell about what tight-mouthed, secretive friends they were another time. It is a very interesting and tender story.

So there we were, the three of us—Grandmother, Mimi, and me. Mimi slept. Grandmother, kind, wearing her holiday silk dress, sat in the corner, and I was supposed to study. That day was difficult for me. There were six classes in the high school, and Mr. Sorokin, the music teacher, was supposed to come, and Mr. L., the Hebrew teacher, to make up the lesson I had missed, and then maybe Peysson, my French teacher. I had to prepare for all these lessons. I could deal with L. easily enough, we were old friends, but the music and the scales—what anguish! First of all, I started on my homework. I spread out my notebooks and painstakingly began to do my mathematics problems. Grandmother didn’t interrupt me, God forbid. The tension inside her, and her reverence for my work, gave her face a dazed look. Her eyes, round, yellow, transparent, never left me. I would turn a page—and her eyes would slowly follow my hand. Another person might have suffered greatly under her persistent, watchful, unwavering stare, but I was used to it.

Then Grandmother listened to me recite my lessons. It has to be said that her Russian was bad—she had her own peculiar way of mangling words, mixing Russian with Polish and Hebrew. Needless to say, she couldn’t read or write Russian, and would hold books upside down. But that didn’t deter me from reciting my lesson from beginning to end. Grandmother listened without understanding a word, but to her the music of the words was sweet, she bowed before science, believed me, believed in me, and wanted me to become a
“bogatir
”* *The grandmother is mixing up Bogatir,; a Herculean hero in Russian folklore, with bogaty, “rich man.”]—that is what she called a rich man. I finished my lessons and began reading a book. At the time, I was reading “First Love” by Turgenev. I liked everything in it, the clear words, the descriptions, the conversations, but the scene that made me shiver all over was the one in which Vladimirs father strikes Zinaidas cheek with a whip. I could hear the whip’s whistling sound—its lithe leather body sharply, painfully, instantly biting into me. I was seized by an indescribable emotion. At that point in the book I had to stop reading, and pace up and down the room. And Grandmother sat there stock-still, and even the hot, stupefying air did not stir, as if it sensed I was studying and shouldn’t be disturbed. The heat in the room kept rising. Mimi began snoring. Until then there had been silence, a ghostly silence, not a sound. Everything seemed uncanny at that moment and I wanted to run away from it all, and yet I wanted to stay there forever. The darkening room, Grandmothers yellow eyes, her tiny body wrapped in a shawl silent and hunched over in the corner, the hot air, the closed door, and the clout of the whip, and that piercing whistle—only now do I realize how strange it all was, how much it meant to me. I was snatched out of this troubled state by the doorbell. Sorokin had come. I hated him at that moment, I hated the scales, the incomprehensible, pointless, shrill music. I must admit that Sorokin was quite a nice fellow. He wore his black hair cropped very short, had large red hands, and beautiful thick lips. On that day, under Grandmother s watchful stare, he had to work for a whole hour, even longer, he had to push himself to the limit. For all of this he got absolutely no recognition. The old womans eyes coldly and persistently followed his every move, remaining distant and indifferent. Grandmother had no interest in outside people. She demanded that they fulfill their obligations to us, and nothing more. We began our lesson. I wasn’t frightened of Grandmother, but for a full hour I had to brave poor Sorokins boundless zeal. He felt extremely ill-at-ease in this remote room, in the presence of a dog peacefully asleep and a coldly watchful, hostile old woman. Finally he took his leave. Grandmother gave him her hard, wrinkled, large hand with indifference, without shaking it. On his way out, he stumbled into a chair.

I also survived the following hour, Mr. L.’s lesson, longing for the moment that the door would close behind him too.

Evening came. Faraway golden dots ignited in the sky. Our courtyard, a deep cage, was dazzled by the moon. A womans voice next door sang the ballad “Why I Am Madly in Love.” My parents went to the theater. I became melancholy. I was tired. I had read so much, studied so much, seen so much. Grandmother lit a lamp. Her room immediately became quiet. The dark, heavy furniture was softly illuminated. Mimi woke up, walked through the room, came back to us again, and waited for her supper. The maid brought in the samovar. Grandmother was a tea lover. She had saved a slice of honey cake for me. We drank large quantities. Sweat sparkled in Grandmother’s deep, sharp wrinkles. “Are you sleepy?” she asked. “No,” I said. We began to talk. And once more I heard Grandmothers stories. Long ago, many, many years ago, there was a Jew who ran a tavern. He was poor, married, burdened with children, and traded in bootleg vodka. The commissar came and tormented him. Life became difficult. He went to the tsaddik and said, “Rabbi! The commissar is vexing me to death! Speak to God on my behalfl” “Go in peace,” the tsaddik said to him. “The commissar will calm down.” The Jew left. At the threshold of his tavern he found the commissar. He was lying there dead, with a purple, swollen face.

Grandmother fell silent. The samovar hummed. The woman next door was still singing. The moon still dazzled. Mimi wagged her tail. She was hungry.

“In olden times, people had beliefs!” Grandmother said. “Life on earth was simpler. When I was a girl, the Poles rebelled. Near where we lived was a count s estate. Even the Czar came to visit the count. Seven days and seven nights they made merry. At night I ran over to the count s castle and looked through the bright windows. The count had a daughter and the finest pearls in the world. Then came the uprising. Soldiers dragged him out onto the square. We all stood there crying. The soldiers dug a pit. They wanted to blindfold the old man. He said, “That will not be necessary!” The count stood before the soldiers and ordered, “Fire!” He was a tall, gray-haired man. The muzhiks loved him. Just as they began burying him, a messenger came galloping up. He brought a pardon from the Czar.

The samovar had gone out. Grandmother drank her last, cold glass of tea, and sucked on a piece of sugar with her toothless mouth.

“Your grandfather,” she began, “knew many stories, but he had no beliefs whatsoever, he only believed in people. He gave away all his money to his friends, and when his turn came to ask them for something they kicked him down the stairs, and he lost his mind.”

And then Grandmother told me about my grandfather, a tall, haughty, passionate, and despotic man. He played the violin, wrote literary works at night, and knew all the languages. He was governed by an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and life. A generals daughter fell in love with their eldest son, who traveled a lot, played cards, and died in Canada at the age of thirty-seven. All Grandmother had left was one son and me. It was all over. Day slips into evening, and death slowly approaches. Grandmother falls silent, lowers her head, and begins crying.

“Study!” she suddenly said forcefully. “Study and you can have everything—wealth and glory. You must know everything. Everyone will fall on their knees before you and bow to you. Let them envy you. Dont believe in people. Don’t have friends. Dont give them your money. Dont give them your heart!”

Grandmother stops talking. Silence. Grandmother is thinking of bygone years and sorrows, is thinking about my fate, and her severe testament rests heavily, eternally, on my weak, young shoulders. In the dark corner, the incandescent cast-iron stove is blazing intensely. Im suffocating, I cant breathe, I want to run out into the air, into the open, but I dont have the strength to lift my drooping head.

Dishes clatter in the kitchen. Grandmother goes there. Were going to have supper. I hear her angry, metallic voice. She is shouting at the maid. I feel strange and troubled. Just a short while ago she had been breathing peace and sorrow. The maid snaps back at her. Grandmothers unbearably shrill voice rings out in an uncontrollable rage, “Get out of here, you dreck! Im the mistress here. You are destroying my property. Get out of here!” I cannot bear her deafening voice of steel. I can see Grandmother through the half-open door. Her face is distorted, her lips are trembling thinly and relentlessly, her throat has thickened, as if it were bulging out. The maid answers back. “Get out of here,” Grandmother says. Then there is silence. The maid bows, and quietly, as if she were afraid of offending the silence, slips out of the room.

We eat our dinner without talking. We eat our fill, abundantly and long. Grandmothers transparent eyes are staring immovably—what they are staring at, I do not know. After supper, she [. . .gap in manuscript]

• • •

More than that I do not see because I fall into a deep sleep, a childs sleep behind seven locks in Grandmother's hot room.

With briefcase in hand, gaunt, unhurried, he walked down the dark street. At the corner, a tall female figure called out to him, “Will you come with me, sweetie?”

Gershkovich raised his head, looked at her through his shimmering spectacles, thought it over, and guardedly said, ‘Til come.”

The woman took him by the arm. They walked around the corner. “So where will we go? To a hotel?”

“I want something for the whole night,” Gershkovich answered. “How about your place?”

“That’ll cost you three rubles, Papa.”

“Two,” Gershkovich said.

“Not worth my while, Papa!”

• • •

He managed to haggle her down to two-and-a-half rubles. They began walking.

The prostitutes room was small, nice, and clean, with frayed curtains and a pink lamp.

When they entered, the woman took off her coat, unbuttoned her blouse, and winked at him.

“Hey!” Gershkovich said, knitting his brow. “Stop messing around!”

“You’re in a bad mood, Papa.”

She came over and sat on his knee.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” Gershkovich said. “You must weigh at least five poo^

“Four-point-three pood.”

She gave him a long kiss on his graying cheek.

• • •

“Hey!” Gershkovich said, knitting his brow again. “I’m tired, I want to go to sleep.”

The prostitute stood up. Her face had become hard.

“You a Jew?”

He looked at her through his spectacles and answered, “No.” “Papa,” the prostitute said slowly, “that’ll be ten rubles.”

He got up and walked to the door.

“Five,” the woman said.

Gershkovich came back.

“Make up the bed for me,” the Jew said wearily, then took off his jacket and looked for a place to hang it. “Whats your name?” “Margarita.”

“Change the sheets, Margarita.”

The bed was wide and covered with a soft eiderdown.

Gershkovich slowly started undressing. He took off his white socks, stretched his sweaty toes, locked the door with the key, put the key under his pillow, and lay down. Margarita yawned, and slowly took off her dress, squinted, squeezed out a pimple on her shoulder, and began plaiting a thin braid for the night.

“Papa, whats your name?”

“Eli. Elya Isaakovich.”

“A tradesman?”

“Well, if you want to call it a trade ...” Gershkovich answered vaguely.