"Uhu."
"Positively?"
I nodded.
The band suddenly struck up and I didn't catch what she said as she
shook the snow from her jacket and frock.
"I don't hear you!"
She grasped my hand and we skated down to the other side of the
rink, to the children's play area. It was dark and quiet there, and all
snowed up. The toboggan slide had fir trees planted along the sides and
little fir trees grew around the area. We might have been in a wood,
somewhere out of town.
"Will they take you?"
"The school?"
"Yes."
It was a dreadful question. Every morning I did my daily dozen on
Anokhin's system and took a cold sponge down on Muller's. I felt my
muscles and thought: "What if they don't take me?" I had my eyes, ears
and heart examined. The school doctor said I was healthy. But there
were different kinds of health; how was he to know I wanted to enter a
flying school? What if I had bad nerves? Or something else wrong with
me? My height! My height, damn it! During the last year I had grown
only by three-quarters of an inch.
"They'll take me," I said confidently.
Katya regarded me with what looked like respect.
CHAPTER FOUR
CHANGES
I never talked with Katya about her domestic affairs. I only asked her
how Maria Vasilievna was getting on and she answered: "Thanks, she's
all right."
"And Nina Kapitonovna?"
"Thanks, she's all right."
Maybe it was all right, but I didn't think so. Katya's spirits dropped
when she had to go home. Obviously, things had gone wrong at home.
Shortly afterwards I met Maria Vasilievna and she confirmed me in this
belief.
89
We met at the theatre at a performance of Princess Turandot. Katya
had managed to get three tickets, the third being for Nina Kapitonovna.
But Nina Kapitonovna, for some reason, could not go, and so I took the
ticket instead.
We arrived at the theatre from different places and Katya was very
nearly late. She came running in after the ticket-collector had closed the
doors.
"Where's Mum?"
Her mother was in her seat. She called to us as we made our way to
our seats, stepping on somebody's feet in the darkness.
There had been a lot of talk at school about Princess Turandot' and
we had even tried to stage it. So, during the first act, I had no time to
look at Maria Vasilievna. I only noticed that she was just as beautiful, if
not more so. She wore her hair differently, exposing the whole of her
high white forehead. She sat erect and had eyes for nothing but the
stage.
In the interval, however, I had a good look at her and was upset.
She had gone thinner and looked older. Her eyes were enormous and
altogether sombre. It occurred to me that anyone seeing her for the first
time might well be startled by that gloomy look.
We talked about Princess Turandot and Katya declared that she did
not like it very much. I did not know whether I liked it or not, so I
agreed with Katya. Maria Vasilievna thought it was wonderful.
"You and Katya are too young, you don't understand."
She asked me about Korablev, how he was getting on, and I thought a
tinge of colour came into her face when I said: "He's quite all right."
As a matter of fact he was feeling none too good. He had not
forgotten, of course, that she had refused him.
She may have been a bit sorry for this now. Otherwise she wouldn't be
asking about him in such detail. She was even interested to know what
forms he was teaching and how he got on with the pupils.
I answered in monosyllables and in the end she got cross with me.
"Faugh, Sanya, I can't get a word out of you! 'Yes', 'no'. Have you
swallowed your tongue?" she said with annoyance.
Then, going off at a tangent, she began to talk about Nikolai Antonich.
Very odd. She said that she considered him a fine man. I said nothing.
The interval was over and we went in for the second act. During the
next interval she started talking about Nikolai Antonich again. I noticed
that Katya frowned. Her lips stirred as if she was about to say
something, but she checked herself.
We walked round the foyer, Maria Vasilievna talking all the time
about Nikolai Antonich. It was unbearable. It was also astonishing,
because I had not forgotten what her former attitude to him had been.
Nothing of the sort! The man was kindness and nobility itself. All his
life he had helped his cousin (it was the first time I had heard Maria
Vasilievna refer to her late husband as Ivan) even when he himself was
having a bad time. He had given his whole fortune to fit out his last
hapless expedition.
"Nikolai Antonich believed in him," she said earnestly.
All this I had heard from Nikolai Antonich himself, almost in the
same phrases. Maria Vasilievna never used to repeat his words before.
There was something behind this. For all the eagerness and earnest-ness
with which she spoke I sensed that she was trying to persuade herself
90
that Nikolai Antonich really was a remarkable person and that her late
husband owed everything to him.
This was on my mind all through the third act. I decided that I would
ask Katya about her father point blank. The portrait of the naval officer
with the broad brow, the set jaw and light dancing eyes suddenly rose
before me. What was this expedition from which he had never returned?
After the show we lingered in the auditorium until the cloakroom
crowds had thinned out.
"I say, Sanya, why don't you ever drop in?" Maria Vasilievna said.
I mumbled something.
"I'm sure Nikolai Antonich has long forgotten that silly affair," she
went on. "If you like, I'll talk to him about it."
The last thing I wanted was for her to get permission from Nikolai
Antonich for me to call on them. I was on the point of saying, "Thanks,
I'd rather you didn't," when Katya interposed, saying that it was nothing
whatever to do with Nikolai Antonich, as I would be coming to see her
and not him.
"Oh, no!" Maria Vasilievna said, startled. "Why only you? He'll be
coming to see me, too, and Mother."
CHAPTER FIVE
KATYA'S FATHER
Now that expedition. What kind of man was Katya's father? All I knew
was that he had been a naval officer and was dead. But was he? Katya
never spoke of him as dead. Except for Nikolai Antonich, who
constantly referred to him as "my late cousin", the Tatarinovs did not
talk about him very often. His portraits hung in all the rooms, but they
seldom spoke about him.
In the end I got tired of speculating, all the more as one could simply
ask Katya where her father was and whether he was alive or dead. That's
what I did.
And this is what she told me.
She was only three, but she clearly remembered the day her father
went away. He was a tall man in naval blues and had big hands. Early in
the morning, while she was still asleep, he had come into her room and
bent over her cot. He patted her head and said something. It sounded
like: "Look, Maria, how pale she is. Promise me she'll be out in the fresh
air as much as possible." And Katya had opened her eyes just a wee bit