about it. They'll tell you the same thing. Of course, you have to go there
and clear everything up. But ... er ... don't say who told you. On second
thoughts, tell them - I don't care,' he added haughtily. 'Only it may get
round to Nikolai Antonich and I won't be able to deceive him any more,
the way I've done today.'
He had betrayed Nikolai Antonich for my sake-that's what he meant.
He looked at me and waited.
'I did not ask you to deceive anybody, though there's nothing to be
ashamed of in deciding (I nearly said: 'for the first time in your life') to
act honourably and to help me. I don't know what your present attitude
is towards Nikolai Antonich.'
'I despise him.'
'Well, that's your affair.' I rose. 'Anyway, thank you Misha. And
goodbye.'
August 5, 1935. They were not at all sure at the N.S.R.A. that the
search should be entrusted to Sanya. He was rather young, and though
he had a long record of air service, he had comparatively little
experience of work in the Arctic. He had the reputation of being a good,
disciplined pilot, but could he cope with such a difficult undertaking,
which called for considerable organising ability? By the way, what sort
of person was he? Wasn't there something about him in some journal,
accusing him of slandering somebody-N. A. Tatarinov, if I'm not
mistaken, the well-known expert on the Arctic and the captain's cousin?
I demanded that the editors of the journal publish a disclaimer, and
argued that the organisation of a search party of six men was not such a
difficult thing. I insisted on the search for Captain Tatarinov being
entrusted to the person who had nursed that idea ever since a child. I
don't know what will come of it. But somehow I feel certain that the
expedition will take place despite everything, and, what's more, that I
will go to Severnaya Zemlya together with Sanya. I wrote about this to
the Chief of the N.S.R.A. offering my services in the capacity of
geologist. Today an answer has arrived from the Personnel Department.
Not exactly the answer I had hoped for, though. I was offered a job at
one of the Arctic stations, at my own choice, and requested to call at the
head office to talk it over. Ah, well, I'll have to start all over again,
demanding, proving, insisting.
September 11, 1935. Today I went to see Grandma.
She comes to see me almost every evening. She comes in puffed up
and important and talks sedately with Kiren's mother. She doesn't like
the idea of me 'living out' when 'she has such a lovely room' at home.
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And she is afraid of somebody called Dora Abramovna who had dropped
in twice already 'to sniff things out'.
'I'm getting old now,' she said to me one day with tears in her eyes,
'but I've never lived so lonely as I do now.'
But yesterday she didn't come, and this morning she phoned to say
that her heart was bothering her. When I asked her whether Nikolai
Antonich was at home she got angry.
'What a silly question,' she said. 'Where do you expect him to be?
Gadding about counting shacks, like you?'
Then she said he was out, and I quickly got ready and went over to see
her.
She was lying on the sofa, covered with her green old coat. Laurel-
water drops stood on a little table beside the sofa-the only medicine she
believed in—and when I asked her how she was, she dismissed my
question with a wave of the hand.
'One of those dumb dogs that can't bark,' she snapped. 'You can tell
at once she lived in a nunnery. Religious. 'Then why are you in service?'
I say to her. I gave her the sack.'
She had dismissed the domestic help, and that was very bad, because
she was a good servant, even though she was religious. At one time
Grandma had been pleased that the woman had once been a nun.
'Grandma, what have you done!' I said. 'Now you're ill and all alone.
I'll have to take you to my place now.'
'You will do nothing of the kind! The idea!'
She flatly refused to undress and get into bed, and said that it wasn't
her heart at all, it was just that she hadn't cooked a meal the day before
and had eaten horse-radish with olive oil-it was the horseradish, it
didn't agree with her.
'If you don't go to bed at once, I'm going away.'
'Hoity-toity!'
Nevertheless, she undressed, got into bed, groaning, and abruptly fell
asleep.
There was always a draught in Mother's room when you opened the
window, and so I opened the door in the corridor to air the room. Then I
went into my own room. How cheerless and bare it looked, the room I
had lived in for so many years! Yet it had been improved since my
departure. The bed was covered with Grandma's lace bedspread, the
curtains were white as white and even a little stiff with starch,
everything was clean and tidy, and the volume of the encyclopaedia,
which I must have taken down before I left, remained open at the
identical page. I was expected back here...
I thought I caught a glimpse of a figure hurrying down the corridor
when I came out of the room.
I couldn't imagine my sick grandmother running about the corridor
in her green velvet coat, but somebody had been running there, and in a
green coat, too. Yet it was Grandma, because, though I found her in bed
when I went back to her room, she looked as if she had just flopped into
it and hadn't had time to draw up the blanket.
It was very funny to see how hard she was pretending. She even
blinked sleepily to show that she had just come awake and that running
down the corridor was farthest from her thoughts. Obviously, she had
been spying on me to see whether I was homesick, hoping I would come
back.
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