strange correspondence broke off.
Irina N.'s letter reminds me of another incident, which equated
literature, as it were, with real life. During the blockade of Leningrad, in
the grim, forever memorable days of late autumn of 1941, the Leningrad
Radio Broadcasting Committee asked me to convey a message to the
8
young Communists of the Baltic in the name of Sanya Grigoriev. I
pointed out that although I had portrayed in Sanya Grigoriev a definite
person, a bomber pilot, who was fighting at the time on the Central
Front, he was nevertheless only a literary character.
"So what of it," was the answer. "It makes no difference. Write as if
the name of your literary hero could be found in the telephone book."
I consented, of course. In the name of Sanya Grigoriev I wrote a
message to the Komsomol boys and girls of Leningrad and the Baltic,
and in response letters addressed to my literary hero came pouring in,
expressing confidence in victory.
I remember myself a boy of nine entering my first library; it was quite
a small one, but seemed very big to me then. Behind a tall barrier, under
paraffin lamp, stood a smooth-haired woman in spectacles wearing a
black dress with a white collar. The barrier was so high-at least to me-
and the lady in black so forbidding that I all but turned tail. In a voice
overloud through shyness I reported that I had already turned nine and
was therefore entitled to become a card holder. The forbidding lady
laughed and bending over the barrier the better to see the new reader
retorted that she had heard of no such rule.
In the end, though, I managed to join the library, and the time flew so
quickly in reading that one day I discovered with surprise that the
barrier was not all that high, nor the lady as forbidding as I had first
thought.
This was the first library in which I felt at home, and ever since then I
have always had this feeling when coming into a house, large or small,
in which there are bookshelves along the walls and people standing by
them thinking only one thing-that these books were there to be read. So
it was in childhood. And so it was in youth, with long hours spent in the
vast Shchedrin public library in Leningrad. Working in the Archives
Department, I penetrated into the very heart of the temple of temples.
Raising my eyes-tired, because reading manuscripts makes them tire
quickly-I watched the noiseless work of the librarians and experienced
again and again a feeling of gratitude. That feeling has remained for a
lifetime. Wherever I go, to whatever place fate brings me, I always ask
first thing, "Is there a library here?" And when I am told, "There is," that
town or township, farm or village, becomes closer, as if irradiating a
warm, unexpected light.
In Schwarz's play "The Snow Queen", the privy councillor, a dour
individual who deals in ice, asks the storyteller whether there are any
children in the house, and on learning that there are, he shudders,
because at the sound of children's voices the ice of the blackest soul
melts. So does a house in which there are books differ from those in
which there are none.
The best writers can be compared to scouts into the future, to those
brave explorers of new and unknown spaces, of whom Fridtjof Nansen,
the famous Norwegian explorer, wrote: "Let us follow the narrow tracks
of the sled runners and those little black dots laying a railway, as it were,
into the heart of the unknown. The wind howls and sweeps across these
tracks leading into the snowy wastes. Soon they will disappear, but a
trail has been blazed, we have acquired a new banner, and this deed will
shine forever through the ages."
V. Kaverin
9
BOOK ONE
10
PART ONE
CHILDHOOD
CHAPTER ONE
THE LETTER. IN SEARCH OF THE BLUE CRAB
I remember the big dirty yard and the squat little houses with the
fence round them. The yard stood on the edge of the river, and in the
spring, when the flood-water subsided, it was littered with bits of wood
and shells, and sometimes with things far more interesting. On one
occasion, for instance, we found a postman's bag full of letters, and
afterwards the waters brought down the postman himself and deposited
him carefully on the bank. He was lying on his back, quite a young man,
fair-haired, in postman's uniform with shining buttons; he must have
polished them up before setting out on this last round.
A policeman took the bag, but Aunt Dasha kept the letters-they were
soaking wet and of no further use to anybody. Not all of them were
soaked though. The bag had been a new one, made of leather, and was
closed tight. Every evening Aunt Dasha used to read one of the letters
out, sometimes to me alone, sometimes to the whole yard. It was so
interesting that even the old women, who used to go to Skovorodnikov's
to play cards, would drop the game and join us. There was one letter
which Aunt Dasha used to read more often than any other, so often, in
fact, that I soon got to know it by heart. Many years have passed since
then, but I can still remember it from the first word to the last. "Dear
Maria Vasilievna,
"I hasten to inform you that Ivan Lvovich is alive and well. Four
months ago, on his orders, I left the schooner along with thirteen of the
crew. I hope to see you soon, so I shall not describe our difficult journey
across the pack-ice to Franz Josef Land. We suffered terrible hardships
and privations. I will only say that I was the only one of our party to
reach Cape Flora safely (not counting a pair of frostbitten feet). I was
picked up by the St. Phocas, of Lieutenant Sedov's Expedition, and
taken to Archangel. Although I have survived, I have little reason to
rejoice, as I shall soon be undergoing an operation, after which I can
11
only trust in God's mercy, for God alone knows how I'm going to live
without feet. What I have to tell you is this.
The St. Maria became icebound in the Kara Sea and since October 1912
has been drifting steadily north with the Arctic icefields. When we left
the schooner she was in latitude 82° 55'. She is standing in the middle of
an icefield, or rather that was where she was from the autumn of 1912
until the day I left her. She may be free of the ice this year, but I think
this is more likely to happen next year, when she will be round about the
spot where the Fram broke free. The men who have remained in her
have enough victuals to last until October or November of next year. In
any case, I hasten to assure you that we did not leave the ship because
she was in a hopeless plight. I had to carry out Captain's orders, of
course, but I must admit that they fell in with my own wishes. When I
was leaving the ship with the thirteen men, Ivan Lvovich gave me a
packet addressed to the Head of the Hydrographical Board—who has
since died-and a letter for you. I dare not risk mailing them, because,
being the only survivor, I am anxious to preserve all evidence of my