and fur boots strapped under the knees. He stood with head doggedly
bent, leaning on his rifle, and at his feet lay a dead bear, its paws folded
like a kitten's. It was as though he had stepped into that hall—a strong
intrepid soul, who had been content with so little! Everyone stood up
when he appeared on the screen, and the hush that fell upon the hall
was so deep and solemn that not a soul dared breathe, let alone utter a
word. And in this solemn silence I read out the Captain's report and his
letter of farewell:
' 'It makes me feel bitter to think of all I could have accomplished if I
had been-I would not say helped-but at least not hindered. What's done
cannot be undone. My one consolation is that through my labours
Russia has discovered and acquired large new territories...'
'But there is a passage in this letter,' I continued when everybody had
sat down, 'to which I want to draw your attention. Here it is:
'I know who could help you, but in these last hours of my life I do not
want to name him. I didn't have a chance to tell him to his face
everything that had been rankling in my breast all these years. He
personified for me all that force that kept me bound hand and foot...'
Who is that man whose name the Captain did not want to utter at his
dying hour? It was to him that he referred in another letter: 'It can
positively be said that we owe all our misfortunes to him alone.' It was
of him that he wrote: 'We were taking a chance, we knew that we were
running a risk, but we did not expect such a blow.' It was of him that he
wrote: 'Our main misfortune was the mistake for which we are now
having to pay every hour, every minute of the day-the mistake I made in
entrusting the fitting out of our expedition to Nikolai...''
Nikolai! But there are many Nikolais in the world!
There were even no few in this auditorium, but only one of them
suddenly stiffened and looked round him when I uttered that name in a
loud voice; and the stick on which he was leaning dropped with a clatter.
Someone picked it up and gave it to him.
'If today I am going to give the full name of that man it is not because
I wish to clinch an old argument between him and me. Life itself has
settled that argument long ago. But he continues to claim in his articles
that he has always been Captain Tatarinov's benefactor, and that even
the idea itself of 'following in the steps of Nordenskjold', as he writes,
was his. He is so sure of himself that he had the audacity to come here
today and is now in this hall.'
A whisper ran through the hall, then there was a hush, followed by
more whispering. The chairman rang his little bell.
'Strangely enough, he has gone through life without ever having had
his name spelled out in full. But among the Captain's farewell letters we
found some business papers. There was one, which the Captain
evidently never parted with. It was a duplicate of a bond under which:
(1) On the expedition's return to the mainland all the spoils of their
hunting and fishing belonged to Nikolai Antonich Tatarinov - named in
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full. (2) The Captain renounced in advance any claims whatever to any
remuneration. (3) In the event of the loss of the vessel the Captain
forfeited all his property to Nikolai Antonich Tatarinov-named in full.
(4) The ship itself and the insurance belonged to Nikolai Antonich
Tatarinov-named in full.
'Once, in conversation with me, this man said that he recognised only
one witness-the Captain himself. Let him deny those words now before
all of us here, because the Captain himself now names him—in full!'
Pandemonium broke loose in the hall the moment I finished my
speech. People in the front row stood up and those behind shouted at
them to sit down, because they could not see him. He was standing,
holding up his hand with the stick in it, and shouting: 'I ask for the
floor, I ask for the floor!'
He got the floor, but the audience would not let him speak. Never in
my life had I heard such a furious uproar as that which broke out the
moment he opened his mouth. Nevertheless he did say something,
though nobody caught what it was, and then, thumping the floor with
his stick, he stepped down from the platform and made for the exit. He
passed down the hall in an utter emptiness, and the space through
which he passed remained empty for a long time, as if nobody wanted to
go where he had just passed, thumping his stick.
CHAPTER NINE
AND THE LAST
The carriage in this train was going only as far as Ensk, and that
meant that all these people in the crowded, dimly lit carriage, who
occupied every inch of free space, including the floor and the upper
berths, would be getting out at Ensk. In the old days this would nearly
have doubled its population.
We made the acquaintance of our travelling companions. They were
girl students from Moscow colleges, who said they were going to Ensk to
work.
'What sort of work?'
'We don't know yet. In the mines.'
Not counting the old tunnel in Cathedral Gardens, which Pyotr had
once assured me ran under the river with 'skeletons at every step', I had
never heard of anything like a mine there. But the girls were quite
definite about their going to the mines.
After two or three hours, as usual, each compartment settled down to
a life of its own, unlike that of its neighbours, as though the ceiling-high
wooden partition divided not so much the carriage as people's thoughts
and feelings. Some compartments were gay and noisy, others dull. Ours
was gay because the girls, after mildly lamenting the fact that they had
not succeeded in staying in Moscow for their summer field work and
saying something catty about a certain Masha who had succeeded in
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doing so, started to sing and all the evening Katya and I were regaled
with modern war songs, some of which were very amusing. In fact, the
