our."
"Make it half an hour, Ivan Pavlovich!" He smiled-a sad, good-natured
smile.
I came back to find Korablev sitting on the sofa, smoking. The shaggy
green service jacket, which he always wore when he felt out of sorts, was
thrown over his shoulders and the soft collar of his shirt was undone.
"Well, old chap, you shouldn't have asked me to phone them," he said.
"Now I know all your secrets." "What secrets?"
He looked at me as though he were seeing me for the first time. "You've
got to be able to keep them," he went on. "And you're no good at that.
Today, for instance, you're courting someone and tomorrow the whole school
gets to know about it. It wouldn't be so bad if it were only the school."
I must have looked pretty sheepish, because Korablev smiled in spite of
himself, just the ghost of a smile. At least twenty thoughts raced through
my head all at once: "Who's done this? Romashka! I'll kill him! That's why
Katya didn't come. That's why the old lady snubbed me."
"I love her, Ivan Pavlovich," I said firmly. He spread his hands.
"I don't care whether the whole school talks about it or not!" "The
school maybe," Korablev said. "But don't you care what Maria Vasilievna and
Nina Kapitonovna may say about it?" "No I don't!" I protested hotly. "But
weren't you shown the door at their house?" "What house? It isn't her house.
She dreams of the day she'll finish school and leave that house."
"Just a minute... Do you mean to say you intend to marry her?" I
collected myself somewhat. "That's nobody's business!"
"Of course not," Korablev hastily put in. "I'm afraid it's not so
simple though. You'll have to ask Katya, after all. Perhaps she isn't
planning to get married yet. In any case you'll have to wait till she gets
back from Ensk."
"Ah," I said very calmly. "So they've sent her away? Fine." Korablev
looked at me again, this time with unconcealed curiosity.
"Her aunt has fallen ill and she's gone to visit her," he said. "She'll
be away several days and will be back for the beginning of the term. That
shouldn't worry you."
"I'm not worrying, Ivan Pavlovich. As for Likho, I'll apologise to him,
if you wish. But let him take back his statement about my being an
idealist."
Then, for fifteen minutes, as though nothing had happened, as though
Katya had not been sent away, as though I had not decided to kill Romaska,
we sat calmly discussing my homework. Then I took my leave, after getting
permission to call again the next day.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I GO TO ENSė
That Romashka! I did not doubt for a moment that it was his doing. Who
else could it be? He had been in the classroom and seen me kiss Katya.
I stared with hatred at his cot and the bedside table and waited for
him in the dormitory for half an hour. Then I wrote a note demanding an
explanation and threatening that if I did not get it I would denounce him as
a cad in front of the whole school. Then I tore the note up and went to see
Valya at the Zoo.
He was with his rodents, of course. In a dirty lab coat, a pencil
behind his ear and a big notebook under his arm, he was standing by a cage
and feeding bats, who were eating out of his hand. He was feeding worms to
them, looking mightily pleased.
I hailed him. He looked round and I asked: "Have you got any money?"
"Twenty-seven rubles," Valya said proudly.
"Let's have 'em."
This was cruel, as I knew that Valya was saving up to buy some snakes
or other. But what could I do? I had only seventeen rubles, and the fare
cost that much more.
Valya blinked, then looked at me gravely and got out the money.
"I'm going away."
"Where to?"
"To Ensk."
"What for?"
"Tell you when I get back. Meanwhile, let me tell you-Romashka's a cad.
You're chummy with him, because you don't know what a cad he is. And if you
do know, then you're a cad yourself. That's all. So long."
I had one foot outside the door when Valya called me back, and in such
a queer voice that I spun round.
"Sanya," he muttered, "I'm not chummy with him. Besides..."
He fell silent.
"It's my fault," he went on with an air of decision. "I should have
warned you. You remember that business about Korablev, don't you?"
"I should say so!"
"Well, it was him!"
"What about him?"
"He went to Nikolai Antonich and told him everything."
"No!"
In a flash I recollected that evening when, on returning from the
Tatarinovs, I had told Valya about the conspiracy they were hatching against
Korablev.
"But I only told you about it."
"Yes, but Romashka was eavesdropping."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
Valya hung his head.
"He made me give my word of honour," he muttered. "Besides, he
threatened that he'd look at me at night. You know I hate being looked at at
night. It's silly, I know. It started with me waking up once to find him
looking at me."
"You're simply a fool, that's all."
"He writes everything down in a book and then snitches to Nikolai
Antonich," Valya went on miserably. "He makes life hell for me. He narks on
people and then tells me all about it. I stop my ears, but he goes on
telling."
"You're a poor yap, you are!" I said. "I've no time to talk to you now,
but I think you ought to write to the Komsomol group about that little book
of his. I never thought he'd bully you like that. How many words of honour
did you give him?"
"I don't remember," Valya mumbled.
"We'll count 'em up."
He looked at me mournfully.
From the Zoo I went to the railway station to book my ticket, and from
there back to school. I had a good case of drawing instruments and decided
to take it with me to sell if I was up against it.
And now to all the follies I had committed was added another one-one
that I had to pay for with interest.
When I entered the dormitory there were about ten people there, among
them Tania Velichko, a girl from my form. They were all engaged in some
occupation, some reading and others talking. Nobody was paying any attention
to Romashka, who was kneeling by my bed and rummaging in my box.
This new act of treachery was the last straw. The blood rushed to my
head and I went over to him with an even tread and said to him in an even
voice: "What are you looking for, Romashka?"
He looked up at me with startled eyes, and worked up as I was at that
moment, I could not help noticing his striking resemblance to an owl-with
that white face of his and those big red ears.
"Katya's letters?" I went on. "Want to hand them over to Nikolai
Antonich? Here they are. Take 'em."
And I kicked him hard in the face.
I had spoken in a quiet voice, so nobody expected that I was going to
hit him. I believe I gave him two or three more kicks. I would have killed
him but for Tania Velichko. While the boys stood open-mouthed, she rushed
between us, grabbed hold of me and pushed me away with such force that I sat
down on the bed.
"You're crazy."
As if through a mist I saw her face and realised that she was looking
at me with abhorrence. I recollected myself.
"I'll explain everything, boys," I said shakily.
They were all silent. Romashka lay on the floor with his head thrown
back. There was a blue bruise on his cheek. I took my box and went out.
I wandered heavy-hearted about the railway station for nearly three
hours. I felt beastly as I read the newspaper, studied the timetable, and
drank tea in the third-class buffet. I was hungry, but the tea seemed
tasteless and the sandwiches wouldn't go down my throat. I somehow felt
sullied after that scene in the dormitory. Ah, well, I didn't have to go
back to school anyway. But the instrument case? Who the hell needed it? As
if I couldn't get the money for my return fare from Aunt Dasha!"
CHAPTER TWELVE HOME AGAIN
One impression has remained with me after that journey through the
places where Pyotr Skovorodnikov and I used to ramble, stealing and begging
- an impression of incomparable freedom.
For the first time in my life I was travelling by rail with a ticket. I
could sit at the window, chat with my fellow-passengers, or smoke, had I
been a smoker. I did not have to crawl under the seat when the
ticket-collector came round. I handed him my ticket with a casual air,
without interrupting my conversation. It was an extraordinary sensation-a
feeling of spaciousness, though the carriage was pretty crowded. I found it
amusing, and I was thinking now about Ensk- about my sister, Aunt Dasha, and
how I would spring a surprise on them and they would not recognise me.
With this thought I fell asleep and slept so long that my
fellow-passengers began to wonder whether I was alive or not.
How good it is to return to one's home town after an absence of eight
years! Everything is so familiar yet unfamiliar. Could that be the
governor's house? I had thought it so huge once. Could that be Zastennaya
Street? Was it so narrow and crooked? And is it Lopu-khinsky Boulevard? The
boulevard gladdened me, though: all down the main avenue, behind the lime
trees, stretched a line of splendid new buildings. The black lime trees
looked like a pencil drawing on a white background and their black shadows
lay aslant on the white snow- it made a beautiful picture.
I walked fast, and at every step I kept recognising old landmarks or
viewing new ones with surprise. There was the orphanage in which Aunt Dasha
had been going to put my sister and me; it was now a green colour and a big
marble plaque had appeared on the wall with gold lettering on it. I could
not believe my eyes-it said: "Alexander Pushkin stayed in this house in
1824". Well I never! In that house! What airs the orphanage kids would have
given themselves had they known this!
And here were the "Chambers", where Mother and I had once handed in a
petition. The place did not look half as imposing now. The old low grating
had been removed from the windows and at the gate hung a signboard saying:
Cultural Centre.
And there were the ramparts. My heart beat faster at the sight of them.
A granite embankment stretched before me, and I hardly recognised our poor
old shelving river bank. But what astonished me more than anything was to
find our houses gone and in their place a public garden had been laid out
and on the seats sat nannies holding infants wrapped up like little mummies.
I had expected anything but this. I stood for a long time on the ramparts
surveying with amazement the garden, the granite embankment and the
boulevard, on which we used to play tipcat. On the site of the common back
of the small grocery and oil shops there now stood a tall grey building,
outside which a guard in a huge sheepskin coat strode up and down. I
accosted him.
"The town power station," he answered importantly, when I pointed to
the building and asked what it was.
"Do you happen to know where Skovorodnikov lives?"
"The judge?"
"No."
"Then I don't know. We have only one man here by that name-
the judge."
I walked away. Could it be that old Skovorodnikov had become a judge? I
turned round to have another look at the fine tall building erected on the
site of our wretched old houses, and decided that it could be.
"What does the judge look like? Is he tall?"
"Yes."
"With whiskers?"
"No, he has no whiskers," the guard said. He sounded sort of offended
for old Skovorodnikov.
H'm, no whiskers. Not much hope.
"Where does that judge live?"
"In Gogolevsky Street, in what used to be Marcouse's house.
I knew the house, one of the best in the town, with lions' heads on
either side of the entrance. Again I was nonplussed. There was nothing for
it but to go down to Gogolevsky Street, and I went, little hoping that old
Skovorodnikov had shaved off his moustache, become a judge and taken up
residence in such a posh house.
In less than half an hour I was in Gogolevsky Street at the Marcouse
house. The lions' heads were eight years older, but as impressive and
fearsome as ever. I stood irresolute at the wide covered entrance door.
Should I ring or not? Or should I ask a policeman where the Address Bureau
was?
Muslin curtains in Aunt Dasha's taste hung in the windows and that
decided me. I rang the bell.
The door was opened by a girl of about sixteen in a blue flannel dress,
her smoothly brushed hair parted in the middle. She was of a dark
complexion, and that puzzled me. "Do the Skovorodnikovs live here?" "Yes."
"And is ... er ... Darya Gavrilovna at home?" I said, giving Aunt Dasha
her full title.
"She'll soon be in," the girl said, smiling and regarding me with
curiosity. She smiled just like Sanya, but Sanya was fair and had curly hair
and blue eyes. No, this wasn't Sanya. "May I wait?" "Certainly."
I took my coat off in the hall and she showed me into a large
well-furnished room. The place of honour in it was occupied by a grand
piano. This did not look much like Aunt Dasha.
I was gazing about me with what must have been a rather sheepish and
happy expression, because the girl was staring at me with all her eyes. All
of a sudden she tilted her head and cocked up an eyebrow exactly the way
Mother used to do. I realised that it was Sanya after all. "Sanya?" I
queried, somewhat uncertainly. She looked surprised. "Yes."
"But you were fair," I went on in a shaky voice. "How comes it? When we
lived in the village you were quite fair. But now you're all on the darkish
side."
She was dumbfounded, even her mouth fell open. "What village?"
"When Father died!" I said, and laughed. "Don't say you've forgotten !
Don't you remember me?"
I felt choky in the throat. After all I had loved her very much and
hadn't seen her for eight years, and she looking so much like Mother.
"Sanya," she brought out at last. "My God! Why, we had given you up for
dead long ago." She embraced me.
"Sanya, Sanya! Is it really you! But sit down, why are you standing?
Where have you come from? When did you arrive?"
We sat down side by side, but she jumped up the next moment and ran
into the hall to get my box.
"Wait a minute! Don't go away. Tell me how you're getting on. How's
Aunt Dasha?"
"How about yourself? Why didn't you write to us? We've been searching
for you. We even put notices in the papers." "I didn't see them," I said
remorsefully.
Only now did I fully realise how beastly I had behaved. Fancy
forgetting that I had such a sister. And such a wonderful Aunt Dasha, who
couldn't even be told that I had come back, because she was likely to die of
joy, as Sanya explained to me.
"And Pyotr's been looking for you too," she went on. "He wrote to
Tashkent not long ago. He thought maybe you were living in Tashkent."
"Pyotr?"
"Why, yes."
"Skovorodnikov?"
"Who else?"
"Where is he?"
"In Moscow," Sanya said.
I was amazed.
"Has he been there long?"
"Ever since you two ran away."
Pyotr in Moscow! I couldn't believe my ears.
"But, Sanya, I live in Moscow myself!"
^'No?"
"Yes, really. How is he, what's he doing?"
"He's all right. He's finishing school this year."
"The devil he is! I'm finishing too. Have you got any photos of him?"
I thought Sanya was somewhat embarrassed when I asked for a photo of
him. She said: "In a minute" and went out, returning almost immediately, as
if she had taken Pyotr's photo out of her pocket.
"My, isn't he handsome," I said and started laughing. "Ginger?"
"Yes."
"Gee, isn't it grand! And the old man? How's the old man? Is it true?"
"Is what true?"
"That he's a judge?"
"Why, he's been a judge these last five years."
We kept asking questions and interrupting each other and asking more
questions. We started the samovar going and made up the stove, and then the
bell tinkled in the hall.
"Aunt Dasha!"
"You stay here," Sanya whispered. "I'll break the news to her. She has
a heart condition, you know."
She went out and I heard the following conversation in the next room.
"Now don't get excited, Aunt Dasha, please. I have very good news so
there's no need to be upset."
"Well, out with it then!"
"You decided not to bake any pies today, Aunt Dasha, but you'll have
to."
"Pyotr has arrived?"
"That would be nice too, but no, it's not Pyotr. You won't get excited,
Aunt Dasha, will you?"
"I won't."
"Honestly?"
"Drat the girl! Honestly."
"That's who's come!" Sanya announced, throwing open the kitchen door.
The remarkable thing is that Aunt Dasha recognised me at first glance.
"Sanya," she said quietly.
She embraced me. Then she sat down and closed her eyes. I took her
hand.
"My darling boy! Alive? Where have you been? We've been searching the
world for you."
"I know, Aunt Dasha. It's all my fault."
"His fault! Good heavens! He comes back and talks about his fault!
Dear, dear boy. What a bonny lad you've grown! And so handsome!"
Aunt Dasha had always thought me a good looker.
Then the judge came in. The guard had been right-the old man had shaved
off his moustache. He looked ten years younger and it was now hard to
believe that he had once boiled skin-glue and built such hopes upon it.
He knew that I had come back, as Sanya had telephoned him.
"Well, prodigal son," he said, hugging me. "Aren't you afraid I'll have
your head off, you rascal, you?"
What could I say for myself? I only grunted penitently.
Later that night he and I were left alone. The old man wanted to know
what I had been doing and how I had been living since I had left the town.
Like the judge he was, he questioned me rigorously about all my affairs,
school and private.
I told him I wanted to be an airman, and he gazed at me long and
steadily from under his bushy eyebrows.
"The air force?"
"An Arctic pilot. In the air force, if necessary."
"A dangerous, but interesting job," he said after a pause.
One thing I didn't tell him, though that I had come to Ensk in the wake
of Katya. I couldn't bring myself to tell him that if it hadn't been for
Katya it would very likely be a long time before I came back to my home
town, to my home.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE OLD LETTERS
I slept until eleven. Sanya had gone a long time ago, the old man was
at work and Aunt Dasha had already put the dinner on, as she informed me.
While I drank my tea she kept making horrified comments on how little I
was eating.
"So that's how they feed you!" she said tartly. "The gypsy fed his
horse better, and that croaked."
"You know, Aunt Dasha, I was looking for you at the old place. The
houses have been pulled down I see?"
"Yes," Aunt Dasha said with a sigh.
"Aunt Dasha, do you know the Bubenchikovs?"
The Bubenchikovs were relations of Nina Kapitonovna, and I had no doubt
that Katya had gone to them.
"The people who were pronounced? Who doesn't know them?"
"Pronounced?"
"The priest pronounced the ban on them," said Aunt Dasha. "They sent
him packing, so he pronounced 'em. That was a long time ago, before the
Revolution. You were a little boy then. Why do you ask?"
"People in Moscow asked me to give them their regards," I lied.
Aunt Dasha shook her head doubtfully.
"Ah, I see..."
I asked Aunt Dasha for an envelope and some paper and sat down to write
a letter. "I'll write to Katya and Sanya will deliver it."
"Katya," I wrote. "As you see, I am back in Ensk, and I'm dying to see
you. Come down to Cathedral Gardens at four. This note will be delivered to
you-guess by whom? By my sister. A. Grigoriev."
"Aunt Dasha, Pyotr used to have some interesting books. Where are they?
Where do you keep books, anyway?"
Pyotr's books were discovered in Sanya's room, on a bric-a-brac stand.
Evidently no great store was set by them, because they stood on the bottom
shelf among all sorts of junk. I felt a bit sad when I picked up The Ghastly
Night or the Most Marvellous Adventures of a Don Cossack in the Caucasus
Mountains. Dammit, what a wretch of a little fellow I was then!
A package wrapped in a yellowed newspaper dropped on the floor during
my energetic search for A Guide To Letter Writing. It was the batch of old
letters. I recognised them immediately. They were letters which the river
had one day washed up into our yard in a post bag. Those long winter
evenings, when Aunt Dasha used to read them to us, came back to me. How
wonderful, how delightful those readings had seemed to me!
Other people's letters! And who knows where these people now were? This
letter, for instance, in its thick yellowed envelope. Maybe somebody had not
slept nights, waiting for it?
Mechanically I opened the envelope and read several lines:
"Dear Maria Vasilievna,
"I hasten to inform you that Ivan Lvovich is alive and well. Four
months ago, on his orders, I left the schooner along with thirteen of the
crew..."
I read on and could not believe my eyes. It was the letter of the
navigating officer, which I used to know by heart and which I had recited on
the trains on my way to Moscow! But it was not this that struck me.
"The St. Maria," I read on, "became icebound in the Kara Sea and since
October 1912 has been drifting steadily north with the Arctic icefields."
The St. Maria'. Why, that was the name of Captain Tatarinov's schooner!
I turned back the sheet and read the letter again.
"Dear Maria Vasilievna"-Maria Vasilievna! I hasten to inform you that
Ivan Lvovich..." Ivan Lvovich! Katya was called Katerina Ivanovna-the
patronimic was from the name Ivan!
Aunt Dasha decided that I had gone crazy, because I suddenly emitted a
yell and started frantically to search among the old letters.
I knew what I was after, though. Aunt Dasha had once read to me another
of those letters describing the life amid the icefloes and about the sailor
who had fallen to his death and how they had to chop the ice away in the
cabins.
"Aunt Dasha, are they all here?" "Goodness gracious, what's happened?"
"Nothing, Aunt Dasha. There should be one particular letter here." I
didn't hear myself speak. Ah, here it was! "My darling, my own dear, sweet
Maria,
"It's nearly now two years since I sent you a letter through the
telegraph dispatch office on Yugorsky Shar. And what a lot of changes '
there have been since then, I can't tell you! To begin with, we were
standing on a straight set course, but since October 1912 have been drifting
slowly north with the Arctic ice. Willy-nilly, we had to abandon our
original plan of making Vladivostok along the coast of Siberia. But this
proved to be a blessing in disguise. It has given me quite a new idea. I
hope it does not strike you, as it does some of my companions, as childish
or foolhardy..."
The first sheet ended here. I turned it over, but could make out
nothing except a few disconnected words which stood out amid the smudges and
stains.
The second sheet started with a description of the schooner:
"...in some places reaching a considerable depth. Amid one such
icefield stands our St. Maria snowed up to the gunwale. At times a garland
of hoarfrost breaks off the rigging and comes down with a soft swishing
sound. As you see, dear Maria, I've become a poet. We have a real poet on
board, though-our cook Kolpakov. A cheerful soul! He goes about all day long
singing his poem. Here are four lines from it for a keepsake:
Under the flag of Mother Russia, In the good ship Saint Maria, We shall
sail the Siberian coast along With our Captain brave and strong.
"I read this endless letter of mine over and over again, and find that
I am simply gossiping when I have so many important things to tell you. I am
sending with Klimov a packet addressed to the head of the Hydrographical
Board, containing my observations, official letters and a report giving the
story of our drift. Just in case, I am writing you, too, about our
discovery: north of the Taimyr Peninsula the map shows no land whatever. But
situated in latitude 79°35', between meridians 86 and 87 east of Greenwich,
we observed a sharply defined silvery strip, slightly convex, running out
from the very horizon. On April 3rd this strip became an opaque patch of
moonlight, and the next day we saw clouds of a very queer shape, resembling
a mist enveloping distant mountains. I am convinced that this is land.
Unfortunately, I couldn't leave the ship in her present plight in order to
explore it. But its turn will come. Meantime, I have named it after you, so
now you will find on every map a heartfelt greeting from your..."
Here ended the reverse side of the second sheet. I laid it aside and
started on the third. The first few lines were washed away. Then came:
"It's galling to think that everything could have turned out
differently. I know he will try to put himself right with you, perhaps he
will even persuade you that it is all my own/fault. One thing I beg of you:
do not trust that man. It can positively be said that we owe all our
misfortunes to him alone. Suffice it to say that most of the sixty dogs he
sold to us at Archangel had to be shot while we were still at Novaya Zemlya.
That's the price we had to pay for that good office. Not I alone, but the
whole expedition send him our curses. We were taking a chance, we knew that
we were running a risk, but we did not expect such a blow. It remains for us
to do all we can. What a lot I could tell you about our voyage! Stories
enough to last Katya a whole winter. But what a price we are having to pay,
good God! I don't want you to think that our plight is hopeless. Still, you
shouldn't look forward too much..."
Like a flash of lightning in a forest that suddenly illumines
everything around and transforms the dark scene so that you can even make
out the leaves on a tree which a moment before had worn the shape of a beast
or a giant, the whole thing dawned on me as I read these lines. Even trivial
details which I never thought I could remember came back to me.
I understood Nikolai Antonich's hypocritical speeches about his "poor
cousin". I understood that false solemnity of expression he wore when
speaking about his cousin, the pucker between his brows deepening as though
you, too, were partly to blame for what had happened. The full depth of the
man's baseness, the show he made of being proud of his own nobility, were
brought home to me. He had not been named in the letter, but that it was he
who was meant I did not have the slightest doubt.
My throat went dry through excitement and I was talking to myself so
loudly that Aunt Dasha was seriously alarmed. "Sanya, what's the matter with
you?"
"Nothing, Aunt Dasha. Where do you keep the rest of these old letters?"
"They're all there."
"That can't be! Don't you remember reading me this letter once? It was
a long one, on eight sheets."
"I don't remember, dear."
I found nothing more in the packet-only these three sheets out of the
eight. But they were enough!
I changed the "come at four" in Katya's letter to "come at three", then
to "come at two". But as it was already two o'clock I changed it back to
three.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A RENDEZVOUS IN CATHEDRAL GARDENS.
"DO NOT TRUST THA ō MAN"
I had been to Cathedral Gardens a thousand times as a boy, but it had
never struck me then as being such a beautiful place. It stood high on a
hill overlooking the confluence of two rivers-the Pes-chinka and the
Tikhaya, and was surrounded by the old ramparts. These were in an excellent
state of preservation, but the towers seemed to have shrunk since Pyotr and
I had last met there to take the "blood-oath of friendship".
At last they came-Katya and Sanya. I saw Sanya, wrapped in an
old-womanish, yellow sheepskin coat, wave her hand around as much as to say,
"this is Cathedral Gardens", and immediately take her leave with a
mysterious nod of the head. "Katya!"Icried. She started, saw me and laughed.
We spent half an hour scolding each other: I her for not having told me
she was going away, and she me, for not having waited for her letter before
coming. Then we both recollected that we had not spoken to each other about
the most important thing of all. It appeared that Nikolai Antonich had had a
talk with Katya. "In the name of my poor cousin" he had forbidden her to see
me. He had delivered a long speech and wept.
"Believe me or not, Sanya," Katya said gravely, "but I saw it with my
own eyes, honestly!"
"Well, well," I said and placed my hand on my chest.
There, in my breast pocket, wrapped in a piece of lint which I had got
from Aunt Dasha, lay Captain Tatarinov's letter.
"Listen, Katya," I began on a firm note, "I want to tell you a story.
It's like this. Imagine that you're living on the bank of a river and one
fine day a postman's bag turns up on this bank. It hasn't dropped from the
skies, of course, it's been washed up by the water. The postman drowned. And
his bag falls into the hands of a woman who's very fond of reading. And this
woman has a boy of eight among her neighbours who's very fond of listening.
So one day she reads him a letter which begins 'Dear Maria Vasilievna'."
Katya looked up at me, startled.
" 'I hasten to inform you that Ivan Lvovich is alive and well," I went
on quickly. "Four months ago, on his orders...' " :.
I recited the letter of the navigating officer in a single breath. I
did not stop once, though Katya clutched my sleeve several times in horror
and amazement.
"Did you see this letter?" she asked, her face white. "He was writing
about Father?" she asked again, as though there could be any doubt about it.
"Yes. But that's not all."
And I told her how Aunt Dasha had one day come upon another letter
describing life aboard an icebound ship which was slowly drifting north.
" 'My darling, my own dear, sweet Maria,' " I began reciting from
memory, then stopped.
A cold shiver ran up my spine and a choking sensation gripped my throat
as I suddenly saw before me, as in a dream, the bleak, prematurely aged face
of Maria Vasilievna, her brows puckered in gloom. She had been about the
same age as Katya was now when he wrote her that letter, and Katya was a
little girl always waiting for "a letter from Daddy". That letter had come
at last!
"Here it is," I said, drawing it from my breast pocket wrapped up in
the piece of lint. "Sit down and read it. I'll go away and come back when
you've finished."
Needless to say, I didn't go anywhere. I stood under the tower of St.
Martin and watched Katya all the time while she was reading. I felt very
sorry for her and warm inside whenever I thought about her, but cold when I
thought how dreadful it must be for her to read those letters. I saw her
push her hair back with an unconscious gesture when it got into her eyes,
then stand up as if trying to make out some difficult word. I wasn't sure
till then whether it was a joy or sorrow to get a letter like that. But
looking at her now, I realised what grief, what terrible grief it was. I
realised that she had never given up hope. Thirteen years ago her father had
disappeared in the icy wastes of the Arctic, a thing that could only mean
death from cold and starvation. But for her he had died only that day!
When I went back to her, Katya's eyes were red and she was sitting on
the garden seat with her hands in her lap, holding the letters.
"Not feeling cold?" I asked, at a loss for words.
"I haven't been able to make out some words... Here: 'I beg of
you...
"Ah, that! It reads: 'I beg of you, do not trust that man.' "
Katya called on us that evening, but we did not speak about the old
letters-we had agreed on that beforehand. Katya was very sad. Everyone was
nice to her, especially Sanya, who had become attached to her immediately as
only girls know how. Afterwards Sanya and I saw her home.
The old folks were still up when we got back. The judge, somewhat
belatedly, was scolding Aunt Dasha for not having delivered that mail-"at
least those letters where the address could be made out"- and could find
only one extenuating circumstance: that it had happened ten years ago. Aunt
Dasha was talking about Katya. My fate, she thought, was decided.
"I think she's very nice," she said, sighing. "Beautiful and sad.
Healthy girl."
I asked Sanya for the map of the Soviet North and showed her the route
which Captain Tatarinov was to have taken from Leningrad to Vladivostok.
Only then did I remind myself of his discovery. What land could that be
lying north of the Taimyr Peninsula? "Why, that must be Severnaya Zemlya!"
Sanya said. What the devil! It was Severnaya Zemlya (Northern Land)
discovered in 1913 by Lieutenant Vilkitsky. Latitude 79°35,' between 86 and
87 longitude. Very strange!
"Hold on!" I said, and must have gone a bit pale, because Aunt Dasha
looked at me anxiously. "I've got it! First it was a silvery strip running
out from the very horizon. On April 3rd the strip became an opaque patch.
April 3rd!"
"Sanya," Aunt Dasha began in alarm.
"Hold on! April 3rd. Now Vilkitsky discovered Severnaya Zemlya in the
autumn, I don't remember when, but it was in the autumn, some time in
September or October. In the autumn, six months later! That's to say he
discovered nothing at all, dammit, because it had already been discovered."
"Sanya!" It was the judge speaking now.
"Discovered and named after Maria Vasilievna," I went on, pressing my
finger hard on Severnaya Zemlya as though afraid there might be some other
mistake about it. "Named after Maria Vasilievna. Maria Land, or something
like that. Now sit down and I'll explain it all to you."
Talk about sleep after a day like that! I drank water and studied the
map. The dining-room was hung with pictures of the town, and I studied them,
too, for a long time without realising that they were Sanya's paintings and
that she was studying painting and dreamt of going to the Academy of Arts. I
looked at the map again. I recollected that the name Severnaya Zemlya had
been given to these islands only recently and that Vilkitsky had named them
Nicholas II Land.
Poor Captain Tatarinov! He had been surprisingly, extraordinarily
unlucky. There was not a single mention of him in any geography book and
nobody in the world knew what he had done.
I felt a cold shiver of pity and rapture, and went to bed, as it had
gone five and from outside in the street came the sounds of a sweeping
broom. But I couldn't fall asleep. Disjointed phrases from the Captain's
letter haunted me, and I could hear Aunt Dasha's voice reading the letter
and see her peering over her spectacles, sighing and faltering. I
recollected a scene, which had once presented itself to my imagination-a
scene of white tents in the snow, huskies harnessed to sledges, a giant of a
man in fur boots and a tall fur cap-and I wished that this had all happened
to me, that I had been on board that ship which was slowly moving to her
doom with the drifting ice and that I had been the Captain who wrote that
farewell letter to his wife, and could not finish it. "I have named it after
you, so now you will find on every map a heartfelt greeting from your..."
I wondered how that sentence ended? Then something slowly passed
through my head, very slowly, almost reluctantly, and I sat' up in bed, half
incredulous, feeling that in another minute I would go mad. Go mad
remembering this: "greeting from your Mongotimo Hawk's Claw, as you used to
call me. God, how long ago that was! I am not complaining , though..."
"I am not complaining, though," I repeated, muttering, fumbling and
groping among my memories for some missing word. "I am not complaining. We
shall see each other again and all will be well. But one thought, one
thought torments me!"
I jumped up, switched on the light and rushed over to the table on
which lay the pencils and maps.
"It's galling to think," I was now writing on one of the maps, "that
everything could have turned out differently. Misfortunes dogged us, but our
main misfortune was the mistake for which we are now having to pay every
hour, every minute of the day-the mistake I made in entrusting the fitting
out of our expedition to Nikolai." Nikolai? Was it Nikolai? Yes, it was!
I paused at this point; beyond it there was a sort of gap in my memory,
and after that there had come something-I remembered that now quite
clearly-something about a sailor named Skachkov, who had fallen into a
crevasse and been crushed to death. But this was not the thing. This was the
general context of the letter, not the actual text, of which I could recall
nothing more, except a few disconnected words.
I got no sleep at all. The judge was up at eight and got a fright when
he saw me sitting in my underwear over a map of the North, from which I had
managed to read all the details of the ill-fated voyage of the St. Maria-
details which would have astonished Captain Tatarinov himself had he
returned.
We had arranged the previous evening to go to the town's museum. Sanya
was keen on showing us this museum, which was the pride of Ensk. It was
housed in an old mansion, once the residence of a rich merchant. On the
second floor was an exhibition of paintings by Sanya's teacher, the artist
Tuva, and she took us to see these first of all. The artist was there in
person-a genial little man in a velvet blouse a la Tolstoy and with a mop of
black hair in which gleamed thick grey strands. His paintings were not bad,
though rather monotonous-all Ensk and Ensk. Ensk by day and by night, in
moonlight and sunlight, the old town and the new town. We praised them
fulsomely, though-this Tuva was such a nice man and Sanya gazed at him with
such adoration.
She must have guessed that Katya and I wanted to have a talk, because
she suddenly excused herself and stayed behind on some trifling pretext,
while we went downstairs into a large hall in which stood knights in
chain-mail, which stuck out from under their breastplates like a shirt under
a man's waistcoat.
Naturally, I was all eagerness to tell Katya about my nocturnal
discoveries. She saved me the trouble of starting the conversation by
starting it herself.
"Sanya," she said, when we stopped in front of a Stephen Bathori
man-at-arms, who somehow reminded me of Korablev. "I've been thinking about
who he meant in that phrase: 'Don't trust that man.' "
"Well?"
"I've come to the conclusion that it ... it's not him."
We were silent. She stared fixedly at the man-at-arms.
"But it was about him," I retorted grimly. "By the way, your father
dicovered Severnaya Zemlya. It was he, and not Vilkitsky at all. I've
established the fact."
This news, which a few years later was to create a sensation among all
the world's geographers, produced no effect whatever on Katya.
"What makes you think," she went on, speaking with an effort, "that
it's he ... Nikolai Antonich? The letter doesn't say so, does it?"
"Oh, yes it does," I said, feeling that I was beginning to lose my
temper. "For one thing, take those dogs. Who had boasted a thousand times
that he had bought excellent dogs for the expedition? Secondly-"
"Secondly what?"
"Secondly, last night I recollect