The Complete Works of Isaac Babel Reprint Edition by Isaac Babel, Nathalie Babel, Peter Constantine (8 page)

A former student returns to the library in the figure of a wounded officer with a black sling. His wound is healing. He is young and rosy. He has dined and taken a walk along the Nevsky Prospekt. The Nevsky Prospekt is already lit. The late edition of the Stock Exchange News has already set off on its triumphal march around town. Grapes lying on millet are displayed in the store window at Eliseyevs. It is still too early to make the social rounds. The officer goes to the public library for old times
^,
sake, stretches out his long legs beneath the table where he is sitting, and reads Apollon. Its somewhat boring. A female student is sitting opposite him. She is studying anatomy, and is copying a picture of a stomach into her notebook. It looks like she might be of Kalugan origin—large-faced, large-boned, rosy, dedicated, and robust. If she has a lover, that would be perfect—shes good material for love.

Beside her is a picturesque tableau, an immutable feature of every public library in the Russian Empire: a sleeping Jew. He is worn out. His hair is a fiery black. His cheeks are sunken. There are bumps on his forehead. His mouth is half open. He is wheezing. Where he is from, nobody knows. Whether he has a residence permit or not, nobody knows. He reads every day. He also sleeps every day. There is a terrible, ineradicable weariness in his face, almost madness. A martyr to books—a distinct, indomitable Jewish martyr.

Near the librarians’ desk sits a large, broad-chested woman in a gray blouse reading with rapturous interest. She is one of those people who suddenly speaks with unexpected loudness in the library, candidly and ecstatically overwhelmed by a passage in the book, and who, filled with delight, begins discussing it with her neighbors. She is reading because she is trying to find out how to make soap at home. She is about forty-five years old. Is she sane? Quite a few people have asked themselves that.

There is one more typical library habitue: the thin little colonel in a loose jacket, wide pants, and extremely well-polished boots. He has tiny feet. His whiskers are the color of cigar ash. He smears them with a wax that gives them a whole spectrum of dark gray shades. In his day he was so devoid of talent that he didn’t manage to work his way up to the rank of colonel so that he could retire a major general. Since his retirement he ceaselessly pesters the gardener, the maid, and his grandson. At the age of seventy-three he has taken it into his head to write a history of his regiment.

He writes. He is surrounded by piles of books. He is the librarians’ favorite. He greets them with exquisite civility. He no longer gets on his family’s nerves. The maid gladly polishes his boots to a maximal shine.

Many more people of every kind come to the public library. More than one could describe. There is also the tattered reader who does nothing but write a luxuriant monograph on ballet. His face: a tragic edition of Hauptmann’s. His body: insignificant.

There are, of course, also bureaucrats riffling through piles of The Russian Invalid and the Government Herald. There are the young provincials, ablaze as they read.

It is evening. The reading room grows dark. The immobile figures sitting at the tables are a mix of fatigue, thirst for knowledge, ambition.

Outside the wide windows soft snow is drifting. Nearby, on the Nevsky Prospekt, life is blossoming. Far away, in the Carpathian Mountains, blood is flowing.

C’est la vie.

There are nine people. All waiting to see the editor. The first to J enter the editors office is a broad-shouldered young man with a loud voice and a bright tie. He introduces himself. His name: Sardarov. His occupation: rhymester. His request: to have his rhymes published. He has a preface written by a well-known poet. And if need be, an epilogue, too.

The editor listens. He is an unruffled, pensive man, who has seen a thing or two. He is in no rush. The upcoming issue has gone to press. He reads through the rhymes:

0
, 
dolefully the Austrian Kaiser groans,

And I too emit impatient moans.

The editor says that, unfortunately, for this reason and that, and so on. The magazine is currently looking for articles on cooperatives or foreign affairs.

Sardarov juts out his chest, excuses himself with exquisite politeness bordering on the caustic, and noisily marches out.

The second person to enter the editor’s office is a young lady— slim, shy, very beautiful. She is there for the third time. Her poems are not intended for publication. All she wants to know, and absolutely nothing more, is if there’s any point in her continuing to write. The editor is extremely pleasant to her. He sometimes sees her walking along the Nevsky Prospekt with a tall gentleman who, from time to time, gravely buys her half a dozen apples. His gravity is ominous. Her poems testify to this. They are a guileless chronicle of her life.

“You want my body,” the girl writes. “So take it, my enemy, my friend! But wheit will my soul find its dream?”

“Hell be getting his hands on your body any day now, thats pretty clear!” the editor thinks. “Your eyes look so lost, weak, and beautiful. I doubt your soul will be finding its dream anytime soon, but youll definitely make quite a spicy woman!”

In her poems the girl describes life as “madly frightening” or “madly marvelous,” in all its little aggravations: “Those sounds, sounds, sounds that me enfold, those sounds eternal, so drunken and so bold.” One thing is certain: once the grave gentlemans enterprise comes to fruition, the girl will stop writing poetry and start visiting midwives.

After the girl, Lunev, a small and nervous man of letters, enters the editors office. Here things get complicated. On a former occasion Lunev had blown up at the editor. He is a talented, perplexed, hapless family man. In his fluster and scramble for rubles he is unable to discriminate who he can afford to shout at and who not. First he blew up at the editor, and then, to his own and the editors amazement, handed over the manuscript, suddenly realizing how foolish all this was, how hard life was, and how unlucky he was, oh, how very unlucky! He had already begun having palpitations in the waiting room, and now the editor informed him that his “little daubs” weren’t all that bad, but, au fond\ you couldn’t really classify them as literature, they were, well . . . Lunev feverishly agreed, unexpectedly muttering, “Oh, Alexander Stepanovich! You are such a good man! And all the while I was so horrible to you! But it can all be seen from another perspective! Absolutely! That is all I want to elucidate, there is more to it than meets the eye, I give you my word of honor!” Lunev turns a deep crimson, scrapes together the pages of his manuscript with quaking fingers, endeavoring to be debonair, ironic, and God knows what else.

After Lunev, two stock figures found in every editorial office come in. The first is a lively, rosy, fair-haired lady. She emits a warm wave of perfume. Her eyes are naive and bright. She has a nine-year-old son, and this son of hers, “you wouldn’t believe it, but he simply writes and writes, day and night, at first we didn’t pay any attention, but then all our friends and acquaintances were so impressed, and my husband, you know, he works in the Department of Agricultural Betterment, a very practical man, you know, he will have nothing to do with modern literature, not Andreyev, not Nagrodskaya, but even he couldn’t stop laughing—I have brought along three notebooks. ...”

The second stock figure is Bykhovsky. He is from Simferopol. He is a very nice, lively man. He has nothing to do with literature, he doesn’t really have any business with the editor, he doesn’t really have anything to say to him, but he is a subscriber, and has dropped by for a little chat and to exchange ideas, to immerse himself in the hurly-burly of Petrograd life. And he is immersing himself. The editor mumbles something about politics and cadets, and Bykhovsky blossoms, convinced that he is taking an active part in the nations public life.

The most doleful of the visitors is Korb. He is a Jew, a true Ahasuerus. He was born in Lithuania, and had been wounded in a pogrom in one of the southern towns. From that day on his head has been hurting very badly. He went to America. During the War he somehow turned up in Antwerp and, at the age of forty-four, joined the French Foreign Legion. He was hit on the head in Maubeuge. Now it won’t stop shaking. Korb was somehow evacuated to Russia, to Petrograd. He gets a pension from somewhere, rents a ramshackle little place in a stinking basement in Peski, and is writing a play called The Czar of Israel. Korb has terrible headaches, he cannot sleep at night, and paces up and down in his basement, deep in thought. His landlord, a plump, condescending man who smokes black four-kopeck cigars, was angry at first, but then was won over by Korb’s gentleness and his diligence at writing hundreds of pages, and finally came to like him. Korb wears an old, faded Antwerp frock coat. He doesn’t shave his chin, and there is a tiredness and fanatical determination in his eyes. Korb has headaches, but he keeps on writing his play, and the plays opening line is: “Ring the bells, for Judah hath perished!”

After Korb, three remain. One is a young man from the provinces. He is unhurried, lost in thought, takes a long time to settle into a chair, and stays settled there for a long time. His sluggish attention comes to rest on the pictures on the wall, the newspaper clippings on the table, the portraits of the staff. What is it exactly that he wants?—It is not that he really wants anything . . . He worked for a newspaper—What newspaper?—A newspaper in the provinces ... Well, all he really wants to know is what the circulation of this magazine is and how much it pays. The young man is told that such information is not handed out to just anybody. If he were a writer, that would be another matter, if not, well then . . . The young man says that he isn’t really a writer or anything, and that he hasn’t really done this kind of work before, but he could take to, well, working as an editor, for instance.

The young “editor” exits, and Smursky enters. He too is a man with a background. He worked as an agriculturist in the district of Kashin in the province of Tver. A tranquil district, a wonderful province! But Smursky was drawn to Petrograd. He applied for a position as an agriculturist, and also submitted twenty manuscripts to an editor. Two had been accepted, and Smursky had come to the conclusion that his future lay in literature. Now he is no longer applying for a position as an agriculturist. He walks about town in a morning coat with his briefcase in hand. He writes a lot, and every day, but little is ever published.

The ninth visitor is none other than Stepan Drako, “the man who walked around the world on foot, bon vivant extraordinare, and public speaker.”

Odessa is a horrible town. Its common knowledge. Instead of say-ing “a great difference,” people there say “two great differences,” and “
tuda i syuda
,”* [here and there] they pronounce “
tudoyu i syudoyu
\ And yet I feel that there are quite a few good things one can say about this important town, the most charming city of the Russian Empire. If you think about it, it is a town in which you can live free and easy. Half the population is made up of Jews, and Jews are a people who have learned a few simple truths along the way. Jews get married so as not to be alone, love so as to live through the centuries, hoard money so they can buy houses and give their wives astrakhan jackets, love children because, lets face it, it is good and important to love ones children. The poor Odessa Jews get very confused when it comes to officials and regulations, but it isn’t all that easy to get them to budge in their opinions, their very antiquated opinions. You might not be able to budge these Jews, but theres a whole lot you can learn from them. To a large extent it is because of them that Odessa has this light and easy atmosphere.

The typical Odessan is the exact opposite of the typical Petrogradian. Nowadays it is a cliche how well Odessans do for themselves in Petrograd. They make money. Because they are dark-haired, limpid blondes fall in love with them. And then, Odessans have a tendency to settle on the Kamenno-Ostrovsky Prospect. People will claim that what I am saying smacks of tall tales. Well, I assure you that these are not tall tales! There is much more to this than meets the eye. Dark-haired Odessans simply bring with them a little lightness and sunshine.

But I have a strong hunch that Odessa is about to provide us with much more than gentlemen who bring with them a little sunshine and a lot of sardines packed in their original cans. Any day now, we will fully experience the fecund, revivifying influence of the Russian south, Russian Odessa—perhaps, qui sait> the only Russian town where there is a good chance that our very own, sorely needed, homegrown Maupassant might be born. I can even see a small, a very small sign, heralding Odessa’s great future: Odessa’s chanteuses (I am referring to Izya Kremer
²
). These chanteuses might not have much in the way of a voice, but they have a joy, an expressive joy, mixed with passion, lightness, and a touching, charming, sad feeling for life. A life that is good, terrible, and, quand meme et malgre tout, exceedingly interesting.

I saw Utochkin,^
a pur sang
Odessan, lighthearted and profound, reckless and thoughtful, elegant and gangly, brilliant and stuttering. He has been ruined by cocaine or morphine—ruined, word has it, since the day he fell out of an airplane somewhere in the marshes of Novgorod. Poor Utochkin, he has lost his mind. But of one thing I am certain: any day now the province of Novgorod will come crawling down to Odessa.

The bottom line is: this town has the material conditions needed to nurture, say, a Maupassantesque talent. In the summer, the bronze, muscular bodies of youths who play sports glisten on beaches, as do the powerful bodies of fishermen who do not play sports, the fat, potbellied, good-natured bodies of the “businessmen,” and the skinny, pimply dreamers, inventors, and brokers. And a little distance from the sea, smoke billows from the factories, and Karl Marx plies his familiar trade.

In Odessa there is an impoverished, overcrowded, suffering Jewish ghetto, an extremely self-satisfied bourgeoisie, and a very Black Hundred
³
city council.