y: "Misha, don't you dare!"
He didn't do it, just clenched his teeth, and such a look of despair
came into his face that my heart was wrung despite myself.
Not that I felt sorry for him. I had a sort of guilty feeling that I
was making him suffer in that dumb way. I would have felt better if he had
started cursing me. But he just stood there saying nothing.
"Misha," I began again with some agitation. "Don't you see those papers
are of no use to you any more. You can't change anything, and I feel ashamed
that I know practically nothing about my father at a time when all the
newspapers are writing about him. I need them-1 and nobody else."
I don't know what he imagined when I uttered the words "I and nobody
else", but an ugly look suddenly came into his eyes and he threw his head up
and took a turn about the room. He was thinking of Sanya.
"I won't give you anything!" he said brusquely.
"Yes you will! If you don't it will mean it was all lies-everything
that you wrote to me."
Suddenly he went out and I was left alone. It was very quiet. I could
hear children's voices from the street and once or twice the tentative hoot
of a motor car. It was disturbing, his going out and not coming back for so
long. What if he did do something to himself? My heart went cold and I
stepped out into the corridor, listening. Not a sound except that of water
running somewhere.
"Misha!"
The door of the bathroom was ajar. I looked in and saw him bending over
the bath. For a moment I couldn't see what he was doing-it was dark in
there, for he had not switched the light on.
"I shan't be long," he said clearly, without turning round.
He stood bent up almost double, holding his head under the tap. The
water was pouring over his face and shoulders, and his new suit was
drenched.
"What are you doing? Are you crazy!"
"Go along, I'll soon be back," he repeated gruffly.
A few minutes later he did come back-collarless, red-eyed- bringing
four ordinary blue scrap-books.
"There they are," he said. "I have no other papers. Take them."
This may have been another lie for all I knew, because, on opening one
of the books at random, I found that it contained some sort of printed
matter, like a page torn out of a book, but you couldn't talk to him any
more, and so I merely thanked him very politely.
"Thanks, Misha."
And went home.
July 12. Night. There they lie in front of me, four thick, blue
scrap-books, old ones, that is, from before the revolution because they all
have on them the trademark "Friedrich Kahn". The first page of the first
book bears the inscription in ornamental lettering with shading to each
letter: "Whereof I have been witness in real life" and the date-"1916.
Memoirs." Further on there are simply cuttings from old newspapers, some of
which I have never heard of, such as: The Stock Exchange Gazette,
Zemshchina, Gazeta-Kopeika. The cuttings were pasted in lengthways in
columns, but in some places also crosswise, for instance this one:
"Tatarinov's expedition. Buy postcards: (1) Prayer before sailing; (2) The
St. Maria in the roadsteads."
When I came home I quickly looked through each book from cover to
cover. There were no "papers" here, as far as I understood this word from my
conversation with Korablev, only articles and news items concerning the
expedition from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok along the coast of Siberia.
What sort of articles were they? I started to read them and could not
tear myself away. The whole of life in the old days was unfolded before me
and I read on with a bitter sense of irreparable doom and resentment.
Irreparable because the schooner St. Maria was doomed before she set
sail-that is what I gathered from these articles. And resentment because I
now learnt how treacherously my father had been deceived, and how badly his
trustful and guileless nature had let him down.
This was how one "eye-witness" described the sailing of the St. Maria:
"The masts of the schooner, bound on her distant voyage are poorly
flagged. The hour for setting sail draws near. The last 'prayer for seamen
and seafarers', the last farewell speeches. Slowly the St. Maria gets under
way. The shore recedes farther and farther until houses and people merge in
a single colourful strip. A solemn moment! The last link with land and home
is severed. But we feel sad and ashamed at this poor send-off, at these
indifferent faces which register merely curiosity. Evening draws in. The St.
Maria stops in the mouth of the Dvina. The people who are seeing her off
drink a glass of champagne to the success of the expedition. A last
handshake, a last embrace, then back to town aboard the waiting Lebedin, the
women standing by the rail of the little steamboat, waving and waving,
brushing the tears away to wave again. We can still hear the nervous barking
of the dogs aboard the receding schooner. She grows smaller and smaller
until nothing but a dot can be seen on the darkening horizon. What lies in
store for you, brave men?"
Now the schooner was off on her long voyage and the lighthouse at
Archangel sent her its farewell signal: "Happy sailing and success!"-but
ashore, what was happening ashore, my God! What sordid squabbling among the
ship chandlers who had serviced the schooner, what lawsuits and
auctions-some of the supplies and victuals had had to be left behind and
were all sold by auction. And the accusations-what didn't they accuse my
father of! Within a week of the schooner setting sail he was accused of
having failed to insure either himself or his men; of having sailed three
weeks later than the conditions of Arctic navigation allowed; of having gone
off without a wireless man. He was accused of thoughtlessness in selecting
his crew, among whom "there was not a single man who could handle a sail".
They made sneering remarks about "this preposterous adventure, which
reflected, as in a drop of water, this present-day, pretentious, muddled
life of ours."
Within a few days of the St. Maria's sailing a violent storm broke out
in the Kara Sea and immediately rumours spread that the expedition had been
shipwrecked off the coast of Novaya Zemlya. "Who is to blame?" "The Fate of
the St. Maria", "Where is Tatarinov?"-the first chilling impressions of my
childhood came back to me as I read these articles. Mother came quickly into
my little room at Ensk with a newspaper in her hand. She was wearing that
lovely black rustling dress. She did not see me, though I spoke to her, and
I jumped out of bed and ran up to her in my bare feet and nightgown. The
floor was cold, but she did not tell me to go back to bed nor did she pick
me up from the floor. She just stood by the window with the newspaper in her
hand. I tried to reach up to the window, too, but all I could see was our
garden strewn with wet maple leaves, and wet paths and puddles in which the
raindrops were still falling. "Mummy, what are you looking at?" She was
silent. I asked again. I wanted her to take me in her arms, because her
continued silence was frightening me. "Mummy!" I began to cry, and that made
her turn round and bend down to pick me up, but something was the matter
with her-she sat down on the floor, then lay down and kept quite still,
stretched out on the floor in her lovely black, rustling dress. And all of a
sudden wild, unreasoning terror seized me and I started to scream. I
screamed madly and banged at something with hands and feet. Then I heard
Mother's frightened voice, but I went on screaming, unable to stop myself.
Afterwards, back in bed I heard Grandma talking to Mother, and Mother
saying: "I frightened her."
I pretended to be asleep and did not say anything, because after all
she was Mummy and because she was talking and crying in her ususal voice.
Only now, on reading these articles, did I realise what made her act
that way.
The rumours proved to be false, however, and from Yugorsky Shar Captain
Tatarinov telegraphed a message of "hearty greetings and best wishes to all
who had made donations to the expedition and to all its wellwishers".
This message was printed in facsimile under an unfamiliar portrait of
Father in naval uniform-regulation jacket with white shoulder-straps-an
elegant officer with an old-fashioned moustache turned up at the ends.
In sending "best wishes to those who had made donations" he was hoping
that their contributions would enable the Committee for the Exploration of
Russia's Arctic Territories to support the families of the crew. He wrote
about this in his dispatch sent through the Yugorsky Shar Dispatch Service,
which was published in the newspaper Novoye Vremya:
"I am confident that the Committee will not leave to the mercy of fate
the families of those who have dedicated their lives to the common national
interests."
Vain hopes! In the issue of the same newspaper for June 27, I read a
report of the Committee's meeting: "According to N. A. Tatarinov, the
Committee's Secretary, the recent collection has yielded negligible results.
Neither have many other methods, such as the organisation of entertainments,
etc., produced the hoped-for profits. Therefore, the Committee finds itself
unable to render to the families of the crew the proposed assistance of
1,000 rubles."
This phrase about "donations from wellwishers" sounded so queer and
grotesque to me. Maybe Mother and I, too, had been living like beggars on
this almsgiving?
But what surprises me most in these old newspapers is the way they all
declared with one voice, that the schooner St. Maria was doomed. Some
figured out, pencil in hand, that she would scarcely make Novaya Zemlya.
Others believed she would be trapped in the first icefield and would perish
somewhat later, after passing Franz Josef Land as a "captive of the Arctic
Sea".
That she would fail to navigate the Northern Sea Route, either in one,
two or three seasons, nobody had any doubt.
The only exception was a poet who published some verses "To I. L.
Tatarinov" in an Archangel newspaper. He was of a different mind:
He is well! God watches over him! The man's astounding energy and risk
Have unlocked the Arctic's frozen disk. The icefield crumbles and retreats
before him.
I had known a good deal before reading these clippings. In the letter
which Sanya had found at Ensk, Father wrote that "most of the sixty dogs had
had to be shot at Novaya Zemlya". Vyshimirsky's statement which Sanya had
taken down spoke about rotten clothing and damaged chocolate. In the
newspaper Arkhangelsk I read the letter of a merchant named E. V. Demidov,
who stated that "the curing of meat and the preparation of ready-made
clothes were not my line of business" and that "in the present instant I
acted as an agent. Moreover, as I had a big business of my own to attend to,
I naturally could not examine every piece of meat and every fish that went
into the barrel. Besides, Captain Tatarinov kept wiring: 'Stop purchases, no
money'. And so on. Why start fitting out an expedition when you have no
money? If there was anything faulty in such hurried preparations, then those
to blame for it should be sought not among the local businessmen, but higher
up..."
What I didn't know-nor Sanya either, and I can't understand why Mother
never mentioned it-was that "three days before St. Maria set sail it was
discovered that in the forepeak, below the second deck and well below the
waterline, on both sides of the collision-bulkhead there were gashes right
through the ribs and shell to the outer sheathing, which made the ship
unseaworthy. These holes that bore the telltale traces of an axe and
saw,were photographed and measured, the largest being 12 inches wide and 2
ft. 4 inches long, the others a bit smaller. How these holes came to be
there is a mystery, one is reminded of the fact that in the event of
shipwreck the new owner of the vessel would collect the insurance money."
Of course, no further confirmation is needed that Father is dead and
will never come back. His doom had been sealed. He had been sent to his
death.
July 18, 1935. Last night, a little after eleven, someone rang at the
door. Kiren's mother said it must be the yardman, who had Come to collect
the garbage. I ran, pail in hand, to open the door. It wasn't the yardman.
It was Romashov. He stepped back quickly when I opened the door and took off
his hat.
"It's an urgent matter, and concerns you, that's why I have decided to
call, even though it's so late."
He uttered this very gravely, and I believed at once that the matter
was urgent and concerned me. I believed because he was so perfectly calm.
"Please come in."
We stood facing each other-he with his hat in his hand, I with my
slop-pail. Then I recalled myself and put the pail down in a corner.
"I'm afraid it's not quite convenient," he said politely. "You have
visitors, I believe?"
"No."
"Can't we talk out here, on the landing? Or go down to the boulevard. I
have something to tell you-"
"Just a moment," I said quickly.
Kiren's mother was calling me. I closed the door and went back.
"Who is it?"
"I'll be back in a minute, Alexandra Dmitrievna," I said hastily. "Or,
I tell you what-let Valya come down for me in fifteen minutes' time. I'll be
on the boulevard."
She said something, but I did not stop to listen.
It was a cool evening and I had come out as I was. Going downstairs,
Romashov said: "You'll catch a cold." He probably wanted to offer me his
overcoat-he had even taken it off and was carrying it on his arm, and
afterwards, when we sat down, he placed it on the seat-but he could not
bring himself to do it. I didn't feel cold, though. I was excited, wondering
what his visit could mean.
The boulevard was quiet and deserted.
"Katya, what I wanted to tell you is this," he began cautiously. "I
know how important it is for you that the expedition should take place. For
you and for-"
He faltered, then went on easily:
"And for Sanya. I don't think that it matters really, I mean that it
can change anything, for your uncle, say, who is scared at the prospect. But
this concerns you and so it can't be a matter of indifference to me."
He said this very simply.
"I have come to warn you."
"Of what?"
"That the expedition won't take place."
"It isn't true! C. telephoned me."
"They have just decided that it's not worth while," Romashov countered
calmly.
"Who has decided? And how do you know?"
He turned away, then faced me, smiling.
"I don't know how to tell you, really. You'll think me a cad again."
"Just as you like."
I was afraid he would get up and go away-he was so calm and
self-assured and so unlike the Romashov I had known. But he did not go away.
"Nikolai Antonich told me that the Deputy Chief of the N.S.R.
Administration reported on the plan for the expedition and came out against
it himself. He doesn't think it's the business of the N.S.R.A. to carry out
searches for the lost captains who disappeared over twenty years ago. If you
ask me, though-" Romashov hesitated. He must have felt hot, because he took
his hat off and held it on his knee. "It's not his own opinion."
"Whose opinion is it, then?"
"Nikolai Antonich's," Romashov came back quickly. "He's acquainted with
the Deputy Chief, who considers him a great expert on the history of the
Arctic. For that matter, who else could they consult concerning the search
for Captain Tatarinov if not Nikolai Antonich? It was he who fitted out the
expedition and afterwards wrote about it. He's a member of the Geographical
Society, and a highly respected one at that."
I was so upset that for the moment I did not ask myself why Nikolai
Antonich should be so interested in preventing a search, or what had made
Romashov give him away. I felt aggrieved not only for my father's sake, but
for Sanya's as well.
"What's his name?"
"Whose?"
"That man who says it's not worth while making a search for lost
captains."
Romashov gave the name.
"I'm not going to have this out with Nikolai Antonich, of course," I
went on with an effort at restraint, feeling that my nostrils were flaring.
"We know where we stand, he and I. But I'll have something to say about him
at the N.S.R.A. Sanya had no time to square accounts with him, or else he
pitied him-I don't know. But are you sure about this?" I suddenly asked,
glancing at Romashov and thinking-why, this is the man who loves me, and
whose only thought is how to bring about the ruin of Sanya!
"Why should I tell a lie?" Romashov said impassively. "You'll hear
about it. They'll tell you the same thing. Of course, you have to go there
and clear everything up. But ... er ... don't say who told you. On second
thoughts, tell them-I don't care," he added haughtily. "Only it may get
round to Nikolai Antonich and I won't be able to deceive him any more, the
way I've done today."
He had betrayed Nikolai Antonich for my sake-that's what he meant. He
looked at me and waited.
"I did not ask you to deceive anybody, though there's nothing to be
ashamed of in deciding (I nearly said: "for the firs^ time in your life") to
act honourably and to help me. I don't know what your present attitude is
towards Nikolai Antonich."
"I despise him."
"Well, that's your affair." I rose. "Anyway, thank you Misha. And
goodbye."
August 5, 1935. They were not at all sure at the N.S.R.A. that the
search should be entrusted to Sanya. He was rather young, and though he had
a long record of air service, he had comparatively little experience of work
in the Arctic. He had the reputation of being a good, disciplined pilot, but
could he cope with such a difficult undertaking, which called for
considerable organising ability? By the way, what sort of person was he?
Wasn't there something about him in some journal, accusing him of slandering
somebody-N. A. Tatarinov, if I'm not mistaken, the well-known expert on the
Arctic and the captain's cousin?
I demanded that the editors of the journal publish a disclaimer, and
argued that the organisation of a search party of six men was not such a
difficult thing. I insisted on the search for Captain Tatarinov being
entrusted to the person who had nursed that idea ever since a child. I don't
know what will come of it. But somehow I feel certain that the expedition
will take place despite everything, and, what's more, that I will go to
Severnaya Zemlya together with Sanya. I wrote about this to the Chief of the
N.S.R.A. offering my services in the capacity of geologist. Today an answer
has arrived from the Personnel Department. Not exactly the answer I had
hoped for, though. I was offered a job at one of the Arctic stations, at my
own choice, and requested to call at the head office to talk it over. Ah,
well, I'll have to start all over again, demanding, proving, insisting.
September 11, 1935. Today I went to see Grandma.
She comes to see me almost every evening. She comes in puffed up and
important and talks sedately with Kiren's mother. She doesn't like the idea
of me "living out" when "she has such a lovely room" at home. And she is
afraid of somebody called Dora Abramovna who had dropped in twice already
"to sniff things out".
"I'm getting old now," she said to me one day with tears in her eyes,
"but I've never lived so lonely as I do now."
But yesterday she didn't come, and this morning she phoned to say that
her heart was bothering her. When I asked her whether Nikolai Antonich was
at home she got angry.
"What a silly question," she said. "Where do you expect him to be?
Gadding about counting shacks, like you?"
Then she said he was out, and I quickly got ready and went over to see
her.
She was lying on the sofa, covered with her green old coat.
Laurel-water drops stood on a little table beside the sofa-the only medicine
she believed in-and when I asked her how she was, she dismissed my question
with a wave of the hand.
"One of those dumb dogs that can't bark," she snapped. "You can tell at
once she lived in a nunnery. Religious. 'Then why are you in service?' I say
to her. I gave her the sack."
She had dismissed the domestic help, and that was very bad, because she
was a good servant, even though she was religious. At one time Grandma had
been pleased that the woman had once been a nun.
"Grandma, what have you done!" I said. "Now you're ill and all alone.
I'll have to take you to my place now."
"You will do nothing of the kind! The idea!"
She flatly refused to undress and get into bed, and said that it wasn't
her heart at all, it was just that she hadn't cooked a meal the day before
and had eaten horse-radish with olive oil-it was the horseradish, it didn't
agree with her.
"If you don't go to bed at once, I'm going away."
"Hoity-toity!"
Nevertheless, she undressed, got into bed, groaning, and abruptly fell
asleep.
There was always a draught in Mother's room when you opened the window,
and so I opened the door in the corridor to air the room. Then I went into
my own room. How cheerless and bare it looked, the room I had lived in for
so many years! Yet it had been improved since my departure. The bed was
covered with Grandma's lace bedspread, the curtains were white as white and
even a little stiff with starch, everything was clean and tidy, and the
volume of the encyclopedia, which I must have taken down before I left,
remained open at the identical page. I was expected back here...
I thought I caught a glimpse of a figure hurrying down the corridor
when I came out of the room.
I couldn't imagine my sick grandmother running about the corridor in
her green velvet coat, but somebody had been running there, and in a green
coat, too. Yet it was Grandma, because, though I found her in bed when I
went back to her room, she looked as if she had just flopped into it and
hadn't had time to draw up the blanket.
It was very funny to see how hard she was pretending. She even blinked
sleepily to show that she had just come awake and that running down the
corridor was farthest from her thoughts. Obviously, she had been spying on
me to see whether I was homesick, hoping I would come back.
"Have you had the doctor, Grandma?" I asked, when she had finally
stopped rubbing her eyes and yawning loudly.
She hadn't. She didn't want any doctor.
"Nonsense! I'm going to call him at once."
But Grandma went up in the air at this and said that if I called the
doctor she would dress immediately and go off to Maria Nikitichna-the
neighbour.
So far not a word had been said about Nikolai Antonich. But when
Grandma put on a dead-pan expression, I knew it was coming.
"The whole house is going to pieces," she began with a sigh. "Your
deserting him has hit him badly! He's lost his grip on things, doesn't care
about anything. Doesn't care whether he eats or not."
"He" meant Nikolai Antonich.
"And he writes and writes-day and night," Grandma went on. "First thing
in the morning, soon as he's had his tea, he wraps my shawl round him and
sits down at Ms desk. 'This, Nina Kapitonovna, will be my lifework,' he
says. 'As to whether I'm guilty or not, my friends and enemies will now
judge for themselves.' And he's got so thin. Absent-minded, too," Grandma
communicated in a whisper. "The other day he sat at the table in his hat. I
think he's going mad."
At that moment the front door closed softly and someone came into the
hall. I looked at Grandma, who avoided my eyes, and I realised that it was
Nikolai Antonich.
"I must be going now. Grandma."
He came in, after a light tap on the door and without waiting for an
answer.
I turned round and nodded, pleased to find that I could do it with such
careless, even audacious ease.
"How are you, Katya?"
"Not bad, thank you."
Oddly enough, I saw him now just as a pale, ageing man with short arms
and stubby fingers, which he kept nervously twiddling and trying to tuck
away all the time, now inside his collar, now into his waistcoat pockets, as
if to hide them. He now resembled an old actor. I had known him once-ages
ago. But now the sight of his pallid face, his scraggy neck and the hands,
which shook so visibly when he stretched them out to pull up an armchair for
himself left me unmoved.
The first awkward minute passed with him asking me in a jocular tone
whether my map was right and I hadn't mixed up the Zimmerdag suite with the
Asha suite-an illusion to a mistake I had once made in my university
days-and I started to take my leave again.
"Goodbye, Grandma."
"I can go away," Nikolai Antonich said quietly.
He sat in an armchair, hunched up, regarding me steadily with a kindly
eye. That was how he looked sometimes, when we had had long talks
together-after Mother's death. But now that was merely a distant memory for
me.
"If you're in a hurry, we can talk some other time," he said.
"Honestly, Grandma, I have an appointment," I said to my grandmother,
who was holding me tightly by the sleeve.
"No you haven't. What d'you mean? He's your uncle."
"Come, come, Nina Kapitonovna," Nikolai Antonich interposed good-nature
dly. "What difference does it make whether I'm her uncle or not. Obviously,
you don't want to hear what I have to say, Katya?"
"I don't."
"Pig-headed, that's what she is!" Grandmother said vehemently.
I laughed.
"I cannot talk to you either about how painful your going away without
even saying goodbye was to me," Nikolai Antonich went on hurriedly in the
same simple kindly manner, "or about how you were both misled into believing
that poor sick old man, who had only recently been discharged from a mental
hospital."
He looked at me over the top of his glasses. A mental hospital! Another
lie. One lie more or less-I did not care now. The only thing that worried me
was the thought that this might affect Sanya in some disagreeable way.
"My God! The things that poor, muddled brain of his made up! That I had
ruined him by means of some bills of exchange, and that it was because of me
that the expedition had found itself so badly equipped-why, what do you
think? Because I wanted to destroy Ivan!"
Nikolai Antonich laughed heartily.
"Out of jealousy! My God! I loved yourmotherand out of jealousy I
wanted to destroy Ivan!"
He laughed again, then suddenly took off his glasses and began wiping
away the tears.
"Yes, I loved her," he muttered, weeping, "and. God knows, everything
could have been different. Even if I were guilty, I have had my punishment
from her. She punished me like I never thought I could be."
I listened to. him as in a dream, with a sense of having seen and heard
all this before-that flushed bald head with its sparse hairs, the same words
uttered with the same expression, and that unpleasant feeling which the
sight of a weeping old man rouses in you.
"Well?" Grandma demanded sternly.
"Grandma!" I said, thrilled at the anger that flared up in me, "after
all, I'm not a little girl any longer, and I can do as I please, I believe.
I don't want to live here any more-is that clear? I'm getting married. I'll
probably live in the Far North with my husband, who has nothing to do here
because he's an Arctic pilot. As for Nikolai Antonich, I've seen him crying
so many times, I'm fed up. All I can say is that if he had not been guilty
he would hardly have messed about with this affair all his life. He would
hardly bother to get the N.S.R.A. to drop the idea ofSanya's expedition."
By this time, I daresay, I was feeling a bit deflated, because Grandma
was looking at me in a frightened way, and, I believe, furtively crossing
herself. Nikolai Antonich's cheek was twitching. He said nothing,
"And leave me alone!" I flung out. "Leave me alone!"
November 19, 1935. The expedition has been approved! Professor V., the
well-known Arctic scientist, wrote an article in which he expressed the
conviction that, judging by the diaries of Navigator Klimov, "the materials
collected by the Tatarinov expedition, if found, could contribute to our
present knowledge of the Arctic".
This idea, even to me, sounded rather daring. Unexpectedly, though, it
received confirmation and it was this that tipped the scale in favour of
Sanya's plan. After studying the chart of the St. Maria's drift between
October 1912 and April 1914, Professor V. expressed the opinion that there
must be as yet undiscovered land at latitude 78°02'and longitude 64°. And
this hypothetical land, which V. had discovered without moving from his
study, was actually found during the 1935 navigation season. True, it wasn't
much of a place, just a small island lost amidst the creeping ice and
presenting a dismal picture, but, be that as it may, this meant one more
blank space filled in on the map of the Soviet Arctic, and this had been
done with the aid of the chart showing the drift of the St. Maria.
I don't know what other arguments, if any were needed to put Sanya's
plan through, but the fact remains that "a search party attached to an
expedition into the high latitudes for the study of Severnaya Zemlya" was
included in the plan for next year's navigation season. Sanya was to come to
Leningrad in the spring, and we arranged to meet there, in Leningrad, where
I had never been before.
May 4, 1936. What thoughts and fancies thronged in my mind yesterday
morning as my train drew into Leningrad, where, the next morning, that is
today. May 4th I was to meet Sanya! Though the carriage was a rattling,
creaking fair-it must have been an old one- I slept all night like a top,
and when I woke up, I started daydreaming. How good it was to lie and dream,
listening to the monotonous rumble of the wheels and the sleepy breathing of
my fellow passengers! I had a feeling that all my dreams would come true,
even that my father was alive and that we would find him and all come back
together. It was impossible of course. But there was such peace and serenity
in my heart that I could not help dwelling on the thought. In my heart, as
it were, I commanded that we find him-and now, there he stood, grey-headed
and erect, and he had to be made to go to sleep, otherwise he would go mad
with excitement and joy.
The men who shared the compartment with me were by this time out in the
corridor, smoking. I suppose they were waiting for me to get dressed and
come out, but I was still lying there, daydreaming.
We had arranged that Sanya's sister (whom I always called Sasha in my
letters to distinguish her from my Sanya) was to meet me at the railway
station-she, "or Pyotr, if I am unwell", she had written. She had several
times made passing mention of her indisposition, but her letters were so
cheerful, with little drawings in them, that I attached no importance to
these remarks. I had an inkling of what it was about, though. In one of her
letters Pyotr was depicted with a paint brush in one hand and an infant in
the other, the two of them being remarkably alike.
Everybody had their hats and coats on now, and my fellow travellers
helped to get my suitcase down from the rack. It was rather heavy, because I
had taken with me everything I possessed, even several interesting
speciments of rock. I was so excited. Leningrad! Suddenly, between the
passengers' heads, the platform came into view, and I began looking out for
the Skovorodnikovs. But the platform slid past and there was no sign of
them. Then I recollected with annoyance that I had not wired them the number
of my carriage.
A porter lugged my case out and we stood together on the platform until
everybody had walked past. The Skovorodnikovs were not there.
Sasha in one of her letters had described in detail, even giving a
sketch, how to get to their place in Karl Liebknecht Prospekt. But I got it
all mixed up and coming out into Nevsky Prospekt I asked a polite
Leningrader in a pince-nez: "Can you please tell me how to get to Nevsky
Prospekt?"
It was a disgraceful blunder, and I have never told a living soul about
it.
Then I got into a tram crush, and the only thing I noticed was that the
streets were rather empty compared with Moscow. So was the one I got off at
and down which I dragged my suitcase. And there was house No. 79.
"Berenstein, Photographic Artist". This was the place.
I was standing on the second floor landing, rubbing my fingers, which
were numb from carrying that accursed suitcase, when the front door banged
downstairs and a lanky figure in a mackintosh with his cap in his hand
dashed past me, taking the steps two at a time.
"Pyotr!" I cried.
He was worlds away at the moment from any thought of me, for he
stopped, glanced at me, and, finding nothing of interest in me, made a
movement to run on. Some dim recollection, however, made him pause.
"Don't you recognise me?"
"Why, of course I do! Katya, I'm coming from the hospital," he said in
a tone of despair. "Sasha was taken in last night."
"No, really?"
"Yes. Come along in. That's why we couldn't come to meet you."
"What's the matter with her?"
"Didn't she write you?"
"No."
"Come along, I'll tell you all about it."
Evidently the family of the photographic artist Berenstein took a great
interest in the affairs of Sasha and Pyotr, for a slight, smartly dressed
woman met Pyotr in the hall and inquired with some agitation: "Well, how is
she?"
He said he knew nothing, he had not been allowed to go in, but at that
moment another woman, just as slight and elegant, came running out and asked
agitatedly: "Well, how is she?"
And Pyotr had to explain to her again that he knew nothing and had not
been allowed to go in.
Sasha was expecting a child, that is why they had taken her to the
hospital.
"Why are you so upset, Pyotr? I'm sure everything will be fine."
We were alone in his room and he was sitting opposite me hunched up in
an armchair. His face looked bleak and he clenched his teeth as if in pain
when I said that everything would be fine.
"You don't know. She's very ill, she has the flu and she's coughing.
She said it would be all right too."
He introduced me to the family of the photographic artist-to his little
grey-haired, graceful wife and her as graceful little grey-haired sister.
The head of the family had moved to Moscow, for some reason, but they showed
me his portrait, that of a well-favoured man with a fine head of hair
wearing a velvet jacket-your true photographic artist, perhaps more of an
artist than a photographer.
I went to sleep in Sasha's bed, but Pyotr said he did not feel sleepy
and settled down with a book by the ^telephone. The nurse at the hospital
phoned regularly every half hour. I fell asleep after one of these calls,
but only for a minute I believe, because someone started knocking on the
wall with short, sharp raps, and I jumped up, not knowing where I was and
what was happening. There was a light in the passage and voices sounded
there, as of several people talking loudly all together. The next moment
Pyotr dashed into the room, looking like some elongated monster, and started
a wild dance.
Then he leaned over the table and began to take something off the wall.
"Pyotr, what is it? What's happened?"
"A boy!" he yelled. "A boy!"
All kinds of things started dropping around as he tried to take from
the wall a large portrait in a heavy frame. First he knelt on the table,
then stood on it, and tried to get between the wall and the picture.
"And Sasha? How's Sasha? You're crazy! Why are you taking that picture
down?"
"I promised to give it to Mrs Berenstein if everything went well."
He clambered down from the table, kissed me and burst into tears.
And this morning I met Sanya.
When the train appeared a ripple of excitement ran down the platform.
Though there were not many people there, I stood well back from them so that
he could easily spot me. I was calm, I believe. Only it seemed to me that
everything was happening very slowly-the train drew slowly alongside the
platform, and the first passengers slowly stepped down and came towards me
ever so slowly. They came and came, but there was no sign of Sanya, and my
heart sank. He had not arrived.
"Katya!"
I turned and saw him standing by the first carriage. I ran to him,
feeling everything within me quivering with excitement and happiness.
We, too, walked very slowly down the platform, stopping every minute to
look at each other. I don't remember what we talked about those first few
minutes. Sanya was asking me hurried questions and I was answering almost
without hearing myself.
We went to Astoria, as Sanya said it was more convenient for him to
stay at a hotel, and from there we phoned Pyotr. He let out a wild whoop
when I told him that Sanya was standing beside me and trying to snatch the
receiver out of my hand. They roared at each other disjointedly: "Hey! How
goes it, old chap, eh?" In the end they came to an understanding-Sanya was
to go to the clinic and together they would try to get in to see Sasha. "And
me?" Sanya took me in his arms.
"From now on, where I go, you go!" he said. "And that's that!" They did
not let us see Sasha, of course, but he sent her a note and received her
reply, begging us to keep Pyotr from going on the rampage.
Sanya had to go to the Arctic Institute, and I accompanied him there,
not only because I wanted to be with him, but because it was time, after
all, that we discussed the business that had brought us both to Leningrad.
My last letters had not reached him and he had not heard the news about the
Pakhtusov, which-it had just been decided- would go through Matochkin
Strait, and then, rounding Severnaya Zemlya, make for the Lyashkov Islands.
"Well, we'll have more time, that's all," Sanya said. "It's the time
factor that worries me most."
We talked about the make-up of the search party and he said that he had
recommended a radio man from Dikson, Doctor Ivan Ivano-vich and his mechanic
Luri, about whom he had often written to me from Zapolarie.
"The radio man's a splendid chap. Do you know who he is?" "No."
"Korzinkin," Sanya solemnly announced. "None other." I had to confess
that I had never heard the name before, and Sanya explained that Korzinkin
was one of the two Russians who had gone with Amundsen to the South Pole,
and that Amundsen mentions him in his book.
"Ripping, eh? I'll be the fifth. And you the sixth. I suggested you as
being the daughter."
"Oh, you did? I thought I was entitled to join the expedition not
merely as the daughter of Captain Tatarinov. Is that what you
wrote-'profession-daughter'?" Sanya was taken aback. "I don't see that it
matters," he muttered. "D'you think it was silly?"
"Very silly."
"Otherwise it would look as if I was trying to get my wife in. Rather
awkward."
"I did not ask you to try to get me in, Sanya," I said composedly.
"Daughter, wife! I'm a niece and granddaughter, too. I'm an old geologist,
Sanya, and I asked the Chief of the N.S.R.A. to include me in the expedition
as a geologist, and not as your wife. By the way, I'm not your