staying?"
"I haven't fixed up yet."
"Very good. I'll be waiting for you."
298
He lived near Liteiny Bridge in a new block. It was a spacious flat,
rather neglected since the war, of course, but with something poetic
about it, like the home of an artist. It may have been the tastefully
fashioned dolls standing under glass covers on the piano that suggested
this idea to me, or the multitude of books on the floor and the shelves,
or perhaps the host himself, who received me without ceremony in his
shirt-sleeves, the open neck of his shirt revealing a full, hairy chest. I
had seen a portrait like that somewhere of Shevchenko. But R. was no
poet, he was a rear-admiral, as his service coat hanging on the back of a
chair testified.
He first of all asked me where I had been and what I had been doing
with myself during the year of war.
"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 Petsamo, 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.
299
"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.
300
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