hidden in a pall of whirling, blinding, whistling snow.
Luckily I was wearing burki (*Burki-high felt boots.-Tr.) -even so I had to
turn the tops back above my knees. Talk about terraces-there wasn't a
trace of them! Only a fantastic imagination could picture houses
somewhere behind those black clouds of whipped snow, and in one of
those houses, in Row 5, Katya laying the hardtack out on the electric fire
to warm them, as I had advised her. In the end I got to the house, of
course. The hardest thing was to recognise it. In little more than an hour
it had turned into a fairy-tale dwarfie hut, standing lopsided and
snowed up to the windows. Like a god of snowstorm I burst into the
hall, and Katya had to brush me down with a whisk broom, starting
from the shoulders, which were caked with frozen snow.
We had talked everything over, it seemed; twice we had approached
the subject of the Captain's letters of farewell-I had brought them with
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me to Polarnoye to show to the doctor; the rest of the material relating
to the expedition I had left at my regiment. But we
avoided the subject of these letters and everything associated with them,
as though we felt that in the joy of our reunion the time had not yet
come for us to talk about them.
Katya had already told me all about little Pyotr-what a swarthy little
chap he was, the very image of my poor sister. We had already discussed
what to do about Grandma, who had quarrelled with Farm Manager
Perishkin and rented a "private apartment" in the village. I had already
learnt that Pyotr Senior had been wounded a second time, had received
a decoration and returned to the front—in Moscow Katya had chanced
to meet the commander of his battalion, a Hero of the Soviet Union,
who had told her that Pyotr "didn't give a damn for death", a phrase
which had startled Katya. I had learnt about Varya Trofimova, too, and
that if things worked out the way Katya thought they would "it would be
the greatest ever happiness for both of them". Changes had been made
in the room, too—things were arranged more comfortably, looking as if
they were grateful to Katya for having brought warmth to this cold,
masculine abode. Some five or six hours had passed since that
wonderful, momentous change had taken place. The entire world of our
family life, lost to us for so long-for eighteen desolate months-had come
back at last, and I had not yet got used to the idea that Katya was with
me once more.
"D'you know what I've been thinking most of the time? That I didn't
love you enough and kept forgetting how hard you had it with me."
"And I was thinking how hard you had it with me," Katya said. "When
you used to go away and I worried about you I was still happy, despite
all those anxieties, cares and fears."
While we were talking she went on arranging things, as she always did
in hotels, even in trains, wherever we went together. It was the habit of a
woman accustomed to moving with her husband from place to place-
and what a pity, tenderness and remorse I felt towards her for that
pathetic habit.
God, how I had missed her! I had forgotten everything! Forgotten, for
instance, how she did her hair for the night, plaiting it into pigtails. Her
hair was still short, and the pigtails were comical little things. Yet she
plaited them, uncovering her beautiful little ears-even these I had
forgotten.
We talked on after a long silence, now in whispers and about quite
another matter. This other matter was Romashov.
I remember having read somewhere about palimpsests, that is,
ancient parchments from which later scribes erased the text to write
bills and receipts on them, and years later scholars discovered the
original writings, which sometimes belonged to the pen of poets of
genius.
It was like a palimpsest, when Katya gave me Romashov's version of
what had happened in the aspen wood, and I erased this lie as if with a
rubber and beneath it the truth came through. I saw and explained to
her this dirty trick of his, which he had used twice-first to prove to Katya
that he had saved my life, then to show me that he had saved hers.
I related to her word for word our last conversation at his flat, and
Katya was astonished at Romashov's confession, which explained the
cause of all my failures and resolved the riddles which had always
weighed upon her heart.
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"Did you put it all down in writing?"
"Yes. I set it out like an examination record and made him sign it."
I repeated his account of how he had been watching my every step in
life, tormented by envy, which has racked his mean, restless soul ever
since his schooldays. I said nothing, however, about the magnificent
portrait of Katya hanging over his desk. I said nothing because this love
of his was an insult to her.
She listened to me with a sombre face, her eyes burning. She took my
hand and pressed it hard to her bosom. She was pale with emotion. She
hated Romashov twice or thrice as much perhaps for the very thing I did
not want to talk about. As for me, he was remote and insignificant, and
it was cheering to think that I had got the better of him.
My wife was asleep, her cheek pillowed on her hand. My clever, lovely
wife, who, heavens knows why, had always loved me with this undying
love. She was sleeping, and I could gaze my till at her, thinking that we
were alone now and though this short, happy night would end all too
soon, we had wrested it from the raging blizzard that was sweeping
through the world.
I had to be up at six and had prevailed upon Katya not to have me
waken her. We had even kissed goodbye to each other the night before.
But when I opened my eyes I found her already washing up, clad in her
dressing gown and propping the wet plates against the electric fire. She
knew what military service I was doing, but we never talked about it.
Only when I bestirred myself, leaving my glass of tea unfinished, did she
ask, as she used to do, whether I was taking my parachute. I said I was.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE FAREWELL LETTERS
On leaving the house I gave Katya the Captain's letters. Once before,
at Ensk, in Cathedral Gardens, I had left her alone to read one of the
letters which Aunt Dasha and I had found in the bag of the drowned
postman. I had stood beneath St. Martin's tower and turned cold as I
mentally went through that letter with her line by line.
Now I would not be seeing her for several days. Even so, we would be
reading together again, and I knew that Katya would feel me breathing
at her shoulder.
Here are the letters.
Captain 1st Class P.S. Sokolov, Hydrographical Board, St. Petersburg
My dear Pyotr Sergeyevich,
I hope this letter reaches you. I am writing it at the moment when our
voyage is nearing its end, and, I regret to say, I am finishing it in
solitude. I do not think anybody in the world could have coped with
what we have had to endure. All my companions have died one after the
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other, and the reconnaissance party which I sent to Galchikha did not
return.