that I should have flown to Leningrad in January, I should have
insisted, demanded that they discharge me from hospital. Who knows-I
might have come out then in better shape than I was now, and could
have found and saved my Katya.
But it was too late in the day now to have regrets about things that
could no longer be mended. 'I'm no worse off than anybody else,' Katya
had written from Leningrad. Only now did I realise what those simple
words meant.
The old woman, who had probably been through much more than I
had, kept trying to comfort me. I asked her for some boiling water and
treated her to some pork fat and onions-things that were still scarce in
Leningrad.
From then on a chill lodged in my heart. No matter what I was
thinking or doing, always the question 'Katya?' obtruded itself.
While at M-v I had conned over the telephone numbers of nearly all
my Leningrad acquaintances. But none of those I rang up from the clinic
answered the call. The ringing seemed to be lost in the mysterious
emptiness of Leningrad. I tried the last number in my memorised list,
the only one I was not sure of. I held the receiver to my ear for a long
time, listening to some far-off rustling sounds, and behind them, still
fainter impatient voices.
'Hullo,' suddenly came a deep masculine voice.
297
'Can I speak to-'
I gave the name.
'Speaking.'
'This is Air Pilot Grigoriev.'
Silence.
'Not Alexander Grigoriev, surely?'
'Yes.'
'Would you believe it! My dear Alexander Ivanovich, I've been
racking my brains these three days where to look for you.'
About six years ago, when the Tatarinov search expedition was
decided upon and I was engaged in organising it, Professor V. had
introduced to me a naval man, a hydrographer, who taught at the
Frunze School. We had spent only one evening together in Leningrad,
but I was often to recall that man, who had painted for me with such
remarkable clarity a picture of the future world war.
He had come late. Katya was asleep, curled up in an armchair. I
wanted to wake her, but he would not let me, and we had a drink with
some olives for a snack; Katya always had a stock of olives.
He was deeply interested in the North. He was sure that the North,
with its inexhaustible resources of strategic raw materials, would be
called upon to play a very important part in the coming war. He
regarded the Northern Sea Route as a naval highway and declared that
the Russo-Japanese campaign had gone wrong because of the failure to
grasp this idea, which had been put forward by Mendeleyev. He had
urged that naval bases should be set up along all convoy routes.
I remember that, at the time, this idea struck me as extremely
sensible. I appreciated it anew on June 14, 1942, a few days before I flew
to Leningrad, when, sitting on the bank of the Kama, I heard the far-off
voice of the radio announcer reading out the text of the treaty between
Great Britain and the Soviet Union. It was not difficult to guess what the
lines of communication mentioned in this treaty were, and my thoughts
went back to that 'nocturnal visitor', as Katya had later called the
hydrographer.
I had run into him several times between 1936 and 1940 and read his
articles and his book Soviet Arctic Seas, which became famous and was
translated into all European languages. I followed his career with
interest, as he, I believe, followed mine. I knew that he had left the
Frunze School and was in command of a hydrographic vessel and then
served at the Hydrographical Department of the People's Commissariat
of the Navy. Shortly before the war he took his doctor's degree; I
remember reading the announcement about his thesis in a Moscow
evening paper. I shall call him R.
It was a rare occasion—'it happens once in a thousand years', as R.
put it-my finding him at home. The flat was sealed and he had unsealed
it and come in only a couple of minutes before I phoned, and that only
because he was leaving Leningrad for long. 'Where are you going?'
'A long way away. Come over, I'll tell you all about it. Where are you
staying?'
'I haven't fixed up yet.'
'Very good. I'll be waiting for you.'
298
He lived near Liteiny Bridge in a new block. It was a spacious flat,
rather neglected since the war, of course, but with something poetic
about it, like the home of an artist. It may have been the tastefully
fashioned dolls standing under glass covers on the piano that suggested
this idea to me, or the multitude of books on the floor and the shelves,
or perhaps the host himself, who received me without ceremony in his
shirt-sleeves, the open neck of his shirt revealing a full, hairy chest. I
had seen a portrait like that somewhere of Shevchenko. But R. was no
poet, he was a rear-admiral, as his service coat hanging on the back of a
chair testified.
He first of all asked me where I had been and what I had been doing
with myself during the year of war.
'Yes, you've had a run of bad luck,' he said when I told him about my
misfortunes. 'But you'll make up for it. How come you were with the
Baltic Fleet, then the Black Sea Fleet? Deserted the North, I see? I
always took you for an enthusiast of the North-for good and all.'
It was too long a story to tell him how I had come to 'desert' the
North. I merely said that I had left the Civil Aviation only when I had
given up hope of returning to the North.
I became lost in thought and started out of my reverie when R.
addressed me.
