ent three months writing and sending out a
stereotype inquiry-will you please give necessary instructions-evacuation
point-historical personality-awaiting your reply. And we received it."
There was a sharp ring at the door. "That's him," Vyshimirsky said.
A cowed look came into his face. The grey tuft of hair on top of his
head started shaking and his moustache drooped. He went out into the
hallway, while I took up a position against the wall beside the door, so
that Romashov should not catch sight of me at once on coming in. He might
jump out onto the landing, because Vyshimirsky said to him in the hallway:
"Somebody to see you."
"Who?" he asked quickly.
"A man by the name of Grigoriev," the old man said.
He did not jump out, though he could have done-I bided my time. He
stood in the dark corner between the wardrobe and the wall and he gave a
scream when he saw me. Then he raised doubled fists and pressed them to his
face, childlike. There was a key in the door. I turned it, took it out and
slipped it into my pocket. Vyshimirsky was standing between us. I picked him
up and set him aside like a dummy. Then, for some reason, I pushed him and
he toppled mechanically into an armchair.
"Well, let's go and have a chat," I said to Romashov.
He was silent. He had a cap in his hand, and he stuffed it into his
mouth and clamped his teeth down on it.
"Well!" I said again.
He shook his head violently.
"You're not going?"
"No!" he screamed.
The stark terror of despair that had seized him at the sight of me
suddenly fell away from him. I wrenched his arm and he straightened up. When
we entered the room only one eye of his still had a slight squint to it, but
a complete change had come over his face, which was now composed and blank
of expression.
"I'm alive as you see," I said quietly.
"So I see."
I could now have a good look at him. He was wearing a light grey suit
with a yellow ribbon on the lapel-the insignia of a seriously wounded man,
whereas he was only slightly shell-shocked. He had put on weight, and but
for Ms protruding red ears, he had never looked such a presentable
gentleman.
"The pistol."
I thought he would start lying about having handed it in when he was
demobbed. But the pistol, with my name engraved on it, was a gift from my
regimental commander for bombing the bridge over the Narova. If Romashov had
handed it in he would have given himself away. That was why, without saying
a word, he now pulled open a drawer of his desk and got it out. The gun was
not loaded.
"The papers!"
He was silent.
"Well!"
"They got soaked and were ruined," he said hastily. "A bombshelter in
Leningrad was flooded. I was unconscious. Only C.'s photograph was intact. I
gave it to Katya. I saved her."
"Really?"
"Yes, I saved her. That's why I'm not afraid. You won't kill me."
"Won't I? Tell me everything, you skunk," I said seizing him by the collar,
then letting him go at once when I felt the yielding softness of his throat.
"I gave her everything when she was starving. Ah, you don't believe
me!" he cried in despair, sidling up to me to peer into my eyes. "But you
will when you've heard me out. You don't know anything. I hate you."
"Is that so?"
"You've taken from me everything that was good in life. I could have
made a go of it, yes I could," he said arrogantly. "I was always in luck,
because the world's full of fools. I could have made a career. But I didn't
give a damn for that!"
"I didn't give a damn for a career" was putting it pretty strong. From
what I knew of him, Romashov had always been an unprincipled climber. He had
succeeded admirably, considering that he had always been such a frightful
dullard at school.
"So listen," Romashov said, growing still paler, if that were possible.
"You'll believe me because I'm going to tell you everything. The Tatarinov
search expedition-it was me who got it cancelled! At first I helped Katya
because I was sure you were going alone. But she decided to .go with you, so
I got the expedition cancelled. I sent in a letter, making a rather risky
statement-it would have been all up with me if I hadn't been able to prove
it. But I pulled it
off."
Some sheets of writing paper lay in a grey leather case bearing the
initials "M.R." in gold. I drew out one sheet, and Romashov froze, Ms
staring eyes directed to some spot above my head. It looked as if he was
trying to peer ahead into his own future, to see what threat to himself that
simple action of mine contained.
"Yes, write it down," he said, "this man who had the expedition stopped
was eventually exiled and is dead. But write it down if it still matters to
you."
"It doesn't mean anything to me," I answered coolly.
"I wrote that the idea of finding Captain Tatarinov, who had
disappeared twenty years ago, was a mania with you, and that you always were
unbalanced ever since your schooldays. But behind it all was an ulterior
motive. You had married Captain Tatarinov's daughter and were raising all
this fuss around his name in order to further your own career. I did not
write this by myself."
"Trust you!"
"D'you remember that article 'In Defence of a Scientist'? Nikolai
Antonich wrote that, and we referred to it in the letter."
"You mean in the denunciation."
I was now taking all this down as fast as I could.
"Yes, in the denunciation. And we had it all corroborated. I tricked
Nina Kapitonovna into signing one paper, and my God, what a job it was to
prevent them calling her out! You have no idea what harm this caused you! In
the Civil Air Fleet, and I suppose also afterwards, when you were already in
the army."
How can I convey the feeling with which I heard out this confession? I
couldn't make out why he was coming clean. The simple calculation was soon
to become clear to me though. It was like a light thrown in retrospect upon
all the inexplicable things that had been happening to me and that I
couldn't help thinking of wherever I was.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE SHADOW
"It all began a long time ago, when I was still at school," Romashov
went on. "I had to sit up all night to be able to answer my lesson as well
as you did. I tried not to think about money because I saw that money didn't
mean anything to you. It was my ambition to become like you, to become you,
and I fretted because you were always and in everything the better man."
With trembling fingers he drew a cigarette out of a glass box lying on
the desk and looked round for a light. I struck my lighter. He lit up,
inhaled and threw the cigarette away.
"Sometimes I used to meet you in the street, and I'd hide myself in
doorways and then follow you like a shadow. I sat behind you in the theatre,
and used to think, my God, in what way am I different from him? But I knew
that what I saw on the stage was different, because I looked at everything
with different eyes than yours. No, Katya was not the only bone of
contention between us. Everything that I ever felt was always at war with
what you felt. That's why I know everything about you. I know that you were
working in agricultural aviation on the Volga, then in the Far East. You
asked to be sent to the North again, but they refused you. So then you went
to Spain-my God, it was as though everything I had striven for all those
years was suddenly working out of itself. But you came back," Romashov
shouted with loathing, "and from then on everything went well with you. You
went to Ensk with Katya-you see, I know everything, even things you have
long forgotten. You could forget because you were happy, but I couldn't,
because I was unhappy." He drew a shuddering breath and closed his eyes.
Then he opened them again, and something very keen and sober, a world away
from these passionate confessions, flickered in his quick glance. I listened
to him in silence.
"Yes, I wanted to part you, because this love had given you such
marvellous happiness all your life. I was sick with envy, thinking that you
loved simply out of love, whereas my love had the extra spur in that I
wanted to take her away from you. You may think it funny, my talking to you
about love. But the contest is over, I have lost, and what is this
humiliation to me now compared with the fact that you are alive and that
fate had played a trick on me again?"
The telephone rang in the hall. Vyshimirsky answered it. "Yes, he's in.
Who's that speaking?"
He did not call Romashov, however.
"Then the war broke out. I joined up. I didn't have to, I was reserved.
If I was killed, all the better! But secretly I was hoping that you'd be
killed. Near Vinnitsa I was lying in a barn when an airman came in and
stopped in the doorway, reading a newspaper. 'What a fine bunch o' lads!' he
said. 'A pity, they've gone up in smoke.' 'Who?' 'Captain Grigoriev and his
crew.' I read that paragraph a thousand times. I learnt it by heart. A few
days later I met you in the hospital train."
It was very odd, the way he was seeking my sympathy, as it were, for
the fact that, contrary to his hopes, I was still alive. He was so carried
away, however, that he did not see the absurdity of his attitude.
"You know the rest. Even in the train I was struck by the fact that you
somehow didn't seem to be thinking about Katya. I saw that you were
tormented by all the filth and confusion, but there again you were yourself,
you would have given your life to prevent that retreat. For me it merely
meant that you had shown yourself again to be the better man."
He fell silent. There might never have been that aspen wood, the heaps
of wet leaves and the woodstack which prevented me from swinging my arm
back, or myself lying on the ground, propped up on my hands, trying not to
shout to him: "Come back, Romashov!"- as he sat there before me, a dignified
gentleman in a light grey suit. The desire to strike him with my pistol was
so great that my arms even began to ache.
"Yes, a profound thought," I said. "Incidentally, will you please sign
this paper."
While he was confessing I had been writing a "deposition", that is, a
brief history of how the search-party had been torpedoed. It was torture for
me, as I am a poor hand at composing official papers. But I think I made a
good showing with the "Deposition ofM.V. Romashov", perhaps because it
contained such phrases as: "Having basely deceived the leadership of the
Northern Sea Route Administration" etc.
Romashov quickly glanced through the paper.
"All right," he muttered, "but first I must explain to you-"
"First, sign, you'll do your explaining afterwards."
"But you don't know-"
"Sign, you rat!" I said in such a voice that he recoiled in terror, and
his teeth began to chatter in a sort of slow, reluctant manner.
He signed and flung the pen down with a savage gesture.
"You ought to be grateful to me, but instead you intend to take
advantage of my frankness. Ah well!"
"Yes, I do!"
He looked at me. How deeply at that moment he must have regretted that
he had not finished me off in the aspen wood!
"I returned to Moscow," he continued, "and immediately set about
getting a transfer to Leningrad. I travelled by way of Lake Ladoga. The
Germans were sinking our ships, but I made it, and just in time, thank God,"
he added hastily. "In another day, at most two days, I would have had to
arrange her funeral."
This may have been the truth. When Vyshimirsky was telling me about
Romashov having been in Leningrad, I recollected the story of the ginger
major which the yardkeeper and her children had told me. "She dig out ginger
man, he have bread. Big sack, carry himself, not let me." It was not this
that worried me. Romashov might have talked Katya into believing that I had
been killed-in battle, of course, and not in the aspen wood.
"And there I was in Leningrad. You can't imagine what it was. I got a
bread ration of three hundred grams, and brought half of it to Katya. At the
end of December I managed to get some glucose, and I bit all my fingers
while I was taking it to Katya. I dropped beside her bed, and she said:
'Misha!' But I didn't have the strength to get up. I saved her," he repeated
gloomily, as though the fearful thought that I might not believe him had
struck him again. "And if I didn't die myself it was only because I knew
that she and you needed me." "I too?" "Yes, you too. Skovorodnikov had
written to her that you'd been killed. She was half-dead with grief when I
arrived. You should have seen what happened to her when I told her I had
seen you! I realised at that moment how pitifuF'-Romashov brought this out
in such a full, loud voice that there even came a thud from the hallway, as
if Vyshimirsky had fallen off his chair-"how pitiful I was in the face of
this love. At that moment I bitterly regretted having wanted to kill you. It
was a false step. Your death would not have brought me happiness."
"Is that all?"
"Yes, that's all. In January they sent me to Khvoinaya. I was away a
fortnight. I brought meat, but the flat was already empty. Varya Trofimova-I
expect you know her-had sent Katya away by plane."
"Where to?"
"To Vologda-I found that out definitely. And from there to Yaroslavl."
"Who did you make inquiries of at Yaroslavl?" "The evacuation centre. I know
the man in charge." "Did you get a reply?"
"Yes. But it was only to say that she had passed through theevacuation
centre and had been sent to a hospital for Leningraders."
"Show me."
He found the letter in his desk and handed it to me. "Vspolye Station,"
I read. "In reply to your inquiry..." "Why Vspolye?"
"The evacuation centre is there. It's two kilometres outside
Yaroslavl."
"Is that all now?" "Yes."
"Now listen to me, then," I said, fighting for self-control. "I can't
forgive, or not forgive you, whatever you may have done for Katya. After
what you did for me this is no longer a personal quarrel between us. You
weren't quarrelling with me when you wanted to finish me off and left me, a
badly wounded man, in the wood to die. You were committing a military
offence, a dastardly crime for which you will be tried as a scoundrel who
violated his oath."
I looked him squarely in the eye and was amazed. He was not listening
to me. Somebody was coming up the stairs, two or three people judging by the
footfalls which echoed hollowly on the staircase. Romashov looked about him
uneasily and stood up. There came a knock at the door, then a ring.
"Shall I open?" Vyshimirsky asked from behind the partition.
"No!" Romashov shouted. "Ask who it is," he added quietly, as though
collecting himself, and walked across the room with a light, almost dancing
tread.
"Who's there?"
"It's from the house management, open the door."
Romashov gave a sharply indrawn breath.
"Tell them I'm not at home."
"I didn't know. Somebody phoned and I said you were at home."
"At home, of course," I said loudly.
Romashov threw himself upon me and seized my arms. I pushed him away.
He squealed, then followed me out into the hallway and took up the same
position as before, between the wall and the
wardrobe.
"Just a minute," I said. "I'll open the door."
Two men came in-an elderly one, who was evidently the house manager,
judging by the dour, businesslike expression of his face, and that same
young man with the cool manner and the smart cap whom I had seen in the
house manager's office. The young man first looked at me, then, unhurriedly,
at Romashov.
"Citizen Romashov?"
"Yes." Vyshimirsky's teeth chattered so loudly that everyone looked
round at him. "Weapons?" "I have none," Romashov answered, almost
unruffled. Only a
vein throbbed in his otherwise impassive face.
"Well, get your things together. Just a change of underwear. Accompany
the prisoner, will you," he said to the house manager.
"Your documents, Captain."
"It's all nonsense, Nikolai Ivanovich!" Romashov was saying in a loud
voice in the next room, where he was packing his knapsack. "I'll be back in
a few days. It's that same stupid old business about the offal. Remember me
telling you about it-the offal from Khvoi- -Lriaya?" ' Vyshimirsky's teeth
chattered again. It was obvious that he had never heard about that offal
before.
"Sanya, I hope you find her in Yaroslavl," Romashov said louder.
"Tell her-"
Standing in the hall, I saw him drop the knapsack and stand for a while
with closed eyes.
"Never mind," he muttered.
"Excuse me, may I ask you for a glass of water," the man in the cap
said to Vyshimirsky.
Vyshimirsky gave it to him. Now we all stood in the hall-Romashov with
his knapsack on his back, the house manager, who had not said a word
throughout, and a bewildered Vyshimirsky with the
empty glass in his hand. For a minute or so all were silent. Then the
young man pushed open the door.
"Goodbye, excuse me for disturbing you." And with a polite gesture he
motioned Romashov forward.
Probably, if I had the time, I would have tried to discover some deep
meaning in the fact that fate, working through a member of the Moscow
C.I.D., has so abruptly interrupted my conversation with Romashov. But the
Yaroslavl train was leaving at 8.20 and in the time left to me I had to:
(a) present myself to Slepushkin and complete all the personnel
formalities besides, and that might take a good hour and a half;
(b) drop in at the Rewards Department-while still at M-v I had received
notice that the award of my second Order of the Red Banner had been endorsed
and I could receive the document at the People's Commissariat;
(c) get something to eat on the journey-nearly everything I had
brought with me from M-v I had left with a fellow-airman of the Baltic
Fleet in Leningrad;
(d) book my ticket, but this did not worry me much, as I would have
gone without one.
What's more, I had to write to the military prosecutor about Romashov.
All this appeared to me absolutely necessary, that is, my life during
the four or five hours before my train was due to leave, was to be rilled
with these particular cares. But what I should have really done was simply
to go back to Valya Zhukov, who was a few minutes' walk away, and then-who
knows?-I might have found time to give some thought to that jumble of truth
and lies with which Romashov had tried to put himself right with me.
I even paused in Arbat Square, in two minds whether to drop in for a
minute on Valya or not. Instead, I went into a barber shop-I had to get
shaved and change my collar before reporting to the Hydrographical
Department, where one rear-admiral was going to introduce me to another.
At five o'clock sharp I presented myself to Slepushkin, and at six 350
I was enlisted in the H.D. personnel for posting to the Far North at
the disposal of R. Two or three years ago these laconic, formal words would
have conjured up a distant scene of wild rolling hills lit up by the timid
sun of a first Arctic day, but just now what with excitement and all these
cares on my mind, I mechanically thrust the document into my pocket and
walked out, thinking of my omission in not having asked R. to get in touch
with Yaroslavl by military telegraph line.
I shall not dwell on the hour and a half that I lost in the Rewards
Department and my other errands. But I must describe this last memorable
encounter I had in Moscow.
Very tired, I went down into the Metro at Okhotny Ryad. It was the
close of the working day, and although in the summer of 1942 there was still
plenty of room in Moscow's Metro, there was a crowd at the top of escalator.
As I peered into the faces of the Muscovites coming up on the moving belt
towards me, it suddenly occurred to me that throughout that busy, tiring day
I had seen nothing of Moscow. I noticed from afar a heavily-built man in a
thick cap and an overcoat with broad square shoulders floating up towards
me, waxing larger as he waited with an air of lofty toleration for that
noisy machine to carry him to the top.
It was Nikolai Antonich.
Had he recognised me? I doubt it. Even if he had, of what interest to
him was a little captain in a shabby tunic, with an ugly kitbag from which a
hunk of bread stuck out?
His somnolent, imperious glance slid over my face incuriously.
PART NINE
TO FIND AND NOT TO YIELD
CHAPTER ONE
THIS IS NOT THE END YET
At the hotel in Yaroslavl there was a telegram waiting for me: "Leave
immediately for Archangel. Lopatin." It was from the Hydro-graphical
Department. But why not from Slepushkin with whom I had arranged that I
would continue my search for Katya in the event of my not finding her in
Yaroslavl? Who was this Lopatin? And why immediately? Why Archangel? True,
Archangel was still the main base for any hydrological work along the
Northern Sea Route. But hadn't R. told me that we were to meet at Polarnoye,
where his plans would have to be endorsed by the Commander-in-Chief of the
Northern Fleet?
All this was cleared up, and very soon too. But at the moment, there in
Yaroslavl, in that squalid little hotel, where I raised the blue paper blind
and read and reread the telegram, I felt nothing but vexation at this muddle
and uncertainty, which seemed in some way to threaten Katya and deprive me
of the hope of seeing her again soon.
I now had a short journey facing me-a mere thousand kilometres
northward of Katya...
This is what I learnt when, straight from the train, I presented myself
at the HQ of the White Sea Naval Flotilla: Lopatin, whom I had been cursing
all the way, was Personnel Chief of the Hydro-graphical Department. Only now
did I recollect having heard the name at the People's Commissariat. There
had been no muddle in this telegram. The day I left Moscow events had
occurred in the Far North which caused Rear-Admiral R. to leave urgently, at
night, for Archangel, and the same night a wire had been sent to me. There
was nothing now for either R. or me to do at Polarnoye, as the officer
commanding the fleet had himself gone to Archangel. His meeting with R. had
taken place the day before. Evidently, the plan for that "most interesting
job" had been approved, because immediately after this meeting R. flew out
to Dickson. He must have been in a great hurry, or else decided he could
manage without me, otherwise he would have left instructions for me at
Flotilla HQ.
"You're late, Captain," The Flotilla Personnel Chief said to me. He was
a genial, grey-headed man with side whiskers, who resembled an old sailor of
the period of Sevastopol's first defence. "What am I to do with you now? We
can't send you chasing after him."
He ordered me to report again in a few days time.
But how Archangel had changed, how unlike itself, while still itself,
it had become.
American sailors strolled about the streets in their little caps,
bell-bottomed trousers and woollen jumpers, fitting close round the waist
and falling loosely over the trousers. British sailors, with the initials
"H.M.S." on their caps, were somewhat more reserved in their manner, but
they, too, had that easy-going air about them which distinguished them so
strongly from our own sailors and struck me as strange. One encountered
Black sailors at every step. Chinese, washing shirts in the Northern Dvina,
right under the quay, and laying them out in the sun among the rocks,
chattered loudly in their softly guttural tongue.
And the Dvina, so spacious, so Russian, that it seemed there could be
no other river like it in the world, bore its brimming waters onward. Motor
launches, cleaving the sparkling wave as with a knife, passed in one
direction, towards the cargo port.
But it was not the foreigners who engaged my attention those days,
though I regarded them with keen but detached curiosity. This was the city
of Sedov and Pakhtusov. At the cemetery in So-lombala I stood for a long
time at the grave of "Lieutenant Pyotr Kuzmich Pakhtusov, Cavalier of the
Corps of Navigators, who died at the age of 36 from the trials and
tribulations sustained on his voyages". From here Captain Tatarinov had
taken his white schooner on her long voyage. Here Navigating Officer Klimov,
the only surviving member of the expedition to reach the mainland, had died
in the town hospital. The St. Maria expedition had an entire section devoted
to it in the local museum, and among the familiar exhibits I found something
new and interesting-the recollections of artist P., a friend of Sedov's,
describing how Klimov had been found on Cape Flora.
Early in the morning, after writing my regular letter to Yaroslavl, I
found myself at a loose end and went down to Kuznechikha. The pine wood
spread its sharp tang over the river. The drawbridge was open and a little
steamboat, weaving its way among the endless timber rafts, was carrying
people to the dock. Wherever you looked was wood, everything was wooden-the
narrow sidewalks along the fronts of the squat old buildings dating from
Nicholas I's time and now housing hospitals and schools, the road paving,
and fantastic edifices built of stacks of fresh-sawn planks along the river
banks. This was Solombala, and here I found the house in which Captain
Tatarinov had lived in the summer of 1912 when the St. Maria was being
fitted out.
He had descended the steps of that little log-house and walked through
the front garden-tall, broad-shouldered, in his white naval jacket, with
moustaches turned up in the old-fashioned way. With stiffly bent head, he
had listened to some Demidov of a merchant, who demanded money from him for
salt junk or for the "preparation of ready-made clothing". And out there, in
the cargo port, barely visible among the heavy merchantmen with side
paddles, stood the slim and graceful schooner-too slim and graceful to make
the voyage from Archangel to Vladivostok along the coast of Siberia.
One incident, insignificant in itself but important for me, brought
these misty scenes oddly to life.
The day before a convoy had arrived I had gone to B. Port to see the
foreign ships unload.
Oho, how big this ancient port had grown, how spacious! I must have
walked a couple of kilometres along the wharves but still saw no end to the
cranes, which were piling military and general cargoes in tall, rectangular
stacks. And extensions were still being made to the port. I came to the end
and stopped to take in the panorama of the wharves, which curved back in a
smooth arc. At that very moment the little steamboat, puffing vigorously,
steered clear of a big American vessel with a Hurricane in the bows and
approached the wharf. I glanced at her name, Lebedin, and remember thinking
that this pretty name had become sort of traditional in northern waters. It
had been the name of the boat in which Tatarinov's friends and relations had
gone out to his schooner to give the captain a last embrace and wish him a
pleasant cruise and happy landfall. Could this be the same Lebedin, which
had been called in one article "the first Russian icebreaker"? Surely not!
I asked a sailor who was rolling a barrel of fuel down the gangway to
call his captain, and a minute later a ruddy-cheeked young fellow of about
twenty-five, clad in ordinary work blues, came up on deck, wiping his hands,
which were black with oil, on a rag.
"I have an historical question to ask you, Captain," I said. "Do you
know by any chance whether this tug of yours was called Lebedin before the
revolution as well?" "She was." "When was she launched?" "In 1907" "And
always had the same name?" "Always."
I told him what it was about, and he surveyed his craft with an air of
cool pride, as though he had never doubted that she would take her destined
place in the history of the Russian fleet. It may sound rather funny, but
the fact is that my encounter with the Lebedin cheered me up immensely.
Although I had read the life of Captain Tatarinov, the last page of it still
remained closed to me.
"This is not the end yet," that old tugboat with her ruddy-cheeked
young skipper seemed to be saying to me. "Who knows, the time may yet come
when you will succeed in turning that page and reading it."
On my third visit to the Personnel Officer I asked him to post me to a
regiment, or, if that was impossible, to place me under the orders of the
Northern Fleet Air Arm HQ.
He was obviously in the know as regards my personal affairs and service
record, because, after a pause, he asked me in a kindly tone:
"What about your health?"
I told him I was as fit as a fiddle. It was the truth or pretty near
the truth, for I always felt better in the North than I did in the South,
the West or the East.
"Ah well, I suppose you'd better be put to use rather than hang about
doing nothing at such a time," the Personnel Chief said reasonably if rather
vaguely.
He had in mind, of course, my being used on the ground. "Catch me doing
ground work. I'm going to fly," I said to myself as I watched his old but
strong hand writing down and underlining my name on his desk diary.
I was appointed to an Arctic base within several kilometres of
Polarnoye.
I am not going to say much about the air war in the North, though it
was very interesting, since nowhere else were the qualities of the Russian
airman displayed with such brilliance as here in the North, where, to all
the difficulties and hazards of flying and fighting were added those of bad
weather and six months of Arctic night. I heard one British officer say:
"Only Russians can fly here." This was a flattering exaggeration, of course,
but we had earned the compliment.
Combat conditions in the North were much more difficult than in the
other theatres of air warfare. The German transports usually hugged the
coastline, keeping as close to the cliffs as their draught would permit. It
was hard to sink them, not only because transports, generally speaking, are
hard to sink, but because it is impossible or well-nigh impossible to get a
clear run-in at a transport which is under a cliff.
In July I went to Kirkenes with a load of bombs-with fair success, as
the photographs showed. At the beginning of August I persuaded my regimental
commander to let me go out "hunting" in search of German convoys. Paired
with some lieutenant we sank a transport of four thousand tons. Strictly
speaking, it was the lieutenant who did the sinking, as my torpedo, launched
at too close range, slipped under the keel and went wide. But in that fight
everything was put to the test, including my wounded leg, which behaved
splendidly. I was pleased, although during the debriefing the squadron
commander proved incontestably that this was just the way transports "ought
not to be sunk". Two or three days later he had occasion to repeat his
arguments, as I flew still lower over a transport, so low that I came home
with a piece of the ship's aerial embedded in my wing. The transport-my
first-was sunk, so that his arguments, while losing none of their cogency,
acquired merely a theoretical interest.
To be brief, I sunk a second transport in the middle of August, one of
six thousand tons, escorted by a patrol vessel and a torpedo boat. This time
I was accompanied by the squadron leader himself and I noticed with
amusement that he attacked from still lower than I did. Needless to say, he
did not give himself a reprimand.
And so life went on-on the whole, not at all badly. At the end of
October the Air Force Commander congratulated me on the award of the Order
of Alexander Nevsky.
I already had friends at the base-the placid, taciturn, pipe-smoking
navigator in the wide trousers turned out to be an intelligent, well-read
man. True, he had little to say for himself, and that little was reduced to
nil when we were in the air, but when asked, "Where are we?" he always
answered with astonishing accuracy. I liked his way of getting onto the
target. We were unlike each other, but you cannot help getting to like a man
who shares with you every day the hard and hazardous work of flying and
making torpedo attacks. If we were to meet death, it would be together, the
same day and hour. And those who face death together, face life together.
I had other friends at the base besides my navigator, but this was not
the friendship my heart was yearning for. No wonder such a heap of unmailed
letters had accumulated in those days-I was hoping that Katya and I would
read them together after the war.
CHAPTER TWO
THE DOCTOR SER VES IN THE ARCTIC
I dreamt all night that I had been wounded again, that Doctor Ivan
Ivanovich was bending over me and I was trying to say to him:
"Abraham, saddle, drink", but I couldn't, I was struck dumb. This was a
recurrent dream, but the first one in which this long-forgotten sensation of
dumbness was so vividly real.
And so, waking up before reveille, I found myself thinking of the
doctor and recollected Romashov telling me that the doctor had come to visit
his son at the front. I don't quite know how to explain it, but I felt
vaguely disturbed by this memory, which had been on my mind for a long time.
I went over it word for word and realised what it meant: Romashov had been
telling me that the doctor was serving at Polarnoye.
The amazing thing is that the doctor, too, had been thinking about me
on that very day and at that very hour. He assured me of it quite seriously.
He had read the order concerning my decoration the day before and at first
had not thought it was me. "There are plenty of Grigorievs in the world," he
had said to himself. But the next morning, while still in bed, he decided
that it must be me, like me, he made for the telephone immediately.
"Ivan Ivanovich!" I cried, when a hoarse voice, which it was hard to
associate with the doctor, reached me as though fighting its way through the
howling autumn wind which raged that morning over Kola Bay. "This is Sanya
Grigoriev speaking. Do you recognise me? Sanya!"
I remained in ignorance as to whether the doctor had recognised me or
not, because the hoarse voice changed to a rather melodious whistling. I
roared myself red in the face, and telephone operator, appreciative of my
efforts, informed me that "Medical officer, Second Class, Pavlov was
reporting".
"What's he reporting? Tell him this is Sanya speaking!"
"Very good," said the telephone girl. "He asks whether you'll be at N.
Base this evening and where can he find you?"
"I'll be here!" I yelled. "Let him come to the Officers' Club. Is that
clear?"
The operator did not say anything, then something clicked in the
earpiece and a voice, which did not sound like hers, growled:
"He'll come."
I was overjoyed, of course, to hear that the doctor was at Polarnoye
and that I would be seeing him that night. Nevertheless, it remained a
puzzle to me, why, on arriving at the club, I drank first a glass of white
wine, then red wine, then white again, and so on. I kept within bounds,
though, all the more so as the Air Arm Commander was dining in the next room
with some war correspondent. But the girls of my acquaintance, who sat down
at my table from time to time between foxtrots, laughed heartily when I
tried to explain to them that if I had leamt to dance my life would have
shaped quite differently. As it was, my life was a flop because I had never
learnt to dance.
It was in this excellent, though slightly wistful mood that I sat in
the Officers' Club, when a tall, elderly naval man with silver stripes
appeared in the doorway and started to pick his way between the tables.
Doctor Ivan Ivanovich, I took it.
I may have been thinking how bent and old he looked and how grey his
beard had grown, but that was only a mirage, of course. Actually, this was
the mysterious old doctor of my childhood coming towards me with his glasses
pushed up on his forehead, for all the world as though he were about to
examine my tongue or peek into my ear.
"Sanya!"
We embraced, looked at each other, then embraced again.
"Have you been here long, Sanya?" the doctor was saying. "How is it we
have not met all this time?"
"Three months. It's my fault, of course. May I pour you out a drink?" I
reached for the bottle without waiting for his reply.
"You've had enough, Sanya," the doctor said gently, setting aside first
his glass, then mine. "Tell me all about yourself. D'you remember Volodya?
He's been killed," he added quickly, as though to show me that I could now
tell him everything. His eyes glistened with tears behind his glasses.
We sat with downcast heads in the brightly lit, noisy Officers' Club.
The band was playing foxtrots and waltzes, and the brass rang out too loudly
in the small wooden rooms.
"Where's Katya, what's happened to her?"
I told him how we had lost track of each other.
"I'm sure she's alive and well," the doctor said. "And searching for
you day and night. She'll find you all right-if I know anything about a
woman in love. Now you can pour me a drink. Let's toast her health."
It was time to go. We were the only people left in the restaurant. The
evening was over-that was a fact. But, God, how reluctant I was to admit it,
when there was still so much left unsaid between us. But what could you do!
We went downstairs and got our overcoats. The warm, bright, slightly tipsy
world was left behind us, and before us, pitch-black, lay N., over which a
rude, bleak north wind ran riot.
CHAPTER THREE
TO THOSE AT SEA
Submariners were the big boys in those parts, not only because they had
done so much at the beginning of the war, more perhaps than anyone else in
the Northern Fleet, but because the peculiar routine of their lives, their
attitudes, and the stresses of their combat activities placed an imprint
upon the life of the whole township. Nowhere are men so equal in the face of
death as among the crew of a submarine, where all either perish or vanquish.
All combat work is hard, but the work of submarine crews, especially in
midgets, is such that I wouldn't care to barter a dozen of the most
hazardous air missions for a single cruise in a midget submarine. Even as a
boy I used to think that among men who went down so deep in the water there
was sure to be some sort of secret compact, like the oath which Pyotr and I
had once sworn to each other.
Flying in company with another captain I succeeded in sinking a third
transport at the end of August 1942. A midget commanded by the famous F.
sank a fourth with my assistance. This would not be worth mentioning-I had
no bomb-load at the time and merely reported to HQ the coordinates of a
German vessel I had sighted-had not F. invited me to the "roast-pig party",
which started off a train of events worth relating.
Who does not know the famous naval tradition of celebrating each
sinking of an enemy ship with a gala dinner at which the commanding officer
treats the victors to roast sucking-pig? The previous day a transport,
patrol-vessel and a torpedo boat had been sent to the bottom, and the
white-capped cooks, all hot and bothered, carried, not one, but three whole
sucking-pigs into the spacious officers' mess where a "U" table was set out
at the head of which sat the admiral commanding the Northern Fleet.
The pigs, appetising, delicately pink, with pal