caught my eye-belonged to, but I slipped it into one of the suitcases
when Katya was not looking. It had belonged to the Captain in any case.
That was all. It must have been the most deserted place in the world
when, the packing done with and coats over our arms, we took leave of
Nina Kapitonovna in the hall. She was staying behind, but not for long—
only until Katya had moved into the room which her institute was giving
her.
"It's not for long," the old lady said, then she broke down and kissed
Katya.
Kiren stumbled on the stairs, sat down abruptly on the suitcase to
prevent herself from tumbling down, and burst out laughing. "You
ninny!" Katya said crossly. I followed them down and pictured to myself
Nikolai Antonich coming up the stairs, ringing the door bell and
listening to what the old lady had to tell him. I saw him pass a trembling
hand over his bald head and cross into his study with dragging
footsteps. Alone in an empty house.
And he will realise that Katya would never come back.
CHAPTER TEN
SIVTSEV-VRAZHEK
Until then it had been just one of Moscow's ordinary, crooked little
streets, of which there are many around the Arbat. But with Katya now
living in it, Sivtsev-Vrazhek had changed surprisingly. It had become the
street in which now Katya lived and which was therefore totally unlike
any other Moscow street. The name itself, which had always struck me
as funny, now sounded significant. It stood for Katya, like everything
else that was associated with her.
I came to Sivtsev-Vrazhek every day. Katya and Kiren would not be
home yet when I arrived, and Kiren's mother, Alexandra Dmitrievna,
would keep me company. Apart from being an exemplary mother she
was a professional reciter who gave readings from the classics at
Moscow workers' clubs. A greying, romantic little lady, not at all like her
daughter.
Then Katya would come in. Korablev had been right. I did not know
her. Not only in the sense that I didn't know many facts about her life,
such as the fact that a year ago her party (she had been working as the
head of a party) had discovered a rich deposit of gold in the Southern
Urals, or that some photographs of hers had won first prize at an
amateur photographers' exhibition. I did not know the strong fibre of
her stuff, her straightforward, honest, sensible attitudes-all that
213
Korablev had summed up so well in the phrase "a serious-minded
sincere soul". She seemed much older than me, especially when she
talked about art—a subject I had sadly neglected in recent years. Then
suddenly the old Katya would emerge-the girl who had a passion for
staging explosions and was deeply stirred at the fact that "Hernan
Cortes, accompanied by the good wishes of the Tiascalans, set out on his
expedition and within a few days reached the populous capital city of
the Incas".
I was reminded of Cortes by a photograph of Katya on horseback,
wearing breeches and high boots and a broadbrimmed hat and with a
carbine slung across her back. A prospector! The sight of that
photograph would have pleased the Captain.
Several days passed in this wise without our having yet talked about
what had happened since we last met, though enough had happened to
last us a lifetime talking about it. We both seemed to feel that it was first
necessary to get used to each other anew. Not a word about Nikolai
Antonich, or Romashov, or my being guilty about her. This was not so
easy, considering that almost every evening the old lady came visiting.
At first she used to make ceremonious calls, looking prim and proper
in a dress with leg-of-mutton sleeves, and telling all kinds of stories—
that is, until Nikolai Antonich's return. But one day she came running in
looking upset and said in a loud whisper: "He's arrived." And forthwith
closeted herself with Katya.
When leaving, she said gruffly: "You've got to have tact to live with
people."
But Katya did not answer. She merely kissed her goodbye with a
thoughtful air.
The next day the old lady came with a tear-stained face, looking tired
and carrying an umbrella. She sat down in the hall.
"He's taken ill," she said. "I called a doctor. A homeopath. But he sent
him away. 'I've given my whole life to her,' he says, 'and this is her
gratitude.' "
She gave a little sob.
" 'It was the last thing that gave me a hold on life. Now it's all over.'
Something like that."
Obviously, it wasn't all over, because Nikolai Antonich got well again,
although he had had a severe heart attack which had kept him in bed for
a few days. He asked for Katya. But Katya did not go to see him. I heard
her tell the old lady: "Grandma, ill or well, alive or dead, I don't want to
see him. D'you understand?"
"I understand," Nina Kapitonovna answered. "Just the way her father
was too," she complained to Kiren's mother as she left. "Talk about
obstinate! Sheer cussedness, I call it!"
But Nikolai Antonich rallied and the old lady cheered up. Now she
sometimes dropped in twice a day, so that we always had the latest news
about Nikolai Antonich and Romashka. One day Katya herself spoke
about Romashka.
"He called on me at the office," she said briefly. "But I sent him word
that I had no time for him and never would have."
"They're writing a letter," the old lady said one day. "All about pilot G.
Pilot G. shouldn't be surprised if they're informing on somebody. And
that holy Joe-is he in a fume! But Nikolai Antonich-he says nothing.
Just sits there, all swollen up, and doesn't say a word. Sits in my shawl."
214
Valya paid several visits to Sivtsev-Vrazhek, and on these occasions
everybody dropped what he or she was doing and stopped talking to
watch the way he was courting Kiren. He really was courting her
according to all the rules of the game, fully convinced that no one
suspected it.
He brought her potted flowers, always the same kind, so that her
room was turned into a little nursery of tea-roses and primulas. He saw
me and Katya as if in a dream and came awake only with Kiren and
sometimes with her mother, to whom he also gave presents—on one
occasion he gave her A Book for the Reciter, 1917 edition.
During his waking spells he told us amusing stories from the life of
jumping squirrels and bats.
It was just as well that Kiren did not need much to make her laugh.
Thus did we spend the evenings at Sivtsev-Vrazhek—the last evenings
before my return to the Arctic.
I was kept pretty busy. My plan to organise a search for Captain
Tatarinov's expedition was received without enthusiasm-or had I not
gone about it the right way?
I wrote several articles-one for the journal Civil Aviation about my
method of anchoring a grounded plane during a blizzard, another for
Pravda about the navigator's diaries, and my Memo for the Northern
Sea Route Administration. Within a few days, on the very eve of my
departure, I was to read my paper on the drift of the St. Maria at a
special session of the Geographical Society.
And then, one late night, when I returned to my hotel in a cheerful