Two Captains

at me dumbly.

"Katya, Katya," I thought, my heart sore on her account and my own.

"Well, well, so that's how it is," Romashka muttered.

"That's how it is."

We had approached the table and our conversation came to an end. I

sat through the evening with difficulty and only did so for Korablev's

sake, so as not to hurt his feelings. I felt out of sorts and would have

liked to down a few drinks but I took only one glass—to the hero of the

day. It was Romashka who proposed the toast. He stood up and waited

for a long time in dignified patience for the noise at the table to subside.

A self-satisfied expression crossed his face when he delivered himself of

a well-turned phrase. He said something about "the friendship which

links all the pupils of our dear teacher". He turned to me when he said

this, and raised his glass to show that he was drinking to me too. I

politely raised my own glass. My own expression must have been none

too amiable, because Korablev looked closely first at him, then at me,

and suddenly-for the moment I couldn't remember what it meant—laid

his hand on the table and motioned to it with his eyes. The fingers began

drumming on the table. It was our old pre-arranged signal warning me

to keep cool. We both laughed at the same time, and I cheered up a bit.

189

CHAPTER THREE

WITHOUT A TITLE

I had an appointment that day with a member of the Pravda editorial

staff whom I wished to tell about my discoveries. He had put me off

twice, being too busy to see me, then at last he telephoned and I went to

see him at the Pravda office.

He was a tall, attentive old chap in spectacles, who had a slight squint,

so that he seemed to be looking away all the time, thinking of something

else. "A specialist of a sort in aviation," he introduced himself. He

seemed sincerely interested in my story-at any rate, he began to take it

down on his writing pad as soon as I started speaking. He made me

sketch a drawing of my method of anchoring a grounded aeroplane

during a blizzard and said I ought to write an article about it for the

Civil Aviation magazine. He phoned the magazine there and then and

arranged when and to whom I was to hand in my article. He seemed to

be well aware of the significance of the St. Maria expedition and said

that now, when everybody was taking such a great interest in the Arctic,

the subject was a timely and useful one.

"But there has already been an article about it," he said. "If I am not

mistaken, in Soviet Arctic."

"In Soviet Arctic! "

"Yes, last year."

That was news indeed! An article about Captain Tatarinov's

expedition in Soviet Arctic last year?

"I didn't see it," I said. "In any case, the writer cannot know what I

know. I've deciphered the diaries of the navigating officer, the only

survivor of the expedition to reach the mainland."

That was when I realised that the man before me was your true-born

journalist. His eyes suddenly gleamed and he began taking me down

quickly, even breaking his pencil in the process. Evidently it was

something in the nature of a scoop. He said as much.

"Why, it's a sensation!"

Then he locked his office, and took me to see the "boss", as he

declared in the corridor.

I repeated my story briefly to the "boss" and we agreed:

(a) that I would bring the diaries to the office the next day,

(b) that Pravda would send a reporter to my lecture, and

(c) that I would write an article about my discoveries and then "we

shall see about where to publish it".

I should have raised the question, while there, of organising a search for

the expedition, but decided that this was a special question which had

nothing to do with the press. That was a pity, because the journalists

would have been able to put me on to somebody at the Northern Sea

Route Administration or even telephoned to that person for me. As it

was, I spent two hours in the waiting-room for the honour of seeing one

of the secretaries of the Head Office. I was shown into a private office,

where I spent another half-hour. The secretary was busy. Every minute

some sailor, airman, radio-operator, engineer, carpenter, agronomist or

190

artist went in to see him, and all the time he had to pretend he knew all

there was to know about aviation, agronomy, painting and radio

engineering. At last he turned to me.

"It's only of historical interest," he said when I had rushed through my

story. "We have other problems to deal with, more up-to-date."

I said I knew perfectly well that it wasn't the job of the Administration

to organise searches for lost expeditions. But since a high-latitudes

expedition was going out that year to Severnaya Zemlya, it was quite

possible to give it the minor parallel task of exploring the area of

Captain Tatarinov's ill-fated expedition.

"Tatarinov, Tatarinov..." the secretary said trying to recall something.

"Didn't he write something about it?"

I said he could not have written about it, as the expedition had set out

from St. Petersburg about twenty years ago and the last news of it was

received in 1914.

"Yes, but who was the Tatarinov who wrote about it?"

"Tatarinov was the Captain," I explained patiently. "He set sail in the

autumn of 1912 aboard the schooner St. Maria with the aim of

navigating the Northern Sea Route, that is, that very Route in whose

administrative offices we now happen to be sitting. The expedition was a

failure, but incidentally Captain Tatarinov made important geographical

discoveries. There is full reason to believe that Severnaya Zemlya, for

instance, was discovered by him, not by Vilkitsky."

"To be sure, there was an article about that expedition and I read it,"

the secretary said.

"Whose article?"

"Tatarinov's, if I'm not mistaken. Tatarinov's expedition, Tatarinov's

article. So what are you proposing?"

I repeated my suggestion.

"Very well, write a memo about it," the secretary said, sounding as if

he felt sorry for my having to write a memo which would remain lying in

his desk drawer.

I left.

It could not be just a coincidence. In a book-shop in Gorky Street I

thumbed through all the issues of Soviet Arctic for the last year. The

title of the article was "A Forgotten Expedition"-the title of my own

paper!—and was signed "N. Tatarinov". It had been written by Nikolai

Antonich!

It was a long article written in a reminiscent vein but with a faint

touch of scholarship. It began by describing the schooner St. Maria as

she lay at her moorings near Nikolayevsky Bridge in St. Petersburg in

the summer of 1912: "The white paint on her walls and ceilings was still

fresh, the polished mahogany of her furniture gleamed like a mirror and

carpets covered the floors of her cabins. The storerooms and hold were

packed with all kinds of supplies. They had everything conceivable-nuts,

sweets, chocolate, different kinds of tinned fruit, pineapples, crates of

jam jars, biscuits, and many other items, including such necessities as

preserved meat and stacks of flour and cereals in bags."

It was amusing to see the way Nikolai Antonich began his article by

first describing the food—for me this was further incriminating

evidence. Further on, however, he was more circumspect. While

mentioning that the expedition had been fitted out at public expense, he

modestly hinted that it was to him that the idea of "following in the

191

footsteps of Nordenskjold" first occurred. He spoke with bitterness

about the obstacles which the reactionary press and the Ministry of

Marine had put in his way. He quoted the note which the Minister of

Marine wrote on the report concerning the loss of the St. Maria: "It is a

pity that Captain Tatarinov has not returned. I should have had him

prosecuted for negligence in the handling of government property."

Still more bitterly did he write about how the Archangel tradesmen

had cheated his cousin by palming off on him poor, untrained dogs,

which might well have been bought off any street urchin for twenty

kopecks a pair, and how the whole business had gone to pieces the

moment Nikolai Antonich was forced by illness to withdraw from it. He

did not name the tradesmen-no fear! Only one of them was indicated by

the initial V. Nikolai Antonich blamed V. for having supplied, at great

profit to himself, meat which had had to be thrown overboard even

before they reached Yugorsky Shar.

This part of the article was written knowledgeably. Nikolai Antonich

even quoted Amundsen to the effect that the success of any expedition

depends entirely on its provisioning, and brilliantly proved this point by

the example of his "late cousin's" expedition. He quoted passages from

his "late cousin's" letters, complaining bitterly of the speculators who

took advantage of the fact that he had to cut short his stay at Archangel

and put out to sea in a hurry.

Nikolai Antonich wrote practically nothing about the actual voyage,

beyond mentioning that at Yugorsky Shar the St. Maria encountered a

number of merchant vessels lying at anchor waiting for the break-up of

the ice which filled the southern part of the Kara Sea. According to one

of the skippers the St. Maria was seen heading into the Kara Sea at

dawn on September 17th and was lost to view over the horizon behind

an uninterrupted line of ice. "The task which I. L. Tatarinov set himself,"

Nikolai Antonich wrote, "was not fulfilled." "In passing, however, he

made a remarkable discovery—that of Severnaya Zemlya, which he

named 'Maria Land'."

I bought this issue of Soviet Arctic, all the more as it contained

references to other articles by the same writer on the same subject, and

returned to my hotel.

I returned in anything but a good humour. It seemed to me that since

this lie had been printed, and so long ago into the bargain—over a year

ago—then there was nothing more to be said. It was too late to challenge

it, and nobody would listen to me if I did. He had forestalled me. It was

a lie, but a lie mixed with truth. He had been the first to point out the

significance of the expedition of the St. Maria. He had been the first to

show that Severnaya Zemlya had been discovered by Captain Tatarinov

six months before it was first sighted by Vilkitsky. He had taken this, of

course, from the Captain's letter, which I had given to Katya. He had

beaten me to it on all points.

I paced my room whistling.

Truth to tell, what I wanted most at that moment was to go to the

railway station and book a ticket to Krasnoyarsk and from there fly to

Zapolarie. But instead of going to the station I sat down to write my

memorandum. I wrote it all day, and when you work all day all the

cheerless thoughts that keep coming into your head have to go away

again because the place is occupied.

192

CHAPTER FOUR

NEWS GALORE

I came in to find Korablev squatting in front of the stove, which he

was making up. It was such a familiar scene-Korablev there at the stove

in his old, shaggy jacket-that I even felt for a moment that all those

years had never been, that I was still a schoolboy, and was going to get a

wigging, as I did that time when I went to Ensk to see Katya. But then he

turned round. "How old he has gone," I thought, and in a flash

everything fell back into place.

"There you are at last!" Korablev said gruffly. "Why didn't you come

and stay with me?"

"Thanks, Ivan Pavlovich."

"You wrote you'd stay with me, didn't you?"

"I'd be inconveniencing you."

He looked at me, closing one eye, as if the better to take me all in. It

was the appraising look of a master examining his handiwork. The sight

must have pleased him, because he stroked his moustache and told me

to sit down.

"I didn't get a proper look at you yesterday," he said. "I was too busy."

He laid the table, got a bottle out of the cupboard, cut some bread,

then got out some cold veal and cut it up. He was still living alone, but

the damp old flat looked cosier and did not seem to be so damp. The

only thing I didn't like was that while I was talking he was helping

himself to the bottle without taking a bite. It worried me.

I said I was going to tell him only the bare essentials, but it is not easy

to pick these out when after so many years you meet a person who is

near and dear to you. Korablev questioned me about the North, about

my work as an airman, and was displeased at the brief answers I gave

him.

"Do you remember, Sanya, what you said to me when you were

leaving Moscow? You said: 'It remains for me now to prove that I am

right even if I have to die in the attempt.' Well, have you proved it?"

It was an unexpected question and I digested it. I remembered our

talk all right. I remembered how Korablev had shouted: "What have you

done, Sanya! My God, what have you done!" And how he had wept,

saying that it was all my fault, because I had insisted that the Captain's

letter referred to Nikolai Antonich when in fact it referred to some von

Vyshimirsky or other.

I couldn't quite see why Korablev should have mentioned that talk of

ours. But he must have had some reason for wanting me to remember it.

He looked at me gravely and seemed secretly pleased about something.

"I don't know who cares whether I prove something or not," I said

gloomily. "Who wants it?"

"That's just where you're mistaken, Sanya," Korablev said. "You want

it, and I want it, and so does one other person. Especially since you have

proved to be right."

I stared at him. Five years have passed since that talk of ours. I now

knew more than anybody else in the world about Captain Tatarinov's

expedition. I had found the navigator's diaries and read them—the

193

hardest job I had ever undertaken. I had had the good luck of meeting

that old Nenets, the last man who, with his own eyes, had seen a sledge

belonging to the expedition, and on this sledge, a dead man who might

have been the Captain himself. Yet I had not found a single piece of

evidence to show that I was right.

And now, when I had returned to Moscow and called on my old

teacher—who, I would have supposed, had long since forgotten about

this affair—now he tells me: "You have proved to be right!"

"Ivan Pavlovich," I began rather shakily, "you really shouldn't say

such things unless you have—"

I was going to say "irrefutable evidence", but he checked me. The

doorbell rang. Korablev bit his lip and looked round anxiously.

"I say, Sanya... I have to see a certain person. Do you mind sitting

here a bit?"

As he said this he led me into the next room, which was like a large

bookcase cluttered up with books. Instead of a door it had a green

curtain which was full of holes.

"And keep your ears open. It'll be worth your while."

I forgot to mention that Korablev that evening had struck me as

behaving rather oddly. Several times he had started to whistle softly. He

had paced the room with his hands clasped on his head and ended by

chewing the pear stem with which he had been picking his teeth. After

piloting me into the "bookcase" he hastily removed the vodka from the

table, then took something out of his desk, chewed on it, then took

several deep breaths with his mouth wide open, and went out to open

the door.

Who do you think was with him when he came back into the room?

Nina Kapitonovna! Yes, it was Nina Kapitonovna, bent, thinner than

before, with the shadows of age round her eyes, and wearing the same

old velvet coat.

She was saying something, but I was not listening. I was watching

Korablev as he attended solicitously to his visitor's comfort. He was

about to pour her out some tea, but she checked him.

"I don't want any. I've just had some. Well, how are you?"

"So-so, Nina Kapitonovna," Korablev said. "My back aches."

"How come? Making old bones! Fancy saying such a thing! Rub Born

Bengue into your back if it aches. It helps."

"Born Bengue-what is that?"

"An ointment. Do you drink?"

"I don't, Nina Kapitonovna, honestly," Korablev said. "I've given ft up.

Just once in a while, maybe, a small glass before dinner. Even the

doctors advise it."

"No, you do drink. Now, when I was young I lived on a farm down

south. My father was a Cossack, you know. He'd come in, hardly able to

stand on his two legs, and say: 'That's nothing, if a man wants to kill

himself he drinks a glass before dinner every day.' "

Korablev laughed. Nina Kapitonovna looked at him and began to

laugh too. Then she told him a story about some winebibber of a

countess who "used to down a glass of vodka first thing in the morning,

as soon as she woke up. Then she'd start walking around. All yellow,

puffy and blowsy. She'd walk around a bit, then have another one. In the

morning she was still normal, but by dinnertime she was tight as a

drum. In the evening she'd have a houseful o' visitors. Dressed

194

beautifully, she'd sit down at the piano and sing. Talk about kind-

hearted! Everyone went to her. With the most trifling things. A fine

person, she was. But a drunkard!"

Apparently, this example did not exactly please Korablev, who tried to

change the subject. He asked how Katya was getting on.

Nina Kapitonovna made a little deprecating gesture with her hand. "We

quarrel," she said with a sigh. "She's so touchy. And awfully

proud! If she fails in one thing, she goes after another. That's why

she's so nervous, all on edge."

"Nervous?"

"Yes. And proud. And she won't talk," said Nina Kapitonovna. "I've

had an eyeful of those who won't talk, you know. I don't like the look of

it at all. I mean the way she keeps to herself. What's the sense? Why not

unburden your mind? But she won't." "Why don't you ask her, Nina

Kapitonovna?" "She won't say. I'm like that myself. I'll never say." "I

met her once, she seemed all right to me," said Korablev. "She was going

to the theatre-true, all by herself, and I thought it strange. But she was

quite cheerful, she said, by the way, that she'd been offered a room in a

Geological Institute house."

"They did offer her a room. But she hasn't moved in." "Why not?" "She

feels sorry for him." "Sorry?" Korablev queried.

"Yes, sorry. For the sake of her mother's memory, and for his own

sake, too. And when she's not there he's not himself. Soon as he comes

in he asks: 'Where's Katya? Has she phoned?'" I guessed at once that

"he" was Nikolai Antonich. "So she hasn't left. AU the time waiting for

someone." Nina Kapitonovna moved her chair up closer to Korablev. "I

read a letter once," she whispered slyly, looking round as if Katya might

see her. "They must have become friends at Ensk when Katya was there

for her holidays. His sister. And she writes: 'He keeps asking me in every

letter, where is Katya, what's the matter with her, I'd give everything to

see her. He can't live without you and I can't understand what this

quarrel of yours is about.' "

"Excuse me, Nina Kapitonovna, I didn't get you. Whose sister?"

"Whose? Why, that chap. That friend of yours." Korablev darted a look

in my direction, and I met his eyes through a hole in the curtain. My

sister? Sanya?

"Well, I suppose that's how it really is," said Korablev. "Very likely he

can't live without her. I shouldn't be surprised."

" 'He keeps asking'," Nina Kapitonovna repeated pointedly, "And 'he

can't live without you'. There! And she can't live without him."

Korablev again glanced in my direction. I fancied a smile lurking in his

moustache. "Yet she thinks of marrying another."

"Nothing of the kind. He isn't of her choice. She has no use for that

Romashov fellow. No more have I. That holy Joe." "Holy Joe?"

"That's what he is. Full o' taradiddle too. Whatever you tell him he's

sure to add something to it right away. Thievish too." "Surely not, Nina

Kapitonovna!"

"Thievish, I say. He took forty rubles from me, said it was to buy a

present, and never gave it back. I didn't remind him, of course. And

such a busybody, so nosy. My God! If it wasn't for my age—" She waved

her hand with a rueful gesture.

You can imagine what my feelings were as I listened to this

conversation! I looked at the old lady through the hole in the curtain,

and that hole was like a lens in which everything that had happened

195

between Katya and me was focussed, becoming clearer and clearer every

minute. Everything came nearer and fell into place, and there was such

a lot of it and all so good that my heart began to quiver, and I realised

that I was terribly excited. The only thing I couldn't understand was

this: I had never "kept asking" my sister and had never written to her

that "I could not live without Katya".

"Sanya made that up, that's what it is," I said to myself. "She was

fibbing. Yet it was all true."

Nina Kapitonovna was still speaking, but I was no longer listening. I

had forgotten myself to such an extent that I began to walk up and down

my "bookcase" and only recollected myself when I heard Korablev's

warning cough.

And there I sat in the "bookcase" until Nina Kapitonovna went away. I

don't know why she had come-maybe it was just to unburden her heart,

Korablev kissed her hand at parting and she kissed him on the brow, the

way they had always done when taking leave of each other.

I was lost in thought and did not hear him come back into the room

until suddenly I saw his nose and moustache above me between the

curtains.

"Still breathing?"

"Still breathing, Ivan Pavlovich."

"What have you to say?"

"That I'm a hopeless, drivelling idiot," I answered, clutching my head.

"The way I spoke to her! My God! I did not understand a thing. Not a

thing! And she was waiting for me to say something. What must her

feelings have been, Ivan Pavlovich! What does she think of me!"

"Never mind, she'll change her mind."

"Never! Do you know what I told her? " I said to her: 'I'll keep you

informed.'

Korablev laughed.

"Ivan Pavlovich!"

"But didn't you write that you couldn't live without her?"

"I didn't!" I cried despairingly. "Sanya made that all up. But it's true,

Ivan Pavlovich! It's the absolute truth. I can't live without her, and the

quarrel between us is really over nothing, because I thought she didn't

love me any more. But what's to be done now? What's to be done?"

"Look here, Sanya, I have a business appointment at nine o'clock. At a

theatre. So if you-"

"All right. I'm going. May I call on Katya now?"

"She'll show you the door, and she'll be quite right."

"I don't care if she does, Ivan Pavlovich!" I said, and suddenly

embraced him. "Damn и all, I just don't know what to do now. What do

you say?"

"I have to change just now," Korablev said, going into the "bookcase".

"As for you, I suggest you pull yourself together."

I saw him take off his jacket, turn up the collar of his soft shirt and

start tying his tie.

"Ivan Pavlovich!" I suddenly yelled. "Wait a minute. I quite forgot!

You said I was right when we argued about whom the Captain's letter

referred to."

"I did."

"Ivan Pavlovich!"

196

Korablev came out of the "bookcase" brushed and combed, in a new

grey suit, looking young and presentable.

"Now, we're going to the theatre," he said gravely, "and you'll learn

everything. Your job will be to sit and say nothing. Sit and listen. Is that

clear?"

"I'm all in the dark. But let's go."

CHAPTER FIVE

AT THE THEATRE

The Moscow Drama Theatre! To judge from Grisha Faber's

description, it was a big, real playhouse in which all the actors wore

smart white spats like he did and spoke just as loudly and well.

Something like the Moscow Art Theatre. But it turned out to be a little

place in Sretenka up some side street.

The play that evening, as the illuminated showcase at the entrance

announced, was Wolf's Trail, and we immediately found Grisha's name

in the cast. He was playing the doctor. His name stood last in the list.

Grisha met us in the foyer, looking as resplendent as ever, and invited

us at once to his dressing-room.

"I'll call him in as soon as the second act starts," he said mysteriously

to Korablev.

I glanced questioningly at Korablev, but he was busy fitting a cigarette

into his long holder and pretended not to have noticed my look.

There were three other actors in Grisha's dressing-room, who looked

as if they belonged there. But when Grisha proffered us chairs there they

tactfully went out, and he apologised for the place. "My private

dressing-room is undergoing repairs," he said. We began talking about

our school theatre, recalled the tragedy The Hour Has Struck, in which

Grisha had played the part of a Jewish foster-child, and I said I thought

him simply wonderful in that role. Grisha laughed, and suddenly the air

of self-importance fell away from him.

"I don't understand what happened, Sanya. You used to draw well, I

remember," he said. "What made you suddenly take to the sky? Hell,

come and join our theatre. We'll make a scenic artist out 'of you. Not

bad, eh?"

I said I had no objection. Then Grisha excused himself again—he had

to go on very shortly and the make-up man was waiting for him— and

went out. We were left alone.

"For God's sake, Ivan Pavlovich, what is it all about? What have you

brought me here for? Who is 'he'? Who is it you want me to

meet?"

"You won't do anything silly, will you?"

"Ivan Pavlovich!"

"You've done one silly thing already," Korablev said. "Two, as a matter

of fact. First, you didn't come and stay with me. Second, you told Katya:

'I'll keep you informed.' "

"But Ivan Pavlovich, how was I to know? You simply wrote to me that

I should come to you. I never suspected it was so important. Now tell

197

me, who are we waiting for here? Who's this person, and why do you

want me to meet him?"

"All right," said Korablev. "Only don't forget—you've got to sit still and

say nothing. The man is von Vyshimirsky."

We were sitting, you will remember, in Grisha's dressing-room in the

Moscow Drama Theatre. But at that moment it seemed to me that all

this was taking place, not in the dressing-room, but on the stage,

because Korablev had hardly finished the sentence than into the room,

ducking not to knock his head on the low lintel of the doorway, stepped

von Vyshimirsky himself.

I guessed at once that it was he, though until that moment it had

never occurred to me that the man ever existed. I had always thought

that Nikolai Antonich had invented him in order to heap on him all my

accusations. He had been no more than a name, and now here he was,

suddenly materialising as a tall, weedy old man with a bent back and

yellow-grey moustache. Nowadays, of course, he was simply

Vyshimirsky, with no "von" handle to his name. He wore a uniform

jacket with brass buttons—that of a cloakroom attendant.

Korablev said "good evening" to him. He responded easily, even

patronisingly, with an extended hand.

"So this is who is waiting for me—Comrade Korablev," he said. "And

not alone, but with his son. He is your son?" he added quickly, glancing

swiftly from me to Korablev and back again.

"No he's not my son, he's a former pupil of mine. But he's an airman

now and he wants to meet you."

"An airman and wants to meet me?" Vyshimirsky said with an

unpleasant smile. "Why should an airman be interested in my poor

person?"

"Your poor person interests him," said Korablev, "because he happens

to be writing an account of Captain Tatarinov's expedition. And you, as

we know, took a very active part in that expedition."

This remark did not exactly please Vyshimirsky, I could see. He

darted another quick look at me, and something like suspicion—or was

it fear?-flashed in his old rheumy eyes.

The next moment he assumed a dignified air and began to talk

nineteen to the dozen. Almost every other word was "Comrade

Korablev", and he boasted blatantly. He said that it had been a great,

historic expedition, and that he had done a lot "to make it a shining

success". While saying this, he kept fidgeting about all the time,

standing up, making various motions with his hands, seizing his left

whisker and nervously tugging it downward, and so on.

"But that was a very long time ago," he wound up in a surprised sort of

way.

"Not so very long," Korablev interposed. "Just before the revolution."

"Yes, just before the revolution. In those days I wasn't working in an

artel of disabled men. The work I'm doing now is only temporary,

though, because I have important services to my credit. We put in some

good work those days. Yes, very good work."

I was about to ask him what, exactly, that work was, but Korablev

silenced me with a steady, blank gaze.

"You once told me something about this expedition," Korablev went

on. "I remember you saying you have certain papers and letters. Would

you please repeat your story to this young man, whom you can simply

198

call Sanya. Name the day and hour he can come and see you and leave

your address with him."

"Certainly! I shall be delighted. You can come and see me, though I

must apologise beforehand for my lodgings. I used to have an eleven-

room apartment, and I don't conceal the fact, on the contrary, I write it

down whenever I have to fill up a questionnaire, because I have done

good service for the people. On the strength of this I have applied for a

special pension, and I shall get it, because I have rendered great

services. This expedition is a mere drop in the ocean! I have built a

bridge across the Volga."

And off he went again! With that tuft of grey hair sticking up on his

head he resembled a harassed old bird.

Then the lamp in Grisha's dressing-room went out for a second-

signalling the end of the act—and this spectre of a past age vanished as

suddenly as it had appeared.

The whole conversation had lasted some five minutes, but it seemed to

me that it had gone on for a very long time, as in a dream. Korablev

looked at me and laughed; my face must have been a study.

"Ivan Pavlovich!"

"Yes, my boy?"

"Was that him?"

"It was."

"Can that be?"

"It can."

"The very same man?"

"The very same."

"What did he tell you? Does he know Nikolai Antonich? Does he go

there?"

"Oh, no," Korablev said. "That he doesn't."

"Why not?"

"Because he hates Nikolai Antonich."

"Why?"

"For various reasons."

"What did he tell you? That power of attorney made out to von

Vyshimirsky—where did it come from? You remember telling me

about it?"

"Ah! That's just it!" Korablev said. "The power of attorney! He nearly

burst a blood vessel when I asked him about it."

"Ivan Pavlovich, tell me all about it, please, I beg you! D'you think it

was nice, your telling me at the last moment that Vyshimirsky was

coming? I was so flabbergasted he must have thought me an idiot."

"On the contrary, he took a fancy to you," Korablev answered gravely.

"He has a grown-up daughter and he looks at every young man from one

angle—whether he's eligible or not. You are definitely eligible—young,

good-looking and an airman to boot."

"Ivan Pavlovich," I said reproachfully, "I don't know what's come over

you, really. You've changed a lot, yes, you have. You know how

important this is for me, yet you make fun of me."

"Oh, all right, Sanya, don't be angry. I'll tell you everything," said

Korablev. "But first let's get out of here before Grisha catches us and

makes us sit through a play at the Moscow Drama Theatre."

"How on earth did you find this Vyshimirsky fellow?" I asked.

199

"Very simple-his son goes to our school," Korablev replied.

CHAPTER SIX

STILL MORE COMES TO LIGHT

I never understood anything about bills of exchange-the word itself

had gone out of use when I started going to school. What's an

"acknowledgment of loan"? What's an "endorsement"? What's a

"policy"? Not in the political sense—everyone knows that. What's a

"discount"?

When these and other banking terms occurred in books that I read it

always reminded me of the "Chambers" at Ensk-the iron seats in the

dimly-lit high corridor, and the unseen official behind the barrier to

whom Mother had bowed so humbly. It was a reminder of the old, long-

forgotten life, which gradually emerged from the dim past as

Vyshimirsky unfolded to me the story of his misfortunes.

We were sitting in a small room with a basement window through

which I could see a broom and a pair of legs-evidently belonging to the

yardman. Everything in this room was old-the rickety chairs held

together with strings, the dining table on which I leaned my elbow only

to remove it at once because the panel bade fair to drop off. There was

dirty upholstery material everywhere—on the window in lieu of

curtains, on the shabby covering of the sofa, and even the clothes

hanging on the wall were covered with the same stuff. The only new

things in the room were some slats, reels and coils of wire with which

Vyshimirsky's son was occupied over a table in a corner of the room.

The boy was about twelve, with a round, sunburnt face. He, too, was

quite new, and as far removed from the world which his father's story

conjured up to me as heaven is from earth.

It was a long, disjointed tale, interspersed with references to bills of

exchange and discounts, and full of digressions and a good deal of

nonsense. Absolutely everything the old man had ever done in his

lifetime he put down to his credit as a service rendered "to the people".

He made much of his work as secretary to the Metropolitan Isidore,

declaring that he had an intimate knowledge of the life of the clergy and

had even made a special study of it in the hope that this might be "of

benefit to the people". He was prepared to blow the lid off this

Metropolitan at any moment.

Another job he laid to his credit was with some admiral by the name

of Heckert. This admiral had "an insane son" and Vyshimirsky took him

around restaurants so that nobody should guess that he was insane, a

fact which "they tried to conceal".

Then he started talking about Nikolai Antonich, and I pricked up my

ears. I had been convinced that Nikolai Antonich had always been a

teacher. He was a typical schoolmaster. Even at home he was always

lecturing, citing examples.

200

"Nothing of the sort," Vyshimirsky said with a vicious grimace. "He

took that up when he was at the end of his tether. He was in business.

He played the stock-market, he was a stock-jobber. A wealthy man who

played the market and engaged in business."

This was the first piece of news. It was followed by a second. I asked

what connection there was between Captain Tatarinov's expedition and

stock-jobbing. What had made Nikolai Antonich take a hand in it? Was

it because it was profitable?

"He would have taken a still more willing hand in it if the expedition

had been to the next world," said Vyshimirsky. "He counted on that,

counted very strongly." "I don't understand." "He was in love with the

Captain's wife. There was quite a lot of talk about that at the time. Quite

a lot. But the Captain did not suspect anything. He was a fine man, the

Captain, but simple-minded. A regular sea-dog!" '

I was dumbfounded.

"Nikolai Antonich in love with Maria Vasilievna? Even in those days?"

"Yes, yes," Vyshimirsky repeated impatiently. "There were personal

reasons. Get me-personal? Personal, person, personality. He would have

given his whole fortune to have that Captain packed off to the next

world. And pack him off he did."

But love or not love, business was business. Nikolai Antonich did not

give up his fortune, on the contrary he doubled it. He took delivery of

rotten clothing for the expedition and pocketed a bribe from the

supplier. He took delivery of spoilt chocolate that smelt of kerosene,

also in return for a bribe.

"Sabotage, deliberate sabotage," said Vyshimirsky. "It was planned as

such!"

Evidently Vyshimirsky had not always held this negative view of the

plan, considering his part in it and the fact that Nikolai Antonich had

sent him to Archangel to meet the expedition and complete its fitting

out.

This was where the power of attorney which Nikolai Antonich had

shown to Korablev first comes into the picture. Together with this

document Vyshimirsky had received money in cash and bills of

exchange.

Sniffing angrily, the old man fished several bills out of the chest of

drawers. A bill of exchange, broadly speaking, was a receipt for money

stipulating that it was to be paid back at a stated time. Only this receipt

was made out on thick state paper, which had watermarks and an

expensive, impressive look. Vyshimirsky explained to me that these bills

circulated in place of money. But they were not exactly money, because

the "drawer" might suddenly declare that he had no money to meet

them.

This left openings for all kinds of sharp practices, and Vyshimirsky

accused Nikolai Antonich of one such swindle.

He accused him of having sent him, along with the power of attorney,

bills of exchange which were no good, because the drawers were

insolvent and unable to pay, and Nikolai Antonich had known this

beforehand. Vyshimirsky did not know this and took the bills for money,

all the more as the drawers were merchants and other people who were

considered respectable in those days. He did not know this until the

schooner had set sail, leaving debts to the amount of forty-eight

thousand. Nobody, of course, would negotiate these dead bills.

201

And so Vyshimirsky had had to pay these debts out of his own pocket.

Afterwards he had had to pay them over again, because Nikolai

Antonich brought an action against him and the court ordered

Vyshimirsky to repay all the monies which had been remitted to him in

Archangel.

Of course, I have given only the gist of this story. The old man spent

two hours telling it, and kept getting up and sitting down during its

narration.

"I fought the case all the way to the Senate," he wound up grimly. "But

I lost it."

That was the end of him, because his property came under the

hammer. His house-he had a house-was sold too, and he moved into

smaller rooms. His wife died of grief, leaving him with young children

on his hands. Then, when the Revolution came, he found himself in a

single room, the one he was now obliged to live in. Or course, this was

"only temporary", because "the government would soon appreciate his

services to the people at their true worth". Meanwhile, he was obliged to

live there, and he had a grown-up daughter who knew two languages

and couldn't get married owing to the cramped space they lived in—

there was no room in it for the husband. But he would move out as soon

as he got his special pension.

"I'll move anywhere, to a Disabled Persons' Home if need be," he said

with a gesture of bitter resignation.

Obviously, this grown-up daughter of his was very keen of getting

married and wanted him to move out.

"Nikolai Ivanovich," I said to him, "may I ask you one question? You

say that he sent this power of attorney to you in Archangel. How did he

get it back again?"

Vyshimirsky stood up. His nostrils dilated and the tuft of grey hair on

his head quivered with anger.

"I threw the paper in his face," he said. "He ran out to get me some

water, but I didn't stay to drink it. I had a fainting fit in the street. Oh,

what's the use of talking!"

I heard him out with a painful feeling. There was something sordid

about this story, as sordid as everything else around me in that room, so

that all the time I felt like washing my hands. It had seemed to me that

our talk would yield further evidence proving me in the right, evidence

as new and surprising as the sudden appearance of this man himself had

been. And so it did. Nevertheless, it was annoying to think that this new

evidence was contaminated with dirt.

Then he started off again about his pension, saying that they were

bound to give him a special pension, seeing that he had an employment

record of over forty-five years. One young man had already called on

him and collected his papers. He, too, was interested in Nikolai

Antonich, by the way, but he did not call again.

"He promised to do something for me," said Vyshimirsky, "but he

never came again."

"Interested in Nikolai Antonich?"

"Yes. He was interested, to be sure he was."

"Who was it?"

Vyshimirsky spread his hands.

202

"He called several times," he said. "I have a grown-up daughter, you

know, and they sat together talking and drinking tea. Getting

acquainted, you know."

The shadow of a smile crossed his face-evidently this acquaintance

had raised certain hopes.

"Well, well," I said. "And he took some papers away, you say?"

"Yes. To help get my pension, a special pension."

"And he inquired about Nikolai Antonich?"

"Yes, he did. He even asked whether I knew anybody else. Whether

anybody else knew what this ugly customer had been up to. I put him on

to one man."

"That's interesting. Who is that young man?"

"A respectable-looking man, too," said Vyshimirsky. "He promised to

do something. He said he had to have all those papers to get me a

pension. A special pension."

I asked what his name was, but the old man could not remember.

"Something with a 'sha' in it," he said.

Then his grown-up daughter came in. I could see now why there was

such a hurry to get her married. It was going to be a problem, not

because there was "no room for a husband" but because to that lady's

nose. It was a terrific nose, and it kept sniffing and snuffling with an

alarmingly predatory air.

I greeted her politely, and she ran out, reappearing some minutes

later looking quite a different person. She was wearing a normal dress

now in place of that Arab burnous thing she had had on when she came

in.

We fell into conversation, talking first about Korablev, who was the

only acquaintance we had in common, then about his pupil, who was

still fiddling about in his comer with his reels and coils and paying no

attention to us whatever.

"Anyuta, what was the name of that young man?" her father asked

timidly.

"What young man?"

"The one who promised to get me my pension."

Anyuta's nose twitched and her lips quivered, and a variety of

expressions crossed her face. The strongest was indignation.

"I don’t remember-Romashov, I think," she answered carelessly.

CHAPTER SEVEN

"WE HAVE A VISITOR!"

Romashka! Romashka had been to see them! He had promised the

old man assistance in getting him a special pension, he had paid court to

Anyuta with the nose! In the end he had disappeared, taking some

papers with him, and the old man could not even remember what kind

203

of papers they were. At first I thought this was some other Romashov,

some other man by the same name. But no, it was the same one. I

described him in detail, and Anyuta said venomously:

"That's him!"

He had paid court to her, that was clear. Afterwards he had stopped

paying court, otherwise she would not be calling him the names she did.

He had got out of the old man everything he knew about Nikolai

Antonich. He was collecting information. What for? Why had he taken

from Vyshimirsky those papers, which only went to prove one thing -

that before the revolution Nikolai Antonich had been no teacher, but

just a mean stock-jobber?

I came away from Vyshimirsky with a reeling head. There could be

only two solutions here—either that his purpose was to destroy all traces

of this past, or to get some sort of hold over Nikolai Antonich.

A hold over him? But why? Wasn't he his pupil, his most devoted and

loyal pupil? He had always been that, even at school, when he

eavesdropped on the boys to hear what they were saying about Nikolai

Antonich and then reported it to him. No, he was acting on instructions!

Nikolai Antonich had asked him to find out what Vyshimirsky knew

about him. It was a "plant". He had sent Romashov to take away the

papers which might prove damaging to him.

I went into a cafe and had some ice-cream. Then I had a drink of

something-some mineral water. I felt very hot and kept thinking and

thinking. After all, many years had passed since Romashka and I had

parted after finishing school. At that time he had been a nasty piece of

work, a mean, cold soul. But he was sincerely devoted to Nikolai

Antonich—at least, so we thought. Now I wasn't so sure. He may have

changed. Perhaps, without Nikolai Antonich knowing it, out of pure

devotion to him, he had decided to destroy papers which might cast a

reflection on the good name of his teacher, his friend?

No, he would never do anything merely out of devotion to that man.

There was some other motive behind this, I was sure. But I couldn't

make out what that motive was. I could only go by the old set of

relations which had existed between Nikolai Antonich and Romashka,

as I knew very little about their present relations.

It might have been some very simple motive, something to do with

promotion. Nikolai Antonich, it should be remembered, was a professor,

and Romashka was his assistant. It might even be money-even as a

schoolboy his ears used to burn at the mere mention of money.

Something to do with his salary perhaps.

I phoned Valya. I wanted to consult him, seeing that he had been

visiting the Tatarinovs in recent years, but he was not at home. He never

was when he was most needed!

"No, it's not salary or a career," I went on thinking. "He'd get these by

other, simpler means. You only have to look at him." It was time to go

home, but evening was only just drawing in, a lovely Moscow evening so

unlike my evenings at Zapolarie that I felt a desire to walk back to my

hotel, though it was a good distance away.

And so I sauntered off, first in the direction of Gorky Street, then

down Vorotnikovsky Street. Familiar places! I had passed my hotel and

continued down Vorotnikovsky, then turned off into Sadovo-

Triumfalnaya, past our school. And from there it was a stone's throw to

2nd Tverskaya-Yamskaya, where a few minutes later found me standing

204

in front of a familiar house. I looked through the gate and saw a familiar

tidy little courtyard and a familiar brickbuilt woodshed where I used to

chop wood for the old lady. And there was the staircase down which I

had tumbled head over heels, and there the door with the brass

nameplate on which was inscribed in fanciful lettering: "N. A.

Tatarinov".

"Katya, I've come to see you. You won't drive me away, will you?"

Afterwards Katya said that she realised at once the moment she saw

me that I was "quite different" from what I had been the other day

outside the Bolshoi Theatre. One thing she couldn't make out, though-

why, coming to see her so suddenly and looking "quite different", I

never took my eyes off Nikolai Antonich and Romashka the whole

evening.

That was an exaggeration, of course, but I did glance at them now and

again. My brain that evening was working at full exam-time pressure

and I guessed and grasped things at a bare hint.

I forgot to mention that before leaving the cafe I had bought some

flowers. I had walked to the Tatarinovs' house carrying a bunch of

flowers and felt rather awkward. Ever since the days Pyotr and I had

stolen gillyflowers from the gardening beds at Ensk and sold them for

five kopecks a bunch to people coming out of the theatre, I had never

walked through the streets carrying flowers. Now that I had come, I

should have given the flowers to Katya. Instead, I put them down on the

hall table beside my cap.

I just have shown some agitation, though, because when I spoke I

couldn't keep the ring out of my voice. Katya looked at me quickly

straight in the face.

We were about to go into her room, but at that moment Nina

Kapitonovna came out of the dining-room. I bowed. She looked at me

blankly and nodded stiffly.

"Grandma, this is Sanya. Don't you recognise him?"

"Sanya? Bless my heart! Is it really?"

She threw a startled look over the shoulder, and through the open

door of the dining-room I saw Nikolai Antonich sitting in an armchair

with a newspaper in his hands. He was at home!

"How do you do, Nina Kapitonovna!" I said warmly. "Do you still

remember me? I bet you have forgotten me."

"No I haven't. Forgotten! Nothing of the sort," the old lady answered.

We were still embracing when Nikolai Antonich appeared in the

doorway.

It was a moment of renewed mutual appraisal. He could have ignored

me, as he had done at Korablev's anniversary party. He could have made

it plain that we were strangers. Finally, he could have shown me the

door if he had dared. But he did none of these things.

"Ah, our young eagle?" he said affably. "So you've come flying in at

last? And high time too."

And he held his hand out to me unhesitatingly.

"How do you do, Nikolai Antonich."

Katya looked at us in surprise, and the old lady blinked dazedly, but I

was tickled - I now felt up to any talk with Nikolai Antonich.

"Well,'well... That's fine," Nikolai Antonich said, regarding me

gravely. "It seems only yesterday that we had a boy, and now he's an

205

Arctic pilot, if you please. And what a profession to have chosen too!

Good for you!"

"Quite an ordinary profession, Nikolai Antonich," I said "Just like any

other."

"Any other? What about self-control? And courage in dangerous

situations? And discipline? Not only service discipline, but moral

discipline, too-self-discipline, so to speak."

It made me feel sick, as of old, to hear these bombastic, well-turned

phrases of his, but I listened to him with courteous attention. He looked

much older than he had at the anniversary party and his face was

careworn. As we passed into the dining-room he put an arm round

Katya's shoulders, and she drew away with a barely perceptible

movement.

In the dining-room sat one of the Bubenchikov aunts, which one

exactly I couldn't make out. My last encounter with the two of them had

been a rather stormy one. Anyway, this aunt now greeted me quite

nicely.

"Well, we're waiting," said Nikolai Antonich, when Nina Kapitonovna,

fussing timidly around me, had poured me out some tea and moved up

to me everything that lay on the table. "We're waiting to hear some tales

of the Arctic. Flying blind, permafrost, drifting icefields snowy wastes!"

"Nothing to write home about, Nikolai Antonich," I answered cheerily.

"Just icefields as icefields go."

Nikolai Antonich laughed.

"I once met an old friend who is now working in our trade delegation

in Rome," he said. "I asked him: 'Well, what's Rome like?' And he

answered: 'Nothing much. Just Rome.' "

His tone was condescending. Katya was listening to us with down--A

cast eyes. To keep the ball rolling I started talking about the Nentsi,

about the Arctic scenery, and even my flight to Vanokan with the doctor.

Nina Kapitonovna wanted to know whether I flew very high, and this

reminded me of Aunt Dasha's letter which I had received when still at

school at Balashov: "Since it's not your lot to walk on the ground like

other people, then I beg you, Sanya dear, to fly low."

I told them how Misha Golomb had got hold of that letter and how,

ever since then, whenever I put on my flying-helmet, the boys at the

airfield used to shout from all sides: "Sanya, don't fly high!"

Misha started a comic journal at the school entitled Fly Low. It ran a

special section called: "Flying Techniques in Pictures" with verses like

this:

It's good to glide when you get height,

Don't try daisy-clipping, though,

Don't risk your life on any flight,

Take Auntie's advice and fly low.

I must have made it a good story, because everyone laughed, loudest

of all Nikolai Antonich. He held his sides with laughter. His face turned

pale - it always did when he laughed.

Katya hardly sat at the table. She kept getting up and disappearing for

long periods in the kitchen, and I had an idea that she went out in order

206

to be alone and think things out. She had that sort of look when she

came back into the room. On one such occasion she went up to the

sideboard with a biscuit barrel and evidently forgot what she had gone

there for. I looked her straight in the eye and she answered with an

anxious puzzled look.

Nikolai Antonich must have noticed our exchange of glances. His face

clouded and he began to speak still more slowly and smoothly.

Then Romashka arrived. Nina Kapitonovna answered the doorbell and I

heard her say to him in the hall in a tone of timid malice:

"We have a visitor!"

He lingered in the hall for quite a time, preening himself, no doubt.

When he came in he did not show the slightest surprise at seeing me.

"Ah, so that's who your visitor is," he said with a sour smile. "Very

glad. Very glad to see you, very glad." His face belied his words. If

anybody was glad it was me. From the moment he came in I watched his

every movement. I did not take my eyes off him. What kind of man was

he? How had he turned out? What was his attitude to Nikolai Antonich,

to Katya? He went up to her and started chatting, and every movement,

every word of his was a sort of riddle which I had to guess there and

then, while my eyes kept drilling his face and I kept thinking about him.

Now that I saw them together, him and Katya, I could have laughed—

so insignificant did he look beside her, so ugly and meanly. He sounded

very sure of himself when he talked to her, "too sure" I made a mental

note. He passed some humorous remark to Nina Kapitonovna, but

nobody smiled. "Not even Nikolai Antonich," I made another mental

note.

The two started talking shop, something to do with a student's thesis,

which Nikolai Antonich considered poor, and Romashka considered

good.

This was done, of course, to stress the fact that my presence meant

nothing to them. I preferred it that way, if anything, because I was now

able to sit and watch them, listening and thinking.

"No," I said to myself, "this is not the old Romashka, who was even

proud of being at the complete beck and call of Nikolai Antonich. He

talks to him in a slighting tone, almost offensive, and Nikolai Antonich

answers wearily, wincing. Theirs is a difficult relationship, and Nikolai

Antonich finds it irksome. I was right. Romashka had not been acting on

his behalf. He had not taken those papers from Vyshimirsky in order to

destroy them. He had done it so that he could sell them to Nikolai

Antonich—that was more like him. And must have demanded a pretty

stiff price too. That is, if he had sold them and was not still haggling."

Katya asked me something and I answered her. Romashka, who was

listening to Nikolai Antonich, glanced at us uneasily, and suddenly an

idea passed slowly through my mind and seemed to step a little to one

side of the others as if waiting for me to come up closer. It was a very

weird idea, but quite a valid one for anybody who had known Romashov

since childhood. At the moment, however, I could not dwell on it

because the thought was chilling and would not bear thinking of. I

merely glanced at it, as it were, from the side.

Then Nikolai Antonich went into his study with Romashka and we

were left with the old ladies, one of whom was deaf while the other

pretended to be deaf.

207

"Katya," I said quietly, "Korablev asked you to call on him tomorrow

at seven. Will you come?"

She nodded.

"Was it all right, my coming here? I wanted to see you ever so badly."

She nodded again.

"And please forget that evening when we last met. It was all wrong.

Consider that we haven't met yet."

She looked at me in silence with a puzzled expression.

CHAPTER EIGHT

TRUE TO A MEMORY

What was that idea? I thought about it the whole evening until I fell

asleep. The next morning I awoke with a feeling that I had not slept at

all for thinking.

The whole day was like that. With this thought in my mind I went to

the Northern Sea Route Administration, to the Geographica Society and

to the office of a journal devoted to Arctic affairs. At times I forgot about

it, but only as though I had simply left it outside the door and then come

out and run into it again like an old acquaintance.

Towards the evening, tired and irritable, I arrived at Korablev's. He

was working when I came, marking exercise books. Two high stacks of

them lay on the table and he sat there in his spectacles reading them, his

poised pen coming down from time to time to pitilessly underline

mistakes. I couldn't imagine where this work had sprung from, this

being holiday-time and the school closed. But even at holiday-time he

found something to do.

"You go on with your work, Ivan Pavlovich, and I'll sit here a bit. You

don't mind? I'm tired."

For a while we sat in complete silence, broken only by the scratching

of Korablev's pen and his angry growls. I had never noticed him

growling so angrily while he worked.

"Well, Sanya, how goes it?"

"I'd like to ask you one question, Ivan Pavlovich."

"Go ahead."

"Do you know that Romashov has been visiting Vyshimirsky?"

"I do."

"And do you know what he went there for?"

"I do."

"Ivan Pavlovich," I said reproachfully. "I can't make you out, honestly,

I can't! Knowing such a thing and never telling me a word!"

Korablev regarded me gravely. He was very serious that evening—

probably a bit nervous, waiting for Katya, and not wanting me to see

that he was.

208

"There are many things I haven't told you, Sanya," he retorted.

"Because although you're a pilot now you're still capable of kicking

somebody in the face."

"That was ages ago! An idea has come to me, Ivan Pavlovich. Of

course, I may be wrong. So much the better."

"There you are, getting excited again," said Korablev.

"No I'm not. Don't you think that Romaska might have demanded of

him ... might have said he would keep his mouth shut if Nikolai

Antonich helped him to marry Katya?"

Korablev did not answer.

"Ivan Pavlovich!" I yelled.

"Getting excited?"

"I'm not. What I can't understand is how Katya could let him even

entertain such an idea. Katya of all people!"

Korablev took a turn about the room with a thoughtful air. He

removed his spectacles and his face looked sad. I caught him glancing

several times at Maria Vasilievna's portrait, the one in which she was

wearing the coral necklace. It stood in its old place on the desk.

"Yes, Katya," he said slowly. "Katya, whom you do not know at all."

That was something new. I did not know Katya?

"You don't know how she has been living all these years. But I do,

because I've ... because I've taken an interest in her," Korablev said

quickly. "All the more because nobody else seemed to have been taking

much interest in her."

That was a dig at me.

"She was very miserable after her mother died," he went on. "And

there was another person at her side who was just as miserable, if not

more so. You know whom I mean."

He meant Nikolai Antonich.

"A very experienced and complex person," he continued. "A terrible

man. But he did really love her mother all his life. And that's saying a

lot. Her death brought the two closer together. That's a fact."

He lit a cigarette and his fingers shook slightly as he struck a match

and then gently laid it in the ashtray.

"Then Romashov came on the scene," he went on. "Let me tell you

that you don't know him either. He's another Nikolai Antonich, but cast

in a different mould. For one thing, he's energetic. Secondly, he's

entirely without morals, good or bad. Thirdly, he's capable of taking a

decisive step, that's to say he's a man of action. And this man of action,

who knows what he's after, comes one fine day to his teacher and friend

and says to him: 'Nikolai Antonich, would you believe it-that Grigoriev

fellow turned out to be quite right. You did swindle Captain Tatarinov's

expedition. What's more, there are quite a number of shady things

you're reticent about when answering personnel questionnaires...' Nina

Kapitonovna overheard this conversation. She did not know what to

make of it, so she came running to me. I got it right, though."

"That's interesting," I said.

There was a pause.

"As to what happened next," Korablev continued, "you can judge by

results. You know Nikolai Antonich - he doesn't do things in a hurry.

Probably this was first put to him half in a joke, casually. Then more and

more seriously and repeatedly."

"But, Ivan Pavlovich, he cannot have persuaded her, can he?"

209

"Sanya, Sanya, what a funny chap you are! Would I be telling you all

this if he had? But who knows? He would have got his way in the end,

perhaps, the way he got—"

I understood what he was going to say: "The way he got Maria

Vasilievna to marry him."

I did not know whether to stay or leave—it was already seven o'clock

and Katya might ring the bell at any moment. I found it physically hard

to tear myself away from him. I watched him sitting there smoking, his

grey head bowed and his long legs stretched out, and thought how

deeply he had loved Maria Vasilievna and how unlucky he had been and

yet how true to her memory he had remained-for that was why he had

watched over Katya so carefully all those years.

Then he suddenly said that I had better go.

"It will be easier for me to talk to her."

He saw me to the door and we took leave of each other till the

following day.

It was still quite light when I went out into the street. The sun was

setting and its rays were reflected in the windows on the opposite side of

Sadovaya.

I stood at the entrance looking down the street in the direction from

which Katya should be coming. I must have been waiting a long time,

for the windows darkened one after another from left to right. Then I

saw her, but not where I had been looking. She had come out of a side

street and was standing on the pavement, waiting for the cars to pass. A

sudden fear assailed me as I watched her crossing the road, wearing the

same dress she had worn when we met outside the Bolshoi Theatre and

looking very sad. She was quite near me now, but she walked with her

head down and did not see me. As a matter of fact I did not want her to

see me. I wished her mentally good cheer and all the best I could wish

her at that moment, and I followed her with my eyes all the way to the

door. She disappeared inside, but mentally I followed her. I could see

Korablev coming forward to meet her, trying hard to appear calm, and

taking a long time fitting a cigarette into his long holder before starting

to talk.

Now the windows were darkening quickly and the glow of sunset

lingered only in the two end windows of the block facing me.

It was only eight o'clock and I did not feel like going back to my hotel

yet. For a long time I sat in a little public garden facing the entrance to

our school. I went into the courtyard several times to see whether the

light had gone on in Korablev's flat. But they were talking in the

twilight, Korablev speaking while Katya listened in silence.

The sight of those dark windows brought back to me another

conversation, when Korablev, suddenly jumping up, had paced the room

restlessly with hands clasped on his chest. And Maria Vasilievna had sat

there, erect, her face immobile, patting her hair from time to time with a

slim hand. "Montigomo Hawk's Claw, I once used to call him." Now

white rather than pale, she sat in front of us, smoking incessantly, the

ash everywhere—even on her knees. She was calm and motionless, only

now and again gently tugging at the string of coral beads round her neck

as if it were choking her. She feared the truth, because she did not have

the strength to stand up to it. But Katya was not afraid to face the truth,

and all would be well when she learnt it.

210

The light had been on now for quite a time, and I saw Korablev's long

black silhouette on the blind. Then Katya's appeared alongside, but soon

moved away, as though she had uttered a single long sentence.

It was now quite dark outside, and that was good, because it was

becoming awkward, my sitting so long in that garden and getting up

from time to time to look at the windows.

Then all of a sudden Katya came out of the house alone and walked

slowly down Sadovaya.

She was going home, no doubt. But she did not seem to be in any

great hurry. She had something to think about before returning home.

She walked along, thinking, and I followed her, and it was as if we were

alone, all alone, in the vast city-Katya walking along and I following

without her seeing me. The trams clanged as they dashed out into the

square, and cars throbbed as they waited for the red traffic light to

change, and I was thinking how hard it must be to keep your mind on

anything amid that hideous noise-it was more likely to put you on the

wrong track, make you think the wrong things. Not the things we all

needed—I, and she, and the Captain, had he been alive, and Maria

Vasilievna, had she been alive—all the living and the dead.

CHAPTER NINE

IT IS DECIDED - SHE GOES AWAY

It was already quite light in the hotel room. I had left the light

burning, and I suppose that was why I looked rather pale in the mirror.

I felt chilly and little shivers ran up my spine. I lifted the receiver and

dialled a number. For a long time there was no answer, then at last I

heard Katya's voice.

"Katya, it's me. You don't mind my ringing you so early?"

She said she didn't mind, though it had only just gone eight.

"Did I wake you up?"

"No."

I hadn't slept that night and was sure that she had not slept a wink

either.

"May I come and see you, Katya?"

After a pause she said: "Yes."

A plumpish girl with fair hair coiled round her head opened the door

to me. She was a complete stranger to me, and when I asked her, "Is

Katya at home?", she blushed and answered, "Yes."

I took a quick step forward, not knowing where I was going, only

knowing that it was to see Katya, but the girl checked me with a

mocking. "Not so fast, Commander, not so fast!"

Then she started to laugh, so uproariously and explosively, that I

could not but recognise her at once.

"Kiren!"

211

Katya came out of the dining-room just as Kiren and I stepped

towards each other over some suitcases in the hall and all but fell into

each other's arms, had not Kiren shyly backed away, so that I merely

shook her hand.

"Kiren, is it really you? What are you doing here?"

"It's me all right," Kiren said, laughing. "But please don't call me

Kiren. I'm not such a ninny now."

We began pumping each other's hand again vigorously. She must

have spent the night with Katya, because she was wearing a dressing

gown of hers, from which the buttons kept flying off while we did the

packing. Two open suitcases stood in the hall and we packed away in

them linen, books, various instruments-everything, in short, that was

Katya's in that house. She was going away. I did not ask where. She was

going away. It was all decided.

I did not ask because I knew every word that had passed between her

and Korablev, every word she had spoken to Nikolai Antonich on her

return. Nikolai Antonich was out of town, somewhere at Volokolamsk,

but all the same I knew every word she would have said to him had she

found him at home on her return from Korablev's.

She walked about determined and pale, talking in a loud voice, giving

orders. But hers was the calm of a person with a bruised mind, and I

sensed that it was best not to say anything. I just squeezed her hands

hard and kissed them, and she responded with a gentle pressure of her

fingers.

If anybody was flustered, it was the old lady. She greeted me coldly

with a mere nod and swept past me haughtily. Then she suddenly came

back and with a vindictive air thrust a blouse into the suitcase.

"Ah, well. It's all for the best."

She sat in the dining-room for quite a time, doing nothing but

criticising the way we packed, then suddenly ran out into the kitchen to

tell the maid off for not having bought enough of something or other.

It did not take us long to pack Katya's things. She had few belongings,

though she was leaving a house in which she had spent most of her life.

Everything there belonged to Nikolai Antonich. She did not leave a thing

of hers behind, though. She did not want any overlooked trifle to remind

her that she had once lived in that house.

She was taking the whole of herself away—her youth, her letters, her

first drawings, which Maria Vasilievna had kept, her Helen Robinson

and The Century of Discovery, which I had borrowed from her in my

third form.

In my ninth form I had borrowed other books from her, and when

their turn came she called me into her room and shut the door.

"Sanya, I want you to have these books," she said with a break in her

voice. "They're Daddy's, and I've always cherished them. But now I want

to give them to you. Here's Nansen, and various sailing directions and

his own book."

Then she led me into Nikolai Antonich's room and took the portrait of

the Captain down from the wall-that fine portrait of the naval officer

with the broad forehead, square jaw and light, dancing eyes.

"I don't want to leave him this," she said firmly, and I carried the

portrait into the dining-room and carefully packed it away in a bag

containing pillows and a blanket.

212

It was the only thing belonging to Nikolai Antonich which Katya was

taking away with her. If she could she would have carried away with her

from this accursed house the very memory of the Captain.

I don't know whom the little ship's compass—the one that had once

caught my eye-belonged to, but I slipped it into one of the suitcases

when Katya was not looking. It had belonged to the Captain in any case.

That was all. It must have been the most deserted place in the world

when, the packing done with and coats over our arms, we took leave of

Nina Kapitonovna in the hall. She was staying behind, but not for long—

only until Katya had moved into the room which her institute was giving

her.

"It's not for long," the old lady said, then she broke down and kissed

Katya.

Kiren stumbled on the stairs, sat down abruptly on the suitcase to

prevent herself from tumbling down, and burst out laughing. "You

ninny!" Katya said crossly. I followed them down and pictured to myself

Nikolai Antonich coming up the stairs, ringing the door bell and

listening to what the old lady had to tell him. I saw him pass a trembling

hand over his bald head and cross into his study with dragging

footsteps. Alone in an empty house.

And he will realise that Katya would never come back.

CHAPTER TEN

SIVTSEV-VRAZHEK

Until then it had been just one of Moscow's ordinary, crooked little

streets, of which there are many around the Arbat. But with Katya now

living in it, Sivtsev-Vrazhek had changed surprisingly. It had become the

street in which now Katya lived and which was therefore totally unlike

any other Moscow street. The name itself, which had always struck me

as funny, now sounded significant. It stood for Katya, like everything

else that was associated with her.

I came to Sivtsev-Vrazhek every day. Katya and Kiren would not be

home yet when I arrived, and Kiren's mother, Alexandra Dmitrievna,

would keep me company. Apart from being an exemplary mother she

was a professional reciter who gave readings from the classics at

Moscow workers' clubs. A greying, romantic little lady, not at all like her

daughter.

Then Katya would come in. Korablev had been right. I did not know

her. Not only in the sense that I didn't know many facts about her life,

such as the fact that a year ago her party (she had been working as the

head of a party) had discovered a rich deposit of gold in the Southern

Urals, or that some photographs of hers had won first prize at an

amateur photographers' exhibition. I did not know the strong fibre of

her stuff, her straightforward, honest, sensible attitudes-all that

213

Korablev had summed up so well in the phrase "a serious-minded

sincere soul". She seemed much older than me, especially when she

talked about art—a subject I had sadly neglected in recent years. Then

suddenly the old Katya would emerge-the girl who had a passion for

staging explosions and was deeply stirred at the fact that "Hernan

Cortes, accompanied by the good wishes of the Tiascalans, set out on his

expedition and within a few days reached the populous capital city of

the Incas".

I was reminded of Cortes by a photograph of Katya on horseback,

wearing breeches and high boots and a broadbrimmed hat and with a

carbine slung across her back. A prospector! The sight of that

photograph would have pleased the Captain.

Several days passed in this wise without our having yet talked about

what had happened since we last met, though enough had happened to

last us a lifetime talking about it. We both seemed to feel that it was first

necessary to get used to each other anew. Not a word about Nikolai

Antonich, or Romashov, or my being guilty about her. This was not so

easy, considering that almost every evening the old lady came visiting.

At first she used to make ceremonious calls, looking prim and proper

in a dress with leg-of-mutton sleeves, and telling all kinds of stories—

that is, until Nikolai Antonich's return. But one day she came running in

looking upset and said in a loud whisper: "He's arrived." And forthwith

closeted herself with Katya.

When leaving, she said gruffly: "You've got to have tact to live with

people."

But Katya did not answer. She merely kissed her goodbye with a

thoughtful air.

The next day the old lady came with a tear-stained face, looking tired

and carrying an umbrella. She sat down in the hall.

"He's taken ill," she said. "I called a doctor. A homeopath. But he sent

him away. 'I've given my whole life to her,' he says, 'and this is her

gratitude.' "

She gave a little sob.

" 'It was the last thing that gave me a hold on life. Now it's all over.'

Something like that."

Obviously, it wasn't all over, because Nikolai Antonich got well again,

although he had had a severe heart attack which had kept him in bed for

a few days. He asked for Katya. But Katya did not go to see him. I heard

her tell the old lady: "Grandma, ill or well, alive or dead, I don't want to

see him. D'you understand?"

"I understand," Nina Kapitonovna answered. "Just the way her father

was too," she complained to Kiren's mother as she left. "Talk about

obstinate! Sheer cussedness, I call it!"

But Nikolai Antonich rallied and the old lady cheered up. Now she

sometimes dropped in twice a day, so that we always had the latest news

about Nikolai Antonich and Romashka. One day Katya herself spoke

about Romashka.

"He called on me at the office," she said briefly. "But I sent him word

that I had no time for him and never would have."

"They're writing a letter," the old lady said one day. "All about pilot G.

Pilot G. shouldn't be surprised if they're informing on somebody. And

that holy Joe-is he in a fume! But Nikolai Antonich-he says nothing.

Just sits there, all swollen up, and doesn't say a word. Sits in my shawl."

214

Valya paid several visits to Sivtsev-Vrazhek, and on these occasions

everybody dropped what he or she was doing and stopped talking to

watch the way he was courting Kiren. He really was courting her

according to all the rules of the game, fully convinced that no one

suspected it.

He brought her potted flowers, always the same kind, so that her

room was turned into a little nursery of tea-roses and primulas. He saw

me and Katya as if in a dream and came awake only with Kiren and

sometimes with her mother, to whom he also gave presents—on one

occasion he gave her A Book for the Reciter, 1917 edition.

During his waking spells he told us amusing stories from the life of

jumping squirrels and bats.

It was just as well that Kiren did not need much to make her laugh.

Thus did we spend the evenings at Sivtsev-Vrazhek—the last evenings

before my return to the Arctic.

I was kept pretty busy. My plan to organise a search for Captain

Tatarinov's expedition was received without enthusiasm-or had I not

gone about it the right way?

I wrote several articles-one for the journal Civil Aviation about my

method of anchoring a grounded plane during a blizzard, another for

Pravda about the navigator's diaries, and my Memo for the Northern

Sea Route Administration. Within a few days, on the very eve of my

departure, I was to read my paper on the drift of the St. Maria at a

special session of the Geographical Society.

And then, one late night, when I returned to my hotel in a cheerful

frame of mind, I was handed, together with the key to my room, a letter

and a newspaper.

The letter was a brief one. The Secretary of the Geographical Society

notified me that my paper could not be read as I had not submitted it in

writing within the proper time. The newspaper fell open as I picked it up

and I saw an article headed: "In Defence of a Scientist". I started to read

it and lines grew blurred before my eyes.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

A HECTIC DAY

This is what the article said:

1. That there lived in Moscow a well-known educationalist and public

figure. Professor N. A. Tatarinov, author of a number of articles on the

history of Arctic exploration and development.

2. That an airman by the name of G. was making the round of various

offices connected with Arctic affairs and casting slurs upon this worthy

scientist, whom he accused of swindling (!) the expedition led by his

cousin. Captain I. L. Tatarinov.

3. That this airman G. intended to read a paper on these lines,

evidently regarding his slander as a scientific achievement of major

importance.

215

4. That the conduct of this man, who was sullying the good name of

Soviet Arctic workers, could bear looking into on the part of the

Northern Sea Route Administration.

The article was signed "I. Krylov", and I was surprised at the editors

using the name of the great man for such an article. I had no doubt that

Nikolai Antonich had written it-this was the "letter" the old lady had

been talking about. The newspaper was addressed to me.

Hell, what if it isn't him? It was three o'clock and I was still pacing the

room, thinking. This letter from the Geographical Society now-that

surely was his doing. Korablev told me that Nikolai Antonich was a

member of the Geographical Society, and scolded me for having told

Romashka about my paper. But the article was his too! He'd lost his

head, what with Katya going away.

I pictured him sitting in that old woman's shawl, listening in silence to

Romashka's insults. It was quite possible!

The last thing they would wish was to have the N.S.R.A. call me out

and demand an explanation. It was just what I wanted! I thought of this

as I lay in my bed. "Conduct sullying the good name of Soviet Arctic

workers..." What conduct? I hadn't spoken to anyone about it yet. They

thought they'd scare me, make me back out.

Possibly, if it hadn't been for this article, I would have left Moscow

without having accomplished anything worth mention for the Captain's

cause. The article acted as a spur. I had to do something now, the sooner

the better.

It would be wrong to think that I was as calm then as I am now, when

I am looking back at it. Several times I caught myself playing with crazy

ideas of a kind that come within the jurisdiction of the C.I.D. But I had

only to remember Katya and her words: "ill or well, dead or alive, I do

not want to see him"-for everything to fall into its proper place, and I

was really surprised at the calm way I spoke and acted that busy day.

I had a plan worked out first thing in the morning-a very simple plan,

but one which showed how fed up I was with having to deal with

secretaries and clerks. It was this:

1. To go to Pravda. I had to be there in any case as I had to hand in

the promised article before my departure.

2. To call on C.

The idea of going to see C., that famous C. who had once been our

hero at the Leningrad Flying School and afterwards became Hero of the

Soviet Union, a man the whole country knew and loved-this idea

occurred to me during the night, but had then seemed to be too

audacious. I wondered whether I could presume to phone him. Would

he remember me? I had only been an air cadet when we last met.

But now I had made up my mind. I did not think he would refuse to

see me, even if he did not remember me.

I don't know who it was that answered the phone-his wife, perhaps.

"This is air pilot Grigoriev."

"Yes?"

"I'd very much like to see Comrade C. I've come down from the Arctic,

and it's very important for me to see him."

"Then come along."

"When?"

"Today, if you can. He'll be home from the airfield at ten o'clock."

216

I went to Pravda, and this time I had to wait two hours to see my

journalist. At last he arrived.

"Ah, airman G.?" he said in a rather friendly tone. "The man who

sullies the name?"

"That's him."

"What's it all about?"

"Let me explain," I said calmly.

There followed a very serious talk in the private office of the Editor-

in-Chief, in the course of which I placed on his desk, one after another:

(a) The Captain's last letter (a copy).

(b) The navigator's letter beginning with the words: "I hasten to

inform you that Ivan Lvovich is alive and well" (a copy).

(c) The navigator's diaries.

(d) The story of the hunter Ivan Vilka taken down by me and

witnessed by the doctor.

(e) Vyshimirsky's story certified by Korablev.

(0 A photograph of the boat-hook bearing the inscription "Schooner

St. Maria".

I think it was a useful talk, because one very serious man shook me

warmly by the hand, while another said that my article on the drift of

the St. Maria would be published in one of the next issues of the

newspaper.

It was at least six kilometres from the Pravda offices to where C.

lived, but I did not remember until I had gone half way that I could have

taken a tram. I ran like mad, thinking of how I was going to tell him

about my talk at the Pravda offices.

At last I climb the stairs of a new apartment house, and stop in front

of the door and wipe my face-it is very hot-trying to think slowly about

something-a sure way of keeping calm.

The door is opened, I give my name and hear his deep voice from one

of the rooms: "Somebody to see me?"

And now this man, whom we loved in our youth and of whose

wonderful flights we had heard so much, this man comes towards me

holding out his strong hand.

"Comrade C.," I say, "you would hardly remember me. My name is

Grigoriev. We met in Leningrad when I was an air cadet."

After a slight pause he says with pleasure: "Why, of course! You were

a regular ace. Sure I remember you!"

And we go into his room, and I begin my story, feeling more excited

than ever at the thought that he has remembered me.

It was at this meeting with C. that he gave me his photograph, writing

across it the words: "If it's worth doing at all, do it well." He said I

belonged to the breed who have "a long-distance ticket". He heard me

out and said that he would telephone the N.S.R.A. the next day and

speak to the Chief about my plan.

217

CHAPTER TWELVE

ROMASHKA

It was a little past eleven when I took my leave of C and returned to

my hotel. Rather a late hour for visitors. But a visitor there was for me,

though an uninvited one.

The man at the desk said: "Someone to see you."

And Romashka rose to meet me.

He must have prepared himself for this visit in body as well as in soul,

for I had never seen him look so smart. He was wearing a loose overcoat

of a steely colour and a soft hat which did not so much sit as stand on

his big misshaped head. He had an odour of eau-de-cologne about him.

"Ah, Romashka," I said cheerfully. "How do you do, old Owl?"

He seemed shaken by this greeting.

"Ah, yes. Owl," he said smiling. "I quite forgot that you used to call me

that at school. Fancy remembering all those school nicknames!"

He, too, was trying to appear at ease.

"I remember everything, old chap. You want to see me?"

"If you're not too busy."

"Not at all," I said. "I'm absolutely free."

In the lift he studied me narrowly all the time, apparently trying to

make out whether I was drunk, and if I was, how he could profit by it.

But I was not drunk. I had quaffed only one glass of wine to the health

of the great airman who had held out to me the hand of friendship.

"Nice room, this," he remarked as he accepted the armchair I politely

offered him.

"Not bad."

I was expecting him to ask how much I paid for the room, but he did

not.

"This is quite a decent hotel," he said. "As good as the Metropole."

"I daresay it is."

He was waiting for me to begin the conversation. But I sat there with

my legs crossed, smoking, deeply absorbed in a study of the "Rules for

Visitors" which lay under the sheet of glass covering the desk. Finally, he

sighed quite openly, and began.

"Look here, Sanya, there are quite a number of things we must talk

over," he said gravely. "I think we're sufficiently civilised to discuss and

settle matters in a peaceful manner. Don't you think so?"

Evidently, he had not forgotten the anything but peaceful manner in

which I had once settled matters with him. But his voice hardened with

every word he uttered.

"I don't know what induced Katya suddenly to leave home, but I have

a right to ask whether the reasons for it have anything to do with your

appearance on the scene?"

"Why don't you ask Katya that?" I said coolly.

He fell silent. His ears flushed, his eyes snapped viciously and his

brow smoothened. I looked at him with interest.

218

"But from what I know, she went away with you," he resumed in a

slightly suppressed voice.

"So she did. As a matter of fact I helped her pack."

"I see," he rasped. One eye was now almost closed and the other

squinted—not a pretty sight. I had never seen him like that before. "I

see," he repeated.

"Yes, that's how it is."

"I see."

We fell silent.

"Look here," he resumed, "we didn't finish our talk that time at

Korablev's anniversary. I want to tell you that in a general way I know

all about the expedition of the St. Maria. I was interested in it, too, the

same as you are, only from a different angle, I daresay."

I did not answer. I knew what that angle was.

"Among other things, you were interested, I believe, is finding out

what Nikolai Antonich's role was in that expedition. At least, that's what

I gathered from our conversation."

He could have gathered that in other ways too, but I let his remark

pass. I wasn't sure yet what he was driving at. "I think I can be of great

service to you in this." "Really?" "Yes."

He suddenly lunged towards me, and I instinctively jumped up and

stood behind my chair.

"Listen," he muttered, "I know such things about him! Such things! I

have evidence that will settle his hash, if only you go about it the right

way. What d'you think he is?"

He repeated the last phrase three times, moving up to me so close that

I was obliged to take him by the shoulders and gently push him away.

But he didn't even notice this.

"Things that he's even forgotten himself," Romashka went on. "In

papers."

He was referring, of course, to the papers he had taken from

Vyshimirsky.

"I know why you quarrelled with him. You told him that he had

swindled the expedition and he threw you out. But it's true. You were

right."

It was the second time I had heard this acknowledged, but now it gave

me little pleasure to hear it. I merely said in feigned surprise:

"You don't say?"

"It's him all right!" Romashka repeated with a sort of rapturous glee.

"I'll help you. I'll hand it all over to you, all my evidence. We'll send him

toppling."

I should have kept silent, but I could not help asking:

"How much?"

He collected himself.

"You can take it any way you please," he said. "But all I ask of you is

that you should go away."

"Alone?"

"Yes."

"Without Katya?"

"Yes."

"That's interesting. In other words, you are asking me to give her up."

"I love her," he said almost haughtily.

219

"You do. That's interesting. And we're not to correspond with each

other, I suppose?"

He was silent.

"Wait a minute, I won't be long," I said, and left the room.

The floor lady was sitting at her desk. I asked permission to use her

telephone, and while I was talking I kept an eye on the corridor to make

sure that Romashka did not leave. But he did not-it probably did not

occur to him that I had gone out to make a call.

"Nikolai Antonich? Grigoriev here." He asked me to repeat the name,

evidently thinking that he had misheard. "Nikolai Antonich," I said

politely, "excuse me for disturbing you so late. But I must see you."

For a moment he did not answer. Then he said: "In that case, come

along."

"Nikolai Antonich, if you don't mind I'd like you to call at my place.

Believe me it's very important, not so much for me as for you."

There was another pause and I could hear him breathing at the other

end.

"When? I can't come today."

"But it must be today. Right now. Nikolai Antonich," I raised my

voice, "believe me this once, at least. You will come. I'm ringing off

now."

He did not ask where I was staying, and that was proof enough, if

proof were needed, that it was he who had sent me the newspaper

containing the article "In Defence of a Scientist". But just then I had

other things on my mind and I dismissed the matter and went back to

Romashka.

I don't remember ever having lied and shuffled the way I did during

the twenty minutes before Nikolai Antonich arrived. I pretended that I

did not care at all what Nikolai Antonich had ever been, I asked what

the papers were about, and assured him in a voice nasal with cunning

that I could not go away without Katya. Then came a knock at the door

and I cried out: "Come in!"

Nikolai Antonich came in and stopped in the doorway.

"Good evening, Nikolai Antonich," I said.

I wasn't looking at Romashka but when afterwards I did I saw him

sitting on the edge of the chair, his head drawn down into his shoulders

with an anxious listening air-a real owl, and a sinister one too.

"There, Nikolai Antonich," I went on very calmly, "you probably know

this gentleman. He goes by the name of Romashov, your favourite pupil

and assistant, and almost next door to a kinsman, if I am not mistaken.

I've invited you here to give you the gist of our talk."

Nikolai Antonich was still standing by the door, very erect,

surprisingly upright, coat and hat in his hand. Afterwards he dropped

the hat.

"This Romashov here," I proceeded, "came to me an hour and a half

ago with the following proposition. He offered me the use of certain

evidence which shows, first, that you swindled Captain Tatarinov's

expedition and, second, that you have a number of other shady dealings

to your name of which no mention is made by you in your personnel

questionnaires."

This was when he dropped his hat.

220

"I have the impression," I continued, "that this is not the first time he

has been offering this merchandise for sale. I don't know, I may be

wrong."

"Nikolai Antonich!" Romashka suddenly squealed. "It's a lie. Don't you

believe him. He's lying."

I waited until he had finished shouting.

"It's all the same to me now, of course," I went on. "It's between you

two. But you deliberately..."

I felt my cheek beginning to twitch, and I did not like it, because I had

sworn to keep cool when talking to them.

"But you deliberately arranged for this man to marry Katya. You were

trying to talk her into it, because you were afraid of him. And now he

comes here, shouting: 'We'll send him toppling.' "

As though suddenly coming awake, Nikolai Antonich took a step

forward and stared at Romashka. He stared at him hard and long, and

the tense silence was beginning to tell even on me.

"Nikolai Antonich," Romashka began again in a stammering, piteous

voice.

Nikolai Antonich kept staring. Then he began to speak, and the sound

of his voice, the broken, quavery voice of an old man, astonished me.

"Why did you invite me here?" he said. "I am ill, it's hard for me to

speak. You wanted me to see that he's a scoundrel. That's no news to

me. You wanted to crush me again, but you can't do more than you have

already done-and done irreparably." He drew a deep breath. I realised

that it really was hard for him to speak.

"I leave to her conscience," he went on just as quietly, but in a voice

hardened and bitter, "the act she has committed in going away without

saying a word to me, believing the base slander of which I have been a

victim all my life."

I was silent. Romashka poured out a glass of water with a shaking

hand and offered it to him.

"Nikolai Antonich," he mumbled, "you mustn't get excited."

But Nikolai Antonich thrust his arm aside with a violent gesture and

the water spilled over the carpet.

"I accept no reproaches, no regrets," he said, suddenly snatching off

his glasses and twisting them about in his fingers. "It's her affair. Her

own fate. All I wanted for her was happiness. But my cousin's memory—

that will never yield to anybody," he said hoarsely, and his face became

sullen, puffy, thick-lipped. "I would gladly accept this suffering as a

punishment-even unto death-because life has long been a burden to me.

But I deny all these monstrous, shameful accusations. And not even a

thousand false witnesses would make anyone believe that I killed this

man with his great ideas and his great heart."

I wanted to remind Nikolai Antonich that he had not always held such

a high opinion of his cousin, but he would not let me get a word in.

"I recognise only one witness," he went on, "Ivan himself. He alone

can accuse me, and if I were to blame, he alone would have the right to

do so."

He broke down and wept. He cut his fingers with his glasses and

fumbled about in his pocket for his handkerchief. Romashka ran up and

offered him one, but Nikolai Antonich pushed his hand aside again.

"Even the dead, I think, would have spoken," he said and reached for his

hat, breathing heavily.

221

"Nikolai Antonich," I said very calmly, "I don't want you to think that

I intend to devote my whole life trying to convince mankind of your

guilt. It has been clear to me for a long time and now it is clear to others

too. I did not invite you here to go over all this again. I simply

considered it my duty to show you the real face of this scoundrel. I have

no use for the things he has been telling me about you—I have known

them long before. Don't you want to say anything to him?"

Nikolai Antonich was silent.

"Then get out!" I said to Romashka.

He ran over to Nikolai Antonich and began whispering something to

him. But the latter stood stiffly, staring straight in front of him. Only

now did I notice how he had aged these last few days, how defected and

pitiful he looked. But I felt no pity for him, none whatever.

"Get out!" I repeated to Romashka.

He did not go but kept whispering. Then he took Nikolai Antonich by

the arm and led him to the door. This was unexpected, seeing that it was

Romashka I had ordered out, not Nikolai Antonich, whom I had asked

to come. I had wanted to ask him who had written an article "In Defence

of a Scientist", and whether I. Krylov was a descendant of the famous

fabulist. But I was too late—they had already left the room.

I hadn't set them at odds after all. They walked slowly down the

corridor arm in arm, and only once did Nikolai Antonich stop for a

moment. He started to tear his hair. He had no hair to speak of, but a

sort of childish down came away in his fingers and he stared at it with

agonised amazement. Romashka restrained him and brushed his

overcoat, and they moved along sedately until they disappeared round a

bend in the corridor.

On the eve of my departure C. phoned to tell me that he had spoken to

the Chief of the N.S.R.A. and read out to him my Memo. His answer was

a favourable one. It was too late to send out an expedition this year, but

it was highly probable that they would do this next year. My plan was

detailed and convincing, but the part dealing with the route needed

clarifying. The historical section was most interesting. I would be

summoned to the N.S.R.A. and would receive further notice.

I spent all that day around the shops. I wanted to buy a present for

Katya, as we were parting again. It was no easy job. A tea-cosy? But she

had no teapot. A dress? But I could never tell crepe de Chine from faille

de Chine. A camera? She needed one badly, but I didn't have enough

money for a Leica. I would probably have ended by buying nothing at

all, had I not met Valya in the Arbat. He was standing before the

window of a bookshop, thinking—I would have once guessed

unerringly—of animals. But now he had other things on his mind.

"Valya," I said, "have you any money?"

"I have."

"How much?"

"Five hundred rubles."

"Let's have it."

He laughed.

"You're not going to Ensk again for Katya, are you?"

We went into a shop and bought a Leica.

As far as the rest of the world was concerned I was leaving at

midnight, but with Katya I started taking my leave in the morning and

kept it up all day, now dropping in on her at home, now at her office. We

222

were parting only for a short time. In August she was to come to

Zapolarie, and I was expecting to be called out before that-in July,

perhaps. Nevertheless I thought of our parting with a pang, fearing that

it might be a long one again.

Valya came to see me off at the station and brought a copy of Pravda

containing my article. It was printed just as I had written it, except that

in one passage the style had been improved and the article as a whole

had been condensed to half its size. The excerpts from the diaries,

however, were printed in full. "I shall never forget that leave-taking, 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..."

Katya and I read this in the corridor of my carriage, and I felt her hair

against my face, felt that she, too, could hardly keep back her tears.

The End of Book One

223

BOOK TWO

224

PART SIX

FROM THE DIARY OF KATYA TATARINOVA

YOUTH CONTINUES

July 6, 1935. We spent only one evening together all the time Sanya

was in Moscow. He came in looking very tired, and Alexandra

Dmitrievna went out of the room at once. I made Sanya some tea-he

likes his tea strong-and watched him eating and drinking until he made

me sit down and have tea with him.

Then he suddenly recalled how we used to go skating together, and

made up some story about his kissing me on the cheek at the rink, and

finding it "awfully firm, downy and cold." And I recalled how he had

acted as judge at the trial of Eugene Onegin and had kept staring

gloomily at me all the time.

"And do you remember-'Grigoriev is a brilliant personality, but he

hasn't read Dickens'?"

"Don't I! Have you read him since?"

"No," Sanya said ruefully. "I never had the time. I read Voltaire,

though—'The Maid of Orleans'. For some reason we have a lot of

Voltaire's books in our library at Zapolarie."

Just then the phone rang. I went to answer it and spent a good half

hour talking with my old professor. She called me "dear child" and had

to know absolutely everything-where I now had my lunch and whether I

had bought that pretty lampshade at Muir's. When I got back Sanya was

asleep. I called him, then all at once I felt a pang of pity for him. I

squatted down beside him and began to study his face ever so close.

That evening Sanya gave me the navigator's diary and all the papers

and photographs. The diary was in a special paper case with a lock to it.

After Sanya left I spent a long time examining these pages with torn

edges, covered with close-written, crooked lines, which suddenly ran

helplessly wide as though the hand had gone on writing while the mind

had wandered off God knows where.

The boat-hook with the words "Schooner St. Maria" on it had been

left behind at Zapolarie, but Sanya had brought a photograph of it. I

225

don't suppose there is another boat-hook in the world which

photographs so well!

I promised Sanya that I would write every day, but there is nothing

new to write about every day. I am still living at Kiren's, reading a lot,

working a lot, though it isn't very convenient, because the boxes of

collected specimens stand in the hallway, and I have to draw my maps

on the piano lid. For the first time this summer I did not go out on field-

work. I have to work up the old material, and the Bashkir Geological

Survey Board, where I am employed, have allowed me to remain in

Moscow;

The map is a difficult one, quite a bit of a muddle, and I have to do

everything over again. But the harder it is the more I like doing it.

Though my nights are so dreary, I live with a feeling that all the painful

experiences, the dim miseries of the past have been left behind me, and

I can look forward to something interesting and new, something that

makes me feel at once light-hearted, and happy, and a little afraid.

July 7, 1935. At all the offices where Sanya had called on his last day

in town, he left my telephone number-both with the N.S.R.A. and

Pravda. I was a little alarmed when he told me about it.

"Who am I supposed to be.? Who are they to ask for?"

"Katerina Tatarinova-Grigorieva," Sanya answered gravely.

I thought he was joking. But three days after he had gone someone

phoned and asked for Katerina Tatarinova-Grigorieva.

It was a well-known journalist from Pravda. He said that Sanya's

article had had wide repercussions and that enquiries concerning its

author had even been made by the Arctic Institute.

"Give your husband my congratulations."

I was on the point of answering that he wasn't my husband yet, but

thought better of it.

"If I am not mistaken I have the pleasure of speaking to Captain

Tatarinov's daughter?"

"Yes."

"Have you any more material relating to your father's life and

activities?"

I said I had, but without the permission of Alexander Ivanovich— this

was the first time I called Sanya by his first name and patronymic – I

could not let him have it.

"Never mind, we'll write to him."

There was a phone call from Civil Aviation, too, asking where to send

the copy of the paper carrying his article about the anchoring of a

grounded aircraft during a blizzard—and I did not even know that he

had written such an article. I asked for two copies—one for myself. After

that there was another phone call from Literaturnaya Gazeta asking

what Grigoriev this was, whether it was the author who had written such

and such a book.

But the most important was my talk with C. I don't know what Sanya

told him about me, but he spoke to me as though I were an old friend.

"Are you receiving a pension?" I was puzzled. "For your father."

"No."

"You should put in for one."

226

Then he said with a laugh that the people at the N.S.R.A. had got the

wind up on hearing that my father had discovered Severnaya Zemlya.

Their records attributed it to somebody else.

"I don't know..." he went on, "somehow I don't like the way they are

dealing with this."

"I thought an expedition had been decided on." "So did I, but now it

suddenly seems that it hasn't. When I told them to send him out with

the Pakhtusov, they said there was a pilot on board already. What if

there is! Your man has definite ideas." He said it just like that—"your

man".

"Never mind, I'll have another go at them. Drop in and see us some

day."

I said I should be very happy to, and we said goodbye. Every day I get a

letter, sometimes two letters, from Romashov. The envelopes are

addressed "Second Party, Bashkir Geological Survey Board", as though

they were mailed to an institution. I am something of an institution

though, as there was no other way of arranging for me to work in

Moscow. But the address is a joke, and a joke, which is repeated every

day becomes a nuisance.

At first I used to read these letters, then I started to return them

unopened, and then stopped reading and returning them altogether. But

somehow I cannot get myself to burn these letters; they lie about all

over the place, and when I come across them I snatch my hand away.

I run into the writer of these letters the same way. He used to be a

very busy man, and I just can't make out how he finds the time to stand

about in the street whenever I come out of the house. I meet him in

shops and at the theatre, and it's very unpleasant, because he bows to

me and I ignore him. When he makes a movement to come up, I turn

away.

He called on Valya, and cried, and yelled at him like mad when Valya

jokingly cited a similar example of unrequited love among the

chimpanzees.

Altogether he has begun to loom so large in my life that I am

beginning to feel morbid about it. The moment I close my eyes I see him

in front of me in his new grey coat and soft hat, which he has taken to

wearing on my account-he told me as much himself one day.

July 12, 1935. Of course, it was a very strange idea of mine-to go to

Romashov and get from him those papers which Vyshimirsky had

handed over to him. It was a cruel thought—to go to him after all those

letters and the flowers which I sent back. But the more I thought of it

the more the idea appealed to me. I saw myself coming in and him

staring at me, bewildered, without saying a word, then turning pale,

dashing down the corridor and flinging open the door of his room, while

I said coolly: "Misha, I've come to see you on business."

The curious thing about it is that everything happened exactly as I had

pictured it. I have just come away from Mm.

He was wearing a warm suit of blue pyjamas and hadn't had time to

comb his hair yet. It was wet-apparently after a bath-and hung down his

forehead in yellow strands. He stood pale and silent, while I took my

coat off. Then he stepped swiftly towards me.

"Katya!"

"Misha, I've come to see you on business," I repeated coolly. "Get

dressed and comb your hair. Where can I wait?"

227

"Yes, of course..."

He ran down the corridor and flung open the door of his room.

"In here, please. Excuse me..."

"On the contrary. Excuse me."

We had visited him the previous year, the three of us-Nikolai

Antonich, Grandma and myself, and Grandma, by the way, had kept

throwing out hints all the evening that he had borrowed forty rubles

from her and not given it back.

I had liked his room at the time, but I thought it looked even better

now. It was done up in pleasing light-grey tones, the door and built-in

cupboard somewhat of a lighter shade than the walls. The upholstered

furniture was soft and comfortable, and everything was attractively

arranged. The window looked out on Dog Place-my favourite spot in

Moscow. I have loved Dog Place ever since a child-that little square with

its monument to dogs that had died, and all the quaint little turnings

that ran off it.

"Misha," I said when he had come back, combed, scented, and

wearing a new blue suit which I had not seen before, "I have come to

answer all your letters. What's that nonsense you write about my

repenting it later if I didn't marry you! It's silly schoolboy behaviour to

keep writing me every day when you know that I do not even read your

letters. You know perfectly well that I never intended to marry you, and

you have no reason to write that I misled you."

It was rather frightening to watch the way his face changed. He had

come in with an eager, happy look, as if hoping, yet scarcely able to

believe it-and now hope was dying with every word I uttered and his

face drained slowly of life. He turned away and looked down on the

floor.

"It's too long to explain why I allowed you to speak about it before.

There were many reasons. But you are an intelligent man. You could not

have made the mistake of believing that I loved you."

"But you won't be happy with him!"

His knees were shaking, and he covered his eyes several times in a

strange way. I was reminded of what Sanya had said about him sleeping

with his eyes open.

"I'll kill myself and you," he whispered.

"You can kill yourself for all I care," I said very calmly. "I don't want

to quarrel with you, but really, what right have you to talk that way? You

started an intrigue, as though girls in our day can be won by means of

idiotic intrigues! You haven't a shred of self-esteem, otherwise you

wouldn't be dogging my steps every day. The best thing you can do is

listen to me and say nothing, because I know everything you are going

to say. And now, to come to the point: what are those papers you took

from Vyshimirsky?"

"What papers?"

"Don't pretend, Misha. You know perfectly well what I am talking

about. The papers you used to threaten Nikolai Antonich with, papers

which showed him up as having been a stock-jobber and which you

afterwards offered to let Sanya have if he gave me up and went away.

Hand them over to me this minute. Do you hear—this minute!"

He closed his eyes several times and sighed. Then he made a motion to

get down on his knees. But I said very loudly: "Misha, don't you dare!"

228

He didn't do it, just clenched his teeth, and such a look of despair

came into his face that my heart was wrung despite myself.

Not that I felt sorry for him. I had a sort of guilty feeling that I was

making him suffer in that dumb way. I would have felt better if he had

started cursing me. But he just stood there saying nothing.

"Misha," I began again with some agitation. "Don't you see those

papers are of no use to you any more. You can't change anything, and I

feel ashamed that I know practically nothing about my father at a time

when all the newspapers are writing about him. I need them-1 and

nobody else."

I don't know what he imagined when I uttered the words "I and

nobody else", but an ugly look suddenly came into his eyes and he threw

his head up and took a turn about the room. He was thinking of Sanya.

"I won't give you anything!" he said brusquely.

"Yes you will! If you don't it will mean it was all lies-everything that

you wrote to me."

Suddenly he went out and I was left alone. It was very quiet. I could

hear children's voices from the street and once or twice the tentative

hoot of a motor car. It was disturbing, his going out and not coming

back for so long. What if he did do something to himself? My heart went

cold and I stepped out into the corridor, listening. Not a sound except

that of water running somewhere.

"Misha!"

The door of the bathroom was ajar. I looked in and saw him bending

over the bath. For a moment I couldn't see what he was doing-it was

dark in there, for he had not switched the light on.

"I shan't be long," he said clearly, without turning round.

He stood bent up almost double, holding his head under the tap. The

water was pouring over his face and shoulders, and his new suit was

drenched.

"What are you doing? Are you crazy!"

"Go along, I'll soon be back," he repeated gruffly.

A few minutes later he did come back-collarless, red-eyed— bringing

four ordinary blue scrap-books.

"There they are," he said. "I have no other papers. Take them."

This may have been another lie for all I knew, because, on opening

one of the books at random, I found that it contained some sort of

printed matter, like a page torn out of a book, but you couldn't talk to

him any more, and so I merely thanked him very politely.

"Thanks, Misha."

And went home.

July 12. Night. There they lie in front of me, four thick, blue scrap-

books, old ones, that is, from before the revolution because they all have

on them the trademark "Friedrich Kahn". The first page of the first book

bears the inscription in ornamental lettering with shading to each letter:

"Whereof I have been witness in real life" and the date-"1916. Memoirs."

Further on there are simply cuttings from old newspapers, some of

which I have never heard of, such as: The Stock Exchange Gazette,

Zemshchina, Gazeta-Kopeika. The cuttings were pasted in lengthways

in columns, but in some places also crosswise, for instance this one:

"Tatarinov's expedition. Buy postcards: (1) Prayer before sailing; (2) The

St. Maria in the roadsteads."

229

When I came home I quickly looked through each book from cover to

cover. There were no "papers" here, as far as I understood this word

from my conversation with Korablev, only articles and news items

concerning the expedition from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok along the

coast of Siberia.

What sort of articles were they? I started to read them and could not

tear myself away. The whole of life in the old days was unfolded before

me and I read on with a bitter sense of irreparable doom and

resentment. Irreparable because the schooner St. Maria was doomed

before she set sail-that is what I gathered from these articles. And

resentment because I now learnt how treacherously my father had been

deceived, and how badly his trustful and guileless nature had let him

down.

This was how one "eye-witness" described the sailing of the St. Maria:

"The masts of the schooner, bound on her distant voyage are poorly

flagged. The hour for setting sail draws near. The last 'prayer for seamen

and seafarers', the last farewell speeches. Slowly the St. Maria gets

under way. The shore recedes farther and farther until houses and

people merge in a single colourful strip. A solemn moment! The last link

with land and home is severed. But we feel sad and ashamed at this poor

send-off, at these indifferent faces which register merely curiosity.

Evening draws in. The St. Maria stops in the mouth of the Dvina. The

people who are seeing her off drink a glass of champagne to the success

of the expedition. A last handshake, a last embrace, then back to town

aboard the waiting Lebedin, the women standing by the rail of the little

steamboat, waving and waving, brushing the tears away to wave again.

We can still hear the nervous barking of the dogs aboard the receding

schooner. She grows smaller and smaller until nothing but a dot can be

seen on the darkening horizon. What lies in store for you, brave men?"

Now the schooner was off on her long voyage and the lighthouse at

Archangel sent her its farewell signal: "Happy sailing and success!"-but

ashore, what was happening ashore, my God! What sordid squabbling

among the ship chandlers who had serviced the schooner, what lawsuits

and auctions-some of the supplies and victuals had had to be left behind

and were all sold by auction. And the accusations-what didn't they

accuse my father of! Within a week of the schooner setting sail he was

accused of having failed to insure either himself or his men; of having

sailed three weeks later than the conditions of Arctic navigation

allowed; of having gone off without a wireless man. He was accused of

thoughtlessness in selecting his crew, among whom "there was not a

single man who could handle a sail". They made sneering remarks about

"this preposterous adventure, which reflected, as in a drop of water, this

present-day, pretentious, muddled life of ours."

Within a few days of the St. Maria's sailing a violent storm broke out

in the Kara Sea and immediately rumours spread that the expedition

had been shipwrecked off the coast of Novaya Zemlya. "Who is to

blame?" "The Fate of the St. Maria", "Where is Tatarinov?"- the first

chilling impressions of my childhood came back to me as I read these

articles. Mother came quickly into my little room at Ensk with a

newspaper in her hand. She was wearing that lovely black rustling dress.

She did not see me, though I spoke to her, and I jumped out of bed and

ran up to her in my bare feet and nightgown. The floor was cold, but she

did not tell me to go back to bed nor did she pick me up from the floor.

She just stood by the window with the newspaper in her hand. I tried to

230

reach up to the window, too, but all I could see was our garden strewn

with wet maple leaves, and wet paths and puddles in which the

raindrops were still falling. "Mummy, what are you looking at?" She was

silent. I asked again. I wanted her to take me in her arms, because her

continued silence was frightening me. "Mummy!" I began to cry, and

that made her turn round and bend down to pick me up, but something

was the matter with her-she sat down on the floor, then lay down and

kept quite still, stretched out on the floor in her lovely black, rustling

dress. And all of a sudden wild, unreasoning terror seized me and I

started to scream. I screamed madly and banged at something with

hands and feet. Then I heard Mother's frightened voice, but I went on

screaming, unable to stop myself. Afterwards, back in bed I heard

Grandma talking to Mother, and Mother saying: "I frightened her."

I pretended to be asleep and did not say anything, because after all

she was Mummy and because she was talking and crying in her usual

voice.

Only now, on reading these articles, did I realise what made her act

that way.

The rumours proved to be false, however, and from Yugorsky Shar

Captain Tatarinov telegraphed a message of "hearty greetings and best

wishes to all who had made donations to the expedition and to all its

well-wishers".

This message was printed in facsimile under an unfamiliar portrait of

Father in naval uniform-regulation jacket with white shoulder-straps-an

elegant officer with an old-fashioned moustache turned up at the ends.

In sending "best wishes to those who had made donations" he was

hoping that their contributions would enable the Committee for the

Exploration of Russia's Arctic Territories to support the families of the

crew. He wrote about this in his dispatch sent through the Yugorsky

Shar Dispatch Service, which was published in the newspaper Novoye

Vremya:

"I am confident that the Committee will not leave to the mercy of fate

the families of those who have dedicated their lives to the common

national interests."

Vain hopes! In the issue of the same newspaper for June 27, I read a

report of the Committee's meeting: "According to N. A. Tatarinov, the

Committee's Secretary, the recent collection has yielded negligible

results. Neither have many other methods, such as the organisation of

entertainments, etc., produced the hoped-for profits. Therefore, the

Committee finds itself unable to render to the families of the crew the

proposed assistance of 1,000 rubles."

This phrase about "donations from well-wishers" sounded so queer

and grotesque to me. Maybe Mother and I, too, had been living like

beggars on this almsgiving?

But what surprises me most in these old newspapers is the way they

all declared with one voice, that the schooner St. Maria was doomed.

Some figured out, pencil in hand, that she would scarcely make Novaya

Zemlya. Others believed she would be trapped in the first icefield and

would perish somewhat later, after passing Franz Josef Land as a

"captive of the Arctic Sea".

That she would fail to navigate the Northern Sea Route, either in one,

two or three seasons, nobody had any doubt.

The only exception was a poet who published some verses "To I. L.

Tatarinov" in an Archangel newspaper. He was of a different mind:

231

He is well! God watches over him! The man's astounding energy and

risk Have unlocked the Arctic's frozen disk. The icefield crumbles and

retreats before him.

I had known a good deal before reading these clippings. In the letter

which Sanya had found at Ensk, Father wrote that "most of the sixty

dogs had had to be shot at Novaya Zemlya". Vyshimirsky's statement

which Sanya had taken down spoke about rotten clothing and damaged

chocolate. In the newspaper Arkhangelsk I read the letter of a merchant

named E. V. Demidov, who stated that "the curing of meat and the

preparation of ready-made clothes were not my line of business" and

that "in the present instant I acted as an agent. Moreover, as I had a big

business of my own to attend to, I naturally could not examine every

piece of meat and every fish that went into the barrel. Besides, Captain

Tatarinov kept wiring: 'Stop purchases, no money'. And so on. Why start

fitting out an expedition when you have no money? If there was

anything faulty in such hurried preparations, then those to blame for it

should be sought not among the local businessmen, but higher up..."

What I didn't know-nor Sanya either, and I can't understand why

Mother never mentioned it-was that "three days before St. Maria set

sail it was discovered that in the forepeak, below the second deck and

well below the waterline, on both sides of the collision-bulkhead there

were gashes right through the ribs and shell to the outer sheathing,

which made the ship unseaworthy. These holes that bore the telltale

traces of an axe and saw, were photographed and measured, the largest

being 12 inches wide and 2 ft. 4 inches long, the others a bit smaller.

How these holes came to be there is a mystery, one is reminded of the

fact that in the event of shipwreck the new owner of the vessel would

collect the insurance money."

Of course, no further confirmation is needed that Father is dead and

will never come back. His doom had been sealed. He had been sent to

his death.

July 18, 1935. Last night, a little after eleven, someone rang at the

door. Kiren's mother said it must be the yardman, who had Come to

collect the garbage. I ran, pail in hand, to open the door. It wasn't the

yardman. It was Romashov. He stepped back quickly when I opened the

door and took off his hat.

"It's an urgent matter, and concerns you, that's why I have decided to

call, even though it's so late."

He uttered this very gravely, and I believed at once that the matter

was urgent and concerned me. I believed because he was so perfectly

calm.

"Please come in."

We stood facing each other—he with his hat in his hand, I with my

slop-pail. Then I recalled myself and put the pail down in a corner.

"I'm afraid it's not quite convenient," he said politely. "You have

visitors, I believe?"

"No."

"Can't we talk out here, on the landing? Or go down to the boulevard.

I have something to tell you—"

"Just a moment," I said quickly.

Kiren's mother was calling me. I closed the door and went back.

232

"Who is it?"

"I'll be back in a minute, Alexandra Dmitrievna," I said hastily. "Or, I

tell you what-let Valya come down for me in fifteen minutes' time. I'll be

on the boulevard."

She said something, but I did not stop to listen.

It was a cool evening and I had come out as I was. Going downstairs,

Romashov said: "You'll catch a cold." He probably wanted to offer me

his overcoat—he had even taken it off and was carrying it on his arm,

and afterwards, when we sat down, he placed it on the seat-but he could

not bring himself to do it. I didn't feel cold, though. I was excited,

wondering what his visit could mean.

The boulevard was quiet and deserted.

"Katya, what I wanted to tell you is this," he began cautiously. "I know

how important it is for you that the expedition should take place. For

you and for—"

He faltered, then went on easily:

"And for Sanya. I don't think that it matters really, I mean that it can

change anything, for your uncle, say, who is scared at the prospect. But

this concerns you and so it can't be a matter of indifference to me."

He said this very simply.

"I have come to warn you."

"Of what?"

"That the expedition won't take place."

"It isn't true! C. telephoned me."

"They have just decided that it's not worth while," Romashov

countered calmly.

"Who has decided? And how do you know?"

He turned away, then faced me, smiling.

"I don't know how to tell you, really. You'll think me a cad again."

"Just as you like."

I was afraid he would get up and go away—he was so calm and self-

assured and so unlike the Romashov I had known. But he did not go

away.

"Nikolai Antonich told me that the Deputy Chief of the N.S.R.

Administration reported on the plan for the expedition and came out

against it himself. He doesn't think it's the business of the N.S.R.A. to

carry out searches for the lost captains who disappeared over twenty

years ago. If you ask me, though-" Romashov hesitated. He must have

felt hot, because he took his hat off and held it on his knee. "It's not his

own opinion."

"Whose opinion is it, then?"

"Nikolai Antonich's," Romashov came back quickly. "He's acquainted

with the Deputy Chief, who considers him a great expert on the history

of the Arctic. For that matter, who else could they consult concerning

the search for Captain Tatarinov if not Nikolai Antonich? It was he who

fitted out the expedition and afterwards wrote about it. He's a member

of the Geographical Society, and a highly respected one at that."

I was so upset that for the moment I did not ask myself why Nikolai

Antonich should be so interested in preventing a search, or what had

made Romashov give him away. I felt aggrieved not only for my father's

sake, but for Sanya's as well.

"What's his name?"

233

"Whose?"

"That man who says it's not worth while making a search for lost

captains."

Romashov gave the name.

"I'm not going to have this out with Nikolai Antonich, of course," I

went on with an effort at restraint, feeling that my nostrils were flaring.

"We know where we stand, he and I. But I'll have something to say

about him at the N.S.R.A. Sanya had no time to square accounts with

him, or else he pitied him-I don't know. But are you sure about this?" I

suddenly asked, glancing at Romashov and thinking-why, this is the

man who loves me, and whose only thought is how to bring about the

ruin of Sanya!

"Why should I tell a lie?" Romashov said impassively. "You'll hear

about it. They'll tell you the same thing. Of course, you have to go there

and clear everything up. But ... er ... don't say who told you. On second

thoughts, tell them - I don't care," he added haughtily. "Only it may get

round to Nikolai Antonich and I won't be able to deceive him any more,

the way I've done today."

He had betrayed Nikolai Antonich for my sake-that's what he meant.

He looked at me and waited.

"I did not ask you to deceive anybody, though there's nothing to be

ashamed of in deciding (I nearly said: "for the first time in your life") to

act honourably and to help me. I don't know what your present attitude

is towards Nikolai Antonich."

"I despise him."

"Well, that's your affair." I rose. "Anyway, thank you Misha. And

goodbye."

August 5, 1935. They were not at all sure at the N.S.R.A. that the

search should be entrusted to Sanya. He was rather young, and though

he had a long record of air service, he had comparatively little

experience of work in the Arctic. He had the reputation of being a good,

disciplined pilot, but could he cope with such a difficult undertaking,

which called for considerable organising ability? By the way, what sort

of person was he? Wasn't there something about him in some journal,

accusing him of slandering somebody-N. A. Tatarinov, if I'm not

mistaken, the well-known expert on the Arctic and the captain's cousin?

I demanded that the editors of the journal publish a disclaimer, and

argued that the organisation of a search party of six men was not such a

difficult thing. I insisted on the search for Captain Tatarinov being

entrusted to the person who had nursed that idea ever since a child. I

don't know what will come of it. But somehow I feel certain that the

expedition will take place despite everything, and, what's more, that I

will go to Severnaya Zemlya together with Sanya. I wrote about this to

the Chief of the N.S.R.A. offering my services in the capacity of

geologist. Today an answer has arrived from the Personnel Department.

Not exactly the answer I had hoped for, though. I was offered a job at

one of the Arctic stations, at my own choice, and requested to call at the

head office to talk it over. Ah, well, I'll have to start all over again,

demanding, proving, insisting.

September 11, 1935. Today I went to see Grandma.

She comes to see me almost every evening. She comes in puffed up

and important and talks sedately with Kiren's mother. She doesn't like

the idea of me "living out" when "she has such a lovely room" at home.

234

And she is afraid of somebody called Dora Abramovna who had dropped

in twice already "to sniff things out".

"I'm getting old now," she said to me one day with tears in her eyes,

"but I've never lived so lonely as I do now."

But yesterday she didn't come, and this morning she phoned to say

that her heart was bothering her. When I asked her whether Nikolai

Antonich was at home she got angry.

"What a silly question," she said. "Where do you expect him to be?

Gadding about counting shacks, like you?"

Then she said he was out, and I quickly got ready and went over to see

her.

She was lying on the sofa, covered with her green old coat. Laurel-

water drops stood on a little table beside the sofa-the only medicine she

believed in—and when I asked her how she was, she dismissed my

question with a wave of the hand.

"One of those dumb dogs that can't bark," she snapped. "You can tell

at once she lived in a nunnery. Religious. 'Then why are you in service?'

I say to her. I gave her the sack."

She had dismissed the domestic help, and that was very bad, because

she was a good servant, even though she was religious. At one time

Grandma had been pleased that the woman had once been a nun.

"Grandma, what have you done!" I said. "Now you're ill and all alone.

I'll have to take you to my place now."

"You will do nothing of the kind! The idea!"

She flatly refused to undress and get into bed, and said that it wasn't

her heart at all, it was just that she hadn't cooked a meal the day before

and had eaten horse-radish with olive oil-it was the horseradish, it

didn't agree with her.

"If you don't go to bed at once, I'm going away."

"Hoity-toity!"

Nevertheless, she undressed, got into bed, groaning, and abruptly fell

asleep.

There was always a draught in Mother's room when you opened the

window, and so I opened the door in the corridor to air the room. Then I

went into my own room. How cheerless and bare it looked, the room I

had lived in for so many years! Yet it had been improved since my

departure. The bed was covered with Grandma's lace bedspread, the

curtains were white as white and even a little stiff with starch,

everything was clean and tidy, and the volume of the encyclopaedia,

which I must have taken down before I left, remained open at the

identical page. I was expected back here...

I thought I caught a glimpse of a figure hurrying down the corridor

when I came out of the room.

I couldn't imagine my sick grandmother running about the corridor

in her green velvet coat, but somebody had been running there, and in a

green coat, too. Yet it was Grandma, because, though I found her in bed

when I went back to her room, she looked as if she had just flopped into

it and hadn't had time to draw up the blanket.

It was very funny to see how hard she was pretending. She even

blinked sleepily to show that she had just come awake and that running

down the corridor was farthest from her thoughts. Obviously, she had

been spying on me to see whether I was homesick, hoping I would come

back.

235

"Have you had the doctor, Grandma?" I asked, when she had finally

stopped rubbing her eyes and yawning loudly.

She hadn't. She didn't want any doctor.

"Nonsense! I'm going to call him at once."

But Grandma went up in the air at this and said that if I called the

doctor she would dress immediately and go off to Maria Nikitichna-the

neighbour.

So far not a word had been said about Nikolai Antonich. But when

Grandma put on a dead-pan expression, I knew it was coming.

"The whole house is going to pieces," she began with a sigh. "Your

deserting him has hit him badly! He's lost his grip on things, doesn't

care about anything. Doesn't care whether he eats or not."

"He" meant Nikolai Antonich.

"And he writes and writes—day and night," Grandma went on. "First

thing in the morning, soon as he's had his tea, he wraps my shawl round

him and sits down at Ms desk. 'This, Nina Kapitonovna, will be my

lifework,' he says. 'As to whether I'm guilty or not, my friends and

enemies will now judge for themselves.' And he's got so thin. Absent-

minded, too," Grandma communicated in a whisper. "The other day he

sat at the table in his hat. I think he's going mad."

At that moment the front door closed softly and someone came into

the hall. I looked at Grandma, who avoided my eyes, and I realised that

it was Nikolai Antonich.

"I must be going now. Grandma."

He came in, after a light tap on the door and without waiting for an

answer.

I turned round and nodded, pleased to find that I could do it with such

careless, even audacious ease.

"How are you, Katya?"

"Not bad, thank you."

Oddly enough, I saw him now just as a pale, ageing man with short

arms and stubby fingers, which he kept nervously twiddling and trying

to tuck away all the time, now inside his collar, now into his waistcoat

pockets, as if to hide them. He now resembled an old actor. I had known

him once-ages ago. But now the sight of his pallid face, his scraggy neck

and the hands, which shook so visibly when he stretched them out to

pull up an armchair for himself left me unmoved.

The first awkward minute passed with him asking me in a jocular tone

whether my map was right and I hadn't mixed up the Zimmerdag suite

with the Asha suite-an illusion to a mistake I had once made in my

university days—and I started to take my leave again.

"Goodbye, Grandma."

"I can go away," Nikolai Antonich said quietly.

He sat in an armchair, hunched up, regarding me steadily with a

kindly eye. That was how he looked sometimes, when we had had long

talks together-after Mother's death. But now that was merely a distant

memory for me.

"If you're in a hurry, we can talk some other time," he said.

"Honestly, Grandma, I have an appointment," I said to my

grandmother, who was holding me tightly by the sleeve.

"No you haven't. What d'you mean? He's your uncle."

236

"Come, come, Nina Kapitonovna," Nikolai Antonich interposed good-

naturedly. "What difference does it make whether I'm her uncle or not.

Obviously, you don't want to hear what I have to say, Katya?"

"I don't."

"Pig-headed, that's what she is!" Grandmother said vehemently.

I laughed.

"I cannot talk to you either about how painful your going away

without even saying goodbye was to me," Nikolai Antonich went on

hurriedly in the same simple kindly manner, "or about how you were

both misled into believing that poor sick old man, who had only recently

been discharged from a mental hospital."

He looked at me over the top of his glasses. A mental hospital!

Another lie. One lie more or less—I did not care now. The only thing

that worried me was the thought that this might affect Sanya in some

disagreeable way.

"My God! The things that poor, muddled brain of his made up! That I

had ruined him by means of some bills of exchange, and that it was

because of me that the expedition had found itself so badly equipped—

why, what do you think? Because I wanted to destroy Ivan!"

Nikolai Antonich laughed heartily.

"Out of jealousy! My God! I loved your mother and out of jealousy I

wanted to destroy Ivan!"

He laughed again, then suddenly took off his glasses and began wiping

away the tears.

"Yes, I loved her," he muttered, weeping, "and. God knows, everything

could have been different. Even if I were guilty, I have had my

punishment from her. She punished me like I never thought I could be."

I listened to. him as in a dream, with a sense of having seen and heard

all this before—that flushed bald head with its sparse hairs, the same

words uttered with the same expression, and that unpleasant feeling

which the sight of a weeping old man rouses in you.

"Well?" Grandma demanded sternly.

"Grandma!" I said, thrilled at the anger that flared up in me, "after all,

I'm not a little girl any longer, and I can do as I please, I believe. I don't

want to live here any more-is that clear? I'm getting married. I'll

probably live in the Far North with my husband, who has nothing to do

here because he's an Arctic pilot. As for Nikolai Antonich, I've seen him

crying so many times, I'm fed up. All I can say is that if he had not been

guilty he would hardly have messed about with this affair all his life. He

would hardly bother to get the N.S.R.A. to drop the idea of Sanya's

expedition."

By this time, I daresay, I was feeling a bit deflated, because Grandma

was looking at me in a frightened way, and, I believe, furtively crossing

herself. Nikolai Antonich's cheek was twitching. He said nothing,

"And leave me alone!" I flung out. "Leave me alone!"

November 19, 1935. The expedition has been approved! Professor V.,

the well-known Arctic scientist, wrote an article in which he expressed

the conviction that, judging by the diaries of Navigator Klimov, "the

materials collected by the Tatarinov expedition, if found, could

contribute to our present knowledge of the Arctic".

This idea, even to me, sounded rather daring. Unexpectedly, though, it

received confirmation and it was this that tipped the scale in favour of

237

Sanya's plan. After studying the chart of the St. Maria's drift between

October 1912 and April 1914, Professor V. expressed the opinion that

there must be as yet undiscovered land at latitude 78°02'and longitude

64°. And this hypothetical land, which V. had discovered without

moving from his study, was actually found during the 1935 navigation

season. True, it wasn't much of a place, just a small island lost amidst

the creeping ice and presenting a dismal picture, but, be that as it may,

this meant one more blank space filled in on the map of the Soviet

Arctic, and this had been done with the aid of the chart showing the drift

of the St. Maria.

I don't know what other arguments, if any were needed to put Sanya's

plan through, but the fact remains that "a search party attached to an

expedition into the high latitudes for the study of Severnaya Zemlya"

was included in the plan for next year's navigation season. Sanya was to

come to Leningrad in the spring, and we arranged to meet there, in

Leningrad, where I had never been before.

May 4, 1936. What thoughts and fancies thronged in my mind

yesterday morning as my train drew into Leningrad, where, the next

morning, that is today. May 4th I was to meet Sanya! Though the

carriage was a rattling, creaking fair—it must have been an old one— I

slept all night like a top, and when I woke up, I started daydreaming.

How good it was to lie and dream, listening to the monotonous rumble

of the wheels and the sleepy breathing of my fellow passengers! I had a

feeling that all my dreams would come true, even that my father was

alive and that we would find him and all come back together. It was

impossible of course. But there was such peace and serenity in my heart

that I could not help dwelling on the thought. In my heart, as it were, I

commanded that we find him-and now, there he stood, grey-headed and

erect, and he had to be made to go to sleep, otherwise he would go mad

with excitement and joy.

The men who shared the compartment with me were by this time out

in the corridor, smoking. I suppose they were waiting for me to get

dressed and come out, but I was still lying there, daydreaming.

We had arranged that Sanya's sister (whom I always called Sasha in

my letters to distinguish her from my Sanya) was to meet me at the

railway station—she, "or Pyotr, if I am unwell", she had written. She had

several times made passing mention of her indisposition, but her letters

were so cheerful, with little drawings in them, that I attached no

importance to these remarks. I had an inkling of what it was about,

though. In one of her letters Pyotr was depicted with a paint brush in

one hand and an infant in the other, the two of them being remarkably

alike.

Everybody had their hats and coats on now, and my fellow travellers

helped to get my suitcase down from the rack. It was rather heavy,

because I had taken with me everything I possessed, even several

interesting specimens of rock. I was so excited. Leningrad! Suddenly,

between the passengers' heads, the platform came into view, and I

began looking out for the Skovorodnikovs. But the platform slid past

and there was no sign of them. Then I recollected with annoyance that I

had not wired them the number of my carriage.

A porter lugged my case out and we stood together on the platform

until everybody had walked past. The Skovorodnikovs were not there.

238

Sasha in one of her letters had described in detail, even giving a

sketch, how to get to their place in Karl Liebknecht Prospekt. But I got it

all mixed up and coming out into Nevsky Prospekt I asked a polite

Leningrader in a pince-nez: "Can you please tell me how to get to

Nevsky Prospekt?"

It was a disgraceful blunder, and I have never told a living soul about

it.

Then I got into a tram crush, and the only thing I noticed was that the

streets were rather empty compared with Moscow. So was the one I got

off at and down which I dragged my suitcase. And there was house No.

79. "Berenstein, Photographic Artist". This was the place.

I was standing on the second floor landing, rubbing my fingers, which

were numb from carrying that accursed suitcase, when the front door

banged downstairs and a lanky figure in a mackintosh with his cap in his

hand dashed past me, taking the steps two at a time.

"Pyotr!" I cried.

He was worlds away at the moment from any thought of me, for he

stopped, glanced at me, and, finding nothing of interest in me, made a

movement to run on. Some dim recollection, however, made him pause.

"Don't you recognise me?"

"Why, of course I do! Katya, I'm coming from the hospital," he said in

a tone of despair. "Sasha was taken in last night."

"No, really?"

"Yes. Come along in. That's why we couldn't come to meet you."

"What's the matter with her?"

"Didn't she write you?"

"No."

"Come along, I'll tell you all about it."

Evidently the family of the photographic artist Berenstein took a great

interest in the affairs of Sasha and Pyotr, for a slight, smartly dressed

woman met Pyotr in the hall and inquired with some agitation: "Well,

how is she?"

He said he knew nothing, he had not been allowed to go in, but at that

moment another woman, just as slight and elegant, came running out

and asked agitatedly: "Well, how is she?"

And Pyotr had to explain to her again that he knew nothing and had

not been allowed to go in.

Sasha was expecting a child, that is why they had taken her to the

hospital.

"Why are you so upset, Pyotr? I'm sure everything will be fine."

We were alone in his room and he was sitting opposite me hunched

up in an armchair. His face looked bleak and he clenched his teeth as if

in pain when I said that everything would be fine.

"You don't know. She's very ill, she has the flu and she's coughing. She

said it would be all right too."

He introduced me to the family of the photographic artist—to his little

grey-haired, graceful wife and her as graceful little grey-haired sister.

The head of the family had moved to Moscow, for some reason, but they

showed me his portrait, that of a well-favoured man with a fine head of

hair wearing a velvet jacket-your true photographic artist, perhaps more

of an artist than a photographer.

I went to sleep in Sasha's bed, but Pyotr said he did not feel sleepy

and settled down with a book by the telephone. The nurse at the

239

hospital phoned regularly every half hour. I fell asleep after one of these

calls, but only for a minute I believe, because someone started knocking

on the wall with short, sharp raps, and I jumped up, not knowing where

I was and what was happening. There was a light in the passage and

voices sounded there, as of several people talking loudly all together.

The next moment Pyotr dashed into the room, looking like some

elongated monster, and started a wild dance.

Then he leaned over the table and began to take something off the

wall.

"Pyotr, what is it? What's happened?"

"A boy!" he yelled. "A boy!"

All kinds of things started dropping around as he tried to take from

the wall a large portrait in a heavy frame. First he knelt on the table,

then stood on it, and tried to get between the wall and the picture.

"And Sasha? How's Sasha? You're crazy! Why are you taking that

picture down?"

"I promised to give it to Mrs Berenstein if everything went well."

He clambered down from the table, kissed me and burst into tears.

And this morning I met Sanya.

When the train appeared a ripple of excitement ran down the

platform. Though there were not many people there, I stood well back

from them so that he could easily spot me. I was calm, I believe. Only it

seemed to me that everything was happening very slowly—the train

drew slowly alongside the platform, and the first passengers slowly

stepped down and came towards me ever so slowly. They came and

came, but there was no sign of Sanya, and my heart sank. He had not

arrived.

"Katya!"

I turned and saw him standing by the first carriage. I ran to him,

feeling everything within me quivering with excitement and happiness.

We, too, walked very slowly down the platform, stopping every

minute to look at each other. I don't remember what we talked about

those first few minutes. Sanya was asking me hurried questions and I

was answering almost without hearing myself.

We went to Astoria, as Sanya said it was more convenient for him to

stay at a hotel, and from there we phoned Pyotr. He let out a wild whoop

when I told him that Sanya was standing beside me and trying to snatch

the receiver out of my hand. They roared at each other disjointedly:

"Hey! How goes it, old chap, eh?" In the end they came to an

understanding-Sanya was to go to the clinic and together they would try

to get in to see Sasha. "And me?" Sanya took me in his arms.

"From now on, where I go, you go!" he said. "And that's that!" They did

not let us see Sasha, of course, but he sent her a note and received her

reply, begging us to keep Pyotr from going on the rampage.

Sanya had to go to the Arctic Institute, and I accompanied him there,

not only because I wanted to be with him, but because it was time, after

all, that we discussed the business that had brought us both to

Leningrad. My last letters had not reached him and he had not heard the

news about the Pakhtusov, which—it had just been decided— would go

through Matochkin Strait, and then, rounding Severnaya Zemlya, make

for the Lyashkov Islands.

"Well, we'll have more time, that's all," Sanya said. "It's the time

factor that worries me most."

240

We talked about the make-up of the search party and he said that he

had recommended a radio man from Dikson, Doctor Ivan Ivanovich and

his mechanic Luri, about whom he had often written to me from

Zapolarie.

"The radio man's a splendid chap. Do you know who he is?" "No."

"Korzinkin," Sanya solemnly announced. "None other." I had to confess

that I had never heard the name before, and Sanya explained that

Korzinkin was one of the two Russians who had gone with Amundsen to

the South Pole, and that Amundsen mentions him in his book.

"Ripping, eh? I'll be the fifth. And you the sixth. I suggested you as

being the daughter."

"Oh, you did? I thought I was entitled to join the expedition not

merely as the daughter of Captain Tatarinov. Is that what you wrote-

'profession—daughter'?" Sanya was taken aback. "I don't see that it

matters," he muttered. "D'you think it was silly?"

"Very silly."

"Otherwise it would look as if I was trying to get my wife in. Rather

awkward."

"I did not ask you to try to get me in, Sanya," I said composedly.

"Daughter, wife! I'm a niece and granddaughter, too. I'm an old

geologist, Sanya, and I asked the Chief of the N.S.R.A. to include me in

the expedition as a geologist, and not as your wife. By the way, I'm not

your wife yet, and if you're going to carry on in this silly way I'll go and

marry someone else. We haven't been to the registrar's yet, have we?"

I even began to feel sorry for him as he stood there blinking, laughing

awkwardly, taking off his cap and wiping his forehead with his hand.

"I'm sorry, Katya, honestly!" he muttered.

I gave him a quick kiss, though we happened to be standing in the

courtyard facing the building of the Arctic Institute, and said: "Good

luck."

He promised to ring me at six or drop in at Pyotr's place, if he could

manage it.

May 7, 1936. He returned that day not at six but at eleven, and not to

Pyotr's but to the Astoria and phoned demanding that we come down

straight away and have supper with him, as he had had nothing to eat

and was as hungry as a wolf, and wanted company.

But Pyotr felt done up after an anxious day, and besides, he had had

some vodka to buck him up and was now lying on the sofa, blinking

sleepily, and looking like Punch with that fantastic nose of his and

ungainly legs and arms.

I remember the dates of all my meetings with Sanya and of our letters

too. We met in the garden in Triumfalnaya Square on April 2 and

outside the Bolshoi Theatre on June 13. And that evening on May 4,

when he rang me up on his return from the Arctic Institute and I went

over to see him-that day, too, I shall remember as long as I live.

We have known each other since childhood and I thought that I knew

him better by now than he perhaps knew himself. But never before had I

seen him the way he was that evening. When we were having supper I

even told him as much.

His plan had been fully approved and he had received lots of

compliments. He had met Professor V., the man who had discovered the

island by tracing the drift of the St. Maria, and the Professor had been

very nice to him. And he was in Leningrad, that great, beautiful city,

241

which he had loved ever since his flying school days—in Leningrad after

the silences of the Arctic! Everything was fine!

This happiness of his, this success, showed so clearly in his face, in his

every gesture, even in the way he ate. His eyes shone, he sat erect and at

the same time at his ease. If I were not already in love with him I would

certainly have fallen in love with him that evening.

We sat eating and drinking for God knows how long, then we went for

a walk after I had mentioned that I hadn't yet seen the sights of

Leningrad. Sanya was all eagerness to show me himself "what kind of a

city this was".

It was past two, the darkest hour of the night, but when we came out

of the Astoria it was so light that I purposely stopped in Gogol Street to

read a newspaper in one of the wall stands.

Leningrad of the Midnight Sun! But Sanya said these white nights

were nothing new to him and the one good thing about the Leningrad

brand was that it did not last six months.

It grew cold and I was lightly clad, so we both wrapped ourselves in

Sanya's raincoat and sat for a long time in utter silence with our arms

round each other.

We were sitting on a semi-circular granite seat on the Neva

embankment, and somewhere down below a wave slapped gently

against the stone facing.

Then we went back to the Astoria and made coffee in Sanya's room.

Sanya always carried a coffee-pot and spirit lamp about with him when

travelling.

"Doesn't it frighten you to feel so happy?" he said, taking me in his

arms. "Your heart's going pit-a-pat! So's mine, you just listen."

He took my hand and placed it over his heart.

"We're terribly excited-isn't it funny?"

He was saying something, without hearing what he was saying, and

his voice grew strangely deep with emotion...

We did not go to the Skovorodnikovs until about one o'clock in the

afternoon. One of the elegant little old ladies opened the door and said

that Pyotr was not at home.

"He has gone to the Clinic."

"So early?"

"Yes."

She looked worried.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing. He telephoned there and they told him that Alexandra was

slightly worse."

May 21, 1936. Then began days which I shall probably remember all

my life with horror and impotent despair. We went to the Schroder

Clinic three times a day and stood for a long time in front of the board

which displayed the patients' temperature charts: "Skovorodnikova-

98;99,2;101;103.8".

Then the temperature dropped sharply and rose again after several

hours to as high as 104.9. I suspected that this was not a case of

pneumonia, as we had been told at the Clinic, and I called on the

professor at his flat. But he confirmed the diagnosis-the area of

inflammation could be clearly detected by auscultation, and there were

several areas in both lungs.

242

I hardly saw Sanya those days. He rang me up sometimes at night and

once I dropped in to see him at the Institute, in the little office set apart

for the organisation of the search party. He was sitting at a desk piled

with weapons, cameras, mittens and fur stockings. A man with a grave

whiskered face, wearing a leather coat, was assembling a double-

barrelled gun on his desk and swearing because the barrels would not fit

into the stock.

"Well, how is she? Did you see her? What do the doctors say?"

The telephone kept ringing every minute. Annoyed, he lifted the

receiver and threw it down on the desk.

"Same as before," I answered.

"And the temperature?"

"This morning it was a hundred and five."

"Hell! Isn't there anything they can do?"

His face looked drawn, anxious and tired, and he was quite unlike

himself, especially the self he was on the day of his arrival.

I had seldom had occasion to nurse sick people, especially people as

ill as Sasha was, but having been given permission to watch at her

bedside, I learned to do it. It was hard, because Sasha practically never

slept, and if she did fall asleep she would wake up on the instant and

one had to listen to her breathing all the time.

There were days when she rallied, and very strongly too. I remember

one such day, the fourth day of my stay at the hospital. She had slept

well during the night and woke up in the morning saying she was

hungry. She drank some tea with milk and ate an egg, and when we

were tucking her in to air the ward she suddenly said: "Katya, darling,

have you been with me all the time? And sleeping here too?"

My face must have given me away, because she showed surprise.

"Have I been as ill as that?"

"Darling, we're going to open the window. You just lie still and keep

quiet. You were ill and now you are getting better and everything will be

fine."

She complied without demur, and only kept my hand in hers for a

little while when I started to wipe her face and hands with toilet vinegar.

Then they brought the baby and we watched him while he fed, his eyes

wide open with such a serious, silly expression.

"He looks like him, doesn't he?" Sasha said from behind her mask.

She was pleased that the boy resembled Pyotr. As a matter of fact he

did have that longish sort of profile. He had a profile already, though he

was only ten days old.

Towards the evening Sasha felt slightly worse, but it did not worry me

very much, because she usually got worse towards the evening. I sat

reading, holding the book close under the lamp which stood on the

bedside table with a kerchief thrown over the shade to keep the light out

of Sasha's eyes. Sanya had sent me several books the day before and I

was reading Stefansson's The Friendly Arctic.

My candidature as a member of the-expedition had been finally

approved, precisely as a geologist, and the books which Sanya had sent

me were basic and had to be read.

It must have been round about three when I got up to listen to Sasha's

breathing and saw that she was lying with her eyes open. "What is it,

darling?"

243

She was silent. Then, quietly, she said: "Katya, I'm dying." "You're

getting better. Today you are much better." "It wouldn't be so terrible if

it weren't for the baby." Her eyes were full of tears and she tried to turn

her head to wipe them on the pillow.

I dried her eyes and kissed her. Her forehead was very hot. The nurse

came in and I sent her to fetch the oxygen pad How can I describe the

horror which began that night! What a lot you learn about a person

when he dies! Listening to the speeches at the memorial service in the

Academy of Arts I thought that Sasha had not had half as many nice

things said about her during her life as those they were saying now after

her death.

The coffin stood on a dais, and there were lots of flowers, so many

that her pale face could hardly be seen amidst them. People made

speeches, saying what "a fine artist" and "a fine person" she had been

and that "sudden death had torn the thread of a noble life" and so on.

And how feeble all those speeches were before the dead, austere face

lying in that coffin!

Pyotr was all right, though his pale, impassive face struck me as odd.

He seemed to be waiting patiently for this whole long procedure to end

at last and then Sasha would be with him again and everything would be

fine once more. Old Skovorodnikov, who had arrived the day before to

attend the funeral, stood behind him, tears rolling down his cheeks into

his neat grey moustache. Then a mist rose before my eyes again and I

have no further memory of how the ceremony ended.

May 28, 1936. Once in conversation with me, C. had used the

expression "getting the North into your blood". And only now, while

helping Sanya to fit out the search party,, did I get to know what it really

meant. Not a day passes without Sanya being visited by some persons

who had contracted that malady. One of them is P., an old artist, a

friend and companion of Sedov, who had warmly acclaimed Sanya's

article in Pravda and subsequently published his own reminiscences of

how the St. Phocas, on her way back to the mainland, had picked up

Navigation officer Klimov at Cape Flora.

Boys come, asking Sanya to take them on as stokers, cooks-any old

job.

Ambitious men come, seeking easy paths to honour and fame; also

disinterested dreamers, to whom the Arctic is a sort of wonderland, full

of magic and glamour.

And yesterday, when I fell asleep, waiting for Sanya, curled up in an

armchair, a man came to see Sanya. A naval man—I couldn't say what

rank-a bluff, hearty man with a Cossack's forelock and dark mocking

eyes. Whether he had come alone or with Sanya, I couldn't say, but

waking up in the middle of the night I found them engaged in earnest

conversation and quickly closed my eyes, pretending to be asleep. It was

pleasant to listen and doze, or pretend that you were dozing—you didn't

have to introduce yourself, or do your hair, or change.

"It's all very well to say that a search for Captain Tatarinov has

nothing in common with the basic tasks of the N.S.R.A. That's nonsense,

of course. You only have to remember the search for Franklin. Searching

for people is a jolly good thing—it helps to improve the map. But I'm

talking of a different thing."

244

Pencil in hand, he began figuring out the mineral resources of the

Kola Peninsula. Now here I was on my own ground. But the nocturnal

visitor counted all these peaceful minerals as "strategic raw material"

needed in the event of war, and mentally I started arguing with him,

convinced as I was that there would be no war.

"I assure you," the man said, "that Captain Tatarinov understood

perfectly well that at the back of every Arctic expedition there must be

some military purpose."

"Of course he did," I mentally retorted in that queer state of

drowsiness when you can think and speak, which is the same as not

speaking and not thinking. "But there won't be any war!"

"It is high time we set up defensive bases all along the route of our

convoys. I'd like to see a good long-range battery on Novaya Zemlya,

say..."

He went on talking and talking, and all of a sudden, from this quiet

hotel room, where I lay curled in an armchair and where Sanya had just

covered the lamp with the end of tablecloth to keep the light out of my

eyes, I was transported to some strange town half-destroyed by fire.

Here, too, it was quiet, but with a tense, deathly hush. Everyone was

waiting for something to happen, talking in whispers, and one had to go

down into a basement, groping for the damp walls in the dark. I didn't

go. I was standing on the front steps of a dark, empty wooden house

with the clear mysterious sky stretching above me. Where was he now?

The plane was hurtling through this fearful starlit void, its engine

stuttering, its ice-laden wings growing heavier every moment. It was the

decree of fate, nothing could alter it. The sound of the engine grew

muffled, the machine quivered, and the call-signs from the distant

stations could no longer be heard...

"Quite right, an old story," the naval man suddenly said in a loud

voice and I woke up with a sigh of relief. It was all nonsense, of course.

In a day or two we would both be leaving for the North, and there he

stood before me, my own Sanya, clever, tired, dear Sanya, whom I loved

and from whom I would now never be parted again.

"But the N.S.R.A. is not interested in history. Dammit, they ought to

read the Large Soviet Encyclopaedia! By the way, it gives an interesting

quotation from Mendeleyev. Listen, I copied it out. A splendid

quotation!"

And burring his r's in a childlike manner, he read out the famous

words of Mendeleyev, which I had first come across somewhere among

my father's papers: "If only a tenth of what we lost at Tsushima had

been spent on reaching the Pole, our squadron would probably have got

to Vladivostok without passing through either the North Sea or

Tsushima."

Sitting curled up in the armchair, pretending to be asleep, lazily

examining through half-lowered eyelids our unexpected nocturnal

visitor with his ardent manner, his childlike burring speech and that

amusing Cossack's forelock of his, I was glad that my dream had been

only a dream, that the whole thing was just nonsense which you could

dismiss from your mind...

May 29, 1936. A nurse had been found at last for Pyotr junior, a very

good nurse with references, stout, clean, with forty years' experience-"a

regular professor of a nurse", as the delighted Berensteins informed me.

She arrived, followed by the yardman dragging in a large old-fashioned

245

trunk, from which the nurse promptly extracted a pinafore and cap and

an ancient photograph dimly portraying the nurse's parents and herself

as a seven-year-old wearing a petrified expression.

June 2, 1936. I shall remember that night as long as I live-the last

night before our departure. In the evening I had run over to see the

baby. He had just had his bath and was sleeping, and the nurse, in cap

and splendid white pinafore, was sitting on her trunk and knitting.

"I've nursed Counts in my day," she said proudly in answer to my last-

minute requests and admonitions.

A chill struck my heart at the thought of all the silly things such a

learned nurse was capable of, but the sight of the little boy reassured

me. He lay there so clean and white, and the whole place was spick and

span.

Pyotr and the Berensteins were going to see us off at the station.

Sanya was asleep when I got back. Some money was lying about on

the carpet; I picked it up and began to read Sanya's long list of things

which had to be attended to the next day.

Though it was already night, the room was light, Sanya had forgotten

to draw the curtains. I took off my dress, had a wash and got into a

dressing gown. My cheeks were burning, and I didn't feel a bit sleepy.

On the contrary, I wished Sanya would wake up.

The telephone rang and I picked up the receiver.

"He's asleep."

"Has he been asleep long?"

"No." "Oh, all right, don't wake him."

Catch me waking him! It was V., I recognised his voice. It must have

been something important to make him phone at night. Anyway, it was

a good thing I had not woken Sanya. He slept soundly, on the sofa, in his

clothes, and must have been having disturbing dreams. A shadow

crossed his face and his lips compressed.

Oh, how I wanted to wake him up! I walked up and down the room,

touching my hot cheeks. It was a hotel room, and tomorrow other

people would be in it. It was like a thousand other such rooms:

a sofa covered with light-blue rep, window blinds, a small desk with a

sheet of glass on top-but all the same it was our first home and I wanted

to retain it in my memory always.

From behind the partition came the sound of a violin. It had been

playing for a long time, but I became aware of it only now. The player

was that slim red-haired boy, a well-known violinist, who had been

pointed out to me in the lobby. I knew he was living in the next room to

ours.

He was playing something altogether different in mood from what I

was thinking at the moment-not that strange, happy feeling about Sanya

being my husband and I his wife, but our former young meetings, as

though he saw us at the school ball, when Sanya had kissed me for the

first time.

"Youth continues," played the red-haired boy, whom I had thought so

ugly. "After sorrow comes joy, after parting, reunion. Do you remember

commanding, in your heart, that you find him, and now there he stands,

grey-headed, erect, and the joy and excitement of it are enough to drive

one mad. Tomorrow you start out, and everything will be as you have

commanded. Everything will be fine, because the fairy-tales we believe

in still come true on this earth."

246

I lay down on the carpeted floor, listening and weeping, half-ashamed

of myself for those foolish tears. But I hadn't cried for so long, and had

always taken pains to pretend that I could not.

I woke Sanya at six o'clock and told him that V. had phoned during the

night.

"You're not angry, are you?"

"What about?"

He sat up on the sofa and looked at me sleepily first with one eye, then

with the other.

"At my not waking you."

"I'm furious," he said, and laughed. "You look younger. Yesterday V.

asked how old you were, and I told him eighteen."

He kissed me, then ran into the bathroom, came out in bathing trunks

and started to do his exercises. He had made me do morning exercises,

too, but I did them by fits and starts, whereas he did them regularly,

even twice a day-morning and evening.

Still wet, wiping his chest with a rough towel, he went over to the

telephone and lifted the receiver, though I said it was too early to phone

V. I was doing something, lighting the spirit-lamp, I believe, to make

coffee. Sanya asked for V. Then, in a queer voice, he said, "What?" I

turned to see the towel slip from his shoulder to the floor without him

making any attempt to pick it up. He stood there, very straight, with the

blood ebbing from his face.

"All right, I'll send an express telegram," he said and hung up.

"What's the matter?"

"Oh, nothing. Some nonsense or other," Sanya said slowly, picking up

the towel. "V. got a wire last night saying that the search party was off.

I've been ordered to report to Moscow immediately, at Civil Air Fleet

Headquarters, to take up a new appointment."

August 19, 1936. Sanya used to say that life was always like that:

everything goes well, then suddenly a sharp turn sends you into

"Barrels" and "Immelmanns". This time, though, you could say that the

machine had gone into a spin.

"It's all over, Katya," he said savagely when he had returned from V.

"The Arctic, expeditions, the St. Maria—\ don't want to hear anything

more about them. It's all fairy-tales for children, time we forgot them."

And I promised to be with him in forgetting those "fairy-tales",

though I was sure that he never would forget them.

I still had a slender hope that Sanya would succeed in Moscow in

getting the order revoked. But the telegram I got from him, sent not

from Moscow but from somewhere on the way to Saratov, killed that

hope. The very appointment which he had received put the seal, as it

were, to the cancellation of the expedition. He had been transferred to

the Agricultural Aviation Service, known as the S.P.A.— Special Purpose

Aviation—and his job now was to sow wheat and spray reservoirs. "Very

well, I'll be what they take me for," he wrote in his first letter from some

farm, where he had been spending over a week now "co-ordinating and

fixing" things with the local authorities. "To hell with illusions, for they

were illusions really! C. was right after all-if a thing's worth doing at all,

do it well. Don't imagine that I've thrown my hand in. The future is still

ours."

247

"Let's be grateful for that old story," he wrote in another letter, "if only

because it helped us to find and love each other. I am confident, though,

that very soon these old private reckonings will prove important not

only to us."

Nothing seemed to be working out the way I had thought and dreamt.

I had come to Leningrad for two or three weeks to meet Sanya and

follow him wherever he might go, and now he was far away from me

again. I now found myself with a family—Pyotr junior, Pyotr senior and

Nanny, who had to be taken care of, and it was I who had to do all the

thinking.

I continued my studies of Arctic geology, though I had promised

Sanya to think no more of the North. Being hard up for money, I took

up some dreary work at the Geological Institute.

Ordinarily, I would probably have taken it badly, cursed myself, and

thought about myself a thousand times more than need be. But a

curious inward composure had suddenly taken possession of me. It was

as though, together with the "fairy-tales", I had seen the last of my

vanity, my pride, my sense of personal grievance at things not having

turned out the way I so passionately wanted them to. "It can't be helped,

dearest!" I answered Sanya when he blamed himself in one of his letters

for having dragged me out to Leningrad and abandoned me there, and

with a whole family on my hands into the bargain. "As our old judge

says, you can't have things your own way in life."

I wrote to him often, long letters about our "learned" Nanny, about

how quick little Pyotr was changing, about how Pyotr senior all of a

sudden had thrown himself eagerly into his work and his design for a

Pushkin monument was going splendidly.

But not a word did I write about how, one day, while shopping at a

grocery store in October 25th Prospekt, I saw through the window a

familiar figure in a grey overcoat and soft hat, the very hat which had

been bought for my benefit and which sat so awkwardly on the big