tipped it out onto the bed. A large photograph fell at my feet. It was a
yellowed photograph, pretty old, bent in a number of places. On the
back was written in a large round hand: "Ship's company of the
schooner St. Maria". I started to examine the photograph, and to my
surprise I found Katya's father on it. Yes, it was him all right. He was
sitting right in the middle of the crew, his arms folded across his chest,
exactly as in the portrait hanging in the Tatarinovs' dining-room. I
couldn't find the doctor on the photograph, though, and asked him why
this was.
"The reason is, old chap, that I didn't sail in the schooner St. Maria,"
the doctor said, puffing mightily as he strapped down the suitcase.
He took the photograph from me and looked round where to put it.
"Somebody left it as a keepsake."
I wanted to ask who that person was, whether it was Katya's father,
but he had already slipped the photograph into a book and put the book
in one of the rucksacks.
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"Well, Sanya," he said, "I've got to be going. Write and tell me what
you're doing and how you're getting on. Don't forget, old chap, you're a
rare specimen!"
I wrote down his address and we said goodbye.
It had gone ten by the time I reached the Home and I was a little
afraid the doors would be locked. But they weren't. They were open and
the lights were on in all the rooms. What could it be?
I tore pell-mell into the dormitory. Empty! The beds were made— the
boys must have been preparing to turn in.
"Uncle Petya!" I yelled and saw the cook coming out of the kitchen in
a new suit, with his hat in his hand. "What's happened?"
"I'm invited to the meeting," he informed me in a mysterious whisper.
I heard no more, as I was running upstairs into the school.
The assembly hall was packed to overflowing and boys and girls
crowded round the doorway and in the corridor. But I got in all right. 1
sat down in the front row, not on a seat, but on the floor right in front of
the platform.
It was an important meeting chaired by Varya. Very red, she sat
among the platform party with a pencil in her hand, tossing back a lock
of hair which kept tumbling over her nose. Other boys and girls from the
Komsomol Group sat on either side of her, busily writing something
down. And over the heads of the platform party, facing the hall, hung
my poster. I caught my breath. It was my poster-an aeroplane soaring
among the clouds, and over it the words: "Young People, Join the
S.F.A.F.!" What my poster had to do with it I couldn't make out for quite
a time, because all the speakers to a man were talking about some
ultimatum or other. It wasn't until Korablev took the floor that the thing
became clear to me.
"Comrades!" he said quietly but distinctly. "The Soviet Government
has had an ultimatum presented to it. On the whole, you have taken the
proper measure of this document. We must give our own answer to that
ultimatum. We must set up at our school a local group of the Society of
Friends of the Air Force!"
Everyone clapped, and thereafter clapped after each phrase Korablev
uttered. He ended up by pointing to my poster and it made me feel
proud.
Then Nikolai Antonich took the floor, and he, too, made a very good
speech, and after that Varya announced that the Komsomol Group were
joining the S.F.A.F. in a body. Those who wished to sign on could do so
at her office tomorrow from ten to ten, meanwhile she proposed taking
a collection for Soviet aviation and sending the money in to Pravda.
I must have been very excited, because Valya, who was also sitting on
the floor a little way off, looked at me in surprise. I got out the silver
fifty-kopeck piece and showed it to him. He twigged. He wanted to ask
me something, probably something about the spinning-tackle, but
checked himself and just nodded.
I jumped up on to the platform and gave the coin to Varya.
"Ivan Pavlovich," I said to Korablev, who was standing in the corridor
smoking a cigarette in a long holder, "at what age do they take on
airmen?"
He looked at me gravely.
"I don't know, Sanya. I don't think they'd take you yet."
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Not take me? I thought of the oath Pyotr and I had once sworn to each
other in Cathedral Gardens: "To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield".
I did not say it out loud, though. Korablev would not have understood
anyway.
__________
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PART THREE
OLD LETTERS
CHAPTER ONE
FOUR YEARS
As in the old silent films, I see a big clock with the hand showing years
instead of hours. One-full circle and I see myself at lesson-time with
Korablev, sharing the same desk with Romashka. We have made a bet, a
bet that I will not cry out or pull my hand away if Romashka slashes me
across the fingers with a penknife. It is a test of willpower. According to
the "rules for developing willpower" I must learn "not to give vent to my
feelings". Every evening I repeat these rules over and over, and now at
last I have a chance of putting myself to the test.
The whole class is watching us. Nobody is listening to Korablev,
though today's lesson is an interesting one; it's a lesson about the
manners and customs of the Chukchi people. "Come on!" I say to
Romashka.
And that cold-blooded beast saws at my finger with his penknife. I do
not cry out, but I can't help pulling my hand away and I lose the bet.
A gasp and a whisper ran round the desks. Bleeding, I purposely give
a loud laugh to show that I don't feel the slightest pain, and suddenly
Korablev orders me out of the classroom. I leave the room with my hand
thrust in my pocket. "You needn't come back."
But I do come back. It is an interesting lesson and I listen to it outside
the door, sitting on the floor.
Rules for developing willpower! I had spent a whole year over them. I
had tried not only to "conceal my feelings", but "not to care for the
opinion of people I disdain". I don't remember which of these rules was
the harder-the first one, probably, because my face always gave me
away.
83
"Sleep as little as possible, for in sleep the will is absent - this was no
hard task either, not for a man like me. I leant to make my "plan for the
whole day first thing in the morning", and have been following this rule
all my life. As for the main rule, "remember the purpose of your
existence", I did not have to repeat that too often, as this purpose was
clear to me even in those days.
Another full circle: an early winter morning in 1925. I wake up before
anyone else, and I lie there thinking, not quite sure whether I am awake
or still asleep. I am thinking of the Tatarinovs. I had not been to see
them for two years. Nikolai Antonich still hates me. There isn't a single
sibilant in my name, yet he contrives to hiss it. Nina Kapitonovna still
loves me; the other day Korablev passed on to me her "regards and
greetings". I wonder how Maria Vasilievna is getting on? Still sitting on