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 THE BLIZZARD I am not going to describe those three days and nights we spent in the tundra, not far from the banks of the Pyasina. One hour was like another, and only the first few minutes, when we had to make the plane fast somehow to prevent it being swept away by the blizzard, were different from the rest of the time. Just try securing a plane down in the tundra, which is bare of vegetation, and with a force ten wind blowing! With the engine still running, we placed the plane with its tail to the wind. We thought of burying it, but the moment we touched the snow with a spade the wind blew it away. The plane was still being tossed about and we had to think 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 ã our eardrums were freezing and when the snow immediately plasters your face, turning it into an icy mask. Luri tries to crack jokes, but the jokes freeze in mid-air, in a fifty-degree (C.) frost and there is nothing left for him but to joke about his ability to joke under any circumstances and at any time. So ended our first night and the night after that. A little more sleepy still. And the snow kept rushing past us until it seemed as if all the world's snow was flying past us... The thing was not to let the mechanic fall asleep. He looked the strongest of us, but turned out to be the weakest. The doctor from time to time slapped him and shook him. Then the doctor himself began to doze and I had to shake him from time to time, politely but persistently. "Nothing of the sort, Sanya. I wasn't sleeping at all," he muttered, opening his eyes with an effort. I no longer felt sleepy. Some years later I read Stefansson's The Friendly Arctic and realised that it was a mistake to go without sleep for such a long time. But at that time I was inexperienced in the ways of the Arctic and believed that to fall asleep in such a situation was courting certain death. All the same I must have fallen asleep or else I was daydreaming, seeing myself boxed up deep in the earth, because overhead I could distinctly hear a street noise and the clanging and rattling of tramcars. It wasn't very terrifying, only somewhat distressing to find myself lying in that little box all alone, unable to stir hand or foot, and I having to fly somewhere without a minute to spare. Then suddenly I found myself in a street standing before the lighted window of a shop, while inside the shop was Katya, walking calmly up and down without looking at me. It was she without a doubt, though I was a little afraid that it would afterward turn out to be someone else or that something would prevent me from speaking to her. The next moment I rushed to the door of the shop, but it was already empty and dark inside, and on the glass door hung a notice: "Closed." I opened my eyes, then shut them again, overjoyed at the sight that met them! The blizzard had died down. The snow no longer blinded us, 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 á/£®®/è-skin dwellings. This was the dark mass which I had shied away from when landing. They were now snowed up and only the conical open tops showed black. Around the chooms stood people, adults and children. They stood perfectly motionless, gazing at our aeroplane. CHAPTER TWELVE WHA’ IS A PRIMUS-STOVE? I never thought that thrushing one's feet into a fire could be such a joy. But it is sheer, unalloyed bliss! You feel the warmth flowing into your body, rising higher and higher, and at last, slowly, softly, warming the heart. I felt nothing else, thought of nothing else. The doctor was muttering something behind me, but I was not listening to him, and did not care a hang about the spirits he was having rubbed into my feet. The smoke of the tundra shrub they were burning, which is like the smoke of damp pinewood, hung over the hearth, but I did not care a hang for this smoke either-all I cared for was the warmth. I was warm-it was almost unbelievable! The Nentsi were squatting round the fire and looking at us. Their faces were grave. The doctor was trying to tell them something in Nenets. They listened attentively and nodded understandingly. And then it transpired that they had understood nothing, and the doctor, with a gesture of annoyance, began to act the scene of a wounded man and an aeroplane flying to his aid. It would have been very funny had I been able to keep awake for as long as a minute at a stretch. He lay down, clutching his belly, then jumped up and rushed forward with raised arms. Suddenly he turned to me, saying in amazement: "Would you believe it! They know all about it. They even know where Ledkov was wounded. It was attempted murder. Somebody shot at him." He began speaking in Nenets again, and I guessed, through my drowsiness, that he was asking them whether they knew who had fired the shot. "They say the man who fired the shot went home. Went home to think. He will think a day, two days. But he will come back." I couldn't fight off sleep any longer. Everything began to swim before me, and I could have laughed through sheer joy at the thought of being able to go to sleep at last. When I woke up it was quite light. A skin flap had been drawn aside and I saw the doctor standing in a dazzling triangle of light with the Nentsi sitting on their haunches around him. Some way off I could see the plane, and all this was so strongly reminiscent of a familiar film scene that I was afraid it would soon flash past and disappear. But it wasn't a film shot. It was the doctor asking the Nentsi where Vanokan was. "There?" he shouted irritably, pointing south. "There, there!" the Nentsi cried. "There?" he asked, pointing east. "There." Then the Nentsi all began pointing to the southeast and the doctor drew a huge map of the Arctic coastline in the snow. But that did not help matters, because the Nentsi regarded the map as a work of art, and one of them, quite a young fellow, drew a figure of a reindeer beside the map to show that he, too, could draw. The first thing to do was to dig the aeroplane out of the snow. And we should never have been able to cope with this task if the Nentsi had not helped us. I had never seen snow which looked so little like snow. We hacked it with axes and spades and cut it with knives. When the last snow block had been cut out and thrown aside, we untied the fastenings, which I had recommended to the notice of Arctic pilots. Water to warm up the engine was being heated in all available pots and kettles. The young Nenets, who had drawn the reindeer in the snow and now volunteered to act as our navigator to show us the way to Vanokan, had said goodbye to his weeping wife, and this was very amusing, as his wife was wearing trousers of reindeer-skin and only the bits of coloured cloth in her hair distinguished her from the men. The sun came out from behind the high fleecy clouds-a sign of good weather-and I told the doctor, who was putting eye drops into somebody's eyes, that it was time to "get going". At that moment Luri came up to me and said that we could not take off. A strut in the undercarriage was broken-no doubt this had happened when I shied clear of the tent-dwelling in landing. We hadn't noticed this until the Nentsi had cleared the snow away from the undercarriage. It was four clear days and nights since we had left Zapolarie. No doubt they would be looking for us and would eventually find us, though the blizzard had carried us off course. They would find us-but could you be certain? Perhaps it was already too late for us to fly to Vanokan, unless we were flying to fetch a corpse? This was my first real test in the North, and it was with dismay that I thought of having to return empty-handed without having done anything. Or, worse still, they would find me in the tundra, helpless as a puppy, beside a crippled aeroplane. What was to be done? I called the doctor and asked him to gather the Nentsi. It was an unforgettable meeting, the one we held in the choom around the fire, or rather around the smoke, which went out through a round hole above our heads. I can't make out how such a crowd of people could pack themselves into that choom\ A reindeer had been slaughtered in our honour, and the Nentsi were eating it raw, holding the meat in their teeth with one hand and cutting slices off close to their lips with amazing dexterity. It was a wonder they did not snip off the tips of their noses while they were at it! Though I am not squeamish, I tried not to look at the way they dipped these strips in a cup of blood and dispatched them amid a smacking of lips. "It's bad," I began my speech, "that we have taken on ourselves to help a wounded man, a respected man, and here we are, sitting with you these last four days, and unable to help him. Please, translate that, Doctor." The doctor translated it. "But what's still worse is that a lot of time has passed and we are still far away from Vanokan and don't even know exactly which way to fly-to the north or south, the east or west." The doctor translated. "Worse still, our aeroplane is damaged. And we can't mend it without your help." The Nentsi began talking all together, but the doctor raised a hand and they fell silent. I had already noticed that they treated him with great respect. "We would have fared badly but for you," I went on. "Without you we would have frozen to death, without you we could not have coped with the snow, under which our aeroplane was buried. Translate that, please." The doctor translated. "And one more request. We need a piece of wood. We need a small, but very strong piece of wood, a metre long. We shall then be able to mend the aeroplane and fly on further to help that worthy man." I tried to speak as though I were mentally translating back from Nenets into Russian. "Of course, I understand that wood is a very rare and precious thing. I would like to give you very much money for that piece of wood a metre long, but I have no money. I can offer you our primus-stove instead." Luri-we had arranged this beforehand-pulled the stove out from under his anorak and held it up. "You know, of course, what a primus-stove is. It's a machine that heats water, cooks meat and boils tea. How long does it take to start a fire? Half an hour. But a primus you can light in one minute. On a primus you can even bake pies. It's a splendid thing, a primus, a useful thing for the household." Luri pumped it up and applied a match to it, and the flame shot up almost to the ceiling. But the damned thing, as if on purpose, wouldn't light, and we had to make believe that it was not supposed to light right away. This was no easy thing, considering that I had just said that lighting it was the work of a moment. "Give us a piece of strong wood a metre long and we'll give you this primus-stove in exchange." I was a little afraid the Nentsi would be offended by so modest a gift, but they weren't. They looked gravely at the primus in utter silence. Luri kept pumping it until the burner was red-hot and red sparks started to fly round it. Frankly, at that moment, out there in the wild remote tundra, in this Nenets choom, the thing looked even to me a live, burning, buzzing miracle! All sat silent, gazing at it with genuine respect. Then an old man with a long pipe in his mouth, and a woman's shawl tied over his head, which in no way detracted from his dignity of mien, rose and said something in Nenets-it sounded to me like one very long sentence. He addressed himself to the doctor, but was replying to me. And this was how the doctor translated him: "There are three ways of fighting smoke: by screening the smoke-hole on the weather side, which will make it draw better; by raising the nyuk, that is, the skin which serves as a door; by making a hole over the door to let the smoke out. But to receive a guest we have only one way-by giving him whatever he wants. Just now we shall eat reindeer and sleep. Afterwards we shall bring you all the wood we can find in our chooms. As for this magnificent primus, you may do whatever you wish with it." CHAPTER THIRTEEN THE OLD BOA T-HOOK And so, no sooner was the reindeer eaten raw, head, ears, eyes and all, than the Nentsi started to drag out all the wooden things they possessed. A hollowed-out plate, a hook for hanging pots, some sort of weaving device in the shape of a board with round holes along the sides, sledge runners and skis. "No good?" They were surprised. "But it's strong wood, it will last a hundred years." They even dragged up a chair-back, which had found its way into the tundra God knows how. Our future navigator brought a god-a real idol, decorated with bits of coloured cloth, with a bullet-head and a nail driven in where a man has his navel. "No good? But it's strong wood, it will last a hundred years." To tell the truth, I felt ashamed of my primus when I saw this Nenets, after saying something sharply to his poor, tearful wife, bring out a tin-bound chest, which was evidently the show-piece in an otherwise empty choom. He came up to me, looking very pleased and deposited the chest in the snow. "Take this chest," the doctor translated. "It has four strong planks. I am a Komsomol member, I don't need anything, I spit on your primus!" I'm not sure the doctor translated this last sentence correctly. In any case, it was a fine action, and I wrung a young man's hand. Have you ever felt your mind occupied by a single idea to the exclusion of all else, and then, all of a sudden, a storm bursts upon your life and you instantly forget what you were striving after only a moment ago with all your soul? That was what happened to me when I saw an old brass-tipped boat-hook lying in the snow among some poles which were used to build tent dwellings. Of course, the whole thing was bizarre, beginning from the moment that I started my lecture on the primus with the Nentsi listening to me gravely, and between us, as in a dream, a column of smoke rising up straight as though made of long grey ribbons. Strange were those wooden household articles lying in the snow round the aeroplane. Strange, that sixty-year-old Nenets with his pipe in his mouth who issued a command to an old woman, and she brought out to us a piece of walrus bone. But strangest of all was this boat-hook. There was hardly a thing in the world stranger than this. At that moment Luri put his head out of the cockpit and hailed me, and I answered him from somewhere away, from that distant world into which this thing had suddenly transported me. What was this boat-hook, then? Nothing much! Just an old brass hook on a pole. But on this old brass, now turned green, were clearly engraved the words: "Schooner St. Maria". I looked back. Luri was still looking out of the cockpit, and he was undoubtedly Luri, with that beard of his, which I made fun of every day because he had grown it in imitation of the well-known Arctic airman F., and it did not in the least suit his young, vivacious face. Some distance away, outside the farthest choom, stood the doctor, surrounded by the Nentsi. Everything was in its place, just as it had been a moment ago. But before me lay the boat-hook with the words "Schooner St. Maria" engraved upon it. "Luri," I said with deadly calm, "come here." "Found something?" Luri shouted from the cockpit. He jumped down, came up to me and started blankly at the boat-hook. "Read that!" Luri read it. "It's from a ship," he said. "The schooner St. Maria." "That can't be! It can't be, Luri!" I picked up the boat-hook, cradling it in my arms like a child, and Luri must have thought I had gone mad, because he muttered something and ran to the doctor as fast as his legs could carry him. The doctor came up with an anxious look, took my head between slightly trembling hands and gazed into my eyes. "Oh, go to hell!" I said with annoyance. "You think I'm off my rocker? Nothing of the sort. Doctor, this boat-hook is from off the St. Maria'." The doctor removed his spectacles and began to study the boat-hook. "The Nentsi must have found it on Severnaya Zemlya," I went on excitedly. "Not on Severnaya Zemlya, of course, but somewhere along the coast. Do you realise what this means, Doctor?" By this time the Nentsi had gathered around, looking on impassively. This might have been the thousandth time they were seeing me showing the boat-hook to the doctor, shouting and getting worked up. The doctor asked whose hook it was, and an old Nenets with an inscrutable, deeply-lined face, which looked as though carved out of wood, stepped forward and said something in Nenets. "What does he say. Doctor? Where did he get this boat-hook?" "Where did you get this boat-hook?" the doctor asked in Nenets. The Nenets answered. "He says he found it." "Where?" "In a boat," the doctor translated. "In a boat? Where did he find the boat?" "On the beach," the doctor translated. "What beach?" "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 choom he kept repeating that he was a hundred. He was probably less, at least he did not look a hundred. Yet the closer I studied that inscrutable wooden face, the more was it brought home to me that he was really very old. He was proud of his hundred years and persisted in repeating it until he was satisfied that we had recorded in the written statement: "Hunter Ivan Vilka, a hundred years old." CHAPTER FOURTEEN VANOKAN To this day it remains a mystery to me where the Nentsi got that length of log from which we made the strut we needed. They went off on skis during the night, probably to some neighbouring nomad camp, and when, next morning, we came out of the choom, where I had spent that I would hardly call the most restful night of my life, this piece of cedar wood lay at the entrance. Indeed, it had been anything but a cheerful night. The doctor slept by the fire, the long ends of his cap, tied over his head, sticking comically over his anorak like a pair of hare's ears. Luri tossed about and coughed. I could not sleep. A Nenets woman sat by a cradle, and I lay a long time listening to the monotonous tune which she was singing with a sort of apathetic abandon. The same words were repeated every minute until it seemed to me that the whole song consisted of just those two or three words. The baby had long ago fallen asleep, but she kept on singing. The feeling I had experienced during my conversation with Valya came back to me, and with such force that I wanted to get up and leave the choom, not to have to listen to this dolorous song. But I did not get up. The woman's song gradually grew slower and quieter and then stopped altogether. She was asleep. The whole world was 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 his eyes-the stricken eyes of a strong man fighting for self-control-would begin to squint, and the next moment he would get up on his good leg and fling himself on the bed. But even there he kept tossing about, shifting from place to place. Whether it was because the bullet had hit some nerve-knot or the wound had festered I could not say. But never had I witnessed such a harrowing scene. It made one wince to look at him as he lay writhing on the bed in a vain attempt to still the excruciating pain, then suddenly, without warning, fling himself into a chair at the bedside. The sight was enough to make any man lose his head, but not Ivan Ivanovich. On the contrary, he seemed to have suddenly grown younger. He bunched his lips and took on the appearance of a determined young army doctor before whom everyone quails. He immediately chased everyone out of the sick-room, including the Chairman of District Executive Committee who had insisted on being present during the examination of Ledkov. He ordered paraffin lamps to be fetched from all over the settlement-"mind they don't smoke"-and hung them round the walls, making the room brighter than anyone had ever seen in Vanokan before. Then the door was slammed to and the sight of that dazzlingly bright room with the sick man lying on a dazzlingly white table and people in dazzlingly white gowns was shut from the astonished gaze of Vanokan. Forty minutes later Ivan Ivanovich came out of the improvised operating theatre. The operation had just been a success, because he turned to me as he was taking off his gown and said something in Latin, then quoted Kozma Prutkov: "If you want to be happy, be .it!" Early the next morning we left Vanokan and landed at Zapolarie three and a half hours later without further adventure. The incident-the brilliant operation performed by the doctor under such difficult conditions, and our adventurous flight-was eventually reported in Izvestia. The paragraph ended with the words: "The patient is making a rapid recovery." As a matter of fact he did recover quickly. Luri and I received a vote of thanks and the doctor a testimonial from the Nenets National Area. The old boat-hook now hung in my room on the wall beside a large map showing the drift of the schooner St. Maria. At the beginning of June I went to Moscow. Unfortunately I had very little time, having been allowed only ten days during which I had to see both to my own private affairs and to the private and public affairs of my Captain. PART FIVE FOR THE HEART CHAPTER ONE J I MEET KATYA Ten days to break one engagement and arrange another is not much, considering that I had a lot of other business to attend to in Moscow. For one thing I was to read a paper before the Geographical Society on the subject of "A Forgotten Polar Expedition", and it was not even written yet. I also had to take up with the Northern Sea Route Administration the question of organising a search for the St. Maria. Valya had done some preliminary work for me. He had arranged with the Geographical Society, for instance, for me to read the paper. But, of course, he could not write it for me. I telephoned Katya. She answered the phone herself. "This is Sanya," I said. She was silent. Then, in the most ordinary voice, she said, "Sanya?" "That's right." There was another pause. "Are you in Moscow for long?" "No, only a few days," I replied, also trying to speak in an ordinary voice, as if I were not seeing her that very moment with the untied earflaps of her fur cap and the overcoat, wet with snow, which she had worn the last time we met, in Triumfalnaya Square. "On leave?" "Both on leave and on business." It required an effort to keep from asking her: "I hear that you see quite a lot of Romashov?" I made the effort and did not ask. "And how is Sanya?" she suddenly asked, meaning my sister. "We used to correspond, then we stopped." We began talking about Sanya, and Katya said that a Leningrad theatre had recently come to Moscow and was presenting Gorky's Mother, and the programme had said that the decor was by "Artist P. Skovorodnikov". "You don't say?" "Very good scenery too. Daring, yet simple." We went on talking and talking about this and that in ordinary voices, until a feeling of horror came upon me at the thought that it would all end like this- with our talking ourselves out in ordinary voices, then parting and my not having any excuse to phone her again. "Katya, I want to see you. When can you meet me?" "As it happens, I'm free this evening." "Nine o'clock, say?" I waited for her to invite me home, but she did not, and we arranged to meet-but where? "What about the public garden at Triumfalnaya?" "That garden doesn't exist any more," Katya said coldly. We arranged to meet in the colonnade of the Bolshoi Theatre. That was all we spoke about on the telephone, and there was no sense in my going over each word the way I did all that long day in Moscow. I went to the offices of the Civil Aviation Board, then went to see Valya at the Zoological Institute. I must have been 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 St. Maria" on it. But not a word was said about why I had done all this. Not a word. As though the whole thing were long since dead and buried, and there had never been the pain and love, the death of Maria Vasilievna, my jealousy of Romashka, and all the living blood that throbbed in me and Katya. They were building the Metro in Moscow and the most familiar places were fenced off, and we had to walk the length of these fences over sagging board-walks and then turn back, because the fence ended in a pit which had not been there yesterday and from which voices could now be heard and the noise of underground work. Our conversation was like that too-all roundabout, hedged, with the most familiar places, known to us from childhood and school years, fenced off. We kept running into these fences, especially when we approached such dangerous ground as the subject of Nikolai Antonich. I asked Katya whether she had received my letters-one from Leningrad and another from Balashov, and when she said she hadn't, I hinted at the possibility of their having fallen into strange hands. "There are no strange hands in our house," Katya said sharply. We returned to Theatre Square. It was already late in the evening, but flowers were still being sold from the stalls, and after Zapolarie it was strange to see so much of everything-people, cars, houses and electric lamps swinging this way and that. We sat on a bench, and Katya listened to me with her chin propped up in her hand. I remembered how she had always liked to take her time settling herself comfortably the better to be able to listen. It struck me now what the change in her was. It was her eyes. They had grown sad. It was our one good moment. Then I asked whether she remembered our last conversation in the garden in Triumfalnaya Square, but she did not answer. It was the most terrible of answers for me. It meant that the old answer: "Let's not talk about it any more", still stood. Perhaps, if I had been able to have a good look into her eyes, I might have read more in them. But she averted them and I gave it up. All I felt was that she was growing colder towards me with every passing minute. She nodded when I said: "I'll keep you informed." After a pause, she said: "I wanted to tell you, Sanya, that I appreciate what you are doing. I was sure you had long forgotten the whole thing." "As you see, I haven't." "Do you mind if I tell Nikolai Antonich about our conversation?" "Not at all. He'd be interested to learn about my discoveries. They concern him very closely, you know, more closely than he imagines." They did not concern him as closely as all that and I had no grounds whatever for making such an insinuation. But I was very sore. Katya regarded me with a thoughtful air. She seemed to be on the point of asking me something, but could not make up her mind. We said goodbye. I walked away disturbed, angry and tired, and in the hotel, for the first time in my life, I had a headache. CHAPTER TWO KORABLEV'S ANMVERSARY 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