phabetical order: "Fadeyev, Fedorov,
Frolov, Golomb, Gribkov, Hertz..." A mist swims before my eyes. I read
again: "Fedorov, Frolov, Golomb, Gribkov, Hertz..." I'm not there! I take a
deep breath and start again: Fedorov, Frolov, Golomb, Gribkov, Hertz. I
stare at the list, which seems to contain all the names under the sun except
my own, and I feel like a man would feel who has nothing more to live for.
I go home under a pouring rain. Fedorov, Frolov, Golomb ... Lucky
Golomb.
Pyotr opens the door and starts at seeing me, drenched and white.
"What's the matter?" "Pyotr, my name's not on the list." "Goon!"
Semyon's mother comes flying into the kitchen to ask whether the
house-manager saw me coming in. I do not answer her. I sit on a chair and
Pyotr stands facing me with a glum look.
The next morning we go together to the Aviation Museum and I find my
name on the list. tt was in another column along with several other boys
whose names began with G. including a couple of Grigorievs-Ivan and
Alexander. Pyotr said I hadn't been able to find it because I was too
excited.
Time races on, and I see myself in the reading-room of the Aviation
Museum, where we had faced the examiners. Thirteen men passed by the
credentials and medical boards are lined up, and the School Superintendent,
a big, jovial, red-haired man, comes out and says:
"Comrade air cadets, attention!"
Comrade air cadets! I am an air cadet! A cold shiver runs up my spine.
I feel as if I had been dipped alternately in cold and hot water. I'm an air
cadet! I'm going to fly! I do not hear what she Super is saying.
Time races on. We go to lectures straight from work at the factory
where Semyon Ginsburg has fixed me up as fitter's mate.
We listen to lectures on materiel, the theory of aviation and the
engine. After eight hours at work we feel very sleepy, but we listen to the
lectures on materiel, the theory of aviation and engines, and once in a
while Misha Golomb, who turned out to be as short as myself, leans up
against my back and starts to snore gently. When his snores become too
audible I carefully bump his head on the desk.
We study at flying school, but what little resemblance that school has
to those that go by that name today! We have neither engines, nor
aeroplanes, neither premises nor money. True, the Aviation Museum does
display a few old sky waggons, in which one could imagine oneself doing air
reconnaissance in a De Havilland or seeing a fighting plane in a Newport
which last did service at the Civil War fronts. But you couldn't learn to
fly on these distinguished "coffins".
We assemble engines. Armed with credentials of Osoaviakhim, that
infallible warrant empowering us to take off the walls any aeroplane parts
we might need, we make a round of all the recreation rooms and clubs of
Leningrad. Sometimes we find these aeroplane parts in the office of the
house management, hanging over the desk of the accounts clerk, who happens
to be an aviation fan. We commandeer them and carry them off to the
airfield. Sometimes this goes off peacefully, sometimes there is a row.
Three times we visit the Clothing Workers' Club, accompanied by a
technician, trying to prove to the club manager that the old engine standing
in the foyer is of no propaganda value.
Our day starts with our trying, each in turn, to explain to Ivan
Gribkov what "horizon" is. We have a fellow named Ivan Gribkov who has all
the school trying to explain this to him. Afterwards came the instructors
and flight training begins.
My instructor-he is our School Superintendent and has charge of
materiel and supplies as well-is an old pilot of Civil War days, a big
jovial man, who loves to tell extraordinary stories and can tell them for
hours. He is quick-tempered, but quick to cool off, brave and superstitious.
His idea of his duties as instructor is of the simplest order: he just
swears at you, his language becoming stronger with the altitude. At last he
stops swearing-for the first time in six months! It's wonderful! For ten
minutes or so I fly in the rarest of good moods. I must be doing the
stickwork jolly well, seeing that he doesn't swear at me! Despite the roar
of the engine I seem to be flying in complete silence-quite a new experience
for me!
But the next moment I see what it is. The intercom had got disconnected
and the phone was dangling over the side. I catch it and together with it
the close of what must have been a long speech:
"You clot. You shouldn't be flying, you ought to be serving in the
sanitary brigade."
Another scene rises before me when I recall my first year in Leningrad.
C. comes to the Corps Airfield every day. He has a modest job-flying
passengers in an old war-scarred machine. But we know what kind of man he
is, we know and love him long before he became known to and loved by the
whole country. We know whom the airmen talk about when they gather at the
Aviation Museum, which was a sort of club of ours in those days. We know
whom our Chief is imitating when he says in a calm bass voice: "Well, how
goes it? Can you manage the sharp bank? But no fibbing, mind?"
We run to this man as fast as our legs can carry us when he returns to
the airfield after his amazing aerobatics, and the lovers of stunt flying,
green as the grass, crawl away almost on all fours, while he looks at us
from the cockpit, his goggles off, a flyer of amazing flair, a wizzard of
sky flying.
Together with the stethoscope which Doctor Ivan Ivanovich left me as a
keepsake I carry a photo of this airman about with me wherever I go. He gave
this photo to me not in Leningrad where I was an air cadet, but much later,
several years afterwards, in Moscow. He wrote on it: "If it's worth doing at
all, do it well." Those were his words. So this year passed, a hard but
splendid year in Leningrad.
CHAPTER TWO
SANYA 'S WEDDING
I saw Sanya every Sunday and I must say-strange though it may sound
coming from a brother-that I came to like her more and more.
She had just entered the Academy of Arts and had found a job with a
children's publishing house. She knew all about our doings, Pyotr's and
mine, and kept the old folks informed about us. She worked a lot at the
Academy too, and although she lacked Pyotr's vivid talent she painted
extremely well. She was fond of doing miniatures, an art that is nowadays
almost completely neglected by our painters, and the fastidious care with
which she executed all the minute details of faces and dress was simply
remarkable. As in childhood, she liked to talk, and when provoked or carried
away she would talk so fast and end up in such a rush that her listeners
would be dazed. In short, she was a wonderful sister, and now she was
getting married.
Of course, it is not hard to guess whom she was marrying, though of all
the young men who gathered that evening at the studio of the
photographer-artist Berenstein where she rented a room, Pyotr looked the
least like a bridegroom. He sat unperturbed and silent beside a sharp-nosed
boy, who was talking at him earnestly.
Altogether, it was an odd wedding. All the evening the guests argued
about a cow-whether it was right for the artist Filippov to be painting a
cow for the last two and a half years. He was said to have divided it into
little squares and was painting each square separately. No one took any
notice of the newlyweds. Sanya was kept very busy. There were not enough
plates to go round and the guests had to be fed in two shifts. She sat down
only for a moment, flushed and tired, in her new dress trimmed with lace,
which somehow reminded me of Ensk and Aunt Dasha.
"Someone sends you regards," she said to me. "Guess who."
I guessed at once, but answered calmly:
"I don't know."
"Katya."
"Really? Thanks."
Sanya looked at me critically. Her face even paled slightly with
annoyance. She realised, of course, that I was pretending.
"You like to fancy yourself a Childe Harold! Now don't you dare tell me
a lie on my wedding-day. I'll write to her and say you kept asking me for
this letter all day and I wouldn't give it to you."
"I'm not asking you for anything."
"In your heart you are," Sanya said with conviction. "Outwardly you're
pretending you don't care. I can let you have it if you like, only you
mustn't read the last page. You won't, will you?"
She thrust the letter into my hand and ran away. I read the letter, of
course, the last page three times, seeing that it was about me. Katya did
not send her regards to me at all, she just inquired how I was getting on
and when I was graduating. To look at, it was just an ordinary letter, but
really a very sad one. It had this passage in it, for instance: "It is now
four o'clock and already dark here, and suddenly I fell asleep and when I
woke up I couldn't make out what had happened to make me feel so good. It
was because I had dreamt of Ensk and of my aunts getting me dressed for the
journey."
I reread this passage several times, and recalled that memorable day,
the day of our departure from Ensk. I remembered the old ladies, her aunts,
shouting their last-minute admonitions as the train moved out, and how later
I had moved into Katya's carriage and we had started to go through our
baskets to see what the old folks had put in them. The little unshaven man
who shared our compartment was trying to guess what we were, and Katya stood
beside me in the corridor and I had looked at her, standing there, and
talked to her. How hard it was to believe, now that she was so far away,
that all this really happened...
CHAPTER THREE
/ WRITE TO DOCTOR IVAN IVANOVICH
I was angry with Katya, because I had wanted to say goodbye to her
before leaving Moscow and had written to her, but she had not answered and
had not come to meet me, though she knew I was going away for a long time
and that perhaps we should never see each other again. I did not write to
her any more, of course. No doubt Nikolai Antonich had succeeded in
convincing her that I had slandered him "with the most dreadful slander
which the human imagination is capable of, and that I was "a guttersnipe of
impure blood" who had caused the death of her mother.
Ah, well, the future was still ours! The memory of that scene made me
groan inwardly.
What could I do in Leningrad, working at the factory from eight till
five and then at the flying school from five till midnight?
In the winter, before flight training began, we studied in the
reading-room of the Aviation Museum. One day I asked the Custodian whether
he knew anything about Captain Tatarinov and whether there were any books in
the library about him or perhaps his own book Causes of the Failure of the
Greely Expedition.
I don't know why, but the Custodian showed a great interest in the
question.
"Captain Tatarinov?" he queried in surprise. "Oho! Why does that
interest you?"
To answer that question I should have had to tell him everything you
have read in this book. So I answered briefly:
"Oh, I just like reading about voyages of exploration." "Very little,
if anything, is known about this voyage," said the Custodian. "Come along,
let's go into the library."
Without him, of course, I would never have found anything, as it was
all in the form of newspaper articles. There was only one book, or rather a
booklet of some twenty-five pages entitled Woman at Sea. The Captain, I
discovered, had not only written about the Greely Expedition,
The booklet went out to prove that a woman could become a sailor and
quoted instances from the life of the fisherfolk on the shores of the Sea of
Azov, when women in dangerous situations had behaved as well as men and even
shown themselves braver. The Captain wrote that he visualised a time when
ships would carry "women engineers, women navigators and women captains".
As I read this booklet I recollected the Captain's notes on Nansen's
voyage and his report concerning the 1911 expedition to the North Pole, and
it struck me for the first time that he was not only a brave sailor, but a
broadminded man of extraordinarily keen intellect.
The writers of some of the articles evidently thought otherwise. In the
Peterburgskaya Gazeta, for instance, one journalist came out against the
expedition on the grounds that the Council of Ministers had "turned down
Captain Tatarinov's request for the necessary funds". Another newspaper
carried an interesting photograph-a beautiful white ship which reminded me
of the caravels in The Century of Discovery. It was the schooner St. Maria.
She looked slim and graceful, too slim and graceful to make the voyage from
St. Petersburg to Vladivostok along the shores of Siberia.
The next issue of the same newspaper carried a still more interesting
photograph-the crew of the schooner. True, it was very difficult to make
anything out on this photograph, but the arrangement of the group with the
Captain seated in the middle, arms folded over his chest, struck me as very
familiar. Where had I seen that photograph? Of course-at the Tatarinovs,
among a lot of other photos, which Katya had once shown me. I continued
thinking back. No, it was not at the Tatarinovs! It was at Doctor Ivan
Ivano-vich's -that's where I had seen it! And suddenly a very simple idea
occurred to me. At the same time, however, it was an extraordinary one,
which only Doctor Ivan Ivanovich could confirm. There and then I decided to
write to him. It was about seven years since he had left Moscow, but I was
quite certain that he was alive and well.
CHAPTER FOUR
I RECEIVE A REPLY
A month passed, then a second and a third. We had finished our
theoretical studies and moved out to the Corps Airfield.
It was a Big Day at the airfield-September 25th, 1930. We still
remember it by that name. It began as usual: 7 a.m. found us sitting by our
"crates". At nine o'clock the instructor arrived and things began to happen.
For one thing, he had brought with him an imposing-looking man in a Russian
blouse and gold-rimmed spectacles. This we soon discovered to be the
secretary of the District Party Committee. Secondly... But this "secondly"
needs going into greater
detail.
We made several flights that day with the instructor, and he kept
studying me all the time, and, contrary to custom, he did not swear at me.
"Well," he said at last. "Now fly solo."
I must have looked excited, because he regarded me for a moment with a
searching, kindly look. He checked the instruments to see whether they were
working properly, and fastened the straps in the first, now empty, cockpit.
"A routine round flight. Take off, start climbing. Don't turn until
you're a hundred and fifty metres off the ground. Bank, then come in to
land."
With a feeling as though it were not I but someone else doing it, I
taxied to the end of the runway and raised my hand for permission to take
off. The flight-controller waved his white flag for me to go. I opened the
throttle and sent the machine down the airfield.
I had long forgotten that childish sense of disappointment I had
experienced when, on the first taking to the air, I realised what flying
meant. In those days I had always imagined that I would fly like a bird,
whereas here I was sitting in an armchair just as if I were on the grornd. 1
sat in the armchair and I had no time to think either of the earth or the
sky. It was not until my tenth or eleventh solo flight that I noticed that
the earth below me was patterned like a map and that we lived in a very
precise geometrical world. I liked the shadows of the clouds scattered here
and there on the ground, and altogether it dawned on me that the world was
very beautiful.
And so this was my first solo flight. The instructor's cockpit is
empty. The first turn. The cockpit is empty and the machine becomes
airborne. A second turn. I am flying quite alone, with a wonderful sensation
of complete freedom. A third turn. Time to land now. Fourth turn. Attention!
I cut off the engine. The ground gets closer and closer. There it is, right
under the machine. The landing run. The touch-down. It must have been a
decent performance, seeing that even our grumpy instructor nodded approval,
while Misha Golomb, behind his back, gave me the thumbs-up sign.
"Sanya, you're a topnotcher," he said, when we sat down on a grassy
bank to have a smoke. "Honest, you are. By the way, there's a letter for
you. I was at the Aviation Museum today and the doorman said: 'One for
Grigoriev. Maybe you'll give it to him?'"
And he held out a letter to me. It was from Doctor Ivan Ivanovich.
"Dear Sanya, I am very glad to hear you are well. I am looking forward
to welcoming you with your plane, as we have to use dogs here all the time
for travelling. Now about the photograph. It was given to me by the
navigating officer of the St. Maria, Ivan Klimov. He was brought to
Archangel in 1914 with frostbitten feet and died in the hospital from
blood-poisoning. He left a couple of notebooks and some letters-quite a lot
of them, round about twenty, I believe. This, of course, was the mail, which
he had brought with him from the ship, though he may have written some of
the letters himself during his journey-he was picked up somewhere by
Lieutenant Sedov's expedition. When he died the hospital posted these
letters to their respective addresses, but the notebooks and photographs
remained with me. As you are acquainted with Captain Tatarinov's family and
are determined 'to present a correct picture of his life and death', you
will naturally be interested to know about these notebooks. They are
ordinary school copybooks and the writing in them, done in pencil, is
unfortunately quite illegible. I tried several times to read them, but had
to give it up. This is about all I know. This happened at the end of 1914
when the war had just started and nobody was interested in Captain
Tatarinov's expedition. These notebooks and photographs are still in my
possession and you can read them if you have the patience when you come, or
rather fly out here. My address is: 24 Kirov Street, Zapolarie, Arctic
Circle.
"I expect more letters from my interesting patient. Your doctor, I.
Pavlov."
Just as I had thought! That photo had been left by the navigating
officer. The doctor has seen the man with his own eyes. The very same man
who had written: "I remain your obedient servant, I. Klimov, Navigating
Officer." The very same man who had fascinated me for life with the
glamorous words "latitude", "schooner", "expedition", "the From" and the
extraordinary politeness of his "I hasten to inform you" and "I hope to see
you soon".
I decided that as soon as I left school I would go to Zapolarie and
read his notebooks. The doctor had given it up, but he wouldn't have done so
if he had had the hope of finding in them as much as a single word to prove
that he had been right, if somebody had spat in his face, if Katya had
thought that he had killed her mother...
CHAPTER FIVE
THREE YEARS
Youth does not end in a single day; you do not mark that day off in the
calendar: "Today my youth has ended." It passes imperceptibly, and it is
gone before you know it.
From Leningrad they sent me to Balashov. After graduating from the
flying school I started studying at another-this time under a real
instructor and on a real machine.
I do not recall any period in my life when I worked so diligently.
"Do you know how you fly?" our School Superintendent had said to me
back in Leningrad. "Like an old tub. For the North you have to be first
rate."
I learnt night-flying, when you get into the dark the moment you take
off, and while you are climbing you feel all the time as if you are making
your way gropingly through a dark corridor. I learnt to fly blind, when
everything around you is wrapped in a white mist and you seem to be flying
through millions of years into a different geological epoch; as if you are
being borne on and on in a Time-Machine instead of an aeroplane.
I learnt that an airman has to know the properties of the air, all its
ways and whims, just as a good sailor knows the ways of the sea.
Those were the years when the Arctic, until then regarded as a remote
and useless icy wilderness, had drawn closer to us and when the first great
air jumps were attracting the whole country's attention. Every day articles
about Polar expeditions by sea and air appeared in the newspapers and I read
them with a thrill. I was longing for the North with all my heart.
Then, one day, when I was about to take one of the most difficult
examination flights and was already seated in the cockpit, I saw a newspaper
in the hands of my instructor. It had something in it which made me take off
my helmet and goggles and climb out of the plane.
"Warm greetings and congratulations to the members of the expedition
which has successfully solved the problem of navigating the Arctic Ocean"
was printed in big letters right across the front page.
Paying no heed to what the astonished instructor was saying to me, I
looked at the page again, trying to take it all in at a glance. "Great
Northern Sea Route Opened", one article was headed. "The Sibiryakov in the
Bering Strait" ran another. "Salute to the Victors" said a third. This was
the news of the historic expedition of the Sibiryakov, which for the first
time in history had navigated the Northern Sea Route in a single season-the
route which Captain Tatarinov had attempted in the schooner St. Maria.
"What's the matter with you? Are you ill?"
"No, I'm all right."
"Altitude one thousand two hundred metres. Two sharp banks one way,
then two the other. Four upward spins."
"Okay!"
I was so excited that I was almost on the point of asking permission to
put off the flight.
All that day I thought of Katya, of poor Maria Vasilievna, and of the
Captain, whose life had become so surprisingly interwoven with my own. But
this time I was thinking of them in a different way and my grievances
appeared to me now in a different, calmer light. Of course, I had not
forgotten anything. I had not forgotten my last talk with Maria Vasilievna,
in which every word of hers had had a secret meaning-her farewell to her
youth and to life. itself. I had not forgotten how I had sat the next day in
the waiting-room together with the old lady, and the door had opened
revealing something white with a dark head and a bare arm dangling from a
couch. I had not yet forgotten how Katya had turned away form me at the
funeral, nor had I forgotten my dreams of meeting her in a few years' time
and tossing to her the proofs showing that I had been right. I had not
forgotten how Nikolai Antonich had spat in my face.
But all this suddenly presented itself to me like a play in which the
chief character is offstage and appears only in the last act, and until then
he is merely talked about. They all talked about a man whose portrait hangs
on the wall-the portrait of a naval officer with a broad forehead, a square
jaw and deep-set eyes. Yes, he was the chief character in this play. He was
a great explorer, killed by non-recognition and his history had a
significance far beyond the bounds of personal affairs and family
relationships. The Great Northern Sea Route had been opened-that was his
history. Through navigation of the Arctic Ocean in a single season-thai had
been his idea. The men who had solved the problem which had confronted
mankind for four hundred years were his men. He could talk with them as
equals.
What, compared with this, were my own dreams, hopes and desires! What
did I want? Why did I become an airman? Why was I so keen on going to the
North?
And now, as in my imaginary play, everything clicked into place and
quite simple ideas came into my head concerning my future and my job.
I was keen on the North and on my profession as a polar airman because
it was a profession which demanded from me endurance, courage and love for
my country and my job.
Who knows but that I, too, one day may be named among those men who
could have talked as equals with Captain Tatarinov?
A month before I finished the Balashov school I put in an application
to be sent to the North. But the school would not let me go.
I was kept on as instructor and spent another whole year at Balashov. I
would hardly call myself a good instructor. Of course, I could teach a man
to fly without experiencing any desire to swear at him every minute. I
understood my pupils. It was quite clear to me, for instance, why, on coming
out of the plane, one man hastened to light up, while another wore an air of
studied jollity. I was not a teacher by vocation and found it boring to have
to explain a thousand times to others things I had learnt long ago.
In August 1933 I got leave and went to Moscow. My travelling warrant
was made out for Ensk via Leningrad and people were expecting me in both
these places. Nevertheless I decided to stop over in Moscow, where no one
was expecting me.
Of course, I had no intention of phoning Katya, all the more as I had
received only one greeting from her in all these three years-through
Sanya-and everything was finished and long forgotten. So completely finished
and forgotten that I even decided I would ring her up and had prepared for
the occasion an opening phrase in a polite impersonal tone. But somehow,
when I lifted the receiver in my room at the hotel, my hand began to shake
and I found myself asking for another number instead-that of Korablev.
He was out of town, on his holiday, and the woman who answered the
phone said that he would not be back until the beginning of the school year.
Valya, too, was out of town. I was politely informed that lecturer
Zhukov was in the Far North and would be away for six months.
There was no one else I could phone in Moscow, unless it was some
secretary or other member of the staff of the Civil Aviation Board. But I
had no use for secretaries. I picked up the receiver and gave the number.
Nina Kapitonovna answered the phone-I recognised her kind firrrf voice
at once.
"May I speak to Katya?"
"Katya?" she queried in surprise. "She's not here."
"Not at home?"
"Not at home and not in town. Who's that speaking?"
"Grigoriev," I said. "Could you give me her address?"
Nina Kapitonovna was silent awhile. Obviously, she hadn't recognised
me. The world was full of Grigorievs.
"She's doing field work. Her address is: Geological Party of Moscow
University, Troitsk."
I thanked her and rang off.
I did not stay long in Moscow. They received me very politely at the
offices of the Northern Sea Route Administration and the Civil Aviation
Board. My being sent to the North was out of the question, I was told, until
the Balashov School released me.
I did not succeed in getting an assignment to the North until eighteen
months later, and that quite by chance. In Leningrad I had made the
acquaintance of an old Arctic pilot who wanted to return to Central Russia.
He was getting too old to fly under the arduous conditions of the North. We
made an exchange, he taking my place at the school and I getting an
assignment as second pilot on one of the Far North air roots.
CHAPTER SIX
I MEET THE DOCTOR
The house was not difficult to find, as the street consisted of a
single house, all the rest existing only in the imagination of the builders
of Zapolarie.
It was getting dark when I knocked on the doctor's door. The windows
lit up and a shadow moved slowly across the blind. No one opened the door,
and after waiting for a while, I quietly opened it myself and stepped into a
clean spacious passage.
"Anybody at home?"
No one answered. A besom stood in the corner and I cleaned the snow off
my high felt boots with it-the snow outside was knee-deep.
"Is there anybody here?"
A ginger kitten sprang out from under the hallstand, stared at me in
fright and fled. Then the doctor appeared in the doorway.
Medically I suppose it would sound improbable, but the fact of the
matter was that in all those years the doctor had not only not aged, but
even managed to look younger. He more than ever now resembled that lanky,
jolly, bearded doctor who had dropped down on me and my sister in the
village that memorable winter.
"Do you want to see me?"
"Yes, Doctor, I'd like you to see a patient," I said quickly. "An
interesting case of muteness without deafness. The man can hear everything
but can't say 'mummy'."
The doctor slowly pushed his glasses up on his forehead.
"I beg your pardon..."
"I said an interesting case," I went on gravely. "The man can pronounce
enly six words: hen, saddle, box, snow, drink, Abraham. Patient G., case
record described in a journal."
The doctor came up to me as if he were going to examine my tongue and
ears, but he simply said: "Sanya!"
We embraced.
"So you've flown in after all!"
"Yes, I flew."
He put his arms round my shoulder and led me into the dining-room. A
boy of about twelve was standing there who looked very much like the doctor.
He gave me his hand and introduced himself: "Volodya."
"Yes, Doctor, I'd like you to see a patient," I said quickly. "An
interesting case of muteness without deafness. The man can hear everything
but can't say 'mummy'."
The doctor slowly pushed his glasses up on his forehead.
"I beg your pardon..."
"I said an interesting case," I went on gravely. "The man can pronounce
only six words: hen, saddle, box, snow, drink, Abraham. Patient G., case
record described in a journal."
The doctor came up to me as if he were going to examine my tongue and
ears, but he simply said: "Sanya!"
We embraced.
"So you've flown in after all!"
"Yes, I Hew."
He put his arms round my shoulder and led me into the dining-room. A
boy of about twelve was standing there who looked very much like the doctor.
He gave me his hand and introduced himself:
"Volodya."
It was lighter here than in the passage, and the doctor looked me over
again. I suspect he was strongly tempted to have a peek in my ear.
While we were sitting drinking tea the doctor's wife, Anna Ste-panovna,
came in. She was a tall, portly woman, who, in her anorak and reindeer-skin
high boots, looked like some Northern god. She was just as big even when she
took off her anorak and boots, and the tall doctor did not look so tall
beside her. She had quite a young face and altogether she went very well
with this clean wooden house with its yellow floor boards and country-style
floor runners. There was something of old Russia about her, as there was of
the town itself, though it was an entirely new town built only five or six
years before. Afterwards I learned that she was a Pomor. (Pomor-a native of
the White Sea maritime ÐÓÕÐ - Tr.)
"Ivan Ivanovich," I said, when we had eaten everything on the table and
started on the delicious home-made cloudberry wine, "do you remember those
letters we wrote to each other when I was in Leningrad?"
"I do."
"You wrote me a very interesting letter about that navigating officer,"
I went on, "and I'd like to know whether you've kept those notebooks of
his."
"Yes, I have them."
"Good. Now let me tell you something. It's a fairly long story, but I'm
going to tell it nevertheless. As you know, it was you who once taught me to
speak. So now you have only yourself to blame."
And I told him everything, beginning with the letters which Aunt Dasha
used to read out to me. About Katya I said only a few words by way of
information. But at this point in my story the doctor, for some reason,
smiled, then quickly assumed a look of gravity.
"He was a very tired man, that navigator," he said. "He really died
from fatigue, not gangrene. He had spent too much strength fighting death
and hadn't enough left to live with. That was the impression he gave."
"You talked to him?"
"Yes."
"What about?"
"I think it was about some town down South," the doctor said. "Sukhumi,
or maybe Baku. It was an obsession with him. Everyone was talking about the
war in those days-it had just started, but he only talked about Sukhumi, how
good it was down there, how warm. I suppose he came from there."
"Ivan Ivanovich, have you got his diaries here? In this house?"
"Yes."
"Let me see them."
These diaries had been on my mind for so long that I had begun to see
them as thick books bound in black cloth. But the doctor went out and
reappeared a few minutes later with two thin copybooks such as children use
in school. I could hardly suppress my excitement as I opened one of them at
random. "To Navigator Iv. Dm. Klimov.
"I order you and all those listed below, in accordance with your wishes
and theirs, to leave the ship with the aim of reaching inhabited land..."
"Why, Doctor, he had an excellent hand! I can read it quite easily."
"It's my excellent hand you're reading," the doctor said. "I have written
out the parts I have been able to decipher on separate sheets. The rest is
like this-look."
Saying which, he opened the copybook at the first page. I had seen some
poor handwriting in my day, Valya Zhukov's, for instance; he used to write
in such a way that the teachers for a long time thought he was doing it to
annoy them. But handwriting such as this I had never seen in my life. It was
like so many fishhooks the size of pinheads scattered higgledy-piggledy all
over the page. The first few pages were smeared with some kind of grease and
the pencil marks were barely visible on the yellow parchment-like paper.
Further on came a hodgepodge of unfinished words, then a rough-drawn map,
followed by another jumble of words, which no graphologist could have made
head or tail of.
"All right," I said, closing the notebook. "I'll read this." The doctor
looked at me with admiration. "I wish you success," he said earnestly.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I READ THE DIARIES
I would not call myself an impatient person. But I think that only a
genius of patience could have waded through those diaries. Obviously, they
had been written during halts, by the light of smoky wicks burning seal oil,
in forty-five degrees of frost, with a frozen and tired hand. In some places
the hand could be seen to have slipped, tracing a long, drooping,
meaningless line.
But I had to read them!
Again and again I tackled this arduous job. Every night-and on
flight-free days from early morning-I sat down at the table with a
magnifying glass, engaged in the slow, painful task of transforming the
fish-hooks into human words-now words of despair, now of hope. At first I
went straight through, just sat down and read. And then I hit on a bright
idea. I started to read whole pages at a time instead of trying to decipher
the separate words.
In going through the diaries I noticed that some of the pages were
written much more legibly than others-the order, for example, which the
doctor had copied out. I copied from these passages all the letters from a
to z and compiled a "Navigator's ABC" in which I reproduced exactly all the
variants of his handwriting. With the aid of this alphabet the work
proceeded much more rapidly. Very often a correct guess of one or two
letters -made with the help of this alphabet would make all the rest clear.
And so, day after day, I deciphered these diaries.
The Diaries of Navigating Officer Ivan Klimov
Wednesday, May 27. Started out late and did 4 versts in 6 hours. Today
is a red-letter day for us. We reckon that we have covered a distance of 100
versts from the ship. Of course, this is not much for a month's trek, but
the going has been much harder than we had expected. We celebrated the
occasion by cooking a soup from dried bilberries seasoned with two tins of
condensed milk.
Friday, May 29. If we do reach the shore, may those men-1 do not want
even to name them-remember May 29th, the day of their deliverance from
death, and mark it every year. But though the men were saved, they lost a
double-barrelled gun and the stove on which we did our cooking. As a result
we had to eat raw meat yesterday and drink cold water diluted with milk. May
God help me to reach the shore safely with this bunch ofgaw-gaws!
Sunday, May 31. Here is the official document authorising me to leave
with part of the crew:
"To Navigating Officer Ivan Klimov.
"I hereby order you and all those listed below, in accordance with your
wishes and theirs, to leave the ship with the aim of reaching inhabited
land, and to do this on the 10th inst., setting out across the ice on foot
and taking with you sledges and kayaks as well as provisions for two months.
On leaving this ship you are to head south until you sight land; on sighting
which you are to act according to circumstances, but preferably try to make
the British Channel between the islands of Franz-Josef Land, following it,
as being best known, down to Cape Flora where you are likely to find food
and' shelter. After that, time and circumstances permitting, you are to head
for Spitsbergen. On reaching Spitsbergen you will be confronted with the
difficult task of finding people there, as we do not know where they are to
be located, but hope that you will be able to find people in the southern
part of the island or at least some fishing vessel off the coast. You are to
be accompanied by thirteen men of the crew, who have expressed their wish to
go with you. Captain of the schooner St. Maria
Ivan Tatarinov" "April 10,1914 Arctic Ocean."
God knows how hard it was for me to go, leaving him in such a
difficult, almost hopeless plight.
Tuesday, June 2. On board ship Engineer Komev had improvised four pairs
of spectacles for us against the snow glare, the glasses of which were made
from gin bottles. The leading sledges are drawn by the lucky ones who can
see, while the "blinded" ones trail in their wake with closed eyes, which
they open from time to time to peer at the track. The pitiless glare hurts
the eyes. Here is a picture of our progress, which I shall never forget: we
are trudging along with measured step, shoulders hunched forward, the
harness straps tight round our chests, while we hold on to the side of the
kayak with one hand. We walk with eyes tightly closed. Each carries a
ski-pole in his right hand which, with mechanical precision, he throws
forward, draws back to the right and slowly trails behind him. How
monotonously and distinctly the snow crunches under the disk of the
ski-pole. In spite of oneself one listens to this crunching, which seems to
be repeating clearly: "Long, long way." We walk as though in a trance,
mechanically pushing our feet forward and throwing our weight against the
straps. Today I fancied that I was walking along a quayside on a hot
summer's day, in the shade of some tall houses. These houses were eastern
fruit stores, their doors were wide open and the aromatic, spicy odour of
fresh and dried fru