Two Captains

but realised what every word of mine meant for her, if I had been able to

foresee what would happen after our conversation. But there is no end

of these "ifs" and there is nothing I can blame myself for. Here, then, is

the conversation that took place.

When I came in I found Maria Vasilievna with Korablev. She had been

sitting there all the evening. But she had come to see, not him, but me,

and she said as much in her very first words.

She sat erect with a blank face, patting her hair from time to time with

a slim hand. Wine and biscuits stood on the table, and Korablev kept

refilling his glass while she only took one sip at hers. She kept smoking

all the time and there was ash all over the place, even on her knees. She

was wearing the familiar string of coral beads and gave little tugs at it

several times as though it were strangling her. That's all.

"The navigating officer writes that he cannot risk sending this letter

through the post," she said. "Yet both letters were in the same post-bag.

How do you account for that?"

I said that I did not know. One would have to ask the officer about

that, if he were still alive. She shook her head. "If he were alive!"

"Perhaps his relatives would know? And then, Maria Vasilievna," I

said in a sudden flash of inspiration, "the navigating officer was picked

up by Lieutenant Sedov's expedition. They would know. He told them

everything, I'm sure of it." "Yes, maybe," she answered.

"And then there's that packet for the Hydrographical Board. If the

navigating officer sent the letter through the post he probably sent that

packet by the same mail. We must find that out." Maria Vasilievna again

said: "Yes."

I paused. I had been speaking alone, and Korablev had not yet uttered

a word.

"What were you doing in Ensk?" she asked me suddenly. "Have you

relatives there?"

I said yes, I had. A sister.

"I love Ensk," she remarked, addressing herself to Korablev. "It's

wonderful there. Such gardens! I've never been in any gardens since."

And suddenly she started talking about Ensk. She said she had three

aunts living there who did not believe in God and were very proud of it,

and one of them had graduated in philosophy at Heidelberg. I had never

known her to talk so much. She sat there pale and beautiful, with

shining eyes, smoking and smoking.

"Katya told me you remembered some more passages from this

letter," she suddenly switched back from the subject of her aunts and

hometown. "But I couldn't get her to tell me what it was." "Yes, I do

remember them."

I was expecting her to ask me what they were, but she said nothing. It

was as if she were afraid to hear them from me.

129

"Well, Sanya?" Korablev said in a brisk tone of voice that was

obviously feigned.

"It ended like this," I said. " 'Greetings from you...' Is that right?"

Maria Vasilievna nodded.

"And it went on: '...from your Mongotimo Hawk's Claw...' "

"Mongotimo?" Korablev queried, astonished.

"Yes, Mongotimo," I repeated firmly.

"Montigomo Hawk's Claw," said Maria Vasilievna, and for the first

time her voice shook slightly. "I used to call him that."

"Montigomo, if you say so," I said. "I remember it as Mongotimo... 'as

you once called me. God, how long ago that was. I am not complaining,

though. We shall see each other again and all will be well. But one

thought, one thought torments me.' 'One thought' comes twice, it's not

me repeating it, that's how it was in the letter."

Maria Vasilievna nodded again.

" 'It's galling to think,' " I went on, " '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.' "

I may have overstressed the last word, because Maria Vasilievna, who

had been very pale already, went still paler. She sat before us, now white

as death, smoking and smoking. Then she said something that sounded

very queer and made me think for the first time that she might be a bit

mad. But I did not attach any importance to it, as I thought that

Korablev, too, was a bit mad that evening. He, of all people, should have

realised what was happening to her! But he had lost his head

completely. I daresay he was picturing Maria Vasilievna marrying him

the very next day.

"Nikolai Antonich fell ill after that meeting," she said to Korablev. "I

wanted to call the doctor, but he wouldn't let me. I haven't spoken to

him about these letters. He's upset as it is. I don't think I ought to just

now—what do you say?"

She was crushed, confounded, but I still understood nothing.

"If that's the case I'll do it myself!" I retorted. "I'll send him a copy. Let

him read it."

"Sanya!" Korablev cried, coming to himself.

"Excuse me, Ivan Pavlovich, but I'll have my say. I feel very strongly

about this. It's a fact that the expedition ended in disaster through his

fault. That's a historical fact. He is charged with a terrible crime. And I

consider, if it comes to that, that Maria Vasilievna, as Captain

Tatarinov's wife, ought to bring this accusation against him herself."

She wasn't Captain Tatarinov's wife, she was his widow. She was now

the wife of Nikolai Antonich, and so would have to bring this accusation

against her own husband. But I hadn't tumbled to this either.

"Sanya!" Korablev shouted again.

But I had already stopped. I had nothing more to say. Our

conversation continued, though there was nothing more to talk about. I

only said that the land mentioned in the letter was Severnaya Zemlya

and that, consequently, Severnaya Zemlya had been discovered by

Captain Tatarinov. All those geographical terms, "longitude", "latitude",

sounded strange in that room at that hour. Korablev paced furiously up

and down the room. Maria Vasilievna smoked incessantly, and the

130

stubs, pink from her lipstick, formed a small mound in the ashtray

before her. She was motionless and calm, and only tugged feebly now

and again at her coral necklace. How far away from her was that

Severnaya Zemlya, lying between some meridians or other!

That was all. Taking leave of her, I began muttering something again,

but Korablev advanced upon me with a stern frown and I found myself

bundled out of the room.

CHAPTER TWENTY

MARIA VASILIEVNA

What surprised me more than anything was that Maria Vasilievna had

not said a word about Katya. Katya and I had spent nine days together

in Ensk, yet Maria Vasilievna never mentioned it.

This silence was suspicious, and it was on my mind that night until I

fell asleep, and then again in the morning during Physics, Social Science

and Literature. I thought about it after school, too, when I wandered

aimlessly about the streets. I remember stopping in front of a billboard

and mechanically reading the titles of the plays, when a girl suddenly

came round the corner and crossed the street at a run. She was without

a hat and wore nothing but a light dress with short sleeves—in such a

frost! Perhaps that was why I did not immediately recognise her.

"Katya!"

She looked round but did not stop, and merely waved her hand. I

overtook her.

"Why haven't you got your coat on, Katya? What's the matter?"

She wanted to say something, but her teeth were cluttering and she had

to clench them and fight for self-control before being able to say:

"I'm going for a doctor. Mother's very ill."

"What is it?"

"I don't know. I think she's poisoned herself."

There are moments when life suddenly changes gear, and everything

seems to gain momentum, speeding and changing faster than you can

realise.

From the moment I heard the words: "I think she's poisoned herself,

everything changed into high gear, and the words kept ringing in my

head with frightful insistence.

We ran to one doctor in Pimenovsky Street, then to another doctor

who lived over the former Hanzhonkov's cimena and burst into a quiet,

tidy flat with dust-sheets over the furniture and were met by a surly old

woman wearing what looked like another dark-blue dust-sheet.

She heard us out with a deprecating shake of the head and left the

room. On her way out she took something off the table in case we might

pinch it.

A few minutes later the doctor came in. He was a tubby pink-faced

man with a close-cropped grey head and a cigar in his mouth.

"Well, young people?"

131

We told him what it was all about, gave him the address and ran out.

In the street, without further ado, I made Katya put on my coat. Her

hair had come undone and she pinned it up as we ran along. But one of

her plaits came loose again and she angrily pushed it under the coat.

An ambulance was standing at the door and we stopped dead in our

tracks at the sight. The ambulance men were coming down the stairs

with a stretcher on which lay Maria Vasilievna.

Her uncovered face was as white as it had been at Korablev's the night

before, only now it looked as if carved in ivory.

I drew back against the banisters to let the stretcher pass, and Katya,

with a piteous murmur "Mummy!", walked alongside it. But Maria

Vasilievna did not open her eyes, and did not stir. I realised that she was

going to die.

Sick at heart I stood in the yard watching them push the stretcher into

the ambulance. I saw the old lady tuck the blanket round Maria

Vasilievna's feet with trembling hands, saw the steam coming from

everyone's mouth, the ambulance man's, too, as he produced a book

that had to be signed, and from Nikolai Antonich's as he peered

painfully from under his glasses and signed it.

"Not here," the man said roughly with a gesture of annoyance, and put

the book away into the big pocket of his white overall.

Katya ran home and returned in her own coat, leaving mine in the

kitchen. She got into the ambulance. The doors closed on Maria

Vasilievna, who lay there white and ghastly, and the ambulance, starting

off with a jerk like an ordinary lorry, sped on its way to the casualty

ward.

Nikolai Antonich and the old lady were left alone in the courtyard. For

a time they stood there in silence. Then he turned and went inside,

moving his feet mechanically as though he were afraid of falling. I had

never seen him like that before.

The old lady asked me to meet the doctor and tell him he was not

needed. I ran off and met him in Triumfalnaya Square, at a tobacconist

kiosk. The doctor was buying a box of matches.

"Dead?" he asked.

I told him that she was not and that the ambulance had taken her to

hospital and I could pay him if he wanted.

"No need, no need," the doctor said gruffly.

I went back to find the old lady sitting in the kitchen, weeping. Nikolai

Antonich was no longer there—he had gone off to the hospital.

"Nina Kapitonovna," I said, "is there anything I can do for you?" She

blew her nose and wept and blew her nose again. This went on for a long

time while I stood and waited. At last she asked me to help her on with

her coat and we took a tram to the hospital.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

ONE IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT

132

That night, with the sense of speed still whistling as it were in my ears

as I hurtled on, though I was lying in my bed in the dark, it dawned on

me that Maria Vasilievna's decision to do away with herself had been

made when sitting in Korablev's room the night before. That's why she

had been so calm and had smoked such a lot and said such queer things.

Her mind was on some mysterious track of its own, of which we knew

nothing. Everything she said was tinctured by the decision she had come

to. It was not me she had been asking questions, but herself, and she

answered them herself.

Perhaps she had thought that I was mistaken and that it was

somebody else the letter referred to. Perhaps she had been hoping that

the passages which I had remembered and which Katya had deliberately

kept from her, would not have the terrible import she feared. Perhaps

she had been hoping that Nikolai Antonich, who had done so much for

her late husband-so much that that alone was reason enough for

marrying him—would turn out to be not so guilty and base as she

feared.

And I? Look what I had done!

I went hot and cold all over. I flung back the blanket and took deep

breaths to steady myself and think matters out calmly. I went over that

conversation again. How clear it was to me now! It was as if each word

was turning slowly round before me and I could now see its other,

hidden side.

"I love Ensk. It's wonderful there. Such gardens!" It had been pleasant

to her to recall her youth at that moment. She was taking farewell, as it

were, of her hometown-now that she had made her decision.

"Montigomo Hawk's Claw - I used to call him that." Her voice had

shaken, because nobody else knew she had called him that, and so it was

undeniable proof that I had remembered the words right.

"I haven't spoken to him about these letters. He's upset as it is. I don't

think I ought to just now—what do you say?" And these words, too,

which had seemed so odd to me yesterday—how clear they were now!

He was her husband, perhaps the closest person in the world to her.

And she simply did not want to upset him, knowing that she had

troubles enough in store for him.

I had forgotten all about my deep breathing and was sitting up in bed,

thinking and thinking. She had wanted to say goodbye to Korablev as

well—that was it! He loved her, too, maybe more than anybody else did.

She had wanted to take leave of the life which they might have made a

go of. I had always had a feeling that it was Korablev she cared for.

I should have been asleep long ago, seeing that I had a very serious

term-test facing me the next day, and that it was anything but pleasant

to brood over the happenings of that unhappy day.

I must have fallen asleep, but only for a minute. Suddenly a voice

close at my side said quietly: "She's dead." I opened my eyes, but nobody

was there, of course. I must have said it myself.

And so, against my will, I found myself recalling how Nina

Kapitonovna and I had gone to the hospital together. I tried to go to

sleep, but I couldn't drive the memories away.

We had sat on a big white seat next to some doors, and it was some

time before I realised that the stretcher with Maria Vasilievna on it was

in the next room so close to us.

133

And then an elderly nurse had come out and said: "You have come to

see Tatarinova? You may go in." And she herself hastily put a white

gown on the old lady and tied the strings.

A chill struck my heart, I understood at once that she must be in a bad

way if you were allowed in without a special permission. My heart went

cold again when the elderly nurse went up to another nurse, somewhat

younger, who was registering patients, and in answer to a question of

hers, said: "Goodness, no! Not a chance."

Then began a long wait. I gazed at the white door and imagined them

all-Nikolai Antonich, the old lady and Katya-standing around the

stretcher on which Maria Vasilievna lay. Then somebody came out,

leaving the door ajar for a moment, and I saw that it was not like that at

all. There was no longer any stretcher there, and something white with a

dark head lay on a low couch with somebody in white kneeling in front

of it. I also saw a bare arm hanging down from the couch, and then the

door shut. After that came a thin hoarse scream, and the nurse who was

registering patients stopped for a minute, then resumed her writing and

explaining. I don't know why, but I realised at once that the scream was

Nikolai Antonich's. In such a thin little voice! Like a child's.

The elderly nurse came out and, with a business-like air that was

obviously affected, began talking to some young man who stood

kneading his hat in his hands. She glanced at me—because I had come

with Nina Kapitonovna—then looked away at once. And I realised that

Maria Vasilievna was dead.

Afterwards I heard the nurse saying to someone: "Such a pity, a

beautiful woman." It all seemed to be happening in a dream, and I'm

not sure whether it was she who said it or somebody else, as Katya and

the old lady came out of the room in which she had died.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

IT ISN'T HIM

Those were miserable days and I don't feel like dwelling on them,

though I remember every conversation, every encounter, almost every

thought. They were days which cast a large shadow, as it were, on my

life.

Soon after Maria Vasilievna's funeral I sat down to work. It seemed to

me that there was something like a sense of self-preservation in the

fierce persistence with which I applied myself to my studies, thrusting

all thoughts behind me. It was not easy, especially bearing in mind that

when I went up to Katya at the funeral she turned away from me.

It happened like this. Unexpectedly, very many people came to the

funeral-colleagues of Maria Vasilievna's and even students who had

been at the Medical Institute with her. She had always seemed a lonely

person, but apparently many people knew her and liked her. Among

these strangers, all talking in whispers and gazing at the gateway,

waiting for the coffin to be carried out, stood Korablev, hollow-eyed, his

big moustache looking enormous on his haggard face.

Nikolai Antonich stood slightly apart with lowered head, and Nina

Kapitonovna held his arm. It looked as if she was supporting him,

134

though he stood quite straight. The Bubenchikov old ladies were there,

too, looking like nuns in their old-fashioned black dresses.

Katya was standing next to them staring steadily at the gate. Her

cheeks were rosy in spite of her grief, which was evident even in the

impatient gesture with which she adjusted her hat when it kept slipping

down on her forehead-probably she had not pinned her hair up

properly.

Half an hour passed, but the coffin had not been carried out yet. And

then suddenly I decided to go up to her.

It may not have been the right thing for me to do at such a moment as

this—I don't know. But I wanted to say something to her, if only a single

word.

"Katya!"

She had looked at me and turned away.

I sat over my books for days on end. This was my last semester at

school, and I was determined to get "highly satisfactory" marks on all

subjects. This was no simple task, especially when it came to Literature.

Came the day when even Likho, with an air of pained reluctance, gave

me his "highly satisfactory". My passing-out essay did not worry me-I

just dashed it off in accordance with the requirements of this loaf-head,

knowing that he would give me a high mark if only through gratified

pride.

I came out top of the class, with only Valya ahead of me. But then he

had brilliant capabilities and was much cleverer than me.

But the shadow crept on. It was with an effort that Korablev brought

himself to look at me whenever we met. Nikolai Antonich did not come

to the school, and though no one mentioned our clash at the Teachers'

Council, they all regarded me with a sort of reproach, as if that fainting

fit of his at the council meeting and Maria Vasilievna's death vindicated

him completely.

Everyone avoided me and I was lonelier than ever. But I little knew

what blow awaited me.

One day, about a fortnight after Maria Vasilievna's death, I went in to

see Korablev. I wanted to ask him to go with us to the Geology Museum

(I was then a Young Pioneer leader and my group had asked to be taken

to the museum).

But he came out to me in a very agitated state and told me to call later.

"When, Ivan Pavlovich?"

"I don't know. Later."

In the hall hung a coat and hat and on a side table lay the brown

woollen scarf which I had seen the old lady was knitting. Korablev had

Nikolai Antonich in his room. I went away.

What was Nikolai Antonich doing there? He hadn't been in Korablev’s

place for at least four years. What was Korablev so upset about?

When I went back, Nikolai Antonich was no longer there. I remember

everything as if it were yesterday: the stove was burning, and Korablev,

wearing the thick shaggy jacket he always put on when he was a little

tipsy or out of sorts, was sitting in front of the stove, gazing into the fire.

He looked up when I came in, and said: "What have you done, Sanya!

My God, what have you done!"

"Ivan Pavlovich!"

"My God, what have you done!" he repeated in a tone of despair. "It

isn't him, it isn't him at all! He has proved it undeniably, incontestably."

135

"I don't understand, Ivan Pavlovich. What are you talking about?"

Korablev got up, then sat down and got up again.

"Nikolai Antonich has been to see me. He has proved me that the

Captain's letter does not refer to him at all. It's some other Nikolai,

some merchant by the name of von Vyshimirsky."

I was astounded.

"But Ivan Pavlovich, it's a lie. He's lying!"

"No, it's true," said Korablev. "It was a vast undertaking of which we

know nothing. There were lots of people involved, merchants, ship

chandlers and what not, and the Captain knew all about it from the very

beginning. He knew that the expedition had been fitted out very badly,

and he wrote to Nikolai Antonich about it. I saw his letters with my own

eyes."

I could hardly believe my ears. I had always thought that the letter I

had found at Ensk was the only one in existence, and this news about

other letters from the Captain simply bowled me over.

"Lots of things went wrong with them," Korablev continued. "Some

ship owner took the crew off just when they were putting out to sea,

they managed, with great difficulty, to get a wireless telegraph

installation, but had to leave it behind because they couldn't get an

operator, and other troubles-so why should Nikolai Antonich be blamed

for all this? It's as clear as anything, my God. And I-I guessed as much...

But I-"

He broke off and suddenly I saw that he was crying. "Ivan Pavlovich," I

said looking away. "It turns out then, that it's not his fault, but the fault

of that 'von' somebody or other. In that case why did Nikolai Antonich

always claim that he had been in charge of the whole business? Ask him

how many beef tea cubes the expedition took with them, how much

macaroni, biscuits and coffee. Why did he never mention this 'von'

before?"

Korablev wiped his eyes and moustache with his handkerchief. He got

some vodka from the cupboard, poured out half a tumbler and

immediately poured a little back with a shaking hand. He drank the

vodka and sat down again.

"Oh, what does it matter now?" he said with a wave of his hand. "But

how blind I was, how terribly blind!" he exclaimed again in a tone of

despair. "I should have persuaded her that it was impossible, incredible,

that even if it was Nikolai Antonich-all the same you couldn't throw the

blame for the failure of such a vast venture on a single man. I could have

said that your insistence was due to your hatred of the man."

I listened to Korablev in silence. I had always liked him and had a

great respect for him, and it was all the more unpleasant to me to see

him in this abject state. He kept blowing his nose, and his hair and

moustache were dishevelled.

"Whether I hate him or not," I said -quietly, "has nothing to do with

it. I don't know what you meant by it, anyway. Do you mean that I stuck

to my version for base personal motives?" Korablev was silent. "Ivan

Pavlovich!" He was still silent.

"Ivan Pavlovich!" I shouted. "You think I got mixed up in this on

purpose so's to have my revenge on Nikolai Antonich? Is that why you

said that even if it was him and not some 'von' or other—all the same

you couldn't throw the blame for the failure of such a vast enterprise on

136

a single man? You believe it's all my fault? Why don't you answer? Do

you?"

Korablev was silent. Everything went dark before my eyes and my

heart pounded in my ears.

"Ivan Pavlovich," I said in a quivering but determined voice. "It

remains for me now to prove that I am right, even if I have to die in the

attempt. But I will prove it. I'll go and see Nikolai Antonich this very day

and ask him to show me those documents and letters. He has convinced

you, now let him convince me."

"Do whatever you like," Korablev said drearily.

I went away. He hadn't stirred and remained seated by the stove,

weary and sunk in despair. We were both in despair, only with me this

feeling was mixed with a sort of cool fury, whereas he was utterly

desolated, old and alone in a cold, empty flat.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

SLANDER

It was all very well to say I'd go and see him and ask him to show me

those letters. I felt sick at the mere thought. I doubted whether he would

even speak to me. As likely as not he'd throw me down the stairs without

further ado. I couldn't very well fight him. After all, he was a sick old

man.

I would have abandoned the idea but for a single thought that never

left me - Katya.

I felt my head beginning to ache at the mere thought of how she had

turned away from me at the funeral. Now I knew why she had done that:

Nikolai Antonich had convinced her that it was all my fault.

I could imagine him talking to her and my heart sank. "That friend of

yours has such an excellent memory. Why did he never mention those

letters before his trip to Ensk?"

Why indeed? How could I have forgotten them? I, who had been so

fascinated by them as a child? I, who had recited them by heart on the

trains between Ensk and Moscow? To forget letters which had dropped

upon our little town like a message from some distant stars?

I had only one explanation-judge for yourselves whether it is correct

or not.

When Katya told me the story of her father, when I examined those

old photographs of him in his regulation jacket with epaulettes and

service cap, when I read his books, it had always seemed to me that all

this belonged to a very distant past, at any rate years before I left Ensk.

The letters, on the other hand, belonged to my childhood, that is, to

quite a different time. It never occurred to me that these two entirely

different periods followed close upon each other. This was not an error

of memory, but quite a different kind of error.

I thought about that "von" a thousand times if I thought about him

once. It was about him, then, that Captain Tatarinov had written:

"The whole expedition sends him our curses." It was about him, then,

that he wrote: "We owe all our misfortunes to him alone." And Korablev

137

had said that you couldn't throw the blame for the failure of such an

enterprise on a single man. The Captain had thought otherwise.

So it was about him that he wrote: "That's the price we had to pay for

that good office." But why should some "von" or other render Captain

Tatarinov this good office? A good office could have been rendered by

his rich cousin—no wonder he had always had so much to say about it.

In short, I had no plan of action whatever when, dressed in my

Sunday best, I called on the Tatarinovs that evening and told the girl-a

stranger to me-who answered the bell that I wanted to see Nikolai

Antonich.

Through the open door I could see them drinking tea in the dining-

room. Nina Kapitonovna was saying something in a low voice and I saw

her sitting by the samovar in her striped shawl.

I don't know what Nikolai Antonich thought when he saw me, but

when he appeared in the doorway he started and slightly recoiled.

"What do you want?" "I wanted to talk to you." There was a brief pause,

then he said: "Come in." I was about to go into his study, but he said:

"No, this way." Afterwards I realised this had been a deliberate ruse on

his part-to get me into the dining-room so as to deal with me in front of

everybody.

They were all somewhat startled to see me following at his heels. The

old Bubenchikov ladies, who were the last people I expected to see

there, jumped up all together. Katya came into the dining-room through

another door and stood stockstill in the doorway. I murmured: "Maybe

it's inconvenient here." "No, it's quite convenient."

I should have said "good evening" the moment I came in, but now it

was too late to say it. Nevertheless, I bowed. Nina Kapitonovna was the

only one who responded-with a slight nod. "Well?"

"You told Ivan Pavlovich that Captain Tatarinov wrote you about a

von Vyshimirsky. I want to know this because it makes me look as if I

purposely tried to convince Maria Vasilievna of your guilt because I had

a grudge against you. At least, that's what Korablev thinks. And others

too. In short, I ask you to show me these letters which go to prove that

some von Vyshimirsky or other is responsible for the loss of the

expedition and that the death of—" (I swallowed the word) "and that all

the rest is my fault."

It was rather a long speech, but as I had prepared it beforehand I

rattled it off without a hitch. I only stumbled when I mentioned the

death of Maria Vasilievna and again at the words "and others too",

because I was thinking of Katya. She was still standing in the doorway,

tensed, holding her breath.

Only now, during this speech, did I notice how old Nikolai Antonich

had grown. With that hooked nose of his and the sagging jowls he was

like an old bird, and even his gold tooth, which used to light up his

whole face, had lost its brightness.

He breathed heavily as he listened to me. He seemed to be at a loss for

a reply. Just then one of the Bubenchikov ladies asked in surprise: "Who

is this?"

He drew his breath and began to speak.

"Who is this?" he queried with a hiss. "It's that foul slanderer I've

been telling you about day in day out."

"Nikolai Antonich, if you're going to call names—"

138

"It's the person who killed her," Nikolai Antonich went on. His face

quivered and he began to crack his knuckles. "That is the person who

slandered me with the most frightful slander the imagination is capable

of. But I'm not dead yet!"

Nobody thought he was, and I was about to tell him as much, when he

started shouting again:

"I'm not dead yet!"

Nina Kapitonovna took hold of his arm. He wrenched it free.

"I could have had the law on him and have him condemned for

everything ... for all that he has done to poison my life. But there are

other laws and other bars, and by these laws he will yet be made to feel

one day what he has done. He killed her," said Nikolai Antonich, and the

tears fairly gushed from his eyes. "She died because of him. Let him go

on living if he can..."

Nina Kapitonovna pushed her chair back and took hold of his arm as

though she were afraid he was going to fall. He stared at her dully. For a

moment I doubted whether I was in the right. But only for a moment.

"Because of whom? My God, because of whom?" Nikolai Antonich

went on. "Because of this guttersnipe, who is so devoid of feeling that he

dares to come again to the house in which she died. Because of this

guttersnipe of impure blood!"

I don't know what he meant by this and why his blood should be any

purer than mine. No matter! I listened to him in silence. Katya stood by

the wall, rigid and very straight.

"—who has dared to enter the house from which I kicked him out like

the snake he is. What a fate mine has been, 0 God! I gave my whole life

to her, I did everything a man could do for the woman he loves, and she

dies on account of this vile, contemptible snake, who tells her that I am

not I, that I had always deceived her, that I had killed her husband, my

own cousin."

I was astonished to hear him speak with such passion and utter

abandon. I felt that I had gone very pale. No matter! I knew how to

answer him.

"Nikolai Antonich," I said, trying to keep cool and noticing that my

tongue was obeying me none too well. "I won't reply to your epithets,

because I understand the state you are in. You did turn me out, but I

came back and will continue to come back until I have proved that I am

absolutely innocent of the death of Maria Vasilievna. And if anyone is

guilty, it's not me, but someone else. The fact is that you have certain

letters of the late Captain Tatarinov which you have used to persuade

Korablev and evidently everybody else that I have slandered you. Will

you please show me those letters so that all can be persuaded that I am

the vile snake you have just said I am."

The uproar that followed these words was terrific. The Bubenchikovs,

still understanding nothing, started shouting again: "Who is this?" As

nobody explained to them who I was they went on shouting louder still.

Nina Kapitonovna was shouting at me too, demanding that I should go

away. But Katya did not utter a word. She stood by the wall and looked

from Nikolai Antonich to me and back again.

Abruptly, all fell silent. Nikolai Antonich pushed the old lady aside

and went into his room from which he returned a moment later with a

batch of letters in his hands. Not just one or two letters, but a batch,

some forty or so. I don't think they were all Captain Tatarinov's letters,

139

more probably they were miscellaneous letters from different people in

connection with the expedition or something of that sort. He flung the

letters at me, spat in my face and dropped into a chair. The old ladies

rushed over to him.

Very likely, if he had spat in my face and hit the target, I would have

knocked him down or even killed him. Nobody had ever spat in my face,

and I would have killed the man who did, rules or no rules. But he

missed. And the letters fell short too.

Naturally, I did not pick them up, though there was a moment when I

very nearly picked one of them up-one which bore a big wax seal and the

words St. Maria on it. But I did not pick them up. I was in this house for

the last time. Katya stood between us, by the armchair in which he lay

with clenched teeth, clutching at his heart. I looked at her, looked her

straight in the face, which I was seeing for the last time.

"Ah, well," I said. "I'm not going to read these letters which you have

thrown into my face. I'll do another thing. I'll find the expedition—1

don't believe it can have disappeared without a trace—and then we'll see

who's right."

I wanted to take my leave of Katya and tell her that I would never

forget the way she turned her back on me at the funeral, but Nikolai

Antonich suddenly got up from the armchair and a hubbub arose again.

The Bubenchikov aunts fell upon me and something struck me painfully

on the back. I waved my hand with a hopeless gesture and went away.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

OUR LAST MEETING

I was more lonely than ever, and buried myself in my books , with a

sort of cold fury. I seemed to have lost even the faculty of thinking. And

a good thing too. It was better that way.

Suddenly it struck me that they might not accept me in the flying

school on account of my health, so I took up gymnastics seriously-high

jumps, swallow dives, back-bends, bar exercises and whatnot. Every

morning I felt my muscles and examined my teeth. What worried me

most, though, was my short stature-all my recent troubles seemed to

have made me shorter still.

At the end of March, however, I got together all the necessary

documents and sent them to the Board of Osoaviakhim (*A voluntary

society for the promotion of aviation and chemical defence.- Tr.) with

an application asking to be sent to the School of Aeronautics in

Leningrad. There is no need to explain why I wanted to leave Moscow.

Pyotr was going to Leningrad too. He had finally made up his mind to

enter the Academy of Arts. Sanya, too, for the same reason.

During the spring holidays Pyotr and I went to Ensk, travelling again

without tickets by the way, because we were saving our money for when

we left school.

But this was quite a different trip and I myself had become quite a

different person these last six months. Aunt Dasha was aghast when she

saw me, and the judge declared that people looking as I did should

140

answer for it before the law and that he would "take every step to

discover the reasons for the defendant's lowered morale".

Pyotr was the only person to whom I had given an account - and a

brief one at that-of my talk with Korablev and my interview with Nikolai

Antonich. Pyotr came out with a surprising suggestion. After listening to

my story he said: "I say, what if you do find it?"

"Find what?"

"The expedition."

"What if I do?" I said to myself.

A shiver of excitement ran through me at the thought. And again, as in

distant childhood, dissolving views appeared before me: white tents in

the snow; panting dogs hauling sledges; a huge man, a giant in fur

boots, coming towards the sledges, and I, too, in fur boots and a huge

fur cap, standing in the opening of a tent, pipe between my teeth...

There was little hope of such a meeting, however. Deep down in my

heart I felt that I was right. But sometimes a chilling sense of doubt

would creep into it, especially when I thought of that accursed "von".

Shortly before my departure for Ensk, Korablev had told me that

Nikolai Antonich had shown him the original power of attorney issued

by Captain Tatarinov authorising Nikolai Ivanich von Vyshimirsky to

conduct all the business of the expedition. "You were wrong," he had

said with succinct cruelty.

I felt lonesome at Ensk, and thought that when I got back to Moscow

and took up my books I would have no time to feel lone some. But I did

find time. Bitter and silent, I wandered round the school.

Then one day, on coming home, I found a sealed note addressed to "A.

Grigoriev, Form 9" lying on the table in the hall where the postman left

all our mail.

I opened it and read:

"Sanya, I'd like to have a talk with you. If you're free, come to the

public garden in Triumfalnaya Square today at half past seven."

It makes me laugh to think what a change came over everything the

moment I read this note. Meeting Likho on the stairs, I said "good

afternoon" to him, and at dinner I gave Valya my favourite dish of sweet

cream of wheat with raisins.

Then came six o'clock. Then half-past six. Seven. Seven o'clock found

me at Triumfalnaya Square. A quarter past. Half past. It was getting

dark, but the street lamps had not been lighted yet, and all kinds of

ridiculous thoughts came into my mind: "The lamps won't go on and I

won't recognise her... The lamps will go on, but she won't come... The

lamps won't go on and she won't recognise me..."

The lamps did go on, and that familiar public garden, where Pyotr and

I once tried to sell cigarettes, where I had swotted a thousand times at

my lessons on spring days, that noisy garden, in which one can swot

only when one is seventeen, that old garden which was the meeting

place for our whole school, and two others besides— that garden became

transformed, like a theatre. In a moment we would meet. Ah, there she

was!

We shook hands in silence. It was quite warm, being April 2nd, but all

of a sudden it started snowing—as if on purpose to make me remember

this day all my life.

141

"I'm glad you've come, Katya. I've been wanting to speak to you too. I

couldn't explain that time, at your place, because Nikolai Antonich

didn't give me a chance, the way he started shouting. Of course, if you

believe him-"

I was afraid to finish the sentence, because if she did believe him I'd

have to leave this garden, where we were sitting pale and grave and

talking without looking at each other-leave this garden, which seemed

to contain nobody else but us two, though someone was sitting on each

garden seat and the dour-faced little keeper was limping up and down

the paths.

"Don't let's talk about that any more."

"I can't help talking about it, Katya. If you believe him we have

nothing to talk about anyway."

She looked at me, sad and quite grown-up—much older and wiser

than I.

"He says it's all my fault," she said.

"Yours?"

"He says that once I believe this unnatural idea that it was he who was

meant in Daddy's letter, then I was to blame for everything."

I recollected Korablev once saying to Maria Vasilievna: "Believe me,

he's a terrible man." And the Captain had written about him:

"One thing I beg of you: do not trust that man." I leapt to my feet in

despair and horror.

"Now he'll be saying it's your fault for fifteen years and you'll believe

him, just as Maria Vasilievna did. Don't you realise if you're to blame he

gets complete power over you, and you'll do everything he wants."

"I'll go away."

"Where?"

"I don't know yet. I've decided to take up geological survey. I'll

graduate and go away."

"You won't go anywhere. You might be able to do it now, but in four

years' time... I bet you won't go anywhere. He'll talk your head off, make

you believe anything. Didn't Maria Vasilievna believe that he was kind

and noble, and, what is more, that she was indebted to him for

everything he had done? Why the hell doesn't he leave you alone! Didn't

he say that it was all my fault?"

"He says you're just a murderer."

"I see."

"And that he could easily have you tried and shot."

"All right, everybody's to blame except him. And I tell you he's a

scoundrel, and it's terrifying even to think that there are people like that

in the world."

"Don't let's talk about it any more."

"All right. But tell me this: what do you believe out of all this

nonsense?"

For a long time Katya said nothing. I sat down again beside her. My

heart in my mouth, I took her hand and she did not move away, did not

withdraw it.

"I don't believe you said it on purpose. You really did think it was

him."

"I still think so."

"But you shouldn't have tried to persuade me of it, still less Mother."

142

"But it was him-"

Katya drew back and disengaged her hand.

"Let's not talk about it any more."

"All right, we shan't. Some day I'll prove to you it was him, even if I

have to spend my whole life doing it."

"It isn't him. If you don't want me to go away don't let's talk about it

any more."

"All right, we shan't."

And we let the matter drop. She asked me about the spring holidays,

how I had spent my time at Ensk, how Sanya and the old folks were

getting on. And I gave her regards from them. But I didn't say about

how lonesome I had been at Ensk without her, especially when I

wandered alone round the places where we had been together. I did not

know now whether or not she loved me, and it was impossible to ask,

though I was dying to all the time. The very word couldn't be uttered,

now that we were sitting and talking, so grave and pale, with Katya

looking so like her mother. I recalled our journey back to Moscow from

Ensk, when we had written on the frosted window-pane with our

fingers, and suddenly through the window, a dark field covered with

snow had come into view. Everything had changed since then. And we

could no longer be to each other what we were before. I was dying to

know, though, whether she still loved me or not.

"Katya," I said suddenly. "Don't you love me any more?"

She gave me a startled look, then blushing, put her arms round my

neck. We kissed with closed eyes-at least, mine were closed and I think

hers were too, because afterwards we opened our eyes together. We

kissed in the public garden in Triumfalnaya Square, in the garden where

three schools could have seen us. But it was a bitter kiss, a kiss of

farewell. Though we arranged to meet again, I felt that it had been our

parting kiss.

That's why, after Katya had gone, I remained in the garden and

wandered for a long time about the paths in anguish, then sat down on

our seat, walked away and came back again. I took off my cap; my head

felt hot and there was an ache in my heart. I couldn't go away.

When I got home I found a large envelope on my bedside table. It bore

the Osoaviakhim stamp and my full name in a large hand. I tore open

the envelope with trembling fingers. Osoaviakhim informed me that my

papers had been accepted and that I was to present myself before a

medical board on May and for enrolment in the flying school.

_____________

143

PART FOUR

THE NORTH

CHAPTER ONE

FLYING SCHOOL

The summer of 1928. I see myself walking the streets of Leningrad

with a small bundle in my hands. The bundle contains my "leaving kit".

All inmates of the children's home on leaving school received such a kit.

It consisted of a spoon, a mug, two sets of underwear and "everything

needed for the first night's lodging". Pyotr and I are living in the home

of Semyon Ginsburg, a fitter at the Elektrosila Works and a former pupil

of our school. Semyon's mother is afraid of the house-manager, so every

morning I take my things away and bring them back again in the

evening, making out as though I had just arrived. In the eating rooms

we take the first course, costing fifteen kopecks, on even days, and the

second course, costing twenty-five kopecks, on odd days. We wander

about the vast, spacious city, along the embankments of the broad Neva,

and Pyotr, who feels quite at home in Leningrad, tells me about the

Bronze Horseman while I think, "Will they accept me or not?"

Three examining boards-medical, credentials and general education.

Heart, lungs, ears, heart again. Who am I, where was I born, what

school did I go to, and why do I want to become an airman?

Was it true that I was nineteen? Hadn't I added to my age-I didn't

look it? Why was my recommendation from the Y.C.L. local signed

"Grigoriev"-was he a brother of mine or just a namesake?

And now, at last, the day of all days. I stand outside the Aviation

Museum. This is where we had our entrance examinations. It is a huge

lion-guarded building in Roshal Prospekt. The lions look at me as if

they, too, are about to ask me who I am, where I was born, and whether

I am really nineteen.

144

But the really terrifying part of it comes when I mount the stairs and

stand before the black showcase displaying the list of persons enrolled

in the flying school.

I read the names in their alphabetical order: "Fadeyev, Fedorov,

Frolov, Golomb, Gribkov, Hertz..." A mist swims before my eyes. I read

again: "Fedorov, Frolov, Golomb, Gribkov, Hertz..." I'm not there! I take

a deep breath and start again: Fedorov, Frolov, Golomb, Gribkov, Hertz.

I stare at the list, which seems to contain all the names under the sun

except my own, and I feel like a man would feel who has nothing more

to live for.

I go home under a pouring rain. Fedorov, Frolov, Golomb ... Lucky

Golomb.

Pyotr opens the door and starts at seeing me, drenched and white.

"What's the matter?" "Pyotr, my name's not on the list." "Goon!"

Semyon's mother comes flying into the kitchen to ask whether the

house-manager saw me coming in. I do not answer her. I sit on a chair

and Pyotr stands facing me with a glum look.

The next morning we go together to the Aviation Museum and I find

my name on the list. It was in another column along with several other

boys whose names began with G. including a couple of Grigorievs-Ivan

and Alexander. Pyotr said I hadn't been able to find it because I was too

excited.

Time races on, and I see myself in the reading-room of the Aviation

Museum, where we had faced the examiners. Thirteen men passed by

the credentials and medical boards are lined up, and the School

Superintendent, a big, jovial, red-haired man, comes out and says:

"Comrade air cadets, attention!"

Comrade air cadets! I am an air cadet! A cold shiver runs up my

spine. I feel as if I had been dipped alternately in cold and hot water. I'm

an air cadet! I'm going to fly! I do not hear what she Super is saying.

Time races on. We go to lectures straight from work at the factory where

Semyon Ginsburg has fixed me up as fitter's mate.

We listen to lectures on materiel, the theory of aviation and the

engine. After eight hours at work we feel very sleepy, but we listen to the

lectures on materiel, the theory of aviation and engines, and once in a

while Misha Golomb, who turned out to be as short as myself, leans up

against my back and starts to snore gently. When his snores become too

audible I carefully bump his head on the desk.

We study at flying school, but what little resemblance that school has

to those that go by that name today! We have neither engines, nor

aeroplanes, neither premises nor money. True, the Aviation Museum

does display a few old sky wagons, in which one could imagine oneself

doing air reconnaissance in a De Havilland or seeing a fighting plane in

a Newport which last did service at the Civil War fronts. But you

couldn't learn to fly on these distinguished "coffins".

We assemble engines. Armed with credentials of Osoaviakhim, that

infallible warrant empowering us to take off the walls any aeroplane

parts we might need, we make a round of all the recreation rooms and

clubs of Leningrad. Sometimes we find these aeroplane parts in the

office of the house management, hanging over the desk of the accounts

clerk, who happens to be an aviation fan. We commandeer them and

carry them off to the airfield. Sometimes this goes off peacefully,

sometimes there is a row. Three times we visit the Clothing Workers'

145

Club, accompanied by a technician, trying to prove to the club manager

that the old engine standing in the foyer is of no propaganda value.

Our day starts with our trying, each in turn, to explain to Ivan

Gribkov what "horizon" is. We have a fellow named Ivan Gribkov who

has all the school trying to explain this to him. Afterwards came the

instructors and flight training begins.

My instructor—he is our School Superintendent and has charge of

materiel and supplies as well—is an old pilot of Civil War days, a big

jovial man, who loves to tell extraordinary stories and can tell them for

hours. He is quick-tempered, but quick to cool off, brave and

superstitious. His idea of his duties as instructor is of the simplest

order: he just swears at you, his language becoming stronger with the

altitude. At last he stops swearing—for the first time in six months! It's

wonderful! For ten minutes or so I fly in the rarest of good moods. I

must be doing the stickwork jolly well, seeing that he doesn't swear at

me! Despite the roar of the engine I seem to be flying in complete

silence—quite a new experience for me!

But the next moment I see what it is. The intercom had got

disconnected and the phone was dangling over the side. I catch it and

together with it the close of what must have been a long speech:

"You clot. You shouldn't be flying, you ought to be serving in the

sanitary brigade."

Another scene rises before me when I recall my first year in

Leningrad. C. comes to the Corps Airfield every day. He has a modest

job-flying passengers in an old war-scarred machine. But we know what

kind of man he is, we know and love him long before he became known

to and loved by the whole country. We know whom the airmen talk

about when they gather at the Aviation Museum, which was a sort of

club of ours in those days. We know whom our Chief is imitating when

he says in a calm bass voice: "Well, how goes it? Can you manage the

sharp bank? But no fibbing, mind?"

We run to this man as fast as our legs can carry us when he returns to

the airfield after his amazing aerobatics, and the lovers of stunt flying,

green as the grass, crawl away almost on all fours, while he looks at us

from the cockpit, his goggles off, a flyer of amazing flair, a wizard of sky

flying.

Together with the stethoscope which Doctor Ivan Ivanovich left me as a

keepsake I carry a photo of this airman about with me wherever I go. He

gave this photo to me not in Leningrad where I was an air cadet, but

much later, several years afterwards, in Moscow. He wrote on it: "If it's

worth doing at all, do it well." Those were his words. So this year passed,

a hard but splendid year in Leningrad.

CHAPTER TWO

SANYA 'S WEDDING

I saw Sanya every Sunday and I must say—strange though it may sound

coming from a brother—that I came to like her more and more.

She had just entered the Academy of Arts and had found a job with a

children's publishing house. She knew all about our doings, Pyotr's and

mine, and kept the old folks informed about us. She worked a lot at the

146

Academy too, and although she lacked Pyotr's vivid talent she painted

extremely well. She was fond of doing miniatures, an art that is

nowadays almost completely neglected by our painters, and the

fastidious care with which she executed all the minute details of faces

and dress was simply remarkable. As in childhood, she liked to talk, and

when provoked or carried away she would talk so fast and end up in

such a rush that her listeners would be dazed. In short, she was a

wonderful sister, and now she was getting married.

Of course, it is not hard to guess whom she was marrying, though of

all the young men who gathered that evening at the studio of the

photographer—artist Berenstein where she rented a room, Pyotr looked

the least like a bridegroom. He sat unperturbed and silent beside a

sharp-nosed boy, who was talking at him earnestly.

Altogether, it was an odd wedding. All the evening the guests argued

about a cow—whether it was right for the artist Filippov to be painting a

cow for the last two and a half years. He was said to have divided it into

little squares and was painting each square separately. No one took any

notice of the newlyweds. Sanya was kept very busy. There were not

enough plates to go round and the guests had to be fed in two shifts. She

sat down only for a moment, flushed and tired, in her new dress

trimmed with lace, which somehow reminded me of Ensk and Aunt

Dasha.

"Someone sends you regards," she said to me. "Guess who."

I guessed at once, but answered calmly:

"I don't know."

"Katya."

"Really? Thanks."

Sanya looked at me critically. Her face even paled slightly with

annoyance. She realised, of course, that I was pretending.

"You like to fancy yourself a Childe Harold! Now don't you dare tell

me a lie on my wedding-day. I'll write to her and say you kept asking me

for this letter all day and I wouldn't give it to you."

"I'm not asking you for anything."

"In your heart you are," Sanya said with conviction. "Outwardly you're

pretending you don't care. I can let you have it if you like, only you

mustn't read the last page. You won't, will you?"

She thrust the letter into my hand and ran away. I read the letter, of

course, the last page three times, seeing that it was about me. Katya did

not send her regards to me at all, she just inquired how I was getting on

and when I was graduating. To look at, it was just an ordinary letter, but

really a very sad one. It had this passage in it, for instance: "It is now

four o'clock and already dark here, and suddenly I fell asleep and when I

woke up I couldn't make out what had happened to make me feel so

good. It was because I had dreamt of Ensk and of my aunts getting me

dressed for the journey."

I reread this passage several times, and recalled that memorable day,

the day of our departure from Ensk. I remembered the old ladies, her

aunts, shouting their last-minute admonitions as the train moved out,

and how later I had moved into Katya's carriage and we had started to

go through our baskets to see what the old folks had put in them. The

little unshaven man who shared our compartment was trying to guess

what we were, and Katya stood beside me in the corridor and I had

147

looked at her, standing there, and talked to her. How hard it was to

believe, now that she was so far away, that all this really happened...

CHAPTER THREE

I WRITE TO DOCTOR IVAN IVANOVICH

I was angry with Katya, because I had wanted to say goodbye to her

before leaving Moscow and had written to her, but she had not

answered and had not come to meet me, though she knew I was going

away for a long time and that perhaps we should never see each other

again. I did not write to her any more, of course. No doubt Nikolai

Antonich had succeeded in convincing her that I had slandered him

"with the most dreadful slander which the human imagination is

capable of, and that I was "a guttersnipe of impure blood" who had

caused the death of her mother.

Ah, well, the future was still ours! The memory of that scene made me

groan inwardly.

What could I do in Leningrad, working at the factory from eight till

five and then at the flying school from five till midnight?

In the winter, before flight training began, we studied in the reading-

room of the Aviation Museum. One day I asked the Custodian whether

he knew anything about Captain Tatarinov and whether there were any

books in the library about him or perhaps his own book Causes of the

Failure of the Greely Expedition.

I don't know why, but the Custodian showed a great interest in the

question.

"Captain Tatarinov?" he queried in surprise. "Oho! Why does that

interest you?"

To answer that question I should have had to tell him everything you

have read in this book. So I answered briefly:

"Oh, I just like reading about voyages of exploration." "Very little, if

anything, is known about this voyage," said the Custodian. "Come along,

let's go into the library."

Without him, of course, I would never have found anything, as it was

all in the form of newspaper articles. There was only one book, or rather

a booklet of some twenty-five pages entitled Woman at Sea. The

Captain, I discovered, had not only written about the Greely Expedition,

The booklet went out to prove that a woman could become a sailor

and quoted instances from the life of the fisher folk on the shores of the

Sea of Azov, when women in dangerous situations had behaved as well

as men and even shown themselves braver. The Captain wrote that he

visualised a time when ships would carry "women engineers, women

navigators and women captains".

As I read this booklet I recollected the Captain's notes on Nansen's

voyage and his report concerning the 1911 expedition to the North Pole,

and it struck me for the first time that he was not only a brave sailor, but

a broadminded man of extraordinarily keen intellect.

The writers of some of the articles evidently thought otherwise. In the

Peterburgskaya Gazeta, for instance, one journalist came out against

the expedition on the grounds that the Council of Ministers had "turned

down Captain Tatarinov's request for the necessary funds". Another

148

newspaper carried an interesting photograph—a beautiful white ship

which reminded me of the caravels in The Century of Discovery. It was

the schooner St. Maria. She looked slim and graceful, too slim and

graceful to make the voyage from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok along

the shores of Siberia.

The next issue of the same newspaper carried a still more interesting

photograph—the crew of the schooner. True, it was very difficult to

make anything out on this photograph, but the arrangement of the

group with the Captain seated in the middle, arms folded over his chest,

struck me as very familiar. Where had I seen that photograph? Of

course-at the Tatarinovs, among a lot of other photos, which Katya had

once shown me. I continued thinking back. No, it was not at the

Tatarinovs! It was at Doctor Ivan Ivanovich's -that's where I had seen it!

And suddenly a very simple idea occurred to me. At the same time,

however, it was an extraordinary one, which only Doctor Ivan Ivanovich

could confirm. There and then I decided to write to him. It was about

seven years since he had left Moscow, but I was quite certain that he was

alive and well.

CHAPTER FOUR

I RECEIVE A REPLY

A month passed, then a second and a third. We had finished our

theoretical studies and moved out to the Corps Airfield.

It was a Big Day at the airfield-September 25th, 1930. We still

remember it by that name. It began as usual: 7 a.m. found us sitting by

our "crates". At nine o'clock the instructor arrived and things began to

happen. For one thing, he had brought with him an imposing-looking

man in a Russian blouse and gold-rimmed spectacles. This we soon

discovered to be the secretary of the District Party Committee.

Secondly... But this "secondly" needs going into greater

detail.

We made several flights that day with the instructor, and he kept

studying me all the time, and, contrary to custom, he did not swear at

me.

"Well," he said at last. "Now fly solo."

I must have looked excited, because he regarded me for a moment

with a searching, kindly look. He checked the instruments to see

whether they were working properly, and fastened the straps in the first,

now empty, cockpit.

"A routine round flight. Take off, start climbing. Don't turn until

you're a hundred and fifty metres off the ground. Bank, then come in to

land."

With a feeling as though it were not I but someone else doing it, I

taxied to the end of the runway and raised my hand for permission to

take off. The flight-controller waved his white flag for me to go. I opened

the throttle and sent the machine down the airfield.

149

I had long forgotten that childish sense of disappointment I had

experienced when, on the first taking to the air, I realised what flying

meant. In those days I had always imagined that I would fly like a bird,

whereas here I was sitting in an armchair just as if I were on the ground.

I sat in the armchair and I had no time to think either of the earth or the

sky. It was not until my tenth or eleventh solo flight that I noticed that

the earth below me was patterned like a map and that we lived in a very

precise geometrical world. I liked the shadows of the clouds scattered

here and there on the ground, and altogether it dawned on me that the

world was very beautiful.

And so this was my first solo flight. The instructor's cockpit is empty.

The first turn. The cockpit is empty and the machine becomes airborne.

A second turn. I am flying quite alone, with a wonderful sensation of

complete freedom. A third turn. Time to land now. Fourth turn.

Attention! I cut off the engine. The ground gets closer and closer. There

it is, right under the machine. The landing run. The touch-down. It must

have been a decent performance, seeing that even our grumpy

instructor nodded approval, while Misha Golomb, behind his back, gave

me the thumbs-up sign.

"Sanya, you're a topnotcher," he said, when we sat down on a grassy

bank to have a smoke. "Honest, you are. By the way, there's a letter for

you. I was at the Aviation Museum today and the doorman said: 'One

for Grigoriev. Maybe you'll give it to him?'"

And he held out a letter to me. It was from Doctor Ivan Ivanovich.

"Dear Sanya, I am very glad to hear you are well. I am looking forward

to welcoming you with your plane, as we have to use dogs here all the

time for travelling. Now about the photograph. It was given to me by the

navigating officer of the St. Maria, Ivan Klimov. He was brought to

Archangel in 1914 with frostbitten feet and died in the hospital from

blood-poisoning. He left a couple of notebooks and some letters-quite a

lot of them, round about twenty, I believe. This, of course, was the mail,

which he had brought with him from the ship, though he may have

written some of the letters himself during his journey-he was picked up

somewhere by Lieutenant Sedov's expedition. When he died the hospital

posted these letters to their respective addresses, but the notebooks and

photographs remained with me. As you are acquainted with Captain

Tatarinov's family and are determined 'to present a correct picture of his

life and death', you will naturally be interested to know about these

notebooks. They are ordinary school copybooks and the writing in them,

done in pencil, is unfortunately quite illegible. I tried several times to

read them, but had to give it up. This is about all I know. This happened

at the end of 1914 when the war had just started and nobody was

interested in Captain Tatarinov's expedition. These notebooks and

photographs are still in my possession and you can read them if you

have the patience when you come, or rather fly out here. My address is:

24 Kirov Street, Zapolarie, Arctic Circle.

"I expect more letters from my interesting patient. Your doctor, I.

Pavlov."

Just as I had thought! That photo had been left by the navigating

officer. The doctor has seen the man with his own eyes. The very same

man who had written: "I remain your obedient servant, I. Klimov,

150

Navigating Officer." The very same man who had fascinated me for life

with the glamorous words "latitude", "schooner", "expedition", "the

From" and the extraordinary politeness of his "I hasten to inform you"

and "I hope to see you soon".

I decided that as soon as I left school I would go to Zapolarie and read

his notebooks. The doctor had given it up, but he wouldn't have done so

if he had had the hope of finding in them as much as a single word to

prove that he had been right, if somebody had spat in his face, if Katya

had thought that he had killed her mother...

CHAPTER FIVE

THREE YEARS

Youth does not end in a single day; you do not mark that day off in the

calendar: "Today my youth has ended." It passes imperceptibly, and it is

gone before you know it.

From Leningrad they sent me to Balashov. After graduating from the

flying school I started studying at another-this time under a real

instructor and on a real machine.

I do not recall any period in my life when I worked so diligently.

"Do you know how you fly?" our School Superintendent had said to

me back in Leningrad. "Like an old tub. For the North you have to be

first rate."

I learnt night-flying, when you get into the dark the moment you take

off, and while you are climbing you feel all the time as if you are making

your way gropingly through a dark corridor. I learnt to fly blind, when

everything around you is wrapped in a white mist and you seem to be

flying through millions of years into a different geological epoch; as if

you are being borne on and on in a Time-Machine instead of an

aeroplane.

I learnt that an airman has to know the properties of the air, all its

ways and whims, just as a good sailor knows the ways of the sea.

Those were the years when the Arctic, until then regarded as a remote

and useless icy wilderness, had drawn closer to us and when the first

great air jumps were attracting the whole country's attention. Every day

articles about Polar expeditions by sea and air appeared in the

newspapers and I read them with a thrill. I was longing for the North

with all my heart.

Then, one day, when I was about to take one of the most difficult

examination flights and was already seated in the cockpit, I saw a

newspaper in the hands of my instructor. It had something in it which

made me take off my helmet and goggles and climb out of the plane.

"Warm greetings and congratulations to the members of the

expedition which has successfully solved the problem of navigating the

Arctic Ocean" was printed in big letters right across the front page.

Paying no heed to what the astonished instructor was saying to me, I

looked at the page again, trying to take it all in at a glance. "Great

Northern Sea Route Opened", one article was headed. "The Sibiryakov

in the Bering Strait" ran another. "Salute to the Victors" said a third.

151

This was the news of the historic expedition of the Sibiryakov, which for

the first time in history had navigated the Northern Sea Route in a

single season-the route which Captain Tatarinov had attempted in the

schooner St. Maria.

"What's the matter with you? Are you ill?"

"No, I'm all right."

"Altitude one thousand two hundred metres. Two sharp banks one

way, then two the other. Four upward spins."

"Okay!"

I was so excited that I was almost on the point of asking permission to

put off the flight.

All that day I thought of Katya, of poor Maria Vasilievna, and of the

Captain, whose life had become so surprisingly interwoven with my

own. But this time I was thinking of them in a different way and my

grievances appeared to me now in a different, calmer light. Of course, I

had not forgotten anything. I had not forgotten my last talk with Maria

Vasilievna, in which every word of hers had had a secret meaning—her

farewell to her youth and to life. itself. I had not forgotten how I had sat

the next day in the waiting-room together with the old lady, and the

door had opened revealing something white with a dark head and a bare

arm dangling from a couch. I had not yet forgotten how Katya had

turned away form me at the funeral, nor had I forgotten my dreams of

meeting her in a few years' time and tossing to her the proofs showing

that I had been right. I had not forgotten how Nikolai Antonich had spat

in my face.

But all this suddenly presented itself to me like a play in which the

chief character is offstage and appears only in the last act, and until then

he is merely talked about. They all talked about a man whose portrait

hangs on the wall-the portrait of a naval officer with a broad forehead, a

square jaw and deep-set eyes. Yes, he was the chief character in this

play. He was a great explorer, killed by non-recognition and his history

had a significance far beyond the bounds of personal affairs and family

relationships. The Great Northern Sea Route had been opened—that

was his history. Through navigation of the Arctic Ocean in a single

season-that had been his idea. The men who had solved the problem

which had confronted mankind for four hundred years were his men.

He could talk with them as equals.

What, compared with this, were my own dreams, hopes and desires!

What did I want? Why did I become an airman? Why was I so keen on

going to the North?

And now, as in my imaginary play, everything clicked into place and

quite simple ideas came into my head concerning my future and my job.

I was keen on the North and on my profession as a polar airman

because it was a profession which demanded from me endurance,

courage and love for my country and my job.

Who knows but that I, too, one day may be named among those men

who could have talked as equals with Captain Tatarinov?

A month before I finished the Balashov school I put in an application

to be sent to the North. But the school would not let me go.

I was kept on as instructor and spent another whole year at Balashov. I

would hardly call myself a good instructor. Of course, I could teach a

man to fly without experiencing any desire to swear at him every

minute. I understood my pupils. It was quite clear to me, for instance,

152

why, on coming out of the plane, one man hastened to light up, while

another wore an air of studied jollity. I was not a teacher by vocation

and found it boring to have to explain a thousand times to others things

I had learnt long ago.

In August 1933 I got leave and went to Moscow. My travelling warrant

was made out for Ensk via Leningrad and people were expecting me in

both these places. Nevertheless I decided to stop over in Moscow, where

no one was expecting me.

Of course, I had no intention of phoning Katya, all the more as I had

received only one greeting from her in all these three years-through

Sanya—and everything was finished and long forgotten. So completely

finished and forgotten that I even decided I would ring her up and had

prepared for the occasion an opening phrase in a polite impersonal tone.

But somehow, when I lifted the receiver in my room at the hotel, my

hand began to shake and I found myself asking for another number

instead-that of Korablev.

He was out of town, on his holiday, and the woman who answered the

phone said that he would not be back until the beginning of the school

year.

Valya, too, was out of town. I was politely informed that lecturer

Zhukov was in the Far North and would be away for six months.

There was no one else I could phone in Moscow, unless it was some

secretary or other member of the staff of the Civil Aviation Board. But I

had no use for secretaries. I picked up the receiver and gave the number.

Nina Kapitonovna answered the phone—I recognised her kind firm

voice at once.

"May I speak to Katya?"

"Katya?" she queried in surprise. "She's not here."

"Not at home?"

"Not at home and not in town. Who's that speaking?"

"Grigoriev," I said. "Could you give me her address?"

Nina Kapitonovna was silent awhile. Obviously, she hadn't recognised

me. The world was full of Grigorievs.

"She's doing field work. Her address is: Geological Party of Moscow

University, Troitsk."

I thanked her and rang off.

I did not stay long in Moscow. They received me very politely at the

offices of the Northern Sea Route Administration and the Civil Aviation

Board. My being sent to the North was out of the question, I was told,

until the Balashov School released me.

I did not succeed in getting an assignment to the North until eighteen

months later, and that quite by chance. In Leningrad I had made the

acquaintance of an old Arctic pilot who wanted to return to Central

Russia. He was getting too old to fly under the arduous conditions of the

North. We made an exchange, he taking my place at the school and I

getting an assignment as second pilot on one of the Far North air roots.

153

CHAPTER SIX

I MEET THE DOCTOR

The house was not difficult to find, as the street consisted of a single

house, all the rest existing only in the imagination of the builders of

Zapolarie.

It was getting dark when I knocked on the doctor's door. The windows

lit up and a shadow moved slowly across the blind. No one opened the

door, and after waiting for a while, I quietly opened it myself and

stepped into a clean spacious passage.

"Anybody at home?"

No one answered. A besom stood in the corner and I cleaned the snow

off my high felt boots with it—the snow outside was knee-deep.

"Is there anybody here?"

A ginger kitten sprang out from under the hallstand, stared at me in

fright and fled. Then the doctor appeared in the doorway.

Medically I suppose it would sound improbable, but the fact of the

matter was that in all those years the doctor had not only not aged, but

even managed to look younger. He more than ever now resembled that

lanky, jolly, bearded doctor who had dropped down on me and my sister

in the village that memorable winter.

"Do you want to see me?"

"Yes, Doctor, I'd like you to see a patient," I said quickly. "An

interesting case of muteness without deafness. The man can hear

everything but can't say 'mummy'."

The doctor slowly pushed his glasses up on his forehead.

"I beg your pardon..."

"I said an interesting case," I went on gravely. "The man can

pronounce only six words: hen, saddle, box, snow, drink, Abraham.

Patient G., case record described in a journal."

The doctor came up to me as if he were going to examine my tongue

and ears, but he simply said: "Sanya!"

We embraced.

"So you've flown in after all!"

"Yes, I flew."

He put his arms round my shoulder and led me into the dining-room.

A boy of about twelve was standing there who looked very much like the

doctor. He gave me his hand and introduced himself: "Volodya."

"Yes, Doctor, I'd like you to see a patient," I said quickly. "An

interesting case of muteness without deafness. The man can hear

everything but can't say 'mummy'."

The doctor slowly pushed his glasses up on his forehead.

"I beg your pardon..."

"I said an interesting case," I went on gravely. "The man can

pronounce only six words: hen, saddle, box, snow, drink, Abraham.

Patient G., case record described in a journal."

The doctor came up to me as if he were going to examine my tongue

and ears, but he simply said: "Sanya!"

We embraced.

"So you've flown in after all!"

154

"Yes, I Hew."

He put his arms round my shoulder and led me into the dining-room.

A boy of about twelve was standing there who looked very much like the

doctor. He gave me his hand and introduced himself:

"Volodya."

It was lighter here than in the passage, and the doctor looked me over

again. I suspect he was strongly tempted to have a peek in my ear.

While we were sitting drinking tea the doctor's wife, Anna

Stepanovna, came in. She was a tall, portly woman, who, in her anorak

and reindeer-skin high boots, looked like some Northern god. She was

just as big even when she took off her anorak and boots, and the tall

doctor did not look so tall beside her. She had quite a young face and

altogether she went very well with this clean wooden house with its

yellow floor boards and country-style floor runners. There was

something of old Russia about her, as there was of the town itself,

though it was an entirely new town built only five or six years before.

Afterwards I learned that she was a Pomor. (Pomor—a native of the

White Sea maritime area – Tr.)

"Ivan Ivanovich," I said, when we had eaten everything on the table

and started on the delicious home-made cloudberry wine, "do you

remember those letters we wrote to each other when I was in

Leningrad?"

"I do."

"You wrote me a very interesting letter about that navigating officer,"

I went on, "and I'd like to know whether you've kept those notebooks of

his."

"Yes, I have them."

"Good. Now let me tell you something. It's a fairly long story, but I'm

going to tell it nevertheless. As you know, it was you who once taught

me to speak. So now you have only yourself to blame."

And I told him everything, beginning with the letters which Aunt

Dasha used to read out to me. About Katya I said only a few words by

way of information. But at this point in my story the doctor, for some

reason, smiled, then quickly assumed a look of gravity.

"He was a very tired man, that navigator," he said. "He really died

from fatigue, not gangrene. He had spent too much strength fighting

death and hadn't enough left to live with. That was the impression he

gave."

"You talked to him?"

"Yes."

"What about?"

"I think it was about some town down South," the doctor said.

"Sukhumi, or maybe Baku. It was an obsession with him. Everyone was

talking about the war in those days-it had just started, but he only

talked about Sukhumi, how good it was down there, how warm. I

suppose he came from there."

"Ivan Ivanovich, have you got his diaries here? In this house?"

"Yes."

"Let me see them."

These diaries had been on my mind for so long that I had begun to see

them as thick books bound in black cloth. But the doctor went out and

reappeared a few minutes later with two thin copybooks such as

155

children use in school. I could hardly suppress my excitement as I

opened one of them at random. "To Navigator Iv. Dm. Klimov.

"I order you and all those listed below, in accordance with your wishes

and theirs, to leave the ship with the aim of reaching inhabited land..."

"Why, Doctor, he had an excellent hand! I can read it quite easily." "It's

my excellent hand you're reading," the doctor said. "I have written out

the parts I have been able to decipher on separate sheets. The rest is like

this-look."

Saying which, he opened the copybook at the first page. I had seen some

poor handwriting in my day, Valya Zhukov's, for instance; he used to

write in such a way that the teachers for a long time thought he was

doing it to annoy them. But handwriting such as this I had never seen in

my life. It was like so many fishhooks the size of pinheads scattered

higgledy-piggledy all over the page. The first few pages were smeared

with some kind of grease and the pencil marks were barely visible on the

yellow parchment-like paper. Further on came a hodgepodge of

unfinished words, then a rough-drawn map, followed by another jumble

of words, which no graphologist could have made head or tail of.

"All right," I said, closing the notebook. "I'll read this." The doctor

looked at me with admiration. "I wish you success," he said earnestly.

CHAPTER SEVEN

I READ THE DIARIES

I would not call myself an impatient person. But I think that only a

genius of patience could have waded through those diaries. Obviously,

they had been written during halts, by the light of smoky wicks burning

seal oil, in forty-five degrees of frost, with a frozen and tired hand. In

some places the hand could be seen to have slipped, tracing a long,

drooping, meaningless line.

But I had to read them!

Again and again I tackled this arduous job. Every night-and on flight-

free days from early morning-I sat down at the table with a magnifying

glass, engaged in the slow, painful task of transforming the fish-hooks

into human words-now words of despair, now of hope. At first I went

straight through, just sat down and read. And then I hit on a bright idea.

I started to read whole pages at a time instead of trying to decipher the

separate words.

In going through the diaries I noticed that some of the pages were

written much more legibly than others-the order, for example, which

the doctor had copied out. I copied from these passages all the letters

from a to z and compiled a "Navigator's ABC" in which I reproduced

exactly all the variants of his handwriting. With the aid of this alphabet

the work proceeded much more rapidly. Very often a correct guess of

one or two letters -made with the help of this alphabet would make all

the rest clear.

And so, day after day, I deciphered these diaries.

156

The Diaries of Navigating Officer Ivan Klimov

Wednesday, May 27. Started out late and did 4 versts in 6 hours.

Today is a red-letter day for us. We reckon that we have covered a

distance of 100 versts from the ship. Of course, this is not much for a

month's trek, but the going has been much harder than we had

expected. We celebrated the occasion by cooking a soup from dried

bilberries seasoned with two tins of condensed milk.

Friday, May 29. If we do reach the shore, may those men—1 do not

want even to name them—remember May 29th, the day of their

deliverance from death, and mark it every year. But though the men

were saved, they lost a double-barrelled gun and the stove on which we

did our cooking. As a result we had to eat raw meat yesterday and drink

cold water diluted with milk. May God help me to reach the shore safely

with this bunch of gaw-gaws!

Sunday, May 31. Here is the official document authorising me to

leave with part of the crew:

"To Navigating Officer Ivan Klimov.

"I hereby order you and all those listed below, in accordance with

your wishes and theirs, to leave the ship with the aim of reaching

inhabited land, and to do this on the 10th inst., setting out across the ice

on foot and taking with you sledges and kayaks as well as provisions for

two months. On leaving this ship you are to head south until you sight

land; on sighting which you are to act according to circumstances, but

preferably try to make the British Channel between the islands of Franz-

Josef Land, following it, as being best known, down to Cape Flora where

you are likely to find food and' shelter. After that, time and

circumstances permitting, you are to head for Spitsbergen. On reaching

Spitsbergen you will be confronted with the difficult task of finding

people there, as we do not know where they are to be located, but hope

that you will be able to find people in the southern part of the island or

at least some fishing vessel off the coast. You are to be accompanied by

thirteen men of the crew, who have expressed their wish to go with you.

Captain of the schooner St. Maria

Ivan

Tatarinov"

"April

10,1914 Arctic Ocean."

God knows how hard it was for me to go, leaving him in such a

difficult, almost hopeless plight.

Tuesday, June 2. On board ship Engineer Komev had improvised four

pairs of spectacles for us against the snow glare, the glasses of which

were made from gin bottles. The leading sledges are drawn by the lucky

ones who can see, while the "blinded" ones trail in their wake with

closed eyes, which they open from time to time to peer at the track. The

pitiless glare hurts the eyes. Here is a picture of our progress, which I

shall never forget: we are trudging along with measured step, shoulders

hunched forward, the harness straps tight round our chests, while we

hold on to the side of the kayak with one hand. We walk with eyes

tightly closed. Each carries a ski-pole in his right hand which, with

mechanical precision, he throws forward, draws back to the right and

slowly trails behind him. How monotonously and distinctly the snow

crunches under the disk of the ski-pole. In spite of oneself one listens to

this crunching, which seems to be repeating clearly: "Long, long way."

We walk as though in a trance, mechanically pushing our feet forward

and throwing our weight against the straps. Today I fancied that I was

157

walking along a quayside on a hot summer's day, in the shade of some

tall houses. These houses were eastern fruit stores, their doors were

wide open and the aromatic, spicy odour of fresh and dried fruits came

from them. There was a heady scent of oranges, peaches, dried apples

and cloves. Persian tradesmen watered the asphalt pavement which was

soft from the heat, and I could hear their calm, guttural speech. God,

how good it smelt, how pleasantly cool it was. Stumbling over my pole

brought me back to earth. I clutched the kayak and stared around me—

snow, snow, snow, as far as the eyes could see. The sun is as blinding

and painful to the eyes as ever.

Thursday, June 4. Today, following in Dunayev's tracks, I noticed

that he was spitting blood. I examined his gums. The last few days he

has been complaining about his legs.

Friday, June 5. I can't get Captain Tatarinov out of my mind. During

the little speech he made when seeing us off he suddenly stopped,

clenched his teeth and looked round with a sort of helpless smile. He

was ill; I had left him when he was just out of his sickbed. God, what a

frightful mistake it was! But I can't very well turn back.

Saturday, June 6. Morev has kept at me these three last days, saying

that he has spotted, from the top of an ice-hummock, a perfectly level

stretch of ice running far out to the south. "I saw it with my own eyes.

Sir. As flat as flat can be." This morning he was missing from the tent.

He had gone off without his skis and the tracks of his snow-shoes were

faintly visible in the thin layer of dry snow. We searched for him all day,

shouting, whistling and firing shots. He would have answered us, as he

had a magazine rifle with a dozen cartridges. But we heard nothing.

Sunday, June 7. We made a mast about ten metres high out of kayaks,

skis and ski-poles, attached two flags to it and hoisted it on a hilltop. If

he is alive he will see our signals.

Tuesday, June 9. On our way again. Thirteen men left-an unlucky

number. When shall we make land, be it even barren and inhospitable

land, but land that stands still and on which you have no fear of being

carried away to the north?

Wednesday, June 10. This evening I had another vision of a southern

town, the sea front, a cafe by night with people in panama hats.

Sukhumi? Again that spicy, aromatic odour of fruit, and the bitter

thought: "Why did I go on this voyage to a cold, icebound sea, when it

was so good sailoring in the south? There it was warm. One could go

about in a shirt, and even barefooted. One could eat lots of oranges,

grapes and apples." Strange, why was I never particularly fond of fruit?

But chocolate, too, is good stuff, eaten with ship's biscuits, the way we

eat it at our midday halt. Only we get very little of it-just one square

each from the bar. How good it would be to have a plateful of these

biscuits in front of you and a whole bar of chocolate all to yourself. How

many more miles, how many hours, days and weeks before this will

become possible!

Thursday, June 11. The going is hell. Deep snow with a lot of water

under it. Open water blocks our path all the time. Did no more than

three versts today. All day a mist and that dull light that makes the eyes

hurt so much. I see this notebook now as though through a film and hot

tears run down my cheeks. It will be Whitsun soon. How good it will be

"there" this day, somewhere down south, and how bad here, on the

floating ice, all cut up by open stretches of water, in latitude 82°! The ice

158

shifts right before our eyes. One glade disappears to give way to another,

like giants playing a game of chess on a gigantic chessboard.

Sunday, June 14. I have made a discovery of which I have said

nothing to my companions: we are drifting past the land. Today we

reached the latitude of Franz-Josef Land and are continuing to push

south, but there is no sign of any island. We are being carried past the

land. lean tell this both from my utterly useless chronometer, from the

prevailing winds and from the direction of the line lowered in the water.

Monday, June 15. I abandoned him, a sick man, in a state of despair,

which only he was capable of concealing. This robs me of all hope for

our deliverance.

Tuesday, June 16. I now have two men with scurvy. Sotkin has fallen

ill too, his gums are bleeding and swollen. I treat them by sending them

forward on skis to find a way for us and giving them each at night a

quinine water. This may be a harsh method of treatment, but I think the

only possible one for a man whose morale has not broken down. The

worst form of scurvy I had seen was that from which Captain Tatarinov

had suffered. He had had it for close on six months and only by a

superhuman effort of will did he force himself to recover, that is, he

simply forbade himself to die. And this will, this broad, free mind and

indomitable moral courage are doomed to perish.

Thursday, June 18. Latitude 81°. The rapidity of our southward drift

is amazing.

Friday, June 19. At about four o'clock, E.S.-E. of our halting place I

spotted "something". It was two pinkish cloudlets on the horizon, which

did not change shape until hidden in the mist. I don't think we were ever

surrounded by so many open lanes of water as now. Lots of pochards

and screaming white gulls are flying about. Oh, these gulls! How often,

at night, they keep me awake with their fuss and bustle and bickering

over the entrails of a shot seal thrown out onto the ice. Like evil spirits

they mock at us, laughing hysterically, screeching, whistling and all but

cursing. How long, I wonder, will I be haunted by these "cries of the

snow-white gull", by these sleepless nights in a tent, by this sun which

never sets and shines through its canvas!

Saturday, June 20. During the week we have been halted we have

drifted a whole degree southward with the ice.

Monday, June 22. In the evening, as usual, I climbed to the top of

some pack-ice to scan the horizon. This time, E. of where I stood, I saw

something which made me so excited that I had to sit down on the ice

and start hastily rubbing both my eyes and my binoculars. It was a

bright strip like a neat stroke made by a brush on a light-blue ground. At

first I took it for the moon, but the left segment of that moon grew

gradually dimmer while the right one became more sharply etched.

During the night I went out four or five times to look through my

binoculars and each time I found this piece of moon in the same place. I

am surprised none of my companions saw it. How hard it was for me to

restrain myself from running into the tent and shouting at the top of my

voice: "What are you sitting here like dummies, why are you sleeping,

don't you see we are being carried towards land?" But for some reason I

kept it to myself. Who knows, maybe it was a mirage too. Hadn't I seen

myself on the sea-front of a southern town on a hot summer's day, in

the shade of tall buildings!

159

The first notebook ended on this sentence. The second started on July

11.

Saturday, July 11. We killed a seal from which we drew two bowls of

blood. With this and some pochards we made a very good soup. When

we are making tea or soup we are usually very serious about it. This

morning we ate a pailful of soup and drank a pailful of tea; for dinner we

ate a pailful of soup, drank a pail of tea; and now for supper we have

eaten over a pound of meat each and are waiting impatiently for our pail

of tea to boil. Our pail is a big one, shaped like a truncated cone. I

daresay we wouldn't mind cooking and eating another pail of soup right

now, only we feel we must restrict ourselves, "economise". Our appetites

are more than wolfish; it is something abnormal.

And so we are now sitting on an island, and beneath us is not ice, on

which we have been these last two years, but earth and moss. All is well

but for one thought, which gives me no peace: why did the Captain not

come with us? He did not want to leave his ship, he couldn't go back

empty-handed. "They'll make short work of me if I come back empty-

handed." And then that childish, foolhardy idea:

"Should desperate circumstances compel me to abandon ship I shall

make for the land which we have discovered." Lately, I think, he had

that land on the brain. We sighted it in April 1913.

Monday, July 13. To E.S.-E. the sea is free of ice right up to the

horizon. Ah, St. Maria, this is where we could do with you, my beauty!

This is where you could bowl along without using your engines!

Tuesday, July 14. Today Sotkin and Korolkov went to the tip of the

island where they made a surprising discovery. Slightly inshore they saw

a small mound built of stones. They were struck by its regular shape. On

coming closer they saw an empty English beer bottle with a screw cap.

The men quickly uncovered the mound and found an iron container

under the stones. In it was a well-preserved British flag, and beneath it

another bottle. This bottle had a paper pasted on it with several names

and inside it was a note written in English. With some difficulty and by

the joint efforts of Nils and myself, I made out that the British polar

expedition led by Jackson, having sailed from Cape Flora in August 1897

had arrived at Cape Mary Harmsworth, where it had placed this flag and

the note. The note said that all was well on the good ship Windward.

In this surprising manner all my doubts were cleared up: we were on

Cape Mary Harmsworth, the south-western tip of Alexandra Land.

Tomorrow we intend to go to the southern shore of the island and make

for Cape Flora where this famous Englishman Jackson had his base.

Wednesday, July 15. Broke camp. We had the choice of either going

all together across the glacier and dragging our baggage along or

breaking up into two parties, one of which would go across the ice on

skis while the other, consisting of five men, would sail along the icefield

in the kayaks. We chose the latter method.

Thursday, July 16. In the morning Maxim and Nils started to bring

the kayaks closer in to where we had halted, and Nils was carried out so

far by the current that two men had to be sent to his aid. I looked

through my binoculars and saw Nils ship his paddle and look at the

approaching rescue craft with a helpless air. Nils must be very sick; it's

the only way I can account for his behaviour. He acts rather strange-

walks unsteadily and sits apart all the time. Today, for supper, we

cooked two pochards and an eider.

160

Friday, July 17. Dirty weather. Still sitting on Cape Grant, waiting for

the shore party. Weather cleared up at night. E.N.-E. ahead, seemingly

quite near, we can see a rocky island across the icefield.

Can this be Northbrook, where Cape Flora is? We shall soon know

whether I was right in trying to make this cape. Twenty years is a long

time. There may be nothing left of Jackson's log houses. But what else

could we do? Make a wide detour? Would my wretched, sick

companions have stood it, their clothes, soaked in blubber oil, all in rags

and full of vermin?

Saturday, July 18. Tomorrow, weather permitting, we will push on. I

cannot wait any longer. Nils can hardly walk and Korolkov is almost as

bad. Dunayev complains of pains in his legs, too, but he does not show

signs of that apathy and exhaustion which frightens me in Nils and

Korolkov. What can be delaying the walking party? In any case we

cannot stay here any longer-it spells death.

Monday, July 20. Bell Island. When we stepped out of the kayaks we

saw that Nils could not walk any more. He fell down and tried to crawl

forward on all fours. We put up a tent of sorts, carried Nils into it and

wrapped him up in our only blanket. He kept trying to crawl away, but

then quieted down. Nils is a Dane. During his two years' service aboard

the St. Maria he learned to speak Russian well. But since yesterday he

has forgotten his Russian. What strikes me most of all is the blank, fear-

stunned look in his eyes, the eyes of a man who has lost his reason. We

boiled some broth and gave him half a cupful. He drank it and lay down.

I feel sorry for him. He is a good sailor, a sensible, hard-working man.

All went to sleep, but I took my rifle and went to look at Cape Flora from

the cliffs.

Tuesday, July 21. Nils died in the night. He had not even thrown off

the blanket we had wrapped him in. His face was serene, undistorted by

death agonies. Within a couple of hours we carried out our dead

comrade and laid him on a sledge. The grave was a shallow one, as the

earth was frozen hard. No one shed a tear over this solitary, remote

grave. His death did not come as a surprise to us and we took it as a

matter of course. This was not callousness or heartlessness on our part.

It was the abnormal torpor one feels in the face of death, a sense of

irrevocable doom that haunted every one of us. It was with something

akin to animosity that we now kept glancing at the next "candidate",

Dunayev, trying to guess whether he would "make it or not". One of his

mates even shouted at him angrily: "What are you sitting there like a

wet hen? Want to go after Nils? Come on, get some driftwood, stir your

stumps!" When Dunayev humbly rose to go, they shouted after him:

"Now, no buckling, mind!" There was no resentment against Dunayev.

Even the driftwood was of no importance now. It was resentment

against the sickness which had claimed their comrade, it was a call to

fight death to one's last breath. Buckling, when your legs give way under

you as though paralysed, is very characteristic. After that your tongue

refuses to obey you. The sick man articulates his words carefully, then

gives it up in some confusion when he sees that nothing comes of it.

Wednesday, July 22. At three o'clock we started out for Cape Flora. My

thoughts again were with Captain Tatarinov. I have no further doubt

now that he was somewhat obsessed with this new land we had

discovered. Lately he kept reproaching himself for not having sent out a

party to explore it. He spoke about it also in Ms farewell speech to us. I

161

shall never forget that leavetaking. That pale, inspired face with its

inward look! How different from that once ruddy-faced, cheerful man

with his fund of yarns and funny stories, the idol of his crew, a man who

always came to his task, however difficult, with a joke on his lips!

Nobody moved after his speech. He stood there with closed eyes, as

though nerving himself for the last word of farewell. But instead of

words, a low moan broke from his lips and tears glistened in the corners

of his eyes. He began jerkily, then continued more calmly: "We all find it

hard to say goodbye to friends with whom we have lived through two

years of struggle and work. But we must remember that, although the

expedition's main task has not been accomplished, we have done a good

deal. By the labours of Russian men, some very important pages have

been written in the history of the North, and Russia can be proud of

them. It is up to us to show ourselves worthy successors of the Russian

explorers of the North. And if we perish, our discovery must not perish

with us. So let our friends report that through the efforts of our

expedition an extensive territory, which we have named Maria Land, has

been added to Russia." He stopped, then embraced each of us in turn

and said: "I want to say to you not 'goodbye', but 'till we meet again'."

Thursday, July 30. There are only eight of us left now-four in the

kayaks and four somewhere on Alexandra Land.

Saturday, August 1. This is what happened today: we were within two

or three miles of Cape Flora when a strong Northeaster rose, which

quickly built up to gale force and whipped up a heavy swell. Before we

knew it we lost the second kayak in the mist, the one with Dunayev and

Korolkov in it. It was impossible to battle against the wind and current

in this swell, so we sought the protection on one of the larger icebergs,

climbed up it and dragged our kayak on to it. We planted a mast at the

top of the iceberg and hoisted a flag in the hope that Dunayev would see

it and follow our example. It was pretty cold, and, being rather tired, we

decided to get some sleep. We put on our parkas and lay down on the

top of the iceberg head-to-toe, so that Maxim's feet were in my parka,

behind my back, and my feet were in Maxim's parka, behind his back.

We slept soundly for some 7 or 8 hours. Our awakening was frightful.

We were wakened by a terrific crash and found ourselves hurtling down.

The next moment our improvised double sleeping-bag was full of water;

we were submerged and making desperate efforts to get out of this

treacherous bag by trying to kick each other away. We were like cats

thrown into the water to be drowned. I don't remember how many

seconds we threshed about in the water, but it seemed a dreadfully long

time to me. Together with thoughts of rescue and death, a kaleidoscope

of scenes from our voyage whirled through my head—the death of

Morev, Nils and the four who had set out on foot. Now it was our turn

and nobody would ever know what had happened to us. At that moment

my feet found Maxim's and we kicked each other free. The next moment

found us standing drenched to the skin on the under-water foot of the

iceberg, fishing out of the water our boots, caps, blanket and mittens

which were floating round us in the water. Our parkas were so heavy

that we had to lift each one out together, and the blanket sank before we

could get to it. I cudgelled my brain what to do now. We would surely

freeze to death! As if in answer to our question, our kayak dropped

down into the water from the top of the iceberg: either the wind had

162

blown it down or the ice had given way under it as it had under us. Now

we knew what to do. We wrung out our socks and jackets, and put them

on again, threw everything we had left into the kayak, got in and started

paddling away. My God, how furiously we worked those paddles! It was

this, I think, that saved us. In about six hours we approached Cape

Flora...

Among the earlier entries made soon after the navigating officer had

left the ship, I found an interesting chart. It had an old-fashioned look

about it, and I thought it resembled the chart that was appended to

Nansen's account of the voyage of the Fram.

But what surprised me was this: there was a chart of the drift of the St.

Maria from October 1912 to April 1914, and the drift was shown as

having taken place in the area of what was known as Petermann's Land.

Who nowadays does not know that this land does not exist? But who

knows that this fact was first established by Captain Tatarinov in the

schooner St. Maria'.

What then did he accomplish, this Captain, whose name appears in no

book of geography? He discovered Severnaya Zemlya and proved that

Petermann's Land does not exist. He changed the map of the Arctic, yet

he considered his expedition a failure.

But the most important thing was this: reading the diary for the fifth,

sixth and seventh time from my own copy (with nothing now to

interfere with the actual process of reading), my attention was drawn to

the entries dealing with the Captain's attitude to this discovery:

"Lately he kept reproaching himself for not having sent out a party to

explore it" (i.e. Severnaya Zemlya).

"If we perish, our discovery must not perish with us. So let our friends

report that through the efforts of our expedition an extensive territory,

which we have named Maria Land, has been added to Russia."

"Should desperate circumstances compel me to abandon ship I shall

make for the land which we have discovered."

And the navigating officer called this idea childish and foolhardy.

Childish and foolhardy! The Captain's last letter which Aunt Dasha

once read to me contained those two words.

"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 had given me quite a new idea. I hope it does not strike

you, as it does some of my companions, as childish and foolhardy."

The page had ended with those words and the next sheet was missing.

Now I knew what that idea was: he wanted to leave ship and head for

that land. The expedition, which had been the principal aim of his life,

had been a failure. He could not return home "empty-handed". His one

desire was to reach that land, and it was clear to me that if any trace of

the expedition were to be found anywhere, then it was in that land that

it had to be sought.

Would I ever find out what had happened to this man, who had

entrusted me, as it were, with the task of telling the story of his life and

death? Had he left the ship to explore the land he had discovered, or had

he died from hunger along with his men, leaving his schooner, icebound

off the coast of Yamal, to drift for years along Nansen's route to

Greenland with a dead crew? Or, one cold stormy night, when stars,

163

moon and Northern Lights were blotted out, had the ship been crushed

in the ice, her masts, topmasts and yards crushing to the deck, killing

the men there, while the hull groaned and creaked in its death throes,

and in some two hours the blizzard had cloaked the scene of the disaster

in snow?

Or were men from the St. Maria still alive somewhere, on some Arctic

desert island, men who could tell the story of the ship's fate and the fate

of her Captain? Had not six Russian sailors lived for several years in an

uninhabited corner of Spitzbergen, hunting bears and seals, eating their

flesh, wearing their skins and using them to cover the floor of their hut,

which they had built from ice and snow?

But how could they? Twenty years had passed since that "childish",

"foolhardy" idea of abandoning ship and striking out for Maria Land

had been voiced. Had they made for this land? Had they reached it?

CHAPTER EIGHT

"I THINK WE HAVE MET"

Volodya, the doctor's son, called for me at seven in the morning. Half

awake, I heard him down below scolding his dogs Buska and Toga. We

had arranged the day before to visit the local fur-breeding farm and he

had suggested making the trip by dog-sledge.

When we had settled in the sledge he shouted briskly, like your true

Nenets, "mush, mush!" and the dogs started off at a spanking speed.

The snow dust struck my face, stinging my eyes and taking my breath

away. When the sledge bounced over a snowdrift I clutched Volodya,

who looked round in surprise. I let go of him and started to bounce up

and down in my straps, which, I thought, were not drawn tight enough.

Whoosh! Without warning the dogs stopped dead in their tracks, all

but catapulting me out of the sledge. Nothing alarming. It appeared that

we had to turn off here, and Volodya had stopped the dogs to change

direction. His dogs had one fault-they couldn't take a turning on the

run.

We continued down the new track and after a while the dogs spurted

forward and began to bark. Hark!—what was that? All of a sudden, as if

in answer to the dogs a chorus of barks came from behind a clump of

trees, first remote, then nearer and nearer. It was a long-drawn-out,

wild, confused barking, which sent a chill up your spine.

"Volodya, why are there so many dogs here?"

"They're not dogs, they're foxes."

"Why do they bark?"

"They're cannies!" Volodya shouted over his shoulder. "They bark!"

I had, of course, seen ordinary foxes, but Volodya explained that this

farm was breeding silvery-black foxes, and this was something quite

different. There were no foxes like it anywhere else in the world. A

164

white-tipped tail was considered beautiful, but here they were trying to

breed a fox without a single white hair.

In short, he really got me interested, and I was very annoyed when,

some fifteen minutes later, we arrived at the farm gate to find a

watchman there with a rifle slung over his shoulder who told us that the

farm was not open for inspection.

"What is it open for?"

"For scientific work," said the watchman.

"Could we see the director?"

"The director is out."

"Who's in charge?"

"The Senior Research Associate," the watchman said impressively.

"Ah, that's the man we want."

I left Volodya at the gate and went in search of the S.R.A. Obviously

not many people came to the farm, for only a single narrow track ran

through the snow-covered courtyard to the house which the watchman

had pointed out to me. After shaking the snow off my boots I opened the

door and found myself in a large low-ceilinged room which led into

another larger room where a man was sitting at a desk. He got up on

seeing me. He looked at me in a way that was very familiar and

reminded me of Valya Zhukov. The same amiable, slightly mad

expression. He even had the same dark down on his cheeks, only thicker

and blacker. Could this be Valya? I voiced the thought:

"Valya! Is that you?"

"What?" he said in a bewildered way, cocking his head to one side as

Valya used to do.

"Valya, you sonofagun!" I said, my heart giving an enormous bound.

"What's the matter? Don't you recognise me?"

He smiled vaguely and gave me his hand.

"Why, yes," he said in an artificial tone. "I think we have met."

"Think? You think we have met!"

I grabbed his arm and dragged him to the window.

"Look, you cow!"

He looked and gave a vague little laugh.

"Dammit, don't you recognise me?" I said with amazement.

He blinked. Then the vagueness left his face, leaving a real, true Valya

which you could confuse with no one else in the world.

"Sanya!" he yelled with a gasp. "Is that you?"

We embraced and started off arm in arm. In the doorway he kissed

me again.

"So it's you? I’ll be jiggered! When did you arrive?"

"I didn't arrive, I live here."

"What d'you mean?"

"What I say. I've been here six months."

"No, really?" Valya muttered. "But of course, I'm seldom in town, or I

might have run into you. H'm... Six months!"

He led me into another room, which looked much the same as the one

we had just left, except that it had a bed in it and a gun hanging on the

wall. The other room was his study and this was his bedroom.

Somewhere nearby there was a laboratory, judging by the stink in the

house. It struck me as funny how this animal smell went with Valya,

with his absent-looking eyes, his shock of hair and that down on his

165

cheeks. Valya had always carried the smell of some animal around with

him.

I reminded myself that I had left Volodya at the gate, and Valya sent a

junior research associate for him. This junior, by the way, was some

thirty years older than Valya, an imposing bearded figure with a queer

thin nose. Apparently, he had made an impression on Volodya, because

they did not come in until half an hour later, chatting in a friendly

fashion, and Volodya announced that Pavel Petrovich-that was the

man's name-had promised to show him the fox kitchen.

"And even treat him to a fox dinner," said Pavel Petrovich.

"Show him the 'jungle'," Valya said.

Volodya flushed and held his breath when he heard the word. Jungle-

it sounded so thrilling.

They went out, leaving Valya and me alone together. We started

reminiscing about Korablev and the boys. After a while Valya reminded

himself that the fox cubs had to be given their medicine.

"Have somebody give it to them."

"No, I've got to do that myself," Valya said. "It's Vigantol, for rickets.

You wait here, I won't be long."

I did not want to part from him and we went off together.

CHAPTER NINE

GOOD NIGHT!

Valya persuaded me to stay the night, and we telephoned the doctor to

say that Volodya would be returning home by himself.

We took a walk in the woods, then went back to Valya's room and had

a drink together. He told me that he had seldom left the farm during the

last six months. He was engaged in interesting work-examining the

stomachs of sables in order to discover what they ate. He had several

stomachs of his own, from the farm and some two hundred or so

presented to him by some animal reservation. And he had discovered a

very interesting thing: that when hunting small furbearers it was

important to spare the ground squirrel, and this was the sable's staple

diet.

I listened to him in silence. We were quite alone, in an empty house,

and the room was absolutely bare—the big, comfortless room of a lonely

man.

"Yes, that's interesting," I said, when Valya had finished. "So the sable

needs ground squirrels to live on? Well, well! And d'you know what you

need most of all? What you're badly in need of? A wife!"

Valya blinked, then laughed.

"What makes you think that?" he said irresolutely.

"Because you live like a dog. And d'you know what kind of wife you

need? One who'd bring you sandwiches in your lab and wouldn't be

demanding on your attention."

166

"I don't know," Valya muttered. "I'll marry eventually I suppose.

When I'm through with my thesis I'll be quite free. I'll soon be going

back to Moscow, you know. What about you?"

"What about me?"

"Why don't you marry?"

After a pause, I said: "Oh, it's different with me. I lead a different life—

here today and at the other end of the earth tomorrow. I can't marry."

"No, you ought to marry too," Valya retorted , then, struck by a

sudden thought, he added: "I say, do you remember coming to see me at

the Zoo with Katya, who brought a friend along? What was her name? A

tall girl with plaits."

His face assumed such a gentle, childish expression that I could not

help laughing.

"Yes, of course. Kiren! Good-looking, isn't she?"

"Very," said Valya. "Very."

He wanted to give me his bed, but I preferred a shakedown on the

floor. There were plenty of cots in the house, but I had always liked

sleeping on the floor.

I did not feel like sleeping that night. We talked about everything

under the sun, then harked back to the subject of Korablev.

"You know." Valya said, "I may be wrong, of course, but I have an idea

that he was a little in love with Maria Vasilievna. Don't you think so?"

"Maybe."

"Because a very odd thing happened. One day, when I called to see

him, I saw her portrait on his desk. I asked him something, because I

happened to be going to Tatarinovs the next day, and he suddenly

started talking about her. Then he fell silent, and he had such a look on

his face ... I decided there was something wrong there."

"You don't say so?" I said with annoyance. "What the hell—you must

be living up in the clouds. A little in love! Why, he couldn't live without

her! And all this was going on right under your nose. But you were busy

with your snakes then!"

"No, really? Poor devil!"

"Poor devil's right."

After a pause I asked:

"Were you often at the Tatarinovs?"

"Not very often. About three times."

"How are they getting on?"

Valya rose on his elbow. He seemed to be trying to see my face in the

dark, though I had spoken quite calmly.

"They're all right. Nikolai Antonich is a professor now."

"Is that so! What does he read?"

"Pedology," Valya said. "And a highly respected professor, I'd have

you know. As a matter of fact..."

"As a matter of fact what?"

"I think you were mistaken about him."

"Do you?"

"Yes," Valya said with conviction. "You were wrong about him. Just

look how he treats his pupils, for instance. Why, he's ready to go

through fire and water for them. Romashov told me that last year—"

"Romashov? Where does he come in?"

"What d'you mean? It was he who took me to the Tatarinovs."

167

"How does he come to be there?"

"He's Nikolai Antonich's assistant. He's there every day. He's an

intimate friend of the family."

"Wait a minute, what are you talking about? I don't understand. You

mean Romashka?"

"Yes, of course," said Valya. "Only nobody calls him that now. By the

way, I believe he's going to marry Katya."

I felt a sudden stab through the heart and sat up. Valya sat up, too,

and stared at me blankly.

"What's the matter?" he asked. "Oh, of course. Damn it. I'd quite

forgotten!"

He muttered something, then looked around with an air of

bewilderment and got out of his bed.

"Well, not exactly going to marry—"

"Finish what you were going to say," I said quite calmly.

"What d'you mean 'finish'?" Valya stammered. "I didn't say anything.

It was just my idea, it doesn't mean anything. I get funny ideas

sometimes, you know."

"Valya!"

"I don't know anything!" Valya said in desperation. "It's only an idea.

I get some crazy ideas sometimes. You don't have to believe me!"

"You have an idea that Romashov is going to marry Katya?"

"Hell, no! I tell you, no! Nothing of the sort! He started to dress up,

that's all."

"Valya!"

"I swear I don't know anything more."

"Has he talked to you about it?"

"Well, yes. He told me he'd been saving up money since he was

thirteen and had now taken and spent it all in six months. Has that got

anything to do with it, you think?"

I was no longer listening to him. I lay on the floor, staring out at the

sky, and it seemed to me that I was lying in some deep abyss and the

whole world was humming and talking above me, while I was lying all

alone with nobody to say a word to. The sky was still dark and the stars

still visible, but already a faint, distant light was hovering over the earth,

and I was thinking-here we had spent the whole night talking and this is

where it has led us!

"Good night!"

"Good night!" I answered mechanically.

I wished now I had left with Volodya. A choking sensation came into

my throat and I felt like getting up and going out into the fresh air, but I

lay where I was, merely turning over onto my stomach with my face in

my hands. So that was that! Incredible though it was, I could not stop

thinking about it for a minute. The incredible thing about it was

Romashka, for I could not imagine him and Katya together. But what

made me think she had not forgotten me all this time? After all, we

hadn't met for so many years.

Valya was asleep and my going out would probably have awakened

him. But I did not feel like talking to him any more, and so I remained

lying on my stomach, then on my back, then again on my stomach with

my face in my hands.

168

Afterwards—it must have been round about seven—the telephone

rang and Valya jumped up, sleepy-eyed, and ran into the next room

dragging the blanket behind him.

"It's for you," he said, returning a moment later.

"Me?"

I threw my coat over my shoulders and went to the telephone.

"Sanya!" It was the doctor speaking. "Where've you disappeared to?

I'm phoning from the Executive Committee office. I'm handing over the

receiver."

"Comrade Grigoriev," said another voice. It was the Zapolarie police

chief. "An urgent matter. You have to fly to Camp Vanokan with Doctor

Pavlov. Do you know Ledkov?"

Did I know him! He was a member of the regional Executive

Committee and one of the most respected men in the North country.

Everyone knew him.

"He's wounded and needs urgent medical aid. When can you fly out?"

"Within an hour," I said.

"And you, doctor?"

I did not catch the doctor's answer.

"Instruments all in order? Good. I'll see you in an hour's time then, at

the airfield."

CHAPTER TEN

THE FLIGHT

These were the people aboard the plane on the morning of March 5th

when we took off and headed northeast: the doctor, anxious-looking,

wearing dark glasses, which changed his appearance surprisingly, my air

mechanic Luri, one of the most popular men in Zapolarie or wherever

else in the Arctic he happened to appear for at least three or four days,

and myself.

This was my fifteenth flight in the North, but my first flight to a

district where they had never seen a plane before. Camp Vanokan was a

very remote spot on one of the tributaries of the Pyasina. The doctor had

been on the Pyasina before and said it should not be difficult to find

Vanokan.

A member of the E.C. had been wounded. It had happened while he

was out hunting—so it was believed. Anyway, the doctor and I had been

asked to ascertain in what circumstances this had happened. We should

arrive at Vanokan about three o'clock, before it grew dark. For an

emergency, though, we took with us provisions for three men to last

thirty days, a primus-stove, a flare gun with a supply of flares, a shotgun

and cartridges, spades, a tent and an axe.

169

As for the weather, all I knew was that it was fine at Zapolarie but

what it was like along our route I had no idea. There was no time to get a

report and no one to give it.

And so all was in order when we took off from Zapolarie and headed

northeast. All was in order, and I was no longer thinking about what I

had heard from Valya the night before. Below me I could see the

Yenisei—a broad, white band between white banks, along which ran a

forest, now closing in, now drawing back. I had a slight headache after

that sleepless night and sometimes there was a ringing in my ears, but

only in my ears, for the engine was working splendidly.

After a while I left the line of the river, and the tundra began-a level,

endless, snowy plain unrelieved by a single black dot, nothing whatever

to catch the eye...

Why had I been so sure that this could never happen? I should have

written to her when she sent me her regards through Sanya. But I had

not wanted to make any advances to her until I had proved that I was

blameless. You must never be too sure of a woman's love, however. Sure

of her loving you in spite of everything.

Snow, snow, snow, wherever you looked. There were clouds ahead,

and I climbed and drove into them. Better to fly blind than have this

endless, dismal, white waste under you which distorted perspective.

I bore Romashka no particular malice, though if he had been here at

the moment I should probably have killed him. I bore him no malice,

simply because it was impossible to associate that man with Katya, that

man with the scruffy thatch on his head and the flaming ears, who had

decided at the age of thirteen to get rich and was always saving and

counting his money. His wanting to marry her was just as senseless as

his wanting, say, to suddenly become a different person other than

himself, someone with Katya's candour and beauty.

We passed through the cloud-bank and entered another, beyond

which snow was falling. The snow glittered somewhere down below

under the sun, which was hidden from us by clouds.

My feet had begun to grow chilled and I regretted that I had put on a

pair of fur boots which were a little too tight on me. I should have put on

larger ones.

So my mind was made up—1 was going to Moscow. I would have to let

her know I was coming, though. I must write her a letter, a letter that

she would read and never forget.

We emerged from the layer of dark clouds, and the sun, as always

happens when you emerge, seemed brighter than ever-but I still could

not decide whether to begin my letter simply with "Katya" or "Dear

Katya".

There were the mountains. They rested on the clouds, lit up by the

sun, some bare, others covered with dazzling snow. Through the rare

rifts in the clouds gorges could be seen, long picturesque gorges,

spelling certain death in the event of a forced landing. I could not help

thinking of this, then I went on composing my letter, continuing this

until I was compelled to give my attention to other, more urgent

matters.

There did not seem to be any wind, yet huge cloudlike caps of snow

started to break away from the mountain tops and whirled up and up.

Within ten minutes it was impossible to imagine that there had just

been sun and sky above us. There was now neither earth, nor sun, nor

sky. All was chaos and confusion. The wind caught up with us and

170

struck us first from the left, then in front, then from the left again,

blowing us off course, to where there was a mist and falling snow—

small, brittle snow which stung your face and pierced through every

buttonhole and gap in your clothing. Then night closed in. You could

not see a thing around you, and for a time I flew the plane in utter

darkness. I seemed to be running into walls, for all around us were real

walls of snow bolstered up on all sides by the wind. At one moment I

broke through them, at the next retreated and broke through again, or

found myself far beneath them. It was a frightening experience to feel

the plane suddenly dropping a hundred and fifty or two hundred

metres, without your knowing how high the mountains were, as they

were not marked on my map. All I could do was to wheel round in a

half-circle and go back to the Yenisei. I would see the backs there, fly

over the high bluffs and steer clear of the blizzard, or, if it came to the

worst, return to Zapolarie.

Turning round was easier said than done. The plane began to shudder

when I pressed my left foot down and we were flung aside again, but I

continued swinging her round. I believe I said something to the

machine. It was at that moment that I felt something was going wrong

with the engine. This was too bad, because we still had those gorges

beneath us, which I had been hoping we had left far behind. We caught

glimpses of them here and there—long and utterly hopeless: nobody

would find us there or ever know what had happened to us. I had to get

away from these death traps, and I did, though I was having engine

trouble and would have to put the plane down soon. I began to descend

very slowly, keeping an eye on the turn indicator and thinking all the

time about the ground, which was somewhere below me, though I did

not know where it was or what it was like. Something was beating in my

brain, like a clock ticking, and I talked loudly to myself and to the

machine. But I was not afraid. I only remember feeling hot for a

moment, when some great bulk swept past me. I flung the plane away

from it and almost grazed the ground with my wing tip.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE BLIZZARD

I am not going to describe those three days and nights we spent in the

tundra, not far from the banks of the Pyasina. One hour was like

another, and only the first few minutes, when we had to make the plane

fast somehow to prevent it being swept away by the blizzard, were

different from the rest of the time.

Just try securing a plane down in the tundra, which is bare of

vegetation, and with a force ten wind blowing! With the engine still

running, we placed the plane with its tail to the wind. We thought of

burying it, but the moment we touched the snow with a spade the wind

blew it away. The plane was still being tossed about and we had to think

171

of some reliable way of anchoring it, because the wind was building up

and in half an hour it would be too late. We then did a simple thing—1

recommended it to all Arctic pilots—we tied ropes to the wings and to

these in turn we attached skis, suitcases, a box containing cargo, and

even a funnel-in short, everything that might help snowdrifts to form

rapidly around them. Within fifteen minutes snowdrifts had piled up

around these objects, but in other places under the plane the snow was

still being blown away.

Now we could do nothing but wait. Not a very cheerful prospect, but

the only thing we could do. To wait and wait—who knows how long!

I have already mentioned that we had everything to meet the

emergency of a forced landing, but what can you do with a tent, say, if a

simple thing like getting out of the plane is a complicated and agonising

business, which you can only bring yourself to do once a day and then

only because you have to get out once a day.

So passed the first day. A little less warmth. A little more sleepy. To

keep from falling asleep I try all kinds of tricks which take a lot of time

doing and are of little use. I try, for instance, to light the primus-stove,

while I order Luri to light the blowlamp. A difficult task! It's hard to

light a primus-stove when every minute you feel your own skin from

head to foot, when you suddenly feel yourself going cold somewhere

deep inside your ears, as if у our eardrums were freezing and when the

snow immediately plasters your face, turning it into an icy mask. Luri

tries to crack jokes, but the jokes freeze in mid-air, in a fifty-degree (C.)

frost and there is nothing left for him but to joke about his ability to joke

under any circumstances and at any time.

So ended our first night and the night after that. A little more sleepy

still. And the snow kept rushing past us until it seemed as if all the

world's snow was flying past us... The thing was not to let the mechanic

fall asleep. He looked the strongest of us, but turned out to be the

weakest. The doctor from time to time slapped him and shook him.

Then the doctor himself began to doze and I had to shake him from time

to time, politely but persistently.

"Nothing of the sort, Sanya. I wasn't sleeping at all," he muttered,

opening his eyes with an effort. I no longer felt sleepy. Some years later I

read Stefansson's The Friendly Arctic and realised that it was a mistake

to go without sleep for such a long time. But at that time I was

inexperienced in the ways of the Arctic and believed that to fall asleep in

such a situation was courting certain death.

All the same I must have fallen asleep or else I was daydreaming,

seeing myself boxed up deep in the earth, because overhead I could

distinctly hear a street noise and the clanging and rattling of tramcars. It

wasn't very terrifying, only somewhat distressing to find myself lying in

that little box all alone, unable to stir hand or foot, and I having to fly

somewhere without a minute to spare. Then suddenly I found myself in

a street standing before the lighted window of a shop, while inside the

shop was Katya, walking calmly up and down without looking at me. It

was she without a doubt, though I was a little afraid that it would

afterward turn out to be someone else or that something would prevent

me from speaking to her. The next moment I rushed to the door of the

shop, but it was already empty and dark inside, and on the glass door

hung a notice: "Closed."

I opened my eyes, then shut them again, overjoyed at the sight that

met them! The blizzard had died down. The snow no longer blinded us,

172

but lay on the ground. Above it were the sun and sky, the immeasurably

vast sky that one can only find at sea or in the tundra. Against this

background of snow and sky, within two hundred paces of the plane,

stood a man. He held a reindeer guiding pole in his hands and behind

him stood reindeer harnessed to a sledge. Farther out, as though faintly

etched, rose two little snow hills—without a doubt Nenets chooms - skin

dwellings. This was the dark mass which I had shied away from when

landing. They were now snowed up and only the conical open tops

showed black. Around the chooms stood people, adults and children.

They stood perfectly motionless, gazing at our aeroplane.

CHAPTER TWELVE

WHAТ IS A PRIMUS-STOVE?

I never thought that thrushing one's feet into a fire could be such a

joy. But it is sheer, unalloyed bliss! You feel the warmth flowing into

your body, rising higher and higher, and at last, slowly, softly, warming

the heart.

I felt nothing else, thought of nothing else. The doctor was muttering

something behind me, but I was not listening to him, and did not care a

hang about the spirits he was having rubbed into my feet.

The smoke of the tundra shrub they were burning, which is like the

smoke of damp pinewood, hung over the hearth, but I did not care a

hang for this smoke either—all I cared for was the warmth. I was

warm—it was almost unbelievable!

The Nentsi were squatting round the fire and looking at us. Their

faces were grave. The doctor was trying to tell them something in

Nenets. They listened attentively and nodded understandingly. And

then it transpired that they had understood nothing, and the doctor,

with a gesture of annoyance, began to act the scene of a wounded man

and an aeroplane flying to his aid. It would have been very funny had I

been able to keep awake for as long as a minute at a stretch. He lay

down, clutching his belly, then jumped up and rushed forward with

raised arms. Suddenly he turned to me, saying in amazement:

"Would you believe it! They know all about it. They even know where

Ledkov was wounded. It was attempted murder. Somebody shot at

him."

He began speaking in Nenets again, and I guessed, through my

drowsiness, that he was asking them whether they knew who had fired

the shot.

"They say the man who fired the shot went home. Went home to

think. He will think a day, two days. But he will come back."

I couldn't fight off sleep any longer. Everything began to swim before

me, and I could have laughed through sheer joy at the thought of being

able to go to sleep at last.

173

When I woke up it was quite light. A skin flap had been drawn aside

and I saw the doctor standing in a dazzling triangle of light with the

Nentsi sitting on their haunches around him. Some way off I could see

the plane, and all this was so strongly reminiscent of a familiar film

scene that I was afraid it would soon flash past and disappear. But it

wasn't a film shot. It was the doctor asking the Nentsi where Vanokan

was.

"There?" he shouted irritably, pointing south. "There, there!" the Nentsi

cried. "There?" he asked, pointing east. "There."

Then the Nentsi all began pointing to the southeast and the doctor

drew a huge map of the Arctic coastline in the snow. But that did not

help matters, because the Nentsi regarded the map as a work of art, and

one of them, quite a young fellow, drew a figure of a reindeer beside the

map to show that he, too, could draw.

The first thing to do was to dig the aeroplane out of the snow. And we

should never have been able to cope with this task if the Nentsi had not

helped us. I had never seen snow which looked so little like snow. We

hacked it with axes and spades and cut it with knives. When the last

snow block had been cut out and thrown aside, we untied the fastenings,

which I had recommended to the notice of Arctic pilots. Water to warm

up the engine was being heated in all available pots and kettles. The

young Nenets, who had drawn the reindeer in the snow and now

volunteered to act as our navigator to show us the way to Vanokan, had

said goodbye to his weeping wife, and this was very amusing, as his wife

was wearing trousers of reindeer-skin and only the bits of coloured cloth

in her hair distinguished her from the men. The sun came out from

behind the high fleecy clouds-a sign of good weather-and I told the

doctor, who was putting eye drops into somebody's eyes, that it was

time to "get going". At that moment Luri came up to me and said that

we could not take off.

A strut in the undercarriage was broken-no doubt this had happened

when I shied clear of the tent-dwelling in landing. We hadn't noticed

this until the Nentsi had cleared the snow away from the undercarriage.

It was four clear days and nights since we had left Zapolarie. No doubt

they would be looking for us and would eventually find us, though the

blizzard had carried us off course. They would find us-but could you be

certain? Perhaps it was already too late for us to fly to Vanokan, unless

we were flying to fetch a corpse?

This was my first real test in the North, and it was with dismay that I

thought of having to return empty-handed without having done

anything. Or, worse still, they would find me in the tundra, helpless as a

puppy, beside a crippled aeroplane. What was to be done?

I called the doctor and asked him to gather the Nentsi.

It was an unforgettable meeting, the one we held in the choom around

the fire, or rather around the smoke, which went out through a round

hole above our heads. I can't make out how such a crowd of people

could pack themselves into that choom\ A reindeer had been

slaughtered in our honour, and the Nentsi were eating it raw, holding

the meat in their teeth with one hand and cutting slices off close to their

lips with amazing dexterity. It was a wonder they did not snip off the

tips of their noses while they were at it!

Though I am not squeamish, I tried not to look at the way they dipped

these strips in a cup of blood and dispatched them amid a smacking of

lips.

174

"It's bad," I began my speech, "that we have taken on ourselves to help

a wounded man, a respected man, and here we are, sitting with you

these last four days, and unable to help him. Please, translate that,

Doctor."

The doctor translated it.

"But what's still worse is that a lot of time has passed and we are still

far away from Vanokan and don't even know exactly which way to fly—

to the north or south, the east or west."

The doctor translated.

"Worse still, our aeroplane is damaged. And we can't mend it without

your help."

The Nentsi began talking all together, but the doctor raised a hand

and they fell silent. I had already noticed that they treated him with

great respect.

"We would have fared badly but for you," I went on. "Without you we

would have frozen to death, without you we could not have coped with

the snow, under which our aeroplane was buried. Translate that,

please."

The doctor translated.

"And one more request. We need a piece of wood. We need a small,

but very strong piece of wood, a metre long. We shall then be able to

mend the aeroplane and fly on further to help that worthy man."

I tried to speak as though I were mentally translating back from

Nenets into Russian.

"Of course, I understand that wood is a very rare and precious thing. I

would like to give you very much money for that piece of wood a metre

long, but I have no money. I can offer you our primus-stove instead."

Luri-we had arranged this beforehand-pulled the stove out from

under his anorak and held it up.

"You know, of course, what a primus-stove is. It's a machine that

heats water, cooks meat and boils tea. How long does it take to start a

fire? Half an hour. But a primus you can light in one minute. On a

primus you can even bake pies. It's a splendid thing, a primus, a useful

thing for the household."

Luri pumped it up and applied a match to it, and the flame shot up

almost to the ceiling. But the damned thing, as if on purpose, wouldn't

light, and we had to make believe that it was not supposed to light right

away. This was no easy thing, considering that I had just said that

lighting it was the work of a moment.

"Give us a piece of strong wood a metre long and we'll give you this

primus-stove in exchange."

I was a little afraid the Nentsi would be offended by so modest a gift,

but they weren't. They looked gravely at the primus in utter silence. Luri

kept pumping it until the burner was red-hot and red sparks started to

fly round it. Frankly, at that moment, out there in the wild remote

tundra, in this Nenets choom, the thing looked even to me a live,

burning, buzzing miracle! All sat silent, gazing at it with genuine

respect.

Then an old man with a long pipe in his mouth, and a woman's shawl

tied over his head, which in no way detracted from his dignity of mien,

rose and said something in Nenets-it sounded to me like one very long

sentence. He addressed himself to the doctor, but was replying to me.

And this was how the doctor translated him:

175

"There are three ways of fighting smoke: by screening the smoke-hole

on the weather side, which will make it draw better; by raising the nyuk,

that is, the skin which serves as a door; by making a hole over the door

to let the smoke out. But to receive a guest we have only one way-by

giving him whatever he wants. Just now we shall eat reindeer and sleep.

Afterwards we shall bring you all the wood we can find in our chooms.

As for this magnificent primus, you may do whatever you wish with it."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE OLD BOAT-HOOK

And so, no sooner was the reindeer eaten raw, head, ears, eyes and all,

than the Nentsi started to drag out all the wooden things they

possessed. A hollowed-out plate, a hook for hanging pots, some sort of

weaving device in the shape of a board with round holes along the sides,

sledge runners and skis.

"No good?"

They were surprised.

"But it's strong wood, it will last a hundred years."

They even dragged up a chair-back, which had found its way into the

tundra God knows how. Our future navigator brought a god-a real idol,

decorated with bits of coloured cloth, with a bullet-head and a nail

driven in where a man has his navel.

"No good? But it's strong wood, it will last a hundred years."

To tell the truth, I felt ashamed of my primus when I saw this Nenets,

after saying something sharply to his poor, tearful wife, bring out a tin-

bound chest, which was evidently the show-piece in an otherwise empty

choom. He came up to me, looking very pleased and deposited the chest

in the snow.

"Take this chest," the doctor translated. "It has four strong planks. I

am a Komsomol member, I don't need anything, I spit on your primus!"

I'm not sure the doctor translated this last sentence correctly. In any

case, it was a fine action, and I wrung a young man's hand.

Have you ever felt your mind occupied by a single idea to the

exclusion of all else, and then, all of a sudden, a storm bursts upon your

life and you instantly forget what you were striving after only a moment

ago with all your soul?

That was what happened to me when I saw an old brass-tipped boat-

hook lying in the snow among some poles which were used to build tent

dwellings.

Of course, the whole thing was bizarre, beginning from the moment

that I started my lecture on the primus with the Nentsi listening to me

gravely, and between us, as in a dream, a column of smoke rising up

straight as though made of long grey ribbons.

Strange were those wooden household articles lying in the snow

round the aeroplane. Strange, that sixty-year-old Nenets with his pipe in

176

his mouth who issued a command to an old woman, and she brought

out to us a piece of walrus bone.

But strangest of all was this boat-hook. There was hardly a thing in

the world stranger than this.

At that moment Luri put his head out of the cockpit and hailed me,

and I answered him from somewhere away, from that distant world into

which this thing had suddenly transported me.

What was this boat-hook, then? Nothing much! Just an old brass

hook on a pole. But on this old brass, now turned green, were clearly

engraved the words: "Schooner St. Maria".

I looked back. Luri was still looking out of the cockpit, and he was

undoubtedly Luri, with that beard of his, which I made fun of every day

because he had grown it in imitation of the well-known Arctic airman F.,

and it did not in the least suit his young, vivacious face.

Some distance away, outside the farthest choom, stood the doctor,

surrounded by the Nentsi.

Everything was in its place, just as it had been a moment ago. But

before me lay the boat-hook with the words "Schooner St. Maria"

engraved upon it.

"Luri," I said with deadly calm, "come here."

"Found something?" Luri shouted from the cockpit.

He jumped down, came up to me and started blankly at the boat-hook.

"Read that!"

Luri read it.

"It's from a ship," he said. "The schooner St. Maria."

"That can't be! It can't be, Luri!"

I picked up the boat-hook, cradling it in my arms like a child, and Luri

must have thought I had gone mad, because he muttered something and

ran to the doctor as fast as his legs could carry him. The doctor came up

with an anxious look, took my head between slightly trembling hands

and gazed into my eyes.

"Oh, go to hell!" I said with annoyance. "You think I'm off my rocker?

Nothing of the sort. Doctor, this boat-hook is from off the St. Maria'."

The doctor removed his spectacles and began to study the boat-hook.

"The Nentsi must have found it on Severnaya Zemlya," I went on

excitedly. "Not on Severnaya Zemlya, of course, but somewhere along

the coast. Do you realise what this means, Doctor?"

By this time the Nentsi had gathered around, looking on impassively.

This might have been the thousandth time they were seeing me showing

the boat-hook to the doctor, shouting and getting worked up.

The doctor asked whose hook it was, and an old Nenets with an

inscrutable, deeply-lined face, which looked as though carved out of

wood, stepped forward and said something in Nenets.

"What does he say. Doctor? Where did he get this boat-hook?"

"Where did you get this boat-hook?" the doctor asked in Nenets.

The Nenets answered.

"He says he found it."

"Where?"

"In a boat," the doctor translated.

"In a boat? Where did he find the boat?"

"On the beach," the doctor translated.

"What beach?"

177

"The Taimyr."

"Doctor, the Taimyr!" I yelled in such a voice that it brought the old

anxious look back into his face. "Taimyr! The coast nearest to Severnaya

Zemlya! And where's the boat?"

"There is no more boat," the doctor translated. "Only a bit of it."

"What bit?"

"A bit of boat."

"Show me!"

Luri drew the doctor aside and they stood whispering together while

the old man went to fetch the bit of boat. Apparently Luri still believed

that my mind was unhinged.

The Nenets reappeared a few minutes later with a piece of tarpaulin—

evidently the boat he had found on the coast of the Taimyr Peninsula

had been made of tarpaulin.

"Not for sale," the doctor translated.

"Doctor, ask him if there were any other things in the boat? If there

were, what things and what became of them?"

"There were some things," the doctor translated. "He doesn't know

what became of them. It was a long time ago. Maybe as long as ten

years. He says he was out hunting, and saw a sledge standing. On the

sledge stood a boat and there were things in the boat. A gun was there, a

bad one, couldn't shoot, no cartridges. Skis were there, bad ones. A man

was there."

"A man?"

"Wait a minute, I may have got it wrong." The doctor hastily put his

question again to the Nenets.

178

"Yes, one man," he repeated. "Dead, of course. Face eaten away by

bears. He was lying in the boat too. That's all."

"Nothing else?"

"Nothing."

"Doctor, ask him whether he searched the man, was there anything in

his pockets-papers, documents, maybe."

"There were."

"Where are they?"

"Where are they?" the doctor asked.

The Nenets shrugged. The question sounded rather silly to him.

"Is the boat-hook the only thing that was left? He must have been

wearing something. What happened to his clothes?"

"No clothes."

"How's that?"

"Very simple," the doctor said tartly. "Or do you suppose he purposely

kept them on the off chance of your dropping down on him from the

blue some day with your aeroplane? Ten years! And probably another

ten since he died!"

179

"Don't be angry. Doctor. It's all clear. The thing is to put this story

down in writing and have you certify that you heard it with your own

ears. Ask him what his name is."

"What's your name?" the doctor asked.

"Ivan Vilka."

"How old?"

"A hundred," the Nenets replied.

We were silent, but Luri held his sides with laughter.

"How old?" the doctor queried.

"A hundred years," Ivan Vilka repeated doggedly in pure Russian.

All the time while his story was being recorded in the choom he kept

repeating that he was a hundred. He was probably less, at least he did

not look a hundred. Yet the closer I studied that inscrutable wooden

face, the more was it brought home to me that he was really very old. He

was proud of his hundred years and persisted in repeating it until he

was satisfied that we had recorded in the written statement:

"Hunter Ivan Vilka, a hundred years old."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

VANOKAN

To this day it remains a mystery to me where the Nentsi got that

length of log from which we made the strut we needed. They went off on

skis during the night, probably to some neighbouring nomad camp, and

when, next morning, we came out of the choom, where I had spent that I

would hardly call the most restful night of my life, this piece of cedar

wood lay at the entrance.

Indeed, it had been anything but a cheerful night. The doctor slept by

the fire, the long ends of his cap, tied over his head, sticking comically

over his anorak like a pair of hare's ears. Luri tossed about and coughed.

I could not sleep. A Nenets woman sat by a cradle, and I lay a long time

listening to the monotonous tune which she was singing with a sort of

apathetic abandon. The same words were repeated every minute until it

seemed to me that the whole song consisted of just those two or three

words. The baby had long ago fallen asleep, but she kept on singing.

The feeling I had experienced during my conversation with Valya

came back to me, and with such force that I wanted to get up and leave

the choom, not to have to listen to this dolorous song. But I did not get

up. The woman's song gradually grew slower and quieter and then

stopped altogether. She was asleep. The whole world was asleep, except

me. I lay in the dark, a poignant sense of loneliness and mortification

creeping about my heart. Why did I have to make this discovery when

all was over, when there was nothing more between us and never would

be, and we could meet, if ever we did, as strangers? I tried to fight off

180

this mood of melancholy, but I could not. I tried and tried until at last I

fell asleep.

By midday we had repaired the undercarriage. We whittled the log

down to the size and shape we wanted it and fixed it in place of the strut.

For greater security we tied it down with ropes. The plane now looked a

sorry sight, like a winged bird.

It was time to take our leave. The Nentsi gathered round the plane

and shook hands all round and we thanked them for their help and

wished them a lucky hunting. They laughed, looking pleased. Our

navigator, smiling shyly, got into the plane. I don't know what he had

said to his wife at parting, but she stood near the plane, looking gay in

her fur parka, embroidered along the hem with coloured cloths, with a

broad belt and a hood with a huge fur frill which surrounded her face

like a halo.

By force of habit I raised my hand, as though asking to be flagged off.

"So long, comrades!"

We were off!

I will not describe how we flew to Vanokan, how our navigator

astonished me by his ability to read the snowy wastes beneath us as if

they were a map. Over one nomad camp he asked me to stop for a while

and was very disappointed to learn that this could not be done.

We found Ledkov in a bad state. I had often met him at meetings and

had once even flown him from Krasnoyarsk to Igarka. I had been

impressed, among other things, by his knowledge of literature. I learnt

that he had graduated from the Teachers' Training College in Leningrad

and was generally an educated man. Until the age of twenty-three he

had been a herdsman in the tundra and the Nentsi always spoke of him

with pride and affection.

He was sitting on the bed, grinding his teeth with pain. The pain

would suddenly lift him up. He would hoist himself out of the bed,

gripping the back of it with one hand, and throw himself into a chair. It

was terrible to see that big, strong body writhing in pain. Sometimes it

abated for a few minutes, and then his face would assume a normal

expression. Then it would start again. He bit his upper lip and his eyes-

the stricken eyes of a strong man fighting for self-control-would begin to

squint, and the next moment he would get up on his good leg and fling

himself on the bed. But even there he kept tossing about, shifting from

place to place. Whether it was because the bullet had hit some nerve-

knot or the wound had festered I could not say. But never had I

witnessed such a harrowing scene. It made one wince to look at him as

he lay writhing on the bed in a vain attempt to still the excruciating

pain, then suddenly, without warning, fling himself into a chair at the

bedside.

The sight was enough to make any man lose his head, but not Ivan

Ivanovich. On the contrary, he seemed to have suddenly grown younger.

He bunched his lips and took on the appearance of a determined young

army doctor before whom everyone quails. He immediately chased

everyone out of the sick-room, including the Chairman of District

Executive Committee who had insisted on being present during the

examination of Ledkov.

He ordered paraffin lamps to be fetched from all over the

settlement—"mind they don't smoke"—and hung them round the walls,

making the room brighter than anyone had ever seen in Vanokan

181

before. Then the door was slammed to and the sight of that dazzlingly

bright room with the sick man lying on a dazzlingly white table and

people in dazzlingly white gowns was shut from the astonished gaze of

Vanokan.

Forty minutes later Ivan Ivanovich came out of the improvised

operating theatre. The operation had just been a success, because he

turned to me as he was taking off his gown and said something in Latin,

then quoted Kozma Prutkov: "If you want to be happy, be .it!"

Early the next morning we left Vanokan and landed at Zapolarie three

and a half hours later without further adventure.

The incident—the brilliant operation performed by the doctor under

such difficult conditions, and our adventurous flight—was eventually

reported in Izvestia. The paragraph ended with the words:

"The patient is making a rapid recovery." As a matter of fact he did

recover quickly.

Luri and I received a vote of thanks and the doctor a testimonial from

the Nenets National Area. The old boat-hook now hung in my room on

the wall beside a large map showing the drift of the schooner St. Maria.

At the beginning of June I went to Moscow. Unfortunately I had very

little time, having been allowed only ten days during which I had to see

both to my own private affairs and to the private and public affairs of

my Captain.

182

PART FIVE

FOR THE HEART

CHAPTER ONE

I MEET KATYA

Ten days to break one engagement and arrange another is not much,

considering that I had a lot of other business to attend to in Moscow.

For one thing I was to read a paper before the Geographical Society on

the subject of "A Forgotten Polar Expedition", and it was not even

written yet. I also had to take up with the Northern Sea Route

Administration the question of organising a search for the St. Maria.

Valya had done some preliminary work for me. He had arranged with

the Geographical Society, for instance, for me to read the paper. But, of

course, he could not write it for me.

I telephoned Katya. She answered the phone herself.

"This is Sanya," I said.

She was silent. Then, in the most ordinary voice, she said,

"Sanya?"

"That's right."

There was another pause.

"Are you in Moscow for long?"

"No, only a few days," I replied, also trying to speak in an ordinary

voice, as if I were not seeing her that very moment with the untied

earflaps of her fur cap and the overcoat, wet with snow, which she had

worn the last time we met, in Triumfalnaya Square.

"On leave?"

"Both on leave and on business."

It required an effort to keep from asking her: "I hear that you see

quite a lot of Romashov?" I made the effort and did not ask.

"And how is Sanya?" she suddenly asked, meaning my sister. "We

used to correspond, then we stopped."

183

We began talking about Sanya, and Katya said that a Leningrad

theatre had recently come to Moscow and was presenting Gorky's

Mother, and the programme had said that the decor was by "Artist P.

Skovorodnikov".

"You don't say?"

"Very good scenery too. Daring, yet simple." We went on talking

and talking about this and that in ordinary voices, until a feeling of horror

came upon me at the thought that it would all end like this— with our

talking ourselves out in ordinary voices, then parting and my not having

any excuse to phone her again.

"Katya, I want to see you. When can you meet me?"

"As it happens, I'm free this evening."

"Nine o'clock, say?"

I waited for her to invite me home, but she did not, and we arranged

to meet-but where?

"What about the public garden at Triumfalnaya?"

"That garden doesn't exist any more," Katya said coldly.

We arranged to meet in the colonnade of the Bolshoi Theatre. That was

all we spoke about on the telephone, and there was no sense in my going

over each word the way I did all that long day in Moscow.

I went to the offices of the Civil Aviation Board, then went to see

Valya at the Zoological Institute. I must have been wool-gathering,

because Valya had to repeat to me several times that tomorrow was the

twenty-fifth anniversary of Korablev's teaching career and there was to

be a meeting to mark the occasion at the school.

Nine o'clock found me outside the Bolshoi Theatre.

It was the same Katya with those plaits coiled round her head and the

curls on her forehead, which I always remembered when I thought of

her. She was paler and more grown-up, no longer that girl who had

kissed me once in a public garden in Triumfalnaya Square. She had

acquired a certain restraint in manner and speech. Yet it was Katya all

the same, and she had not grown to resemble Maria Vasilievna as

strongly as I had feared. On the contrary, her original traits of character

had become more pronounced, if anything, she was even more herself

than before. She was wearing a short-sleeved white silk blouse with a

blue polka-dot bow pinned at the neck, and she put on a severe

expression when I tried, during our conversation, to peer into her face.

Wandering about Moscow that cheerless day, we might have been

conversing through a wall in different rooms, with the door being

opened a little now and again and Katya peeping out to see whether it

was me or not. I talked and talked—I don't remember when I ever talked

so much. But all this was not what I had wanted to tell her. I told her

how I had made up my "Klimov alphabet" and what a job it had been to

read his diaries. I told her how we had found the old boat-hook with the

inscription "Schooner St. Maria" on it.

But not a word was said about why I had done all this. Not a word. As

though the whole thing were long since dead and buried, and there had

never been the pain and love, the death of Maria Vasilievna, my jealousy

of Romashka, and all the living blood that throbbed in me and Katya.

They were building the Metro in Moscow and the most familiar places

were fenced off, and we had to walk the length of these fences over

sagging board-walks and then turn back, because the fence ended in a

184

pit which had not been there yesterday and from which voices could

now be heard and the noise of underground work.

Our conversation was like that too-all roundabout, hedged, with the

most familiar places, known to us from childhood and school years,

fenced off. We kept running into these fences, especially when we

approached such dangerous ground as the subject of Nikolai Antonich.

I asked Katya whether she had received my letters—one from

Leningrad and another from Balashov, and when she said she hadn't, I

hinted at the possibility of their having fallen into strange hands.

"There are no strange hands in our house," Katya said sharply.

We returned to Theatre Square. It was already late in the evening, but

flowers were still being sold from the stalls, and after Zapolarie it was

strange to see so much of everything—people, cars, houses and electric

lamps swinging this way and that.

We sat on a bench, and Katya listened to me with her chin propped up

in her hand. I remembered how she had always liked to take her time

settling herself comfortably the better to be able to listen. It struck me

now what the change in her was. It was her eyes. They had grown sad.

It was our one good moment. Then I asked whether she remembered

our last conversation in the garden in Triumfalnaya Square, but she did

not answer. It was the most terrible of answers for me. It meant that the

old answer: "Let's not talk about it any more", still stood.

Perhaps, if I had been able to have a good look into her eyes, I might

have read more in them. But she averted them and I gave it up.

All I felt was that she was growing colder towards me with every

passing minute. She nodded when I said: "I'll keep you informed." After

a pause, she said:

"I wanted to tell you, Sanya, that I appreciate what you are doing. I

was sure you had long forgotten the whole thing."

"As you see, I haven't."

"Do you mind if I tell Nikolai Antonich about our conversation?"

"Not at all. He'd be interested to learn about my discoveries. They

concern him very closely, you know, more closely than he imagines."

They did not concern him as closely as all that and I had no grounds

whatever for making such an insinuation. But I was very sore.

Katya regarded me with a thoughtful air. She seemed to be on the

point of asking me something, but could not make up her mind. We said

goodbye. I walked away disturbed, angry and tired, and in the hotel, for

the first time in my life, I had a headache.

CHAPTER TWO

KORABLEV'S ANNIVERSARY

To celebrate the anniversary of a secondary school teacher when the

school had broken up for the summer and the pupils were away struck

me as being an odd idea. I told Valya as much and doubted whether

anybody would come.

185

But I was mistaken. The school was crowded. The boys and girls were

still busy decorating the staircase with branches of birch and maple. A

pile of branches lay on the floor in the cloakroom and a huge figure "25"

hung over the entrance to the hall where the celebration meeting was to

be held. The girls were arranging festoons and everybody was busy and

preoccupied. The air of festive excitement made a cheering sight.

But I was not given a chance to spend much time reminiscing. I was in

uniform and in a moment found myself sunounded. Whew! An airman!

I was bombarded with questions.

Then a senior form girl, who reminded me of Varya—she was just as

plump and rosy—came up to me and said, blushing, that Korablev was

expecting me.

He was sitting in the teachers' room, looking older, slightly bent, his

hair already grey. He now resembled Mark Twain—that was it. Though

he had grown older, it seemed to me that he looked sturdier than when

we had last met. His moustache, though greying, was bushier than ever

and the loose, soft collar revealed a strong, red neck.

"Ivan Pavlovich, my hearty congratulations!" I said, and we

embraced. "Congratulations!" I said between the kisses. "I hope all your

pupils will be as grateful to you as I am."

"Thank you, Sanya. Thank you, dear boy," he said, giving me another

hug. He was deeply moved and his lips quivered a little.

An hour later he was sitting on the platform, in that same hall where

we had once held a court to try Eugene Onegin. And we, as guests of

honour, sat on his left and right among the platform party. The latter

consisted of Valya, who had put on a bright green tie for the occasion,

Tania Velichko, now a construction engineer, who had grown into such

a tall stout woman that it was difficult to believe this was the same slim,

high-principled girl I had once known, and several other pupils of

Korablev's, who had been juniors in our day and whom we had looked

down upon as beings who were almost sub-human. Among this

generation were a number of military trainees and I was delighted to

recognise some of them who had belonged to my Pioneer group.

Then, glamorous and dignified in white spats and a heavy knitted

waistcoat, arrived Grisha Faber, actor of the Moscow Drama Theatre.

He, for one, hadn't changed a bit! With a lordly air of condescension, as

though all this had been arranged for his benefit, he implanted a

sovereign kiss upon Korablev's cheek and sat down with legs crossed

negligently. He was so conspicuous among the platform party that it

began to look as if it were his anniversary that was being celebrated and

not Korablev's at all. He passed a languid eye over the audience, then

took out his comb and combed his hair. I wrote him a note:

"Grisha, you blighter, hullo!" He read it and waved a hand to me with an

indulgent smile.

It was a wonderful evening and a good one, because everybody who

spoke spoke the pure truth. Nobody lied—doubtless because it was not

hard to speak the pure truth about Korablev. He had never demanded

anything else from his pupils. I wish people would speak the same way

about me in twenty-five years as they did about Korablev that evening.

I, too, made a little speech, then I went up to Korablev to kiss him,

and bumped foreheads with Valya, who had come up to do the same

from the other side. My speech had received thin applause, but when we

bumped foreheads the applause became thunderous.

186

Tania Velichko spoke after me, but I did not even heard her, for

Nikolai Antonich had arrived.

He came in—stout, dignified, condescending. Dressed in wide

trousers, and bending slightly forward, he made his way towards the

platform. I saw our poor old Serafima, the one who used to do the

"duck" teaching by the complex method, running ahead of him to clear

the way for him, while he strode along, unsmiling, taking no notice

other.

I had not seen him since that ugly scene, when he had shouted at me,

crackling his knuckles, and then spat at me. I found that he had changed

a great deal since then. Behind him walked another man, who was also

rather stout and walked with his body bent forward, unsmiling.

I should never have guessed who this man was if Valya had not

whispered to me at that moment: "There comes Romashka too."

What-that Romashka? That sleek-haired, solid figure with the big,

white, presentable face, wearing that smart grey suit? What had become

of his yellow matted hair? His unnaturally round eyes—the eyes of an

owl—which never closed at night?

187

He was all neat, sleek, toned down, and even the square heavy jaw did

not look so square now. If anything it was fuller and quite presentable

too. If Romashka had been able to make a new face for himself he could

not have made a better job of it. On someone who met him for the first

time he might even have made an agreeable impression.

Nikolai Antonich stepped up on the platform, followed by Romashka,

who did everything that Nikolai Antonich did. Nikolai Antonich

congratulated Korablev in a cordial, though restrained manner, and

shook hands with him, but did not kiss him. Romashka, too, only shook

hands with him. Nikolai Antonich passed an eye over the platform party

and first greeted the Head of the City Educational Department.

Romashka followed suit, the only difference being that Romashka,

oddly enough, carried himself more confidently, with greater assurance.

Nikolai Antonich did not notice me. That is, he made believe I was not

there. But Romashka on drawing level with me, stopped and threw his

hands up in mock surprise, as much as to say: "If that isn't Grigoriev!"

As if I had never kicked him in his ugly face.

"Hullo, Romashka!" I said casually.

He winced, but the next moment pretended that we were old friends

who were entitled to call each other "Sanya" and "Romashka". He sat

down next to me and began talking, but I checked him rather

contemptuously and turned away as though listening to Tania.

But I was not listening to Tania. Everything in me was boiling and

seething, and it was only by an effort of will that I was able to keep a

composed face.

After the meeting the guests were invited to table. Romashka overtook

me in the corridor.

"The affair went on splendidly, didn't it?"

Even his voice had become mellower.

"Yes."

"It's a pity, really, that we meet so rarely. After all we're old friends.

Where do you work?"

"In civil aviation."

"So I see," he said laughing. "I meant 'where' territorially."

"In the Far North."

"Yes, of course! I'd quite forgotten. Katya told me. At Zapolarie."

Katya! Katya had told him. I grew hot, but answered in a calm voice:

"Yes, Zapolarie."

After a pause, he asked guardedly: "Are you here for long?"

"I don't know yet." My reply, too, was guarded. "Depends on a lot of

things."

I was pleased with myself for having answered so calmly and

guardedly, and from that moment I fully recovered my composure. I

became cold and courteous, cunning as a snake.

"Katya told me you were going to read a paper. At the Scientists' Club,

I believe?"

"No, the Geographical Society."

Romashka eyed me with pleasure. He looked as if I'd made him happy

by saying I was going to read the paper at the Geographical Society and

not at the Scientists' Club. And so he was, though I didn't know it at the

time.

"What's it about?"

"Come and hear it," I said coolly. "You'll find it interesting."

188

He winced again, this time markedly.

"Yes," he said, "I'll have to make a note not to miss it." And he began

to write in his pocket diary. "What's the paper called?"

"A Forgotten Polar Expedition."

"I say, isn't that about Ivan Lvovich's expedition?"

"Captain Tatarinov's expedition," I said dryly.

But he affected not to hear my correction.

"Some new information?"

The crafty gleam in his eyes told me at once what it was all about.

"Aha, you rat," I said to myself. "Nikolai Antonich put you up to this.

Wanted you to find out whether I intend to prove again that it was he,

and not some von Vyshimirsky or other, who is to blame for the disaster

which overtook the expedition."

"Yes, new information," I said.

Romashka looked at me closely. For a fleeting moment I saw the old

Romashka, calculating what per cent of profit would work out if I let the

cat out of the bag.

"By the way," he said, "Nikolai Antonich also has some interesting

documents concerning that expedition. He has a lot of letters, some of

them very interesting. He has shown them to me. Why not get him to

show them to you?"

"I see," I said to myself. "Nikolai Antonich has asked you to bring us

together to talk this matter over. He's afraid of me. But he wants me to

take the first step. Nothing doing!"

"Well, no," I answered casually. "He doesn't know much about it,

really. Oddly enough, I know more about his own part in the expedition

than he does himself."

This was a well-directed blow, and Romashka, who was a dimwit for

all that he had greatly developed, suddenly opened his mouth and stared