Other Babel characters include Benya Krik or “the King,” who shakes down his enemies while displaying utter contempt for the police. Babel himself admired Jewish gangsters, and one of his literary characters, “Lyubka the Cossack,” was an intimidating woman smuggler. In the early twentieth century, iconic native son Isaac Babel memorialized the city’s Jewish ghetto, known as Moldavanka or the “Moldovan girl.” In his story “The Father,” Babel memorably described the so-called “kings of Moldavanka,” Jewish bandits riding atop carriages and frequenting local brothels. I have always had a romantic fixation on the Black Sea port of Odessa, home to swashbuckling thieves, miscreants and all manner of shady and colorful characters.
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