him and sits down at Ms desk. 'This, Nina Kapitonovna, will be my
lifework,' he says. 'As to whether I'm guilty or not, my friends and
enemies will now judge for themselves.' And he's got so thin. Absent-
minded, too," Grandma communicated in a whisper. "The other day he
sat at the table in his hat. I think he's going mad."
At that moment the front door closed softly and someone came into
the hall. I looked at Grandma, who avoided my eyes, and I realised that
it was Nikolai Antonich.
"I must be going now. Grandma."
He came in, after a light tap on the door and without waiting for an
answer.
I turned round and nodded, pleased to find that I could do it with such
careless, even audacious ease.
"How are you, Katya?"
"Not bad, thank you."
Oddly enough, I saw him now just as a pale, ageing man with short
arms and stubby fingers, which he kept nervously twiddling and trying
to tuck away all the time, now inside his collar, now into his waistcoat
pockets, as if to hide them. He now resembled an old actor. I had known
him once-ages ago. But now the sight of his pallid face, his scraggy neck
and the hands, which shook so visibly when he stretched them out to
pull up an armchair for himself left me unmoved.
The first awkward minute passed with him asking me in a jocular tone
whether my map was right and I hadn't mixed up the Zimmerdag suite
with the Asha suite-an illusion to a mistake I had once made in my
university days—and I started to take my leave again.
"Goodbye, Grandma."
"I can go away," Nikolai Antonich said quietly.
He sat in an armchair, hunched up, regarding me steadily with a
kindly eye. That was how he looked sometimes, when we had had long
talks together-after Mother's death. But now that was merely a distant
memory for me.
"If you're in a hurry, we can talk some other time," he said.
"Honestly, Grandma, I have an appointment," I said to my
grandmother, who was holding me tightly by the sleeve.
"No you haven't. What d'you mean? He's your uncle."
236
"Come, come, Nina Kapitonovna," Nikolai Antonich interposed good-
naturedly. "What difference does it make whether I'm her uncle or not.
Obviously, you don't want to hear what I have to say, Katya?"
"I don't."
"Pig-headed, that's what she is!" Grandmother said vehemently.
I laughed.
"I cannot talk to you either about how painful your going away
without even saying goodbye was to me," Nikolai Antonich went on
hurriedly in the same simple kindly manner, "or about how you were
both misled into believing that poor sick old man, who had only recently
been discharged from a mental hospital."
He looked at me over the top of his glasses. A mental hospital!
Another lie. One lie more or less—I did not care now. The only thing
that worried me was the thought that this might affect Sanya in some
disagreeable way.
"My God! The things that poor, muddled brain of his made up! That I
had ruined him by means of some bills of exchange, and that it was
because of me that the expedition had found itself so badly equipped—
why, what do you think? Because I wanted to destroy Ivan!"
Nikolai Antonich laughed heartily.
"Out of jealousy! My God! I loved your mother and out of jealousy I
wanted to destroy Ivan!"
He laughed again, then suddenly took off his glasses and began wiping
away the tears.
"Yes, I loved her," he muttered, weeping, "and. God knows, everything
could have been different. Even if I were guilty, I have had my
punishment from her. She punished me like I never thought I could be."
I listened to. him as in a dream, with a sense of having seen and heard
all this before—that flushed bald head with its sparse hairs, the same
words uttered with the same expression, and that unpleasant feeling
which the sight of a weeping old man rouses in you.
"Well?" Grandma demanded sternly.
"Grandma!" I said, thrilled at the anger that flared up in me, "after all,
I'm not a little girl any longer, and I can do as I please, I believe. I don't
want to live here any more-is that clear? I'm getting married. I'll
probably live in the Far North with my husband, who has nothing to do
here because he's an Arctic pilot. As for Nikolai Antonich, I've seen him
crying so many times, I'm fed up. All I can say is that if he had not been
guilty he would hardly have messed about with this affair all his life. He
would hardly bother to get the N.S.R.A. to drop the idea of Sanya's
expedition."
By this time, I daresay, I was feeling a bit deflated, because Grandma
was looking at me in a frightened way, and, I believe, furtively crossing
herself. Nikolai Antonich's cheek was twitching. He said nothing,
"And leave me alone!" I flung out. "Leave me alone!"
November 19, 1935. The expedition has been approved! Professor V.,
the well-known Arctic scientist, wrote an article in which he expressed
the conviction that, judging by the diaries of Navigator Klimov, "the
materials collected by the Tatarinov expedition, if found, could
contribute to our present knowledge of the Arctic".
This idea, even to me, sounded rather daring. Unexpectedly, though, it
received confirmation and it was this that tipped the scale in favour of
237
Sanya's plan. After studying the chart of the St. Maria's drift between
October 1912 and April 1914, Professor V. expressed the opinion that
there must be as yet undiscovered land at latitude 78°02'and longitude
64°. And this hypothetical land, which V. had discovered without
moving from his study, was actually found during the 1935 navigation
season. True, it wasn't much of a place, just a small island lost amidst
the creeping ice and presenting a dismal picture, but, be that as it may,
this meant one more blank space filled in on the map of the Soviet
Arctic, and this had been done with the aid of the chart showing the drift
of the St. Maria.
I don't know what other arguments, if any were needed to put Sanya's
plan through, but the fact remains that "a search party attached to an
expedition into the high latitudes for the study of Severnaya Zemlya"
was included in the plan for next year's navigation season. Sanya was to
come to Leningrad in the spring, and we arranged to meet there, in
Leningrad, where I had never been before.
May 4, 1936. What thoughts and fancies thronged in my mind
yesterday morning as my train drew into Leningrad, where, the next
morning, that is today. May 4th I was to meet Sanya! Though the
carriage was a rattling, creaking fair—it must have been an old one— I
slept all night like a top, and when I woke up, I started daydreaming.
How good it was to lie and dream, listening to the monotonous rumble
of the wheels and the sleepy breathing of my fellow passengers! I had a
feeling that all my dreams would come true, even that my father was
alive and that we would find him and all come back together. It was
impossible of course. But there was such peace and serenity in my heart
that I could not help dwelling on the thought. In my heart, as it were, I
commanded that we find him-and now, there he stood, grey-headed and