Two Captains (38 page)

It was amusing to see the way Nikolai Antonich began his article by first describing the food-for me this was further incriminating evidence.

Further on, however, he was more circumspect. While mentioning that the expedition had been fitted out at public expense, he modestly hinted that it was to him that the idea of "following in the footsteps of Nordenskjold"

first occurred. He spoke with bitterness about the obstacles which the reactionary press and the Ministry of Marine had put in his way. He quoted the note which the Minister of Marine wrote on the report concerning the loss of the St. Maria: "It is a pity that Captain Tatarinov has not returned. I should have had him prosecuted for negligence in the handling of government property."

Still more bitterly did he write about how the Archangel tradesmen had cheated his cousin by palming off on him poor, untrained dogs, which might well have been bought off any street urchin for twenty kopecks a pair, and how the whole business had gone to pieces the moment Nikolai Antonich was forced by illness to withdraw from it. He did not name the tradesmen-no fear! Only one of them was indicated by the initial V. Nikolai Antonich blamed V. for having supplied, at great profit to himself, meat which had had to be thrown overboard even before they reached Yugorsky Shar.

This part of the article was written knowledgeably. Nikolai Antonich even quoted Amundsen to the effect that the success of any expedition depends entirely on its provisioning, and brilliantly proved this point by the example of his "late cousin's" expedition. He quoted passages from his

"late cousin's" letters, complaining bitterly of the speculators who took advantage of the fact that he had to cut short his stay at Archangel and put out to sea in a hurry.

Nikolai Antonich wrote practically nothing about the actual voyage, beyond mentioning that at Yugorsky Shar the St. Maria encountered a number of merchant vessels lying at anchor waiting for the break-up of the ice which filled the southern part of the Kara Sea. According to one of the skippers the St. Maria was seen heading into the Kara Sea at dawn on September 17th and was lost to view over the horizon behind an uninterrupted line of ice. "The task which I. L. Tatarinov set himself," Nikolai Antonich wrote, "was not fulfilled." "In passing, however, he made a remarkable discovery-that of Severnaya Zemlya, which he named 'Maria Land'."

I bought this issue of Soviet Arctic, all the more as it contained references to other articles by the same writer on the same subject, and returned to my hotel.

I returned in anything but a good humour. It seemed to me that since this lie had been printed, and so long ago into the bargain-over a year ago-then there was nothing more to be said. It was too late to challenge it, and nobody would listen to me if I did. He had forestalled me. It was a lie, but a lie mixed with truth. He had been the first to point out the significance of the expedition of the St. Maria. He had been the first to show that Severnaya Zemlya had been discovered by Captain Tatarinov six months before it was first sighted by Vilkitsky. He had taken this, of course, from the Captain's letter, which I had given to Katya. He had beaten me to it on all points.

I paced my room whistling.

Truth to tell, what I wanted most at that moment was to go to the railway station and book a ticket to Krasnoyarsk and from there fly to Zapolarie. But instead of going to the station I sat down to write my memorandum. I wrote it all day, and when you work all day all the cheerless thoughts that keep coming into your head have to go away again because the place is occupied.

CHAPTER FOUR NEWS GALORE

I came in to find Korablev squatting in front of the stove, which he was making up. It was such a familiar scene-Korablev there at the stove in his old, shaggy jacket-that I even felt for a moment that all those years had never been, that I was still a schoolboy, and was going to get a wigging, as I did that time when I went to Ensk to see Katya. But then he turned round. "How old he has gone," I thought, and in a flash everything fell back into place.

"There you are at last!" Korablev said gruffly. "Why didn't you come and stay with me?"

"Thanks, Ivan Pavlovich."

"You wrote you'd stay with me, didn't you?"

"I'd be inconveniencing you."

He looked at me, closing one eye, as if the better to take me all in.

It was the appraising look of a master examining his handiwork. The sight must have pleased him, because he stroked his moustache and told me to sit down.

"I didn't get a proper look at you yesterday," he said. "I was too busy."

He laid the table, got a bottle out of the cupboard, cut some bread, then got out some cold veal and cut it up. He was still living alone, but the damp old flat looked cosier and did not seem to be so damp. The only thing I didn't like was that while I was talking he was helping himself to the bottle without taking a bite. It worried me.

I said I was going to tell him only the bare essentials, but it is not easy to pick these out when after so many years you meet a person who is near and dear to you. Korablev questioned me about the North, about my work as an airman, and was displeased at the brief answers I gave him.

"Do you remember, Sanya, what you said to me when you were leaving Moscow? You said: 'It remains for me now to prove that I am right even if I have to die in the attempt.' Well, have you proved it?"

It was an unexpected question and I digested it. I remembered our talk all right. I remembered how Korablev had shouted: "What have you done, Sanya! My God, what have you done!" And how he had wept, saying that it was all my fault, because I had insisted that the Captain's letter referred to Nikolai Antonich when in fact it referred to some von Vyshimirsky or other.

I couldn't quite see why Korablev should have mentioned that talk of ours. But he must have had some reason for wanting me to remember it. He looked at me gravely and seemed secretly pleased about something.

"I don't know who cares whether I prove something or not," I said gloomily. "Who wants it?"

"That's just where you're mistaken, Sanya," Korablev said. "You want it, and I want it, and so does one other person. Especially since you have proved to be right."

I stared at him. Five years have passed since that talk of ours. I now knew more than anybody else in the world about Captain Tatarinov's expedition. I had found the navigator's diaries and read them-the hardest job I had ever undertaken. I had had the good luck of meeting that old Nenets, the last man who, with his own eyes, had seen a sledge belonging to the expedition, and on this sledge, a dead man who might have been the Captain himself. Yet I had not found a single piece of evidence to show that I was right.

And now, when I had returned to Moscow and called on my old teacher-who, I would have supposed, had long since forgotten about this affair-now he tells me: "You have proved to be right!"

"Ivan Pavlovich," I began rather shakily, "you really shouldn't say such things unless you have-"

I was going to say "irrefutable evidence", but he checked me. The doorbell rang. Korablev bit his lip and looked round anxiously.

"I say, Sanya... I have to see a certain person. Do you mind sitting here a bit?"

As he said this he led me into the next room, which was like a large bookcase cluttered up with books. Instead of a door it had a green curtain which was full of holes.

"And keep your ears open. It'll be worth your while."

I forgot to mention that Korablev that evening had struck me as behaving rather oddly. Several times he had started to whistle softly. He had paced the room with his hands chasped on his head and ended by chewing the pear stem with which he had been picking his teeth. After piloting me into the "bookcase" he hastily removed the vodka from the table, then took something out of his desk, chewed on it, then took several deep breaths with his mouth wide open, and went out to open the door.

Who do you think was with him when he came back into the room? Nina Kapitonovna! Yes, it was Nina Kapitonovna, bent, thinner than before, with the shadows of age round her eyes, and wearing the same old velvet coat.

She was saying something, but I was not listening. I was watching Korablev as he attended solicitously to his visitor's comfort. He was about to pour her out some tea, but she checked him.

"I don't want any. I've just had some. Well, how are you?"

"So-so, Nina Kapitonovna," Korablev said. "My back aches."

"How come? Making old bones! Fancy saying such a thing! Rub Born Bengue into your back if it aches. It helps."

"Born Bengue-what is that?"

"An ointment. Do you drink?"

"I don't, Nina Kapitonovna, honestly," Korablev said. "I've given ft up. Just once in a while, maybe, a small glass before dinner. Even the doctors advise it."

"No, you do drink. Now, when I was young I lived on a farm down south.

My father was a Cossack, you know. He'd come in, hardly able to stand on his two legs, and say: 'That's nothing, if a man wants to kill himself he drinks a glass before dinner every day.' "

Korablev laughed. Nina Kapitonovna looked at him and began to laugh too. Then she told him a story about some winebibber of a countess who "used to down a glass of vodka first thing in the morning, as soon as she woke up.

Then she'd start walking around. All yellow, puffy and blowsy. She'd walk around a bit, then have another one. In the morning she was still normal, but by dinnertime she was tight as a drum. In the evening she'd have a houseful o' visitors. Dressed beautifully, she'd sit down at the piano and sing. Talk about kind-hearted! Everyone went to her. With the most trifling things. A fine person, she was. But a drunkard!"

Apparently, this example did not exactly please Korablev, who tried to change the subject. He asked how Katya was getting on.

Nina Kapitonovna made a little deprecating gesture with her hand. "We quarrel," she said with a sigh. "She's so touchy. And awfully proud! If she fails in one thing, she goes after another. That's why

she's so nervous, all on edge."

"Nervous?"

"Yes. And proud. And she won't talk," said Nina Kapitonovna. "I've had an eyeful of those who won't talk, you know. I don't like the look of it at all. I mean the way she keeps to herself. What's the sense? Why not unburden your mind? But she won't." "Why don't you ask her, Nina Kapitonovna?" "She won't say. I'm like that myself. I'll never say." "I met her once, she seemed all right to me," said Korablev. "She was going to the theatre-true, all by herself, and I thought it strange. But she was quite cheerful, she said, by the way, that she'd been offered a room in a Geological Institute house."

"They did offer her a room. But she hasn't moved in." "Why not?" "She feels sorry for him." "Sorry?" Korablev queried.

"Yes, sorry. For the sake of her mother's memory, and for his own sake, too. And when she's not there he's not himself. Soon as he comes in he asks:

'Where's Katya? Has she phoned?'" I guessed at once that "he" was Nikolai Antonich. "So she hasn't left. AU the time waiting for someone." Nina Kapitonovna moved her chair up closer to Korablev. "I read a letter once,"

she whispered slyly, looking round as if Katya might see her. "They must have become friends at Ensk when Katya was there for her holidays. His sister. And she writes: 'He keeps asking me in every letter, where is Katya, what's the matter with her, I'd give everything to see her. He can't live without you and I can't understand what this quarrel of yours is about.' "

"Excuse me, Nina Kapitonovna, I didn't get you. Whose sister?" "Whose?

Why, that chap. That friend of yours." Korablev darted a look in my direction, and I met his eyes through a hole in the curtain. My sister?

Sanya?

"Well, I suppose that's how it really is," said Korablev. "Very likely he can't live without her. I shouldn't be surprised."

" 'He keeps asking'," Nina Kapitonovna repeated pointedly, "And 'he can't live without you'. There! And she can't live without him."

Korablev again glanced in my direction. I fancied a smile lurking in his moustache. "Yet she thinks of marrying another."

"Nothing of the kind. He isn't of her choice. She has no use for that Romashov fellow. No more have I. That holy Joe." "Holy Joe?"

"That's what he is. Full o' taradiddle too. Whatever you tell him he's sure to add something to it right away. Thievish too." "Surely not, Nina Kapitonovna!"

"Thievish, I say. He took forty rubles from me, said it was to buy a present, and never gave it back. I didn't remind him, of course. And such a busybody, so nosy. My God! If it wasn't for my age-" She waved her hand with a rueful gesture.

You can imagine what my feelings were as I listened to this conversation! I looked at the old lady through the hole in the curtain, and that hole was like a lens in which everything that had happened between Katya and me was focussed, becoming clearer and clearer every minute.

Everything came nearer and fell into place, and there was such a lot of it and all so good that my heart began to quiver, and I realised that I was terribly excited. The only thing I couldn't understand was this: I had never

"kept asking" my sister and had never written to her that "I could not live without Katya".

"Sanya made that up, that's what it is," I said to myself. "She was fibbing. Yet it was all true."

Nina Kapitonovna was still speaking, but I was no longer listening. I had forgotten myself to such an extent that I began to walk up and down my

"bookcase" and only recollected myself when I heard Korablev's warning cough.

And there I sat in the "bookcase" until Nina Kapitonovna went away. I don't know why she had come-maybe it was just to unburden her heart, Korablev kissed her hand at parting and she kissed him on the brow, the way they had always done when taking leave of each other.