Two Captains (28 page)

It makes me laugh to think what a change came over everything the moment I read this note. Meeting Likho on the stairs, I said "good afternoon" to him, and at dinner I gave Valya my favourite dish of sweet cream of wheat with raisins.

Then came six o'clock. Then half-past six. Seven. Seven o'clock found me at Triumfalnaya Square. A quarter past. Half past. It was getting dark, but the street lamps had not been lighted yet, and all kinds of ridiculous thoughts came into my mind: "The lamps won't go on and I won't recognise her... The lamps will go on, but she won't come... The lamps won't go on and she won't recognise me..."

The lamps did go on, and that familiar public garden, where Pyotr and I once tried to sell cigarettes, where I had swotted a thousand times at my lessons on spring days, that noisy garden, in which one can swot only when one is seventeen, that old garden which was the meeting place for our whole school, and two others besides- that garden became transformed, like a theatre. In a moment we would meet. Ah, there she was!

We shook hands in silence. It was quite warm, being April 2nd, but all of a sudden it started snowing-as if on purpose to make me remember this day all my life.

"I'm glad you've come, Katya. I've been wanting to speak to you too. I couldn't explain that time, at your place, because Nikolai Antonich didn't give me a chance, the way he started shouting. Of course, if you believe him-"

I was afraid to finish the sentence, because if she did believe him I'd have to leave this garden, where we were sitting pale and grave and talking without looking at each other-leave this garden, which seemed to contain nobody else but us two, though someone was sitting on each garden seat and the dour-faced little keeper was limping up and down the paths.

"Don't let's talk about that any more."

"I can't help talking about it, Katya. If you believe him we have nothing to talk about anyway."

She looked at me, sad and quite grown-up-much older and wiser than I.

"He says it's all my fault," she said.

"Yours?"

"He says that once I believe this unnatural idea that it was he who was meant in Daddy's letter, then I was to blame for everything."

I recollected Korablev once saying to Maria Vasilievna: "Believe me, he's a terrible man." And the Captain had written about him:

"One thing I beg of you: do not trust that man." I leapt to my feet in despair and horror.

"Now he'll be saying it's your fault for fifteen years and you'll believe him, just as Maria Vasilievna did. Don't you realise if you're to blame he gets complete power over you, and you'll do everything he wants."

"I'll go away."

"Where?"

"I don't know yet. I've decided to take up geological survey. I'll graduate and go away."

"You won't go anywhere. You might be able to do it now, but in four years' time... I bet you won't go anywhere. He'll talk your head off, make you believe anything. Didn't Maria Vasilievna believe that he was kind and noble, and, what is more, that she was indebted to him for everything he had done? Why the hell doesn't he leave you alone! Didn't he say that it was all my fault?"

"He says you're just a murderer."

"I see."

"And that he could easily have you tried and shot."

"All right, everybody's to blame except him. And I tell you he's a scoundrel, and it's terrifying even to think that there are people like that in the world."

"Don't let's talk about it any more."

"All right. But tell me this: what do you believe out of all this nonsense?"

For a long time Katya said nothing. I sat down again beside her. My heart in my mouth, I took her hand and she did not move away, did not withdraw it.

"I don't believe you said it on purpose. You really did think it was him."

"I still think so."

"But you shouldn't have tried to persuade me of it, still less Mother."

"But it was him-"

Katya drew back and disengaged her hand.

"Let's not talk about it any more."

"All right, we shan't. Some day I'll prove to you it was him, even if I have to spend my whole life doing it."

"It isn't him. If you don't want me to go away don't let's talk about it any more."

"All right, we shan't."

And we let the matter drop. She asked me about the spring holidays, how I had spent my time at Ensk, how Sanya and the old folks were getting on.

And I gave her regards from them. But I didn't say about how lonesome I had been at Ensk without her, especially when I wandered alone round the places where we had been together. I did not know now whether or not she loved me, and it was impossible to ask, though I was dying to all the time. The very word couldn't be uttered, now that we were sitting and talking, so grave and pale, with Katya looking so like her mother. I recalled our journey back to Moscow from Ensk, when we had written on the frosted window-pane with our fingers, and suddenly through the window, a dark field covered with snow had come into view. Everything had changed since then. And we could no longer be to each other what we were before. I was dying to know, though, whether she still loved me or not.

"Katya," I said suddenly. "Don't you love me any more?"

She gave me a startled look, then blushing, put her arms round my neck.

We kissed with closed eyes-at least, mine were closed and I think hers were too, because afterwards we opened our eyes together. We kissed in the public garden in Triumfalnaya Square, in the garden where three schools could have seen us. But it was a bitter kiss, a kiss of farewell. Though we arranged to meet again, I felt that it had been our parting kiss.

That's why, after Katya had gone, I remained in the garden and wandered for a long time about the paths in anguish, then sat down on our seat, walked away and came back again. I took off my cap;

my head felt hot and there was an ache in my heart. I couldn't go away.

When I got home I found a large envelope on my bedside table. It bore the Osoaviakhim stamp and my full name in a large hand. I tore open the envelope with trembling fingers. Osoaviakhim informed me that my papers had been accepted and that I was to present myself before a medical board on May 2nd for enrolment in the flying school.

CHAPTER ONE FLYING SCHOOL

The summer of 1928. I see myself walking the streets of Leningrad with a small bundle in my hands. The bundle contains my "leaving kit". All inmates of the children's home on leaving school received such a kit. It consisted of a spoon, a mug, two sets of underwear and "everything needed for the first night's lodging". Pyotr and I are living in the home of Semyon Ginsburg, a fitter at the Elektro-sila Works and a former pupil of our school. Semyon's mother is afraid of the house-manager, so every morning I take my things away and bring them back again in the evening, making out as though I had just arrived. In the eating rooms we take the first course, costing fifteen kopecks, on even days, and the second course, costing twenty-five kopecks, on odd days. We wander about the vast, spacious city, along the embankments of the broad Neva, and Pyotr, who feels quite at home in Leningrad, tells me about the Bronze Horseman while I think, "Will they accept me or not?"

Three examining boards-medical, credentials and general education.

Heart, lungs, ears, heart again. Who am I, where was I born, what school did I go to, and why do I want to become an airman?

Was it true that I was nineteen? Hadn't I added to my age-I didn't look it? Why was my recommendation from the Y.C.L. local signed "Grigoriev"-was he a brother of mine or just a namesake?

And now, at last, the day of all days. I stand outside the Aviation Museum. This is where we had our entrance examinations. It is a huge lion-guarded building in Roshal Prospekt. The lions look at me as if they, too, are about to ask me who I am, where I was born, and whether I am really nineteen.

But the really terrifying part of it comes when I mount the stairs and stand before the black showcase displaying the list of persons enrolled in the flying school.

I read the names in their alphabetical order: "Fadeyev, Fedorov, Frolov, Golomb, Gribkov, Hertz..." A mist swims before my eyes. I read again: "Fedorov, Frolov, Golomb, Gribkov, Hertz..." I'm not there! I take a deep breath and start again: Fedorov, Frolov, Golomb, Gribkov, Hertz. I stare at the list, which seems to contain all the names under the sun except my own, and I feel like a man would feel who has nothing more to live for.

I go home under a pouring rain. Fedorov, Frolov, Golomb ... Lucky Golomb.

Pyotr opens the door and starts at seeing me, drenched and white.

"What's the matter?" "Pyotr, my name's not on the list." "Goon!"

Semyon's mother comes flying into the kitchen to ask whether the house-manager saw me coming in. I do not answer her. I sit on a chair and Pyotr stands facing me with a glum look.

The next morning we go together to the Aviation Museum and I find my name on the list. tt was in another column along with several other boys whose names began with G. including a couple of Grigorievs-Ivan and Alexander. Pyotr said I hadn't been able to find it because I was too excited.

Time races on, and I see myself in the reading-room of the Aviation Museum, where we had faced the examiners. Thirteen men passed by the credentials and medical boards are lined up, and the School Superintendent, a big, jovial, red-haired man, comes out and says:

"Comrade air cadets, attention!"

Comrade air cadets! I am an air cadet! A cold shiver runs up my spine.

I feel as if I had been dipped alternately in cold and hot water. I'm an air cadet! I'm going to fly! I do not hear what she Super is saying.

Time races on. We go to lectures straight from work at the factory where Semyon Ginsburg has fixed me up as fitter's mate.

We listen to lectures on materiel, the theory of aviation and the engine. After eight hours at work we feel very sleepy, but we listen to the lectures on materiel, the theory of aviation and engines, and once in a while Misha Golomb, who turned out to be as short as myself, leans up against my back and starts to snore gently. When his snores become too audible I carefully bump his head on the desk.

We study at flying school, but what little resemblance that school has to those that go by that name today! We have neither engines, nor aeroplanes, neither premises nor money. True, the Aviation Museum does display a few old sky waggons, in which one could imagine oneself doing air reconnaissance in a De Havilland or seeing a fighting plane in a Newport which last did service at the Civil War fronts. But you couldn't learn to fly on these distinguished "coffins".

We assemble engines. Armed with credentials of Osoaviakhim, that infallible warrant empowering us to take off the walls any aeroplane parts we might need, we make a round of all the recreation rooms and clubs of Leningrad. Sometimes we find these aeroplane parts in the office of the house management, hanging over the desk of the accounts clerk, who happens to be an aviation fan. We commandeer them and carry them off to the airfield. Sometimes this goes off peacefully, sometimes there is a row.

Three times we visit the Clothing Workers' Club, accompanied by a technician, trying to prove to the club manager that the old engine standing in the foyer is of no propaganda value.

Our day starts with our trying, each in turn, to explain to Ivan Gribkov what "horizon" is. We have a fellow named Ivan Gribkov who has all the school trying to explain this to him. Afterwards came the instructors and flight training begins.

My instructor-he is our School Superintendent and has charge of materiel and supplies as well-is an old pilot of Civil War days, a big jovial man, who loves to tell extraordinary stories and can tell them for hours. He is quick-tempered, but quick to cool off, brave and superstitious.

His idea of his duties as instructor is of the simplest order: he just swears at you, his language becoming stronger with the altitude. At last he stops swearing-for the first time in six months! It's wonderful! For ten minutes or so I fly in the rarest of good moods. I must be doing the stickwork jolly well, seeing that he doesn't swear at me! Despite the roar of the engine I seem to be flying in complete silence-quite a new experience for me!

But the next moment I see what it is. The intercom had got disconnected and the phone was dangling over the side. I catch it and together with it the close of what must have been a long speech:

"You clot. You shouldn't be flying, you ought to be serving in the sanitary brigade."

Another scene rises before me when I recall my first year in Leningrad.

C. comes to the Corps Airfield every day. He has a modest job-flying passengers in an old war-scarred machine. But we know what kind of man he is, we know and love him long before he became known to and loved by the whole country. We know whom the airmen talk about when they gather at the Aviation Museum, which was a sort of club of ours in those days. We know whom our Chief is imitating when he says in a calm bass voice: "Well, how goes it? Can you manage the sharp bank? But no fibbing, mind?"

We run to this man as fast as our legs can carry us when he returns to the airfield after his amazing aerobatics, and the lovers of stunt flying, green as the grass, crawl away almost on all fours, while he looks at us from the cockpit, his goggles off, a flyer of amazing flair, a wizzard of sky flying.

Together with the stethoscope which Doctor Ivan Ivanovich left me as a keepsake I carry a photo of this airman about with me wherever I go. He gave this photo to me not in Leningrad where I was an air cadet, but much later, several years afterwards, in Moscow. He wrote on it: "If it's worth doing at all, do it well." Those were his words. So this year passed, a hard but splendid year in Leningrad.