Two Captains (60 page)

"Yes, you've had a run of bad luck," he said when I told him about my misfortunes. "But you'll make up for it. How come you were with the Baltic Fleet, then the Black Sea Fleet? Deserted the North, I see? I always took you for an enthusiast of the North-for good and all."

It was too long a story to tell him how I had come to "desert" the North. I merely said that I had left the Civil Aviation only when I had given up hope of returning to the North.

I became lost in thought and started out of my reverie when R.

addressed me.

"You'd better lie down and get some sleep," he said. "You're tired.

We'll talk tomorrow."

Ignoring my protests, he brought in a pillow, removed the holsters from the divan, and made me lie down. I fell asleep instantly, just as though somebody had tiptoed up to me and thrown a thick, heavy blanket over all that had happened that day.

It was still very early, probably round about four o'clock, when I opened my eyes. R. was already up, curtaining off his bookshelves with old newspapers. For some reason the thought that he was going away that day depressed me. He sat down beside me, but did not allow me to get up.

Screwing up his quick, black eyes and rumpling his thinning hair, he began talking.

Nowadays every schoolboy knows, if only roughly, what was happening on the seaways from Britain and America to the Soviet Union in the summer of 1942. But at that time, in the summer of 1942, the things R. was telling me were news even to me, though I had never stopped taking an interest in the North and pounced on every item that appeared in the press concerning the operations of the Air Army of the Northern Fleet.

Very briefly, but in far greater detail than even in special articles I was subsequently to read, he painted for me a picture of the big war that was being waged in the Barents Sea. I listened raptly to the story of the daring raid by midget submarines into the Gulf of Pet-samo, the enemy's major naval base; of Safonov, who had shot down into the sea twenty-five enemy aircraft; of the work of the airmen, who attacked transports under cover of snow blasts-I hadn't forgotten yet what a snow blast was. Listening to him, I experienced for the first time in my life a galling sense of frustration. The North R. was telling me about was my North!

From him I first learned what a "convoy" was. He pointed out to me on the map the possible "rendezvous points", that is, the secretly arranged spots where the British and American ships were to meet, and explained the manner in which they passed under the protection of our Navy.

"This is the way they go," he said, showing me, in a general way, of course, the route, which at that time, in 1942, was not usually talked about. "A column of from one to two hundred ships. You can guess, of course, at what spot they will run into difficulties?" And he pointed out approximately where that spot was. "But never mind the western route. We have men here with good heads on their shoulders" (he pointed out the place). "There's another matter, no less important. These gates, which the Germans are trying to close," he said briskly, covering the outlet from the Barents Sea into the Kara Sea with his hand, "because they understand perfectly well how important the X. mines are for aircraft engine industry.

And, of course, they don't like the idea of our having so valuable a means of transit as the Northern Sea Route, especially as they were already hoping this spring-"

He did not finish the sentence, but I understood what he meant. I happened to have heard that the Germans had succeeded in seriously damaging a port which was of great importance for the western route.

"You can imagine how far the war has spread," R. went on, "if not so long ago a German submarine fired on our aircraft off Novaya Zemlya. But that's not the whole story. Today I'm flying to Moscow in a plane which the Military Council of the Northern Fleet has sent for me. The pilot. Major Katyakin, tells me he has been hunting a German surface raider for two weeks-and where would you think? In the area-" He named a remote area. "In short, the war is already being fought in places where only hydrographers and polar bears used to roam. This is where they remembered me," R. said, laughing. "Not only remembered me, but also-" here his face assumed a kindly, jovial expression-"also given me a most interesting and important job. .1 can't tell you anything about it, of course, it's a military secret.

But I can tell you that you were the first person I thought of. Your phoning me up the way you did was a miracle. Alexander Ivanovich," he wound up gravely, even solemnly, "I propose that you fly with me to the North."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN DECISION

He went away, and I was left all alone in the empty abandoned flat. All four spacious rooms were at my disposal, and I could wander about them, thinking as much as I liked. R. would be coming back at three in the afternoon when I was to tell him one short word: "Yes". Or another still shorter: "No".

Between these two words stretched a long, hard road, and I plodded along it, resting and plodding along again, and there was no end to it.

The Germans were shelling the district. The first ranging-in shrapnel shell had burst long since, and the cloud of smoke, dispersing slowly, still hung over Liteiny Bridge. The explosions, starting at a distance, began to draw nearer, advancing from right to left, striding savagely between the blocks straight towards this house, towards the empty rooms where I was wandering between "yes" and "no", which were so infinitely far apart.

It was probably the nursery. A black, one-eyed teddy bear sat on top of the cupboard with dropping head; in a corner lay a scooter, and on a low round table stood various collections and games, and I pictured to myself a small version of R., just as energetic and full of the same controlled ardour as the senior, with the same droll Cossack's forelock and round face.

In this room I rested from my "yes" and "no". Here I could even think of the home which Katya and I had once planned to set up in Leningrad. For where there is a home there are children.

The shell bursts drew nearer and nearer. One exploded quite close, flinging open the doors and bringing a cheery tinkle of splintered glass. In the ensuing silence footsteps echoed hollowly in the street. I looked out of the window and saw two boys, with what looked to me like ghastly faces, running towards the house. When they drew level one of the boys touched the other on the back and with a loud laugh, turned and ran back again. They were playing tag.

R. would be coming back at three and I would say to him: "Yes".

It would be as though those six months of frustrating idleness had never been. I would go to the North. The farther away from me it had been all those years, the closer and more alluring it had grown. Had I not fought as best I could in the West and the South? But up there, in the North-that was where I had to be, defending a land which I knew and loved.

Then suddenly I stopped still and said to myself: "Katya."

To go away and leave her? To go far away, for a long time? To make no attempt to find Pyotr, whose field post number may simply have been changed?

To undertake no other search here, in Leningrad and at the Leningrad front?

Wherever Katya might have been evacuated she was sure to try and join Nina Kapitonovna and little Pyotr. Was I to lose this trail I had picked up, faint though it was, but which might lead me to where she was, numb with grief because that damned newspaper report could not but have reached her?

My decision was made. I would stay in Leningrad for a few more days. I would find Katya, then go to the North.

R. returned at three o'clock. I told him of my decision. He heard me out and said that in my place he would have done the same. "But we must go to Moscow together. I'll arrange for you to be put on strength at Headquarters, and then Slepushkin will give you a fortnight's leave for family considerations. A wife after all. And what a wife! I remember Ekaterina Ivanovna very well. A sensible girl, kind-hearted, and talk about charming-one in a thousand!"

I shall not describe how, the next day, I went back to the Petro-gradskaya and made another round of all the tenants of house No. 79; how, at the Academy of Arts, I tried to find out where Pyotr was, only to learn that he had been wounded and had been in the clearing hospital on Vasilyevsky Island. The sculptor Kostochkin had visited him, but that sculptor had died of starvation and Pyotr, rumour had it, had returned to the front. Or how I discovered why my letters had never reached the children's camp of the Artists' Union, which had been re-evacuated to a place near Novosibirsk; or how Doctor Ovanesyan went with me to the District Soviet and shouted at an indifferent fat man who declined to make any inquiries about Katya.

Evacuee trains in January had been routed to Yaroslavl, where special hospitals had been set up for Leningraders. This was the only solid fact I had been able to establish, and it was the opinion of all the Leningraders I met that I must look for Katya in Yaroslavl.

Two circumstances combined to convince me that this was so. For one thing, the children's camp of the Artists' Union before its re-evacuation had been in the Yaroslavl region, in a village called Gniloi Yar. Secondly, Lukeria Ilyinichna, as the typist of the Stomatology Clinic was called, suddenly remembered that Doctor Tro-fimova had sent Katya to Yaroslavl.

"My God!" she said with vexation. "Fancy getting such a thing muddled up! My memory's gone weak, you know, it's because I don't have any sugar.

I've remembered it though, sugar or no sugar. And I tell you-Yaroslavl's the place where you'll find her."

R.'s plane was leaving at midnight. I rang him up and arrived ten minutes before the take-off.

WHO WERE NOT AT HOME

If my movements on that day were to be traced on the map of Moscow, one would think I had deliberately gone out of my way to avoid meeting any of those I was so keen on seeing. "Keen" is the word, though I wanted to see different people for quite different reasons. Both lots were in Moscow.

Another glance at the map, perhaps, would reveal that their route that day ran alongside my own. Or crossed it two minutes later. Or ran parallel with mine along the next street, behind a narrow line of buildings. Be that as it may, my luck was out, and with one exception, I found no one at home and went straight from the airfield to Vorotnikovsky Street where Korablev lived, seeing that my luggage consisted of one small suitcase.

The tumbledown wooden annexe, lost amid the tall built-up houses, looked tike a summer cottage, what with its shutters and its veranda.

Korablev no longer had held the ground floor to himself, and though Moscow had struck me, at first sight as being oddly empty, here, in this little house, I found a head sticking out of nearly every window. Women were sitting round the doorsteps, knitting, and the moment I appeared I found at least a dozen pairs of eyes scrutinising me with curiosity. I might have been back at Ensk, in our old courtyard. ' "Who d'you want?" "Korablev."

"Ah, Ivan Pavlovich? Second door on the left down the corridor." "I know that," I said, mounting the steps. "Is he at home?" "Knock. I think he is."

The last time I saw Korablev was before the war. Katya and I had dropped in on the old man without warning, bringing a cake and a bottle of French wine. He was a long time shaving and talking to us from the next room, while we looked at some old school photographs.

At last he had come out, wearing a new suit with a starched collar, his moustache twisted up with a youthful swagger. That was how I saw him as I walked down the dark corridor, just as he had been on that wonderful, memorable evening. In a moment he would come out and recognise me at once.

"Is that you, Sanya?"

But I knocked two or three times at the familiar felt-padded door without getting an answer. Korablev was not at home.

"Dear Ivan Pavlovich," I wrote, moving aside because the women were watching me and I did not want them to see how agitated I was. "I don't know whether I'll have time to call again. I'm leaving for Yaroslavl today, where Katya was evacuated in January. I may travel still farther from there until I have found her. I can't in this note explain what happened to me and how we lost each other. Should you (or Valya, whom I hope to see today) happen to have heard anything of her, please let me know immediately at the following address: c/o Rear-Admiral R., Political Department, Polarnoye, the Arctic. Dear Ivan Pavlovich, in case you have read about my death, here I am writing to you, your Sanya."

A dozen hands reached out simultaneously for my letter. I took the Metro, which looked more beautiful and imposing than ever before, to the Palace of Soviets station. The war might have ended long ago, the way the old men sat about on Gogol Boulevard, leaning on their gnarled old sticks.

Children were playing. Preoccupied with my own thoughts and cares, it suddenly dawned on me-why, this is Moscow, Moscow!

The brass plate on Valya's door read: "Professor Valentin Zhukov". Oho!

A professor! I rang, knocked, then kicked the door.

There was nothing surprising in the fact that in the summer of 1942, when nearly all Moscow's inhabitants spent most of their lives ''a! work, I should not find Professor Zhukov at home during working hours. But the fact that Valya, my old pal Valya, was poking around somewhere when I needed him so badly, made me wild. I kicked the door again, and suddenly it yielded, as though alive, with a plaintive squeak. I pulled the handle, and the door opened.

The flat was empty, of course, and the faint hope that Valya might be asleep was dashed at once. I went into the "all-purpose kitchen", which had once served as both dining-room and nursery. Strange to say, the place had been tidied up. The table was covered with a cloth, and white paper with scalloped edges lay on the shelves. It looked as if a woman's hand had been over those clean-swept walls, over those windows with the fresh lilies-of-the-valley on the sills. Valya buying flowers? One would have to be a great artist to imagine such a scene. In another room a narrow iron cot stood against the wall and over the foot of it lay a neatly folded dress.