without getting an answer. Korablev was not at home.
'Dear Ivan Pavlovich,' I wrote, moving aside because the women were
watching me and I did not want them to see how agitated I was. 'I don't
know whether I'll have time to call again. I'm leaving for Yaroslavl
today, where Katya was evacuated in January. I may travel still farther
from there until I have found her. I can't in this note explain what
happened to me and how we lost each other. Should you (or Valya,
whom I hope to see today) happen to have heard anything of her, please
let me know immediately at the following address: c/o Rear-Admiral R.,
Political Department, Polarnoye, the Arctic. Dear Ivan Pavlovich, in case
you have read about my death, here I am writing to you, your Sanya.'
A dozen hands reached out simultaneously for my letter. I took the
Metro, which looked more beautiful and imposing than ever before, to
the Palace of Soviets station. The war might have ended long ago, the
way the old men sat about on Gogol Boulevard, leaning on their gnarled
old sticks. Children were playing. Preoccupied with my own thoughts
and cares, it suddenly dawned on me-why, this is Moscow, Moscow!
The brass plate on Valya's door read: 'Professor Valentin Zhukov'.
Oho! A professor! I rang, knocked, then kicked the door.
There was nothing surprising in the fact that in the summer of 1942,
when nearly all Moscow's inhabitants spent most of their lives ''а! work,
I should not find Professor Zhukov at home during working hours. But
the fact that Valya, my old pal Valya, was poking around somewhere
when I needed him so badly, made me wild. I kicked the door again, and
suddenly it yielded, as though alive, with a plaintive squeak. I pulled the
handle, and the door opened.
The flat was empty, of course, and the faint hope that Valya might be
asleep was dashed at once. I went into the 'all-purpose kitchen', which
had once served as both dining-room and nursery. Strange to say, the
place had been tidied up. The table was covered with a cloth, and white
paper with scalloped edges lay on the shelves. It looked as if a woman's
hand had been over those clean-swept walls, over those windows with
the fresh lilies-of-the-valley on the sills. Valya buying flowers? One
would have to be a great artist to imagine such a scene. In another room
a narrow iron cot stood against the wall and over the foot of it lay a
neatly folded dress. Katya had once had a dress like that-white polka
dots on a blue ground. What could a woman be doing in Valya's
bachelor flat? Kiren and the children had gone away at the beginning of
the war-I learnt that from Katya's first letters. 'I wonder who's hooked
you, old chap?' I recalled a letter of Katya's in which she poked fun at
Kiren for being jealous of her husband, engrossed though he was in the
study of cross-bred silver foxes. The cause of her jealousy was a 'Zhenka
Kolpakchi, who has eyes of different colour'. It looked as if that Zhenka
hadn't lost much time! Anyhow, I had not found Valya in.
'Dear old Valya,' I wrote, 'on my way to Yaroslavl, where I hope to
find Katya or at least find out where she is, I dropped in on you but
unfortunately did not find you in. I've had no news of Katya for the last
six months. She corresponded with Kiren when she was in Leningrad, so
maybe Kiren or you know something about her? I was wounded and was
in hospital at M—v. I wrote to you but got no reply. I've been through a
303
lot, but how much easier it would have been if Katya and I had met, or
at least if each of us knew that the other was alive. Write to me, care of
Rear-Admiral R., Northern Fleet, Political Department, Polarnoye. This
is a tentative address as I have no other yet. Keep well, dear friend. The
door was open. You'll have to break it down now—at least that's better
than leaving the flat open. I'll drop in again before I leave, if I can
manage it.'
I put this note on the kitchen table. Then I placed the door-hook in
position so that it would drop into the eye when I shut the door, and I
slammed the door. The hook fell straight into the eye.
I had one more important errand in that neighbourhood. Not far from
Valya there lived a man whom I had to see, whether he relished the
prospect of such a visit or not. This visit of mine was long overdue!
During my sleepless nights in hospital, tossing about in delirium, I
had thought about this encounter. I needed it so much that I felt I had
to keep alive until I had seen him!
I had often pictured to myself this meeting. I wanted to appear before
him at some relaxed moment in his life, at the theatre, say, when the
thought of me would be farthest from his mind. Or somewhere in a
hotel, say, when I would lock the door and eye him with a smile.
Sometimes, in the gloom of pre-dawn, I would see him on the bed next
to mine, sitting his legs tucked under him and a look of strange
indifference in his flat, half-closed eyes.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE. KATYA'S PORTRAIT
One day, as we were passing through Dogs' Place, Katya had
remarked: 'Romashov lives here.' She had pointed to a grey-green
building, which looked no different from its neighbours on either side.
Yet both then and now I thought there was something indefinably mean
about those peeling walls.
There was no list of tenants at the entrance, as before the war, and I
had to go to the house-manager's office to find out the number of the
flat.
And this is what took place in the office: the registration clerk, a dour,
prim lady in pince-nez, started and looked at me with round eyes when I
asked for Romashov. In a cubbyhole partitioned off with boards, men
wearing aprons-evidently yardkeepers-sat and stood about. There was a
slight stir among them too.
'Why don't you phone him,' the clerk suggested. 'His phone was
connected yesterday.'
'No, I'd rather call without phoning,' I said, smiling. 'A sort of
surprise. You see, I'm an old friend of his whom he thinks dead.'
Though this was a quite ordinary conversation, the clerk reacted with
an oddly forced smile, and from the adjoining room there slowly
