Two Captains (19 page)

"The Peasantry in Post-Revolutionary Literature" was finished. Fed up, I dashed it off in a single night. I had other debts, too-German, for instance, which I hated. In short, at the end of the half-year Katya and I had been to the skating-rink only once, and then we had not skated. The ice was very rough, as hockey teams had been training on it since the morning.

We just drank tea at the buffet. It was our last meeting before the holidays. After that came lessons and more lessons, reading and more reading. I got up at six in the morning and sat over Aircraft Construction.

And now the half-year was over. Eleven free days! The first thing I did was to phone Katya and invite her to our school for the fancy-dress ball.

Katya arrived rather late, when I had all but run to the phone to ring her up. She came half-frozen, red as a beetroot, and while still in the cloakroom ran straight to the stove. I took care of her coat and galoshes.

"What a frost!" she said, laying her sheek to the warm stove. "Must be two hundred degrees!"

She was wearing a blue velvet dress with a lace collar and had a big blue bow in her hair.

It was amazing how that bow and the blue dress became her, and that string of coral beads round her neck! She was robust, yet light and slender.

In short, hardly had we entered the hall, where the dancing had already begun, than the school's best dancers dropped their partners and made a beeline for her. For the first time in my life I regretted that I did not dance. But there! I tried to look as though I did not care and went into the performers' dressing-rooms. But they were getting ready to come on, and the girls chased me out. I went back into the hall just as the waltz was finishing. I hailed Katya. We sat down and began chatting.

"Who's that?" she suddenly asked me, horrified.

I looked.

"Where?"

"Over there, the one with the red hair."

It was only Romashka. He had smartened up and I thought he looked quite presentable. But Katya was looking at him with distaste.

"Can't you see-he's just horrible," she said, "You're used to him, you don't notice it. He's like Uriah Heep."

"Like who?"

"Uriah Heep."

I pretended I knew who Uriah Heep was, and said meaningfully: "Ah!"

But Katya was not one to be easily taken in.

"Ugh, you-fancy not having read Dickens. And he's supposed to be intelligent."

"Who says that?"

"Everybody. I was talking to a girl from your school one day, and she said: 'Grigoriev is a distinct individuality.'"

Just then the band struck up again and our P. T. instructor, whom everyone called just Gosha, asked Katya to dance and I was left alone again.

This time the performers let me in and even found some work for me to do. I had to make up one of the girls as a rabbi. Some job! I spent over half an hour at it and when I got back into the hall Katya was still dancing-this time with Valya.

Someone pinned a number on me-they were playing "Post". I sat there like a convict with a number on my chest, feeling bored. Suddenly I got two letters at once: "Stop pritending. Say frankly whom you like. Reply to No.

140." It was written just like that- "pritending". The other note was enigmatic: "Grigoriev is a distinct individuality, but he hasn't read Dickens." I wagged a finger at Katya. She laughed, dropped Valya and sat down next to me.

"It's great fun here," she said, "but terribly hot. Well, will you leam to dance now?"

I said I would not, and we went into my classroom. It had been turned into a sort of crushroom, with armchairs in the corners and electric lamps shaded with red and blue paper. We sat down on my desk-the farthest one in the right-hand row. I don't remember what we talked about, I think it was about the talking films. Katya had her doubts about them, but I cited proofs showing the comparative speeds of sound and light.

She was all blue-we were sitting under a blue lamp-and perhaps that was what made me so bold. I had long been wanting to kiss her, from the moment she had come in frozen and flushed and laid her cheek against the stove. But it had been impossible then. Now, when she was all blue, it was possible. I stopped in the middle of a sentence, closed my eyes and kissed her on the cheek.

Did she flare up!

"What does this mean?" she demanded.

I was silent. My heart was thumping and I was afraid that she was going to say "I don't want to know you any more" or something like that.

"How disgusting!" she said with indignation.

"No, it isn't," I said, dismayed.

For a minute we said nothing, then Katya asked me to bring her some water. When I returned with the water she read me a whole lecture. She proved as plain as a pikestaff that I had no feelings for her, that "I only imagined it", and that if it had been another girl in her place at the moment I would have kissed her too.

"You're just trying to persuade yourself," she said with conviction,

"but actually it's nothing of the sort!"

She was ready to admit that I had not intended to insult her-I hadn't, had I? Still I should not have acted that way precisely because I was only deceiving myself, and there was no real feeling...

"No love," she added, and I felt, in that semi-darkness, that she blushed.

By way of reply I took her hand and passed it over my face and eyes.

She did not withdraw it, and for several minutes we sat silent on my desk in the dimly lit classroom. We sat in the classroom where I asked questions and floundered, where I stood at the blackboard and proved theorems-on my desk, in which lay Valya's crumpled cribs. It was so strange. But so good! I can't tell you how good I felt at that moment!

Then I fancied there was somebody in the corner breathing hard. I looked round and saw Romashka. I don't know what made him breathe so hard, but he had a very ugly look on his face. Naturally, he saw at once that we had spotted him. He muttered something and came up with a queasy smile.

"Why don't you introduce me, Grigoriev?"

I stood up. I must have looked anything but affable, because he blinked in a scared sort of way and went out. It was rather funny, the way he took sudden fright. We both started giggling, and Katya said that he not only resembled Uriah Heep, but he was like an owl, a ginger owl with a hook-nose and round eyes. She had guessed right- Romashka was sometimes teased at school by being called Owl. We went back into the hall.

The dancing was over and the concert part of the programme had started with scenes from The Government Inspector, which our theatre was rehearsing.

Katya and I sat together in the third row, but we heard nothing. At least, I didn't. And I don't think she did either. I whispered to her:

"We'll have another talk. Yes?"

She looked at me gravely and nodded.

CHAPTER NINE MY FIRST DATE. INSOMNIA

It wasn't the first time it happened with me that life, after moving in one direction-in a straight line, let's say-suddenly made a sharp turn, executing "Immelmanns" and "Barrels".(* Figures in aerobatics).

This happened when, a boy of eight, I had lost my penknife near the murdered watchman on the pontoon bridge. This happened at the Education Department's reception centre, when, out of sheer boredom, I had begun to model figure-work. This happened when I found myself a reluctant witness to the conspiracy against Korablev and was ignominiously ejected from the Tatarinov home. And this is what happened now, when I was expelled again-this time for good!

The new turn in my life started this way. Katya and I had arranged to meet in Oruzheiny Street, outside the tinsmith's shop, but she did not turn up.

Everything seemed to have gone wrong that sad day. I ran away from the sixth lesson-it was silly, because Likho had said he would give back our homework after the lesson. I wanted to think over our conversation. But how could I think when, after a few minutes, I was frozen stiff and all I could do was stamp my feet and rub my nose and ears like mad.

Yet it was all devilishly interesting! What an extraordinary change had come about since the previous day! Yesterday, for instance, I could say:

"Katya's a stupidhead!" But not today. Yesterday I could have ticked her off for being late, but not today. But most interesting of all was to think that this was the very same Katya who had once asked me whether I had read Helen Robinson, who had busted the lactometer and got it in the neck from me.

Could this be her?

"Yes!" I thought joyfully.

But she was not she now, and I was not I.

A whole hour had passed, though. It was quiet in that street, and only the small tinsmith with the big nose came out of his workshop several times and eyed me suspiciously. I turned my back on him, but this only seemed to deepen his suspicions. I crossed to the other side of the road, but he still stood in the doorway amid clouds of vapour, like God on the ceiling of the cathedral at Ensk. I was obliged to move away, down towards the Tverskaya.

They had had dinner by the time I got back to the school. I went into the kitchen to warm myself and got told off by the cook, who gave me a plate of lukewarm potatoes. I ate the potatoes and went off in search of Valya.

But Valya was at the Zoo. Likho had given my homework to Romashka.

Being upset, I did not notice the state of excitement Romashka was thrown into when he saw me. He went all of a dither when I came into the library where we were in the habit of doing our homework. He laughed several times without apparent reason and hastily handed me my homework.

" 'Old Moke' at it again," he said ingratiatingly. "If I were you, I'd complain."

I thumbed through my work. Down the side of every page was drawn a red line and at the bottom it was written: "Idealism. Extremely poor."

"Fathead," I commented coolly and walked out. Romashka came running after me. I was surprised at the way he fawned on me that day, running ahead of me and peering into my face. I suppose he was glad that I had done so badly with my homework. The real reason for this behaviour never occurred to me.

I was in bed before the boys had returned from their excursion. I really should not have gone to bed so early. Sleep fled my eyes the moment I shut them and turned over on my side.

It was the first case of insomnia in my life. I lay very still, thinking. About what? About everything under the sun, I believe. About Korablev and how I would take my homework to him tomorrow and ask him to read it. About the tinsmith who had taken me for a thief. About Katya's father's booklet Causes of the Failure of the Greely Expedition.

But whatever my thoughts, they always came back to her. I began to doze, and all of a sudden found myself thinking of her with such tenderness that it took my breath away and my heart started beating slowly and loudly.

I saw her more distinctly than if she had been at my side. I could feel the touch of her hand on my eyes.

"Ah, well, if you've fallen in love, you've fallen in love. Now let's get some sleep, my dear chap," I said to myself.

But now that I was feeling so happy I thought it a pity to go to sleep, though I did feel a bit sleepy. I fell asleep when day began to break and Uncle Petya in the kitchen started grumbling at Makhmet, our kitten.

CHAPTER TEN TROUBLES

The first date and first insomnia, though something new, were still part of the good old life. The troubles started the next day, however.

I phoned Katya after breakfast, but had no luck. Nikolai Antonich answered the phone. "Who wants her?" "A friend." "What friend?" I was silent. "Well?" I hung up.

At eleven I entrenched myself in a greengrocer's shop from which I could see the whole length of Tverskaya-Yamskaya. Nobody took me for a thief this time. I pretended to be using the phone, bought some pickled apples and hung around the doorway with a casual air. I was waiting for Nina Kapitonovna. I knew from previous years exactly when she returned from the market. At last she appeared small, bent, in her green velvet coat, carrying her umbrella-in such a frost'-and the invariable shopping bag. "Nina Kapitonovna!"

She glanced at me coldly and walked on without saying a word. I was dumbfounded. "Nina Kapitonovna!"

She set her bag down, straightened up and looked at me resentfully.

"Look here, young man," she said sternly, "I shouldn't like to quarrel with you for old time's sake. But don't let me see or hear you any more." Her head shook slightly.

"You go this way, we go that! And no writing or phoning, please! I don't mind telling you this-I never would have believed it! I see I was mistaken!"

She snatched up her bag, and-bang!-shut the gate right in my face. I stared after her open-mouthed. Which one of us had gone mad? I or she?

This was the first disagreeable conversation. It was followed by a second, and then by a third.

Going home, I met Likho at the front door. I couldn't have chosen a worse time to talk to him about my essay.

We mounted the stairs together, he, as usual, with his head in the air, twisting his nose this way and that in such a stupid fashion that I was strongly tempted to kick him.

"Mr Likho," I suddenly said, "I received my homework. You write:

'Idealism'. This isn't a mark, it's an accusation, which has to be proved first."

"We'll talk about that some other time."

"No, we'll talk about it now," I said. "I'm a Komsomol member and you accuse me of idealism. You don't know a thing about it." "What, what's that?" he demanded, glaring at me. "You have no idea about idealism," I went on, noting with satisfaction that with every word of mine his ugly mug grew longer. "You're just trying to be nasty to me, that's why you've written:

'Idealism.' No wonder they say of you-"