cabbage was sixteen kopecks, veal thirty kopecks, a prayer for the dead
forty kopecks, eggs one ruble twenty kopecks.
I laughed and went out into the hall.
'What about lemons, Nina Kapitonovna?'
She looked round puzzled.
'Didn't the boys pinch a lemon?'
'Sanya!' exclaimed Nina Kapitonovna, throwing up her hands.
She dragged me to the window and looked me over from all sides. The
inspection displeased her.
'Too short,' she said with chagrin. 'You don't grow.'
She looked quite old, stooped and thin. The familiar green velvet coat
hung loosely on her shoulders. But she still had the same brisk,
preoccupied air, which now was quite cheerful. She was overjoyed to see
me, much more so than I had expected.
Katya and I spent a long time looking through the Captain's books and
charts. There was Nansen's Farthest North and Sailing Directions for
the Kara Sea and others. There were not many books as books go, but
each one was interesting. I was dying to ask for one to read, but of
course I understood very well that this was not the thing to do. I was
therefore surprised when Katya suddenly said:
'Would you like to borrow some?'
'May I?'
'You may,' Katya said without looking at me.
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I did not ponder much over the reason why this trust was shown me
and set about selecting the books I wanted to read. I would have taken
the lot if I could, but that was impossible, so I selected five of them.
Among them, by the way, was a booklet by the Captain himself entitled:
Causes of the Failure of the Greely Expedition.
I had timed my visit to the Tatarinovs so as not to run into Nikolai
Antonich there. At that hour he was always at a meeting of the Teachers'
Council. But the meeting must have been put off, because he came in.
Katya and I were so busy chatting that we did not hear the doorbell ring
and only became aware of him when footsteps sounded in the next
room, followed by a dignified cough. Katya frowned and slammed the
door shut.
In almost the same instant it was opened again and Nikolai Antonich
appeared in the doorway.
'I've asked you a thousand times, Katya, not to slam the door,' he
said. 'It's time you got out of these habits...'
He saw me at once, of course, but he did not say anything, just
narrowed his eyes slightly and nodded. I nodded back.
'We live in human society,' he went on blandly. 'And one of the
motive forces of this society is consideration for others. You know
perfectly well, Katya, that I can't stand doors being banged. One can
only presume that you are doing this on purpose. But I don't want to
think that, no, I don't...'
And so on and so forth.
I realised at once that all this waffle was just meant to tease Katya. He
had never dared to talk to her like that before, I remember.
He went away at last, but we no longer had felt like looking through
the Captain's books. Besides, all the time Nikolai Antonich had been
talking, Katya had stood screening the table on which the books lay. He
had not noticed anything. But I knew what it was all about-she did not
want him to know she was letting me take those books.
In short, a damp was thrown over our spirits and I began to take my
leave. I came home with a heavy feeling. I was sorry for them all— for
Maria Vasilievna, for the old lady, for Katya. I didn't like the changes in
the Tatarinovs' home at all.
CHAPTER SEVEN
MARGINAL NOTES
It was my last year at school, and really I should have been applying
myself to my studies instead of going to skating-rinks and paying visits.
I was doing well in some subjects (mathematics and geography, for
instance) and not so well in others—literature, for example.
Literature in our school was taught by Likho, a very stupid man,
whom the whole school called 'Old Moke'. He always went about in a
tall Kuban cap, and we used to draw that cap on the blackboard with
donkey's ears sticking out of it. Likho did not like me for a number of
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reasons. In the first place, one day, while dictating something, he said
'carnaval' instead of 'carnival'. I corrected him and we argued about it,
and I suggested sending an inquiry to the Academy of Sciences. He
resented this.
Secondly, most of the pupils wrote their compositions from the books
and articles—they would read a piece of criticism and copy it out. This
was not my way. I wrote my essay first, then read the critics. And this
was what Likho did not like! He wrote over my essays:
'Trying to be original. Poor!' In short, I was very much afraid I would
get bad marks for literature at the end of the year.
For our final, school-leaving essay, Likho offered us a number of
subjects, the most interesting of which I thought to be 'The Peasantry in
Post-Revolution Literature'. I went to work on it in earnest, but soon
cooled off—possibly because of the books Katya had lent me. After these
books, my own essay seemed as dull as ditch-water to me.
To say that these books were interesting is to say nothing. They were
books which had belonged to Katya's father, an Arctic sea-captain lost
amid the snow and ice, like Franklin, Andree and others.
I never read anything so slowly in all my life. Nearly every page had
markings on it, some passages were underlined and there were question
marks and exclamation marks in the margins. The Captain either 'quite
agreed' or 'absolutely disagreed'. He argued with Nansen—to my
astonishment. He reproached him for having turned back when within
two hundred and fifty miles of the Pole. On the chart affixed to Nansen's
