The Complete Works of Isaac Babel by Isaac Babel

Author:Isaac Babel
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Classics
ISBN: 9780393328240
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Published: 2001-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

AT THE WORKERS’ RETREAT

Beyond the veranda is the night, full of slow sounds and majestic darkness. An inexhaustible rain patrols the violet clefts of the mountains, and the gray rustling silk of its watery walls hangs over the cool and menacing dusk of the ravines. The blue flame of our candle flickers through the tireless murmur of the drumming water like a distant star, and twinkles on the wrinkled faces carved by the heavy, eloquent chisel of labor.

Three old tailors, gentle as nursemaids, the charming M. who not too long ago lost an eye at his loom, and I who am worn out by the bitter, agonizing dust of our towns, are sitting on the veranda that extends into the night, the boundless, aromatic night. An ineffable calm rubs our sore, exhausted muscles with its maternal palms, and we sip our tea, unhurriedly and dreamily—three gentle tailors, the charming M., and I, a downtrodden but enthusiastic workhorse.

You petite bourgeoisie, as talentless and hopeless as a storekeeper’s paunch, who built these “little dachas” for yourselves, if only you could see us rest in them! If only you could see our faces, ravaged by the steel-jawed machines, brighten up!

This silent, masculine kingdom of peace, these vulgar dachas that the miraculous power of events transformed into Workers’ Retreats, embody the elusive and noble essence of careful, silent indolence, so revitalizing and peaceful. Oh, the peerless gesture of a worker’s resting hands chastely frugal and wisely deliberate! I watch with fixed rapture these unswerving, convulsive black hands, used to the complex and unflagging soul of the machine. It is the machine that has given the exhausted body its resigned, silent, and deliberate immobility. How much I learned of the philosophy of respite and the principles of resuscitating depleted energy on that noisy, clear evening, as the tailors and metal workers drank tea on the terrace in the Workers’ Retreat in Mtskhet.7

Tipsy with tea, the boisterous champagne of the poor, we slowly and fervently sweat as we lovingly exchange subdued words and reminisce about how the Workers’ Retreats came to be.

A year has passed since their birth. It was only last February that the Georgian Trade Union Commission came to Mtskhet for an initial survey. They found the dachas in a terrible state, uninhabitable, filthy, dilapidated. The Trade Union went to work with unflagging zeal to launch this blessed undertaking, the bourgeoisie pitching in to the extent its modest means allowed. As is well known, the penalties the Trade Union has imposed on storekeepers of every kind for violating labor laws have reached the comforting sum of six hundred million rubles. So a hundred and fifty million of this sum was spent turning the tumbledown dachas into Workers’ Retreats—from which it clearly follows that the bourgeoisie’s money, for which it had spat blood (emphasis on the blood), is supporting Georgia’s first workers’ spas, for which we bow our heads in thanks. There is an unshakable confidence in the air that, due to the intrinsic nature

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