I don’t like giving that line to Savitsky. He doesn’t seem like the sort of person to give that sort of advice. I like it better coming from a person of lower rank “the boss won’t tell you this, but here’s a way out.”
Having a person of lower rank say this also gives us an example of how a person *might* respond to the cruel environment. Despairing, jittery, resigned. So we see an option available to the narrator. The story is the narrator making a choice, so it helps to see a version for how he could change / not change.
Exactly. The quartermaster is important. He underlines the dichotomy between kindness/matey-ness and horrible violence that seems to be an essential feature of the story…
Yes - this is exactly how the quartermaster landed with me... for me it wasn't so important that he offered a specific way out, but that he showed two different behaviours in one person, and how he too split his soul... shows kindness, sympathy and empathy to the narrator and more generally to the downtrodden (carries trunk, muses on the unfairness and illogic), but shifts to his own version of survival, even makes a good joke at the narrator's expense ('he's suffered in the fields of learning'..) and rushes off, presumably ashamed. This mirrors something of the narrator's personal journey through the story.
Have we not all experienced this at some point in our lives - a friend changes their behaviour when in company, maybe at your own cost? And who has not behaved like this quartermaster at some time?
The QM seems real and inside the situation, dealing with the rules himself - Savitsky is outside the situation and playing with the rules.
Yes - indeed - hence his shift into survival mode. I just did not pick up the feeling that the QM was giving him a way out. Might very well be my own poor reading, but the 'I'll get along' precedes the QM's suggestion, which to me felt like a lament at the upside-down morality of it all, rather than intended as practical advice. Did the narrator pick it up and twist it into his own line of behaviour? I can see that reading makes sense, I just missed it.
Apologies if this note appears twice -- I was writing it then started looking at others' comments and my own disappeared. The point I was making was about reading the quartermaster differently from the reading George gives in the post -- I read him as oppressed by the behavior of the Cossacks, not at all giving the narrator a way out or intending to give him a way out, but lamenting the cruelty (and I take there to be a situation just in the background of an attack that a cossack or cossacks have made on a local girl, supported a little later, obliquely, by the older woman). I read the quartermaster as sympathetic, empathetic, and recognizing potential victimhood in the newly arrived narrator, recognizing someone to whom he can express his sorrow and shame. Also, I don't think the narrator is given or should be given a way out, not intentionally, just the information from which he constructs and discovers his own way out -- he's responsible for making this choice, taking this action, which his acute observations (not someone else's intention) give to him.
I just assumed he was giving advice (like dealing with a bully, find the biggest kid and punch him kind of thing) but thinking of him just commenting on the nature of the Cossacks - that they only respect cruelty, and the narrator interpreting that for his own survival is pretty interesting too.
I agree. Savitsky seems entirely without compassion so unlikely to give the narrator even this (twisted) way out. The QM stands a little apart from the Cossacks whereas Savitsky is of them. I also got a sense of the QM ‘delivering’ the narrator to his fate (like a parent dropping a nervous child to his first day at school), there would have been a lessening of tension if the narrator had gone by himself. I read the description of the sunset as being the ‘dying’ of the narrator’s ability to notice and appreciate beauty.
Well, all that disturbing sun and moon imagery returns again and again. Throughout the cycle. I think they represent a dissonant natural constant. Not the mood of the moment. But that image is certainly very striking and very disturbing in this story. And I think he leaves it up to us to decide what it means….
Liking the parent dropping a child off to school analogy! Yup. Indeed!
Niall, I love what you're saying here: "The QM seems real and inside the situation, dealing with the rules himself." Yes, adjusting his role to fit the circumstances, both for his own survival and that of a fellow human, the narrator.
I agree Kate. Savitsky has played his overbearing part in the intended to terrify and intimidate spectacle of the grand opening scene and, bar one reference to him by the quartermaster, having set the story going in his rollicking way he has departed the dramatic stage, gone back into his bottle, like a pantomime genie into his lamp. Whether he is summoned in another Red Cavalry story I do not know but he is fully established and need say no more in 'My Red Goose' . . . not least because his browbeating cuts no mustard with the unnamed narrator.
I agree and it provides a transition from the cruelty of the commander to the callousness of the Cossacks. We think the quartermaster is helpful but he drops the load at the last minute, setting up a turn.
Agree. This environment is a trecherous one, perhaps by design, perhaps because it can't be otherwise. Cruel. Callous. Even a bit of kind advice comes in the form of you, you want to get along, you gotta be ONE OF US. Confirm and legitimize our crass ways.
I agree that the quartermaster is important. He is a degree more sympathetic toward the narrator. The tone of his version of the warning seems warmer and more caring. It would be out of character for Savitsky to give the narrator "the way out". In his brash rudeness, he uses violence and the threat of violence to control others. He is aggressive. He wants to frighten the narrator and leave it at that. And the way he delivers the warning gives the narrator the opportunity to express his indirect retort, which shows us something about his character. He isn't just a wimp. The quartermaster gives his warning almost as an apology. Sorry, but we have a bit of an issue with glasses around here. I know you can't get along without them, but..." The timing of the warning, just prior to his entering into the yard, recalls Savitsky's warning, reinforcing it and making danger a very present condition--he could be on the precipice of a disaster, right there at the entrance, like the gates of hell. The quartermaster offers the solution, and brings the sinister nature of Savitsky's warning into this pulse, right at the right time.
I think Babel's original version has two things that the 'severity' version doesn't: it subtly gives the sense of the time needed for the narrator to mull over/absorb his new situation - I get this sense of the situation percolating inside him when we see the description - the matter of beats, as in music - and the other is that the quartermaster's dialogue, because of the notes of apology, gives a sense of someone else internally resisting the brutality of the situation; as does the way he approaches the narrator as if he's going to confide something more before he gives the little jump back...it sets up some ghost of emotional resistance to the regime and so deepens the twist when the narrator kills the goose, to win his badge of brutality.
I agree, and to expand on the musical analogy, the dialogue with the quartermaster is something akin to a recapitulation and then further development of the opening scene's melody. The quartermaster repeats Savitsky's warning in another voice, like a different section of the orchestra answering the first. The quartermaster's scene not only moves the story along but also ratchets up the tension.
One thing that occurred to me as I was thinking about Pulse 2 over the last few days was just how much the quartermaster contrasts with Savitsky, which for me raised the stakes in the warning about the glasses. It's not just this chiseled, Dwayne "The Rock' Johnson type of tough dude warning him, it's also this apologetic, somewhat bumbling guy as well.
Yes, the quartermaster's warning heightens the sense of peril for the narrator. Also, Savitsky, as drawn, doesn't want him there, is angry he's there, and therefore certainly would not be the one to try to help him.
Savinsky is such a bombastic character with his boots, and whip cracking, and shouting, that if I were the narrator I don't know that I would take comment about the glasses all that seriously.
But when the jumpy, blushing quartermaster brings it up as well, I think it becomes clear that yes - it's a real problem.
This rings true for me too. The big boss might just like picking on people, but the QM is the guy you really runs things. He's like Radar on MASH. And if he tells you that's the deal, then you best listen.
That little trunk does a lot of work here in this pulse, and later in the story; It shows us that the quartermaster is lower status than the narrator, as he's required to carry this bag for him, which might explain why he, another low status guy, would try to give a clue for how to escape Cossack attacks, it get's flung over the fence by the Cossack as the first attack against the narrator, it holds the manuscript of Lenin's speech, a key story element, and it gets covered with hay for a pillow, echoing the hay on which the Cossacks were originally sitting. He's started the process of symbolically covering his real self with material from the Cossack's reality . What a hardworking little bag. He could have carried his own bag, but we would have missed the ability to see how he was still higher status than some people, in some contexts.
Next, observe the sun, and how it is introduced here so it can travel through the story, how its motion keeps us aware of time passing. Light fading, darkness entering, right on queue, with the next mention of the sun in the story noting that it just set, right before the narrator pivots from being the victim of violence to being a perpetrator. The next celestial body we meet is the moon, rising like a cheap earring. I'm sure we will consider why that is moment in the story where Babel placed it.
Again, apologies for not sticking just to Pulse #2, and looking ahead, but if the question is, what makes these details worth their weight, you need to see why the sun and the little bag are needed as wind up for the pitch that comes later in the story.
What you said about the "little trunk" resonated with me too, Susanna. As you say, the Quartermaster's carrying the narrator's trunk seems to reflect a hierarchy, in which the Quartermaster is superior in rank to the Cossacks (I could be wrong about that, but it's my guess), and the narrator may be considered superior to the Quartermaster (although not formally superior in rank) – yet we are given to understand that, in this environment, that hierarchy, and any merits that it's based on, is irrelevant; the narrator will need to prove himself in another way in order to get on with the Cossacks.
In this context, I also wondered why the Quartermaster "reddened" when he departed. I see him as an intermediary between Savitsky/the Cossacks on one end of the spectrum (so to speak) and, on the other end, the narrator. The Quartermaster sympathises with the narrator, but ultimately his priority is to preserve his relationship with the Cossacks – thus he expressly mentions that the narrator must be billeted pursuant to "Comrade Savtisky's orders" (i.e., not his), and I understood his comment about the narrator's "suffering on the fields of learning" to be poking gentle fun at the narrator, at the narrator's expense (i.e., he's confirming to the Cossacks that, ultimately, he's one of them).
I also like what you mentioned Susanna about the movement of the little trunk; looking back on that, I do think that the trunk being put on the Quartermaster's shoulders, then set down again – shortly to be kicked up in the air – creates a subtle sense of movement.
I don't think the quartermaster is "poking gentle fun." I think he's a weasel and a coward, but one who's doing what he thinks he needs to to get by just as much as the narrator is.
The narrator pretty calmly says "I'll get along" to Savitsky, indicating a quiet strength -- he's not going to be "cut to pieces," he'll do what he has to.
And then the quartermaster, who isn't quiet, calm or strong, shows up, and he reddens and flinches -- this guy's scared, not friendly. He tells the narrator that the Cossacks are a bunch of brutal bastards who are going to give him a hard time, and then he tells the Cossacks that the narrator is a soft, educated man who "suffered" by attending college. In both cases, he's currying favor -- criticizing the Cossack to the narrator, and then criticizing the narrator to the Cossacks.
He gives the narrator an apologetic grin before he criticizes the Cossacks, but jumps away, dismayed, after coming close to the narrator. Why? Maybe he sees something in the narrator's face -- that quiet "I'll get along" strength Babel implied earlier -- and realizes the narrator is not going to like him. And then he delivers the narrator to the Cossacks with a line that amounts to "Here's a wimpy college boy, guys, have at him." And then he reddens, because he was trying to adopt an attitude like the Cossacks, but it doesn't work; they know he's a cringing insect. And then he gets the hell out of there. He _is_ trying to tell the Cossacks that he's one of them, as you say. But he's not.
He's trying to get by by acting sympathetic to whoever near him has any power. When he's alone with the narrator he sucks up to him and when he gets to the Cossacks he sucks up to them and he knows it doesn't work and is embarrassed by his hypocrisy and weakness.
People where comparing him to Radar O'Reilly elsethread, but I think he's not a good-natured sort like Radar. I picture him as a Peter Lorre character, cringing and flinching and practically prostrating himself to curry favor, but knowing he isn't getting it.
In criticizing the Cossacks to the narrator, he gives the narrator the key to getting along, but that's not what he means to do. The apologetic grin, turns his comments into mock-sympathy ("Sorry you're being thrown into the lion's den, but these guys are monsters who only like other monsters"), and that sympathy is shown to be hollow when he essentially tells the Cossacks "Hey, lions! Here's a lamb for you. Fresh meat!"
He's a weasel whose sympathies lie with whoever's bigger than him at the moment. He's not anyone friend. He's just getting along, in his own way.
Or at least, that's how I read it -- the narrator is given two examples. Savitsky or the quartermaster. Those are pretty much his choices. Be tough or be a bug.
The narrator chooses to be tough, but he's still, like the quartermaster, betraying himself to get by.
This is a great analysis of something I did not pick up. Thank you!!!
One thought on your last sentence. Is he really betraying himself to get by? He says from the beginning "Ill get by" - meaning he is prepared to do what it takes. He didn't hesitate to lay a hand on that old lady
This puts the pulse in place, like the "beats" of music mentioned by Emma N. Great summing up. I felt the descriptions locating us in the surroundings and the social scene of the village--the floral garland over the window, the care the village people give to the small things of their lives, which will make killing the goose much more a violation of the village ethos.
I completely agree about the trunk. I thought about that too. There is no discussion about the trunk- the quartermaster assumes his job to carry it for the narrator, indicating lower status. But at the same time the quartermaster is perhaps trying to even out status by saying what he says about the glasses- and that grin that he shares. So even though in the greater order of war, the quartermaster is situated below the narrator, maybe he doesn't actually feel that he is, because of the glasses (and all they indicate about who the narrator is, how they identify him). I keep thinking about how war imposes its own chaotic order on people and what role that plays, is playing in this story - especially concerning the narrator's decisions about the actions he takes. Not sure yet...
Thank you, Susanna. For sharing those observations. I had not considered either in such depth, but what you say does open up another depth of the story that I had not considered. I was about the pick on the description of the sun in this pulse -- as a pumpkin is rarely round typical I think of as orange, which are fairly irrelevant observations, especially in comparision to yours.
I have to comment on the image of the men sitting on hay shaving one another. When I first read this, it brought to mind images of monkeys all grooming one another in the branches of a tree —just a funny image I had to mention. It makes them seem a bit like animals, but also adds a “soft” touch to their hyper-masculinity. In addition, the image of these men shaving one another reinforces the level of their camaraderie. It implies a trust— they are shaving one another with potentially deadly instruments — and an acceptance that they each need the help of the others. This reinforces the outsider status of the narrator. As we know from reading further, this is going to continue. I also have to mention that at this point the first time I read it, I was filled with dread that they were going to shatter his glasses.
Yes. It reminds me of the time (usually on Sundays, weather permitting) that sailors were allotted for grooming on the old wooden sailing ships. They would mend and darn their own clothes, but shave each other or trim beards (no mirrors!) and unplait, comb out, and replait back-of-neck braids (impossible for the 'owner'). The upper ranks encouraged this behaviour, not that they were all that concerned about hygiene, but because it favoured the cohesion of the crew, the esprit de corps.
Here this striking detail (three words!) serves, as you say, to emphasize the cohesion of the Cossack group and the exclusion of the narrator.
Thanks for commenting on the grooming thing. The story begins describing Savitsky in a “plastic”, material manner, very exterior. But the image of the Cossacks grooming each other seems primal and stripped down, humans being like their closest relation, the bonobo. Which in nature, if an animal species wants to exist, they need to adapt to their environment.
You are spot on, in my reading! There is a kind of almost mammalian solidarity, intimacy, love, and equality between these men that is heart-warming. But on the other hand……
This image struck me similarly and reminded me of a scene from Moby Dick (if my memory serves) in which the men are working together to process the whale blubber into oil, squeezing the clumps to help liquify it. It implied a kind of intimacy that I think allowing someone else to shave you does as well.
Savitsky, the guy in charge, the one with the power, can't both lay out the trouble (we don't cotton to glasses around here) and at the same time offer the way out of that trouble. This would force him to have to cop to ruthlessness, his own & the situation's, and thus undermine his power. The solution (a little rape, though a little murder would also work) is beneath him to acknowledge though in his heart he surely knows. And thus the quartermaster earns his place in the story by being a sort of dispenser of the essential information, what Savitsky knows but won't say, putting me in mind of the "Radar" character from "Mash", who knew more than he told but told when necessary (and who also happened to wear glasses & was a bit of an outsider).
Hard to tell from Babel's journal, which George suggested we might take a look at & which seem to me to read more like Babel's notes to himself, if he ever actually encountered a character like the quartermaster (though he must have in some form), but my sense is that Babel understood the value of a "sidekick", even one who appears only briefly, but who is necessary to carry the water, as it were, in a story. Think of all the second bananas and the important roles they played. Where would Lucy be without Ethel, or Holmes without Watson, or Don Quixote without Sancho Panza? What about Falstaff? I think Babel put the quartermaster in because he understood the need of the pairing and of the need to show contrast, Savistsky's bombast & puffery v. the QM, flustered & red-faced.
I agree. The Quartermaster is boasting in a way. He knows the ropes. He’s been there. He knows what is what. He has respect. Except he doesn’t. I can’t imagine him respected by the Cossacks or surviving them any better than a man with glasses. In the end he cuts and runs.
Plus he advises rape but it is doubtful he has ever proven himself in this way to the Cossacks. So he is all about a secondary weaker character as a contrast.
I agree, Leslie. But Radar's world of comedy, war notwithstanding, wasn't anything akin to the QM's grim world in "Goose". Same function, those two, but vastly different settings.
What do we think might be going on in Ukrainian villages right now, with all those crazed and traumatised Russian boys who have already crossed a Rubicon by killing people who look and speak exactly like themselves…..
Plus, I am QUITE sure they have managed to loot all the rurally available stocks of vodka they can lay their hands on. Think about it….
But they are NOT intrinsically evil. They are just every mother’s son, sent far from home to commit horrendous acts by the order of one man. I Can only imagine what those boys are dreaming of tonight. And how they will function when they come home. If they do……
Rosanne I think you nailed it with Savitsky “can’t both lay out the trouble and at the same time offer the way out of that trouble.” In addition to your salient points, it would muddy the emotional valence of the pulse. Thank you!
I’m in the “keep the quartermaster” camp because of what many of you already said (thank you, sorry if I missed something) plus:
-These paragraphs offer a kind of transitional space of time where we are ushered more fully into the reality of the military from the command to the ranks (an order is given, then carried out; everyone has an official (and unofficial) role to play; no one is never truly alone) and also to the very real pecking order (later on: “Lenin hits it straight away, like a hen pecking at a grain.”)
-I felt a huge difference between the “village street lay before us” vs “lay before me” because the “us” invokes a sense of the “us who are not Savitsky or the enemy.” It sets up that question of “who is us” that the story revolves around.
-It helps to have a brief moment where we kind of trust the narrator’s confidence when he says “I’ll get along.” We still don’t know if his response is justified or misguided or just naive. It heightens the anticipation of if we can believe him and if he will succeed.
-When the QM “jump[s] back in despair and [runs] into the first courtyard”—afraid of being associated too closely with the “glasses” in front of the Cossacks and/or afraid of what would happen to the narrator—it made me wonder what compromises he makes to get through his day every day. He seems like a mirror (perhaps lesser) of what the narrator later will become, straddling conflicting moral and social positions, dying inside.
On the Esthetic Delight Meter, those couple of paragraphs heightened my anticipation, hope, and then my dread, all of which I felt better set up the ending. Seems like the language chosen did double or triple duty beyond “setting the scene.”
Wow Susanna, what a five star delight of an insightful read you offer to us . . . in my case to munch on pre-lunch this Monday midday.
Would that Substack afforded me a simple means of 'Bookmarking' this fine comment, posted here. As it doesn't I'll just have to hope to find it when I come scrolling back . . .
Oh, thanks for sharing your kind words and good will, Rob. I’ve been enjoying all of the insightful discussion from such giving and gracious readers. And I hear what you’re saying about the comments. I’ve been cutting and pasting them into a separate doc for future reference! (But just for personal use, I hope that’s OK with everyone – no plans for a Babel in the Bardo (or should it be Babble?). lol)
I love your idea that when the QM comes right up to the narrator, and then jumps back in despair, it is if he is peering at himself in the mirror and doesn't like what he sees. Totally resonates with me and my reading of the story.
You could be describing a stage direction, in say a Shakespeare play, in which a character who may be the Fool or one acting the fool is required to 'get right in the face' of the protagonist. The Fool using such shock tactics in King Lear to try to bring a form of 'tough love' comfort to his increasingly mad monarch is the example that comes to mind as I write. Although it is a much more fleeting encounter the QM's getting so unexpectedly in the face of the Narrator is more a shock than a mere surprise.
I like your reading of him jumping back to separate himself from the narrator, with whom he may feel some affinity - the quartermaster is, I think, appalled at the rapes - and perhaps hopes the narrator is too - but yet has to survive and can't be associated with the narrator if he's going to be the butt of the cossacks' cruelty or jokes.
I'm with Susanna. The quartermaster carries the narrator's trunk--which reminds us of the army hierarchy and gives us a sense of someone even more vulnerable than the narrator, even more frightened of the Cossacks. And I'm feeling somewhat cross with George, for suggesting these cuts. Stories may call for some efficiency, but their atmosphere is part of the reader (or listener's) pleasure and desire to keep listening.
Love your defense of a story’s atmosphere over efficiency and for the reader’s pleasure and delight in it. What a gift GS has given us to provoke us into articulating and defending that very pleasure and delight. :)
Hi, Jane, I have to tell you that I’ve been thinking about this comment you gave about atmosphere a lot. It’s so interesting how so many writing approaches talk about “setting.” I’ve always felt there’s something wrong with that word but couldn’t consciously articulate why. Its connotation (at least for me) feels so much like describing and describing and describing and never enough describing, almost like you have to give the reader to see everything like it is in a film, overly focused on the physical description of a place. But your word “atmosphere” cut through a lot of resistance I had for the word “setting” that I didn’t even know I had (especially in the context of George’s questions about description – thank you, George) and created a domino effect of realizations. In My First Goose, I’ve been thinking about how I couldn’t tell you exactly where the hut is in relation to either the first or second courtyard (it’s told differently in other translations). And we’re only given to know there’s “the village” and the “street lay before us.” But somehow I am still immersed and can find my way around. What I do feel is the people displaced out of their homes, the tension of soldiers taking their places, the smell of pork and loneliness, the languishing and dying sun, the war and violence in the air. I feel all those things because of the brush strokes Babel gives. But he doesn’t do endless describing and describing or positioning us in time and space. So many things Babel doesn’t include, but there is much more there because of it. I think I will forever call setting “atmosphere” from now on, and it will be helpful as a guide (along with George’s questions) to know what to cut and what to leave in. So I just wanted to thank you both for that!
Susanna you are more than welcome. I'm glad atmosphere is a good word for you to use rather than setting. Since, as story writers, we are making things up, I think we need to allow all kinds of winding variations and craziness while still making sense to at least some of our readers.
Agree that efficiency is usually a virtue in storytelling. However, in this case the goal being achieved by repeating the information is not to underline the information itself, but rather to indicate the workings of the "society" of macho guys operating here; it's an authoritarian, domination society, where the big guy sets the rules and the little guys indicate they're part of the team by repeating what the big guy says. We've all seen a lot of this recently, so it's easy to recognize 🤓 Kinda like "The Emperor's New Clothes"; yeah, it's redundant to hear 100 people say how beautiful the Emperor's Clothes are. It's also exactly the point. And also serves a very important role in creating the creeping feeling of terror that if you don't fit it, you're in trouble.
While we're tossing around Hollywood terms like "logline", I'll just note that I think the Hollywood term for "pulse" would be something like "sequence". (Some would say "beat", but I don't think that quite captures the storytelling work a "pulse" has to do.) "Sequences" were championed by a guy named Frank Daniel, a Czech who had quite an interesting career. He was head of the Czech film school in Milos Forman's day, then went to AFI in Los Angeles for a while (where he was a mentor of David Lynch), then ultimately to USC at the end of his career. Briefly, while others talk about 3 acts, Daniel said it was easier to break a movie script into (usually) 8 sequences, each (running about 15 minutes) with its own "dramatic question" which is answered at the end of the sequence. In Daniel's analysis, the first act has 2 sequences, the second has 4, and the third has another 2. So in, for instance, "Bicycle Thieves" some of the sequences would have questions such as (going from memory here, be easy on me), "Will he get the job?" "Will he be able to get a bicycle?" "Will he find the stolen bicycle quickly?". Frank Daniel never wrote any books himself, but some of his disciples did, and they're worth looking into, in my opinion, if this appeals to you. I'll have to think about how the "sequences" would map out in this story, but the first one might be something like "Will the narrator think the boss is a hero or a goon?"
Chiming in to say that I have found sequences really intriguing and quite useful. Glad you brought this up!
I really liked "Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach" by Paul Joseph Gulino. Film Courage on YouTube has some interviews with this author if anyone wants to get a sense of the book's topics:
I agree - Gulino's book is really helpful to study sequences. A wide range of case studies (Fellini to Hitchcock to Toy Story) kind of like what we're doing here.
Yes, but is he really (the quartermaster) repeating the information (I think this is what you're referring to)? Or is he adding something new? To me, it's the latter, and it's not only the crux of this pulse/sequence, but the crux of the story. Love this info you've given us here from Frank Daniel. There's 50 ways to leave your lover and a ga-zillion ways to analyze movies/plays, I guess. Anyway, if you feel like posting the books you like, that would be great!
Yeah I agree the quartermaster is adding something new, but I think I'd argue that what's "new" is the key indication that this story is not about narrator vs. division commander. It's about narrator vs. oppressive atmosphere of militarism and toxic masculinity. So in that sense what the quartermaster does is let us know it's a whole world the narrator has to contend with/find his place in, not just an Ahab figure.
okay, well since that's two requests I'd better reply! On "sequences" and dramatic structure I recommend looking up some screenwriting (can I mention that evil word in here? 🤣 ) books by a guy named David Howard. Howard was a student of Daniel's, eventually a teacher at USC (still is, possibly?) and kind of Plato to Daniel's Socrates. I.E.. Howard did all the book writing. Incidentally, the origin of the sequence thing comes from a much earlier book about playwrighting by a guy named Edward Mabley. In fact, Howard gives Mabley co-credit on his first book, as I recall, though Mabley's book was from the 1970s (?) or so... (as you can see, I'm trying to save face by referring to the theater and not just the blasted movies 🤣 )
Thanks for the reply. Far be it from me to be recommending books in a book group! But if you're interested in Frank Daniel's approach, I suggest just googling "Frank Daniel sequences". You will find quite a few bloggers explaining his approach. For whatever reason, "sequences" never took Hollywood by storm, though I myself find it the most useful approach to figuring out what's working and what's not in a script/story, if that's your bag. 😎
I see what you mean about sequences. Interesting way of considering the BT, too. Can you post the book titles of the Daniel's followers you'd recommend? Would be interested to know more about that approach to storytelling. Many thanks!
I'm reminded of an article I read years ago about a preference for minimalism in "good" writing. I believe Cormac McCarthy was one of the references. And the author saying that one thing minimal writing rarely accomplished was humour. That humour (in this author's opinion) requires a bit of playful verbosity.
I'm not saying Babel is funny (although maybe this is!). But there's something
I would say Babel is funny/satirical. But I also tend to agree that minimalism does not do humor well. Or perhaps it does it differently. When I think Cormac McArthy, I don't think funny but perhaps I have missed something.
Isn't brevity the sole of wit? As in: Take my wife...please.
The whole play of over-written descriptions is the bitterest of satires. And edges on funny if it were not so frightening. I heard a Babel story on NPR the other day. A reporter was interviewing a Ukrainian farmer who had stayed on the farm with his two dogs while his family fled to Kyiv. A group of Russian soldiers breaks in and he gives up his shotgun, his food, shoes, etc. They tell him they are going to shoot his dogs. Then they find two passports and decide he's spy. They tie him to a kitchen stool and tell him they are going to execute him. They leave the kitchen, closing the door (I'm not too sure of the details here) and then there's a barrage of gunfire. The stool is shot to pieces under him, the kitchen is smashed to matchsticks, he's shot in the arm, he hears them trashing the house. Long afterward he frees his arms and finds his dogs are still alive, too, and they set off for the city.
I don't think it's just "to let the narrator know that he’s in trouble but there may be a way out."
The thing about the quartermaster is he's likable and seems reasonable and apologetic, so those words in his mouth, about the "nicest little lady" come across as him feeling bad about this awful behavior. Though also feeling it is inevitable. And also not being in a position to do anything about it. He could even be angry about it-- but being of lower rank can't afford to make that known.
And what about that bit that was missed out accidentally (?) in the last of George's full versions of this "pulse" above:
"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."
Came right up to me, then jumped back in despair.
Why does the quartermaster do that? He wanted to say something, maybe, then had a failure of courage.
Did the quartermaster want to exhort the narrator not to rape girls? or a particular girl? Then felt it was useless, pointless?
It seems unlikely he is about to recommend a particularly nice little lady for the narrator to attack first. He just doesn't come across that way.
Is he hoping against hope that he could dissuade the narrator from such behavior, but realizes it's pointless? He seems in this view so wretched. So stuck - between Savitsky the outrageously exaggerated officer and the more mundane reality of the cossacks and their hardness.
And then the wry way he says, "and no nonsense, on account of his having suffered on the fields of learning..."
And then he reddens and walks away. Why redden? -- Afraid of revealing himself by this somewhat erudite wit - on the fields of learning - as a covert intellectual himself? A schoolteacher say, in hiding?
It is a transitional passage, but there is a lot in it too. I get carried away with these interpretations before I reread and maybe settle somewhere else and maybe I am now. But I'm seeing the quartermaster as a decent man among degraded ones, wanting to beseech the narrator not to harm an innocent girl - or "nicest little lady" - maybe he has known one - maybe in his own family - Maybe he's haunted, pulls back on the verge of blowing his cover. And realizing there is no other way for the narrator to survive maybe.
But the narrator does find another way - he symbolically rapes the goose - thus demonstrating a callous outlook that the cossacks find acceptable. I mean it's bad for the goose but at least he does kill the bird first before running his rapier through her.
Thanks for this insightful portrait of the quartermaster’s decency. It does make one wonder if the QM is himself somewhat learned (schoolteacher in hiding) because he recognizes the narrator as a man of learning where Savitsky doesn’t at first. In which case the mirrored relationship between the QM and narrator intensifies the ending. The more I think about it, I’m realizing the QM does the opposite of what the narrator does. The QM jumps back/runs away from the Cossacks in obvious fear/guilt/shame, but the narrator joins the Cossacks on their terms. Different responses to a similar dilemma, which gives an added tension to what the narrator chooses later on. I also really appreciate that you brought up the women that the QM may already know, even in his family.... I think that word “despair” has so much in it. All the “nicest little (ruined) ladies” kind of haunt the story like ghosts.
Thanks -and yes, I agree he has some education too, as I think I wrote in a reply to a comment elsewhere. I’m away from my computer but what the QM says about fighting in the fields of learning - it doesn’t sound like something a peasant would say. There’s a lot of room for different readings hough I think. The jumping back part. Not sure I have a sure feeling about it. Good discussion !
Does he symbolically rape the goose or does he kill it to assuage his, literal, hunger? I can pose the question but, without remaining on any kind of fence have to say, being undecided, I remain open to both possibilities. Isaac Babel seems to report what happens but leaves it to readers should they wish for more in the way of explanation or interpretation or meaning or whatever to do their own work for themselves.
Thanks, Rob - lot of lively discussion about this section - great ideas.
I think the narrator is also hungry - one can follow his mind working on different levels. I agree - I imagine that Babel leaves things open for readers to percolate over time - changing from one interpretation to another and back again and also hovering somewhere in between and both at the same time too, maybe! I'm so glad to have this wonderful introduction to his work.
Pulse 2 gives the narrator (and me) a chance to breathe, walk, take in the village in the company of another character who steps back from the violence of the opening and the violence to come with the Cossacks. The humanity of the brief encounter between the narrator and the quartermaster is made real by the "we" of their walk. The same observations about the village and so on wouldn't have an equivalent power if only coming from the narrator on a solo walk.
Thanks for describing this so beautifully. I felt like the moments the narrator has with the quartermaster were the most real and honest, human, until the very end but couldn't quite articulate it.
Sometimes I feel that the emphasis on escalation doesn't allow for these opportunities to breathe which in some ways prepare us for the hard work ahead.
Re physical description: the description of the setting sun in this pulse for me ends up conversing with the moon on p 54, which “hung low over the yard like a cheap earring.” There was a surreal loveliness, or maybe an odd naturalness, to that dying pumpkin-sun, which ends up sacrificed along with the goose. Callousness, or guilt, or disgust has corroded our narrator’s view of the heavens.
I was interested in GS comment that if description is only setting the scene, it is under-performing. In addition to it being very visual and adding atmosphere, for me it also reminds us the narrator starts the story as an intellectual, using similes, noticing beauty in a somewhat poetic fashion (those garlands too).
Super duper interesting. Two things re: editing Babel's version. Thinking about this story as if it were food I feel like the quartermaster ingredient balances out the flavor. Bc we've got a strong ingredient in the Savitsky guy, same goes for the Cossacks, and the suicidal old lady is weak but a different kind of opposition--what the narrator doesn't want to be. So if it were just those three, Savitsky, Cossacks, suicidal old lady, it would feel like a bunch of very strong ingredients that needed something mellow and light, like lettuce in a sandwich. Second: I think there's a reluctance to edit an original for fear of cheapening it or making it worse and I think it's that same fear that gets in the way of writers who write stuff where nothing happens. So this exercise is very good practice, imo. Like just do it to do it, he's not going to come back from the dead and take offense. He was probably editing to his very last breath.
P.S. I've been reading the red cavalry stories in the complete works of babel, translated by peter constantine, and his daughter's preface in the book is very moving. The stories themselves have a ton of I don't get (I've been going too fast probably plus lack context) but I get the gist and it's making me brave. There's this one description, I can't remember in which story, about the sun looking like a beheaded head rolling around and it was just so much fun. This dude was fearless and I love him for it.
What strikes me is that the narrator doesn’t seem all that impressed by the whole situation. In pulse 1 we only hear him give affirmative answers: I can. I’ll get along. He seems very confident. His only emotions are admiration and envy of Savitsky. So when you leave out the quartermaster, all you have is this starstruck, overconfident revolutionary who walks blindly into dangers arms. We need a third party to remind us of the stakes.
In the original, the Quartermaster imbues it with this sort of creepy weirdness--like an Igor kind of character, whispering over his shoulder about how it is or what might happen while he leads the unknowing main character along. Without the Quartermaster, the main character is walking on his own, not being led, and the scene is almost idyllic, one of a fading afternoon. With the Quartermaster, the Cossacks shaving themselves (such a strange but simple image!) is latent with threat, but without him, the Cossacks are merely grooming themselves. I think it escalates the tension.
Yes & yikes. Nothing quite like a bunch of guys holding razors to each other's throats without a flinch to get the idea that, yep, they're all with their peeps.
I don’t like giving that line to Savitsky. He doesn’t seem like the sort of person to give that sort of advice. I like it better coming from a person of lower rank “the boss won’t tell you this, but here’s a way out.”
Having a person of lower rank say this also gives us an example of how a person *might* respond to the cruel environment. Despairing, jittery, resigned. So we see an option available to the narrator. The story is the narrator making a choice, so it helps to see a version for how he could change / not change.
Exactly. The quartermaster is important. He underlines the dichotomy between kindness/matey-ness and horrible violence that seems to be an essential feature of the story…
Yes - this is exactly how the quartermaster landed with me... for me it wasn't so important that he offered a specific way out, but that he showed two different behaviours in one person, and how he too split his soul... shows kindness, sympathy and empathy to the narrator and more generally to the downtrodden (carries trunk, muses on the unfairness and illogic), but shifts to his own version of survival, even makes a good joke at the narrator's expense ('he's suffered in the fields of learning'..) and rushes off, presumably ashamed. This mirrors something of the narrator's personal journey through the story.
Have we not all experienced this at some point in our lives - a friend changes their behaviour when in company, maybe at your own cost? And who has not behaved like this quartermaster at some time?
The QM seems real and inside the situation, dealing with the rules himself - Savitsky is outside the situation and playing with the rules.
Don’t you think the QM might be rather scared of the Cossacks himself?
Yes - indeed - hence his shift into survival mode. I just did not pick up the feeling that the QM was giving him a way out. Might very well be my own poor reading, but the 'I'll get along' precedes the QM's suggestion, which to me felt like a lament at the upside-down morality of it all, rather than intended as practical advice. Did the narrator pick it up and twist it into his own line of behaviour? I can see that reading makes sense, I just missed it.
Apologies if this note appears twice -- I was writing it then started looking at others' comments and my own disappeared. The point I was making was about reading the quartermaster differently from the reading George gives in the post -- I read him as oppressed by the behavior of the Cossacks, not at all giving the narrator a way out or intending to give him a way out, but lamenting the cruelty (and I take there to be a situation just in the background of an attack that a cossack or cossacks have made on a local girl, supported a little later, obliquely, by the older woman). I read the quartermaster as sympathetic, empathetic, and recognizing potential victimhood in the newly arrived narrator, recognizing someone to whom he can express his sorrow and shame. Also, I don't think the narrator is given or should be given a way out, not intentionally, just the information from which he constructs and discovers his own way out -- he's responsible for making this choice, taking this action, which his acute observations (not someone else's intention) give to him.
I just assumed he was giving advice (like dealing with a bully, find the biggest kid and punch him kind of thing) but thinking of him just commenting on the nature of the Cossacks - that they only respect cruelty, and the narrator interpreting that for his own survival is pretty interesting too.
I agree. Savitsky seems entirely without compassion so unlikely to give the narrator even this (twisted) way out. The QM stands a little apart from the Cossacks whereas Savitsky is of them. I also got a sense of the QM ‘delivering’ the narrator to his fate (like a parent dropping a nervous child to his first day at school), there would have been a lessening of tension if the narrator had gone by himself. I read the description of the sunset as being the ‘dying’ of the narrator’s ability to notice and appreciate beauty.
Well, all that disturbing sun and moon imagery returns again and again. Throughout the cycle. I think they represent a dissonant natural constant. Not the mood of the moment. But that image is certainly very striking and very disturbing in this story. And I think he leaves it up to us to decide what it means….
Liking the parent dropping a child off to school analogy! Yup. Indeed!
Niall, I love what you're saying here: "The QM seems real and inside the situation, dealing with the rules himself." Yes, adjusting his role to fit the circumstances, both for his own survival and that of a fellow human, the narrator.
In any event, and how ever we feel, we CANNOT give that line to
Savitskii. Because Babel himself does not. And that’s all we’ve got to go on…..
I agree Kate. Savitsky has played his overbearing part in the intended to terrify and intimidate spectacle of the grand opening scene and, bar one reference to him by the quartermaster, having set the story going in his rollicking way he has departed the dramatic stage, gone back into his bottle, like a pantomime genie into his lamp. Whether he is summoned in another Red Cavalry story I do not know but he is fully established and need say no more in 'My Red Goose' . . . not least because his browbeating cuts no mustard with the unnamed narrator.
I like the way you put it, Rob. Savitsky has played his part. Time to move on. NEXT!
Or even ‘My First Goose!’
I agree and it provides a transition from the cruelty of the commander to the callousness of the Cossacks. We think the quartermaster is helpful but he drops the load at the last minute, setting up a turn.
Agree. This environment is a trecherous one, perhaps by design, perhaps because it can't be otherwise. Cruel. Callous. Even a bit of kind advice comes in the form of you, you want to get along, you gotta be ONE OF US. Confirm and legitimize our crass ways.
I agree that the quartermaster is important. He is a degree more sympathetic toward the narrator. The tone of his version of the warning seems warmer and more caring. It would be out of character for Savitsky to give the narrator "the way out". In his brash rudeness, he uses violence and the threat of violence to control others. He is aggressive. He wants to frighten the narrator and leave it at that. And the way he delivers the warning gives the narrator the opportunity to express his indirect retort, which shows us something about his character. He isn't just a wimp. The quartermaster gives his warning almost as an apology. Sorry, but we have a bit of an issue with glasses around here. I know you can't get along without them, but..." The timing of the warning, just prior to his entering into the yard, recalls Savitsky's warning, reinforcing it and making danger a very present condition--he could be on the precipice of a disaster, right there at the entrance, like the gates of hell. The quartermaster offers the solution, and brings the sinister nature of Savitsky's warning into this pulse, right at the right time.
I think Babel's original version has two things that the 'severity' version doesn't: it subtly gives the sense of the time needed for the narrator to mull over/absorb his new situation - I get this sense of the situation percolating inside him when we see the description - the matter of beats, as in music - and the other is that the quartermaster's dialogue, because of the notes of apology, gives a sense of someone else internally resisting the brutality of the situation; as does the way he approaches the narrator as if he's going to confide something more before he gives the little jump back...it sets up some ghost of emotional resistance to the regime and so deepens the twist when the narrator kills the goose, to win his badge of brutality.
I agree, and to expand on the musical analogy, the dialogue with the quartermaster is something akin to a recapitulation and then further development of the opening scene's melody. The quartermaster repeats Savitsky's warning in another voice, like a different section of the orchestra answering the first. The quartermaster's scene not only moves the story along but also ratchets up the tension.
This makes me think of how someone would score the film of the story!
One thing that occurred to me as I was thinking about Pulse 2 over the last few days was just how much the quartermaster contrasts with Savitsky, which for me raised the stakes in the warning about the glasses. It's not just this chiseled, Dwayne "The Rock' Johnson type of tough dude warning him, it's also this apologetic, somewhat bumbling guy as well.
Yes, the quartermaster's warning heightens the sense of peril for the narrator. Also, Savitsky, as drawn, doesn't want him there, is angry he's there, and therefore certainly would not be the one to try to help him.
Savinsky is such a bombastic character with his boots, and whip cracking, and shouting, that if I were the narrator I don't know that I would take comment about the glasses all that seriously.
But when the jumpy, blushing quartermaster brings it up as well, I think it becomes clear that yes - it's a real problem.
This rings true for me too. The big boss might just like picking on people, but the QM is the guy you really runs things. He's like Radar on MASH. And if he tells you that's the deal, then you best listen.
Yeah. He has neither the time nor the intersest in helping this "little bug" of a guy. He has battles to plan. Enemies to vanquish
That little trunk does a lot of work here in this pulse, and later in the story; It shows us that the quartermaster is lower status than the narrator, as he's required to carry this bag for him, which might explain why he, another low status guy, would try to give a clue for how to escape Cossack attacks, it get's flung over the fence by the Cossack as the first attack against the narrator, it holds the manuscript of Lenin's speech, a key story element, and it gets covered with hay for a pillow, echoing the hay on which the Cossacks were originally sitting. He's started the process of symbolically covering his real self with material from the Cossack's reality . What a hardworking little bag. He could have carried his own bag, but we would have missed the ability to see how he was still higher status than some people, in some contexts.
Next, observe the sun, and how it is introduced here so it can travel through the story, how its motion keeps us aware of time passing. Light fading, darkness entering, right on queue, with the next mention of the sun in the story noting that it just set, right before the narrator pivots from being the victim of violence to being a perpetrator. The next celestial body we meet is the moon, rising like a cheap earring. I'm sure we will consider why that is moment in the story where Babel placed it.
Again, apologies for not sticking just to Pulse #2, and looking ahead, but if the question is, what makes these details worth their weight, you need to see why the sun and the little bag are needed as wind up for the pitch that comes later in the story.
What you said about the "little trunk" resonated with me too, Susanna. As you say, the Quartermaster's carrying the narrator's trunk seems to reflect a hierarchy, in which the Quartermaster is superior in rank to the Cossacks (I could be wrong about that, but it's my guess), and the narrator may be considered superior to the Quartermaster (although not formally superior in rank) – yet we are given to understand that, in this environment, that hierarchy, and any merits that it's based on, is irrelevant; the narrator will need to prove himself in another way in order to get on with the Cossacks.
In this context, I also wondered why the Quartermaster "reddened" when he departed. I see him as an intermediary between Savitsky/the Cossacks on one end of the spectrum (so to speak) and, on the other end, the narrator. The Quartermaster sympathises with the narrator, but ultimately his priority is to preserve his relationship with the Cossacks – thus he expressly mentions that the narrator must be billeted pursuant to "Comrade Savtisky's orders" (i.e., not his), and I understood his comment about the narrator's "suffering on the fields of learning" to be poking gentle fun at the narrator, at the narrator's expense (i.e., he's confirming to the Cossacks that, ultimately, he's one of them).
I also like what you mentioned Susanna about the movement of the little trunk; looking back on that, I do think that the trunk being put on the Quartermaster's shoulders, then set down again – shortly to be kicked up in the air – creates a subtle sense of movement.
I don't think the quartermaster is "poking gentle fun." I think he's a weasel and a coward, but one who's doing what he thinks he needs to to get by just as much as the narrator is.
The narrator pretty calmly says "I'll get along" to Savitsky, indicating a quiet strength -- he's not going to be "cut to pieces," he'll do what he has to.
And then the quartermaster, who isn't quiet, calm or strong, shows up, and he reddens and flinches -- this guy's scared, not friendly. He tells the narrator that the Cossacks are a bunch of brutal bastards who are going to give him a hard time, and then he tells the Cossacks that the narrator is a soft, educated man who "suffered" by attending college. In both cases, he's currying favor -- criticizing the Cossack to the narrator, and then criticizing the narrator to the Cossacks.
He gives the narrator an apologetic grin before he criticizes the Cossacks, but jumps away, dismayed, after coming close to the narrator. Why? Maybe he sees something in the narrator's face -- that quiet "I'll get along" strength Babel implied earlier -- and realizes the narrator is not going to like him. And then he delivers the narrator to the Cossacks with a line that amounts to "Here's a wimpy college boy, guys, have at him." And then he reddens, because he was trying to adopt an attitude like the Cossacks, but it doesn't work; they know he's a cringing insect. And then he gets the hell out of there. He _is_ trying to tell the Cossacks that he's one of them, as you say. But he's not.
He's trying to get by by acting sympathetic to whoever near him has any power. When he's alone with the narrator he sucks up to him and when he gets to the Cossacks he sucks up to them and he knows it doesn't work and is embarrassed by his hypocrisy and weakness.
People where comparing him to Radar O'Reilly elsethread, but I think he's not a good-natured sort like Radar. I picture him as a Peter Lorre character, cringing and flinching and practically prostrating himself to curry favor, but knowing he isn't getting it.
In criticizing the Cossacks to the narrator, he gives the narrator the key to getting along, but that's not what he means to do. The apologetic grin, turns his comments into mock-sympathy ("Sorry you're being thrown into the lion's den, but these guys are monsters who only like other monsters"), and that sympathy is shown to be hollow when he essentially tells the Cossacks "Hey, lions! Here's a lamb for you. Fresh meat!"
He's a weasel whose sympathies lie with whoever's bigger than him at the moment. He's not anyone friend. He's just getting along, in his own way.
Or at least, that's how I read it -- the narrator is given two examples. Savitsky or the quartermaster. Those are pretty much his choices. Be tough or be a bug.
The narrator chooses to be tough, but he's still, like the quartermaster, betraying himself to get by.
This is a great analysis of something I did not pick up. Thank you!!!
One thought on your last sentence. Is he really betraying himself to get by? He says from the beginning "Ill get by" - meaning he is prepared to do what it takes. He didn't hesitate to lay a hand on that old lady
This puts the pulse in place, like the "beats" of music mentioned by Emma N. Great summing up. I felt the descriptions locating us in the surroundings and the social scene of the village--the floral garland over the window, the care the village people give to the small things of their lives, which will make killing the goose much more a violation of the village ethos.
I completely agree about the trunk. I thought about that too. There is no discussion about the trunk- the quartermaster assumes his job to carry it for the narrator, indicating lower status. But at the same time the quartermaster is perhaps trying to even out status by saying what he says about the glasses- and that grin that he shares. So even though in the greater order of war, the quartermaster is situated below the narrator, maybe he doesn't actually feel that he is, because of the glasses (and all they indicate about who the narrator is, how they identify him). I keep thinking about how war imposes its own chaotic order on people and what role that plays, is playing in this story - especially concerning the narrator's decisions about the actions he takes. Not sure yet...
Thank you, Susanna. For sharing those observations. I had not considered either in such depth, but what you say does open up another depth of the story that I had not considered. I was about the pick on the description of the sun in this pulse -- as a pumpkin is rarely round typical I think of as orange, which are fairly irrelevant observations, especially in comparision to yours.
I have to comment on the image of the men sitting on hay shaving one another. When I first read this, it brought to mind images of monkeys all grooming one another in the branches of a tree —just a funny image I had to mention. It makes them seem a bit like animals, but also adds a “soft” touch to their hyper-masculinity. In addition, the image of these men shaving one another reinforces the level of their camaraderie. It implies a trust— they are shaving one another with potentially deadly instruments — and an acceptance that they each need the help of the others. This reinforces the outsider status of the narrator. As we know from reading further, this is going to continue. I also have to mention that at this point the first time I read it, I was filled with dread that they were going to shatter his glasses.
Yes. It reminds me of the time (usually on Sundays, weather permitting) that sailors were allotted for grooming on the old wooden sailing ships. They would mend and darn their own clothes, but shave each other or trim beards (no mirrors!) and unplait, comb out, and replait back-of-neck braids (impossible for the 'owner'). The upper ranks encouraged this behaviour, not that they were all that concerned about hygiene, but because it favoured the cohesion of the crew, the esprit de corps.
Here this striking detail (three words!) serves, as you say, to emphasize the cohesion of the Cossack group and the exclusion of the narrator.
That is super interesting….
Like the shattered spectacles on the steps of Odessa in Eisenstein's film.
Thanks for commenting on the grooming thing. The story begins describing Savitsky in a “plastic”, material manner, very exterior. But the image of the Cossacks grooming each other seems primal and stripped down, humans being like their closest relation, the bonobo. Which in nature, if an animal species wants to exist, they need to adapt to their environment.
You are spot on, in my reading! There is a kind of almost mammalian solidarity, intimacy, love, and equality between these men that is heart-warming. But on the other hand……
This image struck me similarly and reminded me of a scene from Moby Dick (if my memory serves) in which the men are working together to process the whale blubber into oil, squeezing the clumps to help liquify it. It implied a kind of intimacy that I think allowing someone else to shave you does as well.
Savitsky, the guy in charge, the one with the power, can't both lay out the trouble (we don't cotton to glasses around here) and at the same time offer the way out of that trouble. This would force him to have to cop to ruthlessness, his own & the situation's, and thus undermine his power. The solution (a little rape, though a little murder would also work) is beneath him to acknowledge though in his heart he surely knows. And thus the quartermaster earns his place in the story by being a sort of dispenser of the essential information, what Savitsky knows but won't say, putting me in mind of the "Radar" character from "Mash", who knew more than he told but told when necessary (and who also happened to wear glasses & was a bit of an outsider).
Hard to tell from Babel's journal, which George suggested we might take a look at & which seem to me to read more like Babel's notes to himself, if he ever actually encountered a character like the quartermaster (though he must have in some form), but my sense is that Babel understood the value of a "sidekick", even one who appears only briefly, but who is necessary to carry the water, as it were, in a story. Think of all the second bananas and the important roles they played. Where would Lucy be without Ethel, or Holmes without Watson, or Don Quixote without Sancho Panza? What about Falstaff? I think Babel put the quartermaster in because he understood the need of the pairing and of the need to show contrast, Savistsky's bombast & puffery v. the QM, flustered & red-faced.
I agree. The Quartermaster is boasting in a way. He knows the ropes. He’s been there. He knows what is what. He has respect. Except he doesn’t. I can’t imagine him respected by the Cossacks or surviving them any better than a man with glasses. In the end he cuts and runs.
Plus he advises rape but it is doubtful he has ever proven himself in this way to the Cossacks. So he is all about a secondary weaker character as a contrast.
The quartermaster is kind of a trope: the honest peasant
And yes - Sancho Panza
Wow! Radar was such an interesting character (was Gary Burghoff the only actor who was in the movie and the TV series?). Great insight!
Yes. Gary Burghoff (sp) was only actor from movie to be cast in the TV show.
Reading that, I realize I was picturing the quartermaster as a "Radar" type character.
Funny. And I like the earlier "Igor" mention too.
Radar and Igor, together at last. With a little Gollum thrown in, to top it off.
yeah. the perfect mash up
Except Radar had ethics. He'd never in a million years suggest rape as a self-protective choice.
I agree, Leslie. But Radar's world of comedy, war notwithstanding, wasn't anything akin to the QM's grim world in "Goose". Same function, those two, but vastly different settings.
Definitely not. He was way to sweet for such a thought. Remember his penchant fo Grape Nehi
Ha! It was grape, wasn't it. I kept thinking it was orange, though I can't imagine they tasted all that different.
Because, being a modern American fictional character, he’d never be in a situation where rape WAS a self protective choice. Lucky him….
Let’s abandon the moral cookie cutter shall we? And just find out what Babel is trying to say to us……
What do we think might be going on in Ukrainian villages right now, with all those crazed and traumatised Russian boys who have already crossed a Rubicon by killing people who look and speak exactly like themselves…..
Plus, I am QUITE sure they have managed to loot all the rurally available stocks of vodka they can lay their hands on. Think about it….
But they are NOT intrinsically evil. They are just every mother’s son, sent far from home to commit horrendous acts by the order of one man. I Can only imagine what those boys are dreaming of tonight. And how they will function when they come home. If they do……
Rosanne I think you nailed it with Savitsky “can’t both lay out the trouble and at the same time offer the way out of that trouble.” In addition to your salient points, it would muddy the emotional valence of the pulse. Thank you!
Gosh. Thanks. You're welcome!
I’m in the “keep the quartermaster” camp because of what many of you already said (thank you, sorry if I missed something) plus:
-These paragraphs offer a kind of transitional space of time where we are ushered more fully into the reality of the military from the command to the ranks (an order is given, then carried out; everyone has an official (and unofficial) role to play; no one is never truly alone) and also to the very real pecking order (later on: “Lenin hits it straight away, like a hen pecking at a grain.”)
-I felt a huge difference between the “village street lay before us” vs “lay before me” because the “us” invokes a sense of the “us who are not Savitsky or the enemy.” It sets up that question of “who is us” that the story revolves around.
-It helps to have a brief moment where we kind of trust the narrator’s confidence when he says “I’ll get along.” We still don’t know if his response is justified or misguided or just naive. It heightens the anticipation of if we can believe him and if he will succeed.
-When the QM “jump[s] back in despair and [runs] into the first courtyard”—afraid of being associated too closely with the “glasses” in front of the Cossacks and/or afraid of what would happen to the narrator—it made me wonder what compromises he makes to get through his day every day. He seems like a mirror (perhaps lesser) of what the narrator later will become, straddling conflicting moral and social positions, dying inside.
On the Esthetic Delight Meter, those couple of paragraphs heightened my anticipation, hope, and then my dread, all of which I felt better set up the ending. Seems like the language chosen did double or triple duty beyond “setting the scene.”
Wow Susanna, what a five star delight of an insightful read you offer to us . . . in my case to munch on pre-lunch this Monday midday.
Would that Substack afforded me a simple means of 'Bookmarking' this fine comment, posted here. As it doesn't I'll just have to hope to find it when I come scrolling back . . .
Thanks for sharing Susanna.
Oh, thanks for sharing your kind words and good will, Rob. I’ve been enjoying all of the insightful discussion from such giving and gracious readers. And I hear what you’re saying about the comments. I’ve been cutting and pasting them into a separate doc for future reference! (But just for personal use, I hope that’s OK with everyone – no plans for a Babel in the Bardo (or should it be Babble?). lol)
I love your idea that when the QM comes right up to the narrator, and then jumps back in despair, it is if he is peering at himself in the mirror and doesn't like what he sees. Totally resonates with me and my reading of the story.
What a beautiful way to put it!!
You could be describing a stage direction, in say a Shakespeare play, in which a character who may be the Fool or one acting the fool is required to 'get right in the face' of the protagonist. The Fool using such shock tactics in King Lear to try to bring a form of 'tough love' comfort to his increasingly mad monarch is the example that comes to mind as I write. Although it is a much more fleeting encounter the QM's getting so unexpectedly in the face of the Narrator is more a shock than a mere surprise.
I like your reading of him jumping back to separate himself from the narrator, with whom he may feel some affinity - the quartermaster is, I think, appalled at the rapes - and perhaps hopes the narrator is too - but yet has to survive and can't be associated with the narrator if he's going to be the butt of the cossacks' cruelty or jokes.
Thanks for your insightful description of the quartermaster’s decency above. I wrote you a comment there. :)
I'm with Susanna. The quartermaster carries the narrator's trunk--which reminds us of the army hierarchy and gives us a sense of someone even more vulnerable than the narrator, even more frightened of the Cossacks. And I'm feeling somewhat cross with George, for suggesting these cuts. Stories may call for some efficiency, but their atmosphere is part of the reader (or listener's) pleasure and desire to keep listening.
Love your defense of a story’s atmosphere over efficiency and for the reader’s pleasure and delight in it. What a gift GS has given us to provoke us into articulating and defending that very pleasure and delight. :)
A gracious response, Susanna.
Hi, Jane, I have to tell you that I’ve been thinking about this comment you gave about atmosphere a lot. It’s so interesting how so many writing approaches talk about “setting.” I’ve always felt there’s something wrong with that word but couldn’t consciously articulate why. Its connotation (at least for me) feels so much like describing and describing and describing and never enough describing, almost like you have to give the reader to see everything like it is in a film, overly focused on the physical description of a place. But your word “atmosphere” cut through a lot of resistance I had for the word “setting” that I didn’t even know I had (especially in the context of George’s questions about description – thank you, George) and created a domino effect of realizations. In My First Goose, I’ve been thinking about how I couldn’t tell you exactly where the hut is in relation to either the first or second courtyard (it’s told differently in other translations). And we’re only given to know there’s “the village” and the “street lay before us.” But somehow I am still immersed and can find my way around. What I do feel is the people displaced out of their homes, the tension of soldiers taking their places, the smell of pork and loneliness, the languishing and dying sun, the war and violence in the air. I feel all those things because of the brush strokes Babel gives. But he doesn’t do endless describing and describing or positioning us in time and space. So many things Babel doesn’t include, but there is much more there because of it. I think I will forever call setting “atmosphere” from now on, and it will be helpful as a guide (along with George’s questions) to know what to cut and what to leave in. So I just wanted to thank you both for that!
Susanna you are more than welcome. I'm glad atmosphere is a good word for you to use rather than setting. Since, as story writers, we are making things up, I think we need to allow all kinds of winding variations and craziness while still making sense to at least some of our readers.
Agree with Rob, Suzanna. This is insightful and super interesting. Thank you!
On the very first page of Red Cavalry, Babel wrote: "The orange sun is rolling across the sky like a severed head." SOLD!
"Where, oh where, can I ever find another father like mine in all the world."
Another great line. That gives me chills. Thank you.
It’s almost Greek in its tragedy…
Such a beautiful brutal line. I am coming to love the way Babel incorporates nature with human nature.
Agree that efficiency is usually a virtue in storytelling. However, in this case the goal being achieved by repeating the information is not to underline the information itself, but rather to indicate the workings of the "society" of macho guys operating here; it's an authoritarian, domination society, where the big guy sets the rules and the little guys indicate they're part of the team by repeating what the big guy says. We've all seen a lot of this recently, so it's easy to recognize 🤓 Kinda like "The Emperor's New Clothes"; yeah, it's redundant to hear 100 people say how beautiful the Emperor's Clothes are. It's also exactly the point. And also serves a very important role in creating the creeping feeling of terror that if you don't fit it, you're in trouble.
While we're tossing around Hollywood terms like "logline", I'll just note that I think the Hollywood term for "pulse" would be something like "sequence". (Some would say "beat", but I don't think that quite captures the storytelling work a "pulse" has to do.) "Sequences" were championed by a guy named Frank Daniel, a Czech who had quite an interesting career. He was head of the Czech film school in Milos Forman's day, then went to AFI in Los Angeles for a while (where he was a mentor of David Lynch), then ultimately to USC at the end of his career. Briefly, while others talk about 3 acts, Daniel said it was easier to break a movie script into (usually) 8 sequences, each (running about 15 minutes) with its own "dramatic question" which is answered at the end of the sequence. In Daniel's analysis, the first act has 2 sequences, the second has 4, and the third has another 2. So in, for instance, "Bicycle Thieves" some of the sequences would have questions such as (going from memory here, be easy on me), "Will he get the job?" "Will he be able to get a bicycle?" "Will he find the stolen bicycle quickly?". Frank Daniel never wrote any books himself, but some of his disciples did, and they're worth looking into, in my opinion, if this appeals to you. I'll have to think about how the "sequences" would map out in this story, but the first one might be something like "Will the narrator think the boss is a hero or a goon?"
Chiming in to say that I have found sequences really intriguing and quite useful. Glad you brought this up!
I really liked "Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach" by Paul Joseph Gulino. Film Courage on YouTube has some interviews with this author if anyone wants to get a sense of the book's topics:
On keeping the audience engaged: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR407eeSix4
Longer interview with the author that goes into the book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqK4jb1l5vQ
Looking forward to reading David Howard. Thanks for the tip!
I agree - Gulino's book is really helpful to study sequences. A wide range of case studies (Fellini to Hitchcock to Toy Story) kind of like what we're doing here.
Yes, but is he really (the quartermaster) repeating the information (I think this is what you're referring to)? Or is he adding something new? To me, it's the latter, and it's not only the crux of this pulse/sequence, but the crux of the story. Love this info you've given us here from Frank Daniel. There's 50 ways to leave your lover and a ga-zillion ways to analyze movies/plays, I guess. Anyway, if you feel like posting the books you like, that would be great!
Yeah I agree the quartermaster is adding something new, but I think I'd argue that what's "new" is the key indication that this story is not about narrator vs. division commander. It's about narrator vs. oppressive atmosphere of militarism and toxic masculinity. So in that sense what the quartermaster does is let us know it's a whole world the narrator has to contend with/find his place in, not just an Ahab figure.
okay, well since that's two requests I'd better reply! On "sequences" and dramatic structure I recommend looking up some screenwriting (can I mention that evil word in here? 🤣 ) books by a guy named David Howard. Howard was a student of Daniel's, eventually a teacher at USC (still is, possibly?) and kind of Plato to Daniel's Socrates. I.E.. Howard did all the book writing. Incidentally, the origin of the sequence thing comes from a much earlier book about playwrighting by a guy named Edward Mabley. In fact, Howard gives Mabley co-credit on his first book, as I recall, though Mabley's book was from the 1970s (?) or so... (as you can see, I'm trying to save face by referring to the theater and not just the blasted movies 🤣 )
Thanks, Paul. I'll check out Howard. Mabley sounds familiar. No need to worry about saving face, not here. Thanks again.
Thanks for the reply. Far be it from me to be recommending books in a book group! But if you're interested in Frank Daniel's approach, I suggest just googling "Frank Daniel sequences". You will find quite a few bloggers explaining his approach. For whatever reason, "sequences" never took Hollywood by storm, though I myself find it the most useful approach to figuring out what's working and what's not in a script/story, if that's your bag. 😎
I see what you mean about sequences. Interesting way of considering the BT, too. Can you post the book titles of the Daniel's followers you'd recommend? Would be interested to know more about that approach to storytelling. Many thanks!
I'm reminded of an article I read years ago about a preference for minimalism in "good" writing. I believe Cormac McCarthy was one of the references. And the author saying that one thing minimal writing rarely accomplished was humour. That humour (in this author's opinion) requires a bit of playful verbosity.
I'm not saying Babel is funny (although maybe this is!). But there's something
in this extended cut that gives a bit more play.
I would say Babel is funny/satirical. But I also tend to agree that minimalism does not do humor well. Or perhaps it does it differently. When I think Cormac McArthy, I don't think funny but perhaps I have missed something.
Isn't brevity the sole of wit? As in: Take my wife...please.
That's funny^^......and minimal-
I think, upon occasion, he IS quite funny..,,
The whole play of over-written descriptions is the bitterest of satires. And edges on funny if it were not so frightening. I heard a Babel story on NPR the other day. A reporter was interviewing a Ukrainian farmer who had stayed on the farm with his two dogs while his family fled to Kyiv. A group of Russian soldiers breaks in and he gives up his shotgun, his food, shoes, etc. They tell him they are going to shoot his dogs. Then they find two passports and decide he's spy. They tie him to a kitchen stool and tell him they are going to execute him. They leave the kitchen, closing the door (I'm not too sure of the details here) and then there's a barrage of gunfire. The stool is shot to pieces under him, the kitchen is smashed to matchsticks, he's shot in the arm, he hears them trashing the house. Long afterward he frees his arms and finds his dogs are still alive, too, and they set off for the city.
I don't think it's just "to let the narrator know that he’s in trouble but there may be a way out."
The thing about the quartermaster is he's likable and seems reasonable and apologetic, so those words in his mouth, about the "nicest little lady" come across as him feeling bad about this awful behavior. Though also feeling it is inevitable. And also not being in a position to do anything about it. He could even be angry about it-- but being of lower rank can't afford to make that known.
And what about that bit that was missed out accidentally (?) in the last of George's full versions of this "pulse" above:
"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."
Came right up to me, then jumped back in despair.
Why does the quartermaster do that? He wanted to say something, maybe, then had a failure of courage.
Did the quartermaster want to exhort the narrator not to rape girls? or a particular girl? Then felt it was useless, pointless?
It seems unlikely he is about to recommend a particularly nice little lady for the narrator to attack first. He just doesn't come across that way.
Is he hoping against hope that he could dissuade the narrator from such behavior, but realizes it's pointless? He seems in this view so wretched. So stuck - between Savitsky the outrageously exaggerated officer and the more mundane reality of the cossacks and their hardness.
And then the wry way he says, "and no nonsense, on account of his having suffered on the fields of learning..."
And then he reddens and walks away. Why redden? -- Afraid of revealing himself by this somewhat erudite wit - on the fields of learning - as a covert intellectual himself? A schoolteacher say, in hiding?
It is a transitional passage, but there is a lot in it too. I get carried away with these interpretations before I reread and maybe settle somewhere else and maybe I am now. But I'm seeing the quartermaster as a decent man among degraded ones, wanting to beseech the narrator not to harm an innocent girl - or "nicest little lady" - maybe he has known one - maybe in his own family - Maybe he's haunted, pulls back on the verge of blowing his cover. And realizing there is no other way for the narrator to survive maybe.
But the narrator does find another way - he symbolically rapes the goose - thus demonstrating a callous outlook that the cossacks find acceptable. I mean it's bad for the goose but at least he does kill the bird first before running his rapier through her.
Thanks for this insightful portrait of the quartermaster’s decency. It does make one wonder if the QM is himself somewhat learned (schoolteacher in hiding) because he recognizes the narrator as a man of learning where Savitsky doesn’t at first. In which case the mirrored relationship between the QM and narrator intensifies the ending. The more I think about it, I’m realizing the QM does the opposite of what the narrator does. The QM jumps back/runs away from the Cossacks in obvious fear/guilt/shame, but the narrator joins the Cossacks on their terms. Different responses to a similar dilemma, which gives an added tension to what the narrator chooses later on. I also really appreciate that you brought up the women that the QM may already know, even in his family.... I think that word “despair” has so much in it. All the “nicest little (ruined) ladies” kind of haunt the story like ghosts.
Thanks -and yes, I agree he has some education too, as I think I wrote in a reply to a comment elsewhere. I’m away from my computer but what the QM says about fighting in the fields of learning - it doesn’t sound like something a peasant would say. There’s a lot of room for different readings hough I think. The jumping back part. Not sure I have a sure feeling about it. Good discussion !
I agree -- I think we're supposed to keep pondering it, coming around to different readings, continuing great discussions! I keep circling...
Really enjoyable, thought provoking post Jackie.
Does he symbolically rape the goose or does he kill it to assuage his, literal, hunger? I can pose the question but, without remaining on any kind of fence have to say, being undecided, I remain open to both possibilities. Isaac Babel seems to report what happens but leaves it to readers should they wish for more in the way of explanation or interpretation or meaning or whatever to do their own work for themselves.
Genius?
Thanks, Rob - lot of lively discussion about this section - great ideas.
I think the narrator is also hungry - one can follow his mind working on different levels. I agree - I imagine that Babel leaves things open for readers to percolate over time - changing from one interpretation to another and back again and also hovering somewhere in between and both at the same time too, maybe! I'm so glad to have this wonderful introduction to his work.
Pulse 2 gives the narrator (and me) a chance to breathe, walk, take in the village in the company of another character who steps back from the violence of the opening and the violence to come with the Cossacks. The humanity of the brief encounter between the narrator and the quartermaster is made real by the "we" of their walk. The same observations about the village and so on wouldn't have an equivalent power if only coming from the narrator on a solo walk.
Thanks for describing this so beautifully. I felt like the moments the narrator has with the quartermaster were the most real and honest, human, until the very end but couldn't quite articulate it.
Sometimes I feel that the emphasis on escalation doesn't allow for these opportunities to breathe which in some ways prepare us for the hard work ahead.
Re physical description: the description of the setting sun in this pulse for me ends up conversing with the moon on p 54, which “hung low over the yard like a cheap earring.” There was a surreal loveliness, or maybe an odd naturalness, to that dying pumpkin-sun, which ends up sacrificed along with the goose. Callousness, or guilt, or disgust has corroded our narrator’s view of the heavens.
I was interested in GS comment that if description is only setting the scene, it is under-performing. In addition to it being very visual and adding atmosphere, for me it also reminds us the narrator starts the story as an intellectual, using similes, noticing beauty in a somewhat poetic fashion (those garlands too).
Super duper interesting. Two things re: editing Babel's version. Thinking about this story as if it were food I feel like the quartermaster ingredient balances out the flavor. Bc we've got a strong ingredient in the Savitsky guy, same goes for the Cossacks, and the suicidal old lady is weak but a different kind of opposition--what the narrator doesn't want to be. So if it were just those three, Savitsky, Cossacks, suicidal old lady, it would feel like a bunch of very strong ingredients that needed something mellow and light, like lettuce in a sandwich. Second: I think there's a reluctance to edit an original for fear of cheapening it or making it worse and I think it's that same fear that gets in the way of writers who write stuff where nothing happens. So this exercise is very good practice, imo. Like just do it to do it, he's not going to come back from the dead and take offense. He was probably editing to his very last breath.
P.S. I've been reading the red cavalry stories in the complete works of babel, translated by peter constantine, and his daughter's preface in the book is very moving. The stories themselves have a ton of I don't get (I've been going too fast probably plus lack context) but I get the gist and it's making me brave. There's this one description, I can't remember in which story, about the sun looking like a beheaded head rolling around and it was just so much fun. This dude was fearless and I love him for it.
What strikes me is that the narrator doesn’t seem all that impressed by the whole situation. In pulse 1 we only hear him give affirmative answers: I can. I’ll get along. He seems very confident. His only emotions are admiration and envy of Savitsky. So when you leave out the quartermaster, all you have is this starstruck, overconfident revolutionary who walks blindly into dangers arms. We need a third party to remind us of the stakes.
Yes
In the original, the Quartermaster imbues it with this sort of creepy weirdness--like an Igor kind of character, whispering over his shoulder about how it is or what might happen while he leads the unknowing main character along. Without the Quartermaster, the main character is walking on his own, not being led, and the scene is almost idyllic, one of a fading afternoon. With the Quartermaster, the Cossacks shaving themselves (such a strange but simple image!) is latent with threat, but without him, the Cossacks are merely grooming themselves. I think it escalates the tension.
The image of the Cossacks shaving one another immediately gives me the sense of how close-knit this group of men are.
Yes & yikes. Nothing quite like a bunch of guys holding razors to each other's throats without a flinch to get the idea that, yep, they're all with their peeps.
Absolutely. And there’s this sort of physical humanity in their relations. Beautiful or lethal?
Maybe both.
Absolutely! And in total down time.
Yes! I think this is spot on. I like the tension between the idyllic and . . . everything else.