blue glaciers split lengthways, as it were, and ready to slide down into
the bottomless snowy gorges.
Then came the moment when our stay on Novaya Zemlya end-ed-a
wonderful moment, which is worth going into in somewhat greater
detail.
I was standing outside a storehouse the roof of which was covered
with birds' carcasses and on its walls were stretched the skins of seals.
Two little Nentsi, looking like penguins in their fur garments with blind
sleeves, were playing on the beach and I was chatting with their parents-
a little girl of a mother and a father of similar stature with a brown head
sticking out of his anorak. We were discussing international affairs, I
remember, and although the analysis of Germany's hopeless position
which I was giving them had been taken from a very old back number of
Pravda, the Nenets was going to pass it on that same day to a friend of
his who lived quite near-a mere two hundred kilometres away. His little
wife, who was quite at sea in politics, nodded her shiny black head with
its pudding-basin haircut and kept saying: 'Velly good, velly good.'
'Would you like to go to the front?' I asked the man.
'I like, I like.'
'Aren't you afraid?'
'Why afraid, why?'
That was the moment when I saw my navigator running towards me-
not just walking, but running along the shore from the point of land on
which our plane stood.
'We're being assigned to a new base.'
'Where?'
'To Zapolarie.'
He had said 'to Zapolarie', and though there was nothing impossible
about our being reassigned to Zapolarie, that is, to the very area where I
thought the raider had to be sought, I was flabbergasted. Why, this was
my own Zapolarie.
'It can't be.'
The navigator had reassumed his old imperturbable, unhurried
manner.
'Shall I check it?'
'No need.'
'When do we take off?'
'In twenty minutes.'
325
CHAPTER FIVE
BACK AT ZAPOLARIE
It was some time before I found Doctor Pavlov's street, for the simple
reason that in my day this street had had only one house standing in it-
the doctor's, all the others existing only on the plan that hung in the
office of the District Executive Committee. Now the little house in which
I had once spent my evenings poring over the diaries of Navigating
Officer Klimov was lost amid its tall neighbours. What pleasant,
youthful evenings those had been! Those creaking floor-boards in the
next room under the light tread of Volodya. Mrs Pavlova coming in-
large, determined, open-hearted-and setting before me in silence a plate
with a huge piece of pie.
Still unbent, unyielding to sorrow, she had only turned grey, and two
deep creases hung over her down-drooping mouth.
'What am I to call you now?' she said, when we met in the little front
garden. 'You were a boy then. How many years is it? Fifteen7 Twenty?'
'Only nine, Anna Stepanovna. And call me Sanya. I'll always be Sanya
to you.'
'A naval airman, with decorations,' she said, as though she shared
with me the pride of my being a naval airman with decorations. 'Where
have you come from now? From what front?'
'Just now from Novaya Zemlya, but before that from Polarnoye. And
straight from Ivan Ivanovich.'
'No, really?'
'My word of honour.'
After a pause she said: 'So you have seen him?'
'Seen him? Why, we used to meet very often. Didn't he write you
about it?'
'He did,' Anna Stepanovna admitted, and I realised that she knew
about Katya.
But I did not need to check her as she had checked me when I started
to speak about Volodya. She did not use any words of comfort, did not
compare her grief to mine. She merely embraced me and kissed me on
the head, and I kissed her hand.
'Well, and how's my old man? Is he well?'
'Quite well.'
'D'you mind if I tell my friends that you've arrived. How much time
have you got?'
I said that I was free till night. She placed before me bread, fish and a
tankard of homebrewed wine, which they were very good at making in
Zapolarie, put on a shawl, excused herself and went out.
It was rather thoughtless of me, though, to let Mrs Pavlova tell her
friends that I had arrived. Within less than half an hour a car drew up
outside the house and I was surprised to see all my crew in it.
'Sanya,' the navigator said, 'Comrade Ledkov has sent for us. Jump
in and let's be off. We'll have breakfast at his place and then—'
'Ledkov? Just a minute... Ah, yes, of course! Ledkov!'
This was the District Executive Committee member for whom the
doctor and I had flown to Camp Vanokan, where Ledkov lay with a
326
wounded leg. He was as well known among the Nentsi in the North as
the famous Dya Vilka was among the inhabitants of Novaya Zemlya.
'Incidentally,' the doctor had once told me, 'he was interested to
know whether you had found Captain Tatarinov. Remember, when we
were expecting you with the expedition, well, he even rode out to some
nomad camps to make inquiries of the Nentsi. According to his
