Pencil in hand, he began figuring out the mineral resources of the
Kola Peninsula. Now here I was on my own ground. But the nocturnal
visitor counted all these peaceful minerals as 'strategic raw material'
needed in the event of war, and mentally I started arguing with him,
convinced as I was that there would be no war.
'I assure you,' the man said, 'that Captain Tatarinov understood
perfectly well that at the back of every Arctic expedition there must be
some military purpose.'
'Of course he did,' I mentally retorted in that queer state of
drowsiness when you can think and speak, which is the same as not
speaking and not thinking. 'But there won't be any war!'
'It is high time we set up defensive bases all along the route of our
convoys. I'd like to see a good long-range battery on Novaya Zemlya,
say...'
He went on talking and talking, and all of a sudden, from this quiet
hotel room, where I lay curled in an armchair and where Sanya had just
covered the lamp with the end of tablecloth to keep the light out of my
eyes, I was transported to some strange town half-destroyed by fire.
Here, too, it was quiet, but with a tense, deathly hush. Everyone was
waiting for something to happen, talking in whispers, and one had to go
down into a basement, groping for the damp walls in the dark. I didn't
go. I was standing on the front steps of a dark, empty wooden house
with the clear mysterious sky stretching above me. Where was he now?
The plane was hurtling through this fearful starlit void, its engine
stuttering, its ice-laden wings growing heavier every moment. It was the
decree of fate, nothing could alter it. The sound of the engine grew
muffled, the machine quivered, and the call-signs from the distant
stations could no longer be heard...
'Quite right, an old story,' the naval man suddenly said in a loud
voice and I woke up with a sigh of relief. It was all nonsense, of course.
In a day or two we would both be leaving for the North, and there he
stood before me, my own Sanya, clever, tired, dear Sanya, whom I loved
and from whom I would now never be parted again.
'But the N.S.R.A. is not interested in history. Dammit, they ought to
read the Large Soviet Encyclopaedia! By the way, it gives an interesting
quotation from Mendeleyev. Listen, I copied it out. A splendid
quotation!'
And burring his r's in a childlike manner, he read out the famous
words of Mendeleyev, which I had first come across somewhere among
my father's papers: 'If only a tenth of what we lost at Tsushima had
been spent on reaching the Pole, our squadron would probably have got
to Vladivostok without passing through either the North Sea or
Tsushima.'
Sitting curled up in the armchair, pretending to be asleep, lazily
examining through half-lowered eyelids our unexpected nocturnal
visitor with his ardent manner, his childlike burring speech and that
amusing Cossack's forelock of his, I was glad that my dream had been
only a dream, that the whole thing was just nonsense which you could
dismiss from your mind...
May 29, 1936. A nurse had been found at last for Pyotr junior, a very
good nurse with references, stout, clean, with forty years' experience-'a
regular professor of a nurse', as the delighted Berensteins informed me.
She arrived, followed by the yardman dragging in a large old-fashioned
245
trunk, from which the nurse promptly extracted a pinafore and cap and
an ancient photograph dimly portraying the nurse's parents and herself
as a seven-year-old wearing a petrified expression.
June 2, 1936. I shall remember that night as long as I live-the last
night before our departure. In the evening I had run over to see the
baby. He had just had his bath and was sleeping, and the nurse, in cap
and splendid white pinafore, was sitting on her trunk and knitting.
'I've nursed Counts in my day,' she said proudly in answer to my last-
minute requests and admonitions.
A chill struck my heart at the thought of all the silly things such a
learned nurse was capable of, but the sight of the little boy reassured
me. He lay there so clean and white, and the whole place was spick and
span.
Pyotr and the Berensteins were going to see us off at the station.
Sanya was asleep when I got back. Some money was lying about on
the carpet; I picked it up and began to read Sanya's long list of things
which had to be attended to the next day.
Though it was already night, the room was light, Sanya had forgotten
to draw the curtains. I took off my dress, had a wash and got into a
dressing gown. My cheeks were burning, and I didn't feel a bit sleepy.
On the contrary, I wished Sanya would wake up.
The telephone rang and I picked up the receiver.
'He's asleep.'
'Has he been asleep long?'
'No.' 'Oh, all right, don't wake him.'
Catch me waking him! It was V., I recognised his voice. It must have
been something important to make him phone at night. Anyway, it was
a good thing I had not woken Sanya. He slept soundly, on the sofa, in his
clothes, and must have been having disturbing dreams. A shadow
crossed his face and his lips compressed.
Oh, how I wanted to wake him up! I walked up and down the room,
touching my hot cheeks. It was a hotel room, and tomorrow other
people would be in it. It was like a thousand other such rooms:
a sofa covered with light-blue rep, window blinds, a small desk with a
sheet of glass on top-but all the same it was our first home and I wanted
to retain it in my memory always.
From behind the partition came the sound of a violin. It had been
playing for a long time, but I became aware of it only now. The player
was that slim red-haired boy, a well-known violinist, who had been
pointed out to me in the lobby. I knew he was living in the next room to
ours.
He was playing something altogether different in mood from what I
