Two Captains (23 page)

She paled and said quietly:

"I do."

We then dropped the subject. I only asked whether she remembered where

"Mongotimo Hawk's Claw" came from, and she said she did not remember-Gustave Aimard, perhaps. Then she asked, did I realise how terrible this would be for her mother.

"All this is much worse than you think," she remarked sadly, just like a grown-up. "Life's very hard for Mother, not to mention what she's lived through. And Nikolai Antonich-"

Katya broke off. Then she explained to me what it was all about. This, too, was a discovery, no less surprising, perhaps, than Captain Tatarinov's discovery of Severnaya Zemlya. It appeared that Nikolai Antonich had been in love with Maria Vasilievna for many years. The year before, when she was ill, he slept, if he slept at all, in his clothes, and engaged a nurse, though this was quite unnecessary. When she got better he took her down to Sochi and fixed her up in the Hotel Riviera, though a sanatorium would have been much cheaper. In the spring he had gone to Leningrad and brought back a very expensive fur jacket for Maria Vasilievna. He never went to bed if she was not at home. He persuaded her to give up the university, because it was hard for her to work and study at the same time. But the most surprising thing of all had happened that winter. All of a sudden Maria Vasilievna said she did not want to see him any more. And he disappeared. Went away in the clothes he stood in and did not come home for ten days. Where he had been living was a mystery-probably in a hotel room. At this point Nina Kapitonovna stood up for him. She said this was nothing short of an

"inquisition", and fetched him home herself. But Maria Vasilievna did not speak to him for a whole month.

Nikolai Antonich madly in love-I couldn't imagine it! Nikolai Antonich with his stubby fingers and his gold tooth-and so old. Nevertheless, as Katya went on with her story, I could picture that complex and painful relationship. I could imagine what Maria Vasi-lievna's life had been, during those long years. Such a beautiful woman left stranded at twenty. "Neither widowed nor married." For the sake of her husband's memory she forced herself to live in her memories. I could imagine Nikolai Antonich courting her for years, suave, persistent, patient. He had succeeded in convincing her-and others too-that he alone understood and loved her husband. Katya was right. For Maria Vasilievna this letter would be a terrible blow. It would be better, perhaps, to leave it on the shelf in Sanya's room, between Tsar Kolokol and The Adventures of a Don Cossack in the Caucasus.

The week I spent in Ensk was anything but a gay one. But then what wonderful memories it left me with for the rest of my life.

Katya and I went for walks every day. I showed her my favourite old spots and spoke about my childhood. I remember reading somewhere that archeologists were able to reconstruct the history and customs of a whole people from a single preserved inscription. That's how it was with me, when, from the few surviving old nooks in my hometown, I reconstructed for Katya the story of my previous life.

I spent only one day away from Katya, the day I went to the cemetery. I expected to find no trace of Mother's grave after all those years. But I found it. It was enclosed in a broken-down wooden fence and you could still make out the inscription on the awry cross:

"Sacred to the memory of..." Of course, it was winter and all the graves were snowed up, yet you could tell at once that this was a neglected grave.

Saddened, I walked among the paths, calling up memories of my

mother. How old would she have been now? Forty. Still quite a young woman. With a pang I thought how happily she could have been living now, the way Aunt Dasha, say, was living. I recollected her tired, heavy glance, her hands corroded by washing, and how she could not eat anything of an evening because she was dead tired.

I found the keeper, who was chopping wood outside the tumbledown chapel.

"Grandad," I said to him, "you have here the grave of Aksinya Grigorieva. It's along this path here, the second from the corner." I think he was pretending when he said he knew the grave I was talking about.

"Couldn't it be tidied up? I'll pay for it." The keeper went down the path, looked at the grave and came back.

"That grave is being cared for," he said. "You can't see it becauseit's winter now. Some of the others aren't being cared for, but thisone is."

I gave him three rubles and went away.

And then the last day came round, the day of parting. It found Aunt Dasha astir at six, busy baking pies. Smeared with flour, wearing her spectacles, she came into the dining-room where I was sleeping, the edge of an envelope between her fingers.

"Must wake Sanya up," she said. "Here's a letter from Pyotr. And so it was, brief, but "pertinent", as the judge put it. First, he explained why he had not come home for the holidays. It was because he had been visiting Leningrad with an excursion party. Secondly, he was astonished to hear that I had turned up and expressed himself feelingly on that point. Third, he went for me baldheaded for not having written, not having looked for him and generally for having "behaved like an unfeeling horse". Fourth, the envelope contained another letter, addressed to my sister, who laughed and said: "The silly fool, he could have just added a postscript." I don't suppose he could, though, because Sanya took the letter and sat reading it in her room for three full hours, until I came charging in demanding that she put a stop to Aunt Dasha, who was piling up a stack of pies for my journey.

The judge came home specially to have dinner with me for the last time.

He brought a bottle of wine. We drank, and he made a speech. A jolly good speech it was too. He compared Pyotr and me to eagles and expressed the hope that we would return more than once to the nest.

We sat so long over dinner that we nearly missed the train. We drove to the station in cabs. I had never travelled so luxuriously before-sitting back in a cab with a hamper at my feet.

We arrived to find Katya standing on the carriage steps with the two old Bubenchikov aunts exhorting her not to catch cold during the journey, to keep an eye on her luggage, not to go out on the carriage platform, to wire them on arrival, remember them to everybody and not to forget to write.

My seat was in another carriage, so we merely bowed a greeting to Katya and the Bubenchikovs. Katya waved to us and the old ladies nodded primly.

The second bell. I embraced Sanya and Aunt Dasha. The judge reminded me to look up Pyotr and I gave my word of honour that I would call on him the day I arrived. I invited Sanya to come and see me in Moscow and she promised to come for her spring holidays-it appeared that she had already made arrangements about this with Pyotr.

The third bell. I was in the carriage. Sanya was writing something in the air and I wrote back at a guess: "Okay." Aunt Dasha began to cry quietly and the last thing I saw was Sanya taking the handkerchief from her and, with a laugh, wiping away her tears. The train pulled out, and that dear old railway station slipped past me. We gathered speed. In another moment the platform came to an end. Goodbye, Ensk.

At the next station I changed places with an oldish gentleman, who found my lower berth more convenient for him, and moved into Katya's carriage. For one thing, it was more airy, for another it was Katya's.

She had quite settled in. On the little table lay a clean napkin and the window was curtained. You'd think she'd been living in that carriage a hundred years.

We had both only just had dinner, but we simply had to see what the old folks had put in our hampers. We had an apple each and treated our travelling companion to one. He was a little, unshaven, blue-black man in spectacles, who kept making guesses as to who we were: brother and sister-no, we didn't look like it. Husband and wife - too young.

It was some time past two in the morning and our unshaven companion was snoring his head off, while Katya and I were still standing in the corridor, chatting. We wrote with our fingers on the frozen panes-first initials, then the opening letters of words.

"Just like in Anna Karenina," said Katya.

I didn't think it was like Anna Karenina or anything else for that matter.

Katya stood beside me and looked sort of new, different. She wore her hair in grown-up style, parted in the middle, and a surprisingly new ear peeped out from under her dark attractive hair. Her teeth, too, looked new when she smiled. Never before had she turned her head, when I began to speak, with that easy yet proud gesture of a beautiful woman. She was a new and entirely different girl, and I felt that I was terribly in love with her.

Suddenly, through the window, we could see the wires dipping and rising, and a dark field came into view covered with dark snow. I don't know at what speed the train was going-it could not have been more than forty kilometres an hour-but it seemed to me that we were rushing along at magical speed. The world lay before me. I did not know what it had in store for me.

But I did know that this was forever, that Katya was mine and I hers for as long as we live.

Imagine yourself returning to your home, in which you had spent half your life, to suddenly find yourself being stared at in surprise, as if you had come to the wrong place. That was what I experienced when I returned to school after visiting Ensk.

The first person I met, down in the cloakroom, was Romashka. He scowled when he saw me, then grinned.

"Hullo!" he said in a tone of malicious glee. "Tishoo! Bless you!"

The cad seemed very pleased.

None of the other boys were about-it was the last day before term began. Korablev passed down the corridor and I ran after him.

"Good morning, Ivan Pavlovich!"

"Ah, it's you!" he said gravely. "Come and see me, I want to speak to you."

The portrait of a young woman stood on Korablev's desk, and for the moment I did not recognise Maria Vasilievna-she was much too beautiful. She was wearing a coral necklace, the same one Katya had worn at our school ball. The sight of that necklace somehow bucked me up. It was like a greeting from Katya.

"Ivan Pavlovich, what's the matter?" I began.

"This is the matter," Korablev said slowly. "They're going to expel you from the school."

"What for?"

"Don't you know?" "I don't."

Korablev eyed me sternly. "I don't like that at all." "Honestly, I don't, Ivan Pavlovich."

"For nine days AWOL," he said, turning down one finger. "For insulting Likho. For fighting."

"I see! Very good," I said very calmly. "But before expelling me be so good as to hear me out." "Go ahead."

"Ivan Pavlovich," I began in a solemn tone, "you want to know why I socked Romashka one in his ugly mug?" "Leave the 'ugly mugs' out of it,"

Korablev said. "All right. I gave him one in his ugly mug because he's a cad. For one thing, he told the Tatarinovs about me and Katya. Secondly, he listens to what the boys say about Nikolai Antonich and narks on them.

Third, I found him rummaging in my box. It was a regular search. The boys saw me catch him at it, and I hit him, it's true. I admit, it wasn't right to use my boot, but I'm only human after all. It was more than flesh and blood could stand. It might have happened to anybody."

"All right. Go on."

"As for Likho, you know about that already. Let him first prove that I am an idealist. Did you read my essay?" "Yes, it's bad."

"That may be, but there isn't a hint of idealism in it. You can take that from me." "All right. Go on." "That's all. What else is there?"

"What else? Do you know they have had the police searching for you?"

"Ivan Pavlovich... Well, that was wrong of me, perhaps. I did tell Valya, but I suppose that doesn't count. All right. But do you mean to say they're going to expel me because I went off on holiday-where do you think?-to my hometown where I haven't been for eight years?"

I knew there was going to be ructions when Korablev mentioned the police, and I wasn't mistaken. He went for me baldheaded, shouting at the top of his voice, and I could only slip in an occasional timid: "Ivan Pavlovich!" "Hold your tongue!"

And he would pause himself for a moment, but only to draw breath for a renewed attack.

It slowly dawned on me that I really had a lot to answer for. But would they really expel me? If they did, then all was lost. It was goodbye to flying school. Goodbye to life! Korablev stopped at last.

"Your behaviour has been outrageous!" he said.

"Ivan Pavlovich," I began in a voice that was croaky, rather than tremulous. "I'm not going to argue with you, though on many points you are not right. But never mind. You don't want them to expel me, do you?"

Korablev was silent, then he said: "And if I don't?"

"Then tell me what I have to do?"

"You must apologise to Likho."

"All right. But first let him-"

"I've spoken to him!" Korablev interrupted with annoyance. "He's crossed out the 'idealism'. But the mark remains the same. Secondly, you must apologise to Romashka too."

"Never!"

"But you admitted yourself that it wasn't right."

"All the same. You can expel me, but I won't apologise to him."

"Look here, Sanya," Korablev said gravely, "I had great difficulty in persuading them to call you before a meeting of the Teachers' Council. But now I'm beginning to regret taking all that trouble. If you come there and start saying your 'Never! You can expel me!' they'll expel you for certain.

You may be sure of that."

He laid special emphasis on these words and I understood from his expression whom he had in mind. Nikolai Antonich immediately appeared before me, suave, smooth-spoken and verbose. That one would do everything to get me expelled.