Two Captains (47 page)

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.