It’s going to be very hard to talk about Pulse 5 without talking about Pulse 6. But I will try (and probably fail).
George’s first question regards the necessity of two sentences within Pulse 5. In sentence one, our narrator wipes the sabre clean of his crime against the goose, leaves the scene of the crime for the outside world, and feels himself “languishing,” which can be defined as “breaking down.” Here—outside—is a moment of reflection for the narrator. A time separate from the Cossacks when he can ponder what he has done. And, as it turns out, he doesn’t feel so great in his triumph. He feels broken. In the second sentence, he notices something in nature—the moon. And it is not a beautiful moon, a celebratory moon, a worshipful moon, a moon that makes one think of the possibility of a Divine Maker, but a moon that looks like a cheap earring, the kind perhaps worn by a woman who is paid for sex. Sex—a natural and beautiful act—is cheapened when one pays for it, when it becomes transactional as opposed to lovingly given. And so our narrator feels and knows he has prostituted himself in his action. He has demoralized his soul in payment for acceptance. Without these two sentences—the first, where he leaves to reflect for a moment (and feels broken) and the second where his reflection tells him he is losing his soul—the story loses some of its depth and intensity. The reader needs to be led to a place where they can understand the narrator’s position before he reads to the Cossacks, and these sentences provide that.
As to George’s second question: can we quit here, at the end of Pulse 5, in the narrator’s triumph? After all, his quest has been to read the words of Lenin to the Cossacks, and now he is doing so. Well, the problem with ending here is that then story would lack the resonance to which it has been building the entire time. Like anyone who commits an act that goes against one’s heart, the question becomes: How do you sleep at night? Even though the narrator has fulfilled his desire, it came with a cost. His brokenness, which he has pushed aside while he reads to the Cossacks (“loudly, like a deaf man triumphant”), comes alive at night when he tries to sleep under that cheap earring-moon. That cost must be revealed—and it will be in Pulse 6.
I continue to be amazed that such a short story has generated something on the order of 100,000 words (or maybe much more) of thoughts, questions, perturbations and analysis. Thank you, George, and Mary, and everyone, for all of those words. It takes a bit of the sting out of how Isaac Babel’s life ended—how so many lives end. The photo of Isaac with his son is so moving. You can see in his face that he is a force of nature to be reckoned with.
Mary, I find your comparison or analogy of the narrator’s state of mind with an act of prostitution quite striking. As someone said to me many moons ago, it’s one thing to sell your body, but something else entirely to sell your soul.
As I read through the comments of others, I see this same idea expressed--that there is a cost to the narrator's actions. It's really a breathtaking story, and i would have had no idea just now breathtaking without the words and thoughts of everyone here in Story Club.
And oh, yes, that photo of Babel and his son is heartbreaking.
I have read a few of the other Red Cavalry stories. So far, all breathtaking. I have the Peter Constantine translation, edited by Isaac’s daughter, Nathalie Babel. If I am ever done with moving I hope to sit down and read the whole thing! (Though perhaps better savored in smaller bites…)
'My First Goose' can, clearly, be read and understood in splendid stand-alone isolation but do you think it might, perhaps, be read better and understood more fully in the context of its placing, eighth, in the cycle of Red Cavalry stories?
Hi Rob. I have only read a few of the Red Cavalry stories. Each so far has been a gem. It does seem that together they become more of a synergistic gestalt tapestry, multiple points of view.
Babel's face is exploding with pride and joy in that photograph. I wanted to shout back in time, "Grab everything dear to you and run away! Get out!" It's hard to look at his happy face and not think of how it all ended.
Well. That’s because you have no real idea of the emotional entanglements he might have felt towards communism and the place he came from. Why didn’t YOU grab your bags and run when Trump was elected?
Engaging in magical thinking is a way to reduce heartbreak. It wasn’t a literal thought. Although my husband and I have had long talks about where to go, how we’d live, and these talks are literal. My wish to save people from horrible deaths that are no longer alive? Magical thinking. To reduce anxiety.
I believe I read that Isaac Babel had one family in Paris and another in Moscow. The last time he was in Paris, friends and family begged him to not return to the Soviet Union. But he felt he could not live or work if he was not home.
I didn't know how he died! How terrible. Heartbreaking. Yet...his words live on and there is much in that to celebrate. I just heard an incredible storyteller at the Moth show last night from a Russian who survived Stalin's prison's twice. He was freed after Stalin unexpectedly died and he traveled to Moscow to see his jailor's face to be sure he was dead. He said he never felt safe until he was in America with the Atlantic Ocean separating him from Russia. At the very end of the story he revealed that he was born in Ukraine & the present situation inspired him to tell his story. He then said he will be 100 in a few months and that he was amazed to be alive.
Love your point about the description of the moon, Mary. I felt something in that 'cheap earring' description, but couldn't quite articulate it; you did wonderfully. Thanks!
The "story would lack the resonance to which it has been building the entire time." Mary the word resonance is key here, I think you've nailed it. Resonance is a big word, but it's what's happening in a strong story--the reader gets the full story, the echoes and answers, in language like "moon like cheap earring". A really good title resonates with its story; a really good ending makes sure all our questions are answered, as you demonstrate. In SIPIR George says some place: "Endings create an entire future world of different, plausible possibilities." In other words, we don't just know what's going on at the end of the story; we can imagine the possibilities after. That's resonance.
Hi Jane. Thank you for this. Obviously, all parts of a story are important, but endings in particular. I mean, if you don't stick the ending, then you really don't have a story--you have to go back to the beginning and figure out where you went wrong. So, yes, having an ending that resonates beyond the last words is the great hope for every story. I'm not sure I agree with you that a "really good ending makes sure all our questions are answered." Maybe i'm misinterpreting you, but i don't think it's always wise to tie up every loose end. I think the resonance in come cases comes from actually not answering every question, but letting the reader come to their own conclusions.
Could it be that a good story with a great ending asks the important questions? (Sending out tentacles of questioning that invite us to think and probe more deeply?)
Agreed... and to Jane's point, perhaps the little (obvious) questions are answered, leaving the reader to "hover with possible endings" leading us deeper...
As soon as I could read, short stories, and novels, have been desperately needed escapes for me. Now I'm learning there's a lot more going on and I can benefit from paying attention, even as a reader.
Yes, good point. Maybe it's "all our big questions are answered, and all our little questions hover with possible endings as we continue to think about the story."
Thank you, Jane. Your post invokes a notion in my mind that a well-written story resonates in a way like a well-lived life, percolating through the souls of subsequent generations.
It's a difficult balance: the wooden beams and floor boards of GS's pulses and sub-pulses, and the emotion and imagination that also go into the process. Phew.
Yes! And what is he reading to the Cossacks? What version of Lenin, really? What do they *really* have a shortage in? Is this really a triumph?
In the context in which the passage ends up being read, the shortage sounds like a shortage of things. Material things. Which provides justification for treating others poorly - using them as things in order to get more things. But with the deeper understory, we can interpret it, really, as a shortage of empathy, understanding (which reading would resonate more with the woman's earlier statement, "this business makes me want to kill myself?").
And this is also backed up by the fact that the whole reason the narrator acts this way is to gain empathy and understanding from the Cossacks. *That* is what makes the situation bearable for him. They share their food, they scoot over to make room. It's the sharing...
"A shortage of everything" - ambiguous, truth in both readings - every thing, and everything.
What do they REALLY have a shortage in! What they REALLY have is a shortage in everything! Including their next dinner! For goodness sake - don’t try to over sophisticate yourself. Take some things that are written as being written because they are as they actually are. Or don’t. Your silly choice!
I think I could have worded my comment better, though perhaps you'd still disagree, and that'd be understandable.
Of course I *knew* what shortage meant. But a shortage is never just a shortage. It exists in the minds of those who experience it, as well as in the wider context of society. A shortage doesn't appear fully formed from on high, but is rather the result of a complex array of forces. It is created by human activity, and can be remedied by human activity. It was created by war, and spurs war on...
I was simply trying to draw attention to the fact that in this context, the words are read in the context of violence. He reads these words right after he kills the woman's goose. He reads them to justify a certain perspective which the Cossacks share. You're right that a shortage is a shortage is a shortage. But also it's not. There's always ambiguity, because there's always different ways to frame it, always different ways to react to it.
The "all" can't exist without the "not-all" (à la Lacan); the perspective can't exist without its context.
Some times a shortage is actually a famine. And a famine can take place unintentionally. Through massive crop failure. Or through the movements of armies through a landscape. For they know not what they do. It’s not always a very straightforward moral question….
I'd say the non-straightforwardness of this moral question is the reason why we're having these disagreements in the first place.
One can interpret societal currents and individual actions through the lens of impersonal forces - this led to that, this led to that, and it was all inevitable, and killing a goose is just what happens when confronted with that inevitability.
One can also interpret societal currents and individual actions as a product of individual minds with individual perspectives, since that's where all behavior originates, by necessity. And individual perspectives are not inevitable. (Of course, that's not an uncontroversial statement, and ties into questions of free will which have been debated since forever...) But I think it is more useful to at least act as though perspectives are not inevitable, since that always leaves other options open.
True, famines can take place unintentionally. But what always remains intentional is how we react to a famine. Pooling resources with other countries, for example? Which on a societal level is a mirroring of simply giving someone a place at your table.
(Also, this particular famine *was* a result of war, though doubtless other factors were involved as well.)
People are created by their societies; societies are created by their people. I don't think we can even have one perspective without the other. I want to emphasize that what I'm saying is not an indictment of the narrator's behavior. One reason this story is so wonderful is that it shows *why* the narrator would act that way; it allows us to empathize with him and understand his actions. But understanding a perspective is not the same thing as accepting it unquestioningly. That's another reason why this story is so wonderful. It also expresses the complications that arise from adopting such a perspective.
There WAS a shortage of everything. Mostly of food. Forget about shoes. I don’t think that’s a problem that many of us have. But at least we might stretch our selves to imagine it. And perhaps to try not to frame the situation in our own, rather effete, moral terms.
He was reading the version of Lenin that was cheaply printed and widely dispersed throughout the Red Army during the dreadful years of civil war 1918 -21. And if you don’t understand that many ordinary people at that time found the writings of Lenin inspirational, you understand nothing of what was going on. And nothing at all about what Babel was writing about.
He is NOT writing about Massachusetts. And not even Alabama.
Kate, you clearly know a lot about what was going on in Russia then, and I do not (my academic interest was in the tribal cultures of the interior basin of British Columbia and the Zagros mountains of Iran, and my ignorance of Russian history is profound). I'm hoping you can help me understand the Lenin business in the story.
I was curious about the narrator's reference to a specific Lenin speech, and I found a translation of it in the Warwick University archives. It's 20 pages, mostly talking about the recent war, colonialism, Treaty of Versailles, national debt(s), and so on. Is this the same speech to which the narrator refers in the story? If so, I find it hard to imagine these Cossacks' attention would truly be held by most of it. What did seem plausible, however, is that they'd focus on the pervasive claim of the inevitability of victory. But the line toward the end of the speech, "...we are frequently forced to make compromises, to bide our time because we are weaker..." seems a useful gift to the narrator. I'd love to hear your insight about this. Thanks!
Well, I think the whole point is that they weren’t really interested. But Babel’s quiet reading of it served, in a kind of way, like a bed time story for these exhausted boys.
And I think, that’s the point. The dissonance between ideological writing and actual human experience.
And also, I’m not remotely interested in dividing the ‘goodies’ and the ‘baddies’ in this story. Actual human experience rarely divides into to those categories. I don’t think Babel is doing that.
And I think the desire of Western people who are reading him now to somehow make that division between ‘ good’ ( ie morally like me or us) , or BAD ( obviously like the people we couldn’t possibly be) is something. rather ridiculous.
But I think that in order to appreciate Babel’s very complex moral position, you have to know something about the context. And even then, you have to forgive him and the people he writes about. As we forgive those who trespass against us.
From that second sub-pulse: the narrator feels dirty, he needs to be alone, he feels weak, and even the beauty of the moon looks cheap to him. And so for me the question I take going into the final segment of the story is: at how high a cost to his soul has his acceptance come?
Beyond that, throughout the story I'm thinking, "This is just the first goose, the title says." And so the even larger question would be: what will killing people in war do to him, if killing a goose does this?
The word "First" in the title does a ton of work. The title itself looms over the story like a dark cloud. I had thought of that early on and sort of forgot about it in the shuffle of pulses and sub pulses. Thanks for bringing that back around for me. Bravo.
I really agree with, and very much like your use of "does a ton of work." I felt a *frisson* of recognition when I realized on first reading what was implied in the title: that one dead goose, worse, one cavalierly, guiltily killed goose, was a harbinger of things to come. As in Dylan's lyric, *I started out on burgundy but soon I hit the harder stuff.* A war is most likely to begin, to be cooked up, in rooms that are comfortable, before that war gets bloody.
One thing I've really liked about thinking in pulses is that it's become a convenient unit of revision. Instead of reading an entire story-draft, taking notes, and revising it, I've done all that for a pulse-draft. I've found it much easier to hold an entire pulse in my head than an entire story. I also like that a "pulse" is very loosely defined, so it can be whatever your mind needs it to be.
I agree with this! Thinking in pulses feels productive. I wonder, though, why we are breaking this pulse (pulse 5/pulse 6) where we are. As I read I assumed pulse 5 would continue up to the last paragraph, at which point the meal and read-aloud have ended and it is time for bed. As you say a pulse is "loosely defined"--I'm just curious what George's reasoning is for ending this one here. (Maybe the discussion of pulse 6 will make this clearer for me.)
It's a meta-moment of "tell me more"! A "Why do you think the character (George) did that?" (I'll be seeing through this lens for a while now, forgive me. lol)
I am awed when I read all the comments already in about this pulse. I am in the presence of amazing, well-read thinkers and writers. As a sincere thinker who is less well-read and not a writer (yet), I’m adding my random thoughts.
When I read this for the fist time, I wondered at the word “languishing.” I thought of the word as meaning weakened, fatigued, enervated. I looked it up to make sure I had the right meaning, and that is one of the definitions, but it also means dispirited or grieving. All of these definitions are appropriate for the translator’s word choice. The next sentence about the moon looking like a cheap earring brings his thoughts into sharp focus after the slightly vague image of him turning around. You realize he is aware of the reality of what he has done, and has a sense of what is to come.
I’m also trying to picture how this scene would look, say, in a movie or play. Would he put his hand on the gate, take a step out, stop and close his eyes, then look up at the sky? How long would he pause before coming back in? Would it look as if he stepped out to actually leave the courtyard, but then changed his mind? Or would he be stepping out simply to collect his thoughts and steel himself before returning to the men?
Final random thought: I don’t know if it was common for the Cossacks to store silverware in their boots, or if by having the narrator accept a spare spoon out of the man’s boot (yuck) he further accents the narrator’s doing what it takes to fit in. If he stopped to wipe it off, he would risk insulting the person offering it.
Okay, one more random thought. It is the flaxen haired young man who asks about the newspaper and moves over for the narrator. To me this is one of the “cashing in” experiences of reading about the men accepting him and it is so effective.
Not a writer yet? Not so. What you just wrote is beautiful. You are a writer if you write deliberately, or even if you just *intended* to write! Here in the Club, we're experiencing more of what a "writer" sees and thinks, but just being here confirms you're as real a writer as anyone ever needs to be.
i love this question about what the scene with the moon might look like in a movie/play. The written art form does something that the others can not. If, in a movie, say, the narrator looks to the moon, how would we know it hangs like a cheap earring? We would have to be led to that "feeling" somehow--probably though music, or perhaps cuts to other scenes, or perhaps a voice over....but whatever was done, it would not match the power of the sentence as we read it inside of our own heads, and as part of the complete written narrative. I am a movie buff--i am not denigrating that art form. But written narratives are in a class all their own. We unspool all of the meaning using the information we are given and nothing else. And so, just the right descriptions must be included, and only the perfect metaphors. etc.
Agreed. Also this: Almost always the book is better than the movie. The only one I can think of at the moment where the book and the movie were equally wonderful is The Sweet Hereafter. I don't know if there was ever a film that was better than the book...? But i'm sure someone will think of one here!
Oh, I thought the movie was really good (and visually stunning), but that the book was even better. A masterpiece of storytelling -- it knocked me out.
I can't help but think my opinion was shaped by seeing the movie before reading the book—I felt so much in the film's quiet/silent moments, and the book had a different effect on me. But this thread has made me want to read it again :)
Oh the Sweet Hereafter (film) was incredible! I feel choked up just thinking about it. It was a rare instance for me where I enjoyed the film more than the book (although also excellent). The other two that come to mind are The Virgin Suicides and Fight Club. Sofia Coppola just captured the mood of the book so beautifully, and I love the last line of the film (which I believe is from the book, but the story continues, if my memory serves me correctly). Fight Club I remember reading in high school and thinking, "THIS NEEDS TO BE A MOVIE" (which I don't say too often about books).
I had the same "cashing in" experience; that is such a nice sequence of escalations: the unnamed Cossack saying he's "our kind" of lad; Surovkov's invitation to sit down; the lad making room and asking about the newspapers; and finally all the Cossacks sitting around and listening to the narrator read.
“brothers-in-legs” - that’s great! Yes, I think one of the things I love most about this story is the depiction of their character and that dynamic - so complex, and rich, and in some aspects contradictory.
I am thinking about George's questions regarding the necessity of Pulse 6, specifically: "What bowling pins are still up in the air for you if the story ends with that line?" "What aspects of the story’s energy are not adequately honored by that ending?" and "What itch have you been feeling, for which Pulse 6 is the scratch?" I agree with the comments that I've read here about empathizing with the narrator's conflicted attitudes towards war, and towards his own cruel, but arguably necessary actions.
For me, there's also a visceral aspect of the story's "energy" that remains un-honored until the last paragraph. There's a sexual desire that accompanies violence and warfare throughout the story, evoked almost immediately by descriptions of Savitsky in Pulse 1 (the "beauty of his gigantic body", the "iron and flowers of his youth," those boots...) I detect it again when the Cossacks are introduced shaving each other in the yard--an extremely intimate act.
If the narrator's act of violence didn't result in a scene involving blood, desire, and intimate physical contact between the narrator and Cossacks, I feel this energetic "bowling pin" would remain airborne. Babel brings the threads together beautifully(wrenchingly) in Pulse 6.
Oh yeah... and "evening enveloped me in ... its twilight sheets," (bracingly damp!) while "motherly palms" touch his blazing forehead... moisture and heat, and six pairs of tangled legs... "Mother of fucking Christ!"
This may be just me, but each time I read through this story from the beginning, I feel disoriented (what's going on here? what is this about?) up until the moment the narrator kills the goose. It's in Pulse 5 that I feel the story pause to take a breath, it's here that my own internal metronome finally finds the beat of Babel's rhythm. I walk in and out of the courtyard with the narrator, consider the moon. I am languishing. It is the briefest interlude, and within it, a glimpse at the narrator's mental state (there are so few of them in this story. He feels envy over Savitsky, loneliness over the column of smoke that reminds him of his childhood village. Each insight seems precious).
If I put on my efficiency bonnet and cut this line, I also silence the voice inside me that's saying, "aha! So he feels anguish. Tell me more." That line puts another bowling pin up in the air for me, and I find myself asking (as Mary G. puts it), "how do you sleep at night?" The anguish lingers over the last line in this pulse ("like a deaf man triumphant"). The narrator is sharing the words of Lenin with the Cossacks--they ask him to read to them!--but the triumph of this small "victory" now feels empty and as cheap as the moon/earring that hangs over the scene.
And holy crap--have we really already spent five months in Story Club!? The time has flown by. Words can't express how much I look forward to these posts and all the wonderful, insightful comments every week. So much gratitude for you George, for creating this space, and to all you wonderful Story Clubbers who show up here to share and nurture it ❤️
Manami, you're so right about those rare moments when we glimpse the narrator's inner world. And about the need to think about pacing when writing a story. Drawing out time is another way to escalate and ratchet up the tension--as you say, "the anguish lingers." (And yes, yay for our five months here in story club. i never would have believed such a place could exist, and yet here we are. All thanks to George!)
Hi, Mary! Babel's stories are such little marvels of momentum. So unlike anything I might write, yet there is so much to learn from them. I must admit to feeling a little sorry we'll be wrapping this discussion up soon . . . (I've never belonged to a book club! Or any club, really. This is 100x better than anything I could have dreamed up myself, hands-down the best thing to emerge from this pandemic :))
I completely agree - feel like I'm in a dream-sequence until the goose. Buffeted around by sense-data and seeming contradictions: Savitsky promises violence vs 'I'll get along'; sympathetic QM vs 'suffered in the fields of learning'. Then, the goose, and I start to make sense of it. I know we're only on Pulse 5, but I did get lost again in the readings from Lenin (perhaps my own lack of knowledge here) before the final line of the story sets me upright at last.
Yes, buffeted around in a dream sequence is such a good way to put it. It's hard not to mention Pulse 6 here, but I get the sense we're all traveling the mysterious curve of a straight line, up until the very end.
One thing that strikes me about the story (read in the light of today’s post) is how little we’re told about what the narrator thinks and feels about the events he’s recounting. Because of this, and because we have the sense right from the very beginning that he’s in a hostile environment, I think we’re constantly looking for some sign of how he’s reacting, emotionally and intellectually, to e.g. being called a pansie, having his little trunk tossed over the gate, cracking the goose’s neck, and so on.
Early on in pulse 5 the narrator is accepted by the Cossacks. But at this point we’re still none the wiser what he thinks or feels about that or anything else that has happened. And because we have the sense that the narrator has achieved that acceptance only by doing things that he would ordinarily regard as abhorrent, the question of what he thinks and feels presses. Is our rough assessment of the narrator’s character (as a decent, not especially violent or mean individual) accurate? Or is he, it turns out, just as ruthless as the Cossacks?
His going out of the gate and coming back in again, languishing, suggests a kind of uneasiness with what he’s done, and so reassures us that the narrator is not, after all, a cold-blooded killer. But we still want, I think, some confirmation in the form of insight into the narrator’s state of mind.
"The Cossacks had begun to eat their supper with the restrained elegance of muzhiks who respect one another, and I wiped the sword dry with sand, went out of the gate and returned again, in torment."
Torment sure makes more sense to me than languishing. Of course, what languishing means to me might be different than what it means to you or to the translator ...
That word, "languishing," is one that I struggled to understand in this context. Because it can mean to become weak and it can mean simply to drop lazily. It's clear killing the goose took something out of him and the slight ambiguity in that word I think keeps us expectant to see how he responds. I suspect, the narrator's unwritten thoughts are, "Was it worth it?"
That's the part... how much to tell the reader? This Babel piece works without knowing exactly how the narrator feels... would it make the story weaker if we were told? I'm still trying to figure that out. Not just with this story but with other stories.
The narrator isn't aware of the "long term" consequences of his and others' actions as the action unfolds and thus feelings are fleeting and in the moment. It will be by recall and reflecting back on the goose experience, by telling the story, that the meaning is revealed. Having the deeper impact revealed in the moment would, as others have noted, diminish the impact of the story.
Thanks, Stacya. My own view is that it would detract if we were updated throughout about how the narrator felt etc. (in this particular story, at least). I think the revelation in the last line in pulse 6 is so striking in part because it's really the only glimpse we get.
Good question. Babel vs Salinger, or Fitzgerald? But, I love all three! Possibly high and low interiority have their uses, depending on the story that wants / needs to be told?
It is brilliant of Isaac Babel, I believe, to take his readers in this journey without much interiority. (And indicative of the narrator’s state of consciousness as events unfold. Only in his dreams, perhaps, do we get a glimpse of the truth.)
Narrator kills goose, the woman whose goose it is says again she wants to hang herself (not "good lad"), the Cossacks say, "good lad," he leaves the scene and returns, in Morison's translation, "depressed." I think this sets us up for the last line, in which, again in Morison's translation, reads "my heart, stained with bloodshed, grated and brimmed over." He's won over the killers by killing, he reads his beloved Lenin to them. But it is, really, not enough to make his actions acceptable to himself.
That’s one of the most striking lines. And she says it twice. And there is no commentary from anyone about these words. They are left to hang in the air and echo in the mind.
It is one of those things that first startles and then sinks in, for me. I was wondering what the narrator felt about the revolution he clearly cares deeply about (beloved Lenin). And in this painful interchange with the Red Cavalry, so much is revealed. Slowly despite the swiftness of some of the actions. That's how my brain takes in a crisis.
“I had dreams – dreams of women – and only my heart, crimson with murder, creaked and bled" brilliantly echos that incredible opening "....He rose and with the purple of his breachers, and the crimson of his cap…”
Honestly, I had forgotten the ending so caught was I by the goose’s slaughter so I went back and reread. The end elevates the story, gives it a moral compass, a compassionate compass with which to contemplate war’s brutality.
I can’t think there is anything more awful than humans slaughtering one another. A week or so ago I read a story about the crying of the starving cows in one Ukrainian town & how five men went out to try to feed them. The men disappeared, never to be seen again. That the men were likely killed is unspeakably sadder by the light of their actions – to go to the aid of their starving animals. The plight of those unrescued cows all the more horrible for the way they had to died. Babel’s story similarly entwins the animal with the human animal, our narrator, who despite his erudition doesn’t hesitate to destroy the goose to make himself “fit” in. But that last sentence absolves him to a certain degree because he owns his own black nature which is also the nature of war. A lesser story would have ended earlier without such an apercu.
I note there has already been some commentary on the story’s chilling title, ‘My First Goose’. It’s a title that is no more than intriguing on a first encounter but which takes on a terrible heft, fundamental to the purpose of the tale, once the story has been read. The titles of the two previous Story Club stories had a similar effect: after reading the story and thinking back to the title, one has the sense of knowing a special secret.
The title of ‘The Stone Boy’ resonates after reading, capturing both the tale and the awful potential of its aftermath in three small words. The title of ‘Cat In The Rain’ left me reflecting on the link between the story’s title and its protagonist. Is she directly represented by the animal or by the contrast between the cat in the rain and the big cat at the end. I wonder whether this represents the contrast between the husband’s early expectations of his wife as [something] to be loved and the evolving wife/girl/woman who is, perhaps, beginning to show more signs of being pampered and independent than her husband has anticipated? Or vice versa: her husband is not going to fulfil her dreams?
I’m going off piste here... but the key is that great titles can add layers to great stories. Perhaps they get less attention than they deserve?
While this isn't technically an answer as to why we should leave in the two lines, I'm in favor of keeping any metaphor Babel uses by the moon or the sky. They're all so astounding. "Like a cheap earring." Or from the first story in Red Cavalry: "The orange sun rolled down the sky like a lopped-off head." And "only the moon, clasping in her blue hands her round, bright, carefree face, wandered like a vagrant outside the window."
I suppose part of the meaning of the two lines could be part of the narrator's initial realization of the choice he made. He has earned acceptance, but at what cost? Then the ending arrives with the full power of that realization.
So many thoughtful responses here, Story Clubbers. I wanted to comment on why the second "sub-pulse" when the narrator "went out of the gate and came back in, languishing etc." is necessary. It occurred to me that this is the only moment our narrator steps off-stage, away from the eyes of anyone in his new life: Cossacks, quartermaster, Savitsky, blind landlady. In front of others, we've seen him remain stoic, even cheerful, despite being insulted and bullied. He has felt loneliness and homesickness, but he covered it up by attempting for the first time to read Lenin's speech in the newspaper. After all, that's why he's here, because of Lenin! And finally, he has taken the quartermaster's advice and has ruined the only female at hand, an old blind woman, by cursing and shoving her, and then killing her goose and then theatrically handing it to her on the end of his sabre, demanding she cook it. All of this is done in front of his audience of Cossacks, the men he is going to have to "get along" with. He has been trying so hard. When he goes out of the gate and then comes back in, he's finally had a moment to come back to himself--stop performing. I have complicated feelings about our narrator at this point. He's probably done what he's had to do in order to survive. His foolish idealism and intellectualism have brought him here, but the writing was on the wall. In order to stop the hazing (and survive the night) he needed to perform a violent act in front of these men. It's cost him something--the rosy sun is gone, replaced by a cheap earring of a moon. By the end of this scene he's eating pork and performing the speech as if he were Lenin himself. "Deaf man triumphant" is so perfect--I can sense he is hearing the falseness of his own voice at this point.
I have a quote from an essay by Charles Baxter on my bulletin board. "Each turning point in a plot will occur as a character steps through a one-way gate. There's no turning back." When our narrator returns to the men, there's definitely no turning back.
I didn't read the narrator as theatrically handing the old woman the dead goose on the end of the sabre. I saw it as him crushing the goose's head with his boot, running the sabre through the bird (for what? good measure?), pulling out the sabre, and leaving it on the ground for the old lady to pick up. But you're right, there's never any mention of him pulling the sabre out of the bird. I guess I just saw it that way because the old lady picked up the bird, as opposed to pulling it off the sabre. But yeah, there's definitely an air of theatre in the sabre run-through, as in Babel's decision to put a sabre in the story at all, seeing as how it wasn't strictly speaking necessary to kill the goose.
For me, the Pulse 6 is the turn of the story, in the same way that the last couplet of a sonnet turns the poem. From pulses 1-5, the Cossacks are at odds with our narrator, the protagonist. He acts violently out of necessity, to survive. We get the sense that he feels more kinship with the old woman he abuses than with the people he's seeking acceptance from. The word choices pointed out by Mary g. show just how soul-killing these actions seem to the narrator as he enacts them.
But in Pulse 6, we see how quickly the power of acceptance works its way into the protagonist's soul. The Cossacks immediately hand him a role within their little community based on the little they know about him: he's the literate one, the smart one. His short synopsis of Lenin's words indicate a hesitancy, but by the end of the speech, the narrator has already assumed the role he's been given with pride.
The last paragraph is the real kicker, though. So much tension is created with Babel's word choices. The cheap moon is replaced by stars. But the homo-eroticism of his hayloft cuddle with the Cossacks--paired with his dream "of women"--man, that's mastery. It pulls the reader in two directions within such a short period of time. It left me thinking that this protagonist doesn't quite know what to make of the experience portrayed in the story. Despite the pleasure he feels from being accepted by the Cossacks, his heart, "crimson with murder, creaked and bled."
Can I just say one thing about Boris before I go? I read another translation of "My First Goose" today that used the word "screeched" instead of "creaked" in the last sentence. The tone of "creaked" as the narrator lies, huddled with the Cossacks in a hayloft, as if his heart interrupts his sleep like an old floorboard, is genius.
I like the way the cheap earring moon contrasts with the rosy sun we were told about as our narrator walked with the quartermaster. It’s a demonstration of how his actions have affected his perspective.
It’s interesting how our view of things can be so impacted by our mood, thoughts, and actions. A party that was fun and festive can suddenly seem garish and grotesque after receiving bad news. A drunk night of debauchery can be exciting in the moment, only to be a painful humiliating memory the next morning. I think this subpulse does a good job of conveying that sense of an inner change in the narrator without explicitly spelling it out.
I was thinking of that contrast too. The round, full, golden, natural, warm, almost seated pumpkin-sun; the hanging, cheap, tawdry artifact such as worn by... what kind of woman? (mary g. has provided us with a brilliant exposition of the answer).
I think the earring-moon, and its contrast with the pumpkin-sun, is as you say, a mood matter, but even more a moral matter. The deed he has committed is a betrayal of the second, and his cheapened view of the natural world is... like a punishment?
The long short of it for me: the bits you are talking about lopping off are the insights into his psychology. When he steps outside and languishes he is telling us who he really is (or thinks he is). When he then joins the group, his presence there is framed by our understanding of those lines, as is the last line of the story. Without those types of lines, we would have to infer a great deal. I haven't studied him, but I'm sure I'm not the only one to notice that a great deal of that interiority seems to be projected unto the sun and the moon (I've been reading the stories).
It’s going to be very hard to talk about Pulse 5 without talking about Pulse 6. But I will try (and probably fail).
George’s first question regards the necessity of two sentences within Pulse 5. In sentence one, our narrator wipes the sabre clean of his crime against the goose, leaves the scene of the crime for the outside world, and feels himself “languishing,” which can be defined as “breaking down.” Here—outside—is a moment of reflection for the narrator. A time separate from the Cossacks when he can ponder what he has done. And, as it turns out, he doesn’t feel so great in his triumph. He feels broken. In the second sentence, he notices something in nature—the moon. And it is not a beautiful moon, a celebratory moon, a worshipful moon, a moon that makes one think of the possibility of a Divine Maker, but a moon that looks like a cheap earring, the kind perhaps worn by a woman who is paid for sex. Sex—a natural and beautiful act—is cheapened when one pays for it, when it becomes transactional as opposed to lovingly given. And so our narrator feels and knows he has prostituted himself in his action. He has demoralized his soul in payment for acceptance. Without these two sentences—the first, where he leaves to reflect for a moment (and feels broken) and the second where his reflection tells him he is losing his soul—the story loses some of its depth and intensity. The reader needs to be led to a place where they can understand the narrator’s position before he reads to the Cossacks, and these sentences provide that.
As to George’s second question: can we quit here, at the end of Pulse 5, in the narrator’s triumph? After all, his quest has been to read the words of Lenin to the Cossacks, and now he is doing so. Well, the problem with ending here is that then story would lack the resonance to which it has been building the entire time. Like anyone who commits an act that goes against one’s heart, the question becomes: How do you sleep at night? Even though the narrator has fulfilled his desire, it came with a cost. His brokenness, which he has pushed aside while he reads to the Cossacks (“loudly, like a deaf man triumphant”), comes alive at night when he tries to sleep under that cheap earring-moon. That cost must be revealed—and it will be in Pulse 6.
I continue to be amazed that such a short story has generated something on the order of 100,000 words (or maybe much more) of thoughts, questions, perturbations and analysis. Thank you, George, and Mary, and everyone, for all of those words. It takes a bit of the sting out of how Isaac Babel’s life ended—how so many lives end. The photo of Isaac with his son is so moving. You can see in his face that he is a force of nature to be reckoned with.
Mary, I find your comparison or analogy of the narrator’s state of mind with an act of prostitution quite striking. As someone said to me many moons ago, it’s one thing to sell your body, but something else entirely to sell your soul.
As I read through the comments of others, I see this same idea expressed--that there is a cost to the narrator's actions. It's really a breathtaking story, and i would have had no idea just now breathtaking without the words and thoughts of everyone here in Story Club.
And oh, yes, that photo of Babel and his son is heartbreaking.
I have read a few of the other Red Cavalry stories. So far, all breathtaking. I have the Peter Constantine translation, edited by Isaac’s daughter, Nathalie Babel. If I am ever done with moving I hope to sit down and read the whole thing! (Though perhaps better savored in smaller bites…)
Question to both, Mary and David, if I may.
'My First Goose' can, clearly, be read and understood in splendid stand-alone isolation but do you think it might, perhaps, be read better and understood more fully in the context of its placing, eighth, in the cycle of Red Cavalry stories?
Hi Rob. I have only read a few of the Red Cavalry stories. Each so far has been a gem. It does seem that together they become more of a synergistic gestalt tapestry, multiple points of view.
Babel's face is exploding with pride and joy in that photograph. I wanted to shout back in time, "Grab everything dear to you and run away! Get out!" It's hard to look at his happy face and not think of how it all ended.
Joyful, terrible, sweet, heartrending, poignant. But what gifts his life gave us.
Well. That’s because you have no real idea of the emotional entanglements he might have felt towards communism and the place he came from. Why didn’t YOU grab your bags and run when Trump was elected?
Engaging in magical thinking is a way to reduce heartbreak. It wasn’t a literal thought. Although my husband and I have had long talks about where to go, how we’d live, and these talks are literal. My wish to save people from horrible deaths that are no longer alive? Magical thinking. To reduce anxiety.
I believe I read that Isaac Babel had one family in Paris and another in Moscow. The last time he was in Paris, friends and family begged him to not return to the Soviet Union. But he felt he could not live or work if he was not home.
I didn't know how he died! How terrible. Heartbreaking. Yet...his words live on and there is much in that to celebrate. I just heard an incredible storyteller at the Moth show last night from a Russian who survived Stalin's prison's twice. He was freed after Stalin unexpectedly died and he traveled to Moscow to see his jailor's face to be sure he was dead. He said he never felt safe until he was in America with the Atlantic Ocean separating him from Russia. At the very end of the story he revealed that he was born in Ukraine & the present situation inspired him to tell his story. He then said he will be 100 in a few months and that he was amazed to be alive.
Wow that’s a Moth show I hope was taped. Incredible.
Yes!
What a story!
It is terrible, Babel’s end. Stalin was a piece of work, to say the least. Power vacuums are perfect for the most ruthless among us.
Love your point about the description of the moon, Mary. I felt something in that 'cheap earring' description, but couldn't quite articulate it; you did wonderfully. Thanks!
The "story would lack the resonance to which it has been building the entire time." Mary the word resonance is key here, I think you've nailed it. Resonance is a big word, but it's what's happening in a strong story--the reader gets the full story, the echoes and answers, in language like "moon like cheap earring". A really good title resonates with its story; a really good ending makes sure all our questions are answered, as you demonstrate. In SIPIR George says some place: "Endings create an entire future world of different, plausible possibilities." In other words, we don't just know what's going on at the end of the story; we can imagine the possibilities after. That's resonance.
Hi Jane. Thank you for this. Obviously, all parts of a story are important, but endings in particular. I mean, if you don't stick the ending, then you really don't have a story--you have to go back to the beginning and figure out where you went wrong. So, yes, having an ending that resonates beyond the last words is the great hope for every story. I'm not sure I agree with you that a "really good ending makes sure all our questions are answered." Maybe i'm misinterpreting you, but i don't think it's always wise to tie up every loose end. I think the resonance in come cases comes from actually not answering every question, but letting the reader come to their own conclusions.
I think maybe it's that...we have the sense at the ending that all the things in the story led to this point. The ending feels earned.
Yes, there's also a phrase, you may know it, the story has landed.
Could it be that a good story with a great ending asks the important questions? (Sending out tentacles of questioning that invite us to think and probe more deeply?)
Agreed... and to Jane's point, perhaps the little (obvious) questions are answered, leaving the reader to "hover with possible endings" leading us deeper...
As soon as I could read, short stories, and novels, have been desperately needed escapes for me. Now I'm learning there's a lot more going on and I can benefit from paying attention, even as a reader.
Yes, good point. Maybe it's "all our big questions are answered, and all our little questions hover with possible endings as we continue to think about the story."
Thank you, Jane. Your post invokes a notion in my mind that a well-written story resonates in a way like a well-lived life, percolating through the souls of subsequent generations.
It's a difficult balance: the wooden beams and floor boards of GS's pulses and sub-pulses, and the emotion and imagination that also go into the process. Phew.
Yes! And what is he reading to the Cossacks? What version of Lenin, really? What do they *really* have a shortage in? Is this really a triumph?
In the context in which the passage ends up being read, the shortage sounds like a shortage of things. Material things. Which provides justification for treating others poorly - using them as things in order to get more things. But with the deeper understory, we can interpret it, really, as a shortage of empathy, understanding (which reading would resonate more with the woman's earlier statement, "this business makes me want to kill myself?").
And this is also backed up by the fact that the whole reason the narrator acts this way is to gain empathy and understanding from the Cossacks. *That* is what makes the situation bearable for him. They share their food, they scoot over to make room. It's the sharing...
"A shortage of everything" - ambiguous, truth in both readings - every thing, and everything.
What do they REALLY have a shortage in! What they REALLY have is a shortage in everything! Including their next dinner! For goodness sake - don’t try to over sophisticate yourself. Take some things that are written as being written because they are as they actually are. Or don’t. Your silly choice!
I think I could have worded my comment better, though perhaps you'd still disagree, and that'd be understandable.
Of course I *knew* what shortage meant. But a shortage is never just a shortage. It exists in the minds of those who experience it, as well as in the wider context of society. A shortage doesn't appear fully formed from on high, but is rather the result of a complex array of forces. It is created by human activity, and can be remedied by human activity. It was created by war, and spurs war on...
I was simply trying to draw attention to the fact that in this context, the words are read in the context of violence. He reads these words right after he kills the woman's goose. He reads them to justify a certain perspective which the Cossacks share. You're right that a shortage is a shortage is a shortage. But also it's not. There's always ambiguity, because there's always different ways to frame it, always different ways to react to it.
The "all" can't exist without the "not-all" (à la Lacan); the perspective can't exist without its context.
Some times a shortage is actually a famine. And a famine can take place unintentionally. Through massive crop failure. Or through the movements of armies through a landscape. For they know not what they do. It’s not always a very straightforward moral question….
I definitely see your point.
I'd say the non-straightforwardness of this moral question is the reason why we're having these disagreements in the first place.
One can interpret societal currents and individual actions through the lens of impersonal forces - this led to that, this led to that, and it was all inevitable, and killing a goose is just what happens when confronted with that inevitability.
One can also interpret societal currents and individual actions as a product of individual minds with individual perspectives, since that's where all behavior originates, by necessity. And individual perspectives are not inevitable. (Of course, that's not an uncontroversial statement, and ties into questions of free will which have been debated since forever...) But I think it is more useful to at least act as though perspectives are not inevitable, since that always leaves other options open.
True, famines can take place unintentionally. But what always remains intentional is how we react to a famine. Pooling resources with other countries, for example? Which on a societal level is a mirroring of simply giving someone a place at your table.
(Also, this particular famine *was* a result of war, though doubtless other factors were involved as well.)
People are created by their societies; societies are created by their people. I don't think we can even have one perspective without the other. I want to emphasize that what I'm saying is not an indictment of the narrator's behavior. One reason this story is so wonderful is that it shows *why* the narrator would act that way; it allows us to empathize with him and understand his actions. But understanding a perspective is not the same thing as accepting it unquestioningly. That's another reason why this story is so wonderful. It also expresses the complications that arise from adopting such a perspective.
It expresses the moral difficulties of its time and place. And it doesn’t ask for your judgement
But it might make you want to get in with the unfed Cossacks by killing a goose…,
There was a massive famine in those years. But perhaps you don’t know that.
There WAS a shortage of everything. Mostly of food. Forget about shoes. I don’t think that’s a problem that many of us have. But at least we might stretch our selves to imagine it. And perhaps to try not to frame the situation in our own, rather effete, moral terms.
The shortage thing is simply NOT ambiguous. It’s just the truth that has to be contended with
He was reading the version of Lenin that was cheaply printed and widely dispersed throughout the Red Army during the dreadful years of civil war 1918 -21. And if you don’t understand that many ordinary people at that time found the writings of Lenin inspirational, you understand nothing of what was going on. And nothing at all about what Babel was writing about.
He is NOT writing about Massachusetts. And not even Alabama.
Kate, you clearly know a lot about what was going on in Russia then, and I do not (my academic interest was in the tribal cultures of the interior basin of British Columbia and the Zagros mountains of Iran, and my ignorance of Russian history is profound). I'm hoping you can help me understand the Lenin business in the story.
I was curious about the narrator's reference to a specific Lenin speech, and I found a translation of it in the Warwick University archives. It's 20 pages, mostly talking about the recent war, colonialism, Treaty of Versailles, national debt(s), and so on. Is this the same speech to which the narrator refers in the story? If so, I find it hard to imagine these Cossacks' attention would truly be held by most of it. What did seem plausible, however, is that they'd focus on the pervasive claim of the inevitability of victory. But the line toward the end of the speech, "...we are frequently forced to make compromises, to bide our time because we are weaker..." seems a useful gift to the narrator. I'd love to hear your insight about this. Thanks!
Well, I think the whole point is that they weren’t really interested. But Babel’s quiet reading of it served, in a kind of way, like a bed time story for these exhausted boys.
And I think, that’s the point. The dissonance between ideological writing and actual human experience.
And also, I’m not remotely interested in dividing the ‘goodies’ and the ‘baddies’ in this story. Actual human experience rarely divides into to those categories. I don’t think Babel is doing that.
And I think the desire of Western people who are reading him now to somehow make that division between ‘ good’ ( ie morally like me or us) , or BAD ( obviously like the people we couldn’t possibly be) is something. rather ridiculous.
But I think that in order to appreciate Babel’s very complex moral position, you have to know something about the context. And even then, you have to forgive him and the people he writes about. As we forgive those who trespass against us.
I referenced your response in my own, Mary. The way you unpacked the "cheap earring" simile, in particular. Good eye.
Wow
Nice one Mary^^
thank you, Graeme.
Very well said Mary
thank you, Mike.
Yes, my thoughts too, Mary, but so beautifully put by you.
Thank you, Anna!
From that second sub-pulse: the narrator feels dirty, he needs to be alone, he feels weak, and even the beauty of the moon looks cheap to him. And so for me the question I take going into the final segment of the story is: at how high a cost to his soul has his acceptance come?
Beyond that, throughout the story I'm thinking, "This is just the first goose, the title says." And so the even larger question would be: what will killing people in war do to him, if killing a goose does this?
The word "First" in the title does a ton of work. The title itself looms over the story like a dark cloud. I had thought of that early on and sort of forgot about it in the shuffle of pulses and sub pulses. Thanks for bringing that back around for me. Bravo.
I really agree with, and very much like your use of "does a ton of work." I felt a *frisson* of recognition when I realized on first reading what was implied in the title: that one dead goose, worse, one cavalierly, guiltily killed goose, was a harbinger of things to come. As in Dylan's lyric, *I started out on burgundy but soon I hit the harder stuff.* A war is most likely to begin, to be cooked up, in rooms that are comfortable, before that war gets bloody.
It begins with mental abnegation. Then down in the trenches we go.
Loss of innocence? Or more likely, moral and ethical clarity?
I had never considered how ominous the title is now. Certainly suggests the first of many.
I agree. How many geese or worse things was he forced/chose to do? That's the shadow that stays hanging long after you finish reading.
maybe not first of many geese, but first of many compromises
What Mike D said. You've reminded us all of what the title implies, and it's dark.
Great point/reminder about the title, JSB.
One thing I've really liked about thinking in pulses is that it's become a convenient unit of revision. Instead of reading an entire story-draft, taking notes, and revising it, I've done all that for a pulse-draft. I've found it much easier to hold an entire pulse in my head than an entire story. I also like that a "pulse" is very loosely defined, so it can be whatever your mind needs it to be.
I agree with this! Thinking in pulses feels productive. I wonder, though, why we are breaking this pulse (pulse 5/pulse 6) where we are. As I read I assumed pulse 5 would continue up to the last paragraph, at which point the meal and read-aloud have ended and it is time for bed. As you say a pulse is "loosely defined"--I'm just curious what George's reasoning is for ending this one here. (Maybe the discussion of pulse 6 will make this clearer for me.)
It's a meta-moment of "tell me more"! A "Why do you think the character (George) did that?" (I'll be seeing through this lens for a while now, forgive me. lol)
I am awed when I read all the comments already in about this pulse. I am in the presence of amazing, well-read thinkers and writers. As a sincere thinker who is less well-read and not a writer (yet), I’m adding my random thoughts.
When I read this for the fist time, I wondered at the word “languishing.” I thought of the word as meaning weakened, fatigued, enervated. I looked it up to make sure I had the right meaning, and that is one of the definitions, but it also means dispirited or grieving. All of these definitions are appropriate for the translator’s word choice. The next sentence about the moon looking like a cheap earring brings his thoughts into sharp focus after the slightly vague image of him turning around. You realize he is aware of the reality of what he has done, and has a sense of what is to come.
I’m also trying to picture how this scene would look, say, in a movie or play. Would he put his hand on the gate, take a step out, stop and close his eyes, then look up at the sky? How long would he pause before coming back in? Would it look as if he stepped out to actually leave the courtyard, but then changed his mind? Or would he be stepping out simply to collect his thoughts and steel himself before returning to the men?
Final random thought: I don’t know if it was common for the Cossacks to store silverware in their boots, or if by having the narrator accept a spare spoon out of the man’s boot (yuck) he further accents the narrator’s doing what it takes to fit in. If he stopped to wipe it off, he would risk insulting the person offering it.
Okay, one more random thought. It is the flaxen haired young man who asks about the newspaper and moves over for the narrator. To me this is one of the “cashing in” experiences of reading about the men accepting him and it is so effective.
Not a writer yet? Not so. What you just wrote is beautiful. You are a writer if you write deliberately, or even if you just *intended* to write! Here in the Club, we're experiencing more of what a "writer" sees and thinks, but just being here confirms you're as real a writer as anyone ever needs to be.
i love this question about what the scene with the moon might look like in a movie/play. The written art form does something that the others can not. If, in a movie, say, the narrator looks to the moon, how would we know it hangs like a cheap earring? We would have to be led to that "feeling" somehow--probably though music, or perhaps cuts to other scenes, or perhaps a voice over....but whatever was done, it would not match the power of the sentence as we read it inside of our own heads, and as part of the complete written narrative. I am a movie buff--i am not denigrating that art form. But written narratives are in a class all their own. We unspool all of the meaning using the information we are given and nothing else. And so, just the right descriptions must be included, and only the perfect metaphors. etc.
I like that stories on the page can do things that film cannot, and often vice versa. (See Cabaret, Paris Texas and Dog Day Afternoon, for starters.)
Agreed. Also this: Almost always the book is better than the movie. The only one I can think of at the moment where the book and the movie were equally wonderful is The Sweet Hereafter. I don't know if there was ever a film that was better than the book...? But i'm sure someone will think of one here!
Oh, I thought the movie was really good (and visually stunning), but that the book was even better. A masterpiece of storytelling -- it knocked me out.
I can't help but think my opinion was shaped by seeing the movie before reading the book—I felt so much in the film's quiet/silent moments, and the book had a different effect on me. But this thread has made me want to read it again :)
Oh the Sweet Hereafter (film) was incredible! I feel choked up just thinking about it. It was a rare instance for me where I enjoyed the film more than the book (although also excellent). The other two that come to mind are The Virgin Suicides and Fight Club. Sofia Coppola just captured the mood of the book so beautifully, and I love the last line of the film (which I believe is from the book, but the story continues, if my memory serves me correctly). Fight Club I remember reading in high school and thinking, "THIS NEEDS TO BE A MOVIE" (which I don't say too often about books).
The Shining.
The Graduate, possibly. There’s another one I am sure about but I can’t bring it up just now!
I had the same "cashing in" experience; that is such a nice sequence of escalations: the unnamed Cossack saying he's "our kind" of lad; Surovkov's invitation to sit down; the lad making room and asking about the newspapers; and finally all the Cossacks sitting around and listening to the narrator read.
Such an oxymoron of brutality and camaraderie. But maybe they are sometimes brothers-in-arms (or brothers-in-legs.)
Yes. The camaraderie of brutalizers comforts them, gives the ok to their acts...
“brothers-in-legs” - that’s great! Yes, I think one of the things I love most about this story is the depiction of their character and that dynamic - so complex, and rich, and in some aspects contradictory.
I am thinking about George's questions regarding the necessity of Pulse 6, specifically: "What bowling pins are still up in the air for you if the story ends with that line?" "What aspects of the story’s energy are not adequately honored by that ending?" and "What itch have you been feeling, for which Pulse 6 is the scratch?" I agree with the comments that I've read here about empathizing with the narrator's conflicted attitudes towards war, and towards his own cruel, but arguably necessary actions.
For me, there's also a visceral aspect of the story's "energy" that remains un-honored until the last paragraph. There's a sexual desire that accompanies violence and warfare throughout the story, evoked almost immediately by descriptions of Savitsky in Pulse 1 (the "beauty of his gigantic body", the "iron and flowers of his youth," those boots...) I detect it again when the Cossacks are introduced shaving each other in the yard--an extremely intimate act.
If the narrator's act of violence didn't result in a scene involving blood, desire, and intimate physical contact between the narrator and Cossacks, I feel this energetic "bowling pin" would remain airborne. Babel brings the threads together beautifully(wrenchingly) in Pulse 6.
Oh yeah... and "evening enveloped me in ... its twilight sheets," (bracingly damp!) while "motherly palms" touch his blazing forehead... moisture and heat, and six pairs of tangled legs... "Mother of fucking Christ!"
This may be just me, but each time I read through this story from the beginning, I feel disoriented (what's going on here? what is this about?) up until the moment the narrator kills the goose. It's in Pulse 5 that I feel the story pause to take a breath, it's here that my own internal metronome finally finds the beat of Babel's rhythm. I walk in and out of the courtyard with the narrator, consider the moon. I am languishing. It is the briefest interlude, and within it, a glimpse at the narrator's mental state (there are so few of them in this story. He feels envy over Savitsky, loneliness over the column of smoke that reminds him of his childhood village. Each insight seems precious).
If I put on my efficiency bonnet and cut this line, I also silence the voice inside me that's saying, "aha! So he feels anguish. Tell me more." That line puts another bowling pin up in the air for me, and I find myself asking (as Mary G. puts it), "how do you sleep at night?" The anguish lingers over the last line in this pulse ("like a deaf man triumphant"). The narrator is sharing the words of Lenin with the Cossacks--they ask him to read to them!--but the triumph of this small "victory" now feels empty and as cheap as the moon/earring that hangs over the scene.
And holy crap--have we really already spent five months in Story Club!? The time has flown by. Words can't express how much I look forward to these posts and all the wonderful, insightful comments every week. So much gratitude for you George, for creating this space, and to all you wonderful Story Clubbers who show up here to share and nurture it ❤️
Manami, you're so right about those rare moments when we glimpse the narrator's inner world. And about the need to think about pacing when writing a story. Drawing out time is another way to escalate and ratchet up the tension--as you say, "the anguish lingers." (And yes, yay for our five months here in story club. i never would have believed such a place could exist, and yet here we are. All thanks to George!)
Hi, Mary! Babel's stories are such little marvels of momentum. So unlike anything I might write, yet there is so much to learn from them. I must admit to feeling a little sorry we'll be wrapping this discussion up soon . . . (I've never belonged to a book club! Or any club, really. This is 100x better than anything I could have dreamed up myself, hands-down the best thing to emerge from this pandemic :))
Five months of joy
So much joy!
I completely agree - feel like I'm in a dream-sequence until the goose. Buffeted around by sense-data and seeming contradictions: Savitsky promises violence vs 'I'll get along'; sympathetic QM vs 'suffered in the fields of learning'. Then, the goose, and I start to make sense of it. I know we're only on Pulse 5, but I did get lost again in the readings from Lenin (perhaps my own lack of knowledge here) before the final line of the story sets me upright at last.
Yes, buffeted around in a dream sequence is such a good way to put it. It's hard not to mention Pulse 6 here, but I get the sense we're all traveling the mysterious curve of a straight line, up until the very end.
I don’t know how I lived and breathed before December last!
One thing that strikes me about the story (read in the light of today’s post) is how little we’re told about what the narrator thinks and feels about the events he’s recounting. Because of this, and because we have the sense right from the very beginning that he’s in a hostile environment, I think we’re constantly looking for some sign of how he’s reacting, emotionally and intellectually, to e.g. being called a pansie, having his little trunk tossed over the gate, cracking the goose’s neck, and so on.
Early on in pulse 5 the narrator is accepted by the Cossacks. But at this point we’re still none the wiser what he thinks or feels about that or anything else that has happened. And because we have the sense that the narrator has achieved that acceptance only by doing things that he would ordinarily regard as abhorrent, the question of what he thinks and feels presses. Is our rough assessment of the narrator’s character (as a decent, not especially violent or mean individual) accurate? Or is he, it turns out, just as ruthless as the Cossacks?
His going out of the gate and coming back in again, languishing, suggests a kind of uneasiness with what he’s done, and so reassures us that the narrator is not, after all, a cold-blooded killer. But we still want, I think, some confirmation in the form of insight into the narrator’s state of mind.
The translation I have from David McDuff uses "torment" instead of "languishing," which brings out the narrator's inner struggle.
Thanks, Michelle. What's the full sentence in your translation, can I ask?
"The Cossacks had begun to eat their supper with the restrained elegance of muzhiks who respect one another, and I wiped the sword dry with sand, went out of the gate and returned again, in torment."
Thank you!
Torment sure makes more sense to me than languishing. Of course, what languishing means to me might be different than what it means to you or to the translator ...
Wow - yes; thanks for noting that. I had read "languishing" to be weaker than "torment", so this changes the way I read that paragraph.
I was hoping for another translator's take on that word. It stands out a little. Thank you!
I wondered about translation. That makes sense and I think adds to the stakes of the moment.
That word, "languishing," is one that I struggled to understand in this context. Because it can mean to become weak and it can mean simply to drop lazily. It's clear killing the goose took something out of him and the slight ambiguity in that word I think keeps us expectant to see how he responds. I suspect, the narrator's unwritten thoughts are, "Was it worth it?"
Also at this point he did not know they would invite him in
I similarly wasn't sure how to understand it. I think that ambiguity is key; it allows for the final escalation in Pulse 6.
That's the part... how much to tell the reader? This Babel piece works without knowing exactly how the narrator feels... would it make the story weaker if we were told? I'm still trying to figure that out. Not just with this story but with other stories.
I think the action of the story is all about how the narrator feels ... telling us would undermine the story itself
I agree. It's a good lesson for our own stories.
Agree with your 100%
The narrator isn't aware of the "long term" consequences of his and others' actions as the action unfolds and thus feelings are fleeting and in the moment. It will be by recall and reflecting back on the goose experience, by telling the story, that the meaning is revealed. Having the deeper impact revealed in the moment would, as others have noted, diminish the impact of the story.
Thanks, Stacya. My own view is that it would detract if we were updated throughout about how the narrator felt etc. (in this particular story, at least). I think the revelation in the last line in pulse 6 is so striking in part because it's really the only glimpse we get.
Also we wouldn’t want to spend all these weeks on the story, breaking it into beats and wondering, if it spelled out the narrator’s inner monologue.
Right!
Good question. Babel vs Salinger, or Fitzgerald? But, I love all three! Possibly high and low interiority have their uses, depending on the story that wants / needs to be told?
It is brilliant of Isaac Babel, I believe, to take his readers in this journey without much interiority. (And indicative of the narrator’s state of consciousness as events unfold. Only in his dreams, perhaps, do we get a glimpse of the truth.)
Narrator kills goose, the woman whose goose it is says again she wants to hang herself (not "good lad"), the Cossacks say, "good lad," he leaves the scene and returns, in Morison's translation, "depressed." I think this sets us up for the last line, in which, again in Morison's translation, reads "my heart, stained with bloodshed, grated and brimmed over." He's won over the killers by killing, he reads his beloved Lenin to them. But it is, really, not enough to make his actions acceptable to himself.
Perfect!
The old woman says it all: All this, she says, makes me want to hang myself.
That’s one of the most striking lines. And she says it twice. And there is no commentary from anyone about these words. They are left to hang in the air and echo in the mind.
It is one of those things that first startles and then sinks in, for me. I was wondering what the narrator felt about the revolution he clearly cares deeply about (beloved Lenin). And in this painful interchange with the Red Cavalry, so much is revealed. Slowly despite the swiftness of some of the actions. That's how my brain takes in a crisis.
A murder can be wiped from a blade, but not from one's heart.
A 24
“I had dreams – dreams of women – and only my heart, crimson with murder, creaked and bled" brilliantly echos that incredible opening "....He rose and with the purple of his breachers, and the crimson of his cap…”
Honestly, I had forgotten the ending so caught was I by the goose’s slaughter so I went back and reread. The end elevates the story, gives it a moral compass, a compassionate compass with which to contemplate war’s brutality.
I can’t think there is anything more awful than humans slaughtering one another. A week or so ago I read a story about the crying of the starving cows in one Ukrainian town & how five men went out to try to feed them. The men disappeared, never to be seen again. That the men were likely killed is unspeakably sadder by the light of their actions – to go to the aid of their starving animals. The plight of those unrescued cows all the more horrible for the way they had to died. Babel’s story similarly entwins the animal with the human animal, our narrator, who despite his erudition doesn’t hesitate to destroy the goose to make himself “fit” in. But that last sentence absolves him to a certain degree because he owns his own black nature which is also the nature of war. A lesser story would have ended earlier without such an apercu.
...and that last line also echoes/equates his heart with the goose's head which "cracked and bled".
Wow, didn't notice that. There is so much fine grain to the story...
I like that, well put... 'his own black nature which is the nature of war"
Thank you, KG. Best wishes on your story collection. 🦩
I note there has already been some commentary on the story’s chilling title, ‘My First Goose’. It’s a title that is no more than intriguing on a first encounter but which takes on a terrible heft, fundamental to the purpose of the tale, once the story has been read. The titles of the two previous Story Club stories had a similar effect: after reading the story and thinking back to the title, one has the sense of knowing a special secret.
The title of ‘The Stone Boy’ resonates after reading, capturing both the tale and the awful potential of its aftermath in three small words. The title of ‘Cat In The Rain’ left me reflecting on the link between the story’s title and its protagonist. Is she directly represented by the animal or by the contrast between the cat in the rain and the big cat at the end. I wonder whether this represents the contrast between the husband’s early expectations of his wife as [something] to be loved and the evolving wife/girl/woman who is, perhaps, beginning to show more signs of being pampered and independent than her husband has anticipated? Or vice versa: her husband is not going to fulfil her dreams?
I’m going off piste here... but the key is that great titles can add layers to great stories. Perhaps they get less attention than they deserve?
While this isn't technically an answer as to why we should leave in the two lines, I'm in favor of keeping any metaphor Babel uses by the moon or the sky. They're all so astounding. "Like a cheap earring." Or from the first story in Red Cavalry: "The orange sun rolled down the sky like a lopped-off head." And "only the moon, clasping in her blue hands her round, bright, carefree face, wandered like a vagrant outside the window."
I suppose part of the meaning of the two lines could be part of the narrator's initial realization of the choice he made. He has earned acceptance, but at what cost? Then the ending arrives with the full power of that realization.
So many thoughtful responses here, Story Clubbers. I wanted to comment on why the second "sub-pulse" when the narrator "went out of the gate and came back in, languishing etc." is necessary. It occurred to me that this is the only moment our narrator steps off-stage, away from the eyes of anyone in his new life: Cossacks, quartermaster, Savitsky, blind landlady. In front of others, we've seen him remain stoic, even cheerful, despite being insulted and bullied. He has felt loneliness and homesickness, but he covered it up by attempting for the first time to read Lenin's speech in the newspaper. After all, that's why he's here, because of Lenin! And finally, he has taken the quartermaster's advice and has ruined the only female at hand, an old blind woman, by cursing and shoving her, and then killing her goose and then theatrically handing it to her on the end of his sabre, demanding she cook it. All of this is done in front of his audience of Cossacks, the men he is going to have to "get along" with. He has been trying so hard. When he goes out of the gate and then comes back in, he's finally had a moment to come back to himself--stop performing. I have complicated feelings about our narrator at this point. He's probably done what he's had to do in order to survive. His foolish idealism and intellectualism have brought him here, but the writing was on the wall. In order to stop the hazing (and survive the night) he needed to perform a violent act in front of these men. It's cost him something--the rosy sun is gone, replaced by a cheap earring of a moon. By the end of this scene he's eating pork and performing the speech as if he were Lenin himself. "Deaf man triumphant" is so perfect--I can sense he is hearing the falseness of his own voice at this point.
I have a quote from an essay by Charles Baxter on my bulletin board. "Each turning point in a plot will occur as a character steps through a one-way gate. There's no turning back." When our narrator returns to the men, there's definitely no turning back.
I didn't read the narrator as theatrically handing the old woman the dead goose on the end of the sabre. I saw it as him crushing the goose's head with his boot, running the sabre through the bird (for what? good measure?), pulling out the sabre, and leaving it on the ground for the old lady to pick up. But you're right, there's never any mention of him pulling the sabre out of the bird. I guess I just saw it that way because the old lady picked up the bird, as opposed to pulling it off the sabre. But yeah, there's definitely an air of theatre in the sabre run-through, as in Babel's decision to put a sabre in the story at all, seeing as how it wasn't strictly speaking necessary to kill the goose.
For me, the Pulse 6 is the turn of the story, in the same way that the last couplet of a sonnet turns the poem. From pulses 1-5, the Cossacks are at odds with our narrator, the protagonist. He acts violently out of necessity, to survive. We get the sense that he feels more kinship with the old woman he abuses than with the people he's seeking acceptance from. The word choices pointed out by Mary g. show just how soul-killing these actions seem to the narrator as he enacts them.
But in Pulse 6, we see how quickly the power of acceptance works its way into the protagonist's soul. The Cossacks immediately hand him a role within their little community based on the little they know about him: he's the literate one, the smart one. His short synopsis of Lenin's words indicate a hesitancy, but by the end of the speech, the narrator has already assumed the role he's been given with pride.
The last paragraph is the real kicker, though. So much tension is created with Babel's word choices. The cheap moon is replaced by stars. But the homo-eroticism of his hayloft cuddle with the Cossacks--paired with his dream "of women"--man, that's mastery. It pulls the reader in two directions within such a short period of time. It left me thinking that this protagonist doesn't quite know what to make of the experience portrayed in the story. Despite the pleasure he feels from being accepted by the Cossacks, his heart, "crimson with murder, creaked and bled."
Can I just say one thing about Boris before I go? I read another translation of "My First Goose" today that used the word "screeched" instead of "creaked" in the last sentence. The tone of "creaked" as the narrator lies, huddled with the Cossacks in a hayloft, as if his heart interrupts his sleep like an old floorboard, is genius.
Yes, I love that word creaked in the translation too. Screeched doesn't convey the same image for me. 'Creaked and bled' sounds beautiful.
I like the way the cheap earring moon contrasts with the rosy sun we were told about as our narrator walked with the quartermaster. It’s a demonstration of how his actions have affected his perspective.
It’s interesting how our view of things can be so impacted by our mood, thoughts, and actions. A party that was fun and festive can suddenly seem garish and grotesque after receiving bad news. A drunk night of debauchery can be exciting in the moment, only to be a painful humiliating memory the next morning. I think this subpulse does a good job of conveying that sense of an inner change in the narrator without explicitly spelling it out.
Yes, though don't you think something is presaged already in that rosy sun? It's dying, breathing its last...
Yes!
I was thinking of that contrast too. The round, full, golden, natural, warm, almost seated pumpkin-sun; the hanging, cheap, tawdry artifact such as worn by... what kind of woman? (mary g. has provided us with a brilliant exposition of the answer).
I think the earring-moon, and its contrast with the pumpkin-sun, is as you say, a mood matter, but even more a moral matter. The deed he has committed is a betrayal of the second, and his cheapened view of the natural world is... like a punishment?
The long short of it for me: the bits you are talking about lopping off are the insights into his psychology. When he steps outside and languishes he is telling us who he really is (or thinks he is). When he then joins the group, his presence there is framed by our understanding of those lines, as is the last line of the story. Without those types of lines, we would have to infer a great deal. I haven't studied him, but I'm sure I'm not the only one to notice that a great deal of that interiority seems to be projected unto the sun and the moon (I've been reading the stories).
Yes, especially the moon I'd say.