From Isaac Babel's "Konarmiya" (Red Cavalry)

THE CROSSING OF THE RIVER ZBRUCH

Division Commander Six informed us that Novograd-Volynsk was captured today at dawn. The headquarters moved from Krapivino, and our convoy sprawled in a noisy rearguard along the Brest-Warsaw road, which was built on the bones of the peasants by Nicholas the First.

 Fields of purple poppies are growing around us, the midday wind plays in the yellowing rye, virgin buckwheat stands tall on the horizon like the wall of a distant monastery. The quiet Volyn twists, the Volyn moves away from us and into the bejewelled mist of birch groves, it crawls into flowery hillocks and with weakened arms entangles itself in patches of hops. The orange sun hurtles through the sky like a severed head, a soft light glows through cracks in the clouds, the standards of sunset flutter over our heads. The smell of yesterday's blood and of slain horses seeps through the cool of evening.

 The blackened Zbruch roars and rolls up the foaming knots of its rapids. The bridges are destroyed, and we ford the river. The majestic moon lies on the waves. The horses sink up to their backs in water, noisy currents ooze through hundreds of horses' legs. Someone is drowning and is loudly defaming the mother of god. The river is strewn with the black squares of carriages, it is filled with roaring, whistling and songs, bellowing over the moon's snakes and shining holes.

 Late that night we arrive in Novograd. In the flat assigned to me I find a pregnant woman and two red-haired Jews with slender necks; a third is asleep against the wall, covered from head to toe. I find turned-out cupboards in the flat assigned to me, as well as fragments of women's fur-coats on the floor, human excrement, and the shattered remains of a treasured dish used by Jews once a year - at Passover.

 "Tidy up," I say to the woman. "My dear hosts, how can you live in such filth?.."

 The two Jews get out of their seats. They jump onto their felt soles and clear up the bits on the floor, they jump around in silence, like monkeys, like Japanese in the circus. Their necks swell up and twist round. They lay a ripped feather-mattress on the ground, and I lie down against the wall, next to the third, sleeping Jew. The fear-soaked poverty of the place closes in over my bed.

 Everything is as if murdered by silence, and only the moon, grabbing its round, shining, carefree head in its blue hands, wanders around outside the window.

 I rub my numbed feet, lie on the torn mattress and go to sleep. I dream of Division Commander Six. He is charging after the Brigade Commander on his heavy stallion, and fires two bullets into his eyes. The bullets smash through the Brigade Commander's head, and both his eyes fall to the ground. "What did you turn the brigade around for?" cries Savitsky, Division Commander Six, to the wounded man. And now I am coming awake, because the pregnant woman is running her fingers over my face.

 "Sir," she says to me, "you are crying out in your sleep and tossing and turning. I'll make your bed in the other corner because you are disturbing my father..." She lifts her thin legs and round stomach off the ground and removes the blanket from the sleeping man. The dead old man is lying there face down. His throat is slit, his face slashed into two halves, and there is blue blood in his beard, like a lump of lead.