Two Captains

desert islands. And Katya did stand a lot in front of mirrors.

The winter I started visiting the Tatarinovs Katya's latest fad was

explosions. Her fingers were always burnt black and she had a smell of

percussion cap and gunpowder about her, like Pyotr once had.

Potassium chlorate lay in the folds of the books she gave me. Then the

explosions stopped abruptly. Katya had settled down to read The

Century of Discovery.

This was an excellent book which gave the life-stories of Christopher

Columbus, Hernan Cortes and other famous seafarers and conquerors

65

of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Amerigo Vespucci, after whom

America is named, was pictured in front of a globe, with a pair of

compasses, which he held over an open book-a bearded, jolly-looking

man. Vasco Nunez de Balboa, armour-clad, with plumed helmet, was

knee-deep in the water. He looked to me like some Russian Vaska who

had turned up in the Pacific. I was keen on the book too. But Katya! She

was simply mad on it. She mooned about like one in a dream, only

awakening to impart the information that "Cortes, accompanied by the

good wishes of the Tiascalans, set out on his expedition and within a few

days reached the populous capital city of the Incas."

The cat, who before The Century of Discovery was called simply

Vasena, she renamed Ixtacihuatl - it appears that there is a mountain by

the name in Mexico. She tried Popocatepetl - the name of another

mountain-on Nina Kapitonovna, but it wouldn't work. The old lady

refused to answer to any name but "Grandma".

In short, if there was anything that Katya regretted at all seriously, it

was that she had not conquered Mexico and discovered Peru.

But there was more to this, as the future showed. I knew what she was

dreaming about. She wanted to become a ship's captain.

CHAPTER EIGHT

KORABLEV PROPOSES

Now what but good, one would think, could I expect from this

acquaintance? Yet in a little less than six months I was kicked out.

It was a Sunday and the Tatarinovs were expecting visitors. Katya was

drawing a picture of "the Spaniards' first encounter with the Indians"

from The Century of Discovery, and Nina Kapitonovna drafted me into

the kitchen. She was rather excited and kept listening and saying to me:

"Sh-sh, there goes the bell."

"It's out in the street, Nina Kapitonovna."

But she kept listening.

In the end, she went out into the dining-room and missed the bell

when it did ring. I opened the door. Korablev came in wearing a light

overcoat and a light-coloured hat. I had never seen him looking so

smart.

His voice shook slightly as he inquired whether Maria Vasilievna was

at home. I said she was. But he stood there for several more seconds

without taking his things off. Then he went in to Maria Vasilievna and I

saw Nina Kapitonovna tiptoeing back from the dining-room. Why the

tiptoes and that excited mysterious air?

From that moment on everything started to go wrong with us. Nina

Kapitonovna, who was peeling potatoes, found the knife slipping from

her fingers. She kept running out into the dining-room, as though to

fetch something, but returned empty-handed. At first she returned in

silence, making sundry mysterious signs with her hands, which could be

interpreted roughly as: "Goodness gracious, what's going to happen?"

66

Then she started muttering. After that she sighed and broke the news.

And amazing news it was! Korablev had come to propose to Maria

Vasilievna. I knew, of course, what "propose" meant. He wanted to

marry her and had come to ask whether or not she would have him.

Would she accept or would she not? If I had not been in the kitchen

Nina Kapitonovna would have debated this point with her pots and

pans. She could not keep silent.

"He says, I'll give my all, my whole life," she reported on her third or

fourth trip to the dining-room. "I'll live for you."

"Is that so?" I threw in.

"I'll live for you," Nina Kapitonovna solemnly repeated. "I see the life

you lead. It's unenviable, I can't bear to see it."

She started on the potatoes, but soon went out again and returned

with moist eyes.

"He's always yearned for a family, he says. I was a lonely man, and I

need nobody but you, he says. I've been sharing your grief for a long

time. Something like that."

The "something like that" was Nina Kapitonovna's own contribution.

Ten minutes later she went out again and came back looking puzzled.

"I'm tired of these people," she said blinking. "They don't let me get on

with my work. You know who I mean. Believe me, he's a terrible man."

She sighed and sat down.

"No, she won't marry him. She's heartbroken and he's getting on in

years."

For nothing better to say, I could only repeat: "Is that so?"

"Believe me, he's a terrible man," Nina Kapitonovna repeated

thoughtfully. "Maybe! Good Lord! Maybe!"

I sat as quiet as a mouse. The dinner was forgotten. White beads of

water rolled over the stove as the water in which the potatoes were

swimming kept boiling and boiling.

The old lady went out again and this time spent some fifteen minutes

in the dining-room. She came back frowning and threw up her hands.

"She's turned him down!" she announced. "Rejected him. My God!

Such a man!"

I don't think she quite knew herself whether to be glad or

disappointed that Maria Vasilievna had refused Korablev.

"It's a pity," I said.

She looked at me in astonishment.

"She could marry," I added. "She's still young."

"Stuff and nonsense!" Nina Kapitonovna began angrily. Then

suddenly becoming sedate and dignified, she sailed out of the kitchen

and met Korablev in the hall. He was very pale. Maria Vasilievna stood

in the doorway silently watching him as he put on his coat. Her eyes

showed that she had recently been crying.

"Poor man, poor man!" Nina Kapitonovna said as though to herself.

Korablev kissed her hand and she kissed him on the forehead, for

which she had to stand on tiptoe and he had to bend down.

"Ivan Pavlovich, you are my friend and our friend," Nina Kapitonovna

said gravely. "I want you to know that this house is like your own home.

You are Maria's best friend, too, I know. She knows it

too."

67

Korablev bowed in silence. I felt very sorry for him. I simply couldn't

understand why Maria Vasilievna had refused him. I thought

them a suitable pair.

The old lady must have been expecting Maria Vasilievna to call her in

and tell her all about it-how Korablev had proposed and how she had

refused him. But Maria Vasilievna did not call her. On the contrary, she

locked herself in her room and could be heard pacing the floor inside.

Katya finished her drawing of "the Spaniards' first encounter with the

Indians" and wanted to show it to her mother, but Maria Vasilievna said

from behind the closed door: "Later on, darling."

Somehow the place became dreary after Korablev had left and

drearier still when Nikolai Antonich came home and briskly announced

that there would be six for dinner, and not three as he had expected.

Willy-nilly, Nina Kapitonovna was obliged to set about it in earnest.

Even Katya was called in to help cut out little rounds of dough for the

meat pastries with a tumbler. She fell to work with a will, getting

flushed and covering herself with flour-nose, hair and all - but she soon

tired of it and decided to cut out the rounds with an old inkwell instead

of the tumbler, because it made star-shaped rounds.

"It's so much prettier. Grandma," she pleaded.

Then she heaped the stars together and announced that she was going

to bake a pie of her own. In short, she was not much of a help.

Six people to dinner! Who could they be? I looked out of the kitchen

and counted them coming in.

The first to arrive was the Director of Studies Ruzhichek, nicknamed

the Noble Thaddeus. I don't know where he got that nickname—

everybody knew only too well how noble he was! Next came the teacher

Likho, a stout, bald man with a peculiar elongated head. Then the

German-cum-French teacher, herself a German. Our Serafima arrived

with the watch on her breast, and last of all an unexpected guest in the

person of Vozhikov from the eighth form. In fact, we had here nearly all

the members of the School Council. This was rather odd, inviting

particularly the whole School Council to dinner.

I sat in the kitchen, listening to their conversation. The doors were

open. They started talking about Korablev. Would you believe it! It

appeared that he was sucking up to the Soviets. He was trying his

damnest "to carve out a career" for himself. He had dyed his moustache.

He had organised a school theatre only to "win popularity". He had been

married and had driven his wife into an early grave. At meetings, they

said, he shed "crocodile tears".

So far this had been conversation, until I heard the voice of Nikolai

Antonich and realised that it wasn't conversation but a conspiracy. They

wanted to kick Korablev out of the school.

Nikolai Antonich worked up to his subject from afar:

"Pedagogics has always envisaged art as an external factor in

education..."

Then he got round to Korablev and first of all "gave him his due for

his gifts". It appeared that "the cause of his late wife's death" was

nothing to do with us. All that concerned us was "the measure and

extent of his influence upon the children". "What worries us is the

harmful trend which Ivan Pavlovich is giving to the school, and that is

the only reason why we should act as our pedagogic duty prompts us to

act—do our duty as loyal Soviet teachers."

68

Nina Kapitonovna raised a chatter of empty plates and I could not

catch exactly what his pedagogic duty prompted Nikolai Antonich to do.

But when Nina Kapitonovna served the second dish I gathered from the

general conversation what it was they were after.

First, at the next meeting of the School Council Korablev was to be

asked to "confine himself to the teaching of geography as prescribed by

the syllabus". Second, his activities were to be assessed as "a

vulgarisation of the idea of manual education". Third, the school theatre

was to be closed down. Fourth and fifth, something else. Korablev, of

course, would resent it and would leave. As the Noble Thaddeus said:

"Good riddance."

Yes, this was a mean plan and I was surprised that Nina Kapitonovna

said nothing. But I soon realised what it was. Round about the middle of

the second course she started lamenting the fact that Maria Vasilievna

had rejected Korablev. She thought of nothing else, heard nothing else.

She kept muttering and shrugging her shoulders, and once even said out

aloud: "Well, well! Who asks Mother these days?"

She must have felt sore about Maria Vasilievna not having sought her

advice before refusing Korablev.

The guests had gone, but I still couldn't make up my mind what to do.

What beastly luck that Korablev had come to propose on that day of

all days. He would have done better to stay at home. I would then have

been able to tell Maria Vasilievna all I had heard. But now it was

awkward, even impossible, because she had not come out for dinner;

she had locked herself in and would not admit anyone. Katya had sat

down to her homework. Nina Kapitonovna suddenly announced that

she was dog tired and sleepy. She lay down and fell asleep at once. I

sighed and took my leave.

CHAPTER NINE

THE REJECTED SUITOR

Lame Japhet, the duty man at the Children's Home, had looked in

twice to see if we were asleep or larking about.

The night lamp had been switched on in the corridor. Valya Zhukov's

eyelids quivered in his sleep like a dog's. Maybe he was dreaming about

dogs? Romashka was snoring. I was the only one awake, thinking all the

time. Each thought more daring than the other. I saw myself getting up

at the meeting of the school and denouncing Nikolai Antonich, revealing

to everyone the mean plan to drive Korablev out of the school. Or I saw

myself writing a letter to Korablev. While composing it I fell asleep.

Strangely enough, when I woke up (while the rest were still asleep) I

continued the letter from the very point I had left off. I started to

recollect the letters which Aunt Dasha had once read to me. At last I

made up my mind.

69

It was still quite early—just gone seven o'clock and it was as dark as

night outside. But that did not deter me, of course. Lame Japhet tried to

stop me, but I dodged past him and ran out by the back way.

Korablev lived in Vorotnikovsky Street, in a one-storey wooden annex

with shutters and a veranda like a summer bungalow. For some reason I

was sure that he was not asleep. Obviously, a rejected suitor who had

received his rebuff from Maria Vasilievna only the day before, could not

be asleep. As a matter of fact, he wasn't. A light was burning in the room

and he was standing at the window staring out into the yard-staring so

hard that one would think there was God knows what out there. So hard

and absorbed that he did not notice me, though I was standing right

under the window and making signs to him with my hands.

"Ivan Pavlovich!"

But Ivan Pavlovich frowned, shook his head and moved away.

"Ivan Pavlovich, open the door, it's me!"

He returned a few minutes later with his coat thrown over his

shoulders and came out on to the veranda.

"It's me, Grigoriev," I repeated, afraid that he might have forgotten

me. He looked at me in an odd sort of way. "I've come to tell you

something. They want to shut down the theatre and have you-"

I don't think I said "kicked out". But maybe I did, because he suddenly

came to himself.

"Come in," he said tersely.

His place was always clean and tidy, with books on the shelves, a

white counterpane on the bed and a cover on the pillow. Everything

shipshape. The only thing that wasn't was the host himself, it seems. At

one moment he screwed up his eyes, the next he opened them wide, as

though things in front of him were getting blurred. I'm sure he had not

been to bed that night. I had never seen him looking so tired.

"Ah, Sanya," he said haltingly. "What is it?" "I was going to write you a

letter, Ivan Pavlovich," I said earnestly. "It's all because of the school

theatre, really. They say you've driven your wife to an early grave."

"Hold on!" he laughed. "Who says I've driven my wife to her grave?"

"All of 'em. 'The cause of his late wife's death is nothing to do with us.

Vulgarisation of the idea—that's what worries us.' " "I don't understand

a thing," Korablev said gravely. "Yes, vulgarisation," I repeated firmly. I

had been memorising these words since the previous day:

"vulgarisation", "popularity", "loyal duty". I had said "vulgarisation",

now there remained "popularity" and "loyal duty".

"At the meetings he sheds crocodile tears," I plunged on. "He started

that theatre stunt in order to win popularity. Yes, 'popularity'. He sucks

up to the Soviets. We must do our loyal duty."

I may have got it a bit mixed up, but it was easier for me to rattle off

by heart what I had heard the night before than to tell it in my own

words. Anyway, Korablev understood me. Understood me perfectly well.

His eyes immediately lost their former clouded look and a tinge of

colour mounted to his cheeks and he paced up and down the room.

"This is great fun," he muttered, though there was no fun in it for him

at all. "And, of course, the boys and girls don't want to see the theatre

closed down?" "Sure they don't."

"Is it because of the theatre that you've come?" I was silent. Perhaps it

was because of the theatre. Or perhaps because the school would be a

70

dull place without Korablev. Or perhaps because I didn't like the mean

way they were plotting to get rid of him.

"What fools!" Korablev said suddenly. "What abysmally dull fools!"

He squeezed my hand, and started pacing the room again with a

thoughtful air. During his pacing he went out, probably into the kitchen,

fetched a boiling kettle, brewed tea and got glasses down from a small

cupboard on the wall.

"I was thinking of leaving, but now I've decided to stay," he said.

"We'll fight. What d'you say, Sanya? And now let's have some tea."

I don't know whether they ever held that School Council meeting at

which Korablev was to pay heavily for "vulgarising the idea of manual

education". Obviously it wasn't held, because he had not been made to

pay for it. Every morning old Whiskers combed his moustache in front

of the mirror as though nothing had happened and went in to take his

lessons.

Within a few days the theatre announced production of Ostrovsky's

play Every Man Has a Fool in His Sleeve, with Grisha Faber in the

leading role.

Two dark, curly-haired boys from the local branch of the Komsomol

came down to organise a Komsomol group in our school. Valya asked

from the floor whether Children's Home boys could enrol in the group,

and they said, yes, they could, provided they had reached the age of

fourteen. I did not know myself how old I was. I figured that I was

getting on for thirteen. To be on the safe side I said I was fourteen. All

the same they wouldn't believe me. It may have been because I was

small for my age that time.

71

The only teachers who attended this meeting were Korablev and

Nikolai Antonich. Korablev made a rather impressive speech, first

congratulating us briefly on the formation of the Group, then criticising

us at length for being poor pupils and hooligans. Nikolai Antonich also

made a speech. It was a fine speech, in which he greeted the Branch

representatives, whom he described as the young generation, and ended

up by reciting a poem of Nekrasov's.

After the meeting I met him in the corridor and said: "Good morning,

Nikolai Antonich!" For some reason he did not answer me.

In short, all was in order, and I don't know what made me suddenly

change my mind about going to the Tatarinovs and decide to meet Katya

in the street the next day and give her the modelling-knife and clay she

had asked for. Within half an hour, however, I had changed my mind

again.

The old lady answered the door, but kept it on the chain, when she

saw me. She seemed to be debating with herself whether to let me in or

not. Then she quickly opened the door, whispered to me:

"Go into the kitchen," and gave me a gentle push in the back.

While I hesitated, rather surprised, Nikolai Antonich came into the

hall, and seeing me, he switched on the light.

72

"A-ah!" he said in a suppressed voice. "You're here."

He gripped my shoulder roughly.

"You ungrateful sneak, scoundrel, spy! Get out of this house and stay

out! Do you hear?"

His lips drew back in a snarl and I caught the glint of a gold tooth in

his mouth. This was the last thing I saw in the home of the Tatarinovs.

With one hand Nikolai Antonich opened the door and with the other he

threw me out onto the landing like a pup.

CHAPTER TEN

I GO AWAY

There was nobody in the Children's Home, nobody in the school.

Everyone had gone out—it was a Sunday. Only Romashka wandered

about the empty rooms, counting something to himself-probably his

future wealth-and the cook in the kitchen sang as he prepared dinner. I

settled myself in a warm cosy corner by the stove and fell to thinking.

Yes, this was Korablev's doing. I had tried to help him, and this was

how he had repaid me. He had gone to Nikolai Antonich and given me

away.

They had been right-Nikolai Antonich, and the German-cum-French

teacher and even Likho, who had said that Korablev shed "crocodile

tears" at meetings. He was a cad. To think that I had been sorry for him

because Maria Vasilievna had rejected him!

Romashka was sitting by the window, counting.

"Goodbye, Romashka," I said to him. "I'm going away."

"Where to?"

"Turkestan," I said, though a minute before that I had not had a

thought about Turkestan.

"You're kidding!"

I slipped off the pillow-case and stuffed all my belongings into it—a

shirt, a spare pair of trousers, and the black tube which Doctor Ivan

Ivanovich had left with me long ago. I smashed all my toads and hares

and flung them into the rubbish-bin. The figure of the girl with the

ringlets on her forehead who looked a little like Katya went in there too.

Romashka watched me with interest. He was still counting in a

whisper, but with nothing like his previous fervour.

"If for one ruble forty thousand, then for a hundred rubles..."

Goodbye school! I would never study any more. What for? I had been

taught to read, write and count. What more did I need? Good enough

for me. And nobody would miss me when I was gone. Maybe Valya

would remember me for a moment, and then forget.

"Then for a hundred rubles four hundred," Romashka whispered.

"Four hundred thousand per cent on a hundred rubles."

But I would be coming back. And Korablev, who would be kicked out

of the school, would come to me moaning and begging me to forgive

him. No fear!

Then suddenly I recollected how he had stood by the window when I

called on him, staring into the yard, very sad and a little tipsy. It

73

couldn't be him, surely? Why should he have betrayed me? On the

contrary, he had probably given no sign, pretending not to know

anything about that secret council. I was wrong to suspect him. It wasn't

him at all. Then who could it be?

"Ah, it's Valya!" I suddenly said to myself. "When I got back from the

Tatarinovs I had told him everything. It was Valya!"

But Valya, I remember, had started snoring in the middle of my story.

Besides, Valya would never do a thing like that.

Romashka, maybe? I looked at him. Pale, with red ears, he sat on the

window-sill, multiplying away like mad. I fancied that he was watching

me furtively like a bird, with one round flat eye. But he knew nothing,

how could he?

Now that I had firmly decided that it was not Korablev, there was no

sense in going away. But my head was aching and my ears were ringing,

and somehow I felt that I had to go, I couldn't stay, not after Г had told

Romashka I was going.

With a sigh, I picked up my bundle, nodded to Romashka and went

out. I must have been running a temperature, because on going out into

the street I was surprised to find it so cold. But then, while still in the

entrance, I had taken off my jacket and put my overcoat on over my

shirt. I had decided to flog the jacket—I figured that it would fetch

round about fifteen million.

For the same reason—my temperature and headache—I have no clear

memory of what I did at the Sukharevka black market, though I spent

practically the whole day there. All I remember was standing in front of

a stall from which came a smell of fried onions, holding up my jacket

and saying in a weak voice: "Anybody want a jacket?"

I remember being surprised at having such a weak voice. I remember

noticing in the crowd a huge man wearing two shipskin coats. He was

wearing one with his arms in the sleeves, while the other—the one he

was selling-was thrown over his shoulders. I found it very odd that

wherever I went, hawking my merchandise, I kept running into this

man. He stood motionless, huge, bearded, clad in two coats, gloomily

naming his price without looking at the customers, who turned back the

skirts and fingered the collar.

I stood about, trying to warm myself, and noticed that though I no

longer felt cold, my fingers were blue. I was very thirsty, and several

times I decided-no more: if I don't sell the thing in half an hour, I'll go

to the teashop and swap it for a glass of hot tea. But the next moment I

had a sort of hunch that a buyer would turn up in a minute, and so I

decided to stick it for another half hour.

I remember it was a sort of consolation to see that the tall man had

not been able to sell his coat either.

I felt like eating a little snow, but the snow at Sukharevka was very

dirty and the boulevard was a long way off. In the end I did go to the

boulevard and ate some snow, which, strange to say, seemed warm to

me. I think I was sick, or maybe I wasn't. All I knew was that I was

sitting in the snow and somebody was holding me up by the shoulders

because I had gone limp. At last the support was removed and I lay

down and stretched my legs out luxuriously. Somebody was saying

something over me, it sounded like: "He's had a fit. He's an epileptic."

Then they tried to take my pillow-slip bundle and I heard them coaxing

me: "Don't be silly, we're putting it under your head!", but I clung to it

74

and wouldn't let go. The man in the two coats passed by slowly, then

suddenly threw one of the coats over me. But that was already delirium

and I understood that perfectly well. They were still tugging at the

pillow-slip. I heard a woman's voice saying: "He won't let go of his

bundle." Then a man's: "Never mind, lay him down with his bundle."

And again: "Looks like the Spanish 'flu."

Then the world went dark.

I was at death's door, and twice they screened me off from the other

patients in the ward. Cyanosis is always a sign of approaching death,

and I had it so bad that all the doctors except one, gave me up as a bad

job and only exclaimed every morning with surprise: "What, still alive?"

All this I learned when I came round.

Be that as it may, I did not die. On the contrary, I got better.

One day I opened my eyes and was about to jump out of bed, thinking

I was in the Children's Home. Someone's hand arrested me. Somebody's

face, half-forgotten yet so familiar, drew close to mine. Believe it or not,

it was doctor Ivan Ivanovich.

"Doctor," I said to him, and what with joy and weakness I started

crying. "Doctor, ear!"

He looked at me closely, probably thinking that I was still delirious.

"Hen, saddle, box, snow, drink, Abraham," I said, feeling the tears

pouring right down into my mouth. "It's me, Doctor. I'm Sanya. Don't

you remember, that village, Doctor? We hid you. You taught me."

He looked at me closely again, then blew out his cheeks and let the air

out noisily.

"Oho!" he said, and laughed. "Do I remember! Where's your sister?

Fancy that! All you could say then was 'ear' and that sounded like a

bark. So you've learnt to speak, eh? And moved to Moscow too? Took it

into your head to die?"

I wanted to tell him that I wasn't thinking of dying at all, just the

opposite, when he suddenly put his hand over my mouth, whipped out a

handkerchief with the other and wiped my face and nose.

"Lie still, old chap," he said. "You mustn't talk yet. Who knows what

you'll be up to next—you've been dying so many times. One word too

many and you may pop off."

CHAPTER ELEVEN

A SERIOUS TALK

If you think that, having come round, I was on the road to recovery,

you are mistaken. Hardly had I pulled through the Spanish 'flu than I

went down with meningitis. And again it was Ivan Ivanovich who

refused to acknowledge that my game was up.

He sat for hours at my bedside, studying the strange movements

which I made with my eyes and hands. In the end I came to again, and

though I lay for a long time with my eyes rolled up to the sky, I was no

longer in.

"No longer in danger of dying," as Ivan Ivanovich put it, "but in

danger of remaining an idiot for the rest of your life."

75

I was lucky. I did not remain an idiot, and after my illness I even felt

somehow more sensible than I was before. It was a fact, though the

illness had nothing to do with it.

Be that as it may, I spent all of six months in hospital. During that

time Ivan Ivanovich and I saw each other almost every other day. We

talked together about old times. It appears that he had been in exile. In

1914, for being a member of the Bolshevik Party, he had been sentenced

to penal servitude and then to exile for life. I don't know where he

served his sentence, but his place of exile was somewhere far away, by

the Barents Sea.

"I escaped from there," he said laughing, "and came running straight

to your village and nearly froze to death on the way."

That's when I learnt why he had stayed awake nights in our cottage.

He had left the black tube—the stethoscope-with me and my sister as a

keepsake. One word leading to another, I told him the story of when and

why I had run away from the Children's Home.

He heard me out attentively, and for some reason kept looking

straight in my mouth.

"Yes, wonderful," he said thoughtfully. "A rare case indeed."

I thought he meant my running away from the Home being a rare case

and was about to tell him it wasn't such a rare thing as he thought, when

he said again:

"Not deaf and dumb, but dumb without being deaf. Stummheit ohne

Taubheir. To think that he couldn't say 'Mummy'! And now, a regular

orator!"

And he began telling the other doctors about me.

I was a bit disappointed that the doctor had not said a word about the

affair that had made me leave the Home, and if anything, had seemed to

let it drift past his ears. But I was mistaken, for one fine day the door of

our ward opened and the nurse said: "A visitor for Grigoriev."

And in came Korablev.

"Hullo, Sanya!"

"Hullo, Ivan Pavlovich!"

The whole ward stared at us with curiosity.

Perhaps that was why he started by only talking about my illness. But

when all had switched their attention back to their own affairs, he began

to scold me. And a good piece of his mind did he give me! He told me,

word for word, exactly what I had thought about him and said it was my

duty to go to him and tell him: "Ivan Pavlovich, you're a cad" if I

thought he was one. But I had not done this, because I was a typical

individualist. He relented a bit when, completely crushed,. I asked:

"Ivan Pavlovich, what's an idividualist?"

In short, he kept going at me until visiting time was over. In taking his

leave, however, he shook my hand warmly and said he would come

again.

"When?"

"In a day or two. I'm going to have a serious talk with you."

The next visiting day Valya Zhukov came to see me and for two

blessed hours talked about his hedgehog. On leaving he reminded

himself that Korablev sent me his regards and said he would call on me

one of these days.

I twigged at once that this was going to be the serious conversation.

Very interesting! Going to give me some more of his mind, I thought.

76

The talk started with Korablev asking me what I wanted to be.

"I don't know," I said. "An artist, perhaps."

His eyebrows went up and he said:

"No good."

Truth to tell, I had never thought of what I wanted to be. In my heart

of hearts I wanted to be somebody like Vasco Nufiez de Balboa. But Ivan

Pavlovich's "no good" had been so positive that it put my back up.

"Why not?"

"For many reasons," Korablev said firmly. "For one thing because you

haven't enough character."

I was dumbfounded. It had never occurred to me that I had no

character.

"Nothing of the sort," I said sulkily. "I have a strong character."

"No you haven't. How can a man have a character when he doesn't

know what he'll be doing the next hour. If you had any character you'd

be doing better at school. But you were studying poorly."

"Ivan Pavlovich," I cried in despair, "I only had one 'unsatisfactory'

mark."

"But you could study very well if you wanted to."

He paused, waiting for me to say something, but I was silent.

"You have more imagination than intelligence."

He paused again.

"And generally, it's high time you figured out what you're going to

make of your life and what you are in this world for. Now you say, 'I

want to be an artist.' But to become that, my dear boy, you'd have to

become quite a different person."

CHAPTER TWELVE

I START THINKING

It's all very well to say you've got to become quite a different person.

But how are you to do it? I didn't agree that I had done so badly in my

studies. Only one "unsatisfactory", and in arithmetic at that, and only

because one day I had cleaned my boots and Ruzhichek had called me

out and said:

"What do you polish your boots with, Grigoriev? Bad eggs in paraffin

oil?"

I had answered him back, and from that day on he had kept giving me

"unsatisfactory" marks. Nevertheless, I felt that Korablev was right and

that I had to become quite a different person. Did I really lack

character? I'd have to check that. I must make a resolution to do

something and do it. For a start I resolved to read A Hunter's Sketches,

which I had started to read the year before and given up because I found

it very dull.

Strange! I took the book again from the hospital library, and after

some five pages I found it duller than ever. More than anything else in

the world now I wished I had not made that resolution. But I had to

keep my word, even if I had given it to myself, whispered it under my

blanket.

77

I waded through A Hunter's Sketches and decided that Korablev was

wrong. I did have character.

I ought to test my mettle again. Every morning, say, do the daily

dozen and then take a sponge down with cold water straight from the

tap. Or get through the year in arithmetic with "excellent" marks. But all

this could wait until I went back to school. Meanwhile I must think and

think.

At last Ivan Ivanovich examined me for the last time and said I was fit

to be discharged from hospital. What a glorious day that was! We

parted, but he gave me his address and told me to call on him.

"Not later than the twentieth, mind," he said. "Or you may not find

me in, old chap."

I left the hospital, bundle in my hand, and after walking a block, sat

down on a curbstone—I was that weak. But how good I felt! What a big

place Moscow was! 1 had forgotten it. And how noisy the streets were! I

felt dizzy, but I knew that I wouldn't fall. I was well and would live. I had

recovered. Goodbye, hospital! Hail, school!

Truth to tell, I was a bit disappointed at the rather cool reception I was

given at the school. Romashka was the only one to ask me: "Better?"

And that in a tone of voice as though he was rather disappointed that I

had not died.

Valya was glad to see me, but he had other things on his mind. His

hedgehog had got lost and he suspected that the cook, on Nikolai

Antonich's orders, had thrown it into the dust-bin.

Big changes had taken place in the school during those six months.

For one thing it was half its size, some of the senior classes having been

transferred to other schools.

Secondly, it had been painted and whitewashed—the once dirty rooms

with their grimy windows and black ceilings were simply

unrecognisable.

Third, the Komsomol Group was now the talk of the school. The

tubby Varya was now its secretary. She must have been a good secretary,

because when I got back I found the little room of the Komsomol office

the most interesting place in the school. Though I wasn't a member of

the Komsomol yet, I was given an assignment by Varya only two days

after coming out of the hospital. I was to draw an aeroplane soaring

among the clouds and write over it the motto: "Young people, join the

S.F.A.F.!"(S.F.A.F.-Society of Friends of the Air Force.-translator)

My fingers were still stiff and not like my own, but I set to work with a

will

78

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE SILVER FIFTY-KOPECK PIECE

The day I intended to call on Doctor Ivan Ivanovich the school was

thrown into commotion first thing in the morning.

Valya's hedgehog had been found. It appears that he had somehow

got into the attic and landed inside an old cabbage cask, where he had

spent over a fortnight. He was in very bad shape and there was nothing

for it but to take him to the university, where a laboratory of some kind

bought hedgehogs. Valya wrapped him up in an old pair of trousers and

went off. He was back within an hour, looking sad, and sat down on his

bed.

"They'll cut him open," he said, fighting back his tears.

"What d'you mean?"

"What I said. They'll slit his belly open and rummage about inside.

Poor thing."

"Never mind," I said. "You'll buy another one. How much did you get

for him?"

Valya opened his fist. The hedgehog had been more dead than alive

and they had given him only twenty kopecks.

"I have thirty," I said. "Let's put them together and buy a spinning-

tackle." I said that about the spinning-tackle on purpose, to cheer him

up.

We put our money together and even exchanged our ten and fifteen-

kopeck coins for one new silver fifty-kopeck piece.

This hedgehog business of Valya's had detained me, and by the time I

started out for the doctor's place darkness had begun to fall. He lived a

good distance away, on Zubovsky Boulevard, and the trams were no

longer free of charge like they were in 1920.1 wangled it, though, took a

free ride.

Only one window had a light in it in the house on Zubovsky

Boulevard—a white house with columns, standing back in a garden—

and I decided that this must be the doctor's room. I was wrong. The

doctor, as it happened, lived on the first floor, whereas the light was

burning on the ground floor. Flat No. 8. Here it was. Under the number

was scrawled in chalk: "Pavlov lives here, not Levenson." Pavlov was my

doctor Ivan Ivanovich.

A woman with a baby in her arms answered the door and kept

"shushing" all the time while she asked me what I wanted. I told her.

Still shushing, she said the doctor was in, but she thought he was asleep.

"Knock at the door, though," she whispered. "He may be awake."

"I'm not asleep," the doctor called out from somewhere. "Who is it?"

"A boy."

"Let him in."

This was my first visit to the doctor and I was surprised to find his

room in such disorder. On the floor, amidst a jumble of packets of tea

and tobacco, lay leather gloves and curious but handsome fur high

boots. The whole room was cluttered with open suitcases and rucksacks.

79

And amidst this chaos, a tripod in his hand, stood Doctor Ivan

Ivanovich.

"Ah, Sanya," he said cheerfully. "You've come. Well, how goes it? Alive

and kicking?"

"Fit as a fiddle."

"Fine! Do you cough?"

"No."

"Good lad! I've written an article about you, old chap."

I thought he was joking.

"A rare case of dumbness," said the doctor. "You can read it yourself in

number seventeen of The Medical Journal. Patient G. That's you, old

chap. You've made a name for yourself. Only as a patient, though, so far.

The future is still yours."

He started to sing: "The future is still yours, still yours, still yours!"

then suddenly pounced on one of the largest suitcases, slammed the lid

down and sat down on it the better to shut it.

The doctor spoke quite a lot that day. I had never seen him so jolly.

Suddenly he decided that I had to be given something as a present and

gave me the leather gloves. Though they were old ones, they were still

very good and did up by means of a strap. I was on the point of refusing,

but he didn't give me a chance. He thrust them at me, saying: "Take

them and shut up."

I ought to have thanked him for the present, but instead I said: "Are you

going away?"

"Yes," the doctor said. "I'm going to the Far North, inside the Arctic

Circle. Heard of it?"

I vaguely recalled the letter of the navigating officer.

"Yes."

"I left my fiancйe there, old chap. Know what that is?"

"Yes."

"No you don't. At least you know, but don't understand."

I began to examine the various queer things he was taking with him:

fur trousers with triangular leather seats, metal boot soles with straps to

them, and so on. And the doctor kept talking all the time while he

packed. One suitcase refused to stay shut. He took it by the lid and

tipped it out onto the bed. A large photograph fell at my feet. It was a

yellowed photograph, pretty old, bent in a number of places. On the

back was written in a large round hand: "Ship's company of the

schooner St. Maria". I started to examine the photograph, and to my

surprise I found Katya's father on it. Yes, it was him all right. He was

sitting right in the middle of the crew, his arms folded across his chest,

exactly as in the portrait hanging in the Tatarinovs' dining-room. I

couldn't find the doctor on the photograph, though, and asked him why

this was.

"The reason is, old chap, that I didn't sail in the schooner St. Maria,"

the doctor said, puffing mightily as he strapped down the suitcase.

He took the photograph from me and looked round where to put it.

"Somebody left it as a keepsake."

I wanted to ask who that person was, whether it was Katya's father,

but he had already slipped the photograph into a book and put the book

in one of the rucksacks.

80

"Well, Sanya," he said, "I've got to be going. Write and tell me what

you're doing and how you're getting on. Don't forget, old chap, you're a

rare specimen!"

I wrote down his address and we said goodbye.

It had gone ten by the time I reached the Home and I was a little

afraid the doors would be locked. But they weren't. They were open and

the lights were on in all the rooms. What could it be?

I tore pell-mell into the dormitory. Empty! The beds were made— the

boys must have been preparing to turn in.

"Uncle Petya!" I yelled and saw the cook coming out of the kitchen in

a new suit, with his hat in his hand. "What's happened?"

"I'm invited to the meeting," he informed me in a mysterious whisper.

I heard no more, as I was running upstairs into the school.

The assembly hall was packed to overflowing and boys and girls

crowded round the doorway and in the corridor. But I got in all right. 1

sat down in the front row, not on a seat, but on the floor right in front of

the platform.

It was an important meeting chaired by Varya. Very red, she sat

among the platform party with a pencil in her hand, tossing back a lock

of hair which kept tumbling over her nose. Other boys and girls from the

Komsomol Group sat on either side of her, busily writing something

down. And over the heads of the platform party, facing the hall, hung

my poster. I caught my breath. It was my poster-an aeroplane soaring

among the clouds, and over it the words: "Young People, Join the

S.F.A.F.!" What my poster had to do with it I couldn't make out for quite

a time, because all the speakers to a man were talking about some

ultimatum or other. It wasn't until Korablev took the floor that the thing

became clear to me.

"Comrades!" he said quietly but distinctly. "The Soviet Government

has had an ultimatum presented to it. On the whole, you have taken the

proper measure of this document. We must give our own answer to that

ultimatum. We must set up at our school a local group of the Society of

Friends of the Air Force!"

Everyone clapped, and thereafter clapped after each phrase Korablev

uttered. He ended up by pointing to my poster and it made me feel

proud.

Then Nikolai Antonich took the floor, and he, too, made a very good

speech, and after that Varya announced that the Komsomol Group were

joining the S.F.A.F. in a body. Those who wished to sign on could do so

at her office tomorrow from ten to ten, meanwhile she proposed taking

a collection for Soviet aviation and sending the money in to Pravda.

I must have been very excited, because Valya, who was also sitting on

the floor a little way off, looked at me in surprise. I got out the silver

fifty-kopeck piece and showed it to him. He twigged. He wanted to ask

me something, probably something about the spinning-tackle, but

checked himself and just nodded.

I jumped up on to the platform and gave the coin to Varya.

"Ivan Pavlovich," I said to Korablev, who was standing in the corridor

smoking a cigarette in a long holder, "at what age do they take on

airmen?"

He looked at me gravely.

"I don't know, Sanya. I don't think they'd take you yet."

81

Not take me? I thought of the oath Pyotr and I had once sworn to each

other in Cathedral Gardens: "To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield".

I did not say it out loud, though. Korablev would not have understood

anyway.

__________

82

PART THREE

OLD LETTERS

CHAPTER ONE

FOUR YEARS

As in the old silent films, I see a big clock with the hand showing years

instead of hours. One-full circle and I see myself at lesson-time with

Korablev, sharing the same desk with Romashka. We have made a bet, a

bet that I will not cry out or pull my hand away if Romashka slashes me

across the fingers with a penknife. It is a test of willpower. According to

the "rules for developing willpower" I must learn "not to give vent to my

feelings". Every evening I repeat these rules over and over, and now at

last I have a chance of putting myself to the test.

The whole class is watching us. Nobody is listening to Korablev,

though today's lesson is an interesting one; it's a lesson about the

manners and customs of the Chukchi people. "Come on!" I say to

Romashka.

And that cold-blooded beast saws at my finger with his penknife. I do

not cry out, but I can't help pulling my hand away and I lose the bet.

A gasp and a whisper ran round the desks. Bleeding, I purposely give

a loud laugh to show that I don't feel the slightest pain, and suddenly

Korablev orders me out of the classroom. I leave the room with my hand

thrust in my pocket. "You needn't come back."

But I do come back. It is an interesting lesson and I listen to it outside

the door, sitting on the floor.

Rules for developing willpower! I had spent a whole year over them. I

had tried not only to "conceal my feelings", but "not to care for the

opinion of people I disdain". I don't remember which of these rules was

the harder-the first one, probably, because my face always gave me

away.

83

"Sleep as little as possible, for in sleep the will is absent - this was no

hard task either, not for a man like me. I leant to make my "plan for the

whole day first thing in the morning", and have been following this rule

all my life. As for the main rule, "remember the purpose of your

existence", I did not have to repeat that too often, as this purpose was

clear to me even in those days.

Another full circle: an early winter morning in 1925. I wake up before

anyone else, and I lie there thinking, not quite sure whether I am awake

or still asleep. I am thinking of the Tatarinovs. I had not been to see

them for two years. Nikolai Antonich still hates me. There isn't a single

sibilant in my name, yet he contrives to hiss it. Nina Kapitonovna still

loves me; the other day Korablev passed on to me her "regards and

greetings". I wonder how Maria Vasilievna is getting on? Still sitting on

the couch and smoking? And Katya?

I look at the clock. Getting on for seven. Time to get up. I had made a

vow to get up before the bell goes. I run on tiptoe to the washroom and

do my exercises in front of the open window. It is cold, snowflakes fly in

at the window, whirling, settling on my shoulders, melting. I wash down

to my waist, then start reading my book. That wonderful book of

Amundsen's about the South Pole, which I am reading for the fourth

time.

Yet another full circle, and I see myself in a small familiar room in

which, for three years, I have spent nearly all my evenings. I have been

given my first assignment by the Komsomol Group—to take charge of

the collective reading of the newspapers. The first time is rather

terrifying, because you have to answer questions too. I know "the

present situation", "the national policy" and "world problems". Best of

all, though, I know the world flying records for altitude, endurance and

duration. What if I am suddenly asked about price cuts? But everything

goes off smoothly.

Another full circle, and I am seventeen.

The whole school is assembled in the hall. Behind a long red table sit

the members of the court. On the left—counsel for the defence; on the

right-the public prosecutor. In the dock—the defendant.

"Defendant, what is your first name?"

"Eugene."

"Surname?"

"Onegin."

That was a memorable day.

CHAPTER TWO

THE TRIAL OF EUGENE ONEGIN*

* (Eugene Onegin-the title and principal character of Pushkin's poem -Tr.)

At first no one in the school took any interest in the idea. But when

one of the actresses of our school theatre suggested staging "The Trial of

Eugene Onegin" in costume, the whole school started talking about it.

84

Grisha Faber was invited to play the leading role. He was studying

now at the Theatrical School, but would sometimes come to see our first

nights for old times' sake. Our own actors were to play the part of

witnesses. No period costume could be found for the Larin's nurse and

so we had to let ourselves be persuaded that nurses in Pushkin's day

dressed much the same as they did in ours. The defence was entrusted

to Valya, our tutor Sutkin was to be the public prosecutor and I the

judge.

The offender, wearing a wig, a blue tail-coat, shoes with bows on them

and knee-length stockings, sat in the dock, coolly cleaning his nails with

a broken pencil. Every now and then he would pass a remote

supercilious eye over the public and the members of the court. That

must have been his idea of how Eugene Onegin would have borne

himself in similar circumstances.

Old Mrs Larina and her daughters and the nurse sat in the witnesses'

room (what used to be the teachers' room). They, on the contrary, were

all in a dither, especially the nurse, who was remarkably youthful and

pretty for her years. Counsel for the defence was excited too. He kept

nervously tapping a bulky file with documents. The material evidence-

two old pistols-lay on the table before me. At my back I could hear the

producers whispering hurriedly among themselves.

"Do you plead guilty?" I asked Grisha. "Guilty of what?"

"Of murder under guise of a duel," the producers prompted in a

whisper.

"Of murder under guise of a duel," I said, adding, after consulting the

charge-sheet, "of the poet Vladimir Lensky, aged eighteen."

"Never!" Grisha said haughtily. "One has to distinguish between a

duel and murder."

"In that case, we shall proceed to examine the witnesses," I said.

"Citizeness Larina, what evidence can you give in this affair?"

At rehearsal this had gone off smoothly, but here everyone felt that it

did not work. Everyone except Grisha, who was quite in his element. At

one moment he produced a comb and started to groom his side-burns,

the next he tried to stare at the members of the court out of

countenance, or tossed his head proudly with a defiant smile. When the

witness, old Mrs Larina, spoke about Onegin having been treated in

their home like one of the family, Grisha covered his eyes with one hand

and placed the other on his heart to show how he was suffering. He

acted wonderfully and I noticed that the female witnesses, especially

Tatiana and Olga, just couldn't keep their eyes off him. I don't blame

Tatiana-after all, she was in love with him in the story-but Olga, now,

she was completely out of character. The audience, too, had eyes only

for Grisha and no one paid the slightest attention to us.

I called the next witness—Tatiana. My, she talked nineteen to the dozen!

She was absolutely unlike Pushkin's Tatiana, and the only point of

resemblance, if there was one, were the curls falling to her shoulders

and the heel-length gown. To my question whether she considered

Onegin guilty of murder, she gave the evasive reply that Onegin was an

egoist.

I called on the defence counsel, and from then on everything was

topsy-turvy. For one thing, because the defence counsel talked sheer

drivel. Secondly, because I had caught sight of Katya.

85

Of course, in four years she had changed a lot. But her hair, worn in

plaits, had the same ringlets on the forehead. She screwed her eyes up in

the same old independent way and had the same purposeful nose-I

think I should have recognised her by that nose if she lived to a

hundred.

She was listening attentively to Valya. It was our biggest mistake,

giving the defence to Valya, whose only interest in life was zoology. He

started off with the very strange statement that duels were to be

observed also in the animal kingdom, but nobody considered them as

murder. Then he warmed to the subject of rodents and became so

carried away that you kept wondering how he would find his way back

to the defence of Eugene Onegin. Katya, though, was listening to him

with interest. I knew from former years that when she began to chew on

her plait, it meant she was interested. She was the only girl who took no

notice of Grisha.

Valya finished rather abruptly, and then came the prosecutor's turn.

He was as dull as ditch-water. He spent a whole blessed hour trying to

prove that although it was the nineteenth-century society of landowners

and bureaucrats who had killed Lensky, nevertheless Eugene Onegin

was fully responsible for this murder, "since all duels are murder,

premeditated murder".

To cut a long story short, the prosecutor held that Eugene Onegin

should be sentenced to ten years' imprisonment with confiscation of his

property.

Nobody had expected such a demand, and laughter broke out in the

hall. Grisha sprang to his feet proudly, I gave him permission to speak.

Actors are said to feel the mood of an audience. That is what Grisha

must have felt, because he led off, shouting at the top of his voice, in

order, as he afterwards explained, to "enthuse the audience". This he

failed to do. His speech had one fault—you couldn't tell whether he was

speaking for himself or for Onegin. Onegin would hardly have said that

"even today his hand would not falter in sending a bullet into Lensky's

heart".

Anyway, everyone drew a sigh of relief when he sat down, wiping his

brow and very pleased with himself.

"The court is retiring to confer."

"Hurry up, you fellows."

"What a bore."

"Dragging it out."

These comments were perfectly justified, and we decided, by tacit

consent, to rush through our verdict. To my astonishment, the majority

of the members of the court agreed with the public prosecutor. Ten

years with confiscation of property. It was clear that Eugene Onegin had

nothing to do with it. The sentence was intended for Grisha, who had

bored everyone to death, everyone except the witnesses Tatiana and

Olga. But I said that it was not fair: Grisha had acted well and without

him the whole show would have been a wash-out. We agreed on five

years.

"Stand!" the usher called. The members of the court filed in.

Everyone stood up. I read the sentence.

"It isn't right!" .

"Acquit him!"

"Shame!"

86

"All right, comrades," I said morosely. "I think it's wrong too. I

consider that Eugene Onegin should be acquitted, and Grisha should

have a vote of thanks. Who's in favour?"

All raised their hands, laughing.

"Adopted unanimously. The meeting is closed."

I was furious. I shouldn't have taken on this thing. Perhaps we should

have treated the whole trial as a joke. But how? I felt that everyone saw

how lacking in resource and wit I was.

It was in this bad humour that I went out into the cloakroom, and

whom should I meet but Katya. She had just got her coat and was

making her way to a clear space near the exit.

"Hullo!" she said with a laugh. "Hold my coat, will you. Some trial

that was!"

She spoke this as if we had parted only the day before.

"Hullo!" I answered sullenly.

She looked at me with interest.

"You've changed."

"Why?"

"Stuck-up. Well, get your coat and let's go!"

"Where?"

"Oh, where, where! To the comer, if that suits you. You're not very

polite."

I went downstairs with her without my coat, but she sent me back.

"It's cold and windy."

This is how I remember her when I caught up with her at the street

corner: she was wearing a grey fur cap with the earflaps down, and the

ringlets on her forehead had come covered with hoarfrost while I ran

back to the school. The wind whipped back the skirt of her coat and she

leaned slightly forward, holding it down with her hand. She was of

medium height, slim and, I believe, very pretty. I say "I believe" because

at that time I did not think about it. Certainly no girl at our school

would have dared to order me about like that:

"Get your coat and let's go!"

But then this was Katya, the kid whose hair I had pulled and nose I

had poked into the snow. Yes, it was Katya all right!

"I say, why do they all call you 'Captain'? Is it because you want to go

to nautical school?"

"I don't know yet," I said, though I had long ago made up my mind

that I would go not to a nautical school but to a flying school.

I saw her to the gate of the familiar house and she asked me in.

"It's awkward."

"Why? Your being on bad terms with Nikolai Antonich is no concern

of mine. Grandma was talking about you the other day too. Come in."

"No, it's awkward."

Katya shrugged coldly.

"Just as you please."

I caught up with her in the yard.

"How silly of you, Katya! I'm telling you it's awkward. Let's go

somewhere together, eh? What about the skating-rink?"

Katya looked at me, then suddenly cocked up her nose, the way she

did when a child.

87

"I'll see," she said importantly. "Phone me up tomorrow round about

four. Ouch, how cold it is! Even your teeth freeze."

CHAPTER THREE

AT THE SKATING-RINK

Back in those years when I was mad on Amundsen, a simple thought

had occurred to me. It was this: if Amundsen had used an aeroplane he

would have reached the South Pole in a fraction of the time. What a

hard time he had had, fighting his way day after day through the endless

snowy wilderness! For two months he had trudged behind his dogs, who

had ended by eating each other. But in an aeroplane he could have

reached the Pole in twenty-four hours. He would not have had friends

enough and acquaintances whose names he could use for all the

mountain peaks, glaciers and plateaux he would have discovered during

the flight.

Every day I copied out long passages from accounts of polar

expeditions. I cut out from the newspapers paragraphs concerning the

first flights to the North and pasted them into an old ledger. On the first

page of this ledger was written: "From (Forward) is the name of his

ship. 'Forward' he says, and forward he strives. Nansen about

Amundsen." This was my motto too. Mentally, in an aeroplane, I

followed Scott, and Shackleton, and Robert Peary. Along all their routes.

And since I had an aeroplane at my disposal, I had to study its design.

Following point 3 of my Rules: "Wilful will do't", I read The Theory of

Aircraft Construction. Ugh, what agony it was! If there was anything I

did not understand, I just learnt it off by heart to be on the safe side.

Every day I took my imaginary aeroplane to pieces. I studied the

engine and airscrew. I fitted it with the most up-to-date instruments. I

knew it like the back of my own hand. The only thing I didn't know

about it was how to fly it. And that was just what I wanted to learn.

I kept my resolution a secret, even from Korablev. At school they

considered that I had too many irons in the fire as it was and I did not

want them to say of my interest in aviation: "The latest fad!" This was no

fad.

Then suddenly I revealed my secret. To whom? To Katya.

That day we had arranged to go to the skating-rink first thing in the

morning, but something kept cropping up to prevent us. First Katya put

it off, then I. At last we started out, but our skating started off on the

wrong foot. For one thing, we had to wait half an hour in the frost,

because the rink was snowed up and closed while they were clearing it.

Secondly, Katya's heel broke off the first time round and we had to tie

the skate down with a strap, which I had brought with me just in case.

But my strap kept coming undone. We had to go back to the cloakroom

and ask the help of the dour, red-faced mechanic who was grinding

skates there. At last, all was in order. It had started snowing again and

we skated for a long time hand in hand, in big half-circles, now to the

right, now to the left. This figure is called "curve eight".

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Then we sat down right in front of the bandstand, and Katya suddenly

brought her flushed face with its dancing black eyes close to mine. I

thought she wanted to say something in my ear and said loudly: "Eh?"

She laughed.

"Nothing. It's hot."

"Katya," I said, "shall I tell you something? You won't tell anybody,

will you?"

"Not a soul."

"I'm going to flying school."

She blinked, then stared hard at me.

"You've made up your mind?"

"Uhu."

"Positively?"

I nodded.

The band suddenly struck up and I didn't catch what she said as she

shook the snow from her jacket and frock.

"I don't hear you!"

She grasped my hand and we skated down to the other side of the

rink, to the children's play area. It was dark and quiet there, and all

snowed up. The toboggan slide had fir trees planted along the sides and

little fir trees grew around the area. We might have been in a wood,

somewhere out of town.

"Will they take you?"

"The school?"

"Yes."

It was a dreadful question. Every morning I did my daily dozen on

Anokhin's system and took a cold sponge down on Muller's. I felt my

muscles and thought: "What if they don't take me?" I had my eyes, ears

and heart examined. The school doctor said I was healthy. But there

were different kinds of health; how was he to know I wanted to enter a

flying school? What if I had bad nerves? Or something else wrong with

me? My height! My height, damn it! During the last year I had grown

only by three-quarters of an inch.

"They'll take me," I said confidently.

Katya regarded me with what looked like respect.

CHAPTER FOUR

CHANGES

I never talked with Katya about her domestic affairs. I only asked her

how Maria Vasilievna was getting on and she answered: "Thanks, she's

all right."

"And Nina Kapitonovna?"

"Thanks, she's all right."

Maybe it was all right, but I didn't think so. Katya's spirits dropped

when she had to go home. Obviously, things had gone wrong at home.

Shortly afterwards I met Maria Vasilievna and she confirmed me in this

belief.

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We met at the theatre at a performance of Princess Turandot. Katya

had managed to get three tickets, the third being for Nina Kapitonovna.

But Nina Kapitonovna, for some reason, could not go, and so I took the

ticket instead.

We arrived at the theatre from different places and Katya was very

nearly late. She came running in after the ticket-collector had closed the

doors.

"Where's Mum?"

Her mother was in her seat. She called to us as we made our way to

our seats, stepping on somebody's feet in the darkness.

There had been a lot of talk at school about Princess Turandot' and

we had even tried to stage it. So, during the first act, I had no time to

look at Maria Vasilievna. I only noticed that she was just as beautiful, if

not more so. She wore her hair differently, exposing the whole of her

high white forehead. She sat erect and had eyes for nothing but the

stage.

In the interval, however, I had a good look at her and was upset.

She had gone thinner and looked older. Her eyes were enormous and

altogether sombre. It occurred to me that anyone seeing her for the first

time might well be startled by that gloomy look.

We talked about Princess Turandot and Katya declared that she did

not like it very much. I did not know whether I liked it or not, so I

agreed with Katya. Maria Vasilievna thought it was wonderful.

"You and Katya are too young, you don't understand."

She asked me about Korablev, how he was getting on, and I thought a

tinge of colour came into her face when I said: "He's quite all right."

As a matter of fact he was feeling none too good. He had not

forgotten, of course, that she had refused him.

She may have been a bit sorry for this now. Otherwise she wouldn't be

asking about him in such detail. She was even interested to know what

forms he was teaching and how he got on with the pupils.

I answered in monosyllables and in the end she got cross with me.

"Faugh, Sanya, I can't get a word out of you! 'Yes', 'no'. Have you

swallowed your tongue?" she said with annoyance.

Then, going off at a tangent, she began to talk about Nikolai Antonich.

Very odd. She said that she considered him a fine man. I said nothing.

The interval was over and we went in for the second act. During the

next interval she started talking about Nikolai Antonich again. I noticed

that Katya frowned. Her lips stirred as if she was about to say

something, but she checked herself.

We walked round the foyer, Maria Vasilievna talking all the time

about Nikolai Antonich. It was unbearable. It was also astonishing,

because I had not forgotten what her former attitude to him had been.

Nothing of the sort! The man was kindness and nobility itself. All his

life he had helped his cousin (it was the first time I had heard Maria

Vasilievna refer to her late husband as Ivan) even when he himself was

having a bad time. He had given his whole fortune to fit out his last

hapless expedition.

"Nikolai Antonich believed in him," she said earnestly.

All this I had heard from Nikolai Antonich himself, almost in the

same phrases. Maria Vasilievna never used to repeat his words before.

There was something behind this. For all the eagerness and earnest-ness

with which she spoke I sensed that she was trying to persuade herself

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that Nikolai Antonich really was a remarkable person and that her late

husband owed everything to him.

This was on my mind all through the third act. I decided that I would

ask Katya about her father point blank. The portrait of the naval officer

with the broad brow, the set jaw and light dancing eyes suddenly rose

before me. What was this expedition from which he had never returned?

After the show we lingered in the auditorium until the cloakroom

crowds had thinned out.

"I say, Sanya, why don't you ever drop in?" Maria Vasilievna said.

I mumbled something.

"I'm sure Nikolai Antonich has long forgotten that silly affair," she

went on. "If you like, I'll talk to him about it."

The last thing I wanted was for her to get permission from Nikolai

Antonich for me to call on them. I was on the point of saying, "Thanks,

I'd rather you didn't," when Katya interposed, saying that it was nothing

whatever to do with Nikolai Antonich, as I would be coming to see her

and not him.

"Oh, no!" Maria Vasilievna said, startled. "Why only you? He'll be

coming to see me, too, and Mother."

CHAPTER FIVE

KATYA'S FATHER

Now that expedition. What kind of man was Katya's father? All I knew

was that he had been a naval officer and was dead. But was he? Katya

never spoke of him as dead. Except for Nikolai Antonich, who

constantly referred to him as "my late cousin", the Tatarinovs did not

talk about him very often. His portraits hung in all the rooms, but they

seldom spoke about him.

In the end I got tired of speculating, all the more as one could simply

ask Katya where her father was and whether he was alive or dead. That's

what I did.

And this is what she told me.

She was only three, but she clearly remembered the day her father

went away. He was a tall man in naval blues and had big hands. Early in

the morning, while she was still asleep, he had come into her room and

bent over her cot. He patted her head and said something. It sounded

like: "Look, Maria, how pale she is. Promise me she'll be out in the fresh

air as much as possible." And Katya had opened her eyes just a wee bit

and seen her mother's tear-stained face. But she gave no sign she was

awake-it was such fun pretending to be asleep. Afterwards they were

sitting in a big brightly lit hall at a long table on which stood white little

hillocks. These were table-napkins. Katya was so fascinated by these

table-napkins that she did not notice that her mother had left her and in

her place now sat Grandma, who kept sighing and saying: "My

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goodness!" And Mother, in a strange unfamiliar dress with puffed

sleeves, sat next to Father and winked to Katya from afar.

It was very jolly at table, there were lots of people, all laughing and

talking together loudly. Then Father got up, a glass of wine in his hand,

and everyone fell silent. Katya did not understand what he was saying,

but she remembered everyone clapping and cheering when he had

finished, and again Grandma muttered "My goodness!" and sighed.

Then everyone said goodbye to Father and to some other sailors, and at

parting he had tossed Katya high up in the air with his kind, big hands.

"Well, Maria darling," he had said to Mother. And they had kissed

each other on both cheeks.

This had been a farewell dinner and send-off of Captain Tatarinov at

the Ensk railway station. He had come to Ensk in May 1912 to say

goodbye to his family, and in the middle of June he had set sail from St.

Petersburg in the schooner St. Maria bound for Vladivostok.

At first everything went on as before, except that something quite new

had appeared in life—letters from Daddy. "There will soon be a letter

from Daddy." And a letter there would be. Sometimes it took a week or

two coming, but it always came. And then came the last letter, sent from

Yugorsky Shar in the Arctic. It really was the last, but Mother was not

particularly worried; she even said that this was as it should be: the St.

Maria was sailing in places where there was no post, nothing but ice

and snow.

It was as it should be. Daddy himself had written that there would be

no more letters. Still, it was very sad, and Mother became more and

more silent and sad every day.

"A letter from Daddy" was a splendid thing. Grandma, for instance,

always baked a pie when a letter came from Daddy. And now, instead of

that splendid thing which cheered everyone up, there appeared in life

that long and dreary phrase: "It is as it should be," or "There can't be

anything yet."

These words were repeated every day, especially in the evenings,

when Katya went to bed and Mother and Grandma kept talking and

talking. And Katya listened. She had long been wanting to say:

"Maybe the wolves have eaten him up," but she knew that would make

Mother angry, so she didn't.

Father was "wintering". Here in town summer had come long since,

while he was still "wintering". This was very odd, but Katya asked no

questions. She had heard Grandma one day say to a neighbour: "We

keep saying he's wintering, but God knows whether he's alive or not."

Then Mother wrote a petition to "His Most Gracious Majesty". Katya

remembered that petition very well—she was a big girl by now. The wife

of Captain Tatarinov petitioned that an auxiliary expedition be fitted out

to rescue her unfortunate husband. She pointed out that the main

reason for the voyage "was undoubtedly national pride and our

country's honour". She hoped that "His Most Excellent Majesty" would

not leave without support a brave explorer, always ready to give his life

for the sake of the "nation's glory".

Katya thought of "His Most Gracious Majesty" as some sort of

religious procession led by a bishop in a crimson hat. It turned out to be

simply the Tsar. For a long time the Tsar did not answer and Grandma

used to scold him every evening. At last a letter came from his

chancellery. Very politely, the chancellery advised Mother to apply to

the Minister of Marine. But it wasn't worthwhile applying to him. The

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matter had already been reported to him and he had said: "It's a pity

Captain Tatarinov has not returned. I should have had him prosecuted

for negligence in the handling of government property."

Then Nikolai Antonich had come to Ensk and new words had

appeared in the house: "No hope whatever." He had said this to

Grandma in a whisper. But everyone got to know about it somehow—

Grandma's relations, the Bubenchikovs, and Katya's friends. Everyone

except Mother.

No hope whatever. He would never come back. Never say something

funny, never argue with Grandma about it being "good for you to drink

a glass of vodka before dinner and if it didn't do you good, it did not

harm either, and since it did no harm it was nice". Never again would he

make fun of Mother for taking so long to dress when they went to the

theatre. No one would hear him sing in the mornings as he dressed:

"What is our life? A game!"

No hope whatever! He had remained somewhere far away, in the Far

North, amid the snow and ice, and no one from his expedition had come

back.

Nikolai Antonich said Father himself was to blame. The expedition

had been fitted out excellently. There had been five tons of flour alone,

over a ton and a half of Australian tinned meat, and twenty hams; more

than a hundredweight of Skorikov's beaf-tea cubes, and biscuits,

macaroni and coffee galore. Half the mess room had been partitioned

off and biscuit stowed away in it. They had even taken asparagus—

eighty pounds of it. Jam and nuts. And all this bought with Nikolai

Antonich's money. Eighty splendid huskies, so that in case of an

emergency they could return home by dog-teams.

In short, if Daddy had lost his life it was undoubtedly his own fault.

One could imagine him, for instance, being in a hurry where he should

have bided his time. According to Nikolai Antonich, he had always done

things in a hurry. However that may be, he had remained out there in

the Far North and nobody knew whether he was alive or dead, because

none of the crew of thirty had come back.

But in their own home he was still alive and had remained so for a

long time. Who knows but that the door might suddenly open and he

would walk in! Just as he had been that last day at the Ensk railway

station. In his blue uniform, and stiff collar open at the throat. Cheerful,

with big hands.

A good many things in the house were still associated with him.

Mother smoked, and everyone knew she had started to smoke when he

was lost. Grandma chased Katya out of the house-and that was him

again, for he had given orders that Katya was to have plenty of fresh air.

The learned books with the queer titles in the narrow glass-fronted

bookcase, which were lent to nobody, were his books. Then they had

moved to Moscow, to Nikolai Antonich's flat, and everything was

changed. No one now hoped that the door would suddenly open and he

would come in. For this was a strange house, in which he had never

been.

93

CHAPTER SIX

MORE CHANGES

Maybe I would not have gone to the Tatarinovs had not Katya

promised to show me the Captain's books and maps. I looked up the

route and found it to be that famous Northeast Passage for which men

had been searching for three hundred years. Finally, the Swedish

explorer Nordenskiold navigated it in 1878. It was no easy job, no

doubt, because it was a full quarter of a century before another explorer,

Vilkitsky, repeated the journey, only in the opposite direction. In short,

all this was so interesting that I decided to go.

Nothing had changed in the Tatarinovs' flat, except that there were

noticeably fewer things about. Among others, the Levitan, which I had

liked so much, had gone-that picture of a straight wide garden path and

pine trees lit up by the sun. I asked Katya what had happened to it.

"Given away," was Katya's curt reply.

I said nothing.

"Presented to Nikolai Antonich," she added with sudden venom. "He

adores Levitan."

It looked as if other things besides the Levitan had gone to Nikolai

Antonich, because the dining-room had an empty sort of look. The

ship's compass, though, stood in its old place with the needle still

pointing North.

Nobody was at home, neither Maria Vasilievna nor the old lady.

Afterwards the old lady came in. I heard her taking her things off in

the hall and complaining to Katya that everything had got so dear again-

cabbage was sixteen kopecks, veal thirty kopecks, a prayer for the dead

forty kopecks, eggs one ruble twenty kopecks.

I laughed and went out into the hall.

"What about lemons, Nina Kapitonovna?"

She looked round puzzled.

"Didn't the boys pinch a lemon?"

"Sanya!" exclaimed Nina Kapitonovna, throwing up her hands.

She dragged me to the window and looked me over from all sides. The

inspection displeased her.

"Too short," she said with chagrin. "You don't grow."

She looked quite old, stooped and thin. The familiar green velvet coat

hung loosely on her shoulders. But she still had the same brisk,

preoccupied air, which now was quite cheerful. She was overjoyed to see

me, much more so than I had expected.

Katya and I spent a long time looking through the Captain's books and

charts. There was Nansen's Farthest North and Sailing Directions for

the Kara Sea and others. There were not many books as books go, but

each one was interesting. I was dying to ask for one to read, but of

course I understood very well that this was not the thing to do. I was

therefore surprised when Katya suddenly said:

"Would you like to borrow some?"

"May I?"

"You may," Katya said without looking at me.

94

I did not ponder much over the reason why this trust was shown me

and set about selecting the books I wanted to read. I would have taken

the lot if I could, but that was impossible, so I selected five of them.

Among them, by the way, was a booklet by the Captain himself entitled:

Causes of the Failure of the Greely Expedition.

I had timed my visit to the Tatarinovs so as not to run into Nikolai

Antonich there. At that hour he was always at a meeting of the Teachers'

Council. But the meeting must have been put off, because he came in.

Katya and I were so busy chatting that we did not hear the doorbell ring

and only became aware of him when footsteps sounded in the next

room, followed by a dignified cough. Katya frowned and slammed the

door shut.

In almost the same instant it was opened again and Nikolai Antonich

appeared in the doorway.

"I've asked you a thousand times, Katya, not to slam the door," he

said. "It's time you got out of these habits..."

He saw me at once, of course, but he did not say anything, just

narrowed his eyes slightly and nodded. I nodded back.

"We live in human society," he went on blandly. "And one of the

motive forces of this society is consideration for others. You know

perfectly well, Katya, that I can't stand doors being banged. One can

only presume that you are doing this on purpose. But I don't want to

think that, no, I don't..."

And so on and so forth.

I realised at once that all this waffle was just meant to tease Katya. He

had never dared to talk to her like that before, I remember.

He went away at last, but we no longer had felt like looking through

the Captain's books. Besides, all the time Nikolai Antonich had been

talking, Katya had stood screening the table on which the books lay. He

had not noticed anything. But I knew what it was all about-she did not

want him to know she was letting me take those books.

In short, a damp was thrown over our spirits and I began to take my

leave. I came home with a heavy feeling. I was sorry for them all— for

Maria Vasilievna, for the old lady, for Katya. I didn't like the changes in

the Tatarinovs' home at all.

CHAPTER SEVEN

MARGINAL NOTES

It was my last year at school, and really I should have been applying

myself to my studies instead of going to skating-rinks and paying visits.

I was doing well in some subjects (mathematics and geography, for

instance) and not so well in others—literature, for example.

Literature in our school was taught by Likho, a very stupid man,

whom the whole school called "Old Moke". He always went about in a

tall Kuban cap, and we used to draw that cap on the blackboard with

donkey's ears sticking out of it. Likho did not like me for a number of

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reasons. In the first place, one day, while dictating something, he said

"carnaval" instead of "carnival". I corrected him and we argued about it,

and I suggested sending an inquiry to the Academy of Sciences. He

resented this.

Secondly, most of the pupils wrote their compositions from the books

and articles—they would read a piece of criticism and copy it out. This

was not my way. I wrote my essay first, then read the critics. And this

was what Likho did not like! He wrote over my essays:

"Trying to be original. Poor!" In short, I was very much afraid I would

get bad marks for literature at the end of the year.

For our final, school-leaving essay, Likho offered us a number of

subjects, the most interesting of which I thought to be "The Peasantry in

Post-Revolution Literature". I went to work on it in earnest, but soon

cooled off—possibly because of the books Katya had lent me. After these

books, my own essay seemed as dull as ditch-water to me.

To say that these books were interesting is to say nothing. They were

books which had belonged to Katya's father, an Arctic sea-captain lost

amid the snow and ice, like Franklin, Andree and others.

I never read anything so slowly in all my life. Nearly every page had

markings on it, some passages were underlined and there were question

marks and exclamation marks in the margins. The Captain either "quite

agreed" or "absolutely disagreed". He argued with Nansen—to my

astonishment. He reproached him for having turned back when within

two hundred and fifty miles of the Pole. On the chart affixed to Nansen's

book, the extreme northern point of his drift was ringed with a red

pencil. Apparently, this occupied the Captain's mind very much, because

he returned to it again and again in the margins of other books. "The ice

itself will solve the problem," was written down the side of one page. I

turned the page and suddenly a small sheet of yellowed paper fell out of

the book. It had writing on it in the same hand. This is what it said:

"The human mind was so absorbed by this problem, that the solving

of it, despite the desolate graves which most of the explorers had found

there, had become a sheer national contest. Nearly all civilised countries

took part in this contest with the exception of Russia, although the

impulse towards discovery of the North Pole was very strong among the

Russians even in Lomonosov's time and is still strong today. Amundsen

is determined at all costs to win for Norway the honour of reaching the

Pole, but we will set out this year and prove to the world that Russians

too are capable of such a feat."

This must have been a fragment from some memorandum, for written

on the back of it was: "To the Head of the Hydrographical Board" with

the date "April 17th 1911".

So that was what Katya's father was after! He wanted, like Nansen, to

go as far North as possible with the drifting ice and then make the Pole

on dog-teams. By force of habit I figured out how much quicker it would

be by aeroplane.

What puzzled me was this: in the summer of 1912 the schooner St.

Maria had set sail for Vladivostok from St. Petersburg. Where did the

North Pole come in?

96

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE BALL

"The Peasantry in Post-Revolutionary Literature" was finished. Fed

up, I dashed it off in a single night. I had other debts, too—German, for

instance, which I hated. In short, at the end of the half-year Katya and I

had been to the skating-rink only once, and then we had not skated. The

ice was very rough, as hockey teams had been training on it since the

morning. We just drank tea at the buffet. It was our last meeting before

the holidays. After that came lessons and more lessons, reading and

more reading. I got up at six in the morning and sat over Aircraft

Construction.

And now the half-year was over. Eleven free days! The first thing I did

was to phone Katya and invite her to our school for the fancy-dress ball.

Katya arrived rather late, when I had all but run to the phone to ring

her up. She came half-frozen, red as a beetroot, and while still in the

cloakroom ran straight to the stove. I took care of her coat and galoshes.

"What a frost!" she said, laying her cheek to the warm stove. "Must be

two hundred degrees!"

She was wearing a blue velvet dress with a lace collar and had a big

blue bow in her hair.

It was amazing how that bow and the blue dress became her, and that

string of coral beads round her neck! She was robust, yet light and

slender. In short, hardly had we entered the hall, where the dancing had

already begun, than the school's best dancers dropped their partners

and made a beeline for her. For the first time in my life I regretted that I

did not dance. But there! I tried to look as though I did not care and

went into the performers' dressing-rooms. But they were getting ready

to come on, and the girls chased me out. I went back into the hall just as

the waltz was finishing. I hailed Katya. We sat down and began chatting.

"Who's that?" she suddenly asked me, horrified.

I looked.

"Where?"

"Over there, the one with the red hair."

It was only Romashka. He had smartened up and I thought he looked

quite presentable. But Katya was looking at him with distaste.

"Can't you see-he's just horrible," she said, "You're used to him, you

don't notice it. He's like Uriah Heep."

"Like who?"

"Uriah Heep."

I pretended I knew who Uriah Heep was, and said meaningfully: "Ah!"

But Katya was not one to be easily taken in.

"Ugh, you-fancy not having read Dickens. And he's supposed to be

intelligent."

"Who says that?"

"Everybody. I was talking to a girl from your school one day, and she

said: 'Grigoriev is a distinct individuality.'"

Just then the band struck up again and our P. T. instructor, whom

everyone called just Gosha, asked Katya to dance and I was left alone

again. This time the performers let me in and even found some work for

97

me to do. I had to make up one of the girls as a rabbi. Some job! I spent

over half an hour at it and when I got back into the hall Katya was still

dancing-this time with Valya.

Someone pinned a number on me—they were playing "Post". I sat

there like a convict with a number on my chest, feeling bored. Suddenly

I got two letters at once: "Stop pritending. Say frankly whom you like.

Reply to No. 140." It was written just like that— "pritending". The other

note was enigmatic: "Grigoriev is a distinct individuality, but he hasn't

read Dickens." I wagged a finger at Katya. She laughed, dropped Valya

and sat down next to me.

"It's great fun here," she said, "but terribly hot. Well, will you learn to

dance now?"

I said I would not, and we went into my classroom. It had been turned

into a sort of crushroom, with armchairs in the corners and electric

lamps shaded with red and blue paper. We sat down on my desk—the

farthest one in the right-hand row. I don't remember what we talked

about, I think it was about the talking films. Katya had her doubts about

them, but I cited proofs showing the comparative speeds of sound and

light.

She was all blue—we were sitting under a blue lamp—and perhaps

that was what made me so bold. I had long been wanting to kiss her,

from the moment she had come in frozen and flushed and laid her cheek

against the stove. But it had been impossible then. Now, when she was

all blue, it was possible. I stopped in the middle of a sentence, closed my

eyes and kissed her on the cheek.

Did she flare up!

"What does this mean?" she demanded.

I was silent. My heart was thumping and I was afraid that she was

going to say "I don't want to know you any more" or something like that.

"How disgusting!" she said with indignation.

"No, it isn't," I said, dismayed.

For a minute we said nothing, then Katya asked me to bring her some

water. When I returned with the water she read me a whole lecture. She

proved as plain as a pikestaff that I had no feelings for her, that "I only

imagined it", and that if it had been another girl in her place at the

moment I would have kissed her too.

"You're just trying to persuade yourself," she said with conviction,

"but actually it's nothing of the sort!"

She was ready to admit that I had not intended to insult her-I hadn't,

had I? Still I should not have acted that way precisely because I was only

deceiving myself, and there was no real feeling...

"No love," she added, and I felt, in that semi-darkness, that she

blushed.

By way of reply I took her hand and passed it over my face and eyes.

She did not withdraw it, and for several minutes we sat silent on my

desk in the dimly lit classroom. We sat in the classroom where I asked

questions and floundered, where I stood at the blackboard and proved

theorems-on my desk, in which lay Valya's crumpled cribs. It was so

strange. But so good! I can't tell you how good I felt at that moment!

Then I fancied there was somebody in the corner breathing hard. I

looked round and saw Romashka. I don't know what made him breathe

so hard, but he had a very ugly look on his face. Naturally, he saw at

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once that we had spotted him. He muttered something and came up

with a queasy smile.

"Why don't you introduce me, Grigoriev?"

I stood up. I must have looked anything but affable, because he

blinked in a scared sort of way and went out. It was rather funny, the

way he took sudden fright. We both started giggling, and Katya said that

he not only resembled Uriah Heep, but he was like an owl, a ginger owl

with a hook-nose and round eyes. She had guessed right— Romashka

was sometimes teased at school by being called Owl. We went back into

the hall.

The dancing was over and the concert part of the programme had

started with scenes from The Government Inspector, which our theatre

was rehearsing.

Katya and I sat together in the third row, but we heard nothing. At

least, I didn't. And I don't think she did either. I whispered to her:

"We'll have another talk. Yes?"

She looked at me gravely and nodded.

CHAPTER NINE

MY FIRST DATE. INSOMNIA

It wasn't the first time it happened with me that life, after moving in

one direction—in a straight line, let's say—suddenly made a sharp turn,

executing "Immelmanns" and "Barrels". (Figures in aerobatics).

This happened when, a boy of eight, I had lost my penknife near the

murdered watchman on the pontoon bridge. This happened at the

Education Department's reception centre, when, out of sheer boredom,

I had begun to model figure-work. This happened when I found myself a

reluctant witness to the conspiracy against Korablev and was

ignominiously ejected from the Tatarinov home. And this is what

happened now, when I was expelled again-this time for good!

The new turn in my life started this way. Katya and I had arranged to

meet in Oruzheiny Street, outside the tinsmith's shop, but she did not

turn up.

Everything seemed to have gone wrong that sad day. I ran away from

the sixth lesson-it was silly, because Likho had said he would give back

our homework after the lesson. I wanted to think over our conversation.

But how could I think when, after a few minutes, I was frozen stiff and

all I could do was stamp my feet and rub my nose and ears like mad.

Yet it was all devilishly interesting! What an extraordinary change had

come about since the previous day! Yesterday, for instance, I could say:

"Katya's a stupid head!" But not today. Yesterday I could have ticked her

off for being late, but not today. But most interesting of all was to think

that this was the very same Katya who had once asked me whether I had

read Helen Robinson, who had busted the lactometer and got it in the

neck from me. Could this be her?

"Yes!" I thought joyfully.

But she was not she now, and I was not I.

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A whole hour had passed, though. It was quiet in that street, and only

the small tinsmith with the big nose came out of his workshop several

times and eyed me suspiciously. I turned my back on him, but this only

seemed to deepen his suspicions. I crossed to the other side of the road,

but he still stood in the doorway amid clouds of vapour, like God on the

ceiling of the cathedral at Ensk. I was obliged to move away, down

towards the Tverskaya.

They had had dinner by the time I got back to the school. I went into

the kitchen to warm myself and got told off by the cook, who gave me a

plate of lukewarm potatoes. I ate the potatoes and went off in search of

Valya. But Valya was at the Zoo. Likho had given my homework to

Romashka.

Being upset, I did not notice the state of excitement Romashka was

thrown into when he saw me. He went all of a dither when I came into

the library where we were in the habit of doing our homework. He

laughed several times without apparent reason and hastily handed me

my homework.

" 'Old Moke' at it again," he said ingratiatingly. "If I were you, I'd

complain."

I thumbed through my work. Down the side of every page was drawn

a red line and at the bottom it was written: "Idealism. Extremely poor."

"Fathead," I commented coolly and walked out. Romashka came

running after me. I was surprised at the way he fawned on me that day,

running ahead of me and peering into my face. I suppose he was glad

that I had done so badly with my homework. The real reason for this

behaviour never occurred to me.

I was in bed before the boys had returned from their excursion. I

really should not have gone to bed so early. Sleep fled my eyes the

moment I shut them and turned over on my side.

It was the first case of insomnia in my life. I lay very still, thinking.

About what? About everything under the sun, I believe. About Korablev

and how I would take my homework to him tomorrow and ask him to

read it. About the tinsmith who had taken me for a thief. About Katya's

father's booklet Causes of the Failure of the Greely Expedition.

But whatever my thoughts, they always came back to her. I began to

doze, and all of a sudden found myself thinking of her with such

tenderness that it took my breath away and my heart started beating

slowly and loudly. I saw her more distinctly than if she had been at my

side. I could feel the touch of her hand on my eyes.

"Ah, well, if you've fallen in love, you've fallen in love. Now let's get

some sleep, my dear chap," I said to myself.

But now that I was feeling so happy I thought it a pity to go to sleep,

though I did feel a bit sleepy. I fell asleep when day began to break and

Uncle Petya in the kitchen started grumbling at Makhmet, our kitten.

CHAPTER TEN

TROUBLES

100

The first date and first insomnia, though something new, were still

part of the good old life. The troubles started the next day, however.

I phoned Katya after breakfast, but had no luck. Nikolai Antonich

answered the phone.

"Who wants her?"

"A friend."

"What friend?" I was silent.

"Well?"

I hung up.

At eleven I entrenched myself in a greengrocer's shop from which I

could see the whole length of Tverskaya-Yamskaya. Nobody took me for

a thief this time. I pretended to be using the phone, bought some

pickled apples and hung around the doorway with a casual air. I was

waiting for Nina Kapitonovna. I knew from previous years exactly when

she returned from the market. At last she appeared small, bent, in her

green velvet coat, carrying her umbrella—in such a frost'-and the

invariable shopping bag.

"Nina Kapitonovna!"

She glanced at me coldly and walked on without saying a word. I was

dumbfounded.

"Nina Kapitonovna!"

She set her bag down, straightened up and looked at me resentfully.

"Look here, young man," she said sternly, "I shouldn't like to quarrel

with you for old time's sake. But don't let me see or hear you any more."

Her head shook slightly.

"You go this way, we go that! And no writing or phoning, please! I

don't mind telling you this-I never would have believed it! I see I was

mistaken!"

She snatched up her bag, and-bang!-shut the gate right in my face. I

stared after her open-mouthed. Which one of us had gone mad? I or

she?

This was the first disagreeable conversation. It was followed by a

second, and then by a third.

Going home, I met Likho at the front door. I couldn't have chosen a

worse time to talk to him about my essay.

We mounted the stairs together, he, as usual, with his head in the air,

twisting his nose this way and that in such a stupid fashion that I was

strongly tempted to kick him.

"Mr Likho," I suddenly said, "I received my homework. You write:

'Idealism'. This isn't a mark, it's an accusation, which has to be proved

first."

"We'll talk about that some other time."

"No, we'll talk about it now," I said. "I'm a Komsomol member and

you accuse me of idealism. You don't know a thing about it." "What,

what's that?" he demanded, glaring at me. "You have no idea about

idealism," I went on, noting with satisfaction that with every word of

mine his ugly mug grew longer. "You're just trying to be nasty to me,

that's why you've written:

'Idealism.' No wonder they say of you-"

I paused for a moment, feeling that I was about to say something

shockingly rude. I said it nevertheless:

"That you have a head like a coconut, hard outside and watery inside."

101

This was so unexpected that we were both thunderstruck. Then, with

flaring nostrils, he said briefly and ominously: "I see!" And off he strode.

Exactly an hour after this conversation Korablev sent for me. This was

an ominous sign, for Korablev seldom summoned anyone to his house.

It was long since I had seen him looking so angry. With bent head, he

paced the room and when I came in, he drew aside with something like

distaste.

"Look here!" he started, his moustache bristling. "You're giving me a

fine account of yourself. It makes pleasant news!"

"Ivan Pavlovich, I'll explain everything to you in a minute," I said,

trying hard to speak calmly. "I don't like the critics, that's true. But that

doesn't make me an idealist. The other boys and girls copy everything

out from the critics. And that's what he likes. Let him first prove that

I'm an idealist. He ought to know that for me that's an insult."

I held my exercise book out to him but he did not even glance at it.

"You'll have to explain your conduct at the Teachers' Council."

"Certainly! Ivan Pavlovich," I said suddenly, "is it long since you were

at the Tatarinovs?"

"Why?"

"Nothing."

"Well, my lad," he said quietly, "I see you had some reason for being

rude to Likho. Sit down and tell me all about it. No fibs, mind."

I would not have told my own mother that I had fallen in love with

Katya and had been thinking about her all night. That was impossible.

But I had long been wanting to tell Korablev about the changes that had

taken place in the home of the Tatarinovs, changes which I did not like

at all.

He heard me out, pacing from comer to corner of the room. From

time to time he stopped and looked around with a sad expression. My

story seemed to distress him. At one moment his hand even went to his

head, but he caught himself and made as if he were stroking his

forehead.

"All right," he said when I asked him to telephone the Tatarinovs and

find out what it was all about. "I'll do that. You call back in an hour."

"Make it half an hour, Ivan Pavlovich!" He smiled—a sad, good-natured

smile.

I came back to find Korablev sitting on the sofa, smoking. The shaggy

green service jacket, which he always wore when he felt out of sorts, was

thrown over his shoulders and the soft collar of his shirt was undone.

"Well, old chap, you shouldn't have asked me to phone them," he said.

"Now I know all your secrets." "What secrets?"

He looked at me as though he were seeing me for the first time. "You've

got to be able to keep them," he went on. "And you're no good at that.

Today, for instance, you're courting someone and tomorrow the whole

school gets to know about it. It wouldn't be so bad if it were only the

school."

I must have looked pretty sheepish, because Korablev smiled in spite

of himself, just the ghost of a smile. At least twenty thoughts raced

through my head all at once: "Who's done this? Romashka! I'll kill him!

That's why Katya didn't come. That's why the old lady snubbed me."

"I love her, Ivan Pavlovich," I said firmly. He spread his hands.

"I don't care whether the whole school talks about it or not!" "The

school maybe," Korablev said. "But don't you care what Maria

102

Vasilievna and Nina Kapitonovna may say about it?" "No I don't!" I

protested hotly. "But weren't you shown the door at their house?" "What

house? It isn't her house. She dreams of the day she'll finish school and

leave that house."

"Just a minute... Do you mean to say you intend to marry her?" I

collected myself somewhat. "That's nobody's business!"

"Of course not," Korablev hastily put in. "I'm afraid it's not so simple

though. You'll have to ask Katya, after all. Perhaps she isn't planning to

get married yet. In any case you'll have to wait till she gets back from

Ensk."

"Ah," I said very calmly. "So they've sent her away? Fine." Korablev

looked at me again, this time with unconcealed curiosity.

"Her aunt has fallen ill and she's gone to visit her," he said. "She'll be

away several days and will be back for the beginning of the term. That

shouldn't worry you."

"I'm not worrying, Ivan Pavlovich. As for Likho, I'll apologise to him,

if you wish. But let him take back his statement about my being an

idealist."

Then, for fifteen minutes, as though nothing had happened, as though

Katya had not been sent away, as though I had not decided to kill

Romaska, we sat calmly discussing my homework. Then I took my leave,

after getting permission to call again the next day.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I GO TO ENSК

That Romashka! I did not doubt for a moment that it was his doing.

Who else could it be? He had been in the classroom and seen me kiss

Katya.

I stared with hatred at his cot and the bedside table and waited for

him in the dormitory for half an hour. Then I wrote a note demanding

an explanation and threatening that if I did not get it I would denounce

him as a cad in front of the whole school. Then I tore the note up and

went to see Valya at the Zoo.

He was with his rodents, of course. In a dirty lab coat, a pencil behind

his ear and a big notebook under his arm, he was standing by a cage and

feeding bats, who were eating out of his hand. He was feeding worms to

them, looking mightily pleased.

I hailed him. He looked round and I asked: "Have you got any

money?"

"Twenty-seven rubles," Valya said proudly.

"Let's have 'em."

This was cruel, as I knew that Valya was saving up to buy some snakes

or other. But what could I do? I had only seventeen rubles, and the fare

cost that much more.

Valya blinked, then looked at me gravely and got out the money.

"I'm going away."

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"Where to?"

"To Ensk."

"What for?"

"Tell you when I get back. Meanwhile, let me tell you-Romashka's a

cad. You're chummy with him, because you don't know what a cad he is.

And if you do know, then you're a cad yourself. That's all. So long."

I had one foot outside the door when Valya called me back, and in

such a queer voice that I spun round.

"Sanya," he muttered, "I'm not chummy with him. Besides..."

He fell silent.

"It's my fault," he went on with an air of decision. "I should have

warned you. You remember that business about Korablev, don't you?"

"I should say so!"

"Well, it was him!"

"What about him?"

"He went to Nikolai Antonich and told him everything."

"No!"

In a flash I recollected that evening when, on returning from the

Tatarinovs, I had told Valya about the conspiracy they were hatching

against Korablev.

"But I only told you about it."

"Yes, but Romashka was eavesdropping."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

Valya hung his head.

"He made me give my word of honour," he muttered. "Besides, he

threatened that he'd look at me at night. You know I hate being looked

at at night. It's silly, I know. It started with me waking up once to find

him looking at me."

"You're simply a fool, that's all."

"He writes everything down in a book and then snitches to Nikolai

Antonich," Valya went on miserably. "He makes life hell for me. He

narks on people and then tells me all about it. I stop my ears, but he

goes on telling."

"You're a poor yap, you are!" I said. "I've no time to talk to you now,

but I think you ought to write to the Komsomol group about that little

book of his. I never thought he'd bully you like that. How many words of

honour did you give him?"

"I don't remember," Valya mumbled.

"We'll count 'em up."

He looked at me mournfully.

From the Zoo I went to the railway station to book my ticket, and

from there back to school. I had a good case of drawing instruments and

decided to take it with me to sell if I was up against it.

And now to all the follies I had committed was added another one—

one that I had to pay for with interest.

When I entered the dormitory there were about ten people there,

among them Tania Velichko, a girl from my form. They were all engaged

in some occupation, some reading and others talking. Nobody was

paying any attention to Romashka, who was kneeling by my bed and

rummaging in my box.

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This new act of treachery was the last straw. The blood rushed to my

head and I went over to him with an even tread and said to him in an

even voice: "What are you looking for, Romashka?"

He looked up at me with startled eyes, and worked up as I was at that

moment, I could not help noticing his striking resemblance to an owl—

with that white face of his and those big red ears.

"Katya's letters?" I went on. "Want to hand them over to Nikolai

Antonich? Here they are. Take 'em."

And I kicked him hard in the face.

I had spoken in a quiet voice, so nobody expected that I was going to

hit him. I believe I gave him two or three more kicks. I would have killed

him but for Tania Velichko. While the boys stood open-mouthed, she

rushed between us, grabbed hold of me and pushed me away with such

force that I sat down on the bed.

"You're crazy."

As if through a mist I saw her face and realised that she was looking at

me with abhorrence. I recollected myself.

"I'll explain everything, boys," I said shakily.

They were all silent. Romashka lay on the floor with his head thrown

back. There was a blue bruise on his cheek. I took my box and went out.

I wandered heavy-hearted about the railway station for nearly three

hours. I felt beastly as I read the newspaper, studied the timetable, and

drank tea in the third-class buffet. I was hungry, but the tea seemed

tasteless and the sandwiches wouldn't go down my throat. I somehow

felt sullied after that scene in the dormitory. Ah, well, I didn't have to go

back to school anyway. But the instrument case? Who the hell needed

it? As if I couldn't get the money for my return fare from Aunt Dasha!"

CHAPTER TWELVE

HOME AGAIN

One impression has remained with me after that journey through the

places where Pyotr Skovorodnikov and I used to ramble, stealing and

begging - an impression of incomparable freedom.

For the first time in my life I was travelling by rail with a ticket. I

could sit at the window, chat with my fellow-passengers, or smoke, had I

been a smoker. I did not have to crawl under the seat when the ticket-

collector came round. I handed him my ticket with a casual air, without

interrupting my conversation. It was an extraordinary sensation—a

feeling of spaciousness, though the carriage was pretty crowded. I found

it amusing, and I was thinking now about Ensk— about my sister, Aunt

Dasha, and how I would spring a surprise on them and they would not

recognise me.

With this thought I fell asleep and slept so long that my fellow-

passengers began to wonder whether I was alive or not.

How good it is to return to one's home town after an absence of eight

years! Everything is so familiar yet unfamiliar. Could that be the

governor's house? I had thought it so huge once. Could that be

Zastennaya Street? Was it so narrow and crooked? And is it

105

Lopukhinsky Boulevard? The boulevard gladdened me, though: all

down the main avenue, behind the lime trees, stretched a line of

splendid new buildings. The black lime trees looked like a pencil

drawing on a white background and their black shadows lay aslant on

the white snow- it made a beautiful picture.

I walked fast, and at every step I kept recognising old landmarks or

viewing new ones with surprise. There was the orphanage in which Aunt

Dasha had been going to put my sister and me; it was now a green

colour and a big marble plaque had appeared on the wall with gold

lettering on it. I could not believe my eyes-it said: "Alexander Pushkin

stayed in this house in 1824". Well I never! In that house! What airs the

orphanage kids would have given themselves had they known this!

And here were the "Chambers", where Mother and I had once handed

in a petition. The place did not look half as imposing now. The old low

grating had been removed from the windows and at the gate hung a

signboard saying: Cultural Centre.

And there were the ramparts. My heart beat faster at the sight of

them. A granite embankment stretched before me, and I hardly

recognised our poor old shelving river bank. But what astonished me

more than anything was to find our houses gone and in their place a

public garden had been laid out and on the seats sat nannies holding

infants wrapped up like little mummies. I had expected anything but

this. I stood for a long time on the ramparts surveying with amazement

the garden, the granite embankment and the boulevard, on which we

used to play tipcat. On the site of the common back of the small grocery

and oil shops there now stood a tall grey building, outside which a guard

in a huge sheepskin coat strode up and down. I accosted him.

"The town power station," he answered importantly, when I pointed

to the building and asked what it was.

"Do you happen to know where Skovorodnikov lives?"

"The judge?"

"No."

"Then I don't know. We have only one man here by that name-

the judge."

I walked away. Could it be that old Skovorodnikov had become a

judge? I turned round to have another look at the fine tall building

erected on the site of our wretched old houses, and decided that it could

be.

"What does the judge look like? Is he tall?"

"Yes."

"With whiskers?"

"No, he has no whiskers," the guard said. He sounded sort of offended

for old Skovorodnikov.

H'm, no whiskers. Not much hope.

"Where does that judge live?"

"In Gogolevsky Street, in what used to be Marcouse's house.

I knew the house, one of the best in the town, with lions' heads on

either side of the entrance. Again I was nonplussed. There was nothing

for it but to go down to Gogolevsky Street, and I went, little hoping that

old Skovorodnikov had shaved off his moustache, become a judge and

taken up residence in such a posh house.

In less than half an hour I was in Gogolevsky Street at the Marcouse

house. The lions' heads were eight years older, but as impressive and

106

fearsome as ever. I stood irresolute at the wide covered entrance door.

Should I ring or not? Or should I ask a policeman where the Address

Bureau was?

Muslin curtains in Aunt Dasha's taste hung in the windows and that

decided me. I rang the bell.

The door was opened by a girl of about sixteen in a blue flannel dress,

her smoothly brushed hair parted in the middle. She was of a dark

complexion, and that puzzled me. "Do the Skovorodnikovs live here?"

"Yes."

"And is ... er ... Darya Gavrilovna at home?" I said, giving Aunt Dasha

her full title.

"She'll soon be in," the girl said, smiling and regarding me with

curiosity. She smiled just like Sanya, but Sanya was fair and had curly

hair and blue eyes. No, this wasn't Sanya. "May I wait?" "Certainly."

I took my coat off in the hall and she showed me into a large well-

furnished room. The place of honour in it was occupied by a grand

piano. This did not look much like Aunt Dasha.

I was gazing about me with what must have been a rather sheepish

and happy expression, because the girl was staring at me with all her

eyes. All of a sudden she tilted her head and cocked up an eyebrow

exactly the way Mother used to do. I realised that it was Sanya after all.

"Sanya?" I queried, somewhat uncertainly. She looked surprised. "Yes."

"But you were fair," I went on in a shaky voice. "How comes it? When

we lived in the village you were quite fair. But now you're all on the

darkish side."

She was dumbfounded, even her mouth fell open. "What village?"

"When Father died!" I said, and laughed. "Don't say you've forgotten !

Don't you remember me?"

I felt choky in the throat. After all I had loved her very much and

hadn't seen her for eight years, and she looking so much like Mother.

"Sanya," she brought out at last. "My God! Why, we had given you up

for dead long ago." She embraced me.

"Sanya, Sanya! Is it really you! But sit down, why are you standing?

Where have you come from? When did you arrive?"

We sat down side by side, but she jumped up the next moment and

ran into the hall to get my box.

"Wait a minute! Don't go away. Tell me how you're getting on. How's

Aunt Dasha?"

"How about yourself? Why didn't you write to us? We've been

searching for you. We even put notices in the papers." "I didn't see

them," I said remorsefully.

Only now did I fully realise how beastly I had behaved. Fancy

forgetting that I had such a sister. And such a wonderful Aunt Dasha,

who couldn't even be told that I had come back, because she was likely

to die of joy, as Sanya explained to me.

"And Pyotr's been looking for you too," she went on. "He wrote to

Tashkent not long ago. He thought maybe you were living in Tashkent."

"Pyotr?"

"Why, yes."

"Skovorodnikov?"

"Who else?"

107

"Where is he?"

"In Moscow," Sanya said.

I was amazed.

"Has he been there long?"

"Ever since you two ran away."

Pyotr in Moscow! I couldn't believe my ears.

"But, Sanya, I live in Moscow myself!"

"No?"

"Yes, really. How is he, what's he doing?"

"He's all right. He's finishing school this year."

"The devil he is! I'm finishing too. Have you got any photos of him?"

I thought Sanya was somewhat embarrassed when I asked for a photo

of him. She said: "In a minute" and went out, returning almost

immediately, as if she had taken Pyotr's photo out of her pocket.

"My, isn't he handsome," I said and started laughing. "Ginger?"

"Yes."

"Gee, isn't it grand! And the old man? How's the old man? Is it true?"

"Is what true?"

"That he's a judge?"

"Why, he's been a judge these last five years."

We kept asking questions and interrupting each other and asking

more questions. We started the samovar going and made up the stove,

and then the bell tinkled in the hall.

"Aunt Dasha!"

"You stay here," Sanya whispered. "I'll break the news to her. She has

a heart condition, you know."

She went out and I heard the following conversation in the next room.

"Now don't get excited, Aunt Dasha, please. I have very good news so

there's no need to be upset."

"Well, out with it then!"

"You decided not to bake any pies today, Aunt Dasha, but you'll have

to."

"Pyotr has arrived?"

"That would be nice too, but no, it's not Pyotr. You won't get excited,

Aunt Dasha, will you?"

"I won't."

"Honestly?"

"Drat the girl! Honestly."

"That's who's come!" Sanya announced, throwing open the kitchen

door.

The remarkable thing is that Aunt Dasha recognised me at first

glance.

"Sanya," she said quietly.

She embraced me. Then she sat down and closed her eyes. I took her

hand.

"My darling boy! Alive? Where have you been? We've been searching

the world for you."

"I know, Aunt Dasha. It's all my fault."

"His fault! Good heavens! He comes back and talks about his fault!

Dear, dear boy. What a bonny lad you've grown! And so handsome!"

Aunt Dasha had always thought me a good looker.

108

Then the judge came in. The guard had been right—the old man had

shaved off his moustache. He looked ten years younger and it was now

hard to believe that he had once boiled skin-glue and built such hopes

upon it.

He knew that I had come back, as Sanya had telephoned him.

"Well, prodigal son," he said, hugging me. "Aren't you afraid I'll have

your head off, you rascal, you?"

What could I say for myself? I only grunted penitently.

Later that night he and I were left alone. The old man wanted to

know what I had been doing and how I had been living since I had left

the town. Like the judge he was, he questioned me rigorously about all

my affairs, school and private.

I told him I wanted to be an airman, and he gazed at me long and

steadily from under his bushy eyebrows.

"The air force?"

"An Arctic pilot. In the air force, if necessary."

"A dangerous, but interesting job," he said after a pause.

One thing I didn't tell him, though that I had come to Ensk in the

wake of Katya. I couldn't bring myself to tell him that if it hadn't been

for Katya it would very likely be a long time before I came back to my

home town, to my home.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE OLD LETTERS

I slept until eleven. Sanya had gone a long time ago, the old man was

at work and Aunt Dasha had already put the dinner on, as she informed

me.

While I drank my tea she kept making horrified comments on how

little I was eating.

"So that's how they feed you!" she said tartly. "The gypsy fed his horse

better, and that croaked."

"You know, Aunt Dasha, I was looking for you at the old place. The

houses have been pulled down I see?"

"Yes," Aunt Dasha said with a sigh.

"Aunt Dasha, do you know the Bubenchikovs?"

The Bubenchikovs were relations of Nina Kapitonovna, and I had no

doubt that Katya had gone to them.

"The people who were pronounced? Who doesn't know them?"

"Pronounced?"

"The priest pronounced the ban on them," said Aunt Dasha. "They

sent him packing, so he pronounced 'em. That was a long time ago,

before the Revolution. You were a little boy then. Why do you ask?"

"People in Moscow asked me to give them their regards," I lied.

Aunt Dasha shook her head doubtfully.

"Ah, I see..."

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I asked Aunt Dasha for an envelope and some paper and sat down to

write a letter. "I'll write to Katya and Sanya will deliver it."

"Katya," I wrote. "As you see, I am back in Ensk, and I'm dying to see

you. Come down to Cathedral Gardens at four. This note will be

delivered to you—guess by whom? By my sister. A. Grigoriev."

"Aunt Dasha, Pyotr used to have some interesting books. Where are

they? Where do you keep books, anyway?"

Pyotr's books were discovered in Sanya's room, on a bric-a-brac

stand. Evidently no great store was set by them, because they stood on

the bottom shelf among all sorts of junk. I felt a bit sad when I picked up

The Ghastly Night or the Most Marvellous Adventures of a Don

Cossack in the Caucasus Mountains. Dammit, what a wretch of a little

fellow I was then!

A package wrapped in a yellowed newspaper dropped on the floor

during my energetic search for A Guide To Letter Writing. It was the

batch of old letters. I recognised them immediately. They were letters

which the river had one day washed up into our yard in a post bag.

Those long winter evenings, when Aunt Dasha used to read them to us,

came back to me. How wonderful, how delightful those readings had

seemed to me!

Other people's letters! And who knows where these people now were?

This letter, for instance, in its thick yellowed envelope. Maybe

somebody had not slept nights, waiting for it?

Mechanically I opened the envelope and read several lines:

"Dear Maria Vasilievna,

"I hasten to inform you that Ivan Lvovich is alive and well. Four

months ago, on his orders, I left the schooner along with thirteen of the

crew..."

I read on and could not believe my eyes. It was the letter of the

navigating officer, which I used to know by heart and which I had

recited on the trains on my way to Moscow! But it was not this that

struck me.

"The St. Maria," I read on, "became icebound in the Kara Sea and

since October 1912 has been drifting steadily north with the Arctic

icefields."

The St. Maria'. Why, that was the name of Captain Tatarinov's

schooner! I turned back the sheet and read the letter again.

"Dear Maria Vasilievna"—Maria Vasilievna! I hasten to inform you

that Ivan Lvovich..." Ivan Lvovich! Katya was called Katerina

Ivanovna—the patronymic was from the name Ivan!

Aunt Dasha decided that I had gone crazy, because I suddenly emitted a

yell and started frantically to search among the old letters.

I knew what I was after, though. Aunt Dasha had once read to me

another of those letters describing the life amid the icefloes and about

the sailor who had fallen to his death and how they had to chop the ice

away in the cabins.

"Aunt Dasha, are they all here?" "Goodness gracious, what's happened?"

"Nothing, Aunt Dasha. There should be one particular letter here." I

didn't hear myself speak. Ah, here it was! "My darling, my own dear,

sweet Maria,

"It's nearly now two years since I sent you a letter through the telegraph

dispatch office on Yugorsky Shar. And what a lot of changes ' there have

been since then, I can't tell you! To begin with, we were standing on a

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straight set course, but since October 1912 have been drifting slowly

north with the Arctic ice. Willy-nilly, we had to abandon our original

plan of making Vladivostok along the coast of Siberia. But this proved to

be a blessing in disguise. It has given me quite a new idea. I hope it does

not strike you, as it does some of my companions, as childish or

foolhardy..."

The first sheet ended here. I turned it over, but could make out

nothing except a few disconnected words which stood out amid the

smudges and stains.

The second sheet started with a description of the schooner:

"...in some places reaching a considerable depth. Amid one such icefield

stands our St. Maria snowed up to the gunwale. At times a garland of

hoarfrost breaks off the rigging and comes down with a soft swishing

sound. As you see, dear Maria, I've become a poet. We have a real poet

on board, though—our cook Kolpakov. A cheerful soul! He goes about

all day long singing his poem. Here are four lines from it for a keepsake:

Under the flag of Mother Russia,

In the good ship Saint Maria,

We shall sail the Siberian coast along

With our Captain brave and strong.

"I read this endless letter of mine over and over again, and find that I

am simply gossiping when I have so many important things to tell you. I

am sending with Klimov a packet addressed to the head of the

Hydrographical Board, containing my observations, official letters and a

report giving the story of our drift. Just in case, I am writing you, too,

about our discovery: north of the Taimyr Peninsula the map shows no

land whatever. But situated in latitude 79°35', between meridians 86

and 87 east of Greenwich, we observed a sharply defined silvery strip,

slightly convex, running out from the very horizon. On April 3rd this

strip became an opaque patch of moonlight, and the next day we saw

clouds of a very queer shape, resembling a mist enveloping distant

mountains. I am convinced that this is land. Unfortunately, I couldn't

leave the ship in her present plight in order to explore it. But its turn

will come. Meantime, I have named it after you, so now you will find on

every map a heartfelt greeting from your..."

Here ended the reverse side of the second sheet. I laid it aside and

started on the third. The first few lines were washed away. Then came:

"It's galling to think that everything could have turned out differently.

I know he will try to put himself right with you, perhaps he will even

persuade you that it is all my own/fault. One thing I beg of you: do not

trust that man. It can positively be said that we owe all our misfortunes

to him alone. Suffice it to say that most of the sixty dogs he sold to us at

Archangel had to be shot while we were still at Novaya Zemlya. That's

the price we had to pay for that good office. Not I alone, but the whole

expedition send him our curses. We were taking a chance, we knew that

we were running a risk, but we did not expect such a blow. It remains

for us to do all we can. What a lot I could tell you about our voyage!

Stories enough to last Katya a whole winter. But what a price we are

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having to pay, good God! I don't want you to think that our plight is

hopeless. Still, you shouldn't look forward too much..."

Like a flash of lightning in a forest that suddenly illumines everything

around and transforms the dark scene so that you can even make out

the leaves on a tree which a moment before had worn the shape of a

beast or a giant, the whole thing dawned on me as I read these lines.

Even trivial details which I never thought I could remember came back

to me.

I understood Nikolai Antonich's hypocritical speeches about his "poor

cousin". I understood that false solemnity of expression he wore when

speaking about his cousin, the pucker between his brows deepening as

though you, too, were partly to blame for what had happened. The full

depth of the man's baseness, the show he made of being proud of his

own nobility, were brought home to me. He had not been named in the

letter, but that it was he who was meant I did not have the slightest

doubt.

My throat went dry through excitement and I was talking to myself so

loudly that Aunt Dasha was seriously alarmed. "Sanya, what's the

matter with you?"

"Nothing, Aunt Dasha. Where do you keep the rest of these old

letters?"

"They're all there."

"That can't be! Don't you remember reading me this letter once? It

was a long one, on eight sheets."

"I don't remember, dear."

I found nothing more in the packet-only these three sheets out of the

eight. But they were enough!

I changed the "come at four" in Katya's letter to "come at three", then

to "come at two". But as it was already two o'clock I changed it back to

three.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

A RENDEZVOUS IN CATHEDRAL GARDENS.

"DO NOT TRUST THA Т MAN"

I had been to Cathedral Gardens a thousand times as a boy, but it had

never struck me then as being such a beautiful place. It stood high on a

hill overlooking the confluence of two rivers—the Peschinka and the

Tikhaya, and was surrounded by the old ramparts. These were in an

excellent state of preservation, but the towers seemed to have shrunk

since Pyotr and I had last met there to take the "blood-oath of

friendship".

At last they came-Katya and Sanya. I saw Sanya, wrapped in an old-

womanish, yellow sheepskin coat, wave her hand around as much as to

say, "this is Cathedral Gardens", and immediately take her leave with a

mysterious nod of the head. "Katya!" I cried. She started, saw me and

laughed.

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We spent half an hour scolding each other: I her for not having told

me she was going away, and she me, for not having waited for her letter

before coming. Then we both recollected that we had not spoken to each

other about the most important thing of all. It appeared that Nikolai

Antonich had had a talk with Katya. "In the name of my poor cousin" he

had forbidden her to see me. He had delivered a long speech and wept.

"Believe me or not, Sanya," Katya said gravely, "but I saw it with my

own eyes, honestly!"

"Well, well," I said and placed my hand on my chest.

There, in my breast pocket, wrapped in a piece of lint which I had got

from Aunt Dasha, lay Captain Tatarinov's letter.

"Listen, Katya," I began on a firm note, "I want to tell you a story. It's

like this. Imagine that you're living on the bank of a river and one fine

day a postman's bag turns up on this bank. It hasn't dropped from the

skies, of course, it's been washed up by the water. The postman

drowned. And his bag falls into the hands of a woman who's very fond of

reading. And this woman has a boy of eight among her neighbours

who's very fond of listening. So one day she reads him a letter which

begins 'Dear Maria Vasilievna'."

Katya looked up at me, startled.

" 'I hasten to inform you that Ivan Lvovich is alive and well," I went on

quickly. "Four months ago, on his orders...' " :.

I recited the letter of the navigating officer in a single breath. I did not

stop once, though Katya clutched my sleeve several times in horror and

amazement.

"Did you see this letter?" she asked, her face white. "He was writing

about Father?" she asked again, as though there could be any doubt

about it.

"Yes. But that's not all."

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And I told her how Aunt Dasha had one day come upon another letter

describing life aboard an icebound ship which was slowly drifting north.

" 'My darling, my own dear, sweet Maria,' " I began reciting from

memory, then stopped.

A cold shiver ran up my spine and a choking sensation gripped my

throat as I suddenly saw before me, as in a dream, the bleak,

prematurely aged face of Maria Vasilievna, her brows puckered in

gloom. She had been about the same age as Katya was now when he

wrote her that letter, and Katya was a little girl always waiting for "a

letter from Daddy". That letter had come at last!

"Here it is," I said, drawing it from my breast pocket wrapped up in

the piece of lint. "Sit down and read it. I'll go away and come back when

you've finished."

Needless to say, I didn't go anywhere. I stood under the tower of St.

Martin and watched Katya all the time while she was reading. I felt very

sorry for her and warm inside whenever I thought about her, but cold

when I thought how dreadful it must be for her to read those letters. I

saw her push her hair back with an unconscious gesture when it got into

her eyes, then stand up as if trying to make out some difficult word. I

wasn't sure till then whether it was a joy or sorrow to get a letter like

that. But looking at her now, I realised what grief, what terrible grief it

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was. I realised that she had never given up hope. Thirteen years ago her

father had disappeared in the icy wastes of the Arctic, a thing that could

only mean death from cold and starvation. But for her he had died only

that day!

When I went back to her, Katya's eyes were red and she was sitting on

the garden seat with her hands in her lap, holding the letters.

"Not feeling cold?" I asked, at a loss for words.

"I haven't been able to make out some words... Here: 'I beg of you...

"Ah, that! It reads: 'I beg of you, do not trust that man.' "

Katya called on us that evening, but we did not speak about the old

letters—we had agreed on that beforehand. Katya was very sad.

Everyone was nice to her, especially Sanya, who had become attached to

her immediately as only girls know how. Afterwards Sanya and I saw

her home.

The old folks were still up when we got back. The judge, somewhat

belatedly, was scolding Aunt Dasha for not having delivered that mail—

"at least those letters where the address could be made out"— and could

find only one extenuating circumstance: that it had happened ten years

ago. Aunt Dasha was talking about Katya. My fate, she thought, was

decided.

"I think she's very nice," she said, sighing. "Beautiful and sad. Healthy

girl."

I asked Sanya for the map of the Soviet North and showed her the

route which Captain Tatarinov was to have taken from Leningrad to

Vladivostok. Only then did I remind myself of his discovery. What land

could that be lying north of the Taimyr Peninsula? "Why, that must be

Severnaya Zemlya!" Sanya said. What the devil! It was Severnaya

Zemlya (Northern Land) discovered in 1913 by Lieutenant Vilkitsky.

Latitude 79°35,' between 86 and 87 longitude. Very strange!

"Hold on!" I said, and must have gone a bit pale, because Aunt Dasha

looked at me anxiously. "I've got it! First it was a silvery strip running

out from the very horizon. On April 3rd the strip became an opaque

patch. April 3rd!"

"Sanya," Aunt Dasha began in alarm.

"Hold on! April 3rd. Now Vilkitsky discovered Severnaya Zemlya in

the autumn, I don't remember when, but it was in the autumn, some

time in September or October. In the autumn, six months later! That's

to say he discovered nothing at all, dammit, because it had already been

discovered."

"Sanya!" It was the judge speaking now.

"Discovered and named after Maria Vasilievna," I went on, pressing

my finger hard on Severnaya Zemlya as though afraid there might be

some other mistake about it. "Named after Maria Vasilievna. Maria

Land, or something like that. Now sit down and I'll explain it all to you."

Talk about sleep after a day like that! I drank water and studied the

map. The dining-room was hung with pictures of the town, and I

studied them, too, for a long time without realising that they were

Sanya's paintings and that she was studying painting and dreamt of

going to the Academy of Arts. I looked at the map again. I recollected

that the name Severnaya Zemlya had been given to these islands only

recently and that Vilkitsky had named them Nicholas II Land.

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Poor Captain Tatarinov! He had been surprisingly, extraordinarily

unlucky. There was not a single mention of him in any geography book

and nobody in the world knew what he had done.

I felt a cold shiver of pity and rapture, and went to bed, as it had gone

five and from outside in the street came the sounds of a sweeping

broom. But I couldn't fall asleep. Disjointed phrases from the Captain's

letter haunted me, and I could hear Aunt Dasha's voice reading the

letter and see her peering over her spectacles, sighing and faltering. I

recollected a scene, which had once presented itself to my imagination-a

scene of white tents in the snow, huskies harnessed to sledges, a giant of

a man in fur boots and a tall fur cap—and I wished that this had all

happened to me, that I had been on board that ship which was slowly

moving to her doom with the drifting ice and that I had been the

Captain who wrote that farewell letter to his wife, and could not finish

it. "I have named it after you, so now you will find on every map a

heartfelt greeting from your..."

I wondered how that sentence ended? Then something slowly passed

through my head, very slowly, almost reluctantly, and I sat' up in bed,

half incredulous, feeling that in another minute I would go mad. Go

mad remembering this: "greeting from your Mongotimo Hawk's Claw,

as you used to call me. God, how long ago that was! I am not

complaining , though..."

"I am not complaining, though," I repeated, muttering, fumbling and

groping among my memories for some missing word. "I am not

complaining. We shall see each other again and all will be well. But one

thought, one thought torments me!"

I jumped up, switched on the light and rushed over to the table on

which lay the pencils and maps.

"It's galling to think," I was now writing on one of the maps, "that

everything could have turned out differently. Misfortunes dogged us,

but our main misfortune was the mistake for which we are now having

to pay every hour, every minute of the day-the mistake I made in

entrusting the fitting out of our expedition to Nikolai." Nikolai? Was it

Nikolai? Yes, it was!

I paused at this point; beyond it there was a sort of gap in my

memory, and after that there had come something-I remembered that

now quite clearly-something about a sailor named Skachkov, who had

fallen into a crevasse and been crushed to death. But this was not the

thing. This was the general context of the letter, not the actual text, of

which I could recall nothing more, except a few disconnected words.

I got no sleep at all. The judge was up at eight and got a fright when

he saw me sitting in my underwear over a map of the North, from which

I had managed to read all the details of the ill-fated voyage of the St.

Maria— details which would have astonished Captain Tatarinov himself

had he returned.

We had arranged the previous evening to go to the town's museum.

Sanya was keen on showing us this museum, which was the pride of

Ensk. It was housed in an old mansion, once the residence of a rich

merchant. On the second floor was an exhibition of paintings by Sanya's

teacher, the artist Tuva, and she took us to see these first of all. The

artist was there in person-a genial little man in a velvet blouse a la

Tolstoy and with a mop of black hair in which gleamed thick grey

strands. His paintings were not bad, though rather monotonous—all

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Ensk and Ensk. Ensk by day and by night, in moonlight and sunlight,

the old town and the new town. We praised them fulsomely, though—

this Tuva was such a nice man and Sanya gazed at him with such

adoration.

She must have guessed that Katya and I wanted to have a talk,

because she suddenly excused herself and stayed behind on some

trifling pretext, while we went downstairs into a large hall in which

stood knights in chain-mail, which stuck out from under their

breastplates like a shirt under a man's waistcoat.

Naturally, I was all eagerness to tell Katya about my nocturnal

discoveries. She saved me the trouble of starting the conversation by

starting it herself.

"Sanya," she said, when we stopped in front of a Stephen Bathori

man-at-arms, who somehow reminded me of Korablev. "I've been

thinking about who he meant in that phrase: 'Don't trust that man.' "

"Well?"

"I've come to the conclusion that it ... it's not him."

We were silent. She stared fixedly at the man-at-arms.

"But it was about him," I retorted grimly. "By the way, your father

discovered Severnaya Zemlya. It was he, and not Vilkitsky at all. I've

established the fact."

This news, which a few years later was to create a sensation among all

the world's geographers, produced no effect whatever on Katya.

"What makes you think," she went on, speaking with an effort, "that

it's he ... Nikolai Antonich? The letter doesn't say so, does it?"

"Oh, yes it does," I said, feeling that I was beginning to lose my

temper. "For one thing, take those dogs. Who had boasted a thousand

times that he had bought excellent dogs for the expedition? Secondly-"

"Secondly what?"

"Secondly, last night I recollected another passage from that letter.

Here it is."

And I recited the passage which began with the words: "Mongotimo

Hawk's Claw." I recited it loudly and distinctly, like poetry, and Katya

listened to it wide-eyed, grave as a statue. Suddenly her eyes went cold

and I thought that she didn't believe me.

"Don't you believe me?"

She paled and said quietly:

"I do."

We then dropped the subject. I only asked whether she remembered

where "Mongotimo Hawk's Claw" came from, and she said she did not

remember—Gustave Aimard, perhaps. Then she asked, did I realise how

terrible this would be for her mother.

"All this is much worse than you think," she remarked sadly, just like

a grown-up. "Life's very hard for Mother, not to mention what she's

lived through. And Nikolai Antonich-"

Katya broke off. Then she explained to me what it was all about. This,

too, was a discovery, no less surprising, perhaps, than Captain

Tatarinov's discovery of Severnaya Zemlya. It appeared that Nikolai

Antonich had been in love with Maria Vasilievna for many years. The

year before, when she was ill, he slept, if he slept at all, in his clothes,

and engaged a nurse, though this was quite unnecessary. When she got

better he took her down to Sochi and fixed her up in the Hotel Riviera,

though a sanatorium would have been much cheaper. In the spring he

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had gone to Leningrad and brought back a very expensive fur jacket for

Maria Vasilievna. He never went to bed if she was not at home. He

persuaded her to give up the university, because it was hard for her to

work and study at the same time. But the most surprising thing of all

had happened that winter. All of a sudden Maria Vasilievna said she did

not want to see him any more. And he disappeared. Went away in the

clothes he stood in and did not come home for ten days. Where he had

been living was a mystery-probably in a hotel room. At this point Nina

Kapitonovna stood up for him. She said this was nothing short of an

"inquisition", and fetched him home herself. But Maria Vasilievna did

not speak to him for a whole month.

Nikolai Antonich madly in love—I couldn't imagine it! Nikolai

Antonich with his stubby fingers and his gold tooth-and so old.

Nevertheless, as Katya went on with her story, I could picture that

complex and painful relationship. I could imagine what Maria

Vasilievna's life had been, during those long years. Such a beautiful

woman left stranded at twenty. "Neither widowed nor married." For the

sake of her husband's memory she forced herself to live in her

memories. I could imagine Nikolai Antonich courting her for years,

suave, persistent, patient. He had succeeded in convincing her-and

others too—that he alone understood and loved her husband. Katya was

right. For Maria Vasilievna this letter would be a terrible blow. It would

be better, perhaps, to leave it on the shelf in Sanya's room, between

Tsar Kolokol and The Adventures of a Don Cossack in the Caucasus.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

WE GO FOR WALKS.

I VISIT MOTHER'S GRAVE.

DAY OF DEPARTURE

The week I spent in Ensk was anything but a gay one. But then what

wonderful memories it left me with for the rest of my life.

Katya and I went for walks every day. I showed her my favourite old

spots and spoke about my childhood. I remember reading somewhere

that archaeologists were able to reconstruct the history and customs of a

whole people from a single preserved inscription. That's how it was with

me, when, from the few surviving old nooks in my hometown, I

reconstructed for Katya the story of my previous life.

I spent only one day away from Katya, the day I went to the cemetery.

I expected to find no trace of Mother's grave after all those years. But I

found it. It was enclosed in a broken-down wooden fence and you could

still make out the inscription on the awry cross:

"Sacred to the memory of..." Of course, it was winter and all the graves

were snowed up, yet you could tell at once that this was a neglected

grave.

Saddened, I walked among the paths, calling up memories of my

mother. How old would she have been now? Forty. Still quite a young

woman. With a pang I thought how happily she could have been living

now, the way Aunt Dasha, say, was living. I recollected her tired, heavy

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glance, her hands corroded by washing, and how she could not eat

anything of an evening because she was dead tired.

I found the keeper, who was chopping wood outside the tumbledown

chapel.

"Granddad," I said to him, "you have here the grave of Aksinya

Grigorieva. It's along this path here, the second from the corner." I think

he was pretending when he said he knew the grave I was talking about.

"Couldn't it be tidied up? I'll pay for it." The keeper went down the

path, looked at the grave and came back.

"That grave is being cared for," he said. "You can't see it because it's

winter now. Some of the others aren't being cared for, but this one is."

I gave him three rubles and went away.

And then the last day came round, the day of parting. It found Aunt

Dasha astir at six, busy baking pies. Smeared with flour, wearing her

spectacles, she came into the dining-room where I was sleeping, the

edge of an envelope between her fingers.

"Must wake Sanya up," she said. "Here's a letter from Pyotr. And so it

was, brief, but "pertinent", as the judge put it. First, he explained why he

had not come home for the holidays. It was because he had been visiting

Leningrad with an excursion party. Secondly, he was astonished to hear

that I had turned up and expressed himself feelingly on that point.

Third, he went for me baldheaded for not having written, not having

looked for him and generally for having "behaved like an unfeeling

horse". Fourth, the envelope contained another letter, addressed to my

sister, who laughed and said: "The silly fool, he could have just added a

postscript." I don't suppose he could, though, because Sanya took the

letter and sat reading it in her room for three full hours, until I came

charging in demanding that she put a stop to Aunt Dasha, who was

piling up a stack of pies for my journey.

The judge came home specially to have dinner with me for the last

time. He brought a bottle of wine. We drank, and he made a speech. A

jolly good speech it was too. He compared Pyotr and me to eagles and

expressed the hope that we would return more than once to the nest.

We sat so long over dinner that we nearly missed the train. We drove

to the station in cabs. I had never travelled so luxuriously before-sitting

back in a cab with a hamper at my feet.

We arrived to find Katya standing on the carriage steps with the two

old Bubenchikov aunts exhorting her not to catch cold during the

journey, to keep an eye on her luggage, not to go out on the carriage

platform, to wire them on arrival, remember them to everybody and not

to forget to write.

My seat was in another carriage, so we merely bowed a greeting to

Katya and the Bubenchikovs. Katya waved to us and the old ladies

nodded primly.

The second bell. I embraced Sanya and Aunt Dasha. The judge

reminded me to look up Pyotr and I gave my word of honour that I

would call on him the day I arrived. I invited Sanya to come and see me

in Moscow and she promised to come for her spring holidays-it

appeared that she had already made arrangements about this with

Pyotr.

The third bell. I was in the carriage. Sanya was writing something in

the air and I wrote back at a guess: "Okay." Aunt Dasha began to cry

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quietly and the last thing I saw was Sanya taking the handkerchief from

her and, with a laugh, wiping away her tears. The train pulled out, and

that dear old railway station slipped past me. We gathered speed. In

another moment the platform came to an end. Goodbye, Ensk.

At the next station I changed places with an oldish gentleman, who

found my lower berth more convenient for him, and moved into Katya's

carriage. For one thing, it was more airy, for another it was Katya's.

She had quite settled in. On the little table lay a clean napkin and the

window was curtained. You'd think she'd been living in that carriage a

hundred years.

We had both only just had dinner, but we simply had to see what the

old folks had put in our hampers. We had an apple each and treated our

travelling companion to one. He was a little, unshaven, blue-black man

in spectacles, who kept making guesses as to who we were: brother and

sister-no, we didn't look like it. Husband and wife - too young.

It was some time past two in the morning and our unshaven

companion was snoring his head off, while Katya and I were still

standing in the corridor, chatting. We wrote with our fingers on the

frozen panes-first initials, then the opening letters of words.

"Just like in Anna Karenina," said Katya.

I didn't think it was like Anna Karenina or anything else for that

matter.

Katya stood beside me and looked sort of new, different. She wore her

hair in grown-up style, parted in the middle, and a surprisingly new ear

peeped out from under her dark attractive hair. Her teeth, too, looked

new when she smiled. Never before had she turned her head, when I

began to speak, with that easy yet proud gesture of a beautiful woman.

She was a new and entirely different girl, and I felt that I was terribly in

love with her.

Suddenly, through the window, we could see the wires dipping and

rising, and a dark field came into view covered with dark snow. I don't

know at what speed the train was going-it could not have been more

than forty kilometres an hour—but it seemed to me that we were

rushing along at magical speed. The world lay before me. I did not know

what it had in store for me. But I did know that this was forever, that

Katya was mine and I hers for as long as we live.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

WHAТ АWAITED ME IN MOSCOW

Imagine yourself returning to your home, in which you had spent half

your life, to suddenly find yourself being stared at in surprise, as if you

had come to the wrong place. That was what I experienced when I

returned to school after visiting Ensk.

The first person I met, down in the cloakroom, was Romashka. He

scowled when he saw me, then grinned.

"Hullo!" he said in a tone of malicious glee. "Tishoo! Bless you!"

The cad seemed very pleased.

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None of the other boys were about-it was the last day before term

began. Korablev passed down the corridor and I ran after him.

"Good morning, Ivan Pavlovich!"

"Ah, it's you!" he said gravely. "Come and see me, I want to speak to

you."

____________

The portrait of a young woman stood on Korablev's desk, and for the

moment I did not recognise Maria Vasilievna—she was much too

beautiful. She was wearing a coral necklace, the same one Katya had

worn at our school ball. The sight of that necklace somehow bucked me

up. It was like a greeting from Katya.

"Ivan Pavlovich, what's the matter?" I began.

"This is the matter," Korablev said slowly. "They're going to expel you

from the school."

"What for?"

"Don't you know?" "I don't."

Korablev eyed me sternly. "I don't like that at all." "Honestly, I don't,

Ivan Pavlovich."

"For nine days AWOL," he said, turning down one finger. "For

insulting Likho. For fighting."

"I see! Very good," I said very calmly. "But before expelling me be so

good as to hear me out." "Go ahead."

"Ivan Pavlovich," I began in a solemn tone, "you want to know why I

socked Romashka one in his ugly mug?" "Leave the 'ugly mugs' out of

it," Korablev said. "All right. I gave him one in his ugly mug because he's

a cad. For one thing, he told the Tatarinovs about me and Katya.

Secondly, he listens to what the boys say about Nikolai Antonich and

narks on them. Third, I found him rummaging in my box. It was a

regular search. The boys saw me catch him at it, and I hit him, it's true. I

admit, it wasn't right to use my boot, but I'm only human after all. It

was more than flesh and blood could stand. It might have happened to

anybody."

"All right. Go on."

"As for Likho, you know about that already. Let him first prove that I

am an idealist. Did you read my essay?" "Yes, it's bad."

"That may be, but there isn't a hint of idealism in it. You can take that

from me." "All right. Go on." "That's all. What else is there?"

"What else? Do you know they have had the police searching for you?"

"Ivan Pavlovich... Well, that was wrong of me, perhaps. I did tell

Valya, but I suppose that doesn't count. All right. But do you mean to

say they're going to expel me because I went off on holiday-where do

you think?-to my hometown where I haven't been for eight years?"

I knew there was going to be ructions when Korablev mentioned the

police, and I wasn't mistaken. He went for me baldheaded, shouting at

the top of his voice, and I could only slip in an occasional timid: "Ivan

Pavlovich!" "Hold your tongue!"

And he would pause himself for a moment, but only to draw breath

for a renewed attack.

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It slowly dawned on me that I really had a lot to answer for. But

would they really expel me? If they did, then all was lost. It was goodbye

to flying school. Goodbye to life! Korablev stopped at last.

"Your behaviour has been outrageous!" he said.

"Ivan Pavlovich," I began in a voice that was croaky, rather than

tremulous. "I'm not going to argue with you, though on many points you

are not right. But never mind. You don't want them to expel me, do

you?"

Korablev was silent, then he said: "And if I don't?"

"Then tell me what I have to do?"

"You must apologise to Likho."

"All right. But first let him-"

"I've spoken to him!" Korablev interrupted with annoyance. "He's

crossed out the 'idealism'. But the mark remains the same. Secondly,

you must apologise to Romashka too."

"Never!"

"But you admitted yourself that it wasn't right."

"All the same. You can expel me, but I won't apologise to him."

"Look here, Sanya," Korablev said gravely, "I had great difficulty in

persuading them to call you before a meeting of the Teachers' Council.

But now I'm beginning to regret taking all that trouble. If you come

there and start saying your 'Never! You can expel me!' they'll expel you

for certain. You may be sure of that."

He laid special emphasis on these words and I understood from his

expression whom he had in mind. Nikolai Antonich immediately

appeared before me, suave, smooth-spoken and verbose. That one

would do everything to get me expelled.

"I don't think you have the right to risk your whole future through

petty vanity."

"It isn't petty vanity, it's a point of honour!" I said warmly. "Would you

have me hush up this Romashka affair just because it affects Nikolai

Antonich, who has the power to decide whether I'm to be expelled or

not? Would you have me act so meanly? Never! I know why he'll insist

on having me expelled. He wants to get rid of me, wants me to go away

somewhere so's not to meet Katya. Not likely! I'll tell them everything at

the Teachers' Council. I'll tell them that Romashka is a cad and only a

cad would apologise to him." Korablev became thoughtful.

"Wait a minute," he said. "You say Romashov eavesdrops on the boys

and then reports to Nikolai Antonich what they say about him. But how

can you prove it?" "I have a witness—Valya." "Valya whom?" "Zhukov."

"H'm that's interesting," Korablev said. "Why has Valya kept quiet

about this? He's your chum, isn't he?"

"Romashka has some influence over him. He looks at him at night,

and Valya can't stand it. Besides, he made Valya give his word of honour

he would not babble about what Romashka had told him. Valya's a fool,

of course, to have given his word of honour, but once he's given it he

must keep his mouth shut. Isn't that so?"

Korablev stood up. He paced the room, took out a comb and tidied his

moustache, then his eyebrows, and then his moustache again. He was

thinking. My heart hammered, but I did not say another word. I let him

think. I even breathed more quietly so's not to distract him.

122

"Very well, Sanya. You're not schooled in cunning, anyway," Korablev

said at last. "Put the thing to the Teachers' Council exactly the way you

have told me. But on one condition—"

"What's that, Ivan Pavlovich?"

"That you keep cool. You just said, for instance, that Nikolai Antonich

wants to get you expelled because of Katya. You shouldn't say that at the

Council meeting."

"Ivan Pavlovich, what do you take me for? Don't I understand?"

"You understand, all right, but you get too excited. I tell you what,

Sanya, let's make this arrangement. I'll keep my hand on the table like

this, palm downwards, and you'll keep your eye on it as you speak. If I

start drumming the table, that means you're getting excited. If I don't,

you aren't."

"All right, Ivan Pavlovich. Thank you. When's the meeting?"

"Today at three. But they'll call you in a bit later."

He asked me to send Valya to him and we parted.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I BURN MY BOATS

It was an ordinary meeting in our small teachers' room, at a table

covered with a blue cloth with ragged tassels. But it seemed to me that

they were all looking at me with a sort of enigmatic, meaningful

expression. Korablev gave a laugh when I came in, and I thought:

"That's on purpose."

"Well, Grigoriev," Nikolai Antonich began in a mild tone, "you know,

of course, why we have called you to this meeting. You have distressed

us, and not only us, but, I may say, the whole school. Distress us by your

wanton behaviour, which is unworthy of the human society in which we

live, and to whose development we must contribute to the best of our

ability and powers."

I said:

"Please put your questions."

"Allow me, please, Nikolai Antonich," Korablev put in quickly.

"Grigoriev, tell us please where you spent the nine days since you ran

away from school?"

"I did not run away, I went to Ensk," I said calmly. "My sister lives

there and I haven't seen her for eight years. Judge Skovorodnikov can

confirm this-I stayed with him: 13, Gogolevskaya Street, formerly the

Marcouse Mansion."

If I had said frankly that I had spent those nine days with Katya

Tatarinova, who had been sent away to keep us from meeting each other

at least during the holidays, my words could not have had a more

disconcerting effect on Nikolai Antonich. He paled, blinked and cocked

his head sharply to one side.

"Why didn't you tell anybody you were going away?" Korablev asked.

I admitted that I was guilty of a breach of discipline and promised

that it would never happen again.

123

"Excellent, Grigoriev," said Nikolai Antonich. "Now that is an

excellent answer. It remains for us to hope that you will have just as

satisfactory explanations for your other actions."

He looked at me affectionately. His composure was marvellous! "Now

tell us what happened between you and Mr Likho." To this day I can't

understand why, in telling the story of my relations with Likho, I did not

mention a word about "idealism". It may have been because I

considered that since Likho had withdrawn his accusation there was

nothing to talk about. This was a bad mistake. Besides, I should not

have mentioned that I wrote my essays without referring to the "critics".

It did not go down well. Korablev frowned and laid his hand on the

table.

"So you don't like the critics?" Nikolai Antonich said dryly. "What did

you say to Mr Likho? Please repeat it word for word."

Repeat to the Teachers' Council what I had said to Likho? Impossible!

If Likho had not been such a fathead he would have intervened at this

point to have this question withdrawn. But he just stared at me with an

air of triumph. "Well," Nikolai Antonich prompted.

"Nikolai Antonich, allow me," Korablev interposed. "We know what

he said to Mr Likho. We'd like to know what explanation he gives to his

conduct."

"I beg your pardon!" said Likho. "I insist that he repeat what he said! I

never heard such things even from the defectives at the Dostoyevsky

School."

I was silent. Had I been able to read thoughts at a distance, I would

have read in Korablev's eyes: "Sanya, tell them he accused you of

'idealism'."

"Well!" Nikolai Antonich repeated indulgently. "I don't remember," I

muttered.

It was silly, because everybody saw at once that I was lying. Likho

snorted.

"Today he insults me for giving him a bad mark, tomorrow he'll cut

my throat," he said. "What hooliganism!"

I felt like giving him a punch on the nose, like I had very nearly done

that time on the stairs, but I didn't, of course. I clenched my teeth and

stared at Korablev's hand. He was drumming lightly on the table.

"It was a bad essay, I admit," I said, trying to keep cool and thinking

with hatred how to extricate myself from this stupid position. "It may

not have earned an 'extremely feeble' mark, because there isn't such a

mark, but it wasn't up to the mark, I admit. Anyway, if the Council

decides that I ought to apologise, then I'll apologise."

Obviously, this was another silly thing to say. All started talking

together, saying God knows what, and Korablev eyed me with

unconcealed annoyance.

"Yes, Grigoriev," Nikolai Antonich said with a deprecating smile. "So

you are ready to apologise to Mr Likho only if the Council takes a

decision to that effect. In other words, you don't feel guilty. Ah, well!

We'll make a note of that and pass to the next question."

"Risk your whole future through petty vanity," the words came back

to me.

"I apologise," I said awkwardly, turning to Likho. But Nikolai

Antonich was speaking again, and Likho made out as if he had not heard

me.

124

"Now this vicious attack on Romashov. You kicked him in the face,

Grigoriev, inflicting serious injuries, which have noticeably affected the

health of your comrade Romashov. How do you explain this conduct,

the like of which has never been heard of within the walls of our

school?"

I think I hated him more than ever at that moment for the smooth

meandering way he spoke. But Korablev's fingers rose warningly above

the table and I kept my temper.

"For one thing, I don't consider Romashov a comrade of mine.

Secondly, I hit him only once. Thirdly, he doesn't show any sign of

impaired health."

This roused a storm of indignation, but Korablev nodded his head

ever so slightly.

"My conduct can be explained in this way," I proceeded more calmly.

"I consider Romashov a cad and can prove it at any time. Instead of a

beating, we should try him by a court of honour and have the whole

school attend the trial."

Nikolai Antonich wanted to stop me, but I plunged on.

"I affirm that Romashov is influencing the weaker boys

psychologically, trying to get a hold on them. If you want an example I

can give it to you—Valya Zhukov. Romashov takes advantage of the fact

that Valya is nervous and scares the life out of him. What does he do?

First he gets him to give his word of honour to keep mum, then tells him

all his low-down secrets. I was simply amazed when I heard about it. A

Komsomol boy who gives his word not to tell anybody anything-about

what? About what he hasn't heard yet himself! What do you call that?

And that's not all!"

Korablev had been drumming the table for some time, but I was no

longer worrying whether I was excited or not. I don't think I was a bit

excited.

"And that's not all! Now I ask you," I said loudly, turning to Nikolai

Antonich, "could such a person as Romashov exist in our school if he did

not have protectors? He could not. And he does have them! At least, I

know one of them—Nikolai Antonich!"

Spoken like a man! I never thought I'd had it in me to tell him this

straight to his face! The room was silent, the whole Council waiting to

see what would happen. Nikolai Antonich gave a laugh and paled. He

always did go a bit pale when he laughed.

"Can this be proved? Easy as anything. Nikolai Antonich has always

been interested in what they say about him in the school. I don't know

why he should be. The fact remains that he hired Romashov for this

purpose. I say 'hired' because Romashov never does anything for

nothing. He hired him, and Romashov started eavesdropping on the

boys and reporting to Nikolai Antonich what they said about him, and

afterwards he gets Zhukov to give him his word of honour not to blab

and tells him all about his talebearing. You may ask me—why did you

keep silent if you knew about this? I got to know this just before I went

away, and Zhukov promised me to write to the Komsomol Group about

it, but he's only done that today."

I stopped speaking. Korablev removed his hand from the table and

turned to Nikolai Antonich with a look of interest. He was the only one,

by the way, who bore himself with ease. The other teachers looked

embarrassed.

125

"Have you finished your explanations, Grigoriev?" said Nikolai

Antonich in a level voice, as though nothing had happened.

"Yes."

"Are there any questions?"

"Nikolai Antonich," said Korablev in a courteous tone, "I believe we

can dismiss Grigoriev. Don't you think we ought to invite Zhukov or

Romashov in now?"

Nikolai Antonich undid the top button of his waistcoat and placed his

hand over his heart. He had gone paler still and a strand of hair combed

back over his head suddenly came loose and tumbled over his forehead.

He fell back in his chair and closed his eyes. Everyone rushed over to

him. So ended the meeting.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

AN OLD FRIEND

My speech at the Teachers' Council was the talk of the school, and I

found myself a very busy man. To say that I felt a hero would be an

exaggeration. Nevertheless, the girls from other classes came to look at

me and commented audibly on my appearance. For the first time in my

life my short stature was overlooked.

I was therefore disagreeably surprised when, at the height of my glory,

the Komsomol Group passed on me a severe reprimand and warning.

The Teachers' Council was not meeting owing to Nikolai Antonich's

illness, but Korablev said that they might decide to transfer me to

another school.

This did not make pleasant hearing, and what's more, it was unfair. I

had nothing to say against the Group's decision. But to have me

transferred to another school! For what? For having shown up

Romashka for the cad he was? For having shown up Nikolai Antonich,

who was his protector? I was in such a cheerless mood that, sitting in

the library, I heard a loud whisper in the doorway: "Which one?" • I

looked up to see a tall young fellow with a mop of red hair eyeing me

questioningly from the doorway. Red-haired people always cultivate

shocks of hair, but this chap's had a wild sort of look, like those you see

on primitive man in your geography textbook. I leapt to my feet and

rushed towards him, overthrowing a chair.

"Pyotr!"

We pumped each other's hands, then, on second thoughts, embraced.

He was very much like his photograph, which Sanya had shown me,

except that on the photograph his hair was smoothed down. Was I glad!

I did not feel the slightest embarrassment—it was like meeting my own

brother.

"Pyotr! This is a surprise! Gee, I'm glad to see you!"

He laughed.

"I thought you were living in Turkestan. Didn't you make it?"

"What about you?"

126

"I did," said Pyotr. "But I didn't like it. Much too hot out there, you

feel thirsty all the time. I was run in, got fed up and came back. You'd

have kicked the bucket there."

We put on our coats and started down the stairs, talking away all the

time. And here a very strange encounter took place.

On the landing outside the geography room stood a woman in a coat

with a squirrel collar. She was standing by the banisters looking down

the well of the staircase-for a moment I thought she was going to throw

herself down the well, because she swayed by the banisters with her eyes

closed. We must have frightened her, and she moved uncertainly

towards the door. It was Maria Vasilievna. I recognised her at once,

though she was in an unfamiliar guise. Perhaps, if I had been alone, she

would have spoken to me. But I was with Pyotr, so she just nodded to

me in response to my awkward bow and turned away.

She had grown thinner since I last saw her and her face was mask-like

and sombre. With this thought in my mind I went out into the street,

and Pyotr and I went for a walk together-just the two of us again, again

in winter, again in Moscow, after a long separation.

"Remember?" we kept saying, as we dug up old memories, walking

very quickly for some reason. It was snowing and there were lots of

children on the boulevards. One young nursemaid looked at us and

laughed.

"Hey, what are we running like this for?" said Pyotr, and we slowed

down.

"Pyotr, I've got a proposal," I said, when, having walked our fill, we

were sitting in a cafe in Tverskaya.

"Go ahead!"

"I'm going to make a phone-call, and you sit here, drink your coffee

and say nothing."

The telephone was some distance from our table, right near the

entrance, and I deliberately spoke loudly.

"Katya, I'd like you to meet a friend. Can you come along? What are

you doing? By the way, I want to speak with you."

"So do I. I'd come, but everybody's ill here." She sounded sad and I

felt a sudden urgent desire to see her.

"What do you mean, everybody? I've just seen Maria Vasilievna."

"Where?"

"She was calling on Korablev."

"Ah," Katya said in a rather odd voice. "No, Grandma's ill. Sanya, I

gave Mother those letters," she added in a whisper, and I involuntarily

pressed the receiver closer to my ear. "I told her that we had met in

Ensk and then I gave it to her."

"And how did she take it?" I asked, also in a whisper.

"Very badly. I'll tell you later. Very badly."

She fell silent and I could hear her breathing through the telephone.

We said goodbye and I returned to the table with a sense of guilt. I felt

dejected and uneasy, and Pyotr seemed to guess my state of mind.

"I say," he began, deliberately going off on a new tack, "did you

discuss this flying school plan of yours with Father?"

"Yes."

"What does he say?"

"He approves."

127

Pyotr sat with his long legs stretched out, thoughtfully fingering the

places where a beard and moustache would be growing in the course of

time.

"I must talk things over with him too," he murmured. "You see, last

year I wanted to enter the Academy of Arts."

"Well?"

"But this year I've changed my mind."

"Why?"

"I may not have the talent for it."

I started laughing. But he looked serious and worried.

"Well, if you'd like to know, I think it strange, your wanting to go in

for art. I always thought of you as becoming an explorer, say, or a sea

captain."

"That's more interesting, of course," Pyotr said irresolutely. "But I like

painting."

"Have you shown your work to anybody?"

"Yes, to X-."

He gave the name of a well-known painter.

"Well?"

"He says it's not bad."

"That settles it, then! It would be cockeyed if you, with your talent,

were to go to some flying school or other! You may be ruining a future

Repin in you."

"Oh, I don't know."

"I'm not so sure."

"You're kidding," Pyotr said with annoyance. "This is a serious

matter."

We left the cafe, and wandered about Tverskaya for half an hour,

talking about everything under the sun, switching from our Ensk to

Shanghai, which had just been captured by the People's Army, from

Shanghai to Moscow, to my school, from my school to Pyotr's, trying to

impress upon each other that we were not living in this world just any

old how, but with a philosophical purpose...

CHAPTER NINETEEN

IT COULD ALL HAVE BEEN DIFFERENT

Gone were those remote times when, coming in after ten o'clock, we

had, with fast-beating heart, to sidle round the fearsome Japhet, who,

clad in his huge sheepskin coat, sat on a stool at the entrance and slept—

if you were lucky to find him asleep. But now I was in my last year and

could come in whenever I liked.

It wasn't very late, though—round about twelve. The boys were still

chatting. Valya was writing something, sitting on his bed with his legs

tucked under him.

128

"I say, Sanya, Korablev wants to see you," he said. "That's if you came

in before twelve. What's the time now?"

"Half past eleven."

"Hurry up!"

I slipped into my overcoat and ran off to see Korablev.

Ours was a most extraordinary conversation, one that I shall never

forget as long as I live, and I must describe it with perfect calm. I must

keep calm, especially now, when so many years have passed. It could all

have been different, of course. It could all have been different if I had