The Complete Works of Isaac Babel Reprint Edition by Isaac Babel, Nathalie Babel, Peter Constantine (54 page)

A hot day, the townsfolk are roaming about, they are coming alive again, there will be trade.

Synagogue, Torahs, built thirty-six years ago by an artisan from Kremenets, they paid him fifty rubles a month, gold peacocks, crossed arms, ancient Torahs, the shamases show no enthusiasm whatever, wizened old men, the bridges of Berestechko, how they shook, the Poles gave all this a long-faded tint. The little old man at whose house

Korotchayev, the demoted division commander,* and his Jewish subaltern, are billeted. Korotchayev was chairman of the Cheka somewhere in Astrakhan, rotten to the core. Friendship with the Jew. We drink tea at the old mans. Silence, placidity. I roam about the shtetl, there is pitiful, powerful, undying life inside the Jewish hovels, young ladies in white stockings, long coats, so few fat people.

We are sending out scouts to Lvov. Apanasenko^ sends dispatches to the Stavropol Executive Committee, heads will roll on the home front, he is delighted. The battle outside Radzivillov, Apanasenko acts heroically—instantaneous disposition of the troops, he almost opened fire on the retreating Fourteenth Division. We’re nearing Radzikhov. Moscow newspapers of July 29. The commencement of the Second Congress of the Third International, finally the unification of all peoples has been realized, everything is clear: two worlds, and a declaration of war. We will be fighting endlessly. Russia has thrown down a challenge. We will march to Europe to subjugate the world. The Red Army has become an international factor.

I have to take a closer look at Apanasenko. Ataman.**

The quiet old mans funeral service for his granddaughter.

Evening, performance in the counts garden, the theatergoers of Berestechko, an idiot of an orderly, the young ladies of Berestechko, silence descends, I would like to stay here awhile and get to know it.

August 9, 1920. Lashkov

The move from Berestechko to Lashkov. Galicia. The division commanders carriage, the division commanders orderly is Lyovka— the one who chases horses like a gypsy. The tale of how he whipped his neighbor Stepan, a former constable under Denikin who had harassed the people, when Stepan came back to the village. They wouldn’t just “butcher” him, they beat him in prison, slashed his back, jumped up and down on him, danced, an epic exchange: “Are you feeling good, Stepan?” “Im feeling bad.” “And the people you harassed, did they feel

good?” “No, they felt bad.” “And did you think that someday you might be feeling bad?” “No, I didnt.” “You should have thought about that, Stepan, because what we think is that if we’d fallen into your hands, you’d have butchered us, so f— it, now, Stepan, we will kill you.” When they finally left him he was already getting cold. Another tale about Shurka the nurse. Night, battle, regiments form, Lyovka in the phaeton, Shurka’s lover is heavily wounded, gives Lyovka his horse, they take away the wounded man and return to the battle. “Shurka, we only live once, and then we die!” “Well, okay, then.” She went to a boarding school in Rostov, gallops with the regiment, she can do fifteen. “But now, Shurka, let’s go, we’re retreating.” The horses got caught up in the barbed wire, he galloped four versts, a village, he sits down, cuts through the barbed wire, the regiment rides through, Shurka leaves the formation. Lyovka prepares supper, they want food, they ate, chatted, go on, Shurka, one more time. Well, okay. But where?

She went galloping after the regiment, he went to sleep. If your wife comes, I’ll kill her.

Lashkov is a green, sunny, quiet, rich Galician village. I’ve been billeted at the deacon s house. His wife has just given birth. Downtrodden people. A clean, new hut, but there’s nothing in the hut. Next door typical Galician Jews. They think—he must be Jewish, no? The story: they came plundering, one of them chopped off the heads of two chickens, found the things in the threshing shed, dug up things from the earth, herded everyone together in the hut, the usual story, remember the young man with sideburns. They tell me that the head rabbi lives in Belz, they finished off the rabbis.

We rest, the First Squadron is in my front garden. Night, a lamp is standing on my table, the horses snort quietly, everyone here is a Kuban Cossack, they eat, sleep, cook together, marvelous, silent camaraderie. They’re all peasants, in the evenings they sing with rich voices songs that sound like hymns, devotion to horses, small bundles, saddle, bridle, ornate sabers, greatcoat, I sleep surrounded by them.

I sleep in the field during the day. No operations, rest—what a marvelous and necessary thing it is. The cavalry, the horses are recuperating after this inhuman work, people are recuperating from all the cruelty, living together, singing songs with quiet voices, they are telling each other things.

The headquarters are in the school. The division commander at the priests.

August 10, 1920. Lashkov

Our rest continues. Scouts to Radzikhov, Sokolovka, Stoyanov, all in the direction of Lvov. News has come that Aleksandrovsk was taken, gigantic complications in the international situation, will we have to go to war against the whole world?

A fire in the village. The priests threshing shed is burning. Two horses, thrashing around with all their might, burned. You cant lead a horse out of a fire. Two cows broke out, the hide of one of them split, blood is coming out of the crack, touching and pitiful.

The smoke envelops the entire village, bright flames, plump black billows of smoke, a mass of wood, hot in the face, everything carried out of the priest’s house and the church, thrown into the front garden. Apanasenko in a red Cossack jacket, a black coat, clean-shaven face, a terrifying apparition, an ataman.

Our Cossacks, a sad sight, dragging loot out over the back porch, their eyes burning, all of them looking uneasy, ashamed, this so-called habit of theirs is ineradicable. All the church banners, ancient saints’ books,* icons are being carried out, strange figures painted whitish pink, whitish blue, monstrous, flat-faced, Chinese or Buddhist, heaps of paper flowers, will the church catch fire, peasant women are wringing their hands in silence, the townspeople, frightened and silent, are running barefoot, everyone sits in front of their hut with a bucket. They are apathetic, cowed, remarkably numb, but they’d drop everything to put out their own fires. They’ve come to terms with the plundering— the soldiers are circling around the priest’s trunks like rapacious, overwrought beasts, they say there’s gold in there, one can take it away from a priest, a portrait of Count Andrzej Szceptycki, the Metropolitan of Galicia. A manly magnate with a black ring on his large, aristocratic hand. The lower lip of the old priest, who has served in Lashkov for thirty-five years, is constantly trembling. He tells me about Szceptycki, that he is not “educated” in the Polish spirit, comes from Ruthenian

* Chefi Menie, anthologies of Old Church Slavonic writings about the lives of saints, organized by month and date.

grandees, “The Counts of Szceptycki,” then they went over to the Poles, his brother is commander in chief of the Polish forces, Andrzej returned to the Ruthenians. His ancient culture, quiet and solid. A good, educated priest who has laid in a supply of flour, chickens, wants to talk about the universities, Ruthenians, the poor man, Apanasenko with his red Cossack jacket is staying with him.

Night—an unusual sight, the high road is brilliantly lit, my room is bright, Im working, the lamp is burning, calm, the Kuban Cossacks are singing with feeling, their thin figures by the campfires, the songs are totally Ukrainian, the horses lie down to sleep. I go to the division commander. Vinokurov tells me about him—a partisan, an ataman, a rebel, Cossack freedom, wild uprising, his ideal is Dumenko,
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an open wound, one has to submit oneself to the organization, a deadly hatred for the aristocracy, clerics, and, most of all, for the intelligentsia, which he cannot stomach in the army. Apanasenko will graduate from a school—how is it different from the times of Bogdan Khmelnitsky?

Late at night. Four o’clock.

August 11, 1920. Lashkov

A day of work, sitting at the headquarters, I write to the point of exhaustion, a day of rest. Toward evening, rain. Kuban Cossacks are staying the night in my room, strange: peaceful and warlike, domestic, and peasants of obvious Ukrainian origin, not all that young.

About the Kuban Cossacks. Camaraderie, they always stick together, horses snort beneath the windows night and day, the marvelous smell of horse manure, of sun, of sleeping Cossacks, twice a day they boil large pails of soup and meat. At night Kuban Cossacks come to visit. Ceaseless rain, they dry themselves and eat their supper in my room. A religious Kuban Cossack in a soft hat, pale face, blond mustache. They are decent, friendly, wild, but somehow more sympathetic, domestic, less foulmouthed, more calm than the Cossacks from Stavropol and the Don.

The nurse came, how clear it all is, must describe that, she is worn out, wants to leave, everyone has had her—the commandant, at least thats what they say, Yakovlev,* and, O horror, Gusev. She’s pitiful, wants to leave, sad, talks gibberish, wants to talk to me about something and looks at me with trusting eyes, she says I am her friend, the others, the others are scum. How quickly they have managed to destroy a person, debase her, make her ugly. She is naive, foolish, receptive even to revolutionary phrases, and the silly fool talks a lot about the Revolution, she worked in the Cheka’s Culture and Education Division, how many male influences.

Interview with Apanasenko. This is very interesting. Must remember this. His blunt, terrible face, his hard body, like Utochkin’s.^

His orderlies (Lyovka), magnificent golden horses, his hangers-on, carriages, Volodya, his adopted son—a small Cossack with an old man’s face, curses like a grown man.

Apanasenko, hungry for fame, here we have it: a new class of man. Whatever the operational situation might be, he will always go off and come back again, an organizer of units, totally hostile to officers, four George Crosses, a career soldier, a noncommissioned officer, an ensign under Kerensky, chairman of the Regimental Committee, stripped officers of their stripes, long months on the Astrakhan steppes, indisputable authority, a professional soldier.

About the atamans, there had been many there, they got themselves machine guns, fought against Shkuro and Mamontov,** merged into the Red Army, a heroic epic. This is not a Marxist Revolution, it is a Cossack uprising that wants to win all and lose nothing. Apanasenko’s hatred for the rich, an unquenchable hatred of the intelligentsia.

Night with the Kuban Cossacks, rain, it’s stuffy, I have some sort of strange itch.

August 12, 1920. Lashkov

The fourth day in Lashkov. A completely downtrodden Galician village. They used to live better than the Russians, good houses, strong

sense of decency, respect for priests, the people honest but blood-drained, my landlords deformed child, how and why was he born, not a drop of blood left in the mother, they are continually hiding something somewhere, pigs are grunting somewhere, they have probably hidden cloth somewhere.

A day off, a good thing—my correspondence, mustn’t neglect that.

Must write for the newspaper, and the life story of Apanasenko.

The division is resting, a kind of stillness in ones heart, and people are better, songs, campfires, fire in the night, jokes, happy, apathetic horses, someone reads the newspaper, they stroll around, shoe their horses. What all this looks like, Sokolov is going on leave, I give him a letter home.

I keep writing about pipes, about long-forgotten things, so much for the Revolution, that’s what I should be concentrating on.

Don’t forget the priest in Lashkov, badly shaven, kind, educated, possibly mercenary: a chicken, a duck, his house, lived well, droll etchings.

Friction between the military commissar and the division commander. He got up and left with Kniga* while Yakovlev, the divisional political commissar, was giving a report, Apanasenko went to the military commissar.

Vinokurov: a typical military commissar, always wants things done his way, wants to put the Sixth Division on track, struggle with the partisan attitude, dull-witted, bores me to death with his speeches, at times he’s rude, uses the informal “you” with everyone.

August 13, 1920. Nivitsa

At night the order comes: head for Busk, thirty-five versts east of Lvov.

We set out in the morning. All three brigades are concentrated in one place. I’m on Misha’s horse, it was taught to run and won’t go at a walking pace, it goes at a trot. The whole day on horseback with the division commander. The farm at Porady. In the forest, four enemy airplanes, a volley of fire. Three brigade commanders: Kolesnikov,

Korotchayev, Kniga. Vasily Ivanovich [Kniga] s sly move, headed for Toporov (Chanyz) in a bypass maneuver, didn’t run into the enemy anywhere. We are at the Porady farm, destroyed huts, I pull an old woman out of a hatch door, dovecotes. Together with the lookout on the battery. Our attack by the woods.

A disaster—swamps, canals, the cavalry can’t be deployed anywhere, attacks in infantry formation, inertia, is our morale flagging? Persistent and yet light fighting near Toporov (in comparison to the Imperialist carnage), they’re attacking on three sides, cannot overpower us, a hurricane of fire from our artillery, from two batteries.

Night. All the attacks failed. Overnight the headquarters move to Nivitsa. Thick fog, penetrating cold, horse, roads through forests, campfires and candles, nurses on tachankas, a harsh journey after a day of anxiety and ultimate failure.

All day long through fields and forests. Most interesting of all: the division commander, his grin, foul language, curt exclamations, snorting, shrugs his shoulders, is agitated, responsibility for everything, passion—if only he had been there everything would have been fine.

What can I remember? The night ride, the screams of the women in Porady when we began (I broke off writing here, two bombs thrown from an airplane exploded a hundred paces from us, we’re at a clearing in the forest west of St[ary] Maidan) taking away their linen, our attack, something we can’t quite make out, not frightening at a distance, some lines of men, horsemen riding over a meadow, at a distance this all looks like it is done haphazardly, it does not seem in the least bit frightening.