slandered me with the most frightful slander the imagination is capable
of. But I'm not dead yet!"
Nobody thought he was, and I was about to tell him as much, when he
started shouting again:
"I'm not dead yet!"
Nina Kapitonovna took hold of his arm. He wrenched it free.
"I could have had the law on him and have him condemned for
everything ... for all that he has done to poison my life. But there are
other laws and other bars, and by these laws he will yet be made to feel
one day what he has done. He killed her," said Nikolai Antonich, and the
tears fairly gushed from his eyes. "She died because of him. Let him go
on living if he can..."
Nina Kapitonovna pushed her chair back and took hold of his arm as
though she were afraid he was going to fall. He stared at her dully. For a
moment I doubted whether I was in the right. But only for a moment.
"Because of whom? My God, because of whom?" Nikolai Antonich
went on. "Because of this guttersnipe, who is so devoid of feeling that he
dares to come again to the house in which she died. Because of this
guttersnipe of impure blood!"
I don't know what he meant by this and why his blood should be any
purer than mine. No matter! I listened to him in silence. Katya stood by
the wall, rigid and very straight.
"—who has dared to enter the house from which I kicked him out like
the snake he is. What a fate mine has been, 0 God! I gave my whole life
to her, I did everything a man could do for the woman he loves, and she
dies on account of this vile, contemptible snake, who tells her that I am
not I, that I had always deceived her, that I had killed her husband, my
own cousin."
I was astonished to hear him speak with such passion and utter
abandon. I felt that I had gone very pale. No matter! I knew how to
answer him.
"Nikolai Antonich," I said, trying to keep cool and noticing that my
tongue was obeying me none too well. "I won't reply to your epithets,
because I understand the state you are in. You did turn me out, but I
came back and will continue to come back until I have proved that I am
absolutely innocent of the death of Maria Vasilievna. And if anyone is
guilty, it's not me, but someone else. The fact is that you have certain
letters of the late Captain Tatarinov which you have used to persuade
Korablev and evidently everybody else that I have slandered you. Will
you please show me those letters so that all can be persuaded that I am
the vile snake you have just said I am."
The uproar that followed these words was terrific. The Bubenchikovs,
still understanding nothing, started shouting again: "Who is this?" As
nobody explained to them who I was they went on shouting louder still.
Nina Kapitonovna was shouting at me too, demanding that I should go
away. But Katya did not utter a word. She stood by the wall and looked
from Nikolai Antonich to me and back again.
Abruptly, all fell silent. Nikolai Antonich pushed the old lady aside
and went into his room from which he returned a moment later with a
batch of letters in his hands. Not just one or two letters, but a batch,
some forty or so. I don't think they were all Captain Tatarinov's letters,
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more probably they were miscellaneous letters from different people in
connection with the expedition or something of that sort. He flung the
letters at me, spat in my face and dropped into a chair. The old ladies
rushed over to him.
Very likely, if he had spat in my face and hit the target, I would have
knocked him down or even killed him. Nobody had ever spat in my face,
and I would have killed the man who did, rules or no rules. But he
missed. And the letters fell short too.
Naturally, I did not pick them up, though there was a moment when I
very nearly picked one of them up-one which bore a big wax seal and the
words St. Maria on it. But I did not pick them up. I was in this house for
the last time. Katya stood between us, by the armchair in which he lay
with clenched teeth, clutching at his heart. I looked at her, looked her
straight in the face, which I was seeing for the last time.
"Ah, well," I said. "I'm not going to read these letters which you have
thrown into my face. I'll do another thing. I'll find the expedition—1
don't believe it can have disappeared without a trace—and then we'll see
who's right."
I wanted to take my leave of Katya and tell her that I would never
forget the way she turned her back on me at the funeral, but Nikolai
Antonich suddenly got up from the armchair and a hubbub arose again.
The Bubenchikov aunts fell upon me and something struck me painfully
on the back. I waved my hand with a hopeless gesture and went away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
OUR LAST MEETING
I was more lonely than ever, and buried myself in my books , with a
sort of cold fury. I seemed to have lost even the faculty of thinking. And
a good thing too. It was better that way.
Suddenly it struck me that they might not accept me in the flying
school on account of my health, so I took up gymnastics seriously-high
jumps, swallow dives, back-bends, bar exercises and whatnot. Every
morning I felt my muscles and examined my teeth. What worried me
most, though, was my short stature-all my recent troubles seemed to
have made me shorter still.
At the end of March, however, I got together all the necessary
documents and sent them to the Board of Osoaviakhim (*A voluntary
society for the promotion of aviation and chemical defence.- Tr.) with
an application asking to be sent to the School of Aeronautics in
Leningrad. There is no need to explain why I wanted to leave Moscow.
Pyotr was going to Leningrad too. He had finally made up his mind to
enter the Academy of Arts. Sanya, too, for the same reason.
During the spring holidays Pyotr and I went to Ensk, travelling again
without tickets by the way, because we were saving our money for when
we left school.
But this was quite a different trip and I myself had become quite a
different person these last six months. Aunt Dasha was aghast when she
saw me, and the judge declared that people looking as I did should
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answer for it before the law and that he would "take every step to
discover the reasons for the defendant's lowered morale".
Pyotr was the only person to whom I had given an account - and a
brief one at that-of my talk with Korablev and my interview with Nikolai
Antonich. Pyotr came out with a surprising suggestion. After listening to
my story he said: "I say, what if you do find it?"
"Find what?"
"The expedition."
"What if I do?" I said to myself.
A shiver of excitement ran through me at the thought. And again, as in
distant childhood, dissolving views appeared before me: white tents in
the snow; panting dogs hauling sledges; a huge man, a giant in fur
boots, coming towards the sledges, and I, too, in fur boots and a huge
fur cap, standing in the opening of a tent, pipe between my teeth...
There was little hope of such a meeting, however. Deep down in my
heart I felt that I was right. But sometimes a chilling sense of doubt