'Have you had the doctor, Grandma?' I asked, when she had finally
stopped rubbing her eyes and yawning loudly.
She hadn't. She didn't want any doctor.
'Nonsense! I'm going to call him at once.'
But Grandma went up in the air at this and said that if I called the
doctor she would dress immediately and go off to Maria Nikitichna-the
neighbour.
So far not a word had been said about Nikolai Antonich. But when
Grandma put on a dead-pan expression, I knew it was coming.
'The whole house is going to pieces,' she began with a sigh. 'Your
deserting him has hit him badly! He's lost his grip on things, doesn't
care about anything. Doesn't care whether he eats or not.'
'He' meant Nikolai Antonich.
'And he writes and writes—day and night,' Grandma went on. 'First
thing in the morning, soon as he's had his tea, he wraps my shawl round
him and sits down at Ms desk. 'This, Nina Kapitonovna, will be my
lifework,' he says. 'As to whether I'm guilty or not, my friends and
enemies will now judge for themselves.' And he's got so thin. Absent-
minded, too,' Grandma communicated in a whisper. 'The other day he
sat at the table in his hat. I think he's going mad.'
At that moment the front door closed softly and someone came into
the hall. I looked at Grandma, who avoided my eyes, and I realised that
it was Nikolai Antonich.
'I must be going now. Grandma.'
He came in, after a light tap on the door and without waiting for an
answer.
I turned round and nodded, pleased to find that I could do it with such
careless, even audacious ease.
'How are you, Katya?'
'Not bad, thank you.'
Oddly enough, I saw him now just as a pale, ageing man with short
arms and stubby fingers, which he kept nervously twiddling and trying
to tuck away all the time, now inside his collar, now into his waistcoat
pockets, as if to hide them. He now resembled an old actor. I had known
him once-ages ago. But now the sight of his pallid face, his scraggy neck
and the hands, which shook so visibly when he stretched them out to
pull up an armchair for himself left me unmoved.
The first awkward minute passed with him asking me in a jocular tone
whether my map was right and I hadn't mixed up the Zimmerdag suite
with the Asha suite-an illusion to a mistake I had once made in my
university days—and I started to take my leave again.
'Goodbye, Grandma.'
'I can go away,' Nikolai Antonich said quietly.
He sat in an armchair, hunched up, regarding me steadily with a
kindly eye. That was how he looked sometimes, when we had had long
talks together-after Mother's death. But now that was merely a distant
memory for me.
'If you're in a hurry, we can talk some other time,' he said.
'Honestly, Grandma, I have an appointment,' I said to my
grandmother, who was holding me tightly by the sleeve.
'No you haven't. What d'you mean? He's your uncle.'
236
'Come, come, Nina Kapitonovna,' Nikolai Antonich interposed good-
naturedly. 'What difference does it make whether I'm her uncle or not.
Obviously, you don't want to hear what I have to say, Katya?'
'I don't.'
'Pig-headed, that's what she is!' Grandmother said vehemently.
I laughed.
'I cannot talk to you either about how painful your going away
without even saying goodbye was to me,' Nikolai Antonich went on
hurriedly in the same simple kindly manner, 'or about how you were
both misled into believing that poor sick old man, who had only recently
been discharged from a mental hospital.'
He looked at me over the top of his glasses. A mental hospital!
Another lie. One lie more or less—I did not care now. The only thing
that worried me was the thought that this might affect Sanya in some
disagreeable way.
'My God! The things that poor, muddled brain of his made up! That I
had ruined him by means of some bills of exchange, and that it was
because of me that the expedition had found itself so badly equipped—
why, what do you think? Because I wanted to destroy Ivan!'
Nikolai Antonich laughed heartily.
'Out of jealousy! My God! I loved your mother and out of jealousy I
wanted to destroy Ivan!'
He laughed again, then suddenly took off his glasses and began wiping
away the tears.
'Yes, I loved her,' he muttered, weeping, 'and. God knows, everything
could have been different. Even if I were guilty, I have had my
punishment from her. She punished me like I never thought I could be.'
I listened to. him as in a dream, with a sense of having seen and heard
all this before—that flushed bald head with its sparse hairs, the same
words uttered with the same expression, and that unpleasant feeling
which the sight of a weeping old man rouses in you.
'Well?' Grandma demanded sternly.
'Grandma!' I said, thrilled at the anger that flared up in me, 'after all,
I'm not a little girl any longer, and I can do as I please, I believe. I don't
want to live here any more-is that clear? I'm getting married. I'll
probably live in the Far North with my husband, who has nothing to do
here because he's an Arctic pilot. As for Nikolai Antonich, I've seen him
crying so many times, I'm fed up. All I can say is that if he had not been
guilty he would hardly have messed about with this affair all his life. He
would hardly bother to get the N.S.R.A. to drop the idea of Sanya's
expedition.'
By this time, I daresay, I was feeling a bit deflated, because Grandma
was looking at me in a frightened way, and, I believe, furtively crossing
herself. Nikolai Antonich's cheek was twitching. He said nothing,
'And leave me alone!' I flung out. 'Leave me alone!'
