PART SIX
FROM THE DIARY OF KATYA TATARINOVA
YOUTH CONTINUES
July 6, 1935. We spent only one evening together all the time Sanya
was in Moscow. He came in looking very tired, and Alexandra
Dmitrievna went out of the room at once. I made Sanya some tea-he
likes his tea strong-and watched him eating and drinking until he made
me sit down and have tea with him.
Then he suddenly recalled how we used to go skating together, and
made up some story about his kissing me on the cheek at the rink, and
finding it 'awfully firm, downy and cold.' And I recalled how he had
acted as judge at the trial of Eugene Onegin and had kept staring
gloomily at me all the time.
'And do you remember-'Grigoriev is a brilliant personality, but he
hasn't read Dickens'?'
'Don't I! Have you read him since?'
'No,' Sanya said ruefully. 'I never had the time. I read Voltaire,
though—'The Maid of Orleans'. For some reason we have a lot of
Voltaire's books in our library at Zapolarie.'
Just then the phone rang. I went to answer it and spent a good half
hour talking with my old professor. She called me 'dear child' and had
to know absolutely everything-where I now had my lunch and whether I
had bought that pretty lampshade at Muir's. When I got back Sanya was
asleep. I called him, then all at once I felt a pang of pity for him. I
squatted down beside him and began to study his face ever so close.
That evening Sanya gave me the navigator's diary and all the papers
and photographs. The diary was in a special paper case with a lock to it.
After Sanya left I spent a long time examining these pages with torn
edges, covered with close-written, crooked lines, which suddenly ran
helplessly wide as though the hand had gone on writing while the mind
had wandered off God knows where.
The boat-hook with the words 'Schooner St. Maria' on it had been
left behind at Zapolarie, but Sanya had brought a photograph of it. I
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don't suppose there is another boat-hook in the world which
photographs so well!
I promised Sanya that I would write every day, but there is nothing
new to write about every day. I am still living at Kiren's, reading a lot,
working a lot, though it isn't very convenient, because the boxes of
collected specimens stand in the hallway, and I have to draw my maps
on the piano lid. For the first time this summer I did not go out on field-
work. I have to work up the old material, and the Bashkir Geological
Survey Board, where I am employed, have allowed me to remain in
Moscow;
The map is a difficult one, quite a bit of a muddle, and I have to do
everything over again. But the harder it is the more I like doing it.
Though my nights are so dreary, I live with a feeling that all the painful
experiences, the dim miseries of the past have been left behind me, and
I can look forward to something interesting and new, something that
makes me feel at once light-hearted, and happy, and a little afraid.
July 7, 1935. At all the offices where Sanya had called on his last day
in town, he left my telephone number-both with the N.S.R.A. and
Pravda. I was a little alarmed when he told me about it.
'Who am I supposed to be.? Who are they to ask for?'
'Katerina Tatarinova-Grigorieva,' Sanya answered gravely.
I thought he was joking. But three days after he had gone someone
phoned and asked for Katerina Tatarinova-Grigorieva.
It was a well-known journalist from Pravda. He said that Sanya's
article had had wide repercussions and that enquiries concerning its
author had even been made by the Arctic Institute.
'Give your husband my congratulations.'
I was on the point of answering that he wasn't my husband yet, but
thought better of it.
'If I am not mistaken I have the pleasure of speaking to Captain
Tatarinov's daughter?'
'Yes.'
'Have you any more material relating to your father's life and
activities?'
I said I had, but without the permission of Alexander Ivanovich— this
was the first time I called Sanya by his first name and patronymic – I
could not let him have it.
'Never mind, we'll write to him.'
There was a phone call from Civil Aviation, too, asking where to send
the copy of the paper carrying his article about the anchoring of a
grounded aircraft during a blizzard—and I did not even know that he
had written such an article. I asked for two copies—one for myself. After
that there was another phone call from Literaturnaya Gazeta asking
what Grigoriev this was, whether it was the author who had written such
and such a book.
But the most important was my talk with C. I don't know what Sanya
told him about me, but he spoke to me as though I were an old friend.
'Are you receiving a pension?' I was puzzled. 'For your father.'
'No.'
'You should put in for one.'
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Then he said with a laugh that the people at the N.S.R.A. had got the
wind up on hearing that my father had discovered Severnaya Zemlya.
Their records attributed it to somebody else.
'I don't know...' he went on, 'somehow I don't like the way they are
dealing with this.'
'I thought an expedition had been decided on.' 'So did I, but now it
