Stories by Isaac Babel

Author:Isaac Babel [Babel, Isaac]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aegitas
Published: 2017-01-05T16:00:00+00:00

The Cemetery at Kozin

A cemetery in a Jewish shtetl. Assyria and the mysterious decay of the East on weedy Volhynian fields.

Carved gray stones with three hundred year old inscriptions. Crude high-relief lettering carved out in granite. The images of a fish and a sheep over a dead human head. The images of rabbis in fur hats. The rabbis are girdled with belts round their narrow loins. Beneath the eyeless faces are wavy stone lines of curled beards. To the side, under an oak tree smashed by lightning, stands the crypt of Rabbi Azriil, killed by the Cossacks of Bogdan Khmelnitsky. Four generations lie in this crypt, which is barren as a water-bearer’s dwelling, and stone tablets, greening stone tablets, sing a Bedouin’s prayer over them:

“Azriil, son of Ananiy, mouth of Jehova.

Iliya, son of Azriil, the mind that battled single-handedly with oblivion.

Wolf, son of Iliya, a prince stolen from the Torah on the nineteenth spring.

Judah, son of Wolf, Rabbi of Cracow and Prague.

O death, o mercenary, o greedy thief, why did you not take pity on us, if only once?”

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