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Isaac Babel
CANVALRY

Crossing the Zbruch

The commander of the six reported that Novograd-Volynsk was taken at dawn today. The headquarters set out from Krapivno, and our convoy, a noisy rearguard, stretched along the highway running from Brest to Warsaw and built on the bones of peasants by Nicholas the First.

Fields of purple poppies bloom around us, the midday wind plays in the yellowing rye, virgin buckwheat rises on the horizon like the wall of a distant monastery. Quiet Volyn bends, Volyn moves away from us into the pearly fog of birch groves, it creeps into flowery hillocks and with weakened hands gets tangled in the thickets of hops. The orange sun rolls across the sky like a severed head, a gentle light lights up in the gorges of the clouds, the standards of sunset flutter above our heads. The smell of yesterday's blood and killed horses drips into the evening cool. The blackened Zbruch makes noise and twists the foamy knots of its thresholds. The bridges are destroyed and we ford the river. The majestic moon lies on the waves. Horses plunge into the water up to their backs, sonorous streams ooze between hundreds of horse legs. Someone is drowning and loudly defaming the Mother of God. The river is dotted with black squares of carts, it is full of hum, whistle and songs thundering over the moon snakes and shining pits.

Late at night we arrive in Novograd. I find a pregnant woman in the apartment assigned to me and two red-haired Jews with thin necks; the third sleeps, covering his head and leaning against the wall. I find destroyed cabinets in the room allotted to me, scraps of women's fur coats on the floor, human feces and shards of sacred dishes used by Jews once a year - at Passover.

“Take it away,” I tell the woman. - How dirty you live, owners...

Two Jews are removed from their place. They jump on felt soles and clear debris from the floor, they jump silently, like monkeys, like the Japanese in a circus, their necks swelling and spinning. They put the torn feather bed on the floor, and I lie down against the wall, next to the third Jew who had fallen asleep. Shy poverty closes over my bed.

Everything is killed by silence, and only the moon, clasping its round, shining, carefree head with its blue hands, wanders under the window.

I stretch my stiff legs, I lie on the ripped feather bed and fall asleep. I dream about the beginning of six. He chases the brigade commander on a heavy stallion and puts two bullets in his eyes. The bullets pierce the brigade commander's head, and both his eyes fall to the ground. “Why did you turn the brigade around?” - Savitsky shouts to the wounded man, having commanded six, - and then I wake up, because a pregnant woman is running her fingers over my face.

“Pan,” she says to me, “you are screaming in your sleep and you are throwing yourself.” I’ll make a bed for you in another corner, because you’re pushing my dad...

She lifts her thin legs and round belly from the floor and takes the blanket off the sleeping man. The dead old man lies there, slumped over on his back. His throat is torn out, his face is cut in half, blue blood lies on his beard like a piece of lead.

“Pan,” says the Jewish woman and shakes the feather bed, “the Poles slaughtered him, and he prayed to them: kill me in the back yard so that my daughter does not see how I die.” But they did what they needed - he ended up in this room and thought about me... And now I want to know, - the woman suddenly said with terrible force, - I want to know where else in the whole earth you will find such a father, like my father...

Church in Novograd

Yesterday I went with a report to the military commissar, who was staying in the house of the fleeing priest. Mrs. Eliza, the Jesuit's housekeeper, met me in the kitchen. She gave me amber tea with biscuits. Her biscuits smelled like a crucifix. The evil juice was contained in them and the fragrant rage of the Vatican.

Near the house, bells roared in the church, wound up by a maddened bell-ringer. It was an evening full of July stars. Mrs. Eliza, shaking her attentive gray hair, poured cookies for me, I enjoyed the food of the Jesuits.

The old Polish woman called me “sir,” gray old men with stiff ears stood at attention at the threshold, and somewhere in the serpentine darkness a monk’s cassock wriggled. Pater fled, but he left behind an assistant - Pan Romuald.

A nasal eunuch with the body of a giant, Romuald called us “comrades.” He traced the map with his yellow finger, indicating the circles of Polish defeat. Seized with hoarse delight, he counted the wounds of his homeland. Let meek oblivion swallow up the memory of Romuald, who betrayed us without regret and was shot in passing. But that evening his narrow cassock moved at all the curtains, furiously chalked all the roads and grinned at everyone who wanted to drink vodka. That evening the shadow of the monk stalked me relentlessly. He would have become a bishop - Pan Romuald, if he had not been a spy.

I drank rum with him, the breath of an unprecedented way of life flickered under the ruins of the priest’s house, and his insinuating temptations weakened me. Oh, crucifixes, tiny, like the talismans of a courtesan, the parchment of papal bulls and the atlas of women’s letters, vests decaying in blue silk!..

I see you from here, unfaithful monk in a purple robe, the swelling of your hands, your soul, tender and merciless, like the soul of a cat, I see the wounds of your god, oozing with seed, a fragrant poison that intoxicates virgins.

We drank rum while waiting for the military commissar, but he still did not return from headquarters. Romuald fell in the corner and fell asleep. He sleeps and trembles, and outside the window in the garden, under the black passion of the sky, the alley shimmers. Thirsty roses sway in the darkness. Green lightning flashes in the domes. A stripped corpse lies under the slope. And the moonlight streams over the dead legs sticking out apart.

Here is Poland, here is the arrogant sorrow of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth! Violent stranger, I spread the lousy mattress in the temple abandoned by the clergyman, I put under my head the volumes in which the hosanna to the noble and blessed Head of the Pantry, Joseph Pilsudski, is printed.

Beggarly hordes are rolling towards your ancient cities, O Poland, the song of the unity of all slaves thunders over them, and woe to you. Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, woe to you, Prince Radziwill, and to you, Prince Sapieha, who got up for an hour!..

My military commissar is still missing. I look for him in the headquarters, in the garden, in the church. The gates of the church are open, I enter, and two silver skulls flare up on the lid of a broken coffin. In fright, I rush down into the dungeon. An oak staircase leads from there to the altar. And I see many lights running in the heights, right next to the dome. I see the military commissar, the head of the special department and the Cossacks with candles in their hands. They respond to my faint cry and take me out of the basement.

The skulls, which turned out to be carvings of a church hearse, do not scare me anymore, and together we continue the search, because it was a search that began after piles of military uniforms were found in the priest’s apartment.

Sparkling our cuffs with embroidered horse muzzles, whispering and rattling spurs, we circle around the echoing building with melting wax in our hands. The Mother of God, studded with precious stones, follows our path with pink, mouse-like pupils, flames beat in our fingers, and square shadows writhe on the statues of St. Peter, St. Francis, St. Vincent, on their rosy cheeks and curly beards painted with carmine.

We circle and search. Bone buttons jump under our fingers, icons cut in half move apart, opening dungeons into caves blooming with mold. This temple is ancient and full of mystery. It hides in its glossy walls secret passages, niches and doors that swing open silently.

O stupid priest, who hung the bras of his parishioners on the nails of the Savior. Behind the royal gates we found a suitcase with gold coins, a morocco bag with credit cards and cases of Parisian jewelers with emerald rings.

And then we counted the money in the military commissar’s room. Pillars of gold, carpets of money, a gusty wind blowing on the flames of candles, the crow's madness in the eyes of Mrs. Eliza, Romuald's thunderous laughter and the endless roar of the bells wound up by Mr. Robatsky, the maddened bell-ringer.

“Away,” I said to myself, “away from these winking madonnas, deceived by the soldiers...

Letter

Here is a letter to my homeland, dictated to me by a boy from our expedition, Kurdyukov. It doesn't deserve to be forgotten. I rewrote it without embellishment, and I convey it verbatim, in accordance with the truth.

“Dear mother Evdokia Fedorovna. In the first lines of this letter, I hasten to notify you that, thanks to the gentlemen, I am alive and well, and I wish to hear the same from you. And I also bow to you humbly from the whiteness of my face to the damp earth...”

(A list of relatives, godparents, and godfathers follows. Let’s skip that. Let’s move on to the second paragraph.)

“Dear mother Evdokia Fedorovna Kurdyukova. I hasten to write to you that I am in the Red Cavalry Army of Comrade Budyonny, and also here is your godfather Nikon Vasilich, who is currently a red hero. They took me to join them, on the expedition of the Political Department, where we deliver literature and newspapers to the positions - Moskovskie Izvestia of the Central Executive Committee, Moskovskaya Pravda and the dear merciless newspaper Red Cavalryman, which every fighter at the forefront wants to read, and after that, with a heroic spirit, he chops down the vile gentry, and I live very splendidly under Nikon Vasilich.

Dear mother Evdokia Fedorovna. Send what you can from your strength-possibility. I ask you to slaughter the speckled boar and send it to Comrade Budyonny’s Political Department for Vasily Kurdyukova. Every day I go to rest without eating and without any clothes, so it’s very cold. Write me a letter for my Styopa, whether he is alive or not, I ask you to look after him and write to me for him - is he still being detected or has he stopped, and also about the scabies in his front legs, have he been shod or not? I ask you, dear mother Evdokia Fedorovna, to wash his front legs without fail with the soap that I left behind the icons, and if daddy’s soap was destroyed, then buy it in Krasnodar, and God will not leave you. I can also describe to you that the country here is very poor, men with their horses are hidden from our red eagles in the forests, there is apparently little wheat and it is terribly small, we laugh at it. The owners sow rye and the same oats. Hops grow on sticks here, so they come out very neatly; Moonshine is distilled from it.

Secondly, in the second lines of this letter, I hasten to describe to you for dad that they chopped up Fyodor Timofeich Kurdyukov’s brother about a year ago. Our Red Brigade, Comrade Pavlichenko, was advancing on the city of Rostov when treason occurred in our ranks. And at that time Denikin’s father was the company commander. The people who saw them said that they wore medals, just like during the old regime. And on the occasion of that betrayal, we were all taken prisoner and brother Fyodor Timofeich caught the eye of dad. And the father began to cut Fedya, saying - skin, red dog, son of a bitch and all sorts of things, and they cut until darkness, until brother Fyodor Timofeich was gone. I wrote a letter to you then about how your Fedya lay without a cross. But daddy begged me with a letter and said: you are your mother’s children, you are her root, you slut, I have been pregnant with your womb and will be pregnant with you, my life is lost, I will destroy my seed for the truth, and other things. I accepted suffering from them as the savior Jesus Christ. Only soon I ran away from my dad and made my way to my unit, Comrade Pavlichenka. And our brigade received orders to go to the city of Voronezh to be replenished, and we received replenishment there, as well as horses, bags, revolvers, and everything that belonged to us. For Voronezh, I can describe to you, dear mother Evdokia Fedorovna, that this is a very magnificent town, it will be more than Krasnodar, the people in it are very beautiful, the river is suitable for swimming. They gave us two pounds of bread a day, half a pound of meat and enough sugar, so when we got up we drank sweet tea, ate the same thing and forgot about hunger, and at lunch I went to my brother Semyon Timofeich for pancakes or goose and after that I went to rest. At that time, Semyon Timofeich, for his desperation, the whole regiment wanted to have as a commander and such an order came from Comrade Budyonny, and he received two horses, useful clothes, a separate cart for junk and the Order of the Red Banner, and I was considered a brother. If any neighbor begins to bully you, then Semyon Timofeich can completely kill him. Then we started chasing General Denikin, cut thousands of them and drove them into the Black Sea, but dad was nowhere to be seen, and Semyon Timofeich was looking for them in all positions, because they really missed their brother Fedya. But only, dear mother, as you know for dad and for his stubborn character, so he did - he impudently dyed his beard from red to black and was in the city of Maykop, in free clothes, so that none of the residents knew that he there is the best guard under the old regime. But only the truth - she will prove to herself that your godfather Nikon Vasilich happened to see him in a resident’s house and wrote a letter to Semyon Timofeich. We mounted our horses and ran two hundred miles - me, brother Senka and willing guys from the village.

And what did we see in the city of Maykop? We saw that the rear does not sympathize with the front in any way and there is treason everywhere and is full of Jews, as under the old regime. And Semyon Timofeich in the city of Maikop had a great argument with the Jews, who would not let dad out of them and put him in prison under lock and key, saying - the order came not to cut down the prisoners, we will judge him ourselves, don’t be angry, he will get what he deserves. But only Semyon Timofeich took his stand and proved that he was the commander of the regiment and had all the Orders of the Red Banner from Comrade Budyonny, and threatened to chop down everyone who argued for his father’s identity and did not give it away, and the guys from the village also threatened. But only Semyon Timofeich received papa, and they began to whip papa and lined up all the fighters in the yard, as if they belonged to the military order. And then Senka splashed water on Papa Timofey Rodionich’s beard, and paint flowed from his beard. And Senka asked Timofey Rodionich:

- Do you feel good, daddy, in my arms?

“No,” said dad, “I feel bad.”

Then Senka asked:

“And when you were cutting him, did Fedya feel good in your hands?”

“No,” said dad, “Fedya felt bad.”

Then Senka asked:

“Did you think, dad, that it would be bad for you too?”

“No,” said dad, “I didn’t think that it would be bad for me.”

Then Senka turned to the people and said:

“And I think that if I fall among yours, there will be no mercy for me.” And now, daddy, we will finish you...

And Timofey Rodionich began to impudently scold Senka according to his mother and the Mother of God and hit Senka in the face, and Semyon Timofeich sent me away from the yard, so I cannot, dear mother Evdokia Feodorovna, describe to you how they ended up with dad, that’s why I was sent away from the yard.

After this we got parking in the city of Novorossiysk. For this city, you can tell that behind it there is no longer any land, but only water. The Black Sea, and we stayed there until May, when we went to the Polish front and harassed the gentry in vain...

I remain your dear son Vasily Timofeich Kurdyukov. Mom, look to Styopka, and God will not leave you.”

Here is Kurdyukov’s letter, not a single word changed. When I finished, he took the scribbled piece of paper and hid it in his bosom, on his naked body.

“Kurdyukov,” I asked the boy, “was your father evil?”

“My father was a male,” he answered gloomily.

- Is your mother better?

- The mother is suitable. If you wish, here is our last name...

He handed me the broken photograph. It depicted Timofey Kurdyukov, a broad-shouldered guard in a uniform cap and a combed beard, motionless, high cheekbones, with a sparkling gaze of colorless and meaningless eyes. Next to him, in a bamboo armchair, sat a tiny peasant woman in an out-of-touch jacket, with stunted, fair and shy features. And against the wall, against this pitiful provincial photographic background, with flowers and doves, stood two guys - monstrously huge, stupid, wide-faced, pop-eyed, frozen, as if in training, two Kurdyukov brothers - Fyodor and Semyon.

Head of stockpile

There is a groan in the village. The cavalry poisons grain and changes horses. In return for the attached nags, the cavalrymen take the draft animals. There is no one to scold here. Without a horse there is no army.

But this consciousness does not make it any easier for the peasants. Peasants relentlessly crowd around the headquarters building.

They drag the resting beds on ropes, sliding from weakness. Deprived of breadwinners, the men, feeling a surge of bitter courage within themselves and knowing that courage will not last long, rush without any hope to defy their superiors, God and their miserable lot.

Chief of Staff J., in full uniform, stands on the porch. Covering his inflamed eyelids, he listens with visible attention to the men’s complaints. But his attention is nothing more than a reception. Like any well-trained and overtired worker, he knows how to completely stop brain work in the empty moments of his existence. In these few moments of blissful meaninglessness, our chief of staff shakes the worn-out machine.

So it is this time with the men.

To the soothing accompaniment of their incoherent and desperate hum, J. watches from the sidelines that soft hustle and bustle in the brain that foreshadows the purity and energy of thought. Having waited for the necessary interruption, he seizes the last man's tear, snaps in a bossy manner and goes to his headquarters to work.

This time there was no need to snap back. On a fiery Anglo-Arab, Dyakov, a former circus athlete and now the head of the horse reserve, galloped up to the porch - red-skinned, gray-haired, in a black cloak and with silver stripes along his red trousers.

- Abbess's blessing to honest bitches! - he shouted, reining in his horse at the quarry, and at the same moment a shabby little horse, one of the exchanged Cossacks, fell under his stirrup.

“Look, comrade chief,” the man yelled, slapping his pants, “here’s what your brother is giving to our brother... Have you seen what they’re giving?” Manage it...

“And for this horse,” Dyakov then began separately and seriously, “for this horse, honorable friend, you have every right to receive fifteen thousand rubles from the horse reserve, and if this horse were more cheerful, then in this case you would receive , beloved friend, there are twenty thousand rubles in the horse reserve. But, however, the fact that the horse fell is not a grip. If a horse has fallen and rises, then it is a horse; if, to put it another way, it does not rise, then it is not a horse. But, by the way, this good filly will rise up for me...

- Oh my God, you are my all-merciful mother! – the man waved his hands. - Where can she, an orphan, rise... She, an orphan, will die...

“You’re insulting the horse, godfather,” Dyakov answered with deep conviction, “you’re downright blasphemous, godfather,” and he deftly removed his stately athlete’s body from the saddle. Spreading his beautiful legs, grabbed at the knees by a strap, magnificent and agile, as on stage, he moved towards the dying animal. It sadly stared at Dyakov with its steep, deep eye, licked some invisible command from his crimson palm, and immediately the exhausted horse felt the skillful strength flowing from this gray-haired, blooming and dashing Romeo. Moving its muzzle and sliding its wobbling legs, feeling the impatient and imperious tickling of the whip under its belly, the nag slowly, carefully stood on its feet. And then we all saw how a thin brush in a fluttering sleeve ruffled the dirty mane and the whip clung to the bleeding sides with a groan. Trembling all over, the nag stood on all fours and did not take his dog-like, fearful, falling-in-love eyes off Dyakov.

“That means it’s a horse,” Dyakov said to the peasant and added softly: “and you were stinging, dear friend...”

Throwing the reins to the orderly, the reserve chief took up the four steps and, throwing up his opera cape, disappeared into the headquarters building.

Pan Apolek

The charming and wise life of Mr. Apolek went to my head like old wine. In Novograd-Volynsk, in a hastily crumpled city, among twisted ruins, fate threw the gospel, hidden from the world, at my feet. Surrounded by the simple-minded radiance of halos, I then made a vow to follow the example of Mr. Apolek. And the sweetness of dreamy malice, bitter contempt for the dogs and pigs of humanity, the fire of silent and intoxicating vengeance - I sacrificed them to a new vow.

In the apartment of the fleeing priest of Novograd, an icon hung high on the wall. There was an inscription on it: “Death of the Baptist.” Without hesitation, I recognized in John the image of a man I had once seen.

I remember: between the straight and light walls there was the cobwebby silence of a summer morning. At the foot of the picture there was a direct ray of sunshine. Glistening dust swarmed in it. The long figure of John descended straight towards me from the blue depths of the niche. The black cloak hung solemnly on this inexorable body, disgustingly thin. Drops of blood glittered in the round clasps of the cloak. John's head was cut off at an angle from his flayed neck. She lay on a clay dish, firmly grasped by the warrior's large yellow fingers. The dead man's face seemed familiar to me. A foreshadowing of the mystery touched me. On a clay dish lay a death’s head, copied from Pan Romuald, the assistant to the fleeing priest. From his bared mouth, his scales sparkling colorfully, hung the tiny body of a snake. Her head, soft pink, full of animation, powerfully set off the deep background of the cloak.

I marveled at the painter’s art and his gloomy invention. The next day, the red-cheeked Mother of God hanging over the marital bed of Mrs. Eliza, the old priest’s housekeeper, seemed all the more amazing to me the next day. Both canvases bore the stamp of the same brush. The fleshy face of the Mother of God was a portrait of Mrs. Eliza. And then I came closer to the solution to the Novograd icons. The solution led to Mrs. Eliza's kitchen, where on balmy evenings the shadows of old servile Poland gathered, with the holy fool at their head. But was Pan Apolek a holy fool, who populated the suburban villages with angels and promoted the crippled cross Yanek to sainthood?

He came here with blind Gottfried thirty years ago on an invisible summer day. Friends - Apolek and Gottfried - approached Shmerel's tavern, which is located on the Rovno highway, two miles from the city limits. IN right hand Apolek had a box of paints, and with his left hand he led a blind accordion player. The melodious step of their German boots, bound with nails, sounded calm and hopeful. A canary scarf hung from Apolek's thin neck, and three chocolate feathers swayed on the blind man's Tyrolean hat.

In the tavern, on the windowsill, the aliens laid out paints and a harmonica. The artist unwound his scarf, endless, like a fairground magician's ribbon. Then he went out into the yard, stripped naked and doused his pink, narrow, frail body with cold water. Shmerel's wife brought the guests raisin vodka and a bowl of zraza. Having had his fill, Gottfried placed the harmony on his sharp knees. He sighed, threw his head back and wiggled his thin fingers. The sounds of Heidelberg songs filled the walls of the Jewish tavern. Apolek sang along with the blind man in a rattling voice. It all looked as if an organ had been brought from the Church of St. Indegilde to Schmerel and the muses in colorful cotton scarves and shod German boots sat side by side on the organ.

The guests sang until sunset, then they put the harmonica and paints in canvas bags, and Pan Apolek, with a low bow, handed over a sheet of paper to Briana, the innkeeper’s wife.

“Dear Mrs. Brian,” he said, “accept this portrait of you from the wandering artist, baptized with the Christian name Apollinaris, as a sign of our servile gratitude, as evidence of your luxurious hospitality.” If God Jesus prolongs my days and strengthens my art, I will return to paint this portrait. Pearls will go with your hair, and we will put an emerald necklace on your chest...

On a small sheet of paper, with a red pencil, a pencil as red and soft as clay, was depicted the laughing face of Mrs. Briana, outlined with copper curls.

- My money! - Shmerel cried when he saw the portrait of his wife. He grabbed a stick and set off in pursuit of the guests. But on the way, Shmerel remembered Apolek’s pink body, drenched in water, and the sun on his yard, and the quiet ringing of the harmonica. The innkeeper was troubled in spirit and, putting down his stick, returned home.

The next morning, Apolek presented the Novograd priest with a diploma of graduation from the Munich Academy and laid out twelve paintings on themes from the Holy Scriptures in front of him. These paintings were painted in oil on thin slices of cypress wood. The priest saw on his table the burning purple of robes, the glitter of emerald fields and flowery blankets thrown over the plains of Palestine.

The saints of Pan Apolek, this whole collection of jubilant and simple-minded elders, gray-bearded, red-faced, were squeezed into the streams of silk and mighty evenings.

On the same day, Pan Apolek received an order to paint the new church. And after Benedictine the priest said to the artist.

“Santa Maria,” he said, “desired Pan Apollinaris, from what wonderful regions did your such joyful grace descend to us?”

Apolek worked diligently, and within a month the new temple was full of the bleating of herds, the dusty gold of sunsets and the fawn teats of cows. Buffaloes with worn skins were drawn in harness, dogs with pink muzzles ran ahead of the flock, and fat babies rocked in cradles suspended from straight palm trunks. The brown rags of the Franciscans surrounded the cradle. The crowd of wise men was cut up with sparkling bald spots and wrinkles, bloody like wounds. In the crowd of wise men, the old woman’s face of Leo XIII flickered with a fox-like grin, and the Novograd priest himself, fingering a Chinese carved rosary with one hand, blessed the newborn Jesus with the other, free.

For five months Apolek crawled, imprisoned in his wooden seat, along the walls, along the dome and in the choir.

“You have a predilection for familiar faces, dear Pan Apolek,” said the priest one day, recognizing himself in one of the Magi and Pan Romuald in the severed head of John. He smiled, the old priest, and sent a glass of cognac to the artist working under the dome.

Then Apolek finished the Last Supper and the stoning of Mary of Magdala. One Sunday he discovered the painted walls. Eminent citizens invited by the priest recognized in Apostle Paul Janek, a lame cross, and in Mary Magdalene - the Jewish girl Elka, the daughter of unknown parents and the mother of many children taken from the fence. Eminent citizens ordered the blasphemous images to be covered up. The priest hurled threats at the blasphemer. But Apolek did not cover the painted walls.

Thus began an unheard of war between a powerful body catholic church, on the one hand, and a carefree god, on the other. It lasted three decades. Chance almost elevated the meek reveler to the founders of a new heresy. And then he would have been the most intricate and ridiculous fighter of all that the evasive and rebellious history of the Roman church has known, a fighter who, in blissful intoxication, walked around the earth with two white mice in his bosom and with a set of the finest brushes in his pocket.

– Fifteen zlotys for the Mother of God, twenty-five zlotys for the holy family and fifty zlotys for the Last Supper with the image of all the customer’s relatives. The customer’s enemy can be depicted in the image of Judas Iscariot, and for this an extra ten zlotys are added, - this is what Apolek announced to the surrounding peasants after he was kicked out of the temple under construction.

He had no shortage of orders. And when a year later, prompted by the frantic messages of the Novograd priest, a commission arrived from the bishop in Zhitomir, it found these monstrous family portraits, sacrilegious, naive and picturesque, in the most run-down and smelly huts. Josephs with their gray heads combed in two, pomaded Jesuses, multiparous village Marys with their knees set apart - these icons hung in the red corners, surrounded by crowns of paper flowers.

- He made you saints during your lifetime! - exclaimed the vicar of Dubno and Novokonstantinovsky, answering the crowd defending Apolek. “He has surrounded you with the ineffable paraphernalia of the sacred, you who have fallen thrice into the sin of disobedience, secret distillers, ruthless lenders, makers of counterfeit scales and sellers of the innocence of your own daughters!”

“Your priesthood,” the lame-legged Witold, the buyer of stolen goods and the cemetery watchman, then said to the vicar, “what does the most merciful Pan God see as the truth, who will tell the dark people about this?” And isn’t there more truth in the pictures of Mr. Apolek, who pleased our pride, than in your words, full of blasphemy and lordly anger?

The cheers of the crowd caused the vicar to flee. The state of minds in the suburbs threatened the safety of church workers. The artist invited to take Apolek’s place did not dare to paint over Elka and the lame Yanek. They can still be seen now in the side chapel of the Novograd church: Janek - the Apostle Paul, a timid lame man with a black scraggly beard, a village renegade, and her, the harlot from Magdala, frail and insane, with a dancing body and sunken cheeks.

The fight against the priest lasted three decades. Then the Cossack flood drove the old monk out of his stone and odorous nest, and Apolek - about the vicissitudes of fate! - settled into Mrs. Eliza’s kitchen. And here I am, an instant guest, drinking the wine of his conversation in the evenings.

Conversations - what? About the romantic times of the nobility, about the fury of womanish fanaticism, about the artist Luca del Rabbio and about the family of a carpenter from Bethlehem.

“I have something to say to Mr. Clerk...” Apolek mysteriously tells me before dinner.

“Yes,” I answer, “yes, Apolek, I’m listening to you...

But the church servant, Pan Robatsky, stern and grey, bony and big-eared, sits too close to us. He hangs before us faded canvases of silence and hostility.

“I have to tell the sir,” Apolek whispers and takes me aside, “that Jesus, the son of Mary, was married to Deborah, a Jerusalem girl of humble birth...

- Oh, ten man! - Pan Robatsky shouts in despair. - That man will not die on his bed... That man will be beaten to death by the people...

I like it. Ignored by the beginning of Apolek’s story, I pace around the kitchen and wait for the cherished hour. And outside the window the night stands like a black column. Outside the window, a lively and dark garden stood frozen. The road to the church flows like a milky and glittering stream under the moon. The earth is lined with a gloomy glow, necklaces of luminous fruits hang on the bushes. The smell of lilies is pure and strong, like alcohol. This fresh poison bites into the greasy, stormy breath of the stove and kills the resinous stuffiness of the spruce scattered around the kitchen.

Apolek, wearing a pink bow and worn pink pants, scurries around in his corner like a kind and graceful animal. His table is smeared with glue and paints. The old man works with small and frequent movements, the quietest melodic beat comes from his corner. Old Gottfried knocks it out with his trembling fingers. The blind man sits motionless in the yellow and oily shine of the lamp. Bowing his bald forehead, he listens to the endless music of his blindness and the muttering of Apolek, his eternal friend.

- ...And what the priests and the Evangelist Mark and the Evangelist Matthew tell the lord is not the truth... But the truth can be revealed to the sir clerk, for whom, for fifty marks, I am ready to make a portrait under the guise of blessed Francis against the backdrop of greenery and the sky. It was a very simple saint, Pan Francis. And if Mr. Clerk has a bride in Russia... Women love Blessed Francis, although not all women, Mr....

Thus began, in a corner that smelled of fir, the story of the marriage of Jesus and Deborah. This girl had a fiancé, according to Apolek. Her fiancé was a young Israeli who traded in elephant tusks. But Deborah's wedding night ended in bewilderment and tears. The woman was overcome with fear when she saw her husband approaching her bed. Hiccups swelled her throat. She vomited up everything she ate at the wedding meal. Shame fell on Deborah, on her father, on her mother and on her entire family. The groom left her, mocking, and called all the guests. Then Jesus, seeing the yearning of the woman who longed for her husband and feared him, put on the newlywed's robe and, full of compassion, united with Deborah, who was lying in the vomit. Then she went out to the guests, noisily triumphant, like a woman who is proud of her fall. And only Jesus stood aside. Deadly perspiration appeared on his body, the bee of sorrow stung him in the heart. Unnoticed by anyone, he left the banquet hall and withdrew into the desert country, east of Judea, where John was waiting for him. And Deborah’s first child was born...

Correspondent of the newspaper "Red Cavalryman" Lyutov (narrator and lyrical hero) finds himself in the ranks of the First Cavalry Army, led by S. Budyonny. The First Cavalry, fighting with the Poles, makes a campaign through Western Ukraine and Galicia. Among the cavalrymen, Lyutov is a stranger. A bespectacled man, an intellectual, a Jew, he feels a condescending, mocking, and even hostile attitude towards himself on the part of the fighters. “You are from Kinderbalsam... and you have glasses on your nose. What a lousy one! They send you away without asking, but here they cut you for points,” Savitsky, the commander of the six, tells him when he comes to him with a paper about being seconded to the division headquarters. Here, at the front, there are horses, passions, blood, tears and death. They are not used to standing on ceremony here and live one day at a time. Making fun of the arriving literate man, the Cossacks throw out his chest, and Lyutov pathetically crawls along the ground, collecting scattered manuscripts. In the end, he, hungry, demands that the mistress feed her. Without waiting for a response, he pushes her in the chest, takes someone else’s saber and kills a goose staggering around the yard, and then orders the owner to fry it. Now the Cossacks no longer mock him, they invite him to eat with them. Now he is almost like his own, and only his heart, stained with murder, “creaked and flowed” in his sleep.

Death of Dolgushov

Even having fought and seen enough of death, Lyutov still remains a “soft-bodied” intellectual. One day, after a battle, he sees telephone operator Dolgushov sitting near the road. He is mortally wounded and asks to finish him off. “I need to spend my cartridges,” he says. “The gentry will run into you and make a mockery of you.” Turning away his shirt, Dolgushov shows the wound. His stomach is torn out, his intestines are crawling onto his knees and his heartbeat is visible. However, Lyutov is unable to commit murder. He moves to the side, pointing to Dolgushov to the platoon commander Afonka Bide who jumped up. Dolgushov and Afonka briefly talk about something, the wounded man hands the Cossack his documents, then Afonka shoots Dolgushov in the mouth. He is seething with anger at the compassionate Lyutov, so in the heat of the moment he is ready to shoot him too. “Go away! - he tells him, turning pale. - I'll kill you! You bespectacled people pity our brother like a cat pities a mouse...”

Biography of Pavlichenko, Matvey Rodionich

Lyutov envies the firmness and determination of the fighters who, like him, do not experience, as it seems to him, false sentimentality. He wants to belong. He is trying to understand the “truth” of the cavalrymen, including the “truth” of their cruelty. Here is the red general talking about how he settled accounts with his former master Nikitinsky, for whom he tended pigs before the revolution. The master pestered his wife Nastya, and now Matvey, having become a red commander, came to his estate to take revenge for the insult. He doesn’t shoot him right away, even though he asks for it, but in front of Nikitinsky’s crazy wife he tramples on him for an hour or more and thus, according to him, he learns life to the fullest. He says: “By shooting a person... you can only get rid of him: shooting is a pardon for him, but a vile ease for yourself; by shooting you will not reach the soul, where a person has it and how it shows itself.”

Salt

Cavalry soldier Balmashev, in a letter to the editor of the newspaper, describes an incident that happened to him on a train heading to Berdichev. At one of the stations, the fighters allow a woman with a baby into their vehicle, supposedly going on a date with her husband. However, on the way, Balmashev begins to doubt the honesty of this woman; he approaches her, rips off the child’s diapers and discovers “a good pood of salt” underneath them. Balmashev delivers a fiery accusatory speech and throws the bagwoman down the slope as he goes. Seeing her remaining unharmed, he removes the “sure screw” from the wall and kills the woman, washing away “this shame from the face of the working land and the republic.”

Letter

The boy Vasily Kurdyukov writes a letter to his mother, in which he asks to send him something to eat and talks about his brothers, who, like him, are fighting for the Reds. One of them, Fyodor, who was captured, was killed by his White Guard father, Denikin’s company commander, “a guard under the old regime.” He slaughtered his son until dark, “saying - skin, red dog, son of a bitch, and all sorts of things,” “until brother Fyodor Timofeich was finished.” And after some time, the father himself, who tried to hide by dyeing his beard, falls into the hands of another son, Stepan, and he, having sent his brother Vasya away from the yard, in turn kills the father.

Clothes

The young Kuban resident Prishchepa, who fled from the whites, killed his parents in revenge. The property was stolen by neighbors. When the whites were driven out, Prishchepa returned to his native village. He takes a cart and goes home to collect his gramophones, kvass jars and towels embroidered by his mother. In those huts where he finds his mother’s or father’s things, Prishchepa leaves stabbed old women, dogs hanging over a well, icons soiled with droppings. Having placed the collected things in their places, he locks himself in -

at his father's house and for two days he drinks, cries, sings and chops tables with a saber. On the third night, flames rise above his hut. The pin takes the cow out of the stall and kills her. Then he jumps on his horse, throws a lock of his hair into the fire and disappears.

Squadron Trunov

Squadron Trunov is looking for officers among the captured Poles. He pulls out an officer's cap from a pile of clothes deliberately discarded by the Poles and puts it on the head of the captive old man, who claims that he is not an officer. The cap fits him, and Trunov stabs the prisoner to death. Immediately, cavalry marauder Andryushka Vosmiletov approaches the dying man and pulls off his pants. Having grabbed two more uniforms, he heads to the convoy, but the indignant Trunov orders him to leave the junk, shoots at Andryushka, but misses. A little later, he and Vosmiletov enter into battle with American airplanes, trying to shoot them down with a machine gun, and both die in this battle.

The story of one horse

Passion rules in art world Babel. For a cavalryman, “a horse is a friend... A horse is a father...”. Divisional commander Savitsky took the white stallion from the commander of the first squadron, and since then Khlebnikov has been thirsting for revenge, waiting in the wings. When Savitsky is removed, he writes to army headquarters asking for the horse to be returned to him. Having received a positive resolution, Khlebnikov goes to the disgraced Savitsky and demands to give him the horse, but the former commander, threatening him with a revolver, resolutely refuses. Khlebnikov again seeks justice from the chief of staff, but he drives him away. As a result, Khlebnikov writes a statement expressing his resentment against the Communist Party, which cannot return “his hard-earned money,” and a week later he is demobilized as an invalid with six wounds.

Afonka Bila

When Afonka Bida’s beloved horse is killed, the upset cavalryman disappears for a long time, and only a menacing murmur in the villages indicates the evil and predatory trace of Afonka’s robbery, getting his horse. Only when the division enters Berestechko does Afonka finally appear on a tall stallion. Instead of his left eye, there is a monstrous pink tumor on his charred face. The heat of the freeman has not yet cooled down in him, and he destroys everything around him.

Pan Apolek

The icons of the Novograd Church have their own history - “the history of an unheard of war between the powerful body of the Catholic Church, on the one hand, and the careless Bogomaz, on the other,” a war that lasted three decades. These icons were painted by the holy fool artist Pan Apolek, who with his art made ordinary people saints. He, who presented a diploma of completion of the Munich Academy and his paintings on the themes Holy Scripture(“burning purple robes, the shine of emerald fields and flowery blankets thrown over the plains of Palestine”), the Novograd priest was entrusted with the painting of the new church. Imagine the surprise of the eminent citizens invited by the priest when they recognize in the Apostle Paul on the painted walls of the church the lame cross Janek, and in Mary Magdalene - the Jewish girl Elka, the daughter of unknown parents and the mother of many children under the fence. The artist invited to take Apolek’s place does not dare to paint over Elka and the lame Janek. The narrator meets Mr. Apolek in the kitchen of the house of the runaway priest, and he offers to make his portrait under the guise of Blessed Francis for fifty marks. He also tells him the blasphemous story about the marriage of Jesus and the common girl Deborah, who gave birth to his first child.

Gedali

Lyutov sees old Jews trading near the yellow walls of the ancient synagogue, and with sadness recalls Jewish life, now dilapidated by the war, recalls his childhood and his grandfather, stroking the volumes of the Jewish sage Ibn Ezra with his yellow beard. Walking through the bazaar, he sees death - silent locks on the trays. He enters the antiquities shop of the old Jew Gedali, where there is everything: from gilded shoes and ship ropes to a broken saucepan and a dead butterfly. Gedali walks, rubbing his white hands, among his treasures and complains about the cruelty of the revolution, which robs, shoots and kills. Gedali dreams of “a sweet revolution”, of an “International of Good People”. The narrator confidently instructs him that the International is “eaten with gunpowder... and seasoned with the best blood.” But when he asks where he can get a Jewish shortbread and a Jewish glass of tea, Gedali sadly tells him that until recently this could have been done in a nearby tavern, but now “they don’t eat there, they cry there...”.

Rabbi

Lyutov feels sorry for this way of life, swept away by the whirlwind of the revolution, trying with great difficulty to preserve itself, he takes part in the Saturday evening meal led by the wise Rabbi Motale of Bratslavsky, whose rebellious son Ilya “with the face of Spinoza, with the mighty forehead of Spinoza” is also here. Ilya, like the narrator, fights in the Red Army, and is soon destined to die. The rabbi urges the guest to rejoice that he is alive and not dead, but Lyutov is relieved to go to the station, where the propaganda train of the First Horse stands, where the radiance of hundreds of lights, the magical shine of the radio station, the persistent running of cars in the printing house and an unfinished article for the newspaper await him. Red Cavalryman."

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Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel

"Cavalry"

My first goose

Correspondent of the newspaper “Red Cavalryman” Lyutov (storyteller and lyrical hero) finds himself in the ranks of the First Cavalry Army, led by S. Budyonny. The First Cavalry, fighting with the Poles, makes a campaign through Western Ukraine and Galicia. Among the cavalrymen, Lyutov is a stranger. A bespectacled man, an intellectual, a Jew, he feels a condescending, mocking, and even hostile attitude towards himself on the part of the fighters. “You are from Kinderbalsam... and you have glasses on your nose. What a lousy one! They send you away without asking, but here they cut you for points,” Savitsky, the commander of the six, tells him when he comes to him with a paper about being seconded to the division headquarters. Here, at the front, there are horses, passions, blood, tears and death. They are not used to standing on ceremony here and live one day at a time. Making fun of the arriving literate man, the Cossacks throw out his chest, and Lyutov pathetically crawls along the ground, collecting scattered manuscripts. In the end, he, hungry, demands that the mistress feed him. Without waiting for a response, he pushes her in the chest, takes someone else’s saber and kills a goose staggering around the yard, and then orders the owner to fry it. Now the Cossacks no longer mock him, they invite him to eat with them. Now he is almost like his own, and only his heart, stained with murder, “creaked and flowed” in his sleep.

Death of Dolgushov

Even having fought and seen enough of death, Lyutov still remains a “soft-bodied” intellectual. One day, after a battle, he sees telephone operator Dolgushov sitting near the road. He is mortally wounded and asks to finish him off. “I need to spend my cartridges,” he says. “The gentry will run into you and make a mockery of you.” Turning away his shirt, Dolgushov shows the wound. His stomach is torn out, his intestines are crawling onto his knees and his heartbeat is visible. However, Lyutov is unable to commit murder. He moves to the side, pointing to Dolgushov to the platoon commander Afonka Bide who jumped up. Dolgushov and Afonka briefly talk about something, the wounded man hands the Cossack his documents, then Afonka shoots Dolgushov in the mouth. He is seething with anger at the compassionate Lyutov, so in the heat of the moment he is ready to shoot him too. “Go away! - he tells him, turning pale. - I'll kill you! You bespectacled people pity our brother like a cat pities a mouse...”

Biography of Pavlichenko, Matvey Rodionich

Lyutov envies the firmness and determination of the fighters who, like him, do not experience, as it seems to him, false sentimentality. He wants to belong. He is trying to understand the “truth” of the cavalrymen, including the “truth” of their cruelty. Here is the red general talking about how he settled accounts with his former master Nikitinsky, for whom he tended pigs before the revolution. The master pestered his wife Nastya, and now Matvey, having become a red commander, came to his estate to take revenge for the insult. He doesn’t shoot him right away, even though he asks for it, but in front of Nikitinsky’s crazy wife he tramples on him for an hour or more and thus, according to him, he learns life to the fullest. He says: “By shooting a person... you can only get rid of him: shooting is a pardon for him, but it’s a vile ease for yourself; by shooting you won’t reach the soul, where a person has it and how it shows itself.”

Salt

Cavalry soldier Balmashev, in a letter to the editor of the newspaper, describes an incident that happened to him on a train heading to Berdichev. At one of the stations, the fighters allow a woman with a baby into their vehicle, supposedly going on a date with her husband. However, on the way, Balmashev begins to doubt the honesty of this woman; he approaches her, tears off the diapers from the child and discovers “a good pood of salt” under them. Balmashev delivers a fiery accusatory speech and throws the bagwoman down the slope as he goes. Seeing her remaining unharmed, he removes the “sure screw” from the wall and kills the woman, washing away “this shame from the face of the working land and the republic.”

Letter

The boy Vasily Kurdyukov writes a letter to his mother, in which he asks to send him something to eat and talks about his brothers, who, like him, are fighting for the Reds. One of them, Fyodor, who was captured, was killed by his White Guard father, Denikin’s company commander, “a guard under the old regime.” He slaughtered his son until dark, “saying - skin, red dog, son of a bitch, and all sorts of things,” “until brother Fyodor Timofeich was finished.” And after some time, the father himself, who tried to hide by dyeing his beard, falls into the hands of another son, Stepan, and he, having sent his brother Vasya away from the yard, in turn kills the father.

Clothes

The young Kuban resident Prishchepa, who fled from the whites, killed his parents in revenge. The property was stolen by neighbors. When the whites were driven out, Prishchepa returned to his native village. He takes a cart and goes home to collect his gramophones, kvass jars and towels embroidered by his mother. In those huts where he finds his mother’s or father’s things, Prishchepa leaves stabbed old women, dogs hanging over a well, icons soiled with droppings. Having put the collected things in their places, he locks himself in his father’s house and for two days drinks, cries, sings and chops tables with a saber. On the third night, flames rise above his hut. The pin takes the cow out of the stall and kills her. Then he jumps on his horse, throws a lock of his hair into the fire and disappears.

Squadron Trunov

Squadron Trunov is looking for officers among the captured Poles. He pulls out an officer's cap from a pile of clothes deliberately discarded by the Poles and puts it on the head of the captive old man, who claims that he is not an officer. The cap fits him, and Trunov stabs the prisoner to death. Immediately, cavalry marauder Andryushka Vosmiletov approaches the dying man and pulls off his pants. Having grabbed two more uniforms, he heads to the convoy, but the indignant Trunov orders him to leave the junk, shoots at Andryushka, but misses. A little later, he and Vosmiletov enter into battle with American airplanes, trying to shoot them down with a machine gun, and both die in this battle.

The story of one horse

Passion rules in the artistic world of Babel. For a cavalryman, “a horse is a friend... A horse is a father...”. The division commander, Savitsky, took the white stallion from the commander of the first squadron, and since then Khlebnikov has been thirsting for revenge, waiting in the wings. When Savitsky is removed, he writes to army headquarters asking for the horse to be returned to him. Having received a positive resolution, Khlebnikov goes to the disgraced Savitsky and demands to give him the horse, but the former commander, threatening him with a revolver, resolutely refuses. Khlebnikov again seeks justice from the chief of staff, but he drives him away. As a result, Khlebnikov writes a statement expressing his resentment against the Communist Party, which cannot return “his hard-earned money,” and a week later he is demobilized as an invalid with six wounds.

Afonka Bida

When Afonka Bida’s beloved horse is killed, the upset cavalryman disappears for a long time, and only a menacing murmur in the villages indicates the evil and predatory trace of Afonka’s robbery, getting his horse. Only when the division enters Berestechko does Afonka finally appear on a tall stallion. Instead of his left eye, there is a monstrous pink tumor on his charred face. The heat of the freeman has not yet cooled down in him, and he destroys everything around him.

Pan Apolek

The icons of the Novograd Church have their own history - “the history of an unheard of war between the powerful body of the Catholic Church, on the one hand, and the careless Bogomaz, on the other,” a war that lasted three decades. These icons were painted by the holy fool artist Pan Apolek, who with his art made ordinary people saints. Having presented a diploma of graduation from the Munich Academy and his paintings on the themes of the Holy Scripture (“burning purple robes, the shine of emerald fields and flowery blankets thrown over the plains of Palestine”), the Novograd priest entrusted him with the painting of the new church. Imagine the surprise of the eminent citizens invited by the priest when they recognize the Apostle Paul on the painted walls of the church of the lame cross as Janek, and in Mary Magdalene - the Jewish girl Elka, the daughter of unknown parents and the mother of many children from the fence. The artist invited to take Apolek’s place does not dare to paint over Elka and the lame Janek. The narrator meets Mr. Apolek in the kitchen of the house of the runaway priest, and he offers to make his portrait under the guise of Blessed Francis for fifty marks. He also tells him the blasphemous story about the marriage of Jesus and the common girl Deborah, who gave birth to his first child.

Gedali

Lyutov sees old Jews trading near the yellow walls of the ancient synagogue, and with sadness recalls Jewish life, now dilapidated by the war, recalls his childhood and his grandfather, stroking the volumes of the Jewish sage Ibn Ezra with his yellow beard. Walking through the bazaar, he sees death - silent locks on the trays. He enters the antiquities shop of the old Jew Gedali, where there is everything: from gilded shoes and ship ropes to a broken pan and a dead butterfly. Gedali walks, rubbing his white hands, among his treasures and complains about the cruelty of the revolution, which robs, shoots and kills. Gedali dreams of “a sweet revolution”, of an “International of Good People”. The narrator confidently instructs him that the International is “eaten with gunpowder... and seasoned with the best blood.” But when he asks where he can get a Jewish shortbread and a Jewish glass of tea, Gedali sadly tells him that until recently this could have been done in a nearby tavern, but now “they don’t eat there, they cry there...”.

Rabbi

Lyutov feels sorry for this way of life, swept away by the whirlwind of the revolution, trying with great difficulty to preserve itself, he takes part in the Saturday evening meal led by the wise Rabbi Motale of Bratslavsky, whose rebellious son Ilya “with the face of Spinoza, with the powerful forehead of Spinoza” is also here. Ilya, like the narrator, fights in the Red Army, and is soon destined to die. The rabbi urges the guest to rejoice that he is alive and not dead, but Lyutov is relieved to go to the station, where the propaganda train of the First Horse stands, where the radiance of hundreds of lights, the magical shine of the radio station, the persistent running of cars in the printing house and an unfinished article for the newspaper await him. Red Cavalryman."

Essays

My first goose

Correspondent of the newspaper “Red Cavalryman” Lyutov (storyteller and lyrical hero) finds himself in the ranks of the First Cavalry Army, led by S. Budyonny. The First Cavalry, fighting with the Poles, makes a campaign through Western Ukraine and Galicia. Among the cavalrymen, Lyutov is a stranger. A bespectacled man, an intellectual, a Jew, he feels a condescending, mocking, and even hostile attitude towards himself on the part of the fighters. “You are from Kinderbalsam... and you have glasses on your nose. What a lousy one! They send you away without asking, but here they cut you for points,” Savitsky, the commander of the six, tells him when he comes to him with a paper about being seconded to the division headquarters. Here, at the front, there are horses, passions, blood, tears and death. They are not used to standing on ceremony here and live one day at a time. Making fun of the arriving literate man, the Cossacks throw out his chest, and Lyutov pathetically crawls along the ground, collecting scattered manuscripts. In the end, he, hungry, demands that the mistress feed him. Without waiting for a response, he pushes her in the chest, takes someone else’s saber and kills a goose staggering around the yard, and then orders the owner to fry it. Now the Cossacks no longer mock him, they invite him to eat with them. Now he is almost his own, and only his heart, stained with murder, “creaked and flowed” in his sleep.

Death of Dolgushov

Even having fought and seen enough of death, Lyutov still remains a “soft-bodied” intellectual. One day, after a battle, he sees telephone operator Dolgushov sitting near the road. He is mortally wounded and asks to finish him off. “I need to spend a cartridge on me,” he says. “The gentry will run into you and make a mockery of you.” Turning away his shirt, Dolgushov shows the wound. His stomach is torn out, his intestines are crawling onto his knees and his heartbeat is visible. However, Lyutov is unable to commit murder. He moves to the side, pointing to Dolgushov to the platoon commander Afonka Bide who jumped up. Dolgushov and Afonka briefly talk about something, the wounded man hands the Cossack his documents, then Afonka shoots Dolgushov in the mouth. He is seething with anger at the compassionate Lyutov, so in the heat of the moment he is ready to shoot him too. “Go away! - he tells him, turning pale. - I'll kill you! You bespectacled people pity our brother like a cat pities a mouse...”

Biography of Pavlichenko, Matvey Rodionich

Lyutov envies the firmness and determination of the fighters who, like him, do not experience, as it seems to him, false sentimentality. He wants to belong. He is trying to understand the “truth” of the cavalrymen, including the “truth” of their cruelty. The Red General talks about how he settled accounts with his former master Nikitinsky, for whom he tended pigs before the revolution. The master pestered his wife Nastya, and now Matvey, having become a red commander, came to his estate to take revenge for the insult. He doesn’t shoot him right away, even though he asks for it, but in front of Nikitinsky’s crazy wife he tramples on him for an hour or more and thus, according to him, he learns life to the fullest. He says: “By shooting a person... you can only get rid of him: shooting is a pardon for him, but a vile ease for yourself; by shooting you will not reach the soul, where a person has it and how it shows itself.”

Cavalry soldier Balmashev, in a letter to the editor of the newspaper, describes an incident that happened to him on a train heading to Berdichev. At one of the stations, the fighters allow a woman with a baby into their vehicle, supposedly going on a date with her husband. However, on the way, Balmashev begins to doubt the honesty of this woman; he approaches her, tears off the diapers from the “child” and discovers “a good pood of salt” under them. Balmashev delivers a fiery accusatory speech and throws the bagwoman down the slope as he goes. Seeing her remaining unharmed, he removes the “sure screw” from the wall and kills the woman, washing away “this shame from the face of the working land and the republic.”

The boy Vasily Kurdyukov writes a letter to his mother, in which he asks to send him something to eat and talks about his brothers, who, like him, are fighting for the Reds. One of them, Fyodor, who was captured, was killed by his White Guard father, Denikin’s company commander, “a guard under the old regime.” He cut his son until it was dark, “speaking - a skin, a red dog, a son of a bitch, and all sorts of things,” “until brother Fyodor Timofeich was finished.” And after some time, the father himself, who tried to hide by dyeing his beard, falls into the hands of another son, Stepan, and he, having sent his brother Vasya away from the yard, in turn kills the father.

The young Kuban resident Prishchepa, who fled from the whites, killed his parents in revenge. The property was stolen by neighbors. When the whites were driven out, Prishchepa returned to his native village. He takes a cart and goes home to collect his gramophones, kvass jars and towels embroidered by his mother. In those huts where he finds his mother’s or father’s things, Prishchepa leaves stabbed old women, dogs hanging over a well, icons soiled with droppings. Having put the collected things in their places, he locks himself in his father’s house and for two days drinks, cries, sings and chops tables with a saber. On the third night, flames rise above his hut. The pin takes the cow out of the stall and kills her. Then he jumps on his horse, throws a lock of his hair into the fire and disappears.

Squadron Trunov

Squadron Trunov is looking for officers among the captured Poles. He pulls out an officer's cap from a pile of clothes deliberately discarded by the Poles and puts it on the head of the captive old man, who claims that he is not an officer. The cap fits him, and Trunov stabs the prisoner to death. Immediately, cavalry marauder Andryushka Vosmiletov approaches the dying man and pulls off his pants. Having grabbed two more uniforms, he heads to the convoy, but the indignant Trunov orders him to leave the junk, shoots at Andryushka, but misses. A little later, he and Vosmiletov enter into battle with American airplanes, trying to shoot them down with a machine gun, and both die in this battle.

The story of one horse

For a cavalryman, “a horse is a friend... A horse is a father...”. Divisional commander Savitsky took the white stallion from the commander of the first squadron, and since then Khlebnikov has been thirsting for revenge, waiting in the wings. When Savitsky is removed, he writes to army headquarters asking for the horse to be returned to him. Having received a positive resolution, Khlebnikov goes to the disgraced Savitsky and demands to give him the horse, but the former commander, threatening him with a revolver, resolutely refuses. Khlebnikov again seeks justice from the chief of staff, but he drives him away. As a result, Khlebnikov writes a statement expressing his resentment against the Communist Party, which cannot return “his hard-earned money,” and a week later he is demobilized as an invalid with six wounds.

Afonka Bida

When Afonka Bida’s beloved horse is killed, the upset cavalryman disappears for a long time, and only a menacing murmur in the villages indicates the evil and predatory trace of Afonka’s robbery, getting his horse. Only when the division enters Berestechko does Afonka finally appear on a tall stallion. Instead of his left eye, there is a monstrous pink tumor on his charred face. The heat of the freeman has not yet cooled down in him, and he destroys everything around him.

Pan Apolek

The icons of the Novograd Church have their own history - “the history of an unheard of war between the powerful body of the Catholic Church, on the one hand, and the careless Bogomaz, on the other,” a war that lasted three decades. These icons were painted by the holy fool artist Pan Apolek, who with his art made ordinary people saints. He, who presented a diploma of graduation from the Munich Academy and his paintings on the themes of the Holy Scriptures (“burning purple robes, the shine of emerald fields and flowery blankets thrown over the plains of Palestine”), was entrusted by the Novograd priest with the painting of the new church. Imagine the surprise of the eminent citizens invited by the priest when they recognize in the Apostle Paul on the painted walls of the church the lame cross Janek, and in Mary Magdalene - the Jewish girl Elka, the daughter of unknown parents and the mother of many children from the fence. The artist invited to take Apolek’s place does not dare to paint over Elka and the lame Janek. The narrator meets Mr. Apolek in the kitchen of the house of the runaway priest, and he offers to make his portrait under the guise of Blessed Francis for fifty marks. He also tells him the blasphemous story about the marriage of Jesus and the common girl Deborah, who gave birth to his first child.

Lyutov sees old Jews trading near the yellow walls of the ancient synagogue, and with sadness recalls Jewish life, now dilapidated by the war, recalls his childhood and his grandfather, stroking the volumes of the Jewish sage Ibn Ezra with his yellow beard. Walking through the bazaar, he sees death - silent locks on the trays. He enters the antiquities shop of the old Jew Gedali, where there is everything: from gilded shoes and ship ropes to a broken saucepan and a dead butterfly. Gedali walks, rubbing his white hands, among his treasures and complains about the cruelty of the revolution, which robs, shoots and kills. Gedali dreams of “a sweet revolution”, of an “International of Good People”. The narrator confidently instructs him that the International is “eaten with gunpowder... and seasoned with the best blood.” But when he asks where he can get a Jewish shortbread and a Jewish glass of tea, Gedali sadly tells him that until recently this could have been done in a nearby tavern, but now “they don’t eat there, they cry there...”.

Lyutov feels sorry for this way of life, scattered by the whirlwind of the revolution, trying with great difficulty to preserve itself, he takes part in the Saturday evening meal led by the wise Rabbi Motale of Bratslavsky, whose rebellious son Ilya “with the face of Spinoza, with the mighty forehead of Spinoza” is also here. Ilya, like the narrator, fights in the Red Army, and is soon destined to die. The rabbi calls on the guest to rejoice that he is alive and not dead, but Lyutov is relieved to go to the station, where the propaganda train of the First Cavalry is parked, where the radiance of hundreds of lights, the magical shine of the radio station, the persistent running of cars in the printing house and the unfinished “Red Cavalryman” awaits him. "

Ivan Akinfiev is a cavalryman, a cart driver of the Revolutionary Tribunal, who receives an order to take deacon Ivan Aggeev, who is feigning deafness, to Rovno (the story “Ivana”). The relationships between the namesake heroes are based on an absurd combination of affection and hatred. A. periodically shoots a revolver over the deacon’s ear in order to expose the malingerer and have a reason to kill him. The deacon really begins to hear poorly from the shots; he understands that he is unlikely to reach Rovno alive, which is what he tells the narrator Lyutov. Subsequently, A., despite being seriously wounded, remains in service (“Chesniki”). After the battle at Chesniki, he accuses Lyutov of going on the attack with an unloaded revolver (“After the Battle”); falling to the ground in a fit, A. breaks his face.

Apollinaris, Apolek - old monk, icon painter. Thirty years ago, he came to Novograd-Volynsky with his friend, the blind musician Gottfried, and received an order to paint a new church (“Pan Apolek”). A. gives the characters of the icons the features of townspeople, as a result of which he is accused of blasphemy: for thirty years the war has lasted between the church and the god, who “produces saints” real people. The parishioners defend A., and the churchmen fail to destroy his paintings. In a conversation with Lyutov, A. sets out the “true” versions of hagiographic plots, giving them the same everyday flavor as his icons. A.'s stories are severely condemned by the church servant, Pan Robatsky. Later (“At St. Valentine’s”) Lyutov sees A.’s paintings in the Berestechka Church; the artist's manner is characterized as "a seductive point of view on the mortal suffering of the sons of men."

Afonka Vida is a cavalry platoon commander whom Lyutov initially calls his friend. In the story “The Path to Brody” A. tells him a parable about a bee that did not want to sting Christ, after which he declares that bees must endure the torment of war, for it is being waged for their benefit. After this, A. sings a song about a stallion named Dzhigit: he brought the horse, his master, to heaven, but the man missed a bottle of vodka forgotten on earth and “cried about the futility of his efforts.” Seeing that Lyutov cannot shoot the mortally wounded telephone operator Dolgushov in order to end his torment (“The Death of Dolgushov”), A. does it himself, after which he begins to treat Lyutov with hatred for his weakness and lack of true mercy; tries to shoot Lyutov, but the cart-bound Grischuk prevents him. In the story “Afonka Vida,” the Cossacks of A.’s platoon “for fun” whip foot militiamen. Soon A.’s horse is killed in a shootout; the next morning the hero disappears and is absent for several weeks, getting a new horse. When the division enters Berestechko, A. rides out to meet it on a tall stallion; during this time A. lost one eye. Then the hero “walks”: drunk, breaks the reliquary with the relics of the saint in the church and tries to play the organ, accompanying his songs (“At St. Valent’s”).

Balmashev Nikita - cavalryman. In the story “Salt” there is a hero-narrator, the author of a letter to the editor devoted to the topic of “the lack of consciousness of women who are harmful to us.” At the Fastov station, soldiers from the cavalry echelon fight off numerous bagmen carrying salt and trying to board the train; however, B. feels sorry for one of the women, in whose arms infant, and puts her in the carriage, and convinces the fighters not to rape her. However, after some time, B. realizes that the woman deceived them, and in her package there is “a good pood of salt.” Offended by the baseness of the woman whom the fighters “raised as a working mother in the republic,” B. first throws her out of the car as it moves, and then, feeling that this is not enough punishment, kills her with a rifle. B.’s letter ends with an oath on behalf of the soldiers of the second platoon to “deal mercilessly with all traitors.” In the story “Betrayal,” B. is the hero-narrator, the author of a statement to the investigator, in which he tells how, together with fellow soldiers Golovin and Kustov, he ended up in the M... hospital in the town of Kozin. When asked by Dr. Yavein to hand over their weapons, take a bath and change into hospital clothes, the fighters respond with a decisive refusal and begin to behave as if under siege. However, after a week they lose their vigilance due to wounds and overwork and the “merciless nurses” manage to disarm them and change their clothes. A complaint to the Pre-Revolutionary Committee Boyderman remains unsuccessful, and then the cavalrymen on the square in front of the hospital disarm the policeman and shoot at the glass of the hospital storage room with his revolver. Four days after this, one of them - Kustov - “was supposed to die from his illness.” B. qualifies the behavior of everyone around him as treason, which he anxiously declares to the investigator.

Ilya Bratslavsky is the son of the Zhytomyr rabbi Motale Bratslavsky; Lyutov first meets him in his father’s house (“Rabbi”): he is a young man “with the powerful forehead of Spinoza, with the stunted face of a nun,” he demonstratively smokes in the presence of those praying, he is called “a cursed son, a disobedient son.” After some time, he leaves home, joins the party and becomes a regiment commander (“Son of a Rabbi”); when the front is broken through, B.'s regiment is defeated, and the hero himself dies of typhus.

Galin is one of the employees of the newspaper "Red Cavalryman", "narrow in the shoulders, pale and blind", in love with the laundress Irina ("Evening"). He tells her about Russian history, but Irina goes to sleep with the cook Vasily, “leaving Galin alone with the moon.” The character’s emphasized frailty contrasts sharply with the willpower he demonstrates: he calls Lyutov a “slut” and talks about “the political education of the First Horse” - while Irina and Vasily’s legs “stick out into the coolness” from the opened kitchen door.

Gedali is the hero of the story of the same name, an old blind Jewish philosopher, the owner of a shop in Zhitomir. In a conversation with L ready, he expresses his readiness to accept the revolution, but complains that there is a lot of violence and few “good people” in it. G. dreams of an “International of Good People”; he cannot understand the difference between revolution and counter-revolution, since both bring death with them.

Dyakov is the head of the division's horse reserve, a former circus athlete. When the cavalrymen forcibly exchange their exhausted horses for fresher peasant ones (“Chief of the Reserve”), the men protest: one of them tells D. that the horse he received “in exchange” cannot even stand up. Then D., who has been given a romantic theatrical appearance (a black cloak and silver stripes along red trousers), approaches the horse, and the horse, feeling “the skillful strength flowing from this gray-haired, blooming and dashing Romeo,” inexplicably rises to its feet.

Konkin is the hero of the story of the same name, a former “musical eccentric and salon ventriloquist from the city of Nizhny,” now “a political commissar of the N... cavalry brigade and a three-time holder of the Order of the Red Banner.” At a halt, he “with his usual buffoonery” tells how once, wounded during a battle, he pursued a Polish general, who wounded him twice more. However, K. overtakes the Pole and persuades him to surrender; he refuses to surrender to the lower rank, not believing that in front of him is a “supreme boss.” Then K. “in the old fashioned way” - without opening his mouth - curses the old man. Having learned that K. is a commissar and a communist, the general asks the hero to hack him to death, which he does; at the same time, K. himself almost loses consciousness from loss of blood.

Kurdyukov Vasily is a cavalryman, a boy of the expedition of the political department, dictating a letter to Lyutov to his mother (“Letter”), in which he dispassionately tells about the fate of his brother Fedor, a Red Army soldier, brutally killed by their father, Timofey Rodionovich Kurdkzhov, a company commander under Denikin; Timofey tortures V. himself, but he manages to escape. He gets to Voronezh to see his other brother, Semyon, the regiment commander at Budyonny. Together with him, V. goes to Maikop, where Semyon, using his authority, gets his father, who was taken prisoner along with other Denikins, at his disposal, subjects him to a severe flogging, and then kills him. V., dictating the letter, is more concerned about the fate of his abandoned horse Styopka than the fate of his father and brothers. Having finished dictating, V. shows Lyutov a photograph of his family - Timofey “with the sparkling gaze of colorless and meaningless eyes”, “monstrously huge, stupid, wide-faced, pop-eyed” Fyodor and Semyon and “a tiny peasant woman with stunted bright and shy features” - his mother, to whom the letter is addressed.

Levka is a cavalryman, the division commander's coachman, and a former circus performer. In the story “The Widow,” L. begs Sashka, the “regimental wife” of the regimental commander Shevelev, to surrender to him (Shevelev himself is mortally wounded). The regiment commander gives Sashka and L. the final orders; as soon as he dies, L. demands from the “widow” that she fulfill the order and send Shevelev’s mother his “clothes, companions, order”; in response to Sashka’s words about the untimeliness of this conversation, L. smashes her face with his fist so that she “remembers the memory” of the deceased.

Lyutov is the main character-narrator of the cycle, appearing in most of the stories. “Kirill Lyutov” is Babel’s pseudonym as a war correspondent for the 6th Cavalry Division of the First Cavalry Army; Naturally, the image of the hero clearly has an autobiographical element. L. - a Jew from Odessa, abandoned by his wife; candidate of rights at St. Petersburg University: an intellectual trying to reconcile the principles of universal humanism with the reality of the revolutionary era - cruelty, violence, rampant primitive instincts. His “terrible” surname does not go well with sensitivity and spiritual subtlety.

Having received an appointment to the headquarters of the 6th division, L. appears to the division commander Savitsky (“My first goose”), making a negative impression on him with his intelligence. The lodger, accompanying L. to his place of accommodation for the night, says that the only way to become “one of us” among the Red Army soldiers is to be the same as them. Having met a very unkind reception from the fighters, the hungry L. pushes his fist into the chest of the old woman who refused to feed him, then kills the owner’s goose, crushing its head with his boot, and orders the old woman to fry it. The cavalrymen who observed the scene invite L. to the cauldron; he reads them “Pravda” with Lenin’s speech, then they go to sleep in the hayloft: “I saw dreams and women in my dreams, and only my heart, stained with murder, creaked and flowed.”

Arriving in busy Novograd-Volynsky (“Passage through Zbruch”), L. occupies an apartment in Jewish family and goes to bed next to the fallen owner. The hero sees horrible dream. The pregnant housewife wakes up L., and it turns out that he was sleeping next to her dead father, killed by the Poles. In the story “The Church in Novograd” L. goes with a report to the military commissar living in the priest’s house, drinks rum with the priest’s assistant Romuald, then goes to look for the military commissar and finds him in the dungeon of the church: together with other cavalrymen they discover money and jewelry in the altar. The icons in Novograd-Volynsky (“Pan Apolek”) clearly remind L. of familiar townspeople; he talks with the artist Apolek.

In the story “Letter,” L. takes Kurdyukov’s dictation and writes down his letter to his mother. In the story "The Sun of Italy" he reads an excerpt from a letter written by his apartment neighbor Sidorov to a woman named Victoria.

In Zhitomir (“Gedali”), under the influence of childhood memories, L. looks for the “first star” on Saturday, and then talks with the shopkeeper-philosopher Gedali, convincing him (and himself) that evil is permissible in the struggle for good, that revolution is impossible without violence, and the International is “eaten with gunpowder and seasoned with the best blood.”

In the story “Rabbi” and “Son of a Rabbi,” L. meets Ilya Bratslavsky, the son of a Zhitomir rabbi. In the story “The Teaching of the Cart,” L. receives command of the cart-cart Grishchuk and becomes the owner of the cart, ceasing to be “a guy among the Cossacks.”

During the battle near Brody, L. cannot find the strength to shoot the mortally wounded telephone operator Dolgushov at his request (“The Death of Dolgushov”); Afonka Vida does this, after which she tries to shoot L. himself: two ideas about humanity collide; Comforting L., the cart-cart Grishchuk treats him to an apple.

After moving from Khotyn to Berestechko (“Berestechko”), L., wandering around the city, ends up in the castle of the Counts Raciborski; looking at the square from there, he sees a meeting at which military commander Vinogradov speaks about the Second Congress of the Comintern; then L. finds a fragment of a French letter dated 1820, in which we're talking about that Napoleon died.

In the story “Evening” L. talks about the employees of the newspaper “Red Cavalryman” - Galina, Slinkin and Sychev (“Three single hearts with the passions of the Ryazan Jesuses”). The hero - “wearing glasses, with boils on his neck and bandaged legs” - complains to Galin about illness and fatigue, after which he calls L. a wimp. In the story “At St. Valentine’s,” L., seeing a church desecrated by cavalrymen, writes a report “about the insult to the religious feelings of the local population.” In the story “Squadron Trunov” L. cruelly scolds Trunov, who killed two captured Poles. In the battle near Khotyn (“Ivany”), L.’s horse is killed, and he picks up the wounded on an ambulance cart. Then he meets two Ivans - the cavalryman Akinfiev and the deacon Aggeev, who expects an imminent death and asks L. to write to his wife in Kasimov: “let my wife cry for me.”

During an overnight stay in Zamość (“Zamość”), L. dreams of a woman named Margot, “dressed for a ball,” who first caresses him and then reads a memorial prayer for him and places nickels on his eyes. The next morning, the division headquarters moves to Sitanets; L. stays in a hut with the lodger Volkov - however, the enemy advances, and soon they have to flee on the same horse; L. agrees with Volkov’s words: “We lost the campaign.” In the story “After the Battle,” L., in a skirmish with Akinfiev, admits that he is going on the attack with an unloaded revolver; after this skirmish, he “begs fate for the simplest of skills - the ability to kill a person.” In the story “Song,” L., threatening with a weapon, demands cabbage soup from the “evil mistress” - however, Sashka Christ interferes with him with his song: “Sashka humbled me with his half-strangled and swaying voice.”

In the story “Argamak” L. decides to join the ranks - to the 6th division; he is assigned to the 4th squadron of the 23rd cavalry regiment and given a horse, taken by order of squadron commander Baulin from the Cossack Tikhomolov as punishment for killing two captured officers. L.'s inability to handle a horse leads to the fact that the argamak's back turns into a continuous wound. L. feels sorry for the horse; in addition, he is upset that he became an accomplice in the injustice committed against the owner of the argamak. Having met with Tikhomolov, the hero invites him to “make peace,” but he, seeing the condition of the horse, refuses. Squadron Baulin, because L. “strives to live without enemies,” drives him away, and the hero goes to the 6th squadron.

In Budyatichi (“The Kiss”) L. stays at the apartment of a schoolteacher. The orderly Mishka Surovtsev advises the teacher’s daughter, Elizaveta Alekseevna Tomilina, to go to bed “closer” to him and L., after which numerous old men and women begin to gather in the house to protect the woman from violence. L. calms Tomilina; two days later they become friends, then lovers. The regiment leaves Budyatichy on alarm; However, a few weeks later, finding themselves spending the night nine kilometers away, L. and Surovtsev go there again. L. spends the night with Tomilina, but before dawn the orderly hurries him to leave, although the hero does not understand the reasons for the haste. On the way, Surovtsev informs L. that Tomilina’s paralyzed father died at night. The last words of the story (and the entire book): “This morning our brigade passed the former state border of the Kingdom of Poland.”

Pavlichenko Matvey Rodionovich - cavalryman, “red general”, hero-narrator of “The Biography of Pavlichenko Matvey Rodionovich”. While a shepherd in the Stavropol province, he married a girl named Nastya. Having learned that the landowner Nikitinsky, for whom he worked, was pestering his wife, he asked for payment; however, the landowner forces him to repay the debt within ten years. In 1918, having already become the commander of the Red Cossack detachment, P. comes to Nikitinsky’s estate and puts him to painful death in the presence of the landowner’s crazy wife. The motivation is typical: “You can only get rid of a person by shooting: shooting is a pardon for him, but it’s a vile ease for yourself; by shooting you won’t reach the soul, where a person has it and how it shows itself. But sometimes I don’t feel sorry for myself, sometimes I trample the enemy for an hour or more, I would like to know what kind of enemy we have...” In the story “Chesniki” P. - having commanded six - argues with Voroshilov, not wanting to launch an attack not in in full force divisions. In the story “Brigade Commander Two,” P. is called “willful.”

Prishchepa is a cavalryman, the hero of the story of the same name: “a young Kuban citizen, a tireless boor, a cleaned-out communist, a future flea dealer, a careless syphilitic, a leisurely liar.” Because P. fled from the whites, they killed his parents; property was stolen by neighbors. Returning to his native village, P. takes revenge on everyone from whom he finds things from his home. Then he, locked in the hut, drinks, sings, cries and chops tables with a saber for two days; on the third night he sets fire to the house, kills a cow and disappears from the village.

Romuald is an assistant priest in Novograd-Volshsky, who spied on the Red Army soldiers and was shot by them. In the story “The Church in Novograd” Lyutov (not knowing that R. is a spy) drinks rum with him. In the story “Pan Apolek” R. turns out to be the “prototype” of John the Baptist in the icon painted by Apolek.

Savitsky is the head of the sixth division. The story “My First Goose” talks about the hero’s “giant body” and that S. “smells of perfume and the cloying coolness of soap.” When Lyutov comes to him with an order to appoint him to the division, S. calls him “lousy.” In the story “Crossing the Zbruch,” Lyutov dreams that S. killed the brigade commander because he “turned the brigade around.” In the story “Brigade Commander Two,” S. is called “captivating”; It is his training that Lyutov explains the brave cavalry landing of Kolesnikov, commander of the second brigade. After unsuccessful battles, S. was removed from his post (“The Death of Dolgushov”, “The Story of a Horse”) and sent to the reserve; he lives with the Cossack woman Pavla in Radzivilov - “drenched in perfume and looking like Peter the Great.” In the story “The Continuation of the Story of One Horse,” S. again commands a division that is fighting heavy rearguard battles; S. writes about this in a response letter to Khlebnikov, promising to see him only “in the kingdom of heaven.”

Sashka is a nurse of the 31st Cavalry Regiment, “the lady of all squadrons.” In the story “The Widow” she is the “field wife” of regiment commander Shevelev until his death. In the story “Chesniki,” S. persuades the Cossack chick Styopka Duplishchev to marry the division commander’s blood stallion Hurricane with her mare, promising a ruble for it; in the end he agrees, but after the mating S. leaves without giving Styopka the money. In the story “After the Battle,” S. does not want to sit at the table next to the commander of the first squadron, Vorobyov, because he and his fighters did not perform properly in the attack.

Sashka Christ (Konyaev) is a cavalryman, the hero of the story of the same name. When S. was 14 years old, he went to Grozny as an assistant to his stepfather Tarakanych, who worked as a carpenter. They both contracted syphilis from a passing beggar woman. When they return to the village, S., threatening to tell his mother about his stepfather’s illness, receives permission from him to become a shepherd. The hero “became famous throughout the district for his innocence,” for which he received the nickname “Christ.” In the story "Song" he is called a "squadron singer"; in the hut where Lyutov is standing, S. sings the Kuban song “Star of the Fields” to the accompaniment of a harmonica (the songs were taught to him by a poacher on the Don in 1919).

Sidorov is a cavalryman, Lyutov’s neighbor in an apartment in Novograd-Volynsky (“Sun of Italy”), studying the Italian language and the plan of Rome at night. Lyutov calls S. “a melancholy murderer.” In a letter to a woman named Victoria S. talks about her former passion for anarchism, her three-month stay in the Makhnovist army and her meeting with anarchist leaders in Moscow. The hero is bored without a “real” job; He is also bored in the Cavalry, since due to his wound he cannot be in the ranks. S. asks Victoria to help him go to Italy to prepare a revolution there. The basis of S.’s image is a combination of a bright romantic dream and a gloomy motif of death: “a night full of distant and painful ringing sounds, a square of light in damp darkness - and in it is Sidorov’s deathly face, a lifeless mask hanging over the yellow flame of a candle.”

Trunov Pavel is a cavalryman, the hero of the story “Squadron Trunov”. Of the ten captured Poles, T. kills two, an old man and a young man, suspecting that they are officers. He asks Lyutov to cross those killed off the list, but he refuses. Seeing enemy planes in the sky, T., together with Andrei Vosmiletov, tries to shoot them down with machine guns; in this case both of them die. T. is buried in Sokal, in a public garden.

Khlebnikov - cavalryman, commander of the first squadron. Divisional Chief Savitsky takes the white stallion from X. (“The Story of One Horse”); after futile attempts to return him, X. writes a statement of resignation from the RCP(b), since the party cannot restore justice in his case. After this, he begins to have a nervous attack, and is eventually demobilized "as an invalid with six wounds." Lyutov regrets this because he believes that X. was similar in character to him: “We both looked at the world as a meadow in May, as a meadow along which women and horses walk.” In the story “The continuation of the story of one horse” X. is the chairman of the Urevkom in the Vitebsk region; he writes a conciliatory letter to Savitsky.

Isaac Babel

CANVALRY

Crossing the Zbruch

The commander of the six reported that Novograd-Volynsk was taken at dawn today. The headquarters set out from Krapivno, and our convoy, a noisy rearguard, stretched along the highway running from Brest to Warsaw and built on the bones of peasants by Nicholas the First.

Fields of purple poppies bloom around us, the midday wind plays in the yellowing rye, virgin buckwheat rises on the horizon like the wall of a distant monastery. Quiet Volyn bends, Volyn moves away from us into the pearly fog of birch groves, it creeps into flowery hillocks and with weakened hands gets tangled in the thickets of hops. The orange sun rolls across the sky like a severed head, a gentle light lights up in the gorges of the clouds, the standards of sunset flutter above our heads. The smell of yesterday's blood and killed horses drips into the evening cool. The blackened Zbruch makes noise and twists the foamy knots of its thresholds. The bridges are destroyed and we ford the river. The majestic moon lies on the waves. Horses plunge into the water up to their backs, sonorous streams ooze between hundreds of horse legs. Someone is drowning and loudly defaming the Mother of God. The river is dotted with black squares of carts, it is full of hum, whistle and songs thundering over the moon snakes and shining pits.

Late at night we arrive in Novograd. I find a pregnant woman in the apartment assigned to me and two red-haired Jews with thin necks; the third sleeps, covering his head and leaning against the wall. I find destroyed cabinets in the room allotted to me, scraps of women's fur coats on the floor, human feces and shards of sacred dishes used by Jews once a year - for Passover.

Take it away,” I tell the woman. - How dirty you live, owners...

Two Jews are removed from their place. They jump on felt soles and clear debris from the floor, they jump silently, like monkeys, like the Japanese in a circus, their necks swelling and spinning. They put the torn feather bed on the floor, and I lie down against the wall, next to the third Jew who had fallen asleep. Shy poverty closes over my bed.

Everything is killed by silence, and only the moon, clasping its round, shining, carefree head with its blue hands, wanders under the window.

I stretch my stiff legs, I lie on the ripped feather bed and fall asleep. I dream about the beginning of six. He chases the brigade commander on a heavy stallion and puts two bullets in his eyes. The bullets pierce the brigade commander's head, and both his eyes fall to the ground. “Why did you turn the brigade around?” - Savitsky shouts to the wounded man, having commanded six, - and then I wake up, because a pregnant woman is running her fingers over my face.

Pan,” she tells me, “you are screaming out of sleep and you are throwing yourself. I’ll make a bed for you in another corner, because you’re pushing my dad...

She lifts her thin legs and round belly from the floor and takes the blanket off the sleeping man. The dead old man lies there, slumped over on his back. His throat is torn out, his face is cut in half, blue blood lies on his beard like a piece of lead.

Pan,” says the Jewish woman and shakes the feather bed, “the Poles slaughtered him, and he prayed to them: kill me in the back yard so that my daughter does not see how I die.” But they did what they needed - he ended up in this room and thought about me... And now I want to know, - the woman suddenly said with terrible force, - I want to know where else in the whole earth you will find such a father, like my father...

Church in Novograd

Yesterday I went with a report to the military commissar, who was staying in the house of the fleeing priest. Mrs. Eliza, the Jesuit's housekeeper, met me in the kitchen. She gave me amber tea with biscuits. Her biscuits smelled like a crucifix. The evil juice was contained in them and the fragrant rage of the Vatican.

Near the house, bells roared in the church, wound up by a maddened bell-ringer. It was an evening full of July stars. Mrs. Eliza, shaking her attentive gray hair, poured cookies for me, I enjoyed the food of the Jesuits.

The old Polish woman called me “sir,” gray old men with stiff ears stood at attention at the threshold, and somewhere in the serpentine darkness a monk’s cassock wriggled. Pater fled, but he left behind an assistant - Pan Romuald.

A nasal eunuch with the body of a giant, Romuald called us “comrades.” He traced the map with his yellow finger, indicating the circles of Polish defeat. Seized with hoarse delight, he counted the wounds of his homeland. Let meek oblivion swallow up the memory of Romuald, who betrayed us without regret and was shot in passing. But that evening his narrow cassock moved at all the curtains, furiously chalked all the roads and grinned at everyone who wanted to drink vodka. That evening the shadow of the monk stalked me relentlessly. He would have become a bishop - Pan Romuald, if he had not been a spy.

I drank rum with him, the breath of an unprecedented way of life flickered under the ruins of the priest’s house, and his insinuating temptations weakened me. Oh, crucifixes, tiny, like the talismans of a courtesan, the parchment of papal bulls and the atlas of women’s letters, vests decaying in blue silk!..

I see you from here, unfaithful monk in a purple robe, the swelling of your hands, your soul, tender and merciless, like the soul of a cat, I see the wounds of your god, oozing with seed, a fragrant poison that intoxicates virgins.

We drank rum while waiting for the military commissar, but he still did not return from headquarters. Romuald fell in the corner and fell asleep. He sleeps and trembles, and outside the window in the garden, under the black passion of the sky, the alley shimmers. Thirsty roses sway in the darkness. Green lightning flashes in the domes. A stripped corpse lies under the slope. And the moonlight streams over the dead legs sticking out apart.

Here is Poland, here is the arrogant sorrow of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth! Violent stranger, I spread the lousy mattress in the temple abandoned by the clergyman, I put under my head the volumes in which the hosanna to the noble and blessed Head of the Pantry, Joseph Pilsudski, is printed.

Beggarly hordes are rolling towards your ancient cities, O Poland, the song of the unity of all slaves thunders over them, and woe to you. Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, woe to you, Prince Radziwill, and to you, Prince Sapieha, who got up for an hour!..

My military commissar is still missing. I look for him in the headquarters, in the garden, in the church. The gates of the church are open, I enter, and two silver skulls flare up on the lid of a broken coffin. In fright, I rush down into the dungeon. An oak staircase leads from there to the altar. And I see many lights running in the heights, right next to the dome. I see the military commissar, the head of the special department and the Cossacks with candles in their hands. They respond to my faint cry and take me out of the basement.

The skulls, which turned out to be carvings of a church hearse, do not scare me anymore, and together we continue the search, because it was a search that began after piles of military uniforms were found in the priest’s apartment.

Sparkling our cuffs with embroidered horse muzzles, whispering and rattling spurs, we circle around the echoing building with melting wax in our hands. The Mother of God, studded with precious stones, follows our path with pink, mouse-like pupils, flames beat in our fingers, and square shadows writhe on the statues of St. Peter, St. Francis, St. Vincent, on their rosy cheeks and curly beards painted with carmine.

We circle and search. Bone buttons jump under our fingers, icons cut in half move apart, opening dungeons into caves blooming with mold. This temple is ancient and full of mystery. It hides in its glossy walls secret passages, niches and doors that swing open silently.

O stupid priest, who hung the bras of his parishioners on the nails of the Savior. Behind the royal gates we found a suitcase with gold coins, a morocco bag with credit cards and cases of Parisian jewelers with emerald rings.

And then we counted the money in the military commissar’s room. Pillars of gold, carpets of money, a gusty wind blowing on the flames of candles, the crow's madness in the eyes of Mrs. Eliza, Romuald's thunderous laughter and the endless roar of the bells wound up by Mr. Robatsky, the maddened bell-ringer.

Away, I said to myself, away from these winking madonnas, deceived by the soldiers...

Here is a letter to my homeland, dictated to me by a boy from our expedition, Kurdyukov. It doesn't deserve to be forgotten. I rewrote it without embellishment, and I convey it verbatim, in accordance with the truth.

“Dear mother Evdokia Fedorovna. In the first lines of this letter, I hasten to notify you that, thanks to the gentlemen, I am alive and well, and I wish to hear the same from you. And I also bow to you humbly from the whiteness of my face to the damp earth...”

(A list of relatives, godparents, and godfathers follows. Let’s skip that. Let’s move on to the second paragraph.)

“Dear mother Evdokia Fedorovna Kurdyukova. I hasten to write to you that I am in the Red Cavalry Army of Comrade Budyonny, and also here is your godfather Nikon Vasilich, who is currently a red hero. They took me with them, on the expedition of the Political Department, where we deliver literature and newspapers to the positions - Moscow Izvestia of the Central Executive Committee, Moskovskaya Pravda and the dear merciless newspaper Red Cavalryman, which every fighter at the forefront wants to read, and after that, with a heroic spirit, he chops down the vile gentry, and I live very splendidly under Nikon Vasilich.