desk and looked round for a light. I struck my lighter. He lit up, inhaled
and threw the cigarette away.
"Sometimes I used to meet you in the street, and I'd hide myself in
doorways and then follow you like a shadow. I sat behind you in the
theatre, and used to think, my God, in what way am I different from
him? But I knew that what I saw on the stage was different, because I
looked at everything with different eyes than yours. No, Katya was not
the only bone of contention between us. Everything that I ever felt was
always at war with what you felt. That's why I know everything about
you. I know that you were working in agricultural aviation on the Volga,
then in the Far East. You asked to be sent to the North again, but they
refused you. So then you went to Spain-my God, it was as though
everything I had striven for all those years was suddenly working out of
itself. But you came back," Romashov shouted with loathing, "and from
then on everything went well with you. You went to Ensk with Katya-
310
you see, I know everything, even things you have long forgotten. You
could forget because you were happy, but I couldn't, because I was
unhappy." He drew a shuddering breath and closed his eyes. Then he
opened them again, and something very keen and sober, a world away
from these passionate confessions, flickered in his quick glance. I
listened to him in silence.
"Yes, I wanted to part you, because this love had given you such
marvellous happiness all your life. I was sick with envy, thinking that
you loved simply out of love, whereas my love had the extra spur in that
I wanted to take her away from you. You may think it funny, my talking
to you about love. But the contest is over, I have lost, and what is this
humiliation to me now compared with the fact that you are alive and
that fate had played a trick on me again?"
The telephone rang in the hall. Vyshimirsky answered it. "Yes, he's in.
Who's that speaking?"
He did not call Romashov, however.
"Then the war broke out. I joined up. I didn't have to, I was reserved.
If I was killed, all the better! But secretly I was hoping that you'd be
killed. Near Vinnitsa I was lying in a barn when an airman came in and
stopped in the doorway, reading a newspaper. 'What a fine bunch o'
lads!' he said. 'A pity, they've gone up in smoke.' 'Who?' 'Captain
Grigoriev and his crew.' I read that paragraph a thousand times. I learnt
it by heart. A few days later I met you in the hospital train."
It was very odd, the way he was seeking my sympathy, as it were, for
the fact that, contrary to his hopes, I was still alive. He was so carried
away, however, that he did not see the absurdity of his attitude.
"You know the rest. Even in the train I was struck by the fact that you
somehow didn't seem to be thinking about Katya. I saw that you were
tormented by all the filth and confusion, but there again you were
yourself, you would have given your life to prevent that retreat. For me
it merely meant that you had shown yourself again to be the better
man."
He fell silent. There might never have been that aspen wood, the
heaps of wet leaves and the woodstack which prevented me from
swinging my arm back, or myself lying on the ground, propped up on
my hands, trying not to shout to him: "Come back, Romashov!"— as he
sat there before me, a dignified gentleman in a light grey suit. The desire
to strike him with my pistol was so great that my arms even began to
ache.
"Yes, a profound thought," I said. "Incidentally, will you please sign
this paper."
While he was confessing I had been writing a "deposition", that is, a
brief history of how the search-party had been torpedoed. It was torture
for me, as I am a poor hand at composing official papers. But I think I
made a good showing with the "Deposition of M.V. Romashov", perhaps
because it contained such phrases as: "Having basely deceived the
leadership of the Northern Sea Route Administration" etc.
Romashov quickly glanced through the paper.
"All right," he muttered, "but first I must explain to you—"
"First, sign, you'll do your explaining afterwards."
"But you don't know-"
311
"Sign, you rat!" I said in such a voice that he recoiled in terror, and his
teeth began to chatter in a sort of slow, reluctant manner.
He signed and flung the pen down with a savage gesture.
"You ought to be grateful to me, but instead you intend to take
advantage of my frankness. Ah well!"
"Yes, I do!"
He looked at me. How deeply at that moment he must have regretted
that he had not finished me off in the aspen wood!
"I returned to Moscow," he continued, "and immediately set about
getting a transfer to Leningrad. I travelled by way of Lake Ladoga. The
Germans were sinking our ships, but I made it, and just in time, thank
God," he added hastily. "In another day, at most two days, I would have
had to arrange her funeral."
This may have been the truth. When Vyshimirsky was telling me
about Romashov having been in Leningrad, I recollected the story of the
ginger major which the yardkeeper and her children had told me. "She
dig out ginger man, he have bread. Big sack, carry himself, not let me."
It was not this that worried me. Romashov might have talked Katya into
believing that I had been killed-in battle, of course, and not in the aspen
wood.
"And there I was in Leningrad. You can't imagine what it was. I got a
bread ration of three hundred grams, and brought half of it to Katya. At
the end of December I managed to get some glucose, and I bit all my
fingers while I was taking it to Katya. I dropped beside her bed, and she
said: 'Misha!' But I didn't have the strength to get up. I saved her," he
repeated gloomily, as though the fearful thought that I might not believe
him had struck him again. "And if I didn't die myself it was only because
I knew that she and you needed me." "I too?" "Yes, you too.
Skovorodnikov had written to her that you'd been killed. She was half-
dead with grief when I arrived. You should have seen what happened to
her when I told her I had seen you! I realised at that moment how
pitiful!-Romashov brought this out in such a full, loud voice that there
even came a thud from the hallway, as if Vyshimirsky had fallen off his
chair-"how pitiful I was in the face of this love. At that moment I bitterly
regretted having wanted to kill you. It was a false step. Your death
would not have brought me happiness."
"Is that all?"
"Yes, that's all. In January they sent me to Khvoinaya. I was away a
fortnight. I brought meat, but the flat was already empty. Varya
Trofimova—I expect you know her—had sent Katya away by plane."
"Where to?"
"To Vologda—I found that out definitely. And from there to
Yaroslavl." "Who did you make inquiries of at Yaroslavl?" "The
evacuation centre. I know the man in charge." "Did you get a reply?"
"Yes. But it was only to say that she had passed through the evacuation
centre and had been sent to a hospital for Leningraders."
"Show me."
He found the letter in his desk and handed it to me. "Vspolye Station," I