ISAAC BABEL DRINKS TEA

ISAAC BABEL DRINKS TEA

[all details here are from I. Babel: Reminiscences of Contemporaries, M. 1972; in Russian]

The leitmotiv of tea runs through all of Babel’s life.

      From the reminiscences of V. Khodasevich, a woman who worked with Babel as an editor. Moscow, 1936-1937: She dropped by Babel’s apartment to go over some manuscripts:

“Babel suggested I sit down at the table, said that, before getting down to business, he wanted to treat me to tea. I sat, while Babel cried out to someone down below, ‘What’s up with the hot water!’ I heard steps below. Babel went down the staircase and returned with a tray containing a huge teapot still pouring out steam and another, also quite large, porcelain, for brewing the tea, a cup, a glass with holder, a spitting basin, a sugar bowl. 

After this began the businesslike, serious and lengthy ritual of brewing the tea and preparing it. I was thinking, Is this some kind of game, or is it all in earnest?

“I won’t describe in detail how the tea was brewed and how it was left to stand—a very complicated affair! The thing that struck me was the sheer volume of tea for each cup: three or four spoonsful heaped high. And you had to drink it almost burning your lips—otherwise the aroma would evaporate.

. . . .

“When the whole procedure was done, Babel remarked in utter seriousness, 'That’s the only sensible way to drink tea. Would you like to do it all again?' No, I did not want to; I dreamed only of getting our conversation on work matters done, as I was in a hurry to return to the editorial office.”

         From the reminiscences of L. Borovoj, who met Babel in the office of a friend, a journalist and official in cinema:

“Meanwhile, Marya Romanovna brought in tea and poured us each a glassful. Babel never even touched his lips to the glass. He picked it up, examined its color, and exclaimed, ‘I knew it. That’s not tea; it’s some squirrley mixture of something, but not tea.’”

After that Babel took it upon himself to prepare the tea. Coming back from the kitchen, he said, ‘The secret of brewing genuine tea is very simple: you need two teaspoons of tea for each cup and you have to let it stand properly. So I just put it on back there, and we have twenty minutes now to talk about literature. Tea loves to stand brewing all on its own, and in the presence of conversation on literature.'”

       From the reminiscences of Antonina Pirozhkova, Babel’s wife:

“In our home there was a tea cult. The ‘first guy’ ('первач') was Babel’s word for the first glass of brewed tea. He seldom gave the first guy to anyone but himself . . . . But if we had a very dear guest Babel might yield to him rights to the first glass, saying, ‘Take note, please; I’m giving you the first guy.’

. . . .

Babel once elaborated on the ritual:

‘Genuine tea drinking these days is hard to come by. They used to drink tea from samovars, and they never sat down at the table without a towel. That was for wiping the sweat away. At the end of the first samovar they wiped sweat off the brow, and when the second samovar was on the table they removed their shirts. They began by wiping the sweat off their necks and chests, and when the sweat came out on their abdomen, only then was a person considered to have really got into his tea drinking (напился чаю). They used to call it “drinking tea down to the beads on your gut.”

“Babel drank his tea with bits of Antonov apples; he also loved raisins in his tea.”

d

The secret police came for Babel in the middle of the night on May 15, 1939. They let his wife Pirozhkova ride with them in the car, all the way from Peredelkino, back to central Moscow and the Lubyanka Prison. Babel got out of the car at the main gate, said goodbye to her, and walked through the gate, never to be seen again.

Her mind was in a fog, and she could think of nothing better to do with the day than to go to work. She was a civil engineer, at that time supervising construction of the metro (subway) station Paveletskaja. She worked all day, one thought running through her mind: “I hope they let him have his tea in the morning; he just cannot function without his tea.”