Isaac Babel
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
In
the winter of 1916 I found myself in St. Petersburg with
a forged passport and not a cent to my name. Alexei Kazantsev, a
teacher of Russian literature, took me into his house.
He lived on a yellow, frozen, evil-smelling street in the Peski
district. The miserable salary he received was padded out a bit by
doing translations from the Spanish; Blasco Ibanez was just becoming
famous at that time.
Kazantsev had never so much as passed through Spain but his
love for that country filled his whole being. He knew every castle,
every garden and every river in Spain. There were many other people
huddling around Kazantsev, all of them, like myself, flung out of the
round of ordinary life. We were half-starved. From time to time the
yellow press would publish, in the smallest print, unimportant news
items written by us.
I spent my mornings hanging around the morgues and police
stations.
Kazantsev was happier than any of us, for he had a country of
his own-Spain.
In
November I was given the chance to become a clerk at the
Obukhov Mills.
It
was a rather good position and would have ex–
empted me from military service.
I refused to become a clerk.
Even in those days, when I was twenty years old, I had told my–
self: better to starve, go to jail, or become a bum than spend ten
hours every day in an office behind a desk.
There was nothing particularly laudable in my resolve, but I
have never broken it and I never will. The wisdom of my ancestors
was firmly lodged in my head: we are born to enjoy our work, our
fights, and our love; we are born for that and for nothing else.
Listening to my bragging Kazantsev ruffled the short yellow
