Two Captains (17 page)

It was in this bad humour that I went out into the cloakroom, and whom should I meet but Katya. She had just got her coat and was making her way to a clear space near the exit.

"Hullo!" she said with a laugh. "Hold my coat, will you. Some trial that was!"

She spoke this as if we had parted only the day before.

"Hullo!" I answered sullenly.

She looked at me with interest.

"You've changed."

"Why?"

"Stuck-up. Well, get your coat and let's go!"

"Where?"

"Oh, where, where! To the comer, if that suits you. You're not very polite."

I went downstairs with her without my coat, but she sent me back.

"It's cold and windy."

This is how I remember her when I caught up with her at the street corner: she was wearing a grey fur cap with the earflaps down, and the ringlets on her forehead had come covered with hoarfrost while I ran back to the school. The wind whipped back the skirt of her coat and she leaned slightly forward, holding it down with her hand. She was of medium height, slim and, I believe, very pretty. I say "I believe" because at that time I did not think about it. Certainly no girl at our school would have dared to order me about like that:

"Get your coat and let's go!"

But then this was Katya, the kid whose hair I had pulled and nose I had poked into the snow. Yes, it was Katya all right!

"I say, why do they all call you 'Captain'? Is it because you want to go to nautical school?"

"I don't know yet," I said, though I had long ago made up my mind that I would go not to a nautical school but to a flying school.

I saw her to the gate of the familiar house and she asked me in.

"It's awkward."

"Why? Your being on bad terms with Nikolai Antonich is no concern of mine. Grandma was talking about you the other day too. Come in."

"No, it's awkward."

Katya shrugged coldly.

"Just as you please."

I caught up with her in the yard.

"How silly of you, Katya! I'm telling you it's awkward. Let's go somewhere together, eh? What about the skating-rink?"

Katya looked at me, then suddenly cocked up her nose, the way she did when a child.

"I'll see," she said importantly. "Phone me up tomorrow round about four. Ouch, how cold it is! Even your teeth freeze."

CHAPTER THREE A T THE SKAT1NG-RINK

Back in those years when I was mad on Amundsen, a simple thought had occurred to me. It was this: if Amundsen had used an aeroplane he would have reached the South Pole in a fraction of the time. What a hard time he had had, fighting his way day after day through the endless snowy wilderness!

For two months he had trudged behind his dogs, who had ended by eating each other. But in an aeroplane he could have reached the Pole in twenty-four hours. He would not have had friends enough and acquaintances whose names he could use for all the mountain peaks, glaciers and plateaux he would have discovered during the flight.

Every day I copied out long passages from accounts of polar expeditions. I cut out from the newspapers paragraphs concerning the first flights to the North and pasted them into an old ledger. On the first page of this ledger was written: "From (Forward) is the name of his ship.

'Forward' he says, and forward he strives. Nansen about Amundsen." This was my motto too. Mentally, in an aeroplane, I followed Scott, and Shackleton, and Robert Peary. Along all their routes. And since I had an aeroplane at my disposal, I had to study its design.

Following point 3 of my Rules: "Wilful will do't", I read The Theory of Aircraft Construction. Ugh, what agony it was! If there was anything I did not understand, I just learnt it off by heart to be on the safe side.

Every day I took my imaginary aeroplane to pieces. I studied the engine and airscrew. I fitted it with the most up-to-date instruments. I knew it like the back of my own hand. The only thing I didn't know about it was how to fly it. And that was just what I wanted to learn.

I kept my resolution a secret, even from Korablev. At school they considered that I had too many irons in the fire as it was and I did not want them to say of my interest in aviation: "The latest fad!" This was no fad.

Then suddenly I revealed my secret. To whom? To Katya.

That day we had arranged to go to the skating-rink first thing in the morning, but something kept cropping up to prevent us. First Katya put it off, then I. At last we started out, but our skating started off on the wrong foot. For one thing, we had to wait half an hour in the frost, because the rink was snowed up and closed while they were clearing it. Secondly, Katya's heel broke off the first time round and we had to tie the skate down with a strap, which I had brought with me just in case. But my strap kept coming undone. We had to go back to the cloakroom and ask the help of the dour, red-faced mechanic who was grinding skates there. At last, all was in order. It had started snowing again and we skated for a long time hand in hand, in big half-circles, now to the right, now to the left. This figure is called "curve eight".

Then we sat down right in front of the bandstand, and Katya suddenly brought her flushed face with its dancing black eyes close to mine. I thought she wanted to say something in my ear and said loudly: "Eh?"

She laughed.

"Nothing. It's hot."

"Katya," I said, "shall I tell you something? You won't tell anybody, will you?"

"Not a soul."

"I'm going to flying school."

She blinked, then stared hard at me.

"You've made up your mind?"

"Uhu."

"Positively?"

I nodded.

The band suddenly struck up and I didn't catch what she said as she shook the snow from her jacket and frock.

"I don't hear you!"

She grasped my hand and we skated down to the other side of the rink, to the children's play area. It was dark and quiet there, and all snowed up.

The toboggan slide had fir trees planted along the sides and little fir trees grew around the area. We might have been in a wood, somewhere out of town.

"Will they take you?"

"The school?"

"Yes."

It was a dreadful question. Every morning I did my daily dozen on Anokhin's system and took a cold sponge down on Muller's. I felt my muscles and thought: "What if they don't take me?" I had my eyes, ears and heart examined. The school doctor said I was healthy. But there were different kinds of health; how was he to know I wanted to enter a flying school? What if I had bad nerves? Or something else wrong with me? My height! My height, damn it! During the last year I had grown only by three-quarters of an inch.

"They'll take me," I said confidently.

Katya regarded me with what looked like respect.

I never talked with Katya about her domestic affairs. I only asked her how Maria Vasilievna was getting on and she answered: "Thanks, she's all right."

"And Nina Kapitonovna?"

"Thanks, she's all right."

Maybe it was all right, but I didn't think so. Katya's spirits dropped when she had to go home. Obviously, things had gone wrong at home. Shortly afterwards I met Maria Vasilievna and she confirmed me in this belief.

We met at the theatre at a performance of Princess Turandot. Katya had managed to get three tickets, the third being for Nina Kapitonovna. But Nina Kapitonovna, for some reason, could not go, and so I took the ticket instead.

We arrived at the theatre from different places and Katya was very nearly late. She came running in after the ticket-collector had closed the doors.

"Where's Mum?"

Her mother was in her seat. She called to us as we made our way to our seats, stepping on somebody's feet in the darkness.

There had been a lot of talk at school about Princess Turandot' and we had even tried to stage it. So, during the first act, I had no time to look at Maria Vasilievna. I only noticed that she was just as beautiful, if not more so. She wore her hair differently, exposing the whole of her high white forehead. She sat erect and had eyes for nothing but the stage.

In the interval, however, I had a good look at her and was upset.

She had gone thinner and looked older. Her eyes were enormous and altogether sombre. It occurred to me that anyone seeing her for the first time might well be startled by that gloomy look.

We talked about Princess Turandot and Katya declared that she did not like it very much. I did not know whether I liked it or not, so I agreed with Katya. Maria Vasilievna thought it was wonderful.

"You and Katya are too young, you don't understand."

She asked me about Korablev, how he was getting on, and I thought a tinge of colour came into her face when I said: "He's quite all right."

As a matter of fact he was feeling none too good. He had not forgotten, of course, that she had refused him.

She may have been a bit sorry for this now. Otherwise she wouldn't be asking about him in such detail. She was even interested to know what forms he was teaching and how he got on with the pupils.

I answered in monosyllables and in the end she got cross with me.

"Faugh, Sanya, I can't get a word out of you! 'Yes', 'no'. Have you swallowed your tongue?" she said with annoyance.

Then, going off at a tangent, she began to talk about Nikolai Antonich.

Very odd. She said that she considered him a fine man. I said nothing.

The interval was over and we went in for the second act. During the next interval she started talking about Nikolai Antonich again. I noticed that Katya frowned. Her lips stirred as if she was about to say something, but she checked herself.

We walked round the foyer, Maria Vasilievna talking all the time about Nikolai Antonich. It was unbearable. It was also astonishing, because I had not forgotten what her former attitude to him had been.

Nothing of the sort! The man was kindness and nobility itself. All his life he had helped his cousin (it was the first time I had heard Maria Vasilievna refer to her late husband as Ivan) even when he himself was having a bad time. He had given his whole fortune to fit out his last hapless expedition.

"Nikolai Antonich believed in him," she said earnestly.

All this I had heard from Nikolai Antonich himself, almost in the same phrases. Maria Vasilievna never used to repeat his words before. There was something behind this. For all the eagerness and earnest-ness with which she spoke I sensed that she was trying to persuade herself that Nikolai Antonich really was a remarkable person and that her late husband owed everything to him.

This was on my mind all through the third act. I decided that I would ask Katya about her father point blank. The portrait of the naval officer with the broad brow, the set jaw and light dancing eyes suddenly rose before me. What was this expedition from which he had never returned?

After the show we lingered in the auditorium until the cloakroom crowds had thinned out.

"I say, Sanya, why don't you ever drop in?" Maria Vasilievna said.

I mumbled something.

"I'm sure Nikolai Antonich has long forgotten that silly affair," she went on. "If you like, I'll talk to him about it."

The last thing I wanted was for her to get permission from Nikolai Antonich for me to call on them. I was on the point of saying, "Thanks, I'd rather you didn't," when Katya interposed, saying that it was nothing whatever to do with Nikolai Antonich, as I would be coming to see her and not him.

"Oh, no!" Maria Vasilievna said, startled. "Why only you? He'll be coming to see me, too, and Mother."

CHAPTER FIVE KATYA'S FATHER

Now that expedition. What kind of man was Katya's father? All I knew was that he had been a naval officer and was dead. But was he? Katya never spoke of him as dead. Except for Nikolai Antonich, who costantly referred to him as "my late cousin", the Tatarinovs did not talk about him very often.

His portraits hung in all the rooms, but they seldom spoke about him.

In the end I got tired of speculating, all the more as one could simply ask Katya where her father was and whether he was alive or dead. That's what I did.

And this is what she told me.

She was only three, but she clearly remembered the day her father went away. He was a tall man in naval blues and had big hands. Early in the morning, while she was still asleep, he had come into her room and bent over her cot. He patted her head and said something. It sounded like: "Look, Maria, how pale she is. Promise me she'll be out in the fresh air as much as possible." And Katya had opened her eyes just a wee bit and seen her mother's tear-stained face. But she gave no sign she was awake-it was such fun pretending to be asleep. Afterwards they were sitting in a big brightly lit hall at a long table on which stood white little hillocks. These were table-napkins. Katya was so fascinated by these table-napkins that she did not notice that her mother had left her and in her place now sat Grandma, who kept sighing and saying: "My goodness!" And Mother, in a strange unfamiliar dress with puffed sleeves, sat next to Father and winked to Katya from afar.

It was very jolly at table, there were lots of people, all laughing and talking together loudly. Then Father got up, a glass of wine in his hand, and everyone fell silent. Katya did not understand what he was saying, but she remembered everyone clapping and cheering when he had finished, and again Grandma muttered "My goodness!" and sighed. Then everyone said goodbye to Father and to some other sailors, and at parting he had tossed Katya high up in the air with his kind, big hands.

"Well, Maria darling," he had said to Mother. And they had kissed each other on both cheeks.

This had been a farewell dinner and send-off of Captain Tatarinov at the Ensk railway station. He had come to Ensk in May 1912 to say goodbye to his family, and in the middle of June he had set sail from St. Petersburg in the schooner St. Maria bound for Vladivostok.