Two Captains (2 page)

Irina N.'s letter reminds me of another incident, which equated literature, as it were, with real life. During the blockade of Leningrad, in the grim, forever memorable days of late autumn of 1941, the Leningrad Radio Broadcasting Committee asked me to convey a message to the young Communists of the Baltic in the name of Sanya Grigoriev. I pointed out that although I had portrayed in Sanya Grigoriev a definite person, a bomber pilot, who was fighting at the time on the Central Front, he was nevertheless only a literary character.

"So what of it," was the answer. "It makes no difference. Write as if the name of your literary hero could be found in the telephone book."

I consented, of course. In the name of Sanya Grigoriev I wrote a message to the Komsomol boys and girls of Leningrad and the Baltic, and in response letters addressed to my literary hero came pouring in, expressing confidence in victory.

I remember myself a boy of nine entering my first library; it was quite a small one, but seemed very big to me then. Behind a tall barrier, under a paraffin lamp, stood a smooth-haired woman in spectacles wearing a black dress with a white collar. The barrier was so high-at least to me-and the lady in black so forbidding that I all but turned tail. In a voice overioud through shyness I reported that I had already turned nine and was therefore entitled to become a card holder. The forbidding lady laughed and bending over the barrier the better to see the new reader retorted that she had heard of no such rule.

In the end, though, I managed to join the library, and the time flew so quickly in reading that one day I discovered with surprise that the barrier was not all that high, nor the lady as forbidding as I had first thought.

This was the first library in which I felt at home, and ever since then I have always had this feeling when coming into a house, large or small, in which there are bookshelves along the walls and people standing by them thinking only one thing-that these books were there to be read. So it was in childhood. And so it was in youth, with long hours spent in the vast Shchedrin public library in Leningrad. Working in the Archives Department, I penetrated into the very heart of the temple of temples. Raising my eyes-tired, because reading manuscripts makes them tire quickly-I watched the noiseless work of the librarians and experienced again and again a feeling of gratitude. That feeling has remained for a lifetime. Wherever I go, to whatever place fate brings me, I always ask first thing, "Is there a library here?" And when I am told, "There is," that town or township, farm or village, becomes closer, as if irradiating a warm, unexpected light.

In Schwarz's play "The Snow Queen", the privy councillor, a dour individual who deals in ice, asks the storyteller whether there are any children in the house, and on learning that there are, he shudders, because at the sound of children's voices the ice of the blackest soul melts. So does a house in which there are books differ from those in which there are none.

The best writers can be compared to scouts into the future, to those brave explorers of new and unknown spaces, of whom Fridt-jof Nansen, the famous Norwegian explorer, wrote: "Let us follow the narrow tracks of the sled runners and those little black dots laying a railway, as it were, into the heart of the unknown. The wind howls and sweeps across these tracks leading into the snowy wastes. Soon they will disappear, but a trail has been blazed, we have acquired a new banner, and this deed will shine forever through the ages."

V. Kaverin

PART ONE CHILDHOOD

I remember the big dirty yard and the squat little houses with the fence round them. The yard stood on the edge of the river, and in the spring, when the flood-water subsided, it was littered with bits of wood and shells, and sometimes with things far more interesting. On one occasion, for instance, we found a postman's bag full of letters, and afterwards the waters brought down the postman himself and deposited him carefully on the bank. He was lying on his back, quite a young man, fair-haired, in postman's uniform with shining buttons; he must have polished them up before setting out on this last round.

A policeman took the bag, but Aunt Dasha kept the letters-they were soaking wet and of no further use to anybody. Not all of them were soaked though. The bag had been a new one, made of leather, and was closed tight.

Every evening Aunt Dasha used to read one of the letters out, sometimes to me alone, sometimes to the whole yard. It was so interesting that even the old women, who used to go to Skovorodnikov's to play cards, would drop the game and join us. There was one letter which Aunt Dasha used to read more often than any other, so often, in fact, that I soon got to know it by heart. Many years have passed since then, but I can still remember it from the first word to the last. "Dear Maria Vasilievna,

"I hasten to inform you that Ivan Lvovich is alive and well. Four months ago, on his orders, I left the schooner along with thirteen of the crew. I hope to see you soon, so I shall not describe our difficult journey across the pack-ice to Franz Josef Land. We suffered terrible hardships and privations. I will only say that I was the only one of our party to reach Cape Flora safely (not counting a pair of frostbitten feet). I was picked up by the St. Phocas, of Lieutenant Sedov's Expedition, and taken to Archangel.

Although I have survived, I have little reason to rejoice, as I shall soon be undergoing an operation, after which I can only trust in God's mercy, for God alone knows how I'm going to live without feet. What I have to tell you is this.

The St. Maria became icebound in the Kara Sea and since October 1912

has been drifting steadily north with the Arctic icefields. When we left the schooner she was in latitude 82° 5 5'. She is standing in the middle of an icefield, or rather that was where she was from the autumn of 1912 until the day I left her. She may be free of the ice this year, but I think this is more likely to happen next year, when she will be round about the spot where the Fram broke free. The men who have remained in her have enough victuals to last until October or November of next year. In any case, I hasten to assure you that we did not leave the ship because she was in a hopeless plight. I had to carry out Captain's orders, of course, but I must admit that they fell in with my own wishes. When I was leaving the ship with the thirteen men, Ivan Lvovich gave me a packet addressed to the Head of the Hydrographical Board-who has since died-and a letter for you. I dare not risk mailing them, because, being the only survivor, I am anxious to preserve all evidence of my honourable conduct. I therefore ask you to send for them or come to Archangel yourself, as I shall be spending at least three months in hospital.

"Awaiting your reply, I remain your obedient servant.

"/. Klimov, Navigating Officer."

The address had been washed away, but had obviously been written in the same bold upright hand on the thick yellowed envelope.

This letter must have become for me something in the nature of a prayer, for I used to repeat it every evening while waiting for my father to come home.

He used to come in late from the wharf. The steamers arrived now every day and took on cargoes, not of flax and grain as they used to do, but of heavy cases containing cartridges and gun parts. Burly, thickset and moustached, he used to come in wearing a cloth cap and tarpaulin trousers.

Mother would talk and talk, while he ate in silence, once in a while clearing his throat or wiping his moustache. Then he would take us children-my sister and me-and lie down to sleep. He smelt of hemp, sometimes of apples or grain, and sometimes of rancid machine-oil, and I remember what a depressing effect that smell had on me.

It must have been on one such cheerless evening, as I lay beside my father, that I first became aware of my surroundings. The squalid little room With its low ceiling, its walls pasted over with newspapers, and a big crack under the window through which drew cold air and the tang of the river-such was our home. The dark, beautiful woman with her hair let down, sleeping on the floor on two sacks filled with straw, was my mother. The little feet sticking out from under the patchwork quilt belonged to my sister. The dark skinny boy in the outsize trousers who crept shivering out of bed and stole into the yard was me.

A likely spot had been selected long ago, string had been prepared and even dry twigs piled up at the Gap; all I needed now to go out after the blue crabs was a piece of rotting meat. The bed of our river was all different colours, and so were the crabs in it-black, green, and yellow.

These were baited with frogs and lured with a bonfire. But the blue crab, as all of us boys firmly believed, could only be taken with rotting meat. The day before I had had a stroke of luck at last: I had managed to steal a piece of meat from Mother and kept it in the sun all day. It was putrid now-one did not have to take it into one's hand to find that out.

I ran down to the Gap along the river bank: here brushwood had been piled up for a fire. In the distance one could see the towers, Pokrovsky Tower on one bank, Spassky on the other. When the war broke out they were used as army leather goods depots. Pyotr Sko-vorodnikov used to say that devils once dwelt in Spassky Tower and that he had actually seen them ferrying over to our side, after which they had scuttled their boat and made their home Pokrovsky Tower. He said the devils were fond of smoking and drinking, they had bullet-heads, and many of them were lame, having hurt themselves when they dropped from the sky. In Pokrovsky Tower they raised families and in fine weather went down to the river to steal the tobacco which the fishermen tied to their nets to appease the water-sprites.

So I was not really surprised when, as I was blowing up my little fire, I saw a thin black shape in the gap of the old ramparts.

"What are you doing here, shaver?" the devil said, just like any ordinary human being.

I couldn't have answered him even if I had wanted to. All I could do was just stare and shake.

At that moment the moon sailed out from behind the clouds, and I could make out the figure of the watchman across the river, walking round the leather depot-a burly man with a rifle sticking up behind his back.

"Catching crabs?"

He sprang down lightly and squatted by the fire.

"What's the matter with you, swallowed your tongue, silly?"

N(), it wasn't a devil. It was a skinny hatless man with a walking stick which he kept slapping against his leg. I couldn't make out his face, but I noticed he had nothing on under his jacket and was wearing a scarf in place of a shirt.

"Don't want to speak, you rascal, eh?" He prodded me with his stick.

"Come on, answer me! Answer! Or I'll-"

Without getting up, he grabbed my leg and pulled me towards him. I gave a sort of croaky sound.

"Ah, you're a deaf mute, I see!"

He let go of me and sat there for quite a while, poking among the embers with his stick.

"Fine town, this," he said disgustedly. "A dog in every blessed yard; brutes of policemen. Damned crab-eaters!"

And he started to swear.

Had I known what was to happen within the hour, I should have tried to remember what he said, although just the same I could not have repeated his words to anybody. He went on swearing for quite a time, and even spat in the fire and gnashed his teeth. Then he fell silent, his head thrown back and knees clasped in his hands. I stole a glance at him and could have felt sorry for him had he not been so unpleasant.

Suddenly the man sprang to his feet. In a few minutes he was on the pontoon bridge, which the soldiers had recently put across the river, and I caught a last glimpse of him on the opposite bank before he disappeared.

My fire had gone out, but even without it I could see clearly that there wasn't a single blue crab among my catch, and a pretty good catch it was. Just ordinary black crabs, none too big either-they went for a kopeck a pair at the local pub.

A cold wind began to draw from somewhere behind me. My trousers billowed out and I began to feel cold. It was time to go home. I was casting my line, baited with meat, for the last time when I saw the watchman on the opposite bank running down the slope. Spassky Tower stood high above the river and the hillside leading down to the river bank was littered with stones. There was no sign of anybody on the hillside, which was lit up brightly by the moon, yet for some reason the watchman unslung this rifle as he ran.

"Halt!"

He did not fire, but just clicked the bolt, and, at that very moment I saw the man he was after on the pontoon bridge. I am choosing my words carefully, because even now I am not quite certain it was the man, who, an hour ago, had been sitting by my fire. But I can still see the scene before my eyes: the quiet banks, the widening moon path on the water running straight from where I was to the barges of the pontoon bridge, and on the bridge the long shadows of two running figures.

The watchman ran heavily and once he even stopped to take breath. But the one who was running ahead seemed to find the going still harder, for he suddenly stopped and crouched down by the handrail. The watchman ran up to him, shouting, then suddenly reeled back, as if he had been struck from below. He hung on the handrail, slowly slipping down, while the murderer was already disappearing behind the rampart.

I don't know why, but that night no one was guarding the pontoon bridge. The sentry-box stood empty, and except for the watchman, who was lying on his side with his arms stretched forward, there was not a soul in sight. A large undressed hide lay beside him, and when, shaking with terror, I went up to him, he started to yawn slowly. Years afterwards I learned that many people yawn just before they die. Then he heaved a deep sigh, as though with relief, and grew still.