"He'll come."
I was overjoyed, of course, to hear that the doctor was at Polarnoye
and that I would be seeing him that night. Nevertheless, it remained a
puzzle to me, why, on arriving at the club, I drank first a glass of white
wine, then red wine, then white again, and so on. I kept within bounds,
though, all the more so as the Air Arm Commander was dining in the
next room with some war correspondent. But the girls of my
acquaintance, who sat down at my table from time to time between
foxtrots, laughed heartily when I tried to explain to them that if I had
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learnt to dance my life would have shaped quite differently. As it was,
my life was a flop because I had never learnt to dance.
It was in this excellent, though slightly wistful mood that I sat in the
Officers' Club, when a tall, elderly naval man with silver stripes
appeared in the doorway and started to pick his way between the tables.
Doctor Ivan Ivanovich, I took it.
I may have been thinking how bent and old he looked and how grey
his beard had grown, but that was only a mirage, of course. Actually,
this was the mysterious old doctor of my childhood coming towards me
with his glasses pushed up on his forehead, for all the world as though
he were about to examine my tongue or peek into my ear.
"Sanya!"
We embraced, looked at each other, then embraced again.
"Have you been here long, Sanya?" the doctor was saying. "How is it
we have not met all this time?"
"Three months. It's my fault, of course. May I pour you out a drink?" I
reached for the bottle without waiting for his reply.
"You've had enough, Sanya," the doctor said gently, setting aside first
his glass, then mine. "Tell me all about yourself. D'you remember
Volodya? He's been killed," he added quickly, as though to show me that
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I could now tell him everything. His eyes glistened with tears behind his
glasses.
We sat with downcast heads in the brightly lit, noisy Officers' Club.
The band was playing foxtrots and waltzes, and the brass rang out too
loudly in the small wooden rooms.
"Where's Katya, what's happened to her?"
I told him how we had lost track of each other.
"I'm sure she's alive and well," the doctor said. "And searching for you
day and night. She'll find you all right-if I know anything about a
woman in love. Now you can pour me a drink. Let's toast her health."
It was time to go. We were the only people left in the restaurant. The
evening was over-that was a fact. But, God, how reluctant I was to admit
it, when there was still so much left unsaid between us. But what could
you do! We went downstairs and got our overcoats. The warm, bright,
slightly tipsy world was left behind us, and before us, pitch-black, lay N.,
over which a rude, bleak north wind ran riot.
CHAPTER THREE
TO THOSE AT SEA
Submariners were the big boys in those parts, not only because they
had done so much at the beginning of the war, more perhaps than
anyone else in the Northern Fleet, but because the peculiar routine of
their lives, their attitudes, and the stresses of their combat activities
placed an imprint upon the life of the whole township. Nowhere are
men so equal in the face of death as among the crew of a submarine,
where all either perish or vanquish. All combat work is hard, but the
work of submarine crews, especially in midgets, is such that I wouldn't
care to barter a dozen of the most hazardous air missions for a single
cruise in a midget submarine. Even as a boy I used to think that among
men who went down so deep in the water there was sure to be some sort
of secret compact, like the oath which Pyotr and I had once sworn to
each other.
Flying in company with another captain I succeeded in sinking a third
transport at the end of August 1942. A midget commanded by the
famous F. sank a fourth with my assistance. This would not be worth
mentioning-I had no bomb-load at the time and merely reported to HQ
the coordinates of a German vessel I had sighted-had not F. invited me
to the "roast-pig party", which started off a train of events worth
relating.
Who does not know the famous naval tradition of celebrating each
sinking of an enemy ship with a gala dinner at which the commanding
officer treats the victors to roast sucking-pig? The previous day a
transport, patrol-vessel and a torpedo boat had been sent to the bottom,
and the white-capped cooks, all hot and bothered, carried, not one, but
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three whole sucking-pigs into the spacious officers' mess where a "U"
table was set out at the head of which sat the admiral commanding the
Northern Fleet.
The pigs, appetising, delicately pink, with pale, sorrowful-looking
snouts, lay on dishes and the three commanders stood over them with
big knives in their hands. That, too, was a tradition-the victors had to do
the carving with their own hands. And the portions they carved! A huge
chunk, stuffed with buckwheat and trimmed with fanciful shavings of
horse-radish sailed down the table towards me. And I had to put it
away, on pain of offending my hosts.
The admiral rose, glass in hand. The first toast was to the victors— the
commanders and their crews. I looked at him-he had visited my
regiment and I remembered the quick, youthful gesture with which he
had thrown Ms head back as he received the report of the regimental
commander. He was a young man, only four years my senior. I had also
known him from my Spanish days.
"To those at sea!" was the second toast. Glasses clinked. The sailors
drank, standing, to their comrades who were braving the perils of the
Arctic night in the watery wastes. To good luck in battle and a steady
heart in the hour of danger and decision.
Now the admiral was looking at me across the table—1 was sitting on
his right, among the journalist guests, to whom F. was demonstrating
with the aid of knife and fork how the torpedo boat was sunk. His eyes
on me all the time, the admiral said something to his neighbour, and the
latter, the flotilla commander, got up to propose a third toast. "Here's to
Captain Grigoriev, who skilfully vectored the submarine onto the
German convoy." And the admiral made a gesture to show that he was
drinking to me.
I shall not list all the toasts that were proposed, especially as the
journalists I have mentioned told the story of the "three roast-pigs" in
the press. I shall merely mention that the admiral disappeared quite
unexpectedly—he suddenly got up and went out. In passing my chair he
leaned over, and without letting me get up, said quietly: "Please come
and see me today, Captain."
CHAPTER FOUR
RANGING WIDE
The machine took off, and within a few minutes that hash of rain and
mist, which we thought nothing of on the ground, became an important
part of the flight, which, like all flights, consisted of (a) the mission, and
(b) everything that hindered the execution of the mission.
We made a flat turn, banking slightly, and swung round onto our