Two Captains (27 page)

Korablev was silent. Everything went dark before my eyes and my heart pounded in my ears.

"Ivan Pavlovich," I said in a quivering but determined voice. "It remains for me now to prove that I am right, even if I have to die in the attempt. But I will prove it. I'll go and see Nikolai Antonich this very day and ask him to show me those documents and letters. He has convinced you, now let him convince me."

"Do whatever you like," Korablev said drearily.

I went away. He hadn't stirred and remained seated by the stove, weary and sunk in despair. We were both in despair, only with me this feeling was mixed with a sort of cool fury, whereas he was utterly desolated, old and alone in a cold, empty flat.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE SLANDER

It was all very well to say I'd go and see him and ask him to show me those letters. I felt sick at the mere thought. I doubted whether he would even speak to me. As likely as not he'd throw me down the stairs without further ado. I couldn't very well fight him. After all, he was a sick old man.

I would have abandoned the idea but for a single thought that never left me - Katya.

I felt my head beginning to ache at the mere thought of how she had turned away from me at the funeral. Now I knew why she had done that: Nikolai Antonich had convinced her that it was all my fault.

I could imagine him talking to her and my heart sank. "That friend of yours has such an excellent memory. Why did he never mention those letters before his trip to Ensk?"

Why indeed? How could I have forgotten them? I, who had been so fascinated by them as a child? I, who had recited them by heart on the trains between Ensk and Moscow? To forget letters which had dropped upon our little town like a message from some distant stars?

I had only one explanation-judge for yourselves whether it is correct or not.

When Katya told me the story of her father, when I examined those old photographs of him in his regulation jacket with epaulettes and service cap, when I read his books, it had always seemed to me that all this belonged to a very distant past, at any rate years before I left Ensk. The letters, on the other hand, belonged to my childhood, that is, to quite a different time. It never occurred to me that these two entirely different periods followed close upon each other. This was not an error of memory, but quite a different kind of error.

I thought about that "von" a thousand times if I thought about him once. It was about him, then, that Captain Tatarinov had written:

"The whole expedition sends him our curses." It was about him, then, that he wrote: "We owe all our misfortunes to him alone." And Korablev had said that you couldn't throw the blame for the failure of such an enterprise on a single man. The Captain had thought otherwise.

So it was about him that he wrote: "That's the price we had to pay for that good office." But why should some "von" or other render Captain Tatarinov this good office? A good office could have been rendered by his rich cousin-no wonder he had always had so much to say about it.

In short, I had no plan of action whatever when, dressed in my Sunday best, I called on the Tatarinovs that evening and told the girl-a stranger to me-who answered the bell that I wanted to see Nikolai Antonich.

Through the open door I could see them drinking tea in the dining-room.

Nina Kapitonovna was saying something in a low voice and I saw her sitting by the samovar in her striped shawl.

I don't know what Nikolai Antonich thought when he saw me, but when he appeared in the doorway he started and slightly recoiled. "What do you want?" "I wanted to talk to you." There was a brief pause, then he said:

"Come in." I was about to go into his study, but he said: "No, this way."

Afterwards I realised this had been a deliberate ruse on his part-to get me into the dining-room so as to deal with me in front of everybody.

They were all somewhat startled to see me following at his heels. The old Bubenchikov ladies, who were the last people I expected to see there, jumped up all together. Katya came into the dining-room through another door and stood stockstill in the doorway. I murmured: "Maybe it's inconvenient here." "No, it's quite convenient."

I should have said "good evening" the moment I came in, but now it was too late to say it. Nevertheless, I bowed. Nina Kapitonovna was the only one who responded-with a slight nod. "Well?"

"You told Ivan Pavlovich that Captain Tatarinov wrote you about a von Vyshimirsky. I want to know this because it makes me look as if I purposely tried to convince Maria Vasilievna of your guilt because I had a grudge against you. At least, that's what Korablev thinks. And others too. In short, I ask you to show me these letters which go to prove that some von Vyshimirsky or other is responsible for the loss of the expedition and that the death of-" (I swallowed the word) "and that all the rest is my fault."

It was rather a long speech, but as I had prepared it beforehand I rattled it off without a hitch. I only stumbled when I mentioned the death of Maria Vasilievna and again at the words "and others too", because I was thinking of Katya. She was still standing in the doorway, tensed, holding her breath.

Only now, during this speech, did I notice how old Nikolai Antonich had grown. With that hooked nose of his and the sagging jowls he was like an old bird, and even his gold tooth, which used to light up his whole face, had lost its brightness.

He breathed heavily as he listened to me. He seemed to be at a loss for a reply. Just then one of the Bubenchikov ladies asked in surprise: "Who is this?"

He drew his breath and began to speak.

"Who is this?" he queried with a hiss. "It's that foul slanderer I've been telling you about day in day out."

"Nikolai Antonich, if you're going to call names-"

"It's the person who killed her," Nikolai Antonich went on. His face quivered and he began to crack his knuckles. "That is the person who slandered me with the most frightful slander the imagination is capable of.

But I'm not dead yet!"

Nobody thought he was, and I was about to tell him as much, when he started shouting again:

"I'm not dead yet!"

Nina Kapitonovna took hold of his arm. He wrenched it free.

"I could have had the law on him and have him condemned for everything

... for all that he has done to poison my life. But there are other laws and other bars, and by these laws he will yet be made to feel one day what he has done. He killed her," said Nikolai Antonich, and the tears fairly gushed from his eyes. "She died because of him. Let him go on living if he can..."

Nina Kapitonovna pushed her chair back and took hold of his arm as though she were afraid he was going to fall. He stared at her dully. For a moment I doubted whether I was in the right. But only for a moment.

"Because of whom? My God, because of whom?" Nikolai Antonich went on.

"Because of this guttersnipe, who is so devoid of feeling that he dares to come again to the house in which she died. Because of this guttersnipe of impure blood!"

I don't know what he meant by this and why his blood should be any purer than mine. No matter! I listened to him in silence. Katya stood by the wall, rigid and very straight.

"-who has dared to enter the house from which I kicked him out like the snake he is. What a fate mine has been, 0 God! I gave my whole life to her, I did everything a man could do for the woman he loves, and she dies on account of this vile, contemptible snake, who tells her that I am not I, that I had always deceived her, that I had killed her husband, my own cousin."

I was astonished to hear him speak with such passion and utter abandon.

I felt that I had gone very pale. No matter! I knew how to answer him.

"Nikolai Antonich," I said, trying to keep cool and noticing that my tongue was obeying me none too well. "I won't reply to your epithets, because I understand the state you are in. You did turn me out, but I came back and will continue to come back until I have proved that I am absolutely innocent of the death of Maria Vasilievna. And if anyone is guilty, it's not me, but someone else. The fact is that you have certain letters of the late Captain Tatarinov which you have used to persuade Korablev and evidently everybody else that I have slandered you. Will you please show me those letters so that all can be persuaded that I am the vile snake you have mst said lam."

The uproar that followed these words was terrific. The Bubenchi-kovs, still understanding nothing, started shouting again: "Who is this?" As nobody explained to them who I was they went on shouting louder still. Nina Kapitonovna was shouting at me too, demanding that I should go away. But Katya did not utter a word. She stood by the wall and looked from Nikolai Antonich to me and back again.

Abruptly, all fell silent. Nikolai Antonich pushed the old lady aside and went into his room from which he returned a moment later with a batch of letters in his hands. Not just one or two letters, but a batch, some forty or so. I don't think they were all Captain Tatarinov's letters, more probably they were miscellaneous letters from different people in connection with the expedition or something of that sort. He flung the letters at me, spat in my face and dropped into a chair. The old ladies rushed over to him.

Very likely, if he had spat in my face and hit the target, I would have knocked him down or even killed him. Nobody had ever spat in my face, and I would have killed the man who did, rules or no rules. But he missed. And the letters fell short too.

Naturally, I did not pick them up, though there was a moment when I very nearly picked one of them up-one which bore a big wax seal and the words St. Maria on it. But I did not pick them up. I was in this house for the last time. Katya stood between us, by the armchair in which he lay with clenched teeth, clutching at his heart. I looked at her, looked her straight in the face, which I was seeing for the last time.

"Ah, well," I said. "I'm not going to read these letters which you have thrown into my face. I'll do another thing. I'll find the expedition-1 don't believe it can have disappeared without a trace-and then we'll see who's right."

I wanted to take my leave of Katya and tell her that I would never forget the way she turned her back on me at the funeral, but Nikolai Antonich suddenly got up from the armchair and a hubbub arose again. The Bubenchikov aunts fell upon me and something struck me painfully on the back. I waved my hand with a hopeless gesture and went away.

OUR LAST MEETING

I was more lonely than ever, and buried myself in my books , with a sort of cold fury. I seemed to have lost even the faculty of J thinking. And a good thing too. It was better that way.

Suddenly it struck me that they might not accept me in the flying school on account of my health, so I took up gymnastics seriously-high jumps, swallow dives, back-bends, bar exercises and whatnot. Every morning I felt my muscles and examined my teeth. What worried me most, though, was my short stature-all my recent troubles seemed to have made me shorter still.

At the end of March, however, I got together all the necessary documents and sent them to the Board of Osoaviakhim (*A voluntary society for the promotion of aviation and chemical defence.- Tr.) with an application asking to be sent to the School of Aeronautics in Leningrad.

There is no need to explain why I wanted to leave Moscow.

Pyotr was going to Leningrad too. He had finally made up his mind to enter the Academy of Arts. Sanya, too, for the same reason.

During the spring holidays Pyotr and I went to Ensk, travelling again without tickets by the way, because we were saving our money for when we left school.

But this was quite a different trip and I myself had become quite a different person these last six months. Aunt Dasha was aghast when she saw me, and the judge declared that people looking as I did should answer for it before the law and that he would "take every step to discover the reasons for the defendant's lowered morale".

Pyotr was the only person to whom I had given an account - and a brief one at that-of my talk with Korablev and my interview with Nikolai Antonich.

Pyotr came out with a surprising suggestion. After listening to my story he said: "I say, what if you do find it?"

"Find what?"

"The expedition."

"What if I do?" I said to myself.

A shiver of excitement ran through me at the thought. And again, as in distant childhood, dissolving views appeared before me: white tents in the snow; panting dogs hauling sledges; a huge man, a giant in fur boots, coming towards the sledges, and I, too, in fur boots and a huge fur cap, standing in the opening of a tent, pipe between my teeth...

There was little hope of such a meeting, however. Deep down in my heart I felt that I was right. But sometimes a chilling sense of doubt would creep into it, especially when I thought of that accursed "von". Shortly before my departure for Ensk, Korablev had told me that Nikolai Antonich had shown him the original power of attorney issued by Captain Tatarinov authorising Nikolai Ivanich von Vyshimirsky to conduct all the business of the expedition. "You were wrong," he had said with succinct cruelty.

I felt lonesome at Ensk, and thought that when I got back to Moscow and took up my books I would have no time to feel lone some. But I did find time. Bitter and silent, I wandered round the school.

Then one day, on coming home, I found a sealed note addressed to "A.

Grigoriev, Form 9" lying on the table in the hall where the postman left all our mail.

I opened it and read:

"Sanya, I'd like to have a talk with you. If you're free, come to the public garden in Triumfalnaya Square today at half past seven."