he delivers speeches, in which I find traces of the old dispute which
ended that day and hour when a woman with a very white face was
carried out into a cold stone yard and taken away from home for ever.
But that dispute had not ended yet, no! It is not for nothing that that
worthy scientist never tires of repeating in his books that the people
responsible for Captain Tatarinov's death were the tradesmen, notably
one named von Vyshimirsky. It is not for nothing that this worthy
scientist uses arguments with which he had once tried to give the lie to
the words of a schoolboy who had discovered his secret.
Now he is silent, that schoolboy. But the future is still ours.
He is silent, and works tirelessly day and night. On the Volga he
sprays reservoirs. He carries the mail between Irkutsk and Vladivostok
and is happy when he succeeds in delivering Moscow newspapers to
Vladivostok within forty-eight hours. He is promoted to Pilot, Second
Class, and it is I, not he, who feels outraged when, after he had asked-for
the nth time—to be sent to the North, he receives by way of reply a
reappointment as sky chauffeur, this time between Simferopol and
Moscow. What is this secret shadow that keeps falling across his path? I
don't know. Nor does he.
He works and is appreciated, but I alone realise how tired he is of the
monotony of those dreary flights, each one resembling the other like a
thousand brothers...
In the winter of 1937 Sanya is transferred to Leningrad. We stay with
the Berensteins, and all would be well but for one thing: I wake up in the
night to find Sanya lying with his eyes wide open...
250
We stand in the Berensteins' tiny hallway among some old winter
coats and mantles. We stand there in silence. The last quarter of an hour
before another parting. He is going away in mufti, looking so unfamiliar
in that fashionable coat with the wide shoulders and the soft hat.
"Is that you, Sanya? "
"Maybe it isn't?"
He laughs.
"Let's consider that it isn't me. You are crying?"
"No. Take care of yourself, darling."
He says, "I'll be back" and some other tender, confused words. I don't
remember what I said, all I remember is asking him not to forget his
parachute. He doesn't always carry one.
Where is he going? To the Far East, he says. Why in mufti? Why,
when I ask him about this assignment, does he take Ms time answering?
Why, when he gets a phone call from Moscow late at night does he
answer only "yes" or "no" and afterwards paces up and down the room,
smoking, agitated, pleased with himself? What is he pleased with? I
don't know, I'm not supposed to know. Why can't I see him off to the
station?"
"It's not very convenient," says Sanya. "I'm not going alone. Maybe I
won't go at all. If it'll be convenient I'll phone you from the railway
station."
He did phone me to say the train was leaving in ten minutes. I mustn't
worry, everything will be all right. He will write to me every day. He
won't forget his parachute, of course...
From time to time: I receive letters bearing a Moscow postmark.
Judging by these letters he gets mine regularly. People I don't know ring
me up to find out how I am getting on. Somewhere a thousand miles
away, in the mountains of Guadarrama, fighting is going on. A map with
little flags pinned all over it hangs over my bedside table. Spain, faraway
and mysterious, the Spain of Jose Diaz and Dolores Ibarruri, becomes as
close to me as the street in which I spent my childhood.
On a rainy day in March the Republican aircraft—"everything that had
wings"—fly out against the rebels, who plan to cut Valencia off from
Madrid. It is the victory of Guadalajara. Where are you, Sanya?
In July the Republican army hurls the rebels back from Brunete.
Where are you, Sanya? The Basque country is cut off communication
with Bilbao is by means of old civil planes, flying in mist over the
mountains. Where are you, Sanya?
"I'm being detained," he writes. "Anything might happen to me.
Whatever happens, remember that you are free, without any
obligations."
Then suddenly the impossible, the incredible happens. Such a simple
thing, yet it makes everything a thousand times better-the weather, my
health, everything.
He comes home-a late night phone call from Moscow, a scared Rosalia
wakes me, and I run to the telephone... And a few days later he stands
before me, looking thinner, bronzed, very much like a Spaniard. I pin
the Order of the Red Banner to his tunic with my own hands.
In the autumn we are going to Ensk. Pyotr and his son and the
"learned" Nanny spend the summer at Ensk every year, and Aunt Dasha
keeps asking us down in every letter – and now, at last, we are going.
Evening finds me standing by the carriage, mentally scolding Sanya,
251
because there are only five minutes to go before the train leaves and he
hasn't come back yet, having gone off to buy a cake. He jumps aboard as
the train moves off, breathless and gay. We sit for a long time in the
semi-darkness of our compartment without putting on the lights.
When was that? We were returning from Ensk like grown-ups, and
those old Nihilists, the Bubenchikovs aunts, with their big funny muffs
were seeing us off. The little unshaven man kept trying to guess what we
were—brother and sister? No resemblance. Husband and wife? Too
young. And those lovely apples—red-cheeked, firm, winter apples! Why
is it that people eat such apples only in childhood?
"It was the day I fell in love with you."
"It wasn't. You fell in love that day we were coming back from the
skating-rink and you offered me some sweets, and I wouldn't take them,
and you gave them away to some little toad of a girl."
"That was when you fell in love with me."
"No, I know it was you. Otherwise you wouldn't have given them
away."
We stand in the corridor, watching the telegraph wires dipping and
leaping past, as we had done then. Things are not the same any more,
yet we are happy. The stout, moustachioed conductor keeps glancing at
us-or at me perhaps? - and says, sighing, that he, too, has a beautiful
daughter.
Ensk. Early morning. The trams are not running yet, and we have to
walk right across the town. A polite ragamuffin carries our baggage and
talks without a stop. All our efforts to stem the flow by telling him that
we are natives of Ensk ourselves are in vain. He knows all the late
Bubenchikovs, Aunt Dasha, and the judge-the judge in particular, whom
he had had occasion to meet more than once.
"Where?"
"At the police court."
In the square, among the carts from which the farmers are selling
apples and cabbages, stands Aunt Dasha weighing a head of cabbage in
her hand, musing whether to take it or not. She has aged.
Sanya hails her. She eyes us sternly over her glasses the way old people
do, then suddenly drops the cabbage from her listless hand.
"Sanya! My darlings! What are you doing here, in the market?"
"We're passing through on our way to you. Aunt Dasha—my wife." He
leads me up to Aunt Dasha, and business in the Ensk market is
suspended-even the horses take their noses out of their bags to gaze