Two Captains (30 page)

I learnt that an airman has to know the properties of the air, all its ways and whims, just as a good sailor knows the ways of the sea.

Those were the years when the Arctic, until then regarded as a remote and useless icy wilderness, had drawn closer to us and when the first great air jumps were attracting the whole country's attention. Every day articles about Polar expeditions by sea and air appeared in the newspapers and I read them with a thrill. I was longing for the North with all my heart.

Then, one day, when I was about to take one of the most difficult examination flights and was already seated in the cockpit, I saw a newspaper in the hands of my instructor. It had something in it which made me take off my helmet and goggles and climb out of the plane.

"Warm greetings and congratulations to the members of the expedition which has successfully solved the problem of navigating the Arctic Ocean"

was printed in big letters right across the front page.

Paying no heed to what the astonished instructor was saying to me, I looked at the page again, trying to take it all in at a glance. "Great Northern Sea Route Opened", one article was headed. "The Sibiryakov in the Bering Strait" ran another. "Salute to the Victors" said a third. This was the news of the historic expedition of the Sibiryakov, which for the first time in history had navigated the Northern Sea Route in a single season-the route which Captain Tatarinov had attempted in the schooner St. Maria.

"What's the matter with you? Are you ill?"

"No, I'm all right."

"Altitude one thousand two hundred metres. Two sharp banks one way, then two the other. Four upward spins."

"Okay!"

I was so excited that I was almost on the point of asking permission to put off the flight.

All that day I thought of Katya, of poor Maria Vasilievna, and of the Captain, whose life had become so surprisingly interwoven with my own. But this time I was thinking of them in a different way and my grievances appeared to me now in a different, calmer light. Of course, I had not forgotten anything. I had not forgotten my last talk with Maria Vasilievna, in which every word of hers had had a secret meaning-her farewell to her youth and to life. itself. I had not forgotten how I had sat the next day in the waiting-room together with the old lady, and the door had opened revealing something white with a dark head and a bare arm dangling from a couch. I had not yet forgotten how Katya had turned away form me at the funeral, nor had I forgotten my dreams of meeting her in a few years' time and tossing to her the proofs showing that I had been right. I had not forgotten how Nikolai Antonich had spat in my face.

But all this suddenly presented itself to me like a play in which the chief character is offstage and appears only in the last act, and until then he is merely talked about. They all talked about a man whose portrait hangs on the wall-the portrait of a naval officer with a broad forehead, a square jaw and deep-set eyes. Yes, he was the chief character in this play. He was a great explorer, killed by non-recognition and his history had a significance far beyond the bounds of personal affairs and family relationships. The Great Northern Sea Route had been opened-that was his history. Through navigation of the Arctic Ocean in a single season-thai had been his idea. The men who had solved the problem which had confronted mankind for four hundred years were his men. He could talk with them as equals.

What, compared with this, were my own dreams, hopes and desires! What did I want? Why did I become an airman? Why was I so keen on going to the North?

And now, as in my imaginary play, everything clicked into place and quite simple ideas came into my head concerning my future and my job.

I was keen on the North and on my profession as a polar airman because it was a profession which demanded from me endurance, courage and love for my country and my job.

Who knows but that I, too, one day may be named among those men who could have talked as equals with Captain Tatarinov?

A month before I finished the Balashov school I put in an application to be sent to the North. But the school would not let me go.

I was kept on as instructor and spent another whole year at Balashov. I would hardly call myself a good instructor. Of course, I could teach a man to fly without experiencing any desire to swear at him every minute. I understood my pupils. It was quite clear to me, for instance, why, on coming out of the plane, one man hastened to light up, while another wore an air of studied jollity. I was not a teacher by vocation and found it boring to have to explain a thousand times to others things I had learnt long ago.

In August 1933 I got leave and went to Moscow. My travelling warrant was made out for Ensk via Leningrad and people were expecting me in both these places. Nevertheless I decided to stop over in Moscow, where no one was expecting me.

Of course, I had no intention of phoning Katya, all the more as I had received only one greeting from her in all these three years-through Sanya-and everything was finished and long forgotten. So completely finished and forgotten that I even decided I would ring her up and had prepared for the occasion an opening phrase in a polite impersonal tone. But somehow, when I lifted the receiver in my room at the hotel, my hand began to shake and I found myself asking for another number instead-that of Korablev.

He was out of town, on his holiday, and the woman who answered the phone said that he would not be back until the beginning of the school year.

Valya, too, was out of town. I was politely informed that lecturer Zhukov was in the Far North and would be away for six months.

There was no one else I could phone in Moscow, unless it was some secretary or other member of the staff of the Civil Aviation Board. But I had no use for secretaries. I picked up the receiver and gave the number.

Nina Kapitonovna answered the phone-I recognised her kind firrrf voice at once.

"May I speak to Katya?"

"Katya?" she queried in surprise. "She's not here."

"Not at home?"

"Not at home and not in town. Who's that speaking?"

"Grigoriev," I said. "Could you give me her address?"

Nina Kapitonovna was silent awhile. Obviously, she hadn't recognised me. The world was full of Grigorievs.

"She's doing field work. Her address is: Geological Party of Moscow University, Troitsk."

I thanked her and rang off.

I did not stay long in Moscow. They received me very politely at the offices of the Northern Sea Route Administration and the Civil Aviation Board. My being sent to the North was out of the question, I was told, until the Balashov School released me.

I did not succeed in getting an assignment to the North until eighteen months later, and that quite by chance. In Leningrad I had made the acquaintance of an old Arctic pilot who wanted to return to Central Russia.

He was getting too old to fly under the arduous conditions of the North. We made an exchange, he taking my place at the school and I getting an assignment as second pilot on one of the Far North air roots.

The house was not difficult to find, as the street consisted of a single house, all the rest existing only in the imagination of the builders of Zapolarie.

It was getting dark when I knocked on the doctor's door. The windows lit up and a shadow moved slowly across the blind. No one opened the door, and after waiting for a while, I quietly opened it myself and stepped into a clean spacious passage.

"Anybody at home?"

No one answered. A besom stood in the corner and I cleaned the snow off my high felt boots with it-the snow outside was knee-deep.

"Is there anybody here?"

A ginger kitten sprang out from under the hallstand, stared at me in fright and fled. Then the doctor appeared in the doorway.

Medically I suppose it would sound improbable, but the fact of the matter was that in all those years the doctor had not only not aged, but even managed to look younger. He more than ever now resembled that lanky, jolly, bearded doctor who had dropped down on me and my sister in the village that memorable winter.

"Do you want to see me?"

"Yes, Doctor, I'd like you to see a patient," I said quickly. "An interesting case of muteness without deafness. The man can hear everything but can't say 'mummy'."

The doctor slowly pushed his glasses up on his forehead.

"I beg your pardon..."

"I said an interesting case," I went on gravely. "The man can pronounce enly six words: hen, saddle, box, snow, drink, Abraham. Patient G., case record described in a journal."

The doctor came up to me as if he were going to examine my tongue and ears, but he simply said: "Sanya!"

We embraced.

"So you've flown in after all!"

"Yes, I flew."

He put his arms round my shoulder and led me into the dining-room. A boy of about twelve was standing there who looked very much like the doctor.

He gave me his hand and introduced himself: "Volodya."

"Yes, Doctor, I'd like you to see a patient," I said quickly. "An interesting case of muteness without deafness. The man can hear everything but can't say 'mummy'."

The doctor slowly pushed his glasses up on his forehead.

"I beg your pardon..."

"I said an interesting case," I went on gravely. "The man can pronounce only six words: hen, saddle, box, snow, drink, Abraham. Patient G., case record described in a journal."

The doctor came up to me as if he were going to examine my tongue and ears, but he simply said: "Sanya!"

We embraced.

"So you've flown in after all!"

"Yes, I Hew."

He put his arms round my shoulder and led me into the dining-room. A boy of about twelve was standing there who looked very much like the doctor.

He gave me his hand and introduced himself:

"Volodya."

It was lighter here than in the passage, and the doctor looked me over again. I suspect he was strongly tempted to have a peek in my ear.

While we were sitting drinking tea the doctor's wife, Anna Ste-panovna, came in. She was a tall, portly woman, who, in her anorak and reindeer-skin high boots, looked like some Northern god. She was just as big even when she took off her anorak and boots, and the tall doctor did not look so tall beside her. She had quite a young face and altogether she went very well with this clean wooden house with its yellow floor boards and country-style floor runners. There was something of old Russia about her, as there was of the town itself, though it was an entirely new town built only five or six years before. Afterwards I learned that she was a Pomor. (Pomor-a native of the White Sea maritime agea - Tr.)

"Ivan Ivanovich," I said, when we had eaten everything on the table and started on the delicious home-made cloudberry wine, "do you remember those letters we wrote to each other when I was in Leningrad?"

"I do."

"You wrote me a very interesting letter about that navigating officer,"

I went on, "and I'd like to know whether you've kept those notebooks of his."

"Yes, I have them."

"Good. Now let me tell you something. It's a fairly long story, but I'm going to tell it nevertheless. As you know, it was you who once taught me to speak. So now you have only yourself to blame."

And I told him everything, beginning with the letters which Aunt Dasha used to read out to me. About Katya I said only a few words by way of information. But at this point in my story the doctor, for some reason, smiled, then quickly assumed a look of gravity.

"He was a very tired man, that navigator," he said. "He really died from fatigue, not gangrene. He had spent too much strength fighting death and hadn't enough left to live with. That was the impression he gave."

"You talked to him?"

"Yes."

"What about?"

"I think it was about some town down South," the doctor said. "Sukhumi, or maybe Baku. It was an obsession with him. Everyone was talking about the war in those days-it had just started, but he only talked about Sukhumi, how good it was down there, how warm. I suppose he came from there."

"Ivan Ivanovich, have you got his diaries here? In this house?"

"Yes."

"Let me see them."

These diaries had been on my mind for so long that I had begun to see them as thick books bound in black cloth. But the doctor went out and reappeared a few minutes later with two thin copybooks such as children use in school. I could hardly suppress my excitement as I opened one of them at random. "To Navigator Iv. Dm. Klimov.

"I order you and all those listed below, in accordance with your wishes and theirs, to leave the ship with the aim of reaching inhabited land..."

"Why, Doctor, he had an excellent hand! I can read it quite easily."

"It's my excellent hand you're reading," the doctor said. "I have written out the parts I have been able to decipher on separate sheets. The rest is like this-look."

Saying which, he opened the copybook at the first page. I had seen some poor handwriting in my day, Valya Zhukov's, for instance; he used to write in such a way that the teachers for a long time thought he was doing it to annoy them. But handwriting such as this I had never seen in my life. It was like so many fishhooks the size of pinheads scattered higgledy-piggledy all over the page. The first few pages were smeared with some kind of grease and the pencil marks were barely visible on the yellow parchment-like paper.

Further on came a hodgepodge of unfinished words, then a rough-drawn map, followed by another jumble of words, which no graphologist could have made head or tail of.

"All right," I said, closing the notebook. "I'll read this." The doctor looked at me with admiration. "I wish you success," he said earnestly.