Daily puzzle

Put My First Goose back in order

Seven beats from our edition of My First Goose by Isaac Babel, shuffled. Drag them, or use the arrows, until the story runs straight. No account, no streak to lose.

  1. Joining the regiment The bespectacled narrator reports to a Cossack division, immediately marked as a soft intellectual outsider.
  2. The commander's mockery The division commander ridicules the newcomer's appearance and warns that bookish men are despised here.
  3. Cossack contempt The Cossacks shove the narrator aside, throw out his belongings, and treat him with open scorn.
  4. The choice to prove himself Hungry and humiliated, the narrator decides he must perform an act of toughness to earn a place.
  5. Killing the goose He grabs an old woman's goose, crushes it underfoot, and harshly demands she cook it for him.
  6. By the fire The Cossacks now respect him, share their meal, and listen as he reads Lenin's pronouncements aloud.
  7. A troubled heart Accepted at last, the narrator lies awake, his conscience darkened by the cruelty that bought his belonging.