running a risk, but we did not expect such a blow.' It was of him that he
wrote: 'Our main misfortune was the mistake for which we are now
having to pay every hour, every minute of the day-the mistake I made in
entrusting the fitting out of our expedition to Nikolai...'"
Nikolai! But there are many Nikolais in the world!
There were even no few in this auditorium, but only one of them
suddenly stiffened and looked round him when I uttered that name in a
loud voice; and the stick on which he was leaning dropped with a clatter.
Someone picked it up and gave it to him.
"If today I am going to give the full name of that man it is not because
I wish to clinch an old argument between him and me. Life itself has
settled that argument long ago. But he continues to claim in his articles
that he has always been Captain Tatarinov's benefactor, and that even
the idea itself of 'following in the steps of Nordenskjold', as he writes,
was his. He is so sure of himself that he had the audacity to come here
today and is now in this hall."
A whisper ran through the hall, then there was a hush, followed by
more whispering. The chairman rang his little bell.
"Strangely enough, he has gone through life without ever having had
his name spelled out in full. But among the Captain's farewell letters we
found some business papers. There was one, which the Captain
evidently never parted with. It was a duplicate of a bond under which:
(1) On the expedition's return to the mainland all the spoils of their
hunting and fishing belonged to Nikolai Antonich Tatarinov - named in
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full. (2) The Captain renounced in advance any claims whatever to any
remuneration. (3) In the event of the loss of the vessel the Captain
forfeited all his property to Nikolai Antonich Tatarinov-named in full.
(4) The ship itself and the insurance belonged to Nikolai Antonich
Tatarinov-named in full.
"Once, in conversation with me, this man said that he recognised only
one witness-the Captain himself. Let him deny those words now before
all of us here, because the Captain himself now names him—in full!"
Pandemonium broke loose in the hall the moment I finished my
speech. People in the front row stood up and those behind shouted at
them to sit down, because they could not see him. He was standing,
holding up his hand with the stick in it, and shouting: "I ask for the
floor, I ask for the floor!"
He got the floor, but the audience would not let him speak. Never in
my life had I heard such a furious uproar as that which broke out the
moment he opened his mouth. Nevertheless he did say something,
though nobody caught what it was, and then, thumping the floor with
his stick, he stepped down from the platform and made for the exit. He
passed down the hall in an utter emptiness, and the space through
which he passed remained empty for a long time, as if nobody wanted to
go where he had just passed, thumping his stick.
CHAPTER NINE
AND THE LAST
The carriage in this train was going only as far as Ensk, and that
meant that all these people in the crowded, dimly lit carriage, who
occupied every inch of free space, including the floor and the upper
berths, would be getting out at Ensk. In the old days this would nearly
have doubled its population.
We made the acquaintance of our travelling companions. They were
girl students from Moscow colleges, who said they were going to Ensk to
work.
"What sort of work?"
"We don't know yet. In the mines."
Not counting the old tunnel in Cathedral Gardens, which Pyotr had
once assured me ran under the river with "skeletons at every step", I had
never heard of anything like a mine there. But the girls were quite
definite about their going to the mines.
After two or three hours, as usual, each compartment settled down to
a life of its own, unlike that of its neighbours, as though the ceiling-high
wooden partition divided not so much the carriage as people's thoughts
and feelings. Some compartments were gay and noisy, others dull. Ours
was gay because the girls, after mildly lamenting the fact that they had
not succeeded in staying in Moscow for their summer field work and
saying something catty about a certain Masha who had succeeded in
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doing so, started to sing and all the evening Katya and I were regaled
with modern war songs, some of which were very amusing. In fact, the
girls sang all the way to Ensk, even in the night-for some reason they
decided to go without sleep. The thirty-four-hour journey passed
quickly enough as we dozed on and off to the sound of these young
voices, singing songs now sad, now gay.
The train used to arrive early in the morning, but now it arrived
towards the evening, so that when we got out, the little station struck
me, in the dusk, as being nice and cosy in an old-fashioned sort of way.
But the Ensk of former days stopped where the broad avenue of lime
trees leading to the station ended. Coming out onto the boulevard, we
saw in the distance a dark mass of buildings over which sped glowing
clouds lit up from below. This, for Ensk, was such a strange townscape
that I found myself saying to the girls that there must be a fire
somewhere across the river, and they believed me because I had been
boasting during the journey that I was a native of Ensk and knew every
stone in the place. As it turned out, it wasn't a fire, but an ordnance
factory which had been built at Ensk during the war.
I had seen the striking changes that had taken place in some of our
towns during the war—those at M—v, for instance—but I had not known
those towns as a child. Now, as Katya and I walked quickly down the
darkening Zastennaya and Gogolevsky streets it seemed to me that these
streets, which used to stretch lazily along the ramparts, now ran hastily
upwards to join the ceaseless glowing motion of the clouds over the
factory buildings. This was our first (and true) impression-that of war-
geared town. To me, of course, it was still my old, native Ensk, but now I
met it as one does an old friend, when one looks at the altered yet
familiar features, and laughs with affection and emotion, at a loss for
words.
We had written to Pyotr from the Arctic that we would be visiting the
old folks and he counted on being able to arrange his long-promised
leave for the same time.
No one met us at the station, though I had wired from Moscow, and we
decided that Pyotr had not arrived. But the first person we ran into at
the lion-guarded entrance to the Marcouse house was none other than
Pyotr. I recognised him at once for all that he had been transformed
from an absent-minded, wool-gathering old thing with a permanent
question-mark expression into a bronzed dashing officer. "Ah, here they
are!" he said as though he had found us at last after a long search.
We embraced, then he strode over to Katya and took her hands in his.
They had their Leningrad in common, and as they stood there gripping
hands, even I was far away from them, though there was probably not a
person in the world nearer to them than I was.