visiting the Tatarinovs in recent years, but he was not at home. He never
was when he was most needed!
'No, it's not salary or a career,' I went on thinking. 'He'd get these by
other, simpler means. You only have to look at him.' It was time to go
home, but evening was only just drawing in, a lovely Moscow evening so
unlike my evenings at Zapolarie that I felt a desire to walk back to my
hotel, though it was a good distance away.
And so I sauntered off, first in the direction of Gorky Street, then
down Vorotnikovsky Street. Familiar places! I had passed my hotel and
continued down Vorotnikovsky, then turned off into Sadovo-
Triumfalnaya, past our school. And from there it was a stone's throw to
2nd Tverskaya-Yamskaya, where a few minutes later found me standing
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in front of a familiar house. I looked through the gate and saw a familiar
tidy little courtyard and a familiar brickbuilt woodshed where I used to
chop wood for the old lady. And there was the staircase down which I
had tumbled head over heels, and there the door with the brass
nameplate on which was inscribed in fanciful lettering: 'N. A.
Tatarinov'.
'Katya, I've come to see you. You won't drive me away, will you?'
Afterwards Katya said that she realised at once the moment she saw
me that I was 'quite different' from what I had been the other day
outside the Bolshoi Theatre. One thing she couldn't make out, though-
why, coming to see her so suddenly and looking 'quite different', I
never took my eyes off Nikolai Antonich and Romashka the whole
evening.
That was an exaggeration, of course, but I did glance at them now and
again. My brain that evening was working at full exam-time pressure
and I guessed and grasped things at a bare hint.
I forgot to mention that before leaving the cafe I had bought some
flowers. I had walked to the Tatarinovs' house carrying a bunch of
flowers and felt rather awkward. Ever since the days Pyotr and I had
stolen gillyflowers from the gardening beds at Ensk and sold them for
five kopecks a bunch to people coming out of the theatre, I had never
walked through the streets carrying flowers. Now that I had come, I
should have given the flowers to Katya. Instead, I put them down on the
hall table beside my cap.
I just have shown some agitation, though, because when I spoke I
couldn't keep the ring out of my voice. Katya looked at me quickly
straight in the face.
We were about to go into her room, but at that moment Nina
Kapitonovna came out of the dining-room. I bowed. She looked at me
blankly and nodded stiffly.
'Grandma, this is Sanya. Don't you recognise him?'
'Sanya? Bless my heart! Is it really?'
She threw a startled look over the shoulder, and through the open
door of the dining-room I saw Nikolai Antonich sitting in an armchair
with a newspaper in his hands. He was at home!
'How do you do, Nina Kapitonovna!' I said warmly. 'Do you still
remember me? I bet you have forgotten me.'
'No I haven't. Forgotten! Nothing of the sort,' the old lady answered.
We were still embracing when Nikolai Antonich appeared in the
doorway.
It was a moment of renewed mutual appraisal. He could have ignored
me, as he had done at Korablev's anniversary party. He could have made
it plain that we were strangers. Finally, he could have shown me the
door if he had dared. But he did none of these things.
'Ah, our young eagle?' he said affably. 'So you've come flying in at
last? And high time too.'
And he held his hand out to me unhesitatingly.
'How do you do, Nikolai Antonich.'
Katya looked at us in surprise, and the old lady blinked dazedly, but I
was tickled - I now felt up to any talk with Nikolai Antonich.
'Well,'well... That's fine,' Nikolai Antonich said, regarding me
gravely. 'It seems only yesterday that we had a boy, and now he's an
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Arctic pilot, if you please. And what a profession to have chosen too!
Good for you!'
'Quite an ordinary profession, Nikolai Antonich,' I said 'Just like any
other.'
'Any other? What about self-control? And courage in dangerous
situations? And discipline? Not only service discipline, but moral
discipline, too-self-discipline, so to speak.'
It made me feel sick, as of old, to hear these bombastic, well-turned
phrases of his, but I listened to him with courteous attention. He looked
much older than he had at the anniversary party and his face was
careworn. As we passed into the dining-room he put an arm round
Katya's shoulders, and she drew away with a barely perceptible
movement.
In the dining-room sat one of the Bubenchikov aunts, which one
exactly I couldn't make out. My last encounter with the two of them had
been a rather stormy one. Anyway, this aunt now greeted me quite
nicely.
'Well, we're waiting,' said Nikolai Antonich, when Nina Kapitonovna,
fussing timidly around me, had poured me out some tea and moved up
to me everything that lay on the table. 'We're waiting to hear some tales
of the Arctic. Flying blind, permafrost, drifting icefields snowy wastes!'
'Nothing to write home about, Nikolai Antonich,' I answered cheerily.
'Just icefields as icefields go.'
Nikolai Antonich laughed.
'I once met an old friend who is now working in our trade delegation
in Rome,' he said. 'I asked him: 'Well, what's Rome like?' And he
answered: 'Nothing much. Just Rome.' '
His tone was condescending. Katya was listening to us with down--A
cast eyes. To keep the ball rolling I started talking about the Nentsi,
