Two Captains (18 page)

At first everything went on as before, except that something quite new had appeared in life-letters from Daddy. "There will soon be a letter from Daddy." And a letter there would be. Sometimes it took a week or two coming, but it always came. And then came the last letter, sent from Yugorsky Shar in the Arctic. It really was the last, but Mother was not particularly worried; she even said that this was as it should be: the St. Maria was sailing in places where there was no post, nothing but ice and snow.

It was as it should be. Daddy himself had written that there would be no more letters. Still, it was very sad, and Mother became more and more silent and sad every day.

"A letter from Daddy" was a splendid thing. Grandma, for instance, always baked a pie when a letter came from Daddy. And now, instead of that splendid thing which cheered everyone up, there appeared in life that long and dreary phrase: "It is as it should be," or "There can't be anything yet."

These words were repeated every day, especially in the evenings, when Katya went to bed and Mother and Grandma kept talking and talking. And Kaya listened. She had long been wanting to say:

"Maybe the wolves have eaten him up," but she knew that would make Mother angry, so she didn't.

Father was "wintering". Here in town summer had come long since, while he was still "wintering". This was very odd, but Katya asked no questions.

She had heard Grandma one day say to a neighbour: "We keep saying he's wintering, but God knows whether he's alive or not."

Then Mother wrote a petition to "His Most Gracious Majesty". Katya remembered that petition very well-she was a big girl by now. The wife of Captain Tatarinov petitioned that an auxiliary expedition be fitted out to rescue her unfortunate husband. She pointed out that the main reason for the voyage "was undoubtedly national pride and our country's honour". She hoped that "His Most Excellent Majesty" would not leave without support a brave explorer, always ready to give his life for the sake of the "nation's glory".

Katya thought of "His Most Gracious Majesty" as some sort of religious procession led by a bishop in a crimson hat. It turned out to be simply the Tsar. For a long time the Tsar did not answer and Grandma used to scold him every evening. At last a letter came from his chancellery. Very politely, the chancellery advised Mother to apply to the Minister of Marine. But it wasn't worthwhile applying to him. The matter had already been reported to him and he had said: "It's a pity Captain Tatarinov has not returned. I should have had him prosecuted for negligence in the handling of government property."

Then Nikolai Antonich had come to Ensk and new words had appeared in the house: "No hope whatever." He had said this to Grandma in a whisper. But everyone got to know about it somehow- Grandma's relations, the Bubenchikovs, and Katya's friends. Everyone except Mother.

No hope whatever. He would never come back. Never say something funny, never argue with Grandma about it being "good for you to drink a glass of vodka before dinner and if it didn't do you good, it did not harm either, and since it did no harm it was nice". Never again would he make fun of Mother for taking so long to dress when they went to the theatre. No one would hear him sing in the mornings as he dressed: "What is our life? A game!"

No hope whatever! He had remained somewhere far away, in the Far North, amid the snow and ice, and no one from his expedition had come back.

Nikolai Antonich said Father himself was to blame. The expedition had been fitted out excellently. There had been five tons of flour alone, over a ton and a half of Australian tinned meat, and twenty hams; more than a hundredweight of Skorikov's beaf-tea cubes, and biscuits, macaroni and coffee galore. Half the mess room had been partitioned off and biscuit stowed away in it. They had even taken asparagus-eighty pounds of it. Jam and nuts. And all this bought with Nikolai Antonich's money. Eighty splendid huskies, so that in case of an emergency they could return home by dog-teams.

In short, if Daddy had lost his life it was undoubtedly his own fault.

One could imagine him, for instance, being in a hurry where he should have bided his time. According to Nikolai Antonich, he had always done things in a hurry. However that may be, he had remained out there in the Far North and nobody knew whether he was alive or dead, because none of the crew of thirty had come back.

But in their own home he was still alive and had remained so for a long time. Who knows but that the door might suddenly open and he would walk in!

Just as he had been that last day at the Ensk railway station. In his blue uniform, and stiff collar open at the throat. Cheerful, with big hands.

A good many things in the house were still associated with him. Mother smoked, and everyone knew she had started to smoke when he was lost. Grandma chased Katya out of the house-and that was him again, for he had given orders that Katya was to have plenty of fresh air. The learned books with the queer titles in the narrow glass-fronted bookcase, which were lent to nobody, were his books. Then they had moved to Moscow, to Nikolai Antonich's flat, and everything was changed. No one now hoped that the door would suddenly open and he would come in. For this was a strange house, in which he had never been.

Maybe I would not have gone to the Tatarinovs had not Katya promised to show me the Captain's books and maps. I looked up the route and found it to be that famous Northeast Passage for which men had been searching for three hundred years. Finally, the Swedish explorer Nordenskiold navigated it in 1878. It was no easy job, no doubt, because it was a full quarter of a century before another explorer, Vilkitsky, repeated the journey, only in the opposite direction. In short, all this was so interesting that I decided to go.

Nothing had changed in the Tatarinovs' flat, except that there were noticeably fewer things about. Among others, the Levitan, which I had liked so much, had gone-that picture of a straight wide garden path and pine trees lit up by the sun. I asked Katya what had happened to it.

"Given away," was Katya's curt reply.

I said nothing.

"Presented to Nikolai Antonich," she added with sudden venom. "He adores Levitan."

It looked as if other things besides the Levitan had gone to Nikolai Antonich, because the dining-room had an empty sort of look. The ship's compass, though, stood in its old place with the needle still pointing North.

Nobody was at home, neither Maria Vasilievna nor the old lady.

Afterwards the old lady came in. I heard her taking her things off in the hall and complaining to Katya that everything had got so dear again-cabbage was sixteen kopecks, veal thirty kopecks, a prayer for the dead forty kopecks, eggs one ruble twenty kopecks.

I laughed and went out into the hall.

"What about lemons, Nina Kapitonovna?"

She looked round puzzled.

"Didn't the boys pinch a lemon?"

"Sanya!" exclaimed Nina Kapitonovna, throwing up her hands.

She dragged me to the window and looked me over from all sides. The inspection displeased her.

"Too short," she said with chagrin. "You don't grow."

She looked quite old, stooped and thin. The familiar green velvet coat hung loosely on her shoulders. But she still had the same brisk, preoccupied air, which now was quite cheerful. She was overjoyed to see me, much more so than I had expected.

Katya and I spent a long time looking through the Captain's books and charts. There was Nansen's Farthest North and Sailing Directions for the Kara Sea and others. There were not many books as books go, but each one was interesting. I was dying to ask for one to read, but of course I understood very well that this was not the thing to do. I was therefore surprised when Katya suddenly said:

"Would you like to borrow some?"

"May I?"

"You may," Katya said without looking at me.

I did not ponder much over the reason why this trust was shown me and set about selecting the books I wanted to read. I would have taken the lot if I could, but that was impossible, so I selected five of them. Among them, by the way, was a booklet by the Captain himself entitled: Causes of the Failure of the Greely Expedition.

I had timed my visit to the Tatarinovs so as not to run into Nikolai Antonich there. At that hour he was always at a meeting of the Teachers'

Council. But the meeting must have been put off, because he came in. Katya and I were so busy chatting that we did not hear the doorbell ring and only became aware of him when footsteps sounded in the next room, followed by a dignified cough. Katya frowned and slammed the door shut.

In almost the same instant it was opened again and Nikolai Antonich appeared in the doorway.

"I've asked you a thousand times, Katya, not to slam the door," he said. "It's time you got out of these habits..."

He saw me at once, of course, but he did not say anything, just narrowed his eyes slightly and nodded. I nodded back.

"We live in human society," he went on blandly. "And one of the motive forces of this society is consideration for others. You know perfectly well, Katya, that I can't stand doors being banged. One can only presume that you are doing this on purpose. But I don't want to think that, no, I don't..."

And so on and so forth.

I realised at once that all this waffle was just meant to tease Katya.

He had never dared to talk to her like that before, I remember.

He went away at last, but we no longer had felt like looking through the Captain's books. Besides, all the time Nikolai Antonich had been talking, Katya had stood screening the table on which the books lay. He had not noticed anything. But I knew what it was all about-she did not want him to know she was letting me take those books.

In short, a damp was thrown over our spirits and I began to take my leave. I came home with a heavy feeling. I was sorry for them all- for Maria Vasilievna, for the old lady, for Katya. I didn't like the changes in the Tatarinovs' home at all.

CHAPTER SEVEN MARGINAL NOTES

It was my last year at school, and really I should have been applying myself to my studies instead of going to skating-rinks and paying visits. I was doing well in some subjects (mathematics and geography, for instance) and not so well in others-literature, for example.

Literature in our school was taught by Likho, a very stupid man, whom the whole school called "Old Moke". He always went about in a tall Kuban cap, and we used to draw that cap on the blackboard with donkey's ears sticking out of it. Likho did not like me for a number of reasons. In the first place, one day, while dictating something, he said "carnaval" instead of "carnival". I corrected him and we argued about it, and I suggested sending an inquiry to the Academy of Sciences. He resented this.

Secondly, most of the pupils wrote their compositions from the books and articles-they would read a piece of criticism and copy it out. This was not my way. I wrote my essay first, then read the critics. And this was what Likho did not like! He wrote over my essays:

"Trying to be original. Poor!" In short, I was very much afraid I would get bad marks for literature at the end of the year.

For our final, school-leaving essay, Likho offered us a number of subjects, the most interesting of which I thought to be "The Peasantry in Post-Revolution Literature". I went to work on it in earnest, but soon cooled off-possibly because of the books Katya had lent me. After these books, my own essay seemed as dull as ditch-water to me.

To say that these books were interesting is to say nothing. They were books which had belonged to Katya's father, an Arctic sea-captain lost amid the snow and ice, like Franklin, Andree and others.

I never read anything so slowly in all my life. Nearly every page had markings on it, some passages were underlined and there were question marks and exclamation marks in the margins. The Captain either "quite agreed" or

"absolutely disagreed". He argued with Nansen-to my astonishment. He reproached him for having turned back when within two hundred and fifty miles of the Pole. On the chart affixed to Nansen's book, the extreme northern point of his drift was ringed with a red pencil. Apparently, this occupied the Captain's mind very much, because he returned to it again and again in the margins of other books. "The ice itself will solve the problem," was written down the side of one page. I turned the page and suddenly a small sheet of yellowed paper fell out of the book. It had writing on it in the same hand. This is what it said:

"The human mind was so absorbed by this problem, that the solving of it, despite the desolate graves which most of the explorers had found there, had become a sheer national contest. Nearly all civilised countries took part in this contest with the exception of Russia, although the impulse towards discovery of the North Pole was very strong among the Russians even in Lomonosov's time and is still strong today. Amundsen is determined at all costs to win for Norway the honour of reaching the Pole, but we will set out this year and prove to the world that Russians too are capable of such a feat."

This must have been a fragment from some memorandum, for written on the back of it was: "To the Head of the Hydrographical Board" with the date

"April 17th 1911".

So that was what Katya's father was after! He wanted, like Nansen, to go as far North as possible with the drifting ice and then make the Pole on dog-teams. By force of habit I figured out how much quicker it would be by aeroplane.

What puzzled me was this: in the summer of 1912 the schooner St. Maria had set sail for Vladivostok from St. Petersburg. Where did the North Pole come in?