Hand them over to me this minute. Do you hear—this minute!'
He closed his eyes several times and sighed. Then he made a motion to
get down on his knees. But I said very loudly: 'Misha, don't you dare!'
228
He didn't do it, just clenched his teeth, and such a look of despair
came into his face that my heart was wrung despite myself.
Not that I felt sorry for him. I had a sort of guilty feeling that I was
making him suffer in that dumb way. I would have felt better if he had
started cursing me. But he just stood there saying nothing.
'Misha,' I began again with some agitation. 'Don't you see those
papers are of no use to you any more. You can't change anything, and I
feel ashamed that I know practically nothing about my father at a time
when all the newspapers are writing about him. I need them-1 and
nobody else.'
I don't know what he imagined when I uttered the words 'I and
nobody else', but an ugly look suddenly came into his eyes and he threw
his head up and took a turn about the room. He was thinking of Sanya.
'I won't give you anything!' he said brusquely.
'Yes you will! If you don't it will mean it was all lies-everything that
you wrote to me.'
Suddenly he went out and I was left alone. It was very quiet. I could
hear children's voices from the street and once or twice the tentative
hoot of a motor car. It was disturbing, his going out and not coming
back for so long. What if he did do something to himself? My heart went
cold and I stepped out into the corridor, listening. Not a sound except
that of water running somewhere.
'Misha!'
The door of the bathroom was ajar. I looked in and saw him bending
over the bath. For a moment I couldn't see what he was doing-it was
dark in there, for he had not switched the light on.
'I shan't be long,' he said clearly, without turning round.
He stood bent up almost double, holding his head under the tap. The
water was pouring over his face and shoulders, and his new suit was
drenched.
'What are you doing? Are you crazy!'
'Go along, I'll soon be back,' he repeated gruffly.
A few minutes later he did come back-collarless, red-eyed— bringing
four ordinary blue scrap-books.
'There they are,' he said. 'I have no other papers. Take them.'
This may have been another lie for all I knew, because, on opening
one of the books at random, I found that it contained some sort of
printed matter, like a page torn out of a book, but you couldn't talk to
him any more, and so I merely thanked him very politely.
'Thanks, Misha.'
And went home.
July 12. Night. There they lie in front of me, four thick, blue scrap-
books, old ones, that is, from before the revolution because they all have
on them the trademark 'Friedrich Kahn'. The first page of the first book
bears the inscription in ornamental lettering with shading to each letter:
'Whereof I have been witness in real life' and the date-'1916. Memoirs.'
Further on there are simply cuttings from old newspapers, some of
which I have never heard of, such as: The Stock Exchange Gazette,
Zemshchina, Gazeta-Kopeika. The cuttings were pasted in lengthways
in columns, but in some places also crosswise, for instance this one:
'Tatarinov's expedition. Buy postcards: (1) Prayer before sailing; (2) The
St. Maria in the roadsteads.'
229
When I came home I quickly looked through each book from cover to
cover. There were no 'papers' here, as far as I understood this word
from my conversation with Korablev, only articles and news items
concerning the expedition from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok along the
coast of Siberia.
What sort of articles were they? I started to read them and could not
tear myself away. The whole of life in the old days was unfolded before
me and I read on with a bitter sense of irreparable doom and
resentment. Irreparable because the schooner St. Maria was doomed
before she set sail-that is what I gathered from these articles. And
resentment because I now learnt how treacherously my father had been
deceived, and how badly his trustful and guileless nature had let him
down.
This was how one 'eye-witness' described the sailing of the St. Maria:
'The masts of the schooner, bound on her distant voyage are poorly
flagged. The hour for setting sail draws near. The last 'prayer for seamen
and seafarers', the last farewell speeches. Slowly the St. Maria gets
under way. The shore recedes farther and farther until houses and
people merge in a single colourful strip. A solemn moment! The last link
with land and home is severed. But we feel sad and ashamed at this poor
send-off, at these indifferent faces which register merely curiosity.
Evening draws in. The St. Maria stops in the mouth of the Dvina. The
people who are seeing her off drink a glass of champagne to the success
of the expedition. A last handshake, a last embrace, then back to town
aboard the waiting Lebedin, the women standing by the rail of the little
steamboat, waving and waving, brushing the tears away to wave again.
We can still hear the nervous barking of the dogs aboard the receding
schooner. She grows smaller and smaller until nothing but a dot can be
seen on the darkening horizon. What lies in store for you, brave men?'
Now the schooner was off on her long voyage and the lighthouse at
Archangel sent her its farewell signal: 'Happy sailing and success!'-but
ashore, what was happening ashore, my God! What sordid squabbling
among the ship chandlers who had serviced the schooner, what lawsuits
and auctions-some of the supplies and victuals had had to be left behind
and were all sold by auction. And the accusations-what didn't they
accuse my father of! Within a week of the schooner setting sail he was
accused of having failed to insure either himself or his men; of having
sailed three weeks later than the conditions of Arctic navigation
