em to be any wind,  yet  huge cloudlike  caps of snow
started to break away from  the mountain tops and whirled up and  up. Within
ten minutes  it was impossible  to imagine  that there had just been sun and
sky  above us. There was now  neither earth, nor sun, nor sky. All was chaos
and confusion. The wind caught up with us and struck us first from the left,
then  in  front,  then from the left again, blowing us off course, to  where
there was a mist and falling snow-small, brittle snow which  stung your face
and  pierced through every buttonhole and  gap  in your clothing. Then night
closed in. You could not see  a thing around you, and for a time I flew  the
plane in utter darkness. I seemed to  be  running into walls, for all around
us  were real walls of snow  bolstered up  on all sides by the wind. At  one
moment I broke through  them, at the next retreated and broke through again,
or  found myself far beneath them. It  was a frightening experience  to feel
the  plane suddenly  dropping  a  hundred and  fifty or two hundred  metres,
without your knowing how high the mountains were, as they were not marked on
my map. All  I  could do was to wheel round in a half-circle  and go back to
the Yenisei. I would see the backs there, fly over the high bluffs and steer
clear of the blizzard, or, if it came to the worst, return to Zapolarie.
     Turning  round was  easier said than done. The  plane began to  shudder
when  I pressed  my  left foot down and  we  were flung aside  again, but  I
continued swinging her round. I believe I  said something to the machine. It
was at that moment  that I felt something was going  wrong  with the engine.
This was too bad, because we still had  those gorges beneath us, which I had
been hoping  we had  left far  behind. We  caught glimpses  of them here and
there-long and utterly hopeless: nobody would find us  there  or  ever  know
what had  happened to us.  I had to get away  from these death traps,  and I
did, though I was having engine trouble and would have to put the plane down
soon.  I began to descend very  slowly, keeping an eye on the turn indicator
and thinking  all the time about the ground, which  was  somewhere below me,
though  I  did not know where  it  was or  what it was  like. Something  was
beating in my brain, like a clock ticking, and I talked loudly to myself and
to  the  machine. But I was not afraid.  I  only remember feeling  hot for a
moment, when some great bulk swept past me. I  flung the  plane away from it
and almost grazed the ground with my wing tip.

     CHAPTER ELEVEN <I>THE BLIZZARD</I>
     I am not going to describe those three days and nights  we spent in the
tundra,  not far from the banks of the Pyasina. One hour  was like  another,
and only the first few minutes, when we had to  make the plane  fast somehow
to prevent it being swept away by the blizzard, were different from the rest
of the time.
     Just  try  securing a  plane  down in  the  tundra,  which is  bare  of
vegetation,  and  with  a  force  ten wind blowing!  With the  engine  still
running, we  placed  the plane  with  its tail to  the wind.  We thought  of
burying it, but the moment we touched the snow with a spade the wind blew it
away. The  plane  was still  being tossed about and we  had to think of some
reliable way of anchoring it, because the wind was  building  up and in half
an hour it would be too late. We then did a simple thing-1 recommended it to
all  Arctic pilots-we tied ropes  to  the  wings and to  these  in  turn  we
attached  skis,  suitcases,  a box  containing cargo, and even  a  funnel-in
short,  everything that might  help snowdrifts to form rapidly around  them.
Within fifteen  minutes snowdrifts had piled up around these objects, but in
other places under the plane the snow was still being blown away.
     Now we could do nothing but wait. Not a very cheerful prospect, but the
only thing we could do. To wait and wait-who knows how long!
     I have already mentioned  that we  had everything to meet the emergency
of a forced landing, but what can you do with a tent, say, if a simple thing
like getting out of the plane is a complicated and agonising business, which
you can only bring  yourself to do once a day and then only because you have
to get out once a day.
     So passed the first day. A little less warmth. A little more sleepy. To
keep from falling asleep I try all kinds  of tricks which take a lot of time
doing and are of little use. I try, for instance, to light the primus-stove,
while  I order  Luri to  light  the blowlamp. A difficult task! It's hard to
light a  primus-stove  when every minute you feel your own skin from head to
foot, when you suddenly feel yourself going  cold somewhere deep inside your
ears, as  if Õ  our eardrums were  freezing and  when the  snow  immediately
plasters your face, turning it into an icy mask. Luri tries  to crack jokes,
but  the jokes freeze in  mid-air, in a fifty-degree (C.) frost and there is
nothing  left  for him  but  to  joke  about his ability to  joke under  any
circumstances and at any time.
     So ended our first night and the night after that. A little more sleepy
still.  And the  snow  kept rushing  past us until it seemed  as  if all the
world's snow was flying  past  us...  The thing was not to  let the mechanic
fall  asleep.  He  looked  the strongest  of  us, but turned out  to be  the
weakest. The doctor  from time to  time slapped him and shook  him. Then the
doctor  himself  began  to  doze and I had  to shake him from time to  time,
politely but persistently.
     "Nothing of the sort, Sanya. I  wasn't sleeping  at all,"  he muttered,
opening his eyes with an effort. I no longer felt sleepy. Some years later I
read Stefansson's <i>The Friendly Arctic</i> and realised that it was  a mistake to
go without sleep for such a long time. But  at that time I was inexperienced
in the ways  of  the Arctic  and believed that  to fall  asleep  in  such  a
situation was courting certain death.
     All  the  same I must  have fallen asleep  or  else  I was daydreaming,
seeing  myself  boxed  up  deep  in  the earth,  because  overhead  I  could
distinctly hear a street noise and the clanging and rattling of tramcars. It
wasn't very  terrifying, only  somewhat distressing to find  myself lying in
that little  box all alone, unable to stir hand or foot, and I having to fly
somewhere without  a minute  to  spare. Then suddenly  I found  myself in  a
street standing before the lighted window of a  shop, while inside  the shop
was  Katya, walking  calmly  up and down without looking at me. It  was  she
without a doubt, though I was a little  afraid that it would  afterward turn
out to be someone else or that something would prevent me  from speaking  to
her. The next moment I rushed to the door of the shop,  but it  was  already
empty and dark inside, and on the glass door hung a notice: "Closed."
     I opened my eyes, then shut them again, overjoyed at the sight that met
them! The blizzard had died down. The snow no longer blinded us,  but lay on
the ground. Above it were the  sun and sky, the  immeasurably  vast sky that
one  can only find at sea or  in the tundra. Against this background of snow
and sky,  within two  hundred  paces of  the plane, stood a man. He  held  a
reindeer guiding pole in  his hands and behind him stood  reindeer harnessed
to a  sledge. Farther  out, as  though faintly etched,  rose two little snow
hills-without a  doubt Nenets Ó/ÇÏÏ/Û-skin dwellings. This was the dark mass
which  I had  shied away from when landing. They were now snowed up and only
the  conical open tops showed black. Around the  <i>chooms</i> stood people, adults
and children. They stood perfectly motionless, gazing at our aeroplane.

     CHAPTER TWELVE
     <I>WHAô IS A PRIMUS-STOVE?</I>
     I never  thought that thrushing one's feet into a fire  could be such a
joy. But it is sheer, unalloyed bliss! You feel the warmth flowing into your
body, rising higher and  higher,  and at last,  slowly, softly,  warming the
heart.
     I felt  nothing else, thought of nothing else. The doctor was muttering
something behind me, but I was not listening to him, and did not care a hang
about the spirits he was having rubbed into my feet.
     The smoke  of  the tundra shrub they were  burning,  which  is like the
smoke of damp pinewood, hung over the hearth, but I did not  care a hang for
this smoke either-all  I cared  for was the warmth. I was warm-it was almost
unbelievable!
     The Nentsi were squatting round the fire and looking at us. Their faces
were grave. The  doctor was  trying to tell them something  in Nenets.  They
listened attentively and nodded understandingly. And then it transpired that
they had  understood nothing, and the doctor,  with a  gesture of annoyance,
began to act the scene of a wounded man  and an aeroplane flying to his aid.
It would have been very funny had I been able to keep awake for as long as a
minute at a stretch.  He lay down,  clutching his  belly, then jumped up and
rushed  forward  with raised  arms.  Suddenly  he turned  to  me,  saying in
amazement:
     "Would you  believe  it! They  know all about it. They even  know where
Ledkov was wounded. It was attempted murder. Somebody shot at him."
     He   began  speaking  in  Nenets  again,  and  I  guessed,  through  my
drowsiness, that  he  was asking  them whether they knew who  had  fired the
shot.
     "They say the man who  fired the shot went home. Went home to think. He
will think a day, two days. But he will come back."
     I  couldn't fight off sleep any longer. Everything began to swim before
me, and I could have laughed through sheer joy at the thought of being  able
to go to sleep at last.
     When I woke up it was quite light. A skin flap had been drawn aside and
I  saw the doctor standing in a dazzling  triangle of light with  the Nentsi
sitting on their haunches  around him. Some way off I could  see the  plane,
and all this was so strongly reminiscent of a familiar film scene that I was
afraid it would soon flash past and disappear. But it wasn't a film shot. It
was the doctor asking the Nentsi where Vanokan was.
     "There?"  he  shouted  irritably,  pointing south. "There,  there!" the
Nentsi cried. "There?" he asked, pointing east. "There."
     Then the Nentsi all began pointing to the southeast and the doctor drew
a huge  map  of the  Arctic coastline  in the snow. But  that  did not  help
matters, because the Nentsi regarded the map as a  work  of art, and  one of
them, quite a young fellow, drew a  figure of a reindeer beside  the map  to
show that he, too, could draw.
     The first thing to do was  to dig the aeroplane out of the snow. And we
should never  have  been able to cope with this task  if the Nentsi  had not
helped us. I had never seen snow which looked so little like snow. We hacked
it with axes and spades and cut it with knives. When the last snow block had
been  cut out and  thrown  aside, we untied  the  fastenings,  which  I  had
recommended to the notice of Arctic pilots.  Water to warm up the engine was
being  heated in all available  pots and kettles. The young  Nenets, who had
drawn  the reindeer in the snow and  now volunteered to act as our navigator
to show us the way to  Vanokan, had  said  goodbye to his  weeping wife, and
this was very amusing, as his wife was wearing trousers of reindeer-skin and
only the bits  of coloured cloth in her hair distinguished her from the men.
The  sun  came  out  from  behind  the  high fleecy clouds-a  sign  of  good
weather-and I told the doctor,  who  was  putting eye drops into  somebody's
eyes, that it was time to "get going". At that moment Luri came up to me and
said that we could not take off.
     A strut in the undercarriage was broken-no doubt this had happened when
I shied clear of the tent-dwelling in landing. We hadn't  noticed this until
the Nentsi had cleared the snow away from the undercarriage.
     It was four clear days and nights since we had left Zapolarie. No doubt
they  would be  looking  for  us and  would  eventually find us,  though the
blizzard  had  carried us  off course. They would find us-but  could  you be
certain? Perhaps it was already too late for us to fly to Vanokan, unless we
were flying to fetch a corpse?
     This was my first real test in the North, and it was with dismay that I
thought of having to return empty-handed  without having  done anything. Or,
worse still, they would find me in the tundra, helpless as a puppy, beside a
crippled aeroplane. What was to be done?
     I called the doctor and asked him to gather the Nentsi.
     It was an  unforgettable meeting, the one we held  in  the <i>choom</i> around
the fire,  or rather around the smoke, which went  out through  a round hole
above our heads.  I  can't make out how such a  crowd  of people could  pack
themselves into  that <i>choom\</i> A reindeer had been  slaughtered in our honour,
and the Nentsi were eating  it raw, holding the meat in their teeth with one
hand and cutting slices  off close to their  lips with amazing dexterity. It
was a wonder they did not snip off  the tips of their noses  while they were
at it!
     Though I  am not  squeamish, I tried not to look at the way they dipped
these strips in a cup of blood and dispatched them amid a smacking of lips.
     "It's bad," I began my speech, "that we have taken on ourselves to help
a wounded man, a respected man, and here we are, sitting with you these last
four days, and unable to help him. Please, translate that, Doctor."
     The doctor translated it.
     "But what's still worse is that a lot  of  time has passed  and we  are
still far  away from Vanokan and don't even know exactly which way to fly-to
the north or south, the east or west."
     The doctor translated.
     "Worse still, our aeroplane is damaged.  And  we can't mend it  without
your help."
     The Nentsi began talking all together, but the doctor raised a hand and
they fell silent. I had already noticed  that they  treated  him with  great
respect.
     "We would have fared badly  but for  you," I  went on. "Without  you we
would have frozen to  death, without you we could  not  have coped with  the
snow, under which our aeroplane was buried. Translate that, please."
     The doctor translated.
     "And one more request. We  need a piece  of wood. We need  a small, but
very  strong piece of wood,  a metre long. We shall then be able to mend the
aeroplane and fly on further to help that worthy man."
     I tried to speak as though I were mentally translating back from Nenets
into Russian.
     "Of course, I understand that wood is a very rare and precious thing. I
would like to give you  very much money for that piece of wood a metre long,
but I have no money. I can offer you our primus-stove instead."
     Luri-we had arranged  this beforehand-pulled the  stove out  from under
his anorak and held it up.
     "You know, of course, what a primus-stove is. It's a machine that heats
water, cooks meat and boils tea. How long does it take to start a fire? Half
an hour. But a  primus you can light in one minute. On a primus you can even
bake  pies.  It's  a  splendid  thing,  a  primus,  a  useful thing for  the
household."
     Luri  pumped  it  up and applied  a match to it, and the flame shot  up
almost to  the ceiling.  But the damned thing,  as  if on  purpose, wouldn't
light, and we  had to make believe that it  was not supposed to  light right
away. This was no easy thing, considering that I had just said that lighting
it was the work of a moment.
     "Give us  a piece of strong wood a  metre  long and we'll give you this
primus-stove in exchange."
     I was a little afraid the Nentsi would be offended by so modest a gift,
but  they weren't. They looked gravely at the primus  in utter silence. Luri
kept pumping it until the burner was  red-hot and red sparks started  to fly
round it. Frankly, at that moment, out there  in the wild  remote tundra, in
this Nenets  <i>choom,</i>  the  thing looked even to  me a live,  burning, buzzing
miracle! All sat silent, gazing at it with genuine respect.
     Then an old man with a long pipe in his mouth, and a woman's shawl tied
over his  head, which in no way detracted from <i>his</i> dignity of mien, rose and
said  something in Nenets-it sounded  to me like one very  long sentence. He
addressed himself  to the doctor,  but was replying to me. And  this was how
the doctor translated him:
     "There are three ways of fighting smoke: by screening the smoke-hole on
the weather side, which will make it  draw better; by raising the <i>nyuk,</i> that
is, the skin which serves as a door;  by making a hole  over the door to let
the  smoke out.  But to receive a  guest  we have only one way-by giving him
whatever he wants. Just now we shall eat reindeer  and sleep. Afterwards  we
shall  bring  you all the  wood  we  can  find  in  our <i>chooms.</i> As for  this
magnificent primus, you may do whatever you wish with it."


     CHAPTER THIRTEEN
     <I>THE OLD BOA T-HOOK</I>
     And so, no sooner was the reindeer eaten raw, head, ears, eyes and all,
than the Nentsi started to  drag out all the wooden things they possessed. A
hollowed-out plate, a  hook for hanging pots, some sort of weaving device in
the  shape of a board with  round holes along the  sides, sledge runners and
skis.
     "No good?"
     They were surprised.
     "But it's strong wood, it will last a hundred years."
     They even dragged up  a  chair-back, which  had found its  way into the
tundra God knows  how.  Our  future navigator  brought  a god-a  real  idol,
decorated with bits of coloured cloth, with  a bullet-head and a nail driven
in where a man has his navel.
     "No good? But it's strong wood, it will last a hundred years."
     To tell the truth, I felt  ashamed of my primus when I saw this Nenets,
after  saying  something  sharply to  his  poor,  tearful wife, bring out  a
tin-bound  chest,  which was evidently the show-piece in an  otherwise empty
<i>choom.</i> He came up to me, looking very pleased and deposited the chest in the
snow.
     "Take this chest," the doctor translated. "It has four strong planks. I
am a Komsomol member, I don't need anything, I spit on your primus!"
     I'm not sure the doctor translated this last sentence correctly. In any
case, it was a fine action, and I wrung a young man's hand.
     Have you ever felt your mind occupied by a single idea to the exclusion
of all else, and then, all of  a sudden,  a storm  bursts upon your life and
you instantly forget what you were striving after only a moment ago with all
your soul?
     That was what happened to me when I saw  an old brass-tipped  boat-hook
lying in the snow among some poles which were used to build tent dwellings.
     Of  course, the whole thing was bizarre, beginning from the moment that
I started my lecture on the primus with the Nentsi listening to  me gravely,
and between  us, as in  a dream,  a column of  smoke rising up  straight  as
though made of long grey ribbons.
     Strange were  those wooden  household articles lying in  the snow round
the  aeroplane. Strange,  that sixty-year-old  Nenets  with his pipe  in his
mouth  who issued  a command  to an old woman, and she  brought out  to us a
piece of walrus bone.
     But  strangest of all was this boat-hook. There  was hardly  a thing in
the world stranger than this.
     At that moment Luri put his head out of the  cockpit and hailed me, and
I answered him from somewhere away, from that distant world into  which this
thing had suddenly transported me.
     What was this boat-hook, then? Nothing much! Just  an old brass hook on
a  pole. But on this old brass, now turned green, were  clearly engraved the
words: "Schooner <i>St. Maria".</i>
     I  looked back. Luri was still  looking  out of the cockpit, and he was
undoubtedly  Luri, with  that beard of  his, which I  made fun of every  day
because he had grown it in imitation of the well-known Arctic airman F., and
it did not in the least suit his young, vivacious face.
     Some distance  away, outside  the  farthest  <i>choom,</i> stood  the  doctor,
surrounded by the Nentsi.
     Everything was in  its  place, just as it  had been  a moment  ago. But
before  me  lay the boat-hook  with the words "Schooner  <i>St. Maria"</i> engraved
upon it.
     "Luri," I said with deadly calm, "come here."
     "Found something?" Luri shouted from the cockpit.
     He jumped down, came up to me and started blankly at the boat-hook.
     "Read that!"
     Luri read it.
     "It's from a ship," he said. "The schooner <i>St. Maria."</i>
     "That can't be! It can't be, Luri!"
     I picked  up the boat-hook,  cradling it in  my  arms like a child, and
Luri must have thought I had gone mad, because he muttered something and ran
to the doctor as fast as his legs could carry him.  The doctor  came up with
an  anxious  look, took my head between  slightly trembling hands and  gazed
into my eyes.
     "Oh,  go to hell!" I said with annoyance. "You think I'm off my rocker?
Nothing of the sort. Doctor, this boat-hook is from off the <i>St. Maria'."</i>
     The doctor removed his spectacles and began to study the boat-hook.
     "The  Nentsi  must  have  found  it  on Severnaya  Zemlya,"  I went  on
excitedly.  "Not on Severnaya Zemlya, of  course, but  somewhere  along  the
coast. Do you realise what this means, Doctor?"
     By this time the Nentsi  had gathered around,  looking on  impassively.
This  might have been the thousandth  time they were  seeing  me showing the
boat-hook to the doctor, shouting and getting worked up.
     The  doctor  asked  whose  hook  it  was, and  an  old Nenets  with  an
inscrutable, deeply-lined  face, which looked  as though carved out of wood,
stepped forward and said something in Nenets.
     "What does he say. Doctor? Where did he get this boat-hook?"
     "Where did you get this boat-hook?" the doctor asked in Nenets.
     The Nenets answered.
     "He says he found it."
     "Where?"
     "In a boat," the doctor translated.
     "In a boat? Where did he find the boat?"
     "On the beach," the doctor translated.
     "What beach?"
     "The Taimyr."
     "Doctor, the Taimyr!" I yelled in such a  voice that it brought the old
anxious look back into his face.  "Taimyr!  The  coast  nearest to Severnaya
Zemlya! And where's the boat?"
     "There is no more boat," the doctor translated. "Only a bit of it."
     "What bit?"
     "A bit of boat."
     "Show me!"
     Luri drew the doctor aside and they stood whispering together while the
old man went to fetch the bit of  boat. Apparently Luri still believed  that
my mind was unhinged.
     The  Nenets  reappeared  a  few  minutes  later   with   a   piece   of
tarpaulin-evidently  the  boat  he  had  found  on the coast of  the  Taimyr
Peninsula had been made of tarpaulin.
     "Not for sale," the doctor translated.
     "Doctor, ask him if there were  any other things in the boat?  If there
were, what things and what became of them?"
     "There were some things," the doctor translated.  "He doesn't know what
became of them. It was a long time ago. Maybe as long as ten years.  He says
he  was out hunting, and saw a sledge standing. On  the seldge stood  a boat
and there were things  in the  boat.  A gun was there, a  bad one,  couldn't
shoot, no cartridges. Skis were there, bad ones. A man was there."
     "A man?"
     "Wait a  minute, I may  have got it wrong." The doctor  hastily put his
question again to the Nenets.
     "Yes, one man," he  repeated.  "Dead,  of course.  Face  eaten  away by
bears. He was lying in the boat too. That's all."
     "Nothing else?"
     "Nothing."
     "Doctor, ask him whether he searched the man, was there anything in his
pockets-papers, documents, maybe."
     "There were."
     "Where are they?"
     "Where are they?" the doctor asked.
     The Nenets shrugged. The question sounded rather silly to him.
     "Is  the boat-hook  the only  thing  that was left?  He  must have been
wearing something. What happened to his clothes?"
     "No clothes."
     "How's that?"
     "Very simple," the doctor said tartly. "Or do you  suppose he purposely
kept them on  the offchance of  your dropping down on him from the blue some
day with your aeroplane? Ten years! And probably another ten since he died!"
     "Don't be angry. Doctor. It's all clear. The thing is to put this story
down in writing and have you  certify that you heard it with your own  ears.
Ask him what his name is."
     "What's your name?" the doctor asked.
     "Ivan Vilka."
     "How old?"
     "A hundred," the Nenets replied.
     We were silent, but Luri held his sides with laughter.
     "How old?" the doctor queried.
     "A hundred years," Ivan Vilka repeated doggedly in pure Russian.
     All the time while his  story was being recorded  in the <i>choom</i> he  kept
repeating that he was a hundred. He  was probably less, at least he  did not
look a hundred.  Yet the closer I studied  that inscrutable wooden face, the
more was it  brought home to me that he was really very old. He was proud of
his hundred years and persisted in repeating it until he was satisfied  that
we had recorded in the written statement:
     "Hunter Ivan Vilka, a hundred years old."

     CHAPTER FOURTEEN <I>VANOKAN</I>
     To this day it remains a mystery to me where the Nentsi got that length
of log from which we made  the strut we needed. They went off on skis during
the night, probably to some neighbouring nomad camp, and when, next morning,
we came  out of the <i>choom,</i>  where  I had spent that I would hardly  call the
most restful night of my life, this piece of cedar wood lay at the entrance.
     Indeed, it had been anything but a cheerful night. The  doctor slept by
the fire,  the long  ends of his cap, tied over his head, sticking comically
over his anorak like a pair of hare's ears. Luri tossed about and coughed. I
could  not sleep.  A  Nenets woman sat  by a  cradle, and I lay a  long time
listening  to  the monotonous  tune which she  was  singing with  a  sort of
apathetic abandon. The same words were repeated every minute until it seemed
to me that the whole song consisted of just  those two  or  three words. The
baby had long ago fallen asleep, but she kept on singing.
     The  feeling  I had experienced during my  conversation with Valya came
back to me, and with such force that I wanted to get up and leave the <i>choom,</i>
not  to have  to listen to this  dolorous song. But I did  not get  up.  The
woman's song gradually grew slower and quieter and then stopped  altogether.
She was asleep. The whole world was  aleep, except me. I lay in the  dark, a
poignant sense of loneliness and mortification creeping  about my heart. Why
did I have to make this discovery when all was over, when there  was nothing
more between us and never would be, and  we could meet, if ever  we  did, as
strangers? I tried to fight  off this mood of melancholy, but I could not. I
tried and tried until at last I fell asleep.
     By midday we had repaired the undercarriage. We wittled the log down to
the  size  and shape we wanted it and fixed it in place of  the  strut.  For
greater security we  tied  it down with ropes.  The plane now looked a sorry
sight, like a winged bird.
     It was time to  take our leave. The Nentsi gathered round the plane and
shook hands all round and we thanked them for  their help and wished  them a
lucky hunting. They laughed, looking pleased. Our  navigator, smiling shyly,
got  into the plane. I  don't know what he had said to  his wife at parting,
but she  stood  near the  plane, looking gay  in  her fur parka, embroidered
along the hem with coloured cloths, with a broad belt and a hood with a huge
fur frill which surrounded her face like a halo.
     By force of habit I raised my hand, as though asking to be flagged off.
     "So long, comrades!"
     We were off!
     I  will  not  describe  how  we  flew  to  Vanokan,  how  our navigator
astonished me by his ability  to read the snowy wastes beneath us as if they
were a map. Over one nomad camp he asked me to stop for a while and was very
disappointed to leam that this could not be done.
     We found Ledkov in a bad state. I had often met him at meetings and had
once even flown  him from Krasnoyarsk to Igarka. I had been impressed, among
other things, by his knowledge of literature. I learnt that he had graduated
from  the  Teachers'  Training  College  in Leningrad  and was  generally an
educated man. Until the age of  twenty-three  he had been a  herdsman in the
tundra and the Nentsi always spoke of him with pride and affection.
     He was sitting on the bed, grinding his teeth with pain. The pain would
suddenly  lift him  up. He would  hoist himself out of the bed, gripping the
back of it with one hand, and throw himself into a chair. It was terrible to
see  that big, strong body  writhing  in pain. Sometimes it abated for a few
minutes, and then his face would assume a normal  expression.  Then it would
start again. He bit his upper lip and <i>his</i> eyes-the stricken eyes of a strong
man fighting for self-control-would  begin to squint, and the next moment he
would get up on his good leg and fling himself on the bed. But even there he
kept tossing about, shifting from place to place. Whether it was because the
bullet had  hit some nerve-knot or  the wound had  festered I could not say.
But never had I witnessed such a harrowing scene. It made one wince to  look
at him  as  he lay  writhing  on  the bed  in  a vain  attempt to still  the
excruciating  pain, then  suddenly, without  warning, fling himself  into  a
chair at the bedside.
     The sight  was enough  to make  any  man lose his  head, but  not  Ivan
Ivanovich.  On  the contrary,  he seemed to have suddenly  grown younger. He
bunched  his lips and  took on the  appearance of  a  determined young  army
doctor  before whom  everyone  quails. He immediately chased everyone out of
the  sick-room, including the  Chairman of  District Executive Committee who
had insisted on being present during the examination of Ledkov.
     He  ordered  paraffin  lamps  to   be  fetched  from   all   over   the
settlement-"mind they don't smoke"-and hung them round the walls, making the
room brighter than anyone had ever seen in Vanokan before. Then the door was
slammed to and the sight of that  dazzlingly bright  room  with the sick man
lying  on a dazzlingly white table  and people in dazzlingly white gowns was
shut from the astonished gaze of Vanokan.
     Forty minutes later Ivan Ivanovich came out of the improvised operating
theatre. The operation had  just been a success, because he turned to  me as
he  was  taking off his gown and said something in Latin,  then quoted Kozma
Prutkov: "If you want to be happy, be .it!"
     Early  the  next morning we left Vanokan and landed  at Zapolarie three
and a half hours later without further adventure.
     The incident-the brilliant operation performed by the doctor under such
difficult conditions, and our adventurous flight-was eventually  reported in
<i>Izvestia.</i> The paragraph ended with the words:
     "The patient is making a  rapid recovery." As a  matter of fact  he did
recover quickly.
     Luri and  I received a vote of thanks and the doctor a testimonial from
the Nenets National  Area. The old boat-hook now hung in my room on the wall
beside a large map showing the drift of the schooner <i>St. Maria.</i>
     At the  beginning  of June I  went to Moscow. Unfortunately I  had very
little time, having been allowed only ten  days during which  I had  to  see
both  to my own private affairs  and to the private and public affairs of my
Captain.

     PART FIVE
     <I>FOR THE HEART</I>
     CHAPTER ONE
     J
     <I>I MEET KATYA</I>
     Ten days  to  break  one engagement  and  arrange  another is not much,
considering that  I had a lot of  other business to attend to in Moscow. For
one thing I was  to read a  paper  before the Geographical  Society  on  the
subject of  "A Forgotten Polar Expedition", and it was not even written yet.
I also  had  to  take up  with  the Northern  Sea  Route Administration  the
question of organising a search for the
     <i>St. Maria.</i>
     Valya  had done some preliminary work for  me. He had arranged with the
Geographical  Society,  for instance,  for  me  to read the  paper.  But, of
course, he could not write it for me.
     I telephoned Katya. She answered the phone herself.
     "This is Sanya," I said.
     She was silent. Then, in the most ordinary voice, she said,
     "Sanya?"
     "That's right."
     There was another pause.
     "Are you in Moscow for long?"
     "No,  only  a few days," I replied, also trying to speak in an ordinary
voice, as if I were not seeing her that very moment with the untied earflaps
of her fur cap and the overcoat, wet with snow, which she had worn the  last
time we met, in Triumfalnaya Square.
     "On leave?"
     "Both on leave and on business."
     It  required an effort  to keep from asking her: "I  hear that  you see
quite a lot of Romashov?" I made the effort and did not ask.
     "And how is Sanya?" she suddenly asked, meaning my sister. "We  used to
correspond, then we stopped."
     We began talking  about Sanya, and Katya said that a  Leningrad theatre
had recently come  to  Moscow and was  presenting  Gorky's  <i>Mother,</i> and  the
programme had said that the decor was by "Artist P. Skovorodnikov".
     "You don't say?"
     "Very good scenery too. Daring, yet simple." We went on talking
     and talking about this and that in ordinary  voices, until a feeling of
horror came upon me at the thought that it would all end like this- with our
talking ourselves out in ordinary voices, then parting and my not having any
excuse to phone her again.
     "Katya, I want to see you. When can you meet me?"
     "As it happens, I'm free this evening."
     "Nine o'clock, say?"
     I waited for her to invite me home, but she did not, and we arranged
     to meet-but where?
     "What about the public garden at Triumfalnaya?"
     "That garden doesn't exist any more," Katya said coldly.
     We arranged to meet  in the colonnade of the Bolshoi  Theatre. That was
all we spoke about on the telephone, and there was no sense in my going over
each word the way I did all that long day in Moscow.
     I went  to the offices of the  Civil Aviation Board, then  went  to see
Valya at the  Zoological  Institute. I must have been woolgathering, because
Valya  had to repeat to me several  times that tomorrow was the twenty-fifth
anniversary  of  Korablev's teaching career and there was to be a meeting to
mark the occasion at the school.
     Nine o'clock found me outside the Bolshoi Theatre.
     It was the same  Katya with those plaits coiled round her head  and the
curls on her forehead, which I always remembered  when I thought of her. She
was paler and more grown-up, no longer that girl who had kissed me once in a
public  garden in Triumfalnaya Square. She  had acquired a certain restraint
in manner and speech. Yet it  was Katya all the same, and she had  not grown
to resemble  Maria Vasilievna as strongly as I had feared.  On the contrary,
her  original traits of  character  had become more pronounced, if anything,
she was even more herself than before. She was wearing a short-sleeved white
silk blouse with a  blue polka-dot bow pinned at the neck,  and she put on a
severe expression  when I tried,  during our conversation, to peer into  her
face.
     Wandering  about  Moscow   that  cheerless  day,  we  might  have  been
conversing through a wall in different  rooms, with the  door being opened a
little now and again and Katya peeping out to see  whether it was me or not.
I  talked and talked-I don't remember when I  ever talked  so  much. But all
this was not what I had wanted to tell her. I told  her how I had made up my
"Klimov alphabet" and what a job it had been to read his diaries. I told her
how we had found the old boat-hook with the inscription "Schooner <i>St. Maria"</i>
on it.
     But not  a word was said about why I had done all this.  Not a word. As
though the whole thing were long since dead and buried, and there had  never
been the pain and  love,  the  death of  Maria  Vasilievna,  my jealousy  of
Romashka, and all the living blood that throbbed in me and Katya.
     They  were  building the Metro  in Moscow  and the most familiar places
were fenced off, and we  had to walk the length of these fences over sagging
board-walks  and then turn back, because the  fence ended in a pit which had
not been there  yesterday and from  which  voices could now be heard and the
noise of underground work.
     Our conversation  was like that  too-all roundabout,  hedged,  with the
most familiar places,  known to us  from  childhood and school years, fenced
off. We kept  running into these fences,  especially when we approached such
dangerous ground as the subject of Nikolai Antonich.
     I asked Katya  whether she had  received  my letters-one from Leningrad
and another from Balashov,  and  when she said she  hadn't, I hinted at  the
possibility of their having fallen into strange hands.
     "There are no strange hands in our house," Katya said sharply.
     We returned to Theatre Square. It was already late in the evening,  but
flowers were still being sold from  the stalls, and  after Zapolarie  it was
strange to see so much of everything-people, cars, houses and electric lamps
swinging this way and that.
     We sat on a bench, and Katya listened to me with her chin propped up in
her hand.  I remembered  how  she had always liked to take her time settling
herself comfortably the better to be able to listen. It  struck  me now what
the change in her was. It was her eyes. They had grown sad.
     It  was our one good moment.  Then I  asked whether she  remembered our
last  conversation  in the  garden in Triumfalnaya Square, but she  did  not
answer. It  was  the  most terrible of answers for me. It meant that the old
answer: "Let's not talk about it any more", still stood.
     Perhaps, if I  had been able to have a good look into her eyes, I might
have read more in them. But she averted them and I gave it up.
     All  I  felt  was  that she  was growing colder towards me  with  every
passing minute.  She nodded when I said: "I'll keep  you informed." After  a
pause, she said:
     "I wanted to tell you, Sanya, that I  appreciate what you are doing.  I
was sure you had long forgotten the whole thing."
     "As you see, I haven't."
     "Do you mind if I tell Nikolai Antonich about our conversation?"
     "Not at  all.  He'd be interested to  learn about my  discoveries. They
concern him very closely, you know, more closely than he imagines."
     They did not concern him as  closely as all that  and I  had no grounds
whatever for making such an insinuation. But I was very sore.
     Katya regarded me  with a thoughtful air. She seemed to be on the point
of asking  me something, but could not make up her mind. We said goodbye.  I
walked away disturbed, angry and tired, and in the hotel, for the first time
in my life, I had a headache.

     CHAPTER TWO
     <I>KORABLEV'S ANMVERSARY</I>
     To  celebrate  the anniversary of  a  secondary school teacher when the
school had  broken up  for the summer and the pupils were  away struck me as
being  an odd idea.  I told Valya as much and  doubted whether anybody would
come.
     But I  was  mistaken. The school was  crowded.  The boys and girls were
still busy decorating the staircase with branches of birch and maple. A pile
of branches lay on the  floor in the cloakroom  and a  huge figure "25" hung
over the entrance to the hall where the celebration  meeting was to be held.
The  girls were arranging festoons and  everybody was busy and  preoccupied.
The air of festive excitement made a cheering sight.
     But I was not given a chance to spend  much time reminiscing. I  was in
uniform  and in  a  moment found myself sunounded. Whew!  An  airman!  I was
bombarded with questions.
     Then a senior form girl, who reminded me of Varya-she was just as plump
and rosy-came up to me and said, blushing, that Korablev was expecting me.
     He was sitting in the teachers' room, looking older, slightly bent, his
hair  already  grey. He now resembled Mark  Twain-that was it. Though he had
grown older, it seemed to me  that he looked sturdier than  when we had last
met. His  moustache,  though greying, was  bushier than ever and  the loose,
soft collar revealed a strong, red neck.
     "Ivan Pavlovich, my hearty  congratulations!" I said,  and we embraced.
"Congratulations!" I said between the kisses.  "I hope all your