Two Captains (44 page)

"This Romashov here," I proceeded, "came to me an hour and a half ago with the following proposition. He offered me the use of certain evidence which shows, first, that you swindled Captain Tatarinov's expedition and, second, that you have a number of other shady dealings to your name of which no mention is made by you in your personnel questionnaires."

This was when he dropped his hat.

"I have the impression," I continued, "that this is not the first time he has been offering this merchandise for sale. I don't know, I may be wrong."

"Nikolai Antonich!" Romashka suddenly squealed. "It's a lie. Don't you believe him. He's lying."

I waited until he had finished shouting.

"It's all the same to me now, of course," I went on. "It's between you two. But you deliberately..."

I felt my cheek beginning to twitch, and I did not like it, because I had sworn to keep cool when talking to them.

"But you deliberately arranged for this man to marry Katya. You were trying to talk her into it, because you were afraid of him. And now he comes here, shouting: 'We'll send him toppling.' "

As though suddenly coming awake, Nikolai Antonich took a step forward and stared at Romashka. He stared at him hard and long, and the tense silence was beginning to tell even on me.

"Nikolai Antonich," Romashka began again in a stammering, piteous voice.

Nikolai Antonich kept staring. Then he began to speak, and the sound of his voice, the broken, quavery voice of an old man, astonished me.

"Why did you invite me here?" he said. "I am ill, it's hard for me to speak. You wanted me to see that he's a scoundrel. That's no news to me. You wanted to crush me again, but you can't do more than you have already done-and done irreparably." He drew a deep breath. I realised that it really was hard for him to speak.

"I leave to her conscience," he went on just as quietly, but in a voice hardened and bitter, "the act she has committed in going away without saying a word to me, believing the base slander of which I have been a victim all my life."

I was silent. Romashka poured out a glass of water with a shaking hand and offered it to him.

"Nikolai Antonich," he mumbled, "you mustn't get excited."

But Nikolai Antonich thrust his arm aside with a violent gesture and the water spilled over the carpet.

"I accept no reproaches, no regrets," he said, suddenly snatching off his glasses and twisting them about in his fingers. "It's her affair. Her own fate. All I wanted for her was happiness. But my cousin's memory-that will never yield to anybody," he said hoarsely, and his face became sullen, puffy, thick-lipped. "I would gladly accept this suffering as a punishment-even unto death-because life has long been a burden to me. But I deny all these monstrous, shameful accusations. And not even a thousand false witnesses would make anyone believe that I killed this man with his great ideas and his great heart."

I wanted to remind Nikolai Antonich that he had not always held such a high opinion of his cousin, but he would not let me get a word in.

"I recognise only one witness," he went on, "Ivan himself. He alone can accuse me, and if I were to blame, he alone would have the right to do so."

He broke down and wept. He cut his fingers with his glasses and fumbled about in his pocket for his handkerchief. Romashka ran up and offered him one, but Nikolai Antonich pushed his hand aside again.

"Even the dead, I think, would have spoken," he said and reached for his hat, breathing heavily.

"Nikolai Antonich," I said very calmly, "I don't want you to think that I intend to devote my whole life trying to convince mankind of your guilt.

It has been clear to me for a long time and now it is clear to others too. I did not invite you here to go over all this again. I simply considered it my duty to show you the real face of this scoundrel. I have no use for the things he has been telling me about you-I have known them long before. Don't you want to say anything to him?"

Nikolai Antonich was silent.

"Then get out!" I said to Romashka.

He ran over to Nikolai Antonich and began whispering something to him.

But the latter stood stiffly, staring straight in front of him. Only now did I notice how he had aged these last few days, how defected and pitiful he looked. But I felt no pity for him, none whatever.

"Get out!" I repeated to Romashka.

He did not go but kept whispering. Then he took Nikolai Antonich by the arm and led him to the door. This was unexpected, seeing that it was Romashka I had ordered out, not Nikolai Antonich, whom I had asked to come.

I had wanted to ask him who had written an article "In Defence of a Scientist", and whether I. Krylov was a descendant of the famous fabulist.

But I was too late-they had already left the room.

I hadn't set them at odds after all. They walked slowly down the corridor arm in arm, and only once did Nikolai Antonich stop for a moment.

He started to tear his hair. He had no hair to speak of, but a sort of childish down came away in his fingers and he stared at it with agonised amazement. Romashka restrained him and brushed his overcoat, and they moved along sedately until they disappeared round a bend in the corridor.

On the eve of my departure C. phoned to tell me that he had spoken to the Chief of the N.S.R.A. and read out to him my Memo. His answer was a favourable one. It was too late to send out an expedition this year, but it was highly probable that they would do this next year. My plan was detailed and convincing, but the part dealing with the route needed clarifying. The historical section was most interesting. I would be summoned to the N.S.R.A.

and would receive further notice.

I spent all that day around the shops. I wanted to buy a present for Katya, as we were parting again. It was no easy job. A tea-cosy? But she had no teapot. A dress? But I could never tell crepe de Chine from faille de Chine. A camera? She needed one badly, but I didn't have enough money for a Leica. I would probably have ended by buying nothing at all, had I not met Valya in the Arbat. He was standing before the window of a bookshop, thinking-I would have once guessed unerringly-of animals. But now he had other things on his mind.

"Valya," I said, "have you any money?"

"I have."

"How much?"

"Five hundred rubles."

"Let's have it."

He laughed.

"You're not going to Ensk again for Katya, are you?"

We went into a shop and bought a Leica.

As far as the rest of the world was concerned I was leaving at midnight, but with Katya I started taking my leave in the morning and kept it up all day, now dropping in on her at home, now at her office. We were parting only for a short time. In August she was to come to Zapolarie, and I was expecting to be called out before that-in July, perhaps. Nevertheless I thought of our parting with a pang, fearing that it might be a long one again.

Valya came to see me off at the station and brought a copy of Pravda containing my article. It was printed just as I had written it, except that in one passage the style had been improved and the article as a whole had been condensed to half its size. The excerpts from the diaries, however, were printed in full. "I shall never forget that leave-taking, that pale, inspired face with its inward look! How different from that once ruddy-faced, cheerful man with his fund of yarns and funny stories, the idol of his crew, a man who always came to his task, however difficult, with a joke on his lips! Nobody moved after his speech. He stood there with closed eyes, as though nerving himself for the last word of farewell. But instead of words a low moan broke from his lips and tears glistened in the corners of his eyes..."

Katya and I read this in the corridor of my carriage, and I felt her hair against my face, felt that she, too, could hardly keep back her tears.

The End of Book One

BOOK TWO

YOUTH CONTINUES

July 6, 1935. We spent only one evening together all the time Sanya was in Moscow. He came in looking very tired, and Alexandra Dmitrievna went out of the room at once. I made Sanya some tea-he likes his tea strong-and watched him eating and drinking until he made me sit down and have tea with him.

Then he suddenly recalled how we used to go skating together, and made up some story about his kissing me on the cheek at the rink, and finding it

"awfully firm, downy and cold." And I recalled how he had acted as judge at the trial of Eugene Onegin and had kept staring gloomily at me all the time.

"And do you remember-'Grigoriev is a brilliant personality, but he hasn't read Dickens'?"

"Don't I! Have you read him since?"

"No," Sanya said ruefully. "I never had the time. I read Voltaire, though-'The Maid of Orleans'. For some reason we have a lot of Voltaire's books in our library at Zapolarie."

Just then the phone rang. I went to answer it and spent a good half hour talking with my old professor. She called me "dear child" and had to know absolutely everything-where I now had my lunch and whether I had bought that pretty lampshade at Muir's. When I got back Sanya was asleep. I called him, then all at once I felt a pang of pity for him. I squatted down beside him and began to study his face ever so close.

That evening Sanya gave me the navigator's diary and all the papers and photographs. The diary was in a special paper case with a lock to it. After Sanya left I spent a long time examining these pages with torn edges, covered with close-written, crooked lines, which suddenly ran helplessly wide as though the hand had gone on writing while the mind had wandered off God knows where.

The boat-hook with the words "Schooner St. Maria" on it had been left behind at Zapolarie, but Sanya had brought a photograph of it. I don't suppose there is another boat-hook in the world which photographs so well!

I promised Sanya that I would write every day, but there is nothing new to write about every day. I am still living at Kiren's, reading a lot, working a lot, though it isn't very convenient, because the boxes of collected specimens stand in the hallway, and I have to draw my maps on the piano lid. For the first time this summer I did not go out on field-work. I have to work up the old material, and the Bashkir Geological Survey Board, where I am employed, have allowed me to remain in Moscow;

The map is a difficult one, quite a bit of a muddle, and I have to do everything over again. But the harder it is the more I like doing it. Though my nights are so dreary, I live with a feeling that all the painful experiences, the dim miseries of the past have been left behind me, and I can look forward to something interesting and new, something that makes me feel at once light-hearted, and happy, and a little afraid.

July 7, 1935. At all the offices where Sanya had called on his last day in town, he left my telephone number-both with the N.S.R.A. and Pravda. I was a little alarmed when he told me about it.

"Who am I supposed to be.? Who are they to ask for?"

"Katerina Tatarinova-Grigorieva," Sanya answered gravely.

I thought he was joking. But three days after he had gone someone phoned and asked for Katerina Tatarinova-Grigorieva.

It was a well-known journalist from Pravda. He said that Sanya's article had had wide repercussions and that enquiries concerning its author had even been made by the Arctic Institute.

"Give your husband my congratulations."

I was on the point of answering that he wasn't my husband yet, but thought better of it.

"If I am not mistaken I have the pleasure of speaking to Captain Tatarinov's daughter?"

"Yes."

"Have you any more material relating to your father's life and

activities?"

I said I had, but without the permission of Alexander Ivanovich- this was the first time I called Sanya by his first name and patrony-mic-I could not let him have it.

"Never mind, we'll write to him."

There was a phone call from Civil Aviation, too, asking where to send the copy of the paper carrying his article about the anchoring of a grounded aircraft during a blizzard-and I did not even know that he had written such an article. I asked for two copies-one for myself. After that there was another phone call from Literaturnaya Gazeta asking what Grigoriev this was, whether it was the author who had written such and such a book.

But the most important was my talk with C. I don't know what Sanya told him about me, but he spoke to me as though I were an old friend.

"Are you receiving a pension?" I was puzzled. "For your father." "No."

"You should put in for one."

Then he said with a laugh that the people at the N.S.R.A. had got the wind up on hearing that my father had discovered Severnaya Zemlya. Their records attributed it to somebody else.

"I don't know..." he went on, "somehow I don't like the way they are dealing with this."

"I thought an expedition had been decided on." "So did I, but now it suddenly seems that it hasn't. When I told them to send him out with the Pakhtusov, they said there was a pilot on board already. What if there is!

Your man has definite ideas." He said it just like that-"your man".

"Never mind, I'll have another go at them. Drop in and see us some day."

I said I should be very happy to, and we said goodbye. Every day I get a letter, sometimes two letters, from Romashov. The envelopes are addressed

"Second Party, Bashkir Geological Survey Board", as though they were mailed to an institution. I am something of an institution though, as there was no other way of arranging for me to work in Moscow. But the address is a joke, and a joke, which is repeated every day becomes a nuisance.

At first I used to read these letters, then I started to return them unopened, and then stopped reading and returning them altogether. But somehow I cannot get myself to burn these letters; they lie about all over the place, and when I come across them I snatch my hand away.