The winter I started visiting the Tatarinovs Katya's latest fad was
explosions. Her fingers were always burnt black and she had a smell of
percussion cap and gunpowder about her, like Pyotr once had.
Potassium chlorate lay in the folds of the books she gave me. Then the
explosions stopped abruptly. Katya had settled down to read The
Century of Discovery.
This was an excellent book which gave the life-stories of Christopher
Columbus, Hernan Cortes and other famous seafarers and conquerors
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of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Amerigo Vespucci, after whom
America is named, was pictured in front of a globe, with a pair of
compasses, which he held over an open book-a bearded, jolly-looking
man. Vasco Nunez de Balboa, armour-clad, with plumed helmet, was
knee-deep in the water. He looked to me like some Russian Vaska who
had turned up in the Pacific. I was keen on the book too. But Katya! She
was simply mad on it. She mooned about like one in a dream, only
awakening to impart the information that 'Cortes, accompanied by the
good wishes of the Tiascalans, set out on his expedition and within a few
days reached the populous capital city of the Incas.'
The cat, who before The Century of Discovery was called simply
Vasena, she renamed Ixtacihuatl - it appears that there is a mountain by
the name in Mexico. She tried Popocatepetl - the name of another
mountain-on Nina Kapitonovna, but it wouldn't work. The old lady
refused to answer to any name but 'Grandma'.
In short, if there was anything that Katya regretted at all seriously, it
was that she had not conquered Mexico and discovered Peru.
But there was more to this, as the future showed. I knew what she was
dreaming about. She wanted to become a ship's captain.
CHAPTER EIGHT
KORABLEV PROPOSES
Now what but good, one would think, could I expect from this
acquaintance? Yet in a little less than six months I was kicked out.
It was a Sunday and the Tatarinovs were expecting visitors. Katya was
drawing a picture of 'the Spaniards' first encounter with the Indians'
from The Century of Discovery, and Nina Kapitonovna drafted me into
the kitchen. She was rather excited and kept listening and saying to me:
'Sh-sh, there goes the bell.'
'It's out in the street, Nina Kapitonovna.'
But she kept listening.
In the end, she went out into the dining-room and missed the bell
when it did ring. I opened the door. Korablev came in wearing a light
overcoat and a light-coloured hat. I had never seen him looking so
smart.
His voice shook slightly as he inquired whether Maria Vasilievna was
at home. I said she was. But he stood there for several more seconds
without taking his things off. Then he went in to Maria Vasilievna and I
saw Nina Kapitonovna tiptoeing back from the dining-room. Why the
tiptoes and that excited mysterious air?
From that moment on everything started to go wrong with us. Nina
Kapitonovna, who was peeling potatoes, found the knife slipping from
her fingers. She kept running out into the dining-room, as though to
fetch something, but returned empty-handed. At first she returned in
silence, making sundry mysterious signs with her hands, which could be
interpreted roughly as: 'Goodness gracious, what's going to happen?'
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Then she started muttering. After that she sighed and broke the news.
And amazing news it was! Korablev had come to propose to Maria
Vasilievna. I knew, of course, what 'propose' meant. He wanted to
marry her and had come to ask whether or not she would have him.
Would she accept or would she not? If I had not been in the kitchen
Nina Kapitonovna would have debated this point with her pots and
pans. She could not keep silent.
'He says, I'll give my all, my whole life,' she reported on her third or
fourth trip to the dining-room. 'I'll live for you.'
'Is that so?' I threw in.
'I'll live for you,' Nina Kapitonovna solemnly repeated. 'I see the life
you lead. It's unenviable, I can't bear to see it.'
She started on the potatoes, but soon went out again and returned
with moist eyes.
'He's always yearned for a family, he says. I was a lonely man, and I
need nobody but you, he says. I've been sharing your grief for a long
time. Something like that.'
The 'something like that' was Nina Kapitonovna's own contribution.
Ten minutes later she went out again and came back looking puzzled.
'I'm tired of these people,' she said blinking. 'They don't let me get on
with my work. You know who I mean. Believe me, he's a terrible man.'
She sighed and sat down.
'No, she won't marry him. She's heartbroken and he's getting on in
years.'
For nothing better to say, I could only repeat: 'Is that so?'
'Believe me, he's a terrible man,' Nina Kapitonovna repeated
thoughtfully. 'Maybe! Good Lord! Maybe!'
I sat as quiet as a mouse. The dinner was forgotten. White beads of
water rolled over the stove as the water in which the potatoes were
swimming kept boiling and boiling.
The old lady went out again and this time spent some fifteen minutes
in the dining-room. She came back frowning and threw up her hands.
'She's turned him down!' she announced. 'Rejected him. My God!
Such a man!'
I don't think she quite knew herself whether to be glad or
disappointed that Maria Vasilievna had refused Korablev.
'It's a pity,' I said.
She looked at me in astonishment.
'She could marry,' I added. 'She's still young.'
