have kicked the bucket there."
We put on our coats and started down the stairs, talking away all the
time. And here a very strange encounter took place.
On the landing outside the geography room stood a woman in a coat
with a squirrel collar. She was standing by the banisters looking down
the well of the staircase-for a moment I thought she was going to throw
herself down the well, because she swayed by the banisters with her eyes
closed. We must have frightened her, and she moved uncertainly
towards the door. It was Maria Vasilievna. I recognised her at once,
though she was in an unfamiliar guise. Perhaps, if I had been alone, she
would have spoken to me. But I was with Pyotr, so she just nodded to
me in response to my awkward bow and turned away.
She had grown thinner since I last saw her and her face was mask-like
and sombre. With this thought in my mind I went out into the street,
and Pyotr and I went for a walk together-just the two of us again, again
in winter, again in Moscow, after a long separation.
"Remember?" we kept saying, as we dug up old memories, walking
very quickly for some reason. It was snowing and there were lots of
children on the boulevards. One young nursemaid looked at us and
laughed.
"Hey, what are we running like this for?" said Pyotr, and we slowed
down.
"Pyotr, I've got a proposal," I said, when, having walked our fill, we
were sitting in a cafe in Tverskaya.
"Go ahead!"
"I'm going to make a phone-call, and you sit here, drink your coffee
and say nothing."
The telephone was some distance from our table, right near the
entrance, and I deliberately spoke loudly.
"Katya, I'd like you to meet a friend. Can you come along? What are
you doing? By the way, I want to speak with you."
"So do I. I'd come, but everybody's ill here." She sounded sad and I
felt a sudden urgent desire to see her.
"What do you mean, everybody? I've just seen Maria Vasilievna."
"Where?"
"She was calling on Korablev."
"Ah," Katya said in a rather odd voice. "No, Grandma's ill. Sanya, I
gave Mother those letters," she added in a whisper, and I involuntarily
pressed the receiver closer to my ear. "I told her that we had met in
Ensk and then I gave it to her."
"And how did she take it?" I asked, also in a whisper.
"Very badly. I'll tell you later. Very badly."
She fell silent and I could hear her breathing through the telephone.
We said goodbye and I returned to the table with a sense of guilt. I felt
dejected and uneasy, and Pyotr seemed to guess my state of mind.
"I say," he began, deliberately going off on a new tack, "did you
discuss this flying school plan of yours with Father?"
"Yes."
"What does he say?"
"He approves."
127
Pyotr sat with his long legs stretched out, thoughtfully fingering the
places where a beard and moustache would be growing in the course of
time.
"I must talk things over with him too," he murmured. "You see, last
year I wanted to enter the Academy of Arts."
"Well?"
"But this year I've changed my mind."
"Why?"
"I may not have the talent for it."
I started laughing. But he looked serious and worried.
"Well, if you'd like to know, I think it strange, your wanting to go in
for art. I always thought of you as becoming an explorer, say, or a sea
captain."
"That's more interesting, of course," Pyotr said irresolutely. "But I like
painting."
"Have you shown your work to anybody?"
"Yes, to X-."
He gave the name of a well-known painter.
"Well?"
"He says it's not bad."
"That settles it, then! It would be cockeyed if you, with your talent,
were to go to some flying school or other! You may be ruining a future
Repin in you."
"Oh, I don't know."
"I'm not so sure."
"You're kidding," Pyotr said with annoyance. "This is a serious
matter."
We left the cafe, and wandered about Tverskaya for half an hour,
talking about everything under the sun, switching from our Ensk to
Shanghai, which had just been captured by the People's Army, from
Shanghai to Moscow, to my school, from my school to Pyotr's, trying to
impress upon each other that we were not living in this world just any
old how, but with a philosophical purpose...
CHAPTER NINETEEN
IT COULD ALL HAVE BEEN DIFFERENT
Gone were those remote times when, coming in after ten o'clock, we
had, with fast-beating heart, to sidle round the fearsome Japhet, who,
clad in his huge sheepskin coat, sat on a stool at the entrance and slept—
if you were lucky to find him asleep. But now I was in my last year and
could come in whenever I liked.
It wasn't very late, though—round about twelve. The boys were still
chatting. Valya was writing something, sitting on his bed with his legs
tucked under him.
128
"I say, Sanya, Korablev wants to see you," he said. "That's if you came
in before twelve. What's the time now?"
"Half past eleven."
"Hurry up!"
I slipped into my overcoat and ran off to see Korablev.
Ours was a most extraordinary conversation, one that I shall never
forget as long as I live, and I must describe it with perfect calm. I must
keep calm, especially now, when so many years have passed. It could all
have been different, of course. It could all have been different if I had
but realised what every word of mine meant for her, if I had been able to
foresee what would happen after our conversation. But there is no end
of these "ifs" and there is nothing I can blame myself for. Here, then, is
the conversation that took place.
When I came in I found Maria Vasilievna with Korablev. She had been
sitting there all the evening. But she had come to see, not him, but me,
and she said as much in her very first words.
She sat erect with a blank face, patting her hair from time to time with
a slim hand. Wine and biscuits stood on the table, and Korablev kept
refilling his glass while she only took one sip at hers. She kept smoking
all the time and there was ash all over the place, even on her knees. She
was wearing the familiar string of coral beads and gave little tugs at it
several times as though it were strangling her. That's all.
"The navigating officer writes that he cannot risk sending this letter
through the post," she said. "Yet both letters were in the same post-bag.
How do you account for that?"
I said that I did not know. One would have to ask the officer about
that, if he were still alive. She shook her head. "If he were alive!"
"Perhaps his relatives would know? And then, Maria Vasilievna," I
said in a sudden flash of inspiration, "the navigating officer was picked
up by Lieutenant Sedov's expedition. They would know. He told them
everything, I'm sure of it." "Yes, maybe," she answered.
"And then there's that packet for the Hydrographical Board. If the
navigating officer sent the letter through the post he probably sent that
packet by the same mail. We must find that out." Maria Vasilievna again
said: "Yes."
I paused. I had been speaking alone, and Korablev had not yet uttered