384
ISAAC BABEL
platform. The lowering sky was furrowed with clouds, suffused
with rain and gloom.
Three days went by before the first train left. At first it
stopped at every verst, but then
it
gathered speed; the wheels
began to rumble with a will, singing a song of power. Everyone
was happy in our freight car. In 1918, rapid travel made people
happy. During the night the train shuddered and came to a
stop. The doors of our car slid open and we saw the greenish
gleam of snow. A railroad telegrapher entered the car, wearing a
wide fur coat fastened with a leather belt, and soft Caucasian
boots. He stretched out his hand and rapped his palm with one
finger.
"Your papers. Put them here!"
Near the door, a quiet old woman lay huddled on some
bales. She was going to her son, a railroad worker in Luban. Next
to me, a teacher, Yehuda Weinberg, and his wife, sat dozing.
The teacher had been married a few days earlier and was taking
his
young wife to Petersburg. All the way they had talked in
whispers about new methods of teaching, and then had fallen
asleep. Even in sleep their hands were linked, clinging to each
other.
The telegrapher read their travel document, signed by
Lunacharsky, took a mauser with a slender, grimy muzzle from
under his coat and shot the teacher in the face.
A large, stooping peasant wearing a fur cap with the ear–
flaps undone shuffled behind the telegrapher. The telegrapher
winked at the peasant who put his lamp on the floor, unbuttoned
the trousers of the dead man, cut off his genitals with a knife
and began stuffing them into
his
wife's mouth.
"Treit
wasn't good enough for you," said the telegrapher.
"So
here's some kosher for yoU."2
The woman's soft neck bulged. Not a sound came from her.
The train had come to a halt in the steppe. The snow-drifts
2.
The
two previous paragraphs were excised in the censored 1957 version.
