Two Captains (14 page)

"Ivan Pavlovich!"

But Ivan Pavlovich frowned, shook his head and moved away.

"Ivan Pavlovich, open the door, it's me!"

He returned a few minutes later with his coat thrown over his shoulders and came out on to the veranda.

"It's me, Grigoriev," I repeated, afraid that he might have forgotten me. He looked at me in an odd sort of way. "I've come to tell you something.

They want to shut down the theatre and have you-"

I don't think I said "kicked out". But maybe I did, because he suddenly came to himself.

"Come in," he said tersely.

His place was always clean and tidy, with books on the shelves, a white counterpane on the bed and a cover on the pillow. Everything shipshape. The only thing that wasn't was the host himself, it seems. At one moment he screwed up his eyes, the next he opened them wide, as though things in front of him were getting blurred. I'm sure he had not been to bed that night. I had never seen him looking so tired.

"Ah, Sanya," he said haltingly. "What is it?" "I was going to write you a letter, Ivan Pavlovich," I said earnestly. "It's all because of the school theatre, really. They say you've driven your wife to an early grave."

"Hold on!" he laughed. "Who says I've driven my wife to her grave?"

"All of 'em. 'The cause of his late wife's death is nothing to do with us. Vulgarisation of the idea-that's what worries us.' " "I don't understand a thing," Korablev said gravely. "Yes, vulgarisation," I repeated firmly. I had been memorising these words since the previous day:

"vulgarisation", "popularity", "loyal duty". I had said

"vulgarisation", now there remained "popularity" and "loyal duty".

"At the meetings he sheds crocodile tears," I plunged on. "He started that theatre stunt in order to win popularity. Yes, 'popularity'. He sucks up to the Soviets. We must do our loyal duty."

I may have got it a bit mixed up, but it was easier for me to rattle off by heart what I had heard the night before than to tell it in my own words. Anyway, Korablev understood me. Understood me perfectly well. His eyes immediately lost their former clouded look and a tinge of colour mounted to his cheeks and he paced up and down the room.

"This is great fun," he muttered, though there was no fun in it for him at all. "And, of course, the boys and girls don't want to see the theatre closed down?" "Sure they don't."

"Is it because of the theatre that you've come?" I was silent. Perhaps it was because of the theatre. Or perhaps because the school would be a dull place without Korablev. Or perhaps because I didn't like the mean way they were plotting to get rid of him.

"What fools!" Korablev said suddenly. "What abysmally dull fools!"

He squeezed my hand, and started pacing the room again with a thoughtful air. During his pacing he went out, probably into the kitchen, fetched a boiling kettle, brewed tea and got glasses down from a small cupboard on the wall.

"I was thinking of leaving, but now I've decided to stay," he said.

"We'll fight. What d'you say, Sanya? And now let's have some tea."

I don't know whether they ever held that School Council meeting at which Korablev was to pay heavily for "vulgarising the idea of manual education". Obviously it wasn't held, because he had not been made to pay for it. Every morning old Whiskers combed his moustache in front of the mirror as though nothing had happened and went in to take his lessons.

Within a few days the theatre announced production of Ostrovsky's play Every Man Has a Fool in His Sleeve, with Grisha Faber in the leading role.

Two dark, curly-haired boys from the local branch of the Komsomol came down to organise a Komsomol group in our school. Valya asked from the floor whether Children's Home boys could enrol in the group, and they said, yes, they could, provided they had reached the age of fourteen. I did not know myself how old I was. I figured that I was getting on for thirteen. To be on the safe side I said I was fourteen. All the same they wouldn't believe me.

It may have been because I was small for my age that time.

The only teachers who attended this meeting were Korablev and Nikolai Antonich. Korablev made a rather impressive speech, first congratulating us briefly on the formation of the Group, then criticising us at length for being poor pupils and hooligans. Nikolai Antonich also made a speech. It was a fine speech, in which he greeted the Branch representatives, whom he described as the young generation, and ended up by reciting a poem of Nekrasov's.

After the meeting I met him in the corridor and said: "Good morning, Nikolai Antonich!" For some reason he did not answer me.

In short, all was in order, and I don't know what made me suddenly change my mind about going to the Tatarinovs and decide to meet Katya in the street the next day and give her the modelling-knife and clay she had asked for. Within half an hour, however, I had changed my mind again.

The old lady answered the door, but kept it on the chain, when she saw me. She seemed to be debating with herself whether to let me in or not. Then she quickly opened the door, whispered to me:

"Go into the kitchen," and gave me a gentle push in the back.

While I hesitated, rather surprised, Nikolai Antonich came into the hall, and seeing me, he switched on the light.

"A-ah!" he said in a suppressed voice. "You're here."

He gripped my shoulder roughly.

"You ungrateful sneak, scoundrel, spy! Get out of this house and stay out! Do you hear?"

His lips drew back in a snarl and I caught the glint of a gold tooth in his mouth. This was the last thing I saw in the home of the Tatarinovs. With one hand Nikolai Antonich opened the door and with the other he threw me out onto the landing like a pup.

There was nobody in the Children's Home, nobody in the school. Everyone had gone out-it was a Sunday. Only Romashka wandered about the empty rooms, counting something to himself-probably his future wealth-and the cook in the kitchen sang as he prepared dinner. I settled myself in a warm cozy corner by the stove and fell to thinking.

Yes, this was Korablev's doing. I had tried to help him, and this was how he had repaid me. He had gone to Nikolai Antonich and given me away.

They had been right-Nikolai Antonich, and the German-cum-French teacher and even Likho, who had said that Korablev shed "crocodile tears" at meetings. He was a cad. To think that I had been sorry for him because Maria Vasilievna had rejected him!

Romashka was sitting by the window, counting.

"Goodbye, Romashka," I said to him. "I'm going away."

"Where to?"

"Turkestan," I said, though a minute before that I had not had a thought about Turkestan.

"You're kidding!"

I slipped off the pillow-case and stuffed all my belongings into it-a shirt, a spare pair of trousers, and the black tube which Doctor Ivan Ivanovich had left with me long ago. I smashed all my toads and hares and flung them into the rubbish-bin. The figure of the girl with the ringlets on her forehead who looked a little like Katya went in there too.

Romashka watched me with interest. He was still counting in a whisper, but with nothing like his previous fervour.

"If for one ruble forty thousand, then for a hundred rubles..."

Goodbye school! I would never study any more. What for? I had been taught to read, write and count. What more did I need? Good enough for me.

And nobody would miss me when I was gone. Maybe Valya would remember me for a moment, and then forget.

"Then for a hundred rubles four hundred," Romashka whispered. "Four hundred thousand per cent on a hundred rubles."

But I would be coming back. And Korablev, who would be kicked out of the school, would come to me moaning and begging me to forgive him. No fear!

Then suddenly I recollected how he had stood by the window when I called on him, staring into the yard, very sad and a little tipsy. It couldn't be him, surely? Why should he have betrayed me? On the contrary, he had probably given no sign, pretending not to know anything about that secret council. I was wrong to suspect him. It wasn't him at all. Then who could it be?

"Ah, it's Valya!" I suddenly said to myself. "When I got back from the Tatarinovs I had told him everything. It was Valya!"

But Valya, I remember, had started snoring in the middle of my story.

Besides, Valya would never do a thing like that.

Romashka, maybe? I looked at him. Pale, with red ears, he sat on the window-sill, multiplying away like mad. I fancied that he was watching me furtively like a bird, with one round flat eye. But he knew nothing, how could he?

Now that I had firmly decided that it was not Korablev, there was no sense in going away. But my head was aching and my ears were ringing, and somehow I felt that I had to go, I couldn't stay, not after G had told Romashka I was going.

With a sigh, I picked up my bundle, nodded to Romashka and went out. I must have been running a temperature, because on going out into the street I was surprised to find it so cold. But then, while still in the entrance, I had taken off my jacket and put my overcoat on over my shirt. I had decided to flog the jacket-I figured that it would fetch round about fifteen million.

For the same reason-my temperature and headache-I have no clear memory of what I did at the Sukharevka black market, though I spent practically the whole day there. All I remember was standing in front of a stall from which came a smell of fried onions, holding up my jacket and saying in a weak voice: "Anybody want a jacket?"

I remember being surprised at having such a weak voice. I remember noticing in the crowd a huge man wearing two shipskin coats. He was wearing one with his arms in the sleeves, while the other-the one he was selling-was thrown over his shoulders. I found it very odd that wherever I went, hawking my merchandise, I kept running into this man. He stood motionless, huge, bearded, clad in two coats, gloomily naming his price without looking at the customers, who turned back the skirts and fingered the collar.

I stood about, trying to warm myself, and noticed that though I no longer felt cold, my fingers were blue. I was very thirsty, and several times I decided-no more: if I don't sell the thing in half an hour, I'll go to the teashop and swap it for a glass of hot tea. But the next moment I had a sort of hunch that a buyer would turn up in a minute, and so I decided to stick it for another half hour.

I remember it was a sort of consolation to see that the tall man had not been able to sell his coat either.

I felt like eating a little snow, but the snow at Sukharevka was very dirty and the boulevard was a long way off. In the end I did go to the boulevard and ate some snow, which, strange to say, seemed warm to me. I think I was sick, or maybe I wasn't. All I knew was that I was sitting in the snow and somebody was holding me up by the shoulders because I had gone limp. At last the support was removed and I lay down and stretched my legs out luxuriously. Somebody was saying something over me, it sounded like:

"He's had a fit. He's an epileptic." Then they tried to take my pillow-slip bundle and I heard them coaxing me: "Don't be silly, we're putting it under your head!", but I clung to it and wouldn't let go. The man in the two coats passed by slowly, then suddenly threw one of the coats over me. But that was already delirium and I understood that perfectly well. They were still tugging at the pillow-slip. I heard a woman's voice saying: "He won't let go of his bundle." Then a man's: "Never mind, lay him down with his bundle."

And again: "Looks like the Spanish 'flu."

Then the world went dark.

I was at death's door, and twice they screened me off from the other patients in the ward. Cyanosis is always a sign of approaching death, and I had it so bad that all the doctors except one, gave me up as a bad job and only exclaimed every morning with surprise: "What, still alive?"

All this I learned when I came round.

Be that as it may, I did not die. On the contrary, I got better.

One day I opened my eyes and was about to jump out of bed, thinking I was in the Children's Home. Someone's hand arrested me. Somebody's face, half-forgotten yet so familiar, drew close to mine. Believe it or not, it was doctor Ivan Ivanovich.

"Doctor," I said to him, and what with joy and weakness I started crying. "Doctor, ear!"

He looked at me closely, probably thinking that I was still delirious.

"Hen, saddle, box, snow, drink, Abraham," I said, feeling the tears pouring right down into my mouth. "It's me, Doctor. I'm Sanya. Don't you remember, that village, Doctor? We hid you. You taught me."

He looked at me closely again, then blew out his cheeks and let the air out noisily.

"Oho!" he said, and laughed. "Do I remember! Where's your sister? Fancy that! All you could say then was 'ear' and that sounded like a bark. So you've learnt to speak, eh? And moved to Moscow too? Took it into your head to die?"

I wanted to tell him that I wasn't thinking of dying at all, just the opposite, when he suddenly put his hand over my mouth, whipped out a handkerchief with the other and wiped my face and nose.

"Lie still, old chap," he said. "You mustn't talk yet. Who knows what you'll be up to next-you've been dying so many times. One word too many and you may pop off."

If you think that, having come round, I was on the road to recovery, you are mistaken. Hardly had I pulled through the Spanish 'flu than I went down with meningitis. And again it was Ivan Ivanovich who refused to acknowledge that my game was up.

He sat for hours at my bedside, studying the strange movements which I made with my eyes and hands. In the end I came to again, and though I lay for a long time with my eyes rolled up to the sky, I was no longer in.