THE STORIES OF ISAAC BABEL
405
Precisely because the Cossacks were innocent of the traditional in–
stitutions of Russian society, Babel admired them. Having no piety to–
ward the stations and duties of the old rotted society---existing, indeed,
almost without any preconceptions about the virtue of society at all–
they were delivered from any compunction about destroying it or what–
ever defended and represented it. For Babel they became the ironic
embodiment of the Revolutionary ideal, the irresistible, anarchic sim–
plicity that would execute the catastrophe of war and survive it as the
first and finest fruits of the new society; for he had few expectations
of industrial greatness or educated masses-the true revolution would
create something like the Cossacks. He was more right than he knew.
In comparison with the Cossacks, however, Babel found himself
miserably inadequate. As a Jew, an intellectual, a revolutionary, he was
unable to meet the violent requirements of the revolution. When he is
called upon to kill a wounded Cossack to prevent his falling into the
hands of the Poles, he cannot. When he borrows a Cossack's horse he
promptly afflicts the beast with saddle-sores. He wanders through a
battle with an unloaded pistol, and convicts himself of lacking "the
simplest of proficiencies-the ability to kill my fellow-men." The Cos–
sacks, apprehending Babel's peculiar unfitness for his work, reproached
him: "'You're trying to live without enemies.''' Such, he confesses, is
the fate of a man with spectacles on his nose.
But Babel did not castigate himself with any lasting bitterness for
this failing. He realized that his time was unable to respond to him; it
could not gratify his vagrant impulses of love. "Gedali," one of his finest
stories, expresses this dilemma beautifully. On a Sabbath eve Babel in–
vokes his childhood. "In bygone days on these occasions my grandfather
would stroke the volumes of Ibn Ezra with his yellow beard. His old
woman in her lace cap would trace fortunes with her knotty fingers
over the Sabbath candles, and sob softly to herself. On those evenings
my child's heart was rocked like a little ship upon enchanted waves. 0
the rotted Talmuds of my childhood! 0 the dense melancholy of memor–
ies!" Roaming through the
shtetl
of a Polish town, longing to share his
nostalgia, he finds an old Jew, Gedali, in his curiosity shop, presiding
over the things boys love and remember, "buttons ... and a dead but–
terfly . . . a labyrinth of globes, skulls, and dead flowers. . . ." But
Gedali disdains to speak of the past, of the Sabbath eves, and argues
wistfully and uncomprehendingly about the Revolution-he too seeks an
impossible communion, "an International of good people." In despair,
Babel cries, " 'Gedali .. . today is Friday, and it's already evening. Where
are Jewish biscuits to be got, and a Jewish glass of tea, and a little of
