"My First Goose," #5

Necessity and Pulse #2.

Today we’re taking up Pulse #2 of “My First Goose,” which was: He travels to the site, in the company of the billeting officer.

This pulse, according to me, begins with paragraph 5 on page 51: (‘“I’ll get along,” I said, and went off to the village with the quartermaster to find lodging for the night.”) And it ends on page 52, with the phrase, “I raised my hand to my cap and saluted the Cossacks.”

Let’s start by asking two questions sacred to the short story writer: 1) “Hey, why is this bit in here anyway?” and 2) “Can I cut it?”

These are good questions to get in the habit of asking, especially of our own stories.  We might see ourselves as bouncers in Club Story.  (“Excuse me, section – what are you doing in here, exactly?  Is this party just as good without you?  Or are you subtly improving it, in a way that makes the lines you require worth it?”)

Here, Babel could have just had the narrator walk to the village alone.  Or he might even have skipped this pulse altogether, so the resulting text would read like this:

“I’ll get along,” I said, and went off to the village with the quartermaster to find lodging for the night. The quartermaster carried my little trunk on his shoulders. The village street lay before us. The dying sun, yellow and round as a pumpkin, was breathing its last rosy breath into the sky.

We came up to a hut with painted carvings of garlands around the windows. The quartermaster suddenly stopped and said with an apologetic grin:“We’ve got trouble with glasses around here, and you can’t do a thing about it. A man of the highest distinction—he’s a goner for sure. But you ruin a lady, the nicest little lady, and our fighting boys treat you real kind…”

He hesitated a moment with my little trunk on his shoulders,came right up to me, then jumped back in despair and ran into the first courtyard.  Cossacks were sitting on hay in there, shaving one another.

That is:

“I’ll get along,” I said, and went off to the village. Cossacks were sitting on hay in a courtyard there, shaving one another.

So, we want to ask:  What is additive about this swatch of text?  What do those thirteen or so lines bring into the story that makes them worth it? How do they earn their keep?

A story is intolerant of repeated information.  It loves escalation.  It loves new detail when the detail is specific and changes the moral calculus of the story even slightly.

So, we might ask: what’s new, here in Pulse #2? 

Well, first, the quartermaster himself is new; he wasn’t, as I read it, present back there in Savitsky’s hut.  What work does he do to justify his presence?  Well, one thing he does is to offer the information that they have “trouble with the glasses around here.” But this is not actually new – Savitsky has said as much.  The quartermaster also does all of that apologetic grinning and hesitation and jumping back in despair and reddening and so forth – all of which serves to reinforce what Savitsky has already said, namely, that this is going to be a bad day for the narrator. 

So, this is all confirmatory but, if it were my story, I’m not sure I’d feel that those extra lines were worth it, since what they offer is just (mere) confirmation - especially since Savitsky’s expression of the idea was so funny and powerful. 

What’s new, however, is contained in these lines: “But you ruin a lady, the nicest little lady, and our fighting boys treat you real kind.” (McDuff: “But lay a finger on a lady, the properest lady there ever was, and our fighting lads will give you a fond caress.”)

That’s really, in my view, the main new thing the quartermaster offers.  There’s the bit about him carrying the trunk, and the nice walk through the village, the sense of tension there, and so on – but really, if we’re being Draconian, his function is to offer the narrator a way out of the coming bind; if he will only ruin “the nicest little lady,” his glasses may be forgiven, and the Cossacks might leave him alone.

There’s something almost video-gameish about this (in a good way).  The character in a game is about to enter the dangerous kingdom of, you know, Morplexii, and at the gates of the city someone pulls him aside to tell him; “Seek ye a golden giraffe.”  It’s a pretty good plot device.  First, we establish the notion: “You are in trouble.” Then we let the character steep in this a bit.  Then: “But there may be a way out.”

So, the quartermaster exists to let the narrator know that he’s in trouble but there may be a way out.  But I want to underscore that this is pretty subtle, especially on first read, when it might just seem like one more note of macho bluster.  But we note it (we put it in our TICHN cart).  Will it later be relevant?

If you’re enjoying the Babel and thinking, as I used to think back when I was first reading him, “If only something intense like this had happened to me, so I could just type it up and thus have written a classic,” you might want to take a look at Babel’s “1920 Diary.”  These are his journal entries during the period that he would represent, just a few years later, in the stories of “Red Cavalry.”  What’s crazy about this diary is the extent to which it doesn’t seem to overlap much with the stories.  It’s been awhile since I’ve read the two side by side, but my memory is that almost none of the vivid, dramatically shaped events in “Red Cavalry” appear directly in the journals.  In any event, it’s a good exercise, reading the journals against the stories; it might remind us that our primary jobs are inventio

n, shaping, the creation of drama - and rarely the literal depiction of what occurred.

Might Babel just have given those lines about ruining a lady to Savitsky back in the hut?

Sure.  Take paragraph four on page 51 and alter it so it reads like this:

“…you get cut to pieces for glasses around here,” Savitsky went on.  “But you ruin a lady, the nicest little lady, and our fighting boys will treat you real kind.  Think you’ll get along, do you?” 

So we should ask: what gets lost in the above, more efficient version?

Well, for one thing, we lose the description of the village streets and the little hut.  We might do some thinking about why we need those descriptions.  What did they do for you in the moment of reading, and how will some of that resonate later?  We might then broaden our question: What, ultimately, is the use of physical descriptions?  What pleasures do they bring?  Why are they sort of a drag? In your work, where do you draw the line?  That is, when is it too much description?  What is your internalized relation to such descriptions – your “policy” (ugh) on physical descriptions?  Are you good at them?  Not so good?  Might this say something about your worldview? We’ll talk more about physical descriptions in the future, I’m sure, but for now let’s just say that “setting the scene” is only part of their function (and if that’s all a description is doing, it’s under-performing, I’d say.)

But actually, come to think of it – we could wedge those descriptions into our “No Quartermaster” version easily enough, like so:

“…you get cut to pieces for glasses around here,” Savitsky went on.  “But you ruin a lady, the nicest little lady, and our fighting boys will treat you real kind.  Think you’ll get along, do you?” 

“I’ll get along,” I said, and went off to the village. 

The village street lay before me.  The dying sun, yellow and round as a pumpkin, was breathing its last rosy breath into the sky.

I came up to a hut with painted carvings of garlands around the window.  Cossacks were sitting on hay in a yard, shaving one another.

The Boris Dralyuk translation of “Red Cavalry”

Anyway, I’m not trying to rewrite Isaac Babel. What I’m really doing is modeling a certain (intense, admittedly obsessive) approach to editing, using Babel’s text.  This approach involves constantly looking for new efficiencies.  It’s something I am constantly doing as I’m writing. I also try to stay open to the idea of moving things around – switching the order of events and sections and so on.  I’ve internalized a pretty strict ethos about the short story, which is not for everyone, for sure.  But within that ethos….words are expensive.  Sections cost us.  Everything has to earn its keep – although the ways in which they do this can be very subtle.  (And, again, disclaimer: this severity is not for everyone and, for some people, trying to think this way is decidedly unhelpful.  We can “severity” ourselves into silence.)

The best exercise here might just be for you to read Babel’s version, and then the extremely frugal version I’ve proposed above (which I’ll copy in below) and…see.  See what you think.  Do a version of what your optometrist does: “Is this better?  Or this?”  Do you like it this way or that way?  Why?  What is gained and lost with each and, more importantly – how is your internal Esthetic Delight Meter reacting to each?  And: what might this tell you about yourself as a writer?

Again, it’s not all that important that you articulate any of this; what’s important is that you feel it.  And there are, of course, no correct or incorrect answers; this is just an opportunity for musing.

Babel’s Version (picking up in the middle of paragraph 4 on page 51):

“…And with glasses on your nose.  What a little louse!…They send you without so much as checking with us—and you get cut to pieces for glasses around here.  Think you’ll get along, do you?

“I’ll get along,” I said, and went off to the village with the quartermaster to find lodgings for the night.  The quartermaster carried my little trunk on his shoulders.  The village street lay before us.  The dying sun, yellow and round as a pumpkin, was breathing its last rosy breath into the sky.

We came up to a hut with painted carvings of garlands around the window.  The quartermaster suddenly stopped and said with an apologetic grin:

“We’ve got trouble with glasses around here, and you can’t do a thing about it.  A man of the highest distinction—he’s a goner for sure.  But you ruin a lady, the nicest little lady, and our fighting boys will treat you real kind…”

He hesitated a moment with my little trunk on his shoulders, came

Cossacks were sitting on hay in a yard, shaving one another.

Ruthlessly Efficient Version:

“…And with glasses on your nose.  What a little louse!…They send you without so much as checking with us—and you get cut to pieces for glasses around here,” Savitsky went on.  “But you ruin a lady, the nicest little lady, and our fighting boys will treat you real kind.  Think you’ll get along, do you?” 

“I’ll get along,” I said, and went off to the village. 

Soon the village street lay before me.  The dying sun, yellow and round as a pumpkin, was breathing its last rosy breath into the sky.

I came up to a hut with painted carvings of garlands around the window.  Cossacks were sitting on hay in a yard, shaving one another.

More soon, and thanks, as always, for being here.