The Complete Works of Isaac Babel Reprint Edition by Isaac Babel, Nathalie Babel, Peter Constantine (56 page)

*The commander of the Sixth Cavalry Division.

t Actually Nikolai Petrovich Kolesov, commander of the Third Brigade.

with his saber, I tag along behind the staff, we await reports, but they advancing, doing bypass maneuvers.

The battle for Barshchovitse. After a day of fluctuations, Polish columns manage in the evening to break through to Lvov. When Apanasenko saw this, he went mad, he is shaking, the brigades are going full force even though they are dealing with a retreating enemy, and the brigades stretch out in endless ribbons, three cavalry brigades are hurled into the attack, Apanasenko is triumphant, snorts, sends out Litovchenko as the new commander of the Third Brigade to replace Kolesnikov, who’s been wounded, you see them, there they are, go finish them off, they re running. He meddles in the artillery action, interferes with the orders of the battery commanders, feverish, they were hoping to repeat what had happened at Zadvurdze, but it wasnt to be. Swamps on one side, ruinous fire on the other. March to Ostrov, the Sixth Cavalry Division is supposed to take Lvov from the southeast.

Gigantic losses among the command personnel: Korotchayev, heavily wounded, his adjutant, a Jew, was killed, the commander of the Thirty-fourth Regiment wounded, all the commissars of the Thirty-first Regiment out of action, all the chiefs of staff wounded, above all Budyonnys commanders.

The wounded crawl onto tachankas. This is how we re going to take Lvov, the reports to the army commander are written in the grass, brigades gallop, orders in the night, again forests, bullets buzz, artillery fire chases us from one place to another, miserable fear of airplanes, get down off your horse, a bomb’s about to explode, there’s a revolting sensation in your mouth. Nothing to feed the horses with.

I see now what a horse means to a Cossack and a cavalryman.

Unhorsed cavalrymen on the hot dusty roads, their saddles in their arms, they sleep like corpses on other men’s carts, horses are rotting all around, all that’s talked about is horses, the customs of barter, the excitement, horses are martyrs, horses are sufferers—their saga, I myself have been gripped by this feeling, every march is an agony for the horse.

Apanasenko’s visits to Budyonny with his retinue. Budyonny and Voroshilov at a farm, they sit at a table. Apanasenko’s report, standing at attention. The failure of the special regiment: they had planned an attack on Lvov, set out, the special regiment’s sentry post was, as always, asleep, it was taken down, the Poles rolled their machine guns within a

hundred paces, rounded up the horses, wounded half the regiment.

The Day of the Transfiguration of Our Savior Jesus Christ—19 August—in Barshchovitse, a butchered, but still breathing, village, peace, a meadow, a flock of geese (we dealt with them later—Sidorenko or Yegor chopped up the geese on a block with their sabers), we eat boiled goose. That day, white as they were, they beautified the village, on the green meadows the villagers, festive but feeble, spectral, barely able to crawl out of their hovels, silent, strange, dazed, and completely cowed.

There is something quiet and oppressive about this holiday.

The Uniate priest in Barshchovitse. A ruined, defiled garden, Budyonny’s headquarters had been here, and smashed, smoked-out beehives, this is a terrible, barbaric custom—I remember the broken frames, thousands of bees buzzing and fighting by the destroyed hives, their panicking swarms.

The priest explains to me the difference between the Uniate and the Russian Orthodox faith. Sheptitsky is a tall man, he wears a canvas cassock. A plump man, a dark, chubby face, shaved cheeks, sparkling little eyes with a sty.

The advance on Lvov. The batteries are drawing nearer and nearer. A rather unsuccessful skirmish by Ostrov, but still the Poles withdraw. Information on Lvovs defenses—schoolmasters, women, adolescents. Apanasenko will butcher them—he hates the intelligentsia, with him its deep-rooted, he wants an aristocracy on his own terms, a muzhik and Cossack state.

August 21, a week of battle has passed, our units are four versts outside Lvov.

An order: the whole Red Cavalry is being put under the command of the Western Front.* They are moving us north to Lublin. There will be an attack there. They are withdrawing the army, now four versts from the town, even though it took so much time for them to get there. The Fourteenth Army will replace us. What is this? Madness, or the impossibility of a town being taken by the cavalry? I will remember the forty-five-verst ride from Barshchovitse to Adamy for the rest of my life. I on my little piebald horse, Sheko^ in his carriage, heat and dust,

the dust of the Apocalypse, stifling clouds, endless lines of transport carts, all the brigades are on the move, clouds of dust from which there is no escape, one is afraid of suffocating, shouting all around, movement, I ride with a squadron over fields, we lose Sheko, the most horrendous part of it begins, the ride on my little horse which cant keep up, we ride endlessly and always at a trot, I am completely exhausted, the squadron wants to overtake the transport carts, we overtake them, I am afraid of being left behind, my horse is drifting along like a bit of fluff, to the point of inertia, all the brigades are on the move, all the artillery, they Ve each left one regiment behind as a covering force, and these regiments are to reunite with the division at the onset of darkness. In the night we ride through silent, dead Busk. What is special about Galician towns? The mixture of the dirty, ponderous East (Byzantium and the Jews) with the beer-drinking German West. Fifteen km. from Busk. I cant hold out anymore. I change my horse. It turns out that there is no covering on the saddle. Riding is torture. I keep constantly changing position. A rest stop in Kozlov. A dark hut, bread with milk. A peasant, a warm and pleasant person, was a prisoner of war in Odessa, I lie on the bench, mustn’t fall asleep, I’m wearing another man’s service jacket, the horses in the dark, it’s stuffy in the hut, children on the floor. We arrived in Adamy at four in the morning. Sheko is asleep. I leave my horse somewhere, there is hay, and I lie down to sleep.

August 21, 1920. Adamy

Frightened Ruthenians. Sun. Nice. I’m ill. Rest. The whole day in the threshing shed. I sleep, feel better toward evening, my head pounds, aches. I’m billeted with Sheko. Yegor, the chief of staff’s lackey. We eat well. How we get our food. Vorobyov took over the Second Squadron. The soldiers are pleased. In Poland, where we are heading, there’s no need to hold back—with the Galicians, who are completely innocent, we had to be more careful. I’m resting, I’m not in the saddle.

Conversation with Artillery Division Commander Maksimov, our army is out to make some money, what we have is not revolution but an uprising of renegade Cossacks.

They are simply an instrument the party is not above using.

Two Odessans, Manuilov and Boguslavsky,* operational air force military commissar, Paris, London, a handsome Jew, a big talker, articles in a European magazine, the divisional chief of staffs adjutant, Jews in the Red Cavalry, I tell them whats what. Wearing a service jacket, the excesses of the Odessan bourgeoisie, painful news from Odessa. They’re being smothered there. What about my father? Have they really taken everything away from him? I have to give some thought to the situation back home.

I’m turning into a sponger.

Apanasenko has written a letter to the officers of the Polish army: You bandits, stop fighting, surrender, you Pans, or we will butcher you all!

Apanasenko’s letter to the Don headquarters, to Stavropol, there they are making things difficult for our fighters, for the Sons of the Revolution, we are heroes, we have no fear, we will march ahead.

A description of the squadron’s rest, they steal hens, the squealing of pigs, agents, musical flourishes on the town square. They wash clothes, thresh oats, come galloping with sheaves. The horses, wiggling their ears, eat oats. The horse is everything. Horse names: Stepan, Misha, Little Brother, Old Girl. Your horse is your savior, you are aware of it every moment, even if you might beat it inhumanly. No one takes care of my horse. They barely take care of it.

August 22, 1920. Adamy

Manuilov, the divisional chief of staff’s adjutant, has a stomachache. I’m not surprised. Served with Muravyov,^ in the Cheka, something to do with military investigation, a bourgeois, women, Paris, air force, something to do with his reputation, and he’s a Communist. Boguslavsky, the secretary, frightened, sits silently and eats.

A peaceful day. We march on northward.

I’m billeted with Sheko. I can’t do anything. I’m tired, battered. I sleep and eat. How we eat. The system. The provisions depot men and the foragers wont give us anything. The arrival of the Red Army fighters in the village, they search through everything, cook, all night the stoves sputter, the household daughters suffer, the squealing of pigs, they come to the military commissar with receipts. The pitiful Galicians.

The saga of how we eat. We eat well: pigs, hens, geese.

Those who dont take part are “rag-looters” and “wimp.”

August 23/24, 1920. Viktov

Ride on to Vitkov in a cart. System of using civilian carts, poor civilians, they are harassed for two, three weeks, are let go, given a pass, are snatched up by other soldiers, are harassed again. An episode: where we are billeted a boy comes back from the transport carts. Night. His mothers joy.

We march into the Krasnostav-Lublin district. WeVe overtaken the army, which is four versts from Lvov. The cavalry did not manage to take it.

The road to Vitkov. Sun. Galician roads, endless transport carts, factory horses, ravaged Galicia, Jews in shtetls, somewhere an unscathed farm, Czech we imagine, we attack the unripe apples, the beehives.

More details about the beehives another time.

On the road, in the cart, I think, I mourn the fate of the Revolution.

The shtetl is unusual, rebuilt on a single plan after its destruction, little white houses, tall wooden roofs, sadness.

We are billeted with the divisional chief of staff’s aides, Manuilov knows nothing about staff work, the hassles of trying to get horses, no one will give us any, we ride on the civilians’ carts, Boguslavsky wears lilac-colored drawers, a great success with the girls in Odessa.

The soldiers ask for a theatrical show. They’re fed His Orderly Let Him Down.

The divisional chief of staff’s night: where’s the Thirty-third Regiment, where did the Second Brigade go, telephone, orders from army headquarters to the brigade commander, 1, 2, 3!

The orderlies on duty. The setup of the squadrons—Matusevich and Vorobyov,* a former commandant, an unalterably cheerful and, from what I can see, a foolish man.

The divisional chief of staff’s night: the division commander wants to see you.

August 25, 1920. Sokal

Finally, a town. We ride through the shtetl ofTartakuv, Jews, ruins, cleanliness of a Jewish kind, the Jewish race, little stores.

I am still ill, I’ve still not gotten back on my feet after the battles outside Lvov. What stuffy air these shtetls have. The infantry had been in Sokal, the town is untouched, the divisional chief of staff is billeted with some Jews. Books, I saw books. I’m billeted with a Galician woman, a rich one at that, we eat well, chicken in sour cream.

I ride on my horse to the center of town, it’s clean, pretty buildings, everything soiled by war, remnants of cleanliness and originality.

The Revolutionary Committee. Requisitions and confiscation. Interesting: they dont touch the peasantry, all the land has been left at its disposal. The peasantry is left alone.

The declarations of the Revolutionary Committee.

My landlords son—a Zionist and ein ausgesprochenerNationalist^ Normal Jewish life, they look to Vienna, to Berlin, the nephew, a young man, is studying philosophy, wants to go to the university. We eat butter and chocolate. Sweets.

Friction between Manuilov and the divisional chief of staff.
¹¹
Sheko tells him to go to—

“I have my pride,” they wont give him a billet, no horse, there’s the cavalry for you, this isn’t a holiday resort. Books—polnische, Juden

In the evening, the division commander in his new jacket, well fed, wearing his multicolored trousers, red-faced and dim-witted, out to have some fun, music at night, the rain disperses us. It is raining, the tormenting Galician rain, it pours and pours, endlessly, hopelessly.

What are our soldiers up to in this town? Dark rumors.

Boguslavsky has betrayed Manuilov. Boguslavsky is a slave.

August 26, 1920. Sokal

A look around town with the young Zionist. The synagogues: the Hasidic one is a staggering sight, it recalls three hundred years ago, pale, handsome boys with peyes, the synagogue as it was two hundred years ago, the selfsame figures in long coats, rocking, waving their hands, howling. This is the Orthodox party, they support the Rabbi of Belz, the famous Rabbi of Belz, who’s made off to Vienna. The moderates support the Rabbi of Husyatin. Their synagogue. The beauty of the altar made by some artisan, the magnificence of the greenish chandeliers, the worm-eaten little tables, the Belz synagogue—a vision of ancient times. The Jews ask me to use my influence so they wont be ruined, they’re being robbed of food and goods.

The Yids hide everything. The cobbler, the Sokal cobbler, is a proletarian. His apprentices appearance, a red-haired Hasid—a cobbler.

The cobbler has been waiting for Soviet rule—now he sees the Yid-killers and the looters, and that there’ll be no earnings, he is shaken, and looks at us with distrust. A hullabaloo over money. In essence, we’re not paying anything, 15-20 rubles. The Jewish quarter. Indescribable poverty, dirt, the boxed-in quality of the ghetto.

The little stores, all of them open, whiting and resin, soldiers ransacking, swearing at the Yids, drifting around aimlessly, entering homes, crawling under counters, greedy eyes, trembling hands, a strange army indeed.

The organized looting of the stationery store, the owner in tears, they tear up everything, they come up with all kinds of demands, the daughter with Western European self-possession, but pitiful and redfaced, hands things over, is given some money or other, and with her storekeeper’s politeness tries to act as if everything were as it should be, except that there are too many customers. The owner’s wife is so full of despair that she cannot make head or tail of anything.