voyage and his report concerning the 1911 expedition to the North Pole,
and it struck me for the first time that he was not only a brave sailor, but
a broadminded man of extraordinarily keen intellect.
The writers of some of the articles evidently thought otherwise. In the
Peterburgskaya Gazeta, for instance, one journalist came out against
the expedition on the grounds that the Council of Ministers had "turned
down Captain Tatarinov's request for the necessary funds". Another
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newspaper carried an interesting photograph—a beautiful white ship
which reminded me of the caravels in The Century of Discovery. It was
the schooner St. Maria. She looked slim and graceful, too slim and
graceful to make the voyage from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok along
the shores of Siberia.
The next issue of the same newspaper carried a still more interesting
photograph—the crew of the schooner. True, it was very difficult to
make anything out on this photograph, but the arrangement of the
group with the Captain seated in the middle, arms folded over his chest,
struck me as very familiar. Where had I seen that photograph? Of
course-at the Tatarinovs, among a lot of other photos, which Katya had
once shown me. I continued thinking back. No, it was not at the
Tatarinovs! It was at Doctor Ivan Ivanovich's -that's where I had seen it!
And suddenly a very simple idea occurred to me. At the same time,
however, it was an extraordinary one, which only Doctor Ivan Ivanovich
could confirm. There and then I decided to write to him. It was about
seven years since he had left Moscow, but I was quite certain that he was
alive and well.
CHAPTER FOUR
I RECEIVE A REPLY
A month passed, then a second and a third. We had finished our
theoretical studies and moved out to the Corps Airfield.
It was a Big Day at the airfield-September 25th, 1930. We still
remember it by that name. It began as usuaclass="underline" 7 a.m. found us sitting by
our "crates". At nine o'clock the instructor arrived and things began to
happen. For one thing, he had brought with him an imposing-looking
man in a Russian blouse and gold-rimmed spectacles. This we soon
discovered to be the secretary of the District Party Committee.
Secondly... But this "secondly" needs going into greater
detail.
We made several flights that day with the instructor, and he kept
studying me all the time, and, contrary to custom, he did not swear at
me.
"Well," he said at last. "Now fly solo."
I must have looked excited, because he regarded me for a moment
with a searching, kindly look. He checked the instruments to see
whether they were working properly, and fastened the straps in the first,
now empty, cockpit.
"A routine round flight. Take off, start climbing. Don't turn until
you're a hundred and fifty metres off the ground. Bank, then come in to
land."
With a feeling as though it were not I but someone else doing it, I
taxied to the end of the runway and raised my hand for permission to
take off. The flight-controller waved his white flag for me to go. I opened
the throttle and sent the machine down the airfield.
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I had long forgotten that childish sense of disappointment I had
experienced when, on the first taking to the air, I realised what flying
meant. In those days I had always imagined that I would fly like a bird,
whereas here I was sitting in an armchair just as if I were on the ground.
I sat in the armchair and I had no time to think either of the earth or the
sky. It was not until my tenth or eleventh solo flight that I noticed that
the earth below me was patterned like a map and that we lived in a very
precise geometrical world. I liked the shadows of the clouds scattered
here and there on the ground, and altogether it dawned on me that the
world was very beautiful.
And so this was my first solo flight. The instructor's cockpit is empty.
The first turn. The cockpit is empty and the machine becomes airborne.
A second turn. I am flying quite alone, with a wonderful sensation of
complete freedom. A third turn. Time to land now. Fourth turn.
Attention! I cut off the engine. The ground gets closer and closer. There
it is, right under the machine. The landing run. The touch-down. It must
have been a decent performance, seeing that even our grumpy
instructor nodded approval, while Misha Golomb, behind his back, gave
me the thumbs-up sign.
"Sanya, you're a topnotcher," he said, when we sat down on a grassy
bank to have a smoke. "Honest, you are. By the way, there's a letter for
you. I was at the Aviation Museum today and the doorman said: 'One
for Grigoriev. Maybe you'll give it to him?'"
And he held out a letter to me. It was from Doctor Ivan Ivanovich.
"Dear Sanya, I am very glad to hear you are well. I am looking forward
to welcoming you with your plane, as we have to use dogs here all the
time for travelling. Now about the photograph. It was given to me by the
navigating officer of the St. Maria, Ivan Klimov. He was brought to
Archangel in 1914 with frostbitten feet and died in the hospital from
blood-poisoning. He left a couple of notebooks and some letters-quite a
lot of them, round about twenty, I believe. This, of course, was the mail,
which he had brought with him from the ship, though he may have
written some of the letters himself during his journey-he was picked up
somewhere by Lieutenant Sedov's expedition. When he died the hospital
posted these letters to their respective addresses, but the notebooks and
photographs remained with me. As you are acquainted with Captain
Tatarinov's family and are determined 'to present a correct picture of his
life and death', you will naturally be interested to know about these
notebooks. They are ordinary school copybooks and the writing in them,
done in pencil, is unfortunately quite illegible. I tried several times to
read them, but had to give it up. This is about all I know. This happened
at the end of 1914 when the war had just started and nobody was
interested in Captain Tatarinov's expedition. These notebooks and
photographs are still in my possession and you can read them if you
have the patience when you come, or rather fly out here. My address is:
24 Kirov Street, Zapolarie, Arctic Circle.
"I expect more letters from my interesting patient. Your doctor, I.
Pavlov."
Just as I had thought! That photo had been left by the navigating
officer. The doctor has seen the man with his own eyes. The very same
man who had written: "I remain your obedient servant, I. Klimov,
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Navigating Officer." The very same man who had fascinated me for life
with the glamorous words "latitude", "schooner", "expedition", "the
From" and the extraordinary politeness of his "I hasten to inform you"
and "I hope to see you soon".
I decided that as soon as I left school I would go to Zapolarie and read
his notebooks. The doctor had given it up, but he wouldn't have done so
if he had had the hope of finding in them as much as a single word to
prove that he had been right, if somebody had spat in his face, if Katya