And Then There Were None
Babel, Isaac
This story, written in 1923 under the Russian title "They Were Nine," has never been published in either the Soviet Union or abroad. It appears here in translation for the first time....
...I began to make notes about the corporal and the nine dead men...
...His leg had been broken with a rifle butt...
...He rode on at a gallop, and his horse swung its tail friskily just as though it was brushing us off...
...He was a slim-waisted youth with curly sideburns on his sallow cheeks...
...The young Pole with the curly sideburns looked at them with peas ant curiosity...
...In the first column I numbered them in order, in the second column I gave their names, and in the third the units to which they belonged...
...He knelt down on one knee, took aim with his rifle and fired, but he missed...
...The sun played on their dusty barrels, and I saw a rainbow on the metal...
...And looking at us in triumph, Andrushka galloped off...
...The slits of their eyes were ablaze...
...It took me some time to come to, as though I had had a concussion...
...The machine guns were being dragged up a hill, like calves on halters...
...My mother knitted them," the prisoner said in a firm voice...
...He said nothing, quivering as he looked at the prisoner, his eyes blank and wide...
...With the slow movement of a woman giving herself to a man, he raised both hands to the back of his neck, slumped to the ground, and died instantly...
...Let's have that stuff back...
...You have that nice Jewish look about you," he said in a shrill voice, hopping on one leg and leaving the thin dog's trail behind him...
...His fresh, pink-cheeked face was angry...
...I feel it in my bones...
...Nobody else but me would do this in the Red Cavalry...
...A smile of relief and satisfaction now came over Golov's face...
...He lay down on his stomach, crawled over to a ditch and for a long time held his battered, bleeding head in the shallow trickle of water...
...You'll get your share later...
...My mother knitted them," he said again and looked down...
...And what do you look at the world through, Golov...
...Now Golov fingered the prisoner's smart-looking underpants...
...That nice Jewish look, sir...
...The likes of us don't wear that sort of stuff," Golov muttered and fell silent...
...I turned around and looked at him...
...Yes, I do," I replied...
...They moved side by side, like one herd, and clanked reassuringly...
...Myriads of bees were trying to fight off their conquerors and were dying by their hives...
...Make a job of it, then...
...Sitting on my horse, I made a list of them in neat columns...
...he whispered, faintically fondling my stirrup...
...he shouted loud and clear and was suddenly pleased by the sound of his own strong voice...
...The staff officer agreed...
...Whereas the Cossack's killing of the prisoners in "And Then There Were None" appears shockingly brutal, in "Squadron Commander Trunov" it is modified by the main character's otherwise heroic behavior and by the narrator's reluctance to judge and condemn...
...Golov looked after the departing Cossack with a bemused expression...
...She knits like a machine, that mother of yours," Andrushka Burak butted in...
...He had tried it on, and it did not fit him—the sleeves scarcely reached down to his elbows...
...He turned around and saw me writing out the list of prisoners...
...Later on in other writings, the material of the diary will be reexamined and reinterpreted, and the Cossack will acquire the legendary stature that he has in some of Babel's stories...
...Get back into line, Shulmeister...
...It is seemingly in this spirit that "And Then There Were None" was written...
...They had wrapped greatcoats around their heads...
...He put his hand to his forehead...
...Our mothers don't knit pants like that for us," he said to me slyly...
...The startled Pole swung around to him, turning on his heels as though obeying an order on parade...
...You are a Jude, sir...
...We've killed them off by the hundreds before now without asking your help...
...It worked out to nine altogether...
...The prisoners are dead...
...Not to you, spectacles, but to my own kind, to the people from Sormovo...
...Then he saw the young Pole with his curly sideburns, who glanced at him with the calm disdain of youth and smiled at his confusion...
...At this moment the sun poured out from behind the dark clouds...
...It left a thin trail of blood like that of a wounded dog, and sweat, glistening in the sun, bubbled on his cracked, yellowish bald pate...
...Hyacinths and blue roses were growing there...
...Yesterday, when Corporal Golov, a worker from Sormovo, killed the lanky Pole, I said to our staff officer that the corporal was setting a bad example for the men and that we ought to make up a list of the prisoners and send them back for questioning...
...The staff officer ordered me to see to the machine guns and rode off...
...The answer he gives is, "Layers: worthlessness, daring, professionalism, revolutionary spirit, animalistic cruelty...
...Want to get hurt, you bastard...
...Cherkashin, the staff today, was plundering the bee-hives...
...I'll answer for it, all right...
...Call yourself a worker...
...I feel it in my bones...
...I took my diary and went into the flower garden, which was untouched...
...Blood was pouring off it like rain off a hayrick...
...They know what's what...
...Traitor," Golov said, pronouncing the word very clearly...
...I feel it in my bones...
...Although the story clearly belongs to the Red Cavalry cycle, it is likely that Babel chose not to include it since he used some of its elements for the more complicated narrative of the story called "Squadron Commander Trunov," dated 1925...
...Nathalie Babel The prisoners are dead, all nine of them...
...He looked sulky and his face went stiff...
...In the same diary he asks the question: "What is our Cossack...
...He gave me a look of hatred and said, "You look at the world through those spectacles of yours...
...I shouted at the Jew, and suddenly, overcome by a deathly feeling of faintness, I began to slip from the saddle and choking, I said, "How did you know...
...His cheeks quickly regained their color...
...In a diary that he kept during the Polish campaign, Babel notes under the date of August 30, 1920, an episode concerning ten Polish prisoners...
...he shouted with indescribable glee...
...You are—" he squealed, the spittle dribbling from his mouth, and his whole body convulsed with joy...
...Mitia, who had pink cheeks and came from Orel, was following him, with a smoking torch in his hands...
...His fussing had a sense of death about it, and I had quite a job fending him off...
...I stretched out my hand toward him and shouted, but the sound stuck in my throat, to choke and swell there...
...No," came the Pole's curt answer...
...The fourth was Adolf Shulmeister, a Jewish clerk from Lodz...
...You're an officer," Golov said, shielding his face from the sun with one hand...
...Laughing, Andrushka rode up to Golov, carefully took the uniform out of his hands, threw it over the saddle on top of the trousers, and, with a slight flick of his whip, rode away from us again...
...It cast a dazzling light on Andrushka's horse as it cantered off perkily with carefree movements of its docked tail...
...Our unit has camped in a devastated Polish country estate...
...And I put aside my pen...
...I got a pencil and paper out of my knapsack and called Golov...
...Andrushka immediately turned his horse around and charged right up to the corporal...
...There is a difference of emphasis between the two stories...
...But I was immediately interrupted by a noise—an all-too-familiar noise...
...Then Golov cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, "This is still a republic, Andrushka...
...He kept pressing up to my horse and stroked and caressed my boot with trembling fingers...
...I gave him the list and said despairingly, "You'll answer for all this, Golov...
...This story, written in 1923 under the Russian title "They Were Nine," has never been published in either the Soviet Union or abroad...
...He leaned right forward, thus giving me a view of Golov as he crawled out of the ditch, weary and pale, with his battered head, and his rifle raised...
...I was horrified at the great number of memorials ahead of me...
...Burak is the pink-faced Cossack with silky hair who had pulled the trousers off the lanky Pole as he lay dying...
...Golov quickly shot the prisoner in the back of the head and jumped to his feet...
...These trousers were now thrown over his saddle...
...Golov did not look up at him...
...This morning, I decided I must do something in memory of them...
...Scratch one and give me that list for the other eight...
...I look at it through the dog's life of us workers," he said and walked back toward one of the prisoners, carrying in his hands a Polish uniform with dangling sleeves...
...The prisoners are dead...
...Why the fuss about finishing off ten Poles...
...Andrushka turned a deaf ear...
...Listen, brother...
Vol. 13 • November 1966 • No. 6
