turned the page and suddenly a small sheet of yellowed paper fell out of
the book. It had writing on it in the same hand. This is what it said:
"The human mind was so absorbed by this problem, that the solving
of it, despite the desolate graves which most of the explorers had found
there, had become a sheer national contest. Nearly all civilised countries
took part in this contest with the exception of Russia, although the
impulse towards discovery of the North Pole was very strong among the
Russians even in Lomonosov's time and is still strong today. Amundsen
is determined at all costs to win for Norway the honour of reaching the
Pole, but we will set out this year and prove to the world that Russians
too are capable of such a feat."
This must have been a fragment from some memorandum, for written
on the back of it was: "To the Head of the Hydrographical Board" with
the date "April 17th 1911".
So that was what Katya's father was after! He wanted, like Nansen, to
go as far North as possible with the drifting ice and then make the Pole
on dog-teams. By force of habit I figured out how much quicker it would
be by aeroplane.
What puzzled me was this: in the summer of 1912 the schooner St.
Maria had set sail for Vladivostok from St. Petersburg. Where did the
North Pole come in?
96
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE BALL
"The Peasantry in Post-Revolutionary Literature" was finished. Fed
up, I dashed it off in a single night. I had other debts, too—German, for
instance, which I hated. In short, at the end of the half-year Katya and I
had been to the skating-rink only once, and then we had not skated. The
ice was very rough, as hockey teams had been training on it since the
morning. We just drank tea at the buffet. It was our last meeting before
the holidays. After that came lessons and more lessons, reading and
more reading. I got up at six in the morning and sat over Aircraft
Construction.
And now the half-year was over. Eleven free days! The first thing I did
was to phone Katya and invite her to our school for the fancy-dress ball.
Katya arrived rather late, when I had all but run to the phone to ring
her up. She came half-frozen, red as a beetroot, and while still in the
cloakroom ran straight to the stove. I took care of her coat and galoshes.
"What a frost!" she said, laying her cheek to the warm stove. "Must be
two hundred degrees!"
She was wearing a blue velvet dress with a lace collar and had a big
blue bow in her hair.
It was amazing how that bow and the blue dress became her, and that
string of coral beads round her neck! She was robust, yet light and
slender. In short, hardly had we entered the hall, where the dancing had
already begun, than the school's best dancers dropped their partners
and made a beeline for her. For the first time in my life I regretted that I
did not dance. But there! I tried to look as though I did not care and
went into the performers' dressing-rooms. But they were getting ready
to come on, and the girls chased me out. I went back into the hall just as
the waltz was finishing. I hailed Katya. We sat down and began chatting.
"Who's that?" she suddenly asked me, horrified.
I looked.
"Where?"
"Over there, the one with the red hair."
It was only Romashka. He had smartened up and I thought he looked
quite presentable. But Katya was looking at him with distaste.
"Can't you see-he's just horrible," she said, "You're used to him, you
don't notice it. He's like Uriah Heep."
"Like who?"
"Uriah Heep."
I pretended I knew who Uriah Heep was, and said meaningfully: "Ah!"
But Katya was not one to be easily taken in.
"Ugh, you-fancy not having read Dickens. And he's supposed to be
intelligent."
"Who says that?"
"Everybody. I was talking to a girl from your school one day, and she
said: 'Grigoriev is a distinct individuality.'"
Just then the band struck up again and our P. T. instructor, whom
everyone called just Gosha, asked Katya to dance and I was left alone
again. This time the performers let me in and even found some work for
97
me to do. I had to make up one of the girls as a rabbi. Some job! I spent
over half an hour at it and when I got back into the hall Katya was still
dancing-this time with Valya.
Someone pinned a number on me—they were playing "Post". I sat
there like a convict with a number on my chest, feeling bored. Suddenly
I got two letters at once: "Stop pritending. Say frankly whom you like.
Reply to No. 140." It was written just like that— "pritending". The other
note was enigmatic: "Grigoriev is a distinct individuality, but he hasn't
read Dickens." I wagged a finger at Katya. She laughed, dropped Valya
and sat down next to me.
"It's great fun here," she said, "but terribly hot. Well, will you learn to
dance now?"
I said I would not, and we went into my classroom. It had been turned
into a sort of crushroom, with armchairs in the corners and electric
lamps shaded with red and blue paper. We sat down on my desk—the
farthest one in the right-hand row. I don't remember what we talked
about, I think it was about the talking films. Katya had her doubts about
them, but I cited proofs showing the comparative speeds of sound and
light.
She was all blue—we were sitting under a blue lamp—and perhaps
that was what made me so bold. I had long been wanting to kiss her,
from the moment she had come in frozen and flushed and laid her cheek
against the stove. But it had been impossible then. Now, when she was
all blue, it was possible. I stopped in the middle of a sentence, closed my
eyes and kissed her on the cheek.
Did she flare up!
"What does this mean?" she demanded.
I was silent. My heart was thumping and I was afraid that she was
going to say "I don't want to know you any more" or something like that.
"How disgusting!" she said with indignation.
"No, it isn't," I said, dismayed.
For a minute we said nothing, then Katya asked me to bring her some
water. When I returned with the water she read me a whole lecture. She
proved as plain as a pikestaff that I had no feelings for her, that "I only
imagined it", and that if it had been another girl in her place at the
moment I would have kissed her too.
"You're just trying to persuade yourself," she said with conviction,
"but actually it's nothing of the sort!"
She was ready to admit that I had not intended to insult her-I hadn't,
had I? Still I should not have acted that way precisely because I was only
deceiving myself, and there was no real feeling...
"No love," she added, and I felt, in that semi-darkness, that she
blushed.
By way of reply I took her hand and passed it over my face and eyes.
She did not withdraw it, and for several minutes we sat silent on my
desk in the dimly lit classroom. We sat in the classroom where I asked
questions and floundered, where I stood at the blackboard and proved
theorems-on my desk, in which lay Valya's crumpled cribs. It was so
strange. But so good! I can't tell you how good I felt at that moment!