Two Captains (50 page)

Now he is silent, that schoolboy. But the future is still ours.

He is silent, and works tirelessly day and night. On the Volga he sprays reservoirs. He carries the mail between Irkutsk and Vladivostok and is happy when he succeeds in delivering Moscow newspapers to Vladivostok within forty-eight hours. He is promoted to Pilot, Second Class, and it is I, not he, who feels outraged when, after he had asked-for the nth time-to be sent to the North, he receives by way of reply a reappointment as sky chauffeur, this time between Simferopol and Moscow. What is this secret shadow that keeps falling across his path? I don't know. Nor does he.

He works and is appreciated, but I alone realise how tired he is of the monotony of those dreary flights, each one resembling the other like a thousand brothers...

In the winter of 1937 Sanya is transferred to Leningrad. We stay with the Berensteins, and all would be well but for one thing: I wake up in the night to find Sanya lying with his eyes wide open...

We stand in the Be rensteins' tiny hallway among some old winter coats and mantles. We stand there in silence. The last quarter of an hour before another parting. He is going away in mufti, looking so unfamiliar in that fashionable coat with the wide shoulders and the soft hat.

"Is that you, Sanya'? Maybe it isn't?"

He laughs.

"Let's consider that it isn't me. You are crying?"

"No. Take care of yourself, darling."

He says, "I'll be back" and some other tender, confused words. I don't remember what I said, all I remember is asking him not to forget his parachute. He doesn't always carry one.

Where is he going? To the Far East, he says. Why in mufti? Why, when I ask him about this assignment, does he take Ms time answering? Why, when he geits a phone call from Moscow late at night does he answer only "yes" or

"no" and afterwards paces up and down the room, smoking, agitatted, pleased with himself? What is he pleased with? I don't know, I"m not supposed to know. Why can't I see him off to the station?"

"It's not very convenient," says Sanya. "I'm not going alone. Maybe I won't go at all. If it'll be convenient I'll phone you from the railway station."

He did phone me to say the train was leaving in ten minutes. I mustn't worry, everything will be all right. He will write to me every day. He won't forget his parachute, of course...

From time to time: I receive letters bearing a Moscow postmark. Judging by these letters he gets mine regularly. People I don't know ring me up to find ou-t how I am getting on. Somewhere a thousand miles away, in the mountains of Guadarrama, fighting is going on. A map with little flags pinned all over it hangs over my bedside table. Spain, faraway and mysterious, the Spain of Jose Diaz and Dolores Ibarruri, becomes as close to me as the street in which I spent my childhood.

On a rainy day in March the Republican aircraft-"everything that had wings"-fly out against the rebels, who plan to cut Valencia off from Madrid.

It is the victory of Guadalajara. Where are you, Sanya?

In July the Republican army hurls the rebels back from Brunete. Where are you, Sanya? The Basque country is cut off, communication with Bilbao is by means of old civil planes, flying in mist over the mountains. Where are you, Sanya?

"I'm being detained," he writes. "Anything might happen to me. Whatever happens, remember that you are free, without any obligations."

Then suddenly the impossible, the incredible happens. Such a simple thing, yet it makes everything a thousand times better-the weather, my health, everything.

He comes home-a late night phone call from Moscow, a scared Rosalia wakes me, and I run to the telephone... And a few days later he stands before me, looking thinner, bronzed, very much like a Spaniard. I pin the Order of the Red Banner to his tunic with my own hands.

In the autumn we are going to Ensk. Pyotr and his son and the "learned"

Nanny spend the summer at Ensk every year, and Aunt Dasha keeps asking us down in'every letter-and now, at last, we are going. Evening finds me standing by the carriage, mentally scolding Sanya, because there are only five minutes to go before the train leaves and he hasn't come back yet, having gone off to buy a cake. He jumps aboard as the train moves off, breathless and gay. We sit for a long time in the semi-darkness of our compartment without putting on the lights.

When was that? We were returning from Ensk like grown-ups, and those old Nihilists, the Bubenchikovs aunts, with their big funny muffs were seing us off. The little unshaven man kept trying to guess what we were-brother and sister? No resemblance. Husband and wife? Too young. And those lovely apples-red-cheeked, firm, winter apples! Why is it that people eat such apples only in childhood?

"It was the day I fell in love with you."

"It wasn't. You fell in love that day we were coming back from the skating-rink and you offered me some sweets, and I wouldn't take them, and you gave them away to some little toad of a girl."

"That was when you fell in love with me."

"No, I know it was you. Otherwise you wouldn't have given them away."

We stand in the corridor, watching the telegraph wires dipping and leaping past, as we had done then. Things are not the same any more, yet we are happy. The stout, mustachioed conductor keeps glancing at us-or at me perhaps?-and says, sighing, that he, too, has a beautiful daughter.

Ensk. Early morning. The trams are not running yet, and we have to walk right across the town. A polite ragamuffin carries our baggage and talks without a stop. All our efforts to stem the flow by telling him that we are natives of Ensk ourselves are in vain. He knows all the late Bubenchikovs, Aunt Dasha, and the judge-the judge in particular, whom he had had occasion to meet more than once.

"Where?"

"At the police court."

In the square, among the carts from which the farmers are selling apples and cabbages, stands Aunt Dasha weighing a head of cabbage in her hand, musing whether to take it or not. She has aged.

Sanya hails her. She eyes us sternly over her glasses the way old people do, then suddenly drops the cabbage from her listless hand.

"Sanya! My darlings! What are you doing here, in the market?"

"We're passing through on our way to you. Aunt Dasha-my wife." He leads me up to Aunt Dasha, and business in the Ensk market is suspended-even the horses take their noses out of their bags to gaze curiously at Aunt Dasha and me kissing.

The judge comes home late in the evening, when we had long ceased to expect him. Somewhere round the corner a flivver starts spluttering and the old man appears on the garden path in a dusty white cap, carrying two briefcases.

"Well, we have visitors I hear. I'll get washed, then come and kiss you."

We hear him grunting with pleasure and splashing about in the kitchen.

Aunt Dasha grumbling about him making a mess of the floor again, but he keeps on grunting and snorting, exclaiming "Ah, that's good!", then finally he appears, his hair combed, his bare feet in slippers, and wearing a clean Russian blouse. He drags us out onto the doorsteps in turn to have a good look, first at me, then at Sanya. Sanya's decoration comes in for a special scrutiny. "Not bad," he says, looking pleased. "And a bar?" "Yes, a bar." "A captain, eh?" "Yes." He wrings Sanya's hand.

We sit at the table till late into the night, talking our heads off. We talk about Sasha, simply and naturally, as if she were with us. She is with us-little Pyotr becomes more and more like her with every passing month-that same Mongolian set of the eyes, the same soft dark hair on the temples. In bending his head, he lifts his eyebrows just as she used to do.

Sanya talks about Spain, and a queer, long-forgotten feeling grips me.

I listen to him as though he were talking about somebody else. So it was he, who, going out one day on a reconnaissance flight, spotted five Junkers and closed in with them without hesitation? It was he who, diving in among the Junkers, fired almost at random, because it was impossible to miss? It was he who, covering his face with his glove, his jacket smouldering, set down his wrecked plane and within the hour was up again in another.

We clink glasses and Sanya says in Spanish: "Salad/" Then, "Let's consider that our 'voyage into life' has only just begun. The ship put out of harbour yesterday and one can still see in the distance the lighthouse which had sent her its farewell signal: 'Happy sailing and success!' Once upon a time, small but brave, we walked through the dark quiet streets of this town. We were armed with only one Finnish knife between us, the knife for which Pyotr made a sheath out of an old boot. But we were better armed than might appear at first sight. We went forward because we had sworn to each other an oath:

'To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield.' We went forward and our road has not come to an end yet."

Saying this, Sanya raised his glass high, drained it and shattered it against the wall...

In 1941 we moved to Leningrad, hoping it is now for good. We rent a three-roomed summer cottage in the country with a well and a handsome old landlord who resembles one of the ancient Russian Streltsi and whom Pyotr immediately starts to paint. We live at this dacha all together, one family-the two Pyotrs and the Nanny did not go to Ensk that year-we bathe in the lake, drink tea from a real, brass pot-bellied samovar, and I find it odd that other women do not seem to notice this wonderful peace and happiness.

On Saturdays we go to meet Sanya. The whole family troop to the sation, and the most eager to meet Uncle Sanya, of course, is little Pyotr, who secretly hopes he will bring him a battleship. His hope is justified. Sanya, a magnificent ship in one hand, jumps down from the step of a carriage, waves to us, but continues to walk alongside the moving carriage. The train stops and he holds out his hand. A little dried-up old woman steps down with a brisk preoccupied air, in one hand an umbrella, in the other a canvas travelling-bag. I can hardly believe my eyes. It is Grandma all right.

Grandma in a chic pongee suit and a cute straw hat, whom he protectively pilots through the crowd which instantly fills the small platform...

I was very keen on having Grandma come and live with us when we decided to make our home in Leningrad. But each time I met her I was persuaded that it was impossible. She had less and less to say against Nikolai Antonich and spoke of him more and more with a sort of superstitious awe. Deep down in her heart she was convinced that he was endowed with supernatural powers.

"The moment I think of a thing, he knows it," she once said. "It's uncanny. The other day I decided to bake some pies, and he says:

'But not with sago. It's bad for the digestion.' "

What could have happened to make Grandma show up at our countryside station and stride briskly towards us, umbrella in one hand and travelling-bag in the other?

After a nap and a wash she appeared at table looking younger and spruce in a dress with leg-of-mutton sleeves and cream-coloured high boots with pointed toes.

"Got himself a housekeeper," she began without any preliminaries. '"Not a housekeeper, but a secretary,' he says. 'She'll help me too.' And she goes and puts her dirty shoes on my kitchen stove. Some help!"

The person who put her dirty shoes on the stove went by the name of Alevtina. It was most interesting. We were sitting in the garden. Grandma proudly telling her story, but so far it was difficult to make out what it was all about. I could see that Pyotr was dying to sketch her, but I wagged a finger at him warning him not to.

I did the same to Sanya, who could barely restrain his mirth. The only serious listener was little Pyotr.

"If you're a secretary, why d'you shove your shoes where I do my cooking. I'm not having any of that! Maybe I'll light the stove today?"

"Really?"

"And so I did."

"You did?"

"And burnt 'em to a cinder," quoth Grandma. "She'll know better next time."

We held our sides with laughter.

In short, the housekeeper lost her shoes, and the result was that Nikolai Antonich invited Grandma in for a serious talk.

"I'm this, I'm that!" said Grandma, puffing herself up ths way Nikolai Antonich did when talking about himself. "Why don't you keep quiet if you're better than the next man. Let other people say it. Showed me the flat. 'Take your choice, Nina Kapitonovna!' "

Nikolai Antonich had been given a flat in a new house in Gorky Street and had offered poor old Grandma the choice of any room she liked in this splendid flat. He had been running around Moscow a whole month, selecting furniture. The old flat, Nikolai Antonich said, was to be turned into a

"Captain Tatarinov Museum". The fact that Captain Tatarinov had never set foot in this flat did not seem to bother him.

"And I bowed to him and said: 'Much obliged, I'm sure. But I've never yet lived in other people's homes.' "

It was after this conversation that Grandma got the idea of leaving Nikolai Antonich and coming to live with us. But her fear of him was so great that instead of simply packing up and going away, she first made her peace with him and even with the housekeeper. She devised a cunning psychological plan based on Nikolai Antonich's departure for Bolshevo to spend his holiday at the Scientists' Rest Home. For the first time in twenty years she left home and sneaked out of Moscow, umbrella in one hand and travelling-bag in the other.

Sanya always got up after six and we'd go for a swim before breakfast.

We did the same that morning, which looked no different from any other Sunday morning.

No different. Then why do I remember it so well? Why do I see, as though it were yesterday, Sanya and myself tripping down the hill hand in hand, and he balancing as he glides along the aspen tree thrown across the brook, while I take off my shoes and wade across, feeling the thick folds of the sandy bed with my feet? Why is it that I can repeat every word of our conversation? Why do I still feel the dreamy, misty delight of the river in the slanting beams of the sun? Why, with a tenderness that wrings my heart, do I remember every trivial detail of that moming-the drops of water on Sanya's tanned face, shoulders and chest and the wet tuft of hair on the back of his head when he comes out of the water and sits down beside me clasping his knees? And that boy, with his trousers rolled up, and carrying a home-made net, whom Sanya had taught how to catch crabs with the aid of a campfire or a bait of rotten meat?