a man in fur boots and a tall fur cap—and I wished that this had all
happened to me, that I had been on board that ship which was slowly
moving to her doom with the drifting ice and that I had been the
Captain who wrote that farewell letter to his wife, and could not finish
it. 'I have named it after you, so now you will find on every map a
heartfelt greeting from your...'
I wondered how that sentence ended? Then something slowly passed
through my head, very slowly, almost reluctantly, and I sat' up in bed,
half incredulous, feeling that in another minute I would go mad. Go
mad remembering this: 'greeting from your Mongotimo Hawk's Claw,
as you used to call me. God, how long ago that was! I am not
complaining , though...'
'I am not complaining, though,' I repeated, muttering, fumbling and
groping among my memories for some missing word. 'I am not
complaining. We shall see each other again and all will be well. But one
thought, one thought torments me!'
I jumped up, switched on the light and rushed over to the table on
which lay the pencils and maps.
'It's galling to think,' I was now writing on one of the maps, 'that
everything could have turned out differently. Misfortunes dogged us,
but 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? Was it
Nikolai? Yes, it was!
I paused at this point; beyond it there was a sort of gap in my
memory, and after that there had come something-I remembered that
now quite clearly-something about a sailor named Skachkov, who had
fallen into a crevasse and been crushed to death. But this was not the
thing. This was the general context of the letter, not the actual text, of
which I could recall nothing more, except a few disconnected words.
I got no sleep at all. The judge was up at eight and got a fright when
he saw me sitting in my underwear over a map of the North, from which
I had managed to read all the details of the ill-fated voyage of the St.
Maria— details which would have astonished Captain Tatarinov himself
had he returned.
We had arranged the previous evening to go to the town's museum.
Sanya was keen on showing us this museum, which was the pride of
Ensk. It was housed in an old mansion, once the residence of a rich
merchant. On the second floor was an exhibition of paintings by Sanya's
teacher, the artist Tuva, and she took us to see these first of all. The
artist was there in person-a genial little man in a velvet blouse a la
Tolstoy and with a mop of black hair in which gleamed thick grey
strands. His paintings were not bad, though rather monotonous—all
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Ensk and Ensk. Ensk by day and by night, in moonlight and sunlight,
the old town and the new town. We praised them fulsomely, though—
this Tuva was such a nice man and Sanya gazed at him with such
adoration.
She must have guessed that Katya and I wanted to have a talk,
because she suddenly excused herself and stayed behind on some
trifling pretext, while we went downstairs into a large hall in which
stood knights in chain-mail, which stuck out from under their
breastplates like a shirt under a man's waistcoat.
Naturally, I was all eagerness to tell Katya about my nocturnal
discoveries. She saved me the trouble of starting the conversation by
starting it herself.
'Sanya,' she said, when we stopped in front of a Stephen Bathori
man-at-arms, who somehow reminded me of Korablev. 'I've been
thinking about who he meant in that phrase: 'Don't trust that man.' '
'Well?'
'I've come to the conclusion that it ... it's not him.'
We were silent. She stared fixedly at the man-at-arms.
'But it was about him,' I retorted grimly. 'By the way, your father
discovered Severnaya Zemlya. It was he, and not Vilkitsky at all. I've
established the fact.'
This news, which a few years later was to create a sensation among all
the world's geographers, produced no effect whatever on Katya.
'What makes you think,' she went on, speaking with an effort, 'that
it's he ... Nikolai Antonich? The letter doesn't say so, does it?'
'Oh, yes it does,' I said, feeling that I was beginning to lose my
temper. 'For one thing, take those dogs. Who had boasted a thousand
times that he had bought excellent dogs for the expedition? Secondly-'
'Secondly what?'
'Secondly, last night I recollected another passage from that letter.
Here it is.'
And I recited the passage which began with the words: 'Mongotimo
Hawk's Claw.' I recited it loudly and distinctly, like poetry, and Katya
listened to it wide-eyed, grave as a statue. Suddenly her eyes went cold
and I thought that she didn't believe me.
'Don't you believe me?'
She paled and said quietly:
'I do.'
We then dropped the subject. I only asked whether she remembered
where 'Mongotimo Hawk's Claw' came from, and she said she did not
remember—Gustave Aimard, perhaps. Then she asked, did I realise how
terrible this would be for her mother.
'All this is much worse than you think,' she remarked sadly, just like
a grown-up. 'Life's very hard for Mother, not to mention what she's
lived through. And Nikolai Antonich-'
Katya broke off. Then she explained to me what it was all about. This,
too, was a discovery, no less surprising, perhaps, than Captain
Tatarinov's discovery of Severnaya Zemlya. It appeared that Nikolai
Antonich had been in love with Maria Vasilievna for many years. The
year before, when she was ill, he slept, if he slept at all, in his clothes,
and engaged a nurse, though this was quite unnecessary. When she got
better he took her down to Sochi and fixed her up in the Hotel Riviera,
though a sanatorium would have been much cheaper. In the spring he
