Two Captains (15 page)

"No longer in danger of dying," as Ivan Ivanovich put it, "but in danger of remaining an idiot for the rest of your life."

I was lucky. I did not remain an idiot, and after my illness I even felt somehow more sensible than I was before. It was a fact, though the illness had nothing to do with it.

Be that as it may, I spent all of six months in hospital. During that time Ivan Ivanovich and I saw each other almost every other day. We talked together about old times. It appears that he had been in exile. In 1914, for being a member of the Bolshevik Party, he had been sentenced to penal servitude and then to exile for life. I don't know where he served his sentence, but his place of exile was somewhere far away, by the Barents Sea.

"I escaped from there," he said laughing, "and came running straight to your village and nearly froze to death on the way."

That's when I learnt why he had stayed awake nights in our cottage. He had left the black tube-the stethoscope-with me and my sister as a keepsake.

One word leading to another, I told him the story of when and why I had run away from the Children's Home.

He heard me out attentively, and for some reason kept looking straight in my mouth.

"Yes, wonderful," he said thoughtfully. "A rare case indeed."

I thought he meant my running away from the Home being a rare case and was about to tell him it wasn't such a rare thing as he thought, when he said again:

"Not deaf and dumb, but dumb without being deaf. Stummheit ohne Taubheir. To think that he couldn't say 'Mummy'! And now, a regular orator!"

And he began telling the other doctors about me.

I was a bit disappointed that the doctor had not said a word about the affair that had made me leave the Home, and if anything, had seemed to let it drift past his ears. But I was mistaken, for one fine day the door of our ward opened and the nurse said: "A visitor for Grigoriev."

And in came Korablev.

"Hullo, Sanya!"

"Hullo, Ivan Pavlovich!"

The whole ward stared at us with curiosity.

Perhaps that was why he started by only talking about my illness. But when all had switched their attention back to their own affairs, he began to scold me. And a good piece of his mind did he give me! He told me, word for word, exactly what I had thought about him and said it was my duty to go to him and tell him: "Ivan Pavlovich, you're a cad" if I thought he was one.

But I had not done this, because I was a typical individualist. He relented a bit when, completely crushed,. I asked: "Ivan Pavlovich, what's an idividualist?"

In short, he kept going at me until visiting time was over. In taking his leave, however, he shook my hand warmly and said he would come again.

"When?"

"In a day or two. I'm going to have a serious talk with you."

The next visiting day Valya Zhukov came to see me and for two blessed hours talked about his hedgehog. On leaving he reminded himself that Korablev sent me his regards and said he would call on me one of these days.

I twigged at once that this was going to be the serious conversation.

Very interesting! Going to give me some more of his mind, I thought.

The talk started with Korablev asking me what I wanted to be.

"I don't know," I said. "An artist, perhaps."

His eyebrows went up and he said:

"No good."

Truth to tell, I had never thought of what I wanted to be. In my heart of hearts I wanted to be somebody like Vasco Nufiez de Balboa. But Ivan Pavlovich's "no good" had been so positive that it put my back up.

"Why not?"

"For many reasons," Korablev said firmly. "For one thing because you haven't enough character."

I was dumbfounded. It had never occurred to me that I had no character.

"Nothing of the sort," I said sulkily. "I have a strong character."

"No you haven't. How can a man have a character when he doesn't know what he'll be doing the next hour. If you had any character you'd be doing better at school. But you were studying poorly."

"Ivan Pavlovich," I cried in despair, "I only had one 'unsatisfactory'

mark."

"But you could study very well if you wanted to."

He paused, waiting for me to say something, but I was silent.

"You have more imagination than intelligence."

He paused again.

"And generally, it's high time you figured out what you're going to make of your life and what you are in this world for. Now you say, 'I want to be an artist.' But to become that, my dear boy, you'd have to become quite a different person."

It's all very well to say you've got to become quite a different person. But how are you to do it? I didn't agree that I had done so badly in my studies. Only one "unsatisfactory", and in arithmetic at that, and only because one day I had cleaned my boots and Ruzhichek had called me out and said:

"What do you polish your boots with, Grigoriev? Bad eggs in paraffin oil?"

I had answered him back, and from that day on he had kept giving me

"unsatisfactory" marks. Nevertheless, I felt that Korablev was right and that I had to become quite a different person. Did I really lack character?

I'd have to check that. I must make a resolution to do something and do it.

For a start I resolved to read A Hunter's Sketches, which I had started to read the year before and given up because I found it very dull.

Strange! I took the book again from the hospital library, and after some five pages I found it duller than ever. More than anything else in the world now I wished I had not made that resolution. But I had to keep my word, even if I had given it to myself, whispered it under my blanket.

I waded through A Hunter's Sketches and decided that Korablev was wrong. I did have character.

I ought to test my mettle again. Every morning, say, do the daily dozen and then take a sponge down with cold water straight from the tap. Or get through the year in arithmetic with "excellent" marks. But all this could wait until I went back to school. Meanwhile I must think and think.

At last Ivan Ivanovich examined me for the last time and said I was fit to be discharged from hospital. What a glorious day that was! We parted, but he gave me his address and told me to call on him.

"Not later than the twentieth, mind," he said. "Or you may not find me in, old chap."

I left the hospital, bundle in my hand, and after walking a block, sat down on a curbstone-I was that weak. But how good I felt! What a big place Moscow was! 1 had forgotten it. And how noisy the streets were! I felt dizzy, but I knew that I wouldn't fall. I was well and would live. I had recovered. Goodbye, hospital! Hail, school!

Truth to tell, I was a bit disappointed at the rather cool reception I was given at the school. Romashka was the only one to ask me: "Better?" And that in a tone of voice as though he was rather disappointed that I had not died.

Valya was glad to see me, but he had other things on his mind. His hedgehog had got lost and he suspected that the cook, on Nikolai Antonich's orders, had thrown it into the dust-bin.

Big changes had taken place in the school during those six months. For one thing it was half its size, some of the senior classes having been transferred to other schools.

Secondly, it had been painted and whitewashed-the once dirty rooms with their grimy windows and black ceilings were simply unrecognisable.

Third, the Komsomol Group was now the talk of the school. The tubby Varya was now its secretary. She must have been a good secretary, because when I got back I found the little room of the Komsomol office the most interesting place in the school. Though I wasn't a member of the Komsomol yet, I was given an assignment by Varya only two days after coming out of the hospital. I was to draw an aeroplane soaring among the clouds and write over it the motto: "Young people, join the S.F.A.F.!"(S.F.A.F.-Society of Friends of the Air Force.-translator)

My fingers were still stiff and not like my own, but I set to work with a will

The day I intended to call on Doctor Ivan Ivanovich the school was thrown into commotion first thing in the morning.

Valya's hedgehog had been found. It appears that he had somehow got into the attic and landed inside an old cabbage cask, where he had spent over a fortnight. He was in very bad shape and there was nothing for it but to take him to the university, where a laboratory of some kind bought hedgehogs. Valya wrapped him up in an old pair of trousers and went off. He was back within an hour, looking sad, and sat down on his bed.

"They'll cut him open," he said, fighting back his tears.

"What d'you mean?"

"What I said. They'll slit his belly open and rummage about inside.

Poor thing."

"Never mind," I said. "You'll buy another one. How much did you get for him?"

Valya opened his fist. The hedgehog had been more dead than alive and they had given him only twenty kopecks.

"I have thirty," I said. "Let's put them together and buy a spinning-tackle." I said that about the spinning-tackle on purpose, to cheer him up.

We put our money together and even exchanged our ten and fifteen-kopeck coins for one new silver fifty-kopeck piece.

This hedgehog business of Valya's had detained me, and by the time I started out for the doctor's place darkness had begun to fall. He lived a good distance away, on Zubovsky Boulevard, and the trams were no longer free of charge like they were in 1920.1 wangled it, though, took a free ride.

Only one window had a light in it in the house on Zubovsky Boulevard-a white house with columns, standing back in a garden- and I decided that this must be the doctor's room. I was wrong. The doctor, as it happened, lived on the first floor, whereas the light was burning on the ground floor. Flat No.

8. Here it was. Under the number was scrawled in chalk: "Pavlov lives here, not Levenson." Pavlov was my doctor Ivan Ivanovich.

A woman with a baby in her arms answered the door and kept "shushing"

all the time while she asked me what I wanted. I told her. Still shushing, she said the doctor was in, but she thought he was asleep.

"Knock at the door, though," she whispered. "He may be awake."

"I'm not asleep," the doctor called out from somewhere. "Who is it?"

"A boy."

"Let him in."

This was my first visit to the doctor and I was surprised to find his room in such disorder. On the floor, amidst a jumble of packets of tea and tobacco, lay leather gloves and curious but handsome fur high boots. The whole room was cluttered with open suitcases and rucksacks. And amidst this chaos, a tripod in his hand, stood Doctor Ivan Ivanovich.

"Ah, Sanya," he said cheerfully. "You've come. Well, how goes it? Alive and kicking?"

"Fit as a fiddle."

"Fine! Do you cough?"

"No."

"Good lad! I've written an article about you, old chap."

I thought he was joking.

"A rare case of dumbness," said the doctor. "You can read it yourself in number seventeen of The Medical Journal. Patient G. That's you, old chap.

You've made a name for yourself. Only as a patient, though, so far. The future is still yours."

He started to sing: "The future is still yours, still yours, still yours!" then suddenly pounced on one of the largest suitcases, slammed the lid down and sat down on it the better to shut it.

The doctor spoke quite a lot that day. I had never seen him so jolly.

Suddenly he decided that I had to be given something as a present and gave me the leather gloves. Though they were old ones, they were still very good and did up by means of a strap. I was on the point of refusing, but he didn't give me a chance. He thrust them at me, saying: "Take them and shut up."

I ought to have thanked him for the present, but instead I said: "Are you going away?"

"Yes," the doctor said. "I'm going to the Far North, inside the Arctic Circle. Heard of it?"

I vaguely recalled the letter of the navigating officer.

"Yes."

"I left my fiancee there, old chap. Know what that is?"

"Yes."

"No you don't. At least you know, but don't understand."

I began to examine the various queer things he was taking with him: fur trousers with triangular leather seats, metal boot soles with straps to them, and so on. And the doctor kept talking all the time while he packed.

One suitcase refused to stay shut. He took it by the lid and tipped it out onto the bed. A large photograph fell at my feet. It was a yellowed photograph, pretty old, bent in a number of places. On the back was written in a large round hand: "Ship's company of the schooner St. Maria". I started to examine the photograph, and to my surprise I found Katya's father on it.

Yes, it was him all right. He was sitting right in the middle of the crew, his arms folded across his chest, exactly as in the portrait hanging in the Tatarinovs' dining-room. I couldn't find the doctor on the photograph, though, and asked him why this was.

"The reason is, old chap, that I didn't sail in the schooner St.

Maria," the doctor said, puffing mightily as he strapped down the suitcase.

He took the photograph from me and looked round where to put it.

"Somebody left it as a keepsake."

I wanted to ask who that person was, whether it was Katya's father, but he had already slipped the photograph into a book and put the book in one of the rucksacks.

"Well, Sanya," he said, "I've got to be going. Write and tell me what you're doing and how you're getting on. Don't forget, old chap, you're a rare specimen!"

I wrote down his address and we said goodbye.

It had gone ten by the time I reached the Home and I was a little afraid the doors would be locked. But they weren't. They were open and the lights were on in all the rooms. What could it be?