As a matter of fact they did owe him an unpayable debt, because that
cousin, whom Nikolai Antonich alternately referred to as "my poor" or
"missing" cousin, was Maria Vasilievna's husband, consequently Katya's
father.
Everything in the flat used to belong to him and now belonged to
Maria Vasilievna and Katya. The pictures, too, for which, according to
the old lady, "the Tretyakov Gallery was offering big money", and some
"insurance policy" or other for which eight thousand rubles was payable
at a Paris bank.
The one person least interested in all these intricate affairs and
relationships among the grown-ups was Katya. She had more important
things to attend to. She carried on a correspondence with two girl
friends in Ensk, and had a habit of leaving these letters lying about
everywhere, so that anyone who felt like it, even visitors, could read
them. She wrote her friends exactly what they wrote her. One friend,
say, would write that she had dreamt of having lost her handbag, when
all of a sudden Misha Kuptsov— "you remember me writing about
him"—came towards her with the bag in his hand. And Katya would
reply to her friend that she dreamt she had lost, not a handbag, but a
penholder or a ribbon, and that Shura Golubentsev - "you remember me
writing about him"-had found it and brought it to her. Her friend would
write that she had been to the cinema, and Katya would reply that so
had she, though in fact she had stayed indoors. Later it occurred to me
that her friends were older than her and she was copying them.
Her classmates, however, she treated rather high-handedly. There
was one little girl by the name of Kiren-at least that was what the
Tatarinovs called her—whom she ordered about more than anybody
else. Katya got cross because Kiren was not fond of reading. "Have you
read Dubrovsky, Kiren?" "Yes." "Don't tell lies." "Spit in my eye."
"Then why didn't Masha marry Dubrovsky - tell me that." "She did."
"Fiddlesticks!" "But I read that she did marry him."
Katya tried the same thing on me when I returned Helen Robinson,
but there was nothing doing. I could go on reciting word for word from
any point. She did not like to show surprise and merely said:
"Learned it off by heart, like a parrot."
I daresay she considered herself as good as Helen Robinson and was
sure that in a similar desperate plight she would have been just as brave.
If you ask me, though, a person who was preparing herself for such an
extraordinary destiny ought not to have spent so much time in front of
the mirror, especially considering that no mirrors are to be found on
desert islands. And Katya did stand a lot in front of mirrors.
The winter I started visiting the Tatarinovs Katya's latest fad was
explosions. Her fingers were always burnt black and she had a smell of
percussion cap and gunpowder about her, like Pyotr once had.
Potassium chlorate lay in the folds of the books she gave me. Then the
explosions stopped abruptly. Katya had settled down to read The
Century of Discovery.
This was an excellent book which gave the life-stories of Christopher
Columbus, Hernan Cortes and other famous seafarers and conquerors
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of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Amerigo Vespucci, after whom
America is named, was pictured in front of a globe, with a pair of
compasses, which he held over an open book-a bearded, jolly-looking
man. Vasco Nunez de Balboa, armour-clad, with plumed helmet, was
knee-deep in the water. He looked to me like some Russian Vaska who
had turned up in the Pacific. I was keen on the book too. But Katya! She
was simply mad on it. She mooned about like one in a dream, only
awakening to impart the information that "Cortes, accompanied by the
good wishes of the Tiascalans, set out on his expedition and within a few
days reached the populous capital city of the Incas."
The cat, who before The Century of Discovery was called simply
Vasena, she renamed Ixtacihuatl - it appears that there is a mountain by
the name in Mexico. She tried Popocatepetl - the name of another
mountain-on Nina Kapitonovna, but it wouldn't work. The old lady
refused to answer to any name but "Grandma".
In short, if there was anything that Katya regretted at all seriously, it
was that she had not conquered Mexico and discovered Peru.
But there was more to this, as the future showed. I knew what she was
dreaming about. She wanted to become a ship's captain.
CHAPTER EIGHT
KORABLEV PROPOSES
Now what but good, one would think, could I expect from this
acquaintance? Yet in a little less than six months I was kicked out.
It was a Sunday and the Tatarinovs were expecting visitors. Katya was
drawing a picture of "the Spaniards' first encounter with the Indians"
from The Century of Discovery, and Nina Kapitonovna drafted me into
the kitchen. She was rather excited and kept listening and saying to me:
"Sh-sh, there goes the bell."
"It's out in the street, Nina Kapitonovna."
But she kept listening.
In the end, she went out into the dining-room and missed the bell
when it did ring. I opened the door. Korablev came in wearing a light
overcoat and a light-coloured hat. I had never seen him looking so
smart.
His voice shook slightly as he inquired whether Maria Vasilievna was
at home. I said she was. But he stood there for several more seconds
without taking his things off. Then he went in to Maria Vasilievna and I
saw Nina Kapitonovna tiptoeing back from the dining-room. Why the
tiptoes and that excited mysterious air?
From that moment on everything started to go wrong with us. Nina
Kapitonovna, who was peeling potatoes, found the knife slipping from
her fingers. She kept running out into the dining-room, as though to
fetch something, but returned empty-handed. At first she returned in
silence, making sundry mysterious signs with her hands, which could be
interpreted roughly as: "Goodness gracious, what's going to happen?"
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Then she started muttering. After that she sighed and broke the news.
And amazing news it was! Korablev had come to propose to Maria
Vasilievna. I knew, of course, what "propose" meant. He wanted to
marry her and had come to ask whether or not she would have him.
Would she accept or would she not? If I had not been in the kitchen
Nina Kapitonovna would have debated this point with her pots and
pans. She could not keep silent.
"He says, I'll give my all, my whole life," she reported on her third or
fourth trip to the dining-room. "I'll live for you."
"Is that so?" I threw in.
"I'll live for you," Nina Kapitonovna solemnly repeated. "I see the life
you lead. It's unenviable, I can't bear to see it."
She started on the potatoes, but soon went out again and returned
with moist eyes.
"He's always yearned for a family, he says. I was a lonely man, and I
need nobody but you, he says. I've been sharing your grief for a long
time. Something like that."
The "something like that" was Nina Kapitonovna's own contribution.
Ten minutes later she went out again and came back looking puzzled.