Di Grasso: A Tale of Odessa

                                                                                       -  Isaac Babel (1894-1939)

The speaker was fourteen and a ticket seller in a theatre. His boss, Nick Schwarz was a tricky customer. The speaker came under his mastership after he had lost his former job in an Italian opera that became a flop.

Sicilian tragedian Di Grasso along with his troupe was called to perform when another celebrity demanded a huge sum of money. Di Grasso arrived at the hotel in peasant carts crammed with children, cats, and caged Italian birds. Di Grasso was hopeless.

Hardly fifty tickets were sold in the first evening of their show. People were unwilling to buy tickets. That evening Di Grasso and his people stayed a Sicilian folk drama that carried a commonplace story. A rich girl loves a shepherd. But when a fashionable boy arrives from town, she is attracted to him and ready to deceive her former beloved.

Nick Schwarz commented in the intermission that the drama was worthless. In the second half of the drama, the heroine gave the shepherd back his ring. The shepherd took her to the painting of Holy Virgin and said she was needed to hear him. The town boy could get several other girls, but he needed only her. In the third act, Giovanni, the boy from the town was seen having his beard shaved in a village fair. The shepherd was standing in a corner gazing at him. When Giovanni saw him he was afraid. The shepherd, the role was played by Di Grasso himself, pounced upon the boy and sucked his blood through a wound he had made in his throat with his teeth. As Giovanni collapsed, the screen fell down. Later on, the local newspapers wrote applauding the show.

The tickets started selling at five times face value. All the business around the theatre flourished, so everybody was happy. But the narrator was the only person who was unhappy. He had taken his father’s watch without his permission and pawned to Nick Schwarz. Though he had repaid all the money he had taken, he had not got his watch back. The narrator had made plan to leave the place, but before that he wanted to say goodbye to Di Grasso.

Nick Schwarz had brought his wife at the show. When the show was finished, she was emotional and weeping. She was a bossy wife.

The narrator followed them sobbing. When the wife heard his sob, she told her husband go give him his watch back.

When he had got his watch back, the narrator for the first time realized how beautiful his surrounding things were.