receiver and threw it down on the desk.
'Same as before,' I answered.
'And the temperature?'
'This morning it was a hundred and five.'
'Hell! Isn't there anything they can do?'
His face looked drawn, anxious and tired, and he was quite unlike
himself, especially the self he was on the day of his arrival.
I had seldom had occasion to nurse sick people, especially people as
ill as Sasha was, but having been given permission to watch at her
bedside, I learned to do it. It was hard, because Sasha practically never
slept, and if she did fall asleep she would wake up on the instant and
one had to listen to her breathing all the time.
There were days when she rallied, and very strongly too. I remember
one such day, the fourth day of my stay at the hospital. She had slept
well during the night and woke up in the morning saying she was
hungry. She drank some tea with milk and ate an egg, and when we
were tucking her in to air the ward she suddenly said: 'Katya, darling,
have you been with me all the time? And sleeping here too?'
My face must have given me away, because she showed surprise.
'Have I been as ill as that?'
'Darling, we're going to open the window. You just lie still and keep
quiet. You were ill and now you are getting better and everything will be
fine.'
She complied without demur, and only kept my hand in hers for a
little while when I started to wipe her face and hands with toilet vinegar.
Then they brought the baby and we watched him while he fed, his eyes
wide open with such a serious, silly expression.
'He looks like him, doesn't he?' Sasha said from behind her mask.
She was pleased that the boy resembled Pyotr. As a matter of fact he
did have that longish sort of profile. He had a profile already, though he
was only ten days old.
Towards the evening Sasha felt slightly worse, but it did not worry me
very much, because she usually got worse towards the evening. I sat
reading, holding the book close under the lamp which stood on the
bedside table with a kerchief thrown over the shade to keep the light out
of Sasha's eyes. Sanya had sent me several books the day before and I
was reading Stefansson's The Friendly Arctic.
My candidature as a member of the-expedition had been finally
approved, precisely as a geologist, and the books which Sanya had sent
me were basic and had to be read.
It must have been round about three when I got up to listen to Sasha's
breathing and saw that she was lying with her eyes open. 'What is it,
darling?'
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She was silent. Then, quietly, she said: 'Katya, I'm dying.' 'You're
getting better. Today you are much better.' 'It wouldn't be so terrible if
it weren't for the baby.' Her eyes were full of tears and she tried to turn
her head to wipe them on the pillow.
I dried her eyes and kissed her. Her forehead was very hot. The nurse
came in and I sent her to fetch the oxygen pad How can I describe the
horror which began that night! What a lot you learn about a person
when he dies! Listening to the speeches at the memorial service in the
Academy of Arts I thought that Sasha had not had half as many nice
things said about her during her life as those they were saying now after
her death.
The coffin stood on a dais, and there were lots of flowers, so many
that her pale face could hardly be seen amidst them. People made
speeches, saying what 'a fine artist' and 'a fine person' she had been
and that 'sudden death had torn the thread of a noble life' and so on.
And how feeble all those speeches were before the dead, austere face
lying in that coffin!
Pyotr was all right, though his pale, impassive face struck me as odd.
He seemed to be waiting patiently for this whole long procedure to end
at last and then Sasha would be with him again and everything would be
fine once more. Old Skovorodnikov, who had arrived the day before to
attend the funeral, stood behind him, tears rolling down his cheeks into
his neat grey moustache. Then a mist rose before my eyes again and I
have no further memory of how the ceremony ended.
May 28, 1936. Once in conversation with me, C. had used the
expression 'getting the North into your blood'. And only now, while
helping Sanya to fit out the search party,, did I get to know what it really
meant. Not a day passes without Sanya being visited by some persons
who had contracted that malady. One of them is P., an old artist, a
friend and companion of Sedov, who had warmly acclaimed Sanya's
article in Pravda and subsequently published his own reminiscences of
how the St. Phocas, on her way back to the mainland, had picked up
Navigation officer Klimov at Cape Flora.
Boys come, asking Sanya to take them on as stokers, cooks-any old
job.
Ambitious men come, seeking easy paths to honour and fame; also
disinterested dreamers, to whom the Arctic is a sort of wonderland, full
of magic and glamour.
And yesterday, when I fell asleep, waiting for Sanya, curled up in an
armchair, a man came to see Sanya. A naval man—I couldn't say what
rank-a bluff, hearty man with a Cossack's forelock and dark mocking
eyes. Whether he had come alone or with Sanya, I couldn't say, but
waking up in the middle of the night I found them engaged in earnest
conversation and quickly closed my eyes, pretending to be asleep. It was
pleasant to listen and doze, or pretend that you were dozing—you didn't
have to introduce yourself, or do your hair, or change.
'It's all very well to say that a search for Captain Tatarinov has
nothing in common with the basic tasks of the N.S.R.A. That's nonsense,
of course. You only have to remember the search for Franklin. Searching
for people is a jolly good thing—it helps to improve the map. But I'm
talking of a different thing.'
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