Two Captains (25 page)

"Remember?" we kept saying, as we dug up old memories, walking very quickly for some reason. It was snowing and there were lots of children on the boulevards. One young nursemaid looked at us and laughed.

"Hey, what are we running like this for?" said Pyotr, and we slowed down.

"Pyotr, I've got a proposal," I said, when, having walked our fill, we were sitting in a cafe in Tverskaya.

"Go ahead!"

"I'm going to make a phone-call, and you sit here, drink your coffee and say nothing."

The telephone was some distance from our table, right near the entrance, and I deliberately spoke loudly.

"Katya, I'd like you to meet a friend. Can you come along? What are you doing? By the way, I want to speak with you."

"So do I. I'd come, but everybody's ill here." She sounded sad and I felt a sudden urgent desire to see her.

"What do you mean, everybody? I've just seen Maria Vasilievna."

"Where?"

"She was calling on Korablev."

"Ah," Katya said in a rather odd voice. "No, Grandma's ill. Sanya, I gave Mother those letters," she added in a whisper, and I involuntarily pressed the receiver closer to my ear. "I told her that we had met in Ensk and then I gave it to her."

"And how did she take it?" I asked, also in a whisper.

"Very badly. I'll tell you later. Very badly."

She fell silent and I could hear her breathing through the telephone.

We said goodbye and I returned to the table with a sense of guilt. I felt dejected and uneasy, and Pyotr seemed to guess my state of mind.

"I say," he began, deliberately going off on a new tack, "did you discuss this flying school plan of yours with Father?"

"Yes."

"What does he say?"

"He approves."

Pyotr sat with his long legs stretched out, thoughtfully fingering the places where a beard and moustache would be growing in the course of time.

"I must talk things over with him too," he murmured. "You see, last year I wanted to enter the Academy of Arts."

"Well?"

"But this year I've changed my mind."

"Why?"

"I may not have the talent for it."

I started laughing. But he looked serious and worried.

"Well, if you'd like to know, I think it strange, your wanting to go in for art. I always thought of you as becoming an explorer, say, or a sea captain."

"That's more interesting, of course," Pyotr said irresolutely. "But I like painting."

"Have you shown your work to anybody?"

"Yes, to X-."

He gave the name of a well-known painter.

"Well?"

"He says it's not bad."

"That settles it, then! It would be cockeyed if you, with your talent, were to go to some flying school or other! You may be ruining a future Repin in you."

"Oh, I don't know."

"I'm not so sure."

"You're kidding," Pyotr said with annoyance. "This is a serious matter."

We left the cafe, and wandered about Tverskaya for half an hour, talking about everything under the sun, switching from our Ensk to Shanghai, which had just been captured by the People's Army, from Shanghai to Moscow, to my school, from my school to Pyotr's, trying to impress upon each other that we were not living in this world just any old how, but with a philosophical purpose...

Gone were those remote times when, coming in after ten o'clock, we had, with fast-beating heart, to sidle round the fearsome Japhet, who, clad in his huge sheepskin coat, sat on a stool at the entrance and slept-if you were lucky to find him asleep. But now I was in my last year and could come in whenever I liked.

It wasn't very late, though-round about twelve. The boys were still chatting. Valya was writing something, sitting on his bed with his legs tucked under him.

"I say, Sanya, Korablev wants to see you," he said. "That's if you came in before twelve. What's the time now?"

"Half past eleven."

"Hurry up!"

I slipped into my overcoat and ran off to see Korablev.

Ours was a most extraordinary conversation, one that I shall never forget as long as I live, and I must describe it with perfect calm. I must keep calm, especially now, when so many years have passed. It could all have been different, of course. It could all have been different if I had but realised what every word of mine meant for her, if I had been able to foresee what would happen after our conversation. But there is no end of these "ifs" and there is nothing I can blame myself for. Here, then, is the conversation that took place.

When I came in I found Maria Vasilievna with Korablev. She had been sitting there all the evening. But she had come to see, not him, but me, and she said as much in her very first words.

She sat erect with a blank face, patting her hair from time to time with a slim hand. Wine and biscuits stood on the table, and Korablev kept refilling his glass while she only took one sip at hers. She kept smoking all the time and there was ash all over the place, even on her knees. She was wearing the familiar string of coral beads and gave little tugs at it several times as though it were strangling her. That's all.

"The navigating officer writes that he cannot risk sending this letter through the post," she said. "Yet both letters were in the same post-bag.

How do you account for that?"

I said that I did not know. One would have to ask the officer about that, if he were still alive. She shook her head. "If he were alive!"

"Perhaps his relatives would know? And then, Maria Vasilievna," I said in a sudden flash of inspiration, "the navigating officer was picked up by Lieutenant Sedov's expedition. They would know. He told them everything, I'm sure of it." "Yes, maybe," she answered.

"And then there's that packet for the Hydrographical Board. If the navigating officer sent the letter through the post he probably sent that packet by the same mail. We must find that out." Maria Vasilievna again said: "Yes."

I paused. I had been speaking alone, and Korablev had not yet uttered a word.

"What were you doing in Ensk?" she asked me suddenly. "Have you relatives there?"

I said yes, I had. A sister.

"I love Ensk," she remarked, addressing herself to Korablev. "It's wonderful there. Such gardens! I've never been in any gardens since."

And suddenly she started talking about Ensk. She said she had three aunts living there who did not believe in God and were very proud of it, and one of them had graduated in philosophy at Heidelberg. I had never known her to talk so much. She sat there pale and beautiful, with shining eyes, smoking and smoking.

"Katya told me you remembered some more passages from this letter," she suddenly switched back from the subject of her aunts and hometown. "But I couldn't get her to tell me what it was." "Yes, I do remember them."

I was expecting her to ask me what they were, but she said nothing. It was as if she were afraid to hear them from me.

"Well, Sanya?" Korablev said in a brisk tone of voice that was obviously feigned.

"It ended like this," I said. " 'Greetings from you...' Is that right?"

Maria Vasilievna nodded.

"And it went on: '...from your Mongotimo Hawk's Claw...' "

"Mongotimo?" Korablev queried, astonished.

"Yes, Mongotimo," I repeated firmly.

"Montigomo Hawk's Claw," said Maria Vasilievna, and for the first time her voice shook slightly. "I used to call him that."

"Montigomo, if you say so," I said. "I remember it as Mongotimo... 'as you once called me. God, how long ago that was. I am not complaining, though. We shall see each other again and all will be well. But one thought, one thought torments me.' 'One thought' comes twice, it's not me repeating it, that's how it was in the letter."

Maria Vasilievna nodded again.

" 'It's galling to think,' " I went on, " 'that everything could have turned out differently. Misfortunes dogged us, but our main misfortune was the mistake for which we are now having to pay every hour, every minute of the day-the mistake I made in entrusting the fitting out of our expedition to Nikolai.' "

I may have overstressed the last word, because Maria Vasilievna, who had been very pale already, went still paler. She sat before us, now white as death, smoking and smoking. Then she said something that sounded very queer and made me think for the first time that she might be a bit mad. But I did not attach any importance to it, as I thought that Korablev, too, was a bit mad that evening. He, of all people, should have realised what was happening to her! But he had lost his head completely. I daresay he was picturing Maria Vasilievna marrying him the very next day.

"Nikolai Antonich fell ill after that meeting," she said to Korablev.

"I wanted to call the doctor, but he wouldn't let me. I haven't spoken to him about these letters. He's upset as it is. I don't think I ought to just now-what do you say?"

She was crushed, confounded, but I still understood nothing.

"If that's the case I'll do it myself!" I retorted. "I'll send him a copy. Let him read it."

"Sanya!" Korablev cried, coming to himself.

"Excuse me, Ivan Pavlovich, but I'll have my say. I feel very strongly about this. It's a fact that the expedition ended in disaster through his fault. That's a historical fact. He is charged with a terrible crime. And I consider, if it comes to that, that Maria Vasilievna, as Captain Tatarinov's wife, ought to bring this accusation against him herself."

She wasn't Captain Tatarinov's wife, she was his widow. She was now the wife of Nikolai Antonich, and so would have to bring this accusation against her own husband. But I hadn't tumbled to this either.

"Sanya!" Korablev shouted again.

But I had already stopped. I had nothing more to say. Our conversation continued, though there was nothing more to talk about. I only said that the land mentioned in the letter was Severnaya Zemlya

and that, consequently, Sevemaya Zemlya had been discovered by Captain Tatarinov. All those geographical terms, "longitude", "latitude", sounded strange in that room at that hour. Korablev paced furiously up and down the room. Maria Vasilievna smoked incessantly, and the stubs, pink from her lipstick, formed a small mound in the ashtray before her. She was motionless and calm, and only tugged feebly now and again at her coral necklace. How far away from her was that Sevemaya Zemlya, lying between some meridians or other!

That was all. Taking leave of her, I began muttering something again, but Korablev advanced upon me with a stern frown and I found myself bundled out of the room.

CHAPTER TWENTY MARIA VASILIEVNA

What surprised me more than anything was that Maria Vasilievna had not said a word about Katya. Katya and I had spent nine days together in Ensk, yet Maria Vasilievna never mentioned it.

This silence was suspicious, and it was on my mind that night until I fell asleep, and then again in the morning during Physics, Social Science and Literature. I thought about it after school, too, when I wandered aimlessly about the streets. I remember stopping in front of a billboard and mechanically reading the titles of the plays, when a girl suddenly came round the corner and crossed the street at a run. She was without a hat and wore nothing but a light dress with short sleeves-in such a frost! Perhaps that was why I did not immediately recognise her.

"Katya!"

She looked round but did not stop, and merely waved her hand. I overtook her.

"Why haven't you got your coat on, Katya? What's the matter?"

She wanted to say something, but her teeth were cluttering and she had to clench them and fight for self-control before being able to say:

"I'm going for a doctor. Mother's very ill."

"What is it?"

"I don't know. I think she's poisoned herself."

There are moments when life suddenly changes gear, and everything seems to gain momentum, speeding and changing faster than you can realise.

From the moment I heard the words: "I think she's poisoned herself, everything changed into high gear, and the words kept ringing in my head with frightful insistence.

We ran to one doctor in Pimenovsky Street, then to another doctor who lived over the former Hanzhonkov's cimena and burst into a quiet,'tidy flat with dust-sheets over the furniture and were met by a surly old woman wearing what looked like another dark-blue dust-sheet.

She heard us out with a deprecating shake of the head and lef the room.

On her way out she took something off the table in case we might pinch it.

A few minutes later the doctor came in. He was a tubby pink-faced man with a close-cropped grey head and a cigar in his mouth.

"Well, young people?"

We told him what it was all about, gave him the address and ran out. In the street, without further ado, I made Katya put on my coat. Her hair had come undone and she pinned it up as we ran along. But one of her plaits came loose again and she angrily pushed it under the coat.

An ambulance was standing at the door and we stopped dead in our tracks at the sight. The ambulance men were coming down the stairs with a stretcher on which lay Maria Vasilievna.

Her uncovered face was as white as it had been at Korablev's the night before, only now it looked as if carved in ivory.

I drew back against the banisters to let the stretcher pass, and Katya, with a piteous murmur "Mummy!", walked alongside it. But Maria Vasilievna did not open her eyes, and did not stir. I realised that she was going to die.

Sick at heart I stood in the yard watching them push the stretcher into the ambulance. I saw the old lady tuck the blanket round Maria Vasilievna's feet with trembling hands, saw the steam coming from everyone's mouth, the ambulance man's, too, as he produced a book that had to be signed, and from Nikolai Antonich's as he peered painfully from under his glasses and signed it.