The three dimensions of Babel's Karl-Yankel

Isaac Babel's story Karl-Yankel is a sly story both political and personal though the latter doesn't become evident till the end. At first it seems like a story about life in an isolated Russian Jewish community much like say an I b singer story. Babel describes the village blacksmith - a very small demure and as he says easily frightened man - who fathered two huge strapping boys who take after their mother - big tough and devout. The daughter is small like the father and marries a tough guy and the relationship to everyone's surprise seems to be ok but as Babel notes who knows within any marriage who breaks the pots? So far so good and the the story takes its first shift of gears: they have a baby boy born while father is away on state business - collecting oil cakes or some such thing - and now it's clear that this story is taking place under soviet rule. The father sues the mother in law for having the baby boy circumcised and named Yankee - instead of father's choice Karl after Marx. We see that this Jewish tradition will seriously compromise his desire to rise in the party - a clash of cultural and political values that gets played out on broad comic fashion in the trial. Especially notable is the testimony of the moile- w Babel's gross description of his sucking the blood after the cutting- and the mother's testimony: what do you call the child? Sweetly-pie. Why do you call him sweetly-pie? I call every child sweetie-pie. And so on. And at the very end it opens to a new dimension as Babel the narrator looks at the nursing child and sees some possibility for happiness that he - an outsider in his home town - can never experience or hope to attain.