The Complete Works of Isaac Babel Reprint Edition by Isaac Babel, Nathalie Babel, Peter Constantine (71 page)

13

See the previous story, “Kamo and Shaumian.”

City in western Russia, about 120 miles southeast of Moscow.

14

Part of Ajaria, an autonomous republic of the USSR from 1922 to 1991, located in southwestern Georgia, adjacent to the Black Sea and the Turkish border.

^ The non-Leninist wing of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party. The Mensheviks played a leading role in the initial postrevolutionary administration in Ajaria. “Cavalry of enlightenment” refers to their educational programs.

15

A village eleven miles from Batumi, the capital of Ajaria.

RENOVATIONS AND REFURBISHMENT

A little history. This is important, so that one can see how correctly sometimes (unfortunately not always), and with what flair, the NEP
¹
is being implemented in certain towns (unfortunately not all towns).

Last year the economy of the city of Sukhumi^ reached a point beyond which catastrophe lies. The Mensheviks ran it completely into the ground. Nor did the first months following Sovietization bring significant improvement. The Department of Municipal Economy was busy with the distribution of furniture and useless knickknacks. The hospital was on its last legs. The water distribution system, primitive and not designed to support the present growth of the city, was suffering prolonged interruptions. The registery of buildings, such as commercial and other profitable enterprises, had not been carried out. The buildings were casually falling to ruin. The electric station, ransacked by the Mensheviks, was on its last legs. And, most of all, it was not understood how vitally important it was to restore our cities, the cradle of our proletariat. The Department of Municipal Economy had neither the authority nor the means—a familiar picture. And when realization of the danger came, the clock of the citys economy was already well past the eleventh hour.

The important thing is not that one of our institutions is doing its job well: the great effort of the Russian Federation, renovating and refurbishing itself, has found here, in this small mirror, its true reflection. What is exhilarating is that this difficult and complex problem, a relatively recent one, has here been dealt with in a corner far removed from the center and nourished by the scant resources provided by an extremely bad provincial communication system.

A worker in a leather cap is sitting at the table. The tumultuous waves of “bourgeois elements” crash against this table: the solicitations of a poorly understood NEP, the dangerous insinuations of the contractors, the suspect calculations of all kinds of merchants, the capricious demands of engineers, the complaints of old women.

One of the generators at the electric station has broken down. The station is overloaded. And so an expedition is preparing to set out for Poti, where a powerful turbo-generator that was taken there by the Mensheviks is lying idle. The projected outcome of the expedition is the complete electrification of Abkhazia: adapting factories to electric power, the effective development of industry, the full provision of energy to the city, and the electrification of the villages. If the generator can be secured, all the work can be completed within a few months.

The water distribution system. The little river that supplies it does not provide it with a sufficient quantity of water. A project for a new water distribution system and sewerage has already been developed, and the preliminary surveys have been initiated. The Department of Municipal Economy is trying to acquire some forest terrain for exploitation, in exchange for which it has pledged to complete all work on the city’s water distribution and sewer system by next summer.

Finances. Six months ago, the Department of Municipal Economy had nothing but debts. Now, with its own funds, it supports the schools of the People’s Commissariat of Education, the hospital of the People’s Commissariat of Health, and the orphanage founded by the Department of Social Assistance. All this has been accomplished with a judicious system of leasing, and a trade policy without the tight yoke of taxation.

“Give us three years,” the director of the Department of Municipal Economy says, “and you will not recognize Sukhumi. Things were bad a year ago, now they are getting better, and in three years they will be very good. We are ready for electrification. The water distribution system and the sewerage will be ready in a matter of months. We have started paving the streets. We are initiating the refurbishment of the dacha suburbs. We have improved sanitation, and easily dealt with this years epidemic. By summer we will have a municipal ice factory functioning. We are racking our brains as to how to set up a repair fund for the wholesale purchase of building materials and setting up loans for homeowners and the community. We will be receiving goods a hundred percent cheaper than on the regular market. We will use these as a solid foundation for the repairs of the city buildings. The electrification will allow us to arrange a proper forestry industry as well as open a carbide factory, for which we have all the arrangements in place. Come visit Sukhumi in three years and you wont recognize the place!”

And I believe him. The three hours I spent in the Sukhumi Department of Municipal Economy—a quite ordinary provincial Department of Municipal Economy—have convinced me of the truth in these proud words.

PARIS AND JULIET

It happened not too long ago. A British flag was hoisted above the Paris. The Paris was the Russian steamer Juliet, abducted by the Whites in 1919.
²
Juliet sailed the Mediterranean and the Sea of Marmara for four years, and then joined the Anatolian Line. Last December, she sailed from Constantinople to Zunguldak for coal. In Zunguldak her first officer went to the maritime agent.

“Effendi,”^ the first officer said. “Your harbor is cluttered with ships, and my turn for loading coal is going to take a long time, and 111 be late getting to Ergli, Ejfendil”

“Yakshi/”
³
the Turk said, tapping his hand on his forehead, his heart, and wherever else custom has it.

And by nightfall Juliet set out for Ergli. She had sailed about fifteen miles from shore when Gavrilichenko, the first officer, took a revolver in each hand and climbed up to the bridge.

“Comrades!” he said to the crew. “We will not head for Ergli, but home to Odessa. If anyone has any objections, he can come up to the bridge and throw me overboard!”

No one had any objections. Gavrilichenko put away his revolvers. The helmsman turned the steering wheel. Juliet headed home to Odessa.

Juliet sailed with extinguished lights, and fought hard to survive a gale of unprecedented strength. The wind was blowing at force eleven, and in Novorossiysk, the gigantic Transbait had torn loose from its anchor. The Kapnaro and the AdmiralDe Roiter had been lost at sea, but Juliet, with her extinguished lights and broken propeller, without coal and managing to dodge her hunters, headed home for Odessa.

Juliet's light hull bobbed on the unfathomable waves, her radio and her siren echoed through the black, unfathomable depths, but the vessel with the shattered propeller, dragged in tow by an icebreaker, arrived in Odessa. And today the British flag flying above the Paris was lowered. Orchestras, Komsomols, and sailors came down to the port. The British flag fell slowly onto the stern like an injured bird, and our red flag climbed the difficult pole of our six-year ascent.

The English sailors laughed as they left the ship, and the Russian sailors laughed as they boarded it. Then everyone went down to the wardroom, drank wine, and danced on the decks, pounding their heels harder than the God of yore hurled his toothless thunderclaps.

Because all this was extremely funny. The English sailors lost nothing, handing over the goods their masters had stolen, and we won everything, regaining the steamer that had been illegally seized by its former masters.

The proletariat lost nothing on that day, and that was why everyone drank wine and stomped their feet harder than God hurled His thunderclaps.

Babel arrived suddenly and unexpectedly in Paris in I935. The International Congress of Writers for the Defense of Culture had been called together under the chairmanship of Andre Malraux and Andre Gide for the purpose of discussing ways of opposing fascism and war Over two hundred official delegates from thirty-eight countries participated\ speaking before an audience of over two thousand in Paris’ Palais de la Mutualite. The world’s foremost writers attended\ among them F. M. Forster; Aldous Huxley, Bertold Brecht, and Robert Musil

When the Soviet delegation arrived in Paris, Malraux and Gide were outraged that Isaac Babel and Boris Pasternak had not been brought to France as part of the Soviet delegation. As Malraux told his biographer Jean Lacouture in a 1972 interview; “Gide and I went to the Soviet embassy to demand\ in view of the importance of the Congress, that the French proletariat be given the opportunity of hailing the artists it most admired\ namely Pasternak and Babel. . . . The ambassador immediately called Moscow.” As a result) Stalin’s personal secretary contacted Babel and Pasternak and ordered them to present themselves immediately at an air base from which they were to he flown directly to Paris in a Soviet Air Force plane. Pasternak, bedridden in a clinic where he was convalescing from a “nervous condition” was too ill to fly, and Babel offered to accompany him by train. By the time they arrived, the conference was already in its third day, but both Babel and Pasternak gave impromptu speeches that were received with great acclaim. As Babel wrote on June 27 to his mother and sister, who were living in Brussels, “Fll spend the short time assigned to me in Paris roaming around in search of material like a hungry wolf.” Babel did not return to Moscow with the Soviet delegation, but spent a few months with his wife and daugh~ ter Nathalie, who were living in Paris.

The following pieces, published two years later in the Soviet Union in Pioner, are the result.

THE CITY OF LIGHT

Since my earliest childhood I have heard people speak of the great city. The French call it “La Ville de Lumiere”—the city of light.

In the West it is considered the capital of the world.

Our train pulled in at Gare du Nord. We stepped out onto the platform, and experienced something along the lines of disappointment. Dirt, clamor, no discernible order anywhere. Where signs cautioned “Do Not Walk” people were walking. Where it said “No Smoking” everyone smoked. The crowds were singing and laughing. A group of youngsters were kissing loudly in a din of whistle and song.

We left the station. We saw gloomy, smoke-blackened three-story houses, and piles of garbage on the streets. The day of our arrival was stifling. A yellow sun hung heavily above the hot flagstones. In sidewalk cafes, stout men had taken off their jackets and sat at ease in their shirts and vests, talking loudly, reminding me of my fellow townspeople back in Odessa—the same kind of nimble, trivial, self-assured folk.

We did not find what we had expected: there was no solemnity, punctiliousness, or ostentatious splendor, no particular sparkle, no imposing buildings. What we found was an old-fashioned jumble of a town. Next to the wide, glittering boulevards lay narrow back alleys and cul-de-sacs through which crowds thronged in loud disorder.

After we had stayed awhile in Paris, taking in all we encountered (though we didnt always know what things were, or their importance), we gradually began to understand why so many artists from all over the world come to Paris for a week or month but end up staying for the rest of their lives in this city, which itself evolved like a work of art.

The city is a thousand years old. People from every nation, from every walk of life, live here—it is a world in miniature. Its diversity is unmatched. There isnt a tongue you will not hear spoken in Paris, and no human emotion that is not expressed in one of these countless tongues. Every wine can be tasted. A Frenchman I met fervently assured me that the best Ukrainian borscht was not to be found in Poltava but in Paris, in a little side street off the Champs-Elysees. And he was right. Les Champs-Elysees—the Elysian Fields—how strange this name sounds to our ears! The French consider it the most beautiful boulevard in the world. It stretches from the Place de la Concorde to the ancient and eternal Bois de Boulogne, and in its wide, triumphant course it passes crystal fountains and green public gardens, rainwater glittering and gushing over its marble flagstones.

Little by little we cast off our initial impressions to make way for new ones. There were few children on the boulevards, but an abundance of old men and women, reading newspapers, knitting, watching children, talking tirelessly of food, and discussing what the weather was like last Thursday—I must confess that these people managed to cure me of my distaste for what is commonly known as “weather talk.” It is the city dwellers attempt, however feeble, to get close to nature.

On the streets the crowds were restless and conceited. When a street musician appears, he is immediately surrounded by people snatching up leaflets on which the words of a song are written, which they all then sing along with him. When a tram conductor speaks sharp words to a passenger, a merry hullabaloo breaks out that lasts a good half hour. One might be misled into thinking that these people lead a superficial existence. At first you think: Is it possible that these flighty, brazen people gave birth to art of such peerless beauty, clarity, and simplicity? Is it possible that these are the people who gave us Balzac and Hugo, Voltaire and Robespierre? One needs time to sense wherein lie the mystery and delight of this city and of its people, and of the magnificent country as a whole, nurtured with love, thoughtfulness, and taste.

There are publishing houses in Paris that are centuries old, and sitting in little bookstores you will more often than not find a great-great-grandson, the direct descendant of the man who founded the store some three hundred years ago, in an era when wolves and bears roamed the outskirts of Moscow. Here the accumulation of wealth, knowledge, and technical expertise began centuries earlier than it did in Russia. The culture of France does not manifest itself with fanfare—vigilance and earnestness are necessary to penetrate its depths.