TWO CAPTAINS - Arvind Gupta

360 Pages·2008·2.98 MB·English

TWO CAPTAINS
By
VENIAMIN KAVERIN

Translation from the Russian
Translated by Bernard Isaacs
/Abridged by the Author/

THE FOREIGN LANGUAGES PUBLISHING HOUSE
MOSCOW
1945

___________________________________________________
OCR: http://home.freeuk.com/russica2
В. КАВЕРИН
ДВА КАПИТАНА
/в сокращении автора/
На английском языке

Издательство Литературы на Иностранных Языках

CONTENTS

Author's Preface
BOOK ONE

PART ONE.
Childhood

CHAPTER ONE. The Letter. In Search of the Blue Crab
CHAPTER TWO. Father
CHAPTER THREE. The Petition
CHAPTER FOUR. The Village
CHAPTER FIVE. Doctor Ivan Ivanovich. I Learn to Speak
CHAPTER SIX. Father's Death. I Refuse to Speak
CHAPTER SEVEN. Mother
CHAPTER EIGHT. Pyotr Skovorodnikov
CHAPTER NINE. Stroke, Stroke, Stroke, Five, Twenty, a Hundred
CHAPTER TEN. Aunt Dasha
CHAPTER ELEVEN. A Talk with Pyotr
CHAPTER TWEL VE. Scaramouch Joins the Death Battalion
CHAPTER THIRTEEN. Journey's End
CHAPTER FOURTEEN. We Run Away. I Pretend to Be Asleep
CHAPTER FIFTEEN. To Strive, to Seek, to Find and Not to Yield
CHAPTER SIXTEEN. My First Flight
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. Clay Modelling
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. Nikolai Antonich

PART TWO.
Food for Thought

CHAPTER ONE. I Listen to Fairy-Tales
CHAPTER TWO. School
CHAPTER THREE. The Old Lady From Ensk
CHAPTER FOUR. More Food for Thought.
CHAPTER FIVE. Is There Salt in Snow?
CHAPTER SIX. I Go Visiting
CHAPTER SEVEN. The Tatarinovs
CHAPTER EIGHT. Korablev Proposes
CHAPTER NINE. The Rejected Suito
CHAPTER TEN. I Go Away
CHAPTER ELEVEN. A Serious Talk
CHAPTER TWELVE. I Start Thinking
CHAPTER THIRTEEN. The Silver Fifty-Kopeck Piece

PART THREE.
Old Letters

CHAPTER ONE. Four Years
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CHAPTER TWO. The Trial of Eugene Onegin
CHAPTER THREE. At the Skating-Rink
CHAPTER FOUR. Changes
CHAPTER FIVE. Katya's Father
CHAPTER SIX. More Changes
CHAPTER SEVEN. Marginal Notes
CHAPTER EIGHT. The Ball
CHAPTER NINE. My First Date. Insomnia
CHAPTER TEN. Troubles
CHAPTER ELEVEN. I Go to Ensk
CHAPTER TWEL VE. Home Again
CHAPTER THIRTEEN. The Old Letters
CHAPTER FOURTEEN. A Rendezvous in Cathedral Gardens. "Do Not Trust That
Man"
CHAPTER FIFTEEN. We Go for Walks. I Visit Mother's Grave. Day of Departure
CHAPTER SIXTEEN. What Awaited Me in Moscow
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. I Burn My Boats
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. An Old Friend
CHAPTER NINETEEN. It Could All Have Been Different
CHAPTER TWENTY. Maria Vasilievna
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE. In the Dead of Night
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO. It Isn't Him
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE. Slander
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR. Our Last Meeting

PART FOUR.
The North

CHAPTER ONE. Flying School
CHAPTER TWO. Sanyo's Wedding
CHAPTER THREE. I Write to Doctor Ivan Ivanovich.
CHAPTER FOUR. I Receive a Reply.
CHAPTER FIVE. Three Years
CHAPTER SIX. I Meet the Doctor
CHAPTER SEVEN. I Read the Diaries.
CHAPTER NINE. Good Night!.
CHAPTER TEN. The Flight
CHAPTER ELEVEN. The Blizzard
CHAPTER TWELVE. What Is a Primus-Stove?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN. The Old Boat-Hook
CHAPTER FOURTEEN. Vanokan

PART FIVE.
For the Heart

CHAPTER ONE. I Meet Katya
CHAPTER TWO. Korablev's Anniversary
CHAPTER THREE. Without Title
CHAPTER FOUR. News Galore
CHAPTER FIVE. At the Theatre
CHAPTER SIX. Still More Comes to Light
CHAPTER SEVEN. "We Have a Visitor!"
CHAPTER EIGHT. True to a Memory
CHAPTER NINE. It Is Decided-She Goes Away.
CHAPTER TEN. Sivtsev- Vrazhek
CHAPTER ELEVEN. A Hectic Day
CHAPTER TWELVE. Romashka
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BOOK TWO

PART SIX. From the Diary of Katya Tatarinova YOUTH CONTINUES
PART SEVEN. From the Diary of Katya Tatarinova SEPARATION.
PART EIGHT.
Told by Sanya Grigoriev. To Strive, to Seek

CHAPTER ONE. He
CHAPTER TWO. All We Could
CHAPTER THREE. "Is That You, Owl?"
CHAPTER FOUR. Old Scores
CHAPTER FIVE. In the Aspen Wood
CHAPTER SIX. Nobody Will Know
CHAPTER SEVEN. Alone
CHAPTER EIGHT. The Boys
CHAPTER NINE. Dealing with Love.
CHAPTER TEN. The Verdict
CHAPTER ELEVEN. I Look for Katya
CHAPTER TWELVE. I Meet Hydrographer R.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN. Decision.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN. Friends Who Were Not at Home
CHAPTER FIFTEEN. An Old Acquaintance. Katya's Portrait
CHAPTER SIXTEEN. "You Won't Kill Me"
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. The Shadow

PART NINE.
To Find and Not to Yield

CHAPTER ONE. This Is Not the End Yet.
CHAPTER TWO. The Doctor Serves in the Arctic
CHAPTER THREE. To Those at Sea
CHAPTER FOUR. Ranging Wide
CHAPTER FIVE. Back at Zapolarie
CHAPTER SIX. Victory

PART TEN.
The Last Page

CHAPTER ONE. The Riddle Is Solved
CHAPTER TWO. The Unbelievable
CHAPTER THREE. It Was Katya
CHAPTER FOUR. The Farewell Letters
CHAPTER FIVE. The Last Page
CHAPTER SIX. The Homecoming
CHAPTER SEVEN. Two Conversations
CHAPTER EIGHT. My Paper
CHAPTER NINE. And the Last.

Epilogue

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AUTHOR 'S PREFACE
I recall a spring day in 1921, when Maxim Gorky first invited to his
home a group of young Leningrad writers, myself among them. He lived
in Kronwerk Street and the windows of his flat overlooked
Alexandrovsky Park. We trooped in, so many of us that we took quite a
time getting seated, the bolder ones closer to the host, the more timid
on the ottoman, from which it was a job getting up afterwards—it was so
soft and sagged almost to the floor. I shall always remember that
ottoman of Gorky's. When I lowered myself on to it I saw my
outstretched feet encased in shabby soldier's boots. I couldn't hide them
away. As for getting up-it was not to be thought of. Those boots worried
me until I noticed a pair just as bad, if not worse, on Vsevolod Ivanov,
who was sitting next to Gorky.
Alice in her wonderland underwent strange transformations on
almost every page of Carroll’s book. At one moment she becomes so
small that she freely goes down a rabbit's hole, the next so tall that she
can speak only with birds living in the tree-tops. Something like that
was happening to me at Gorky's place. At one moment I thought I ought
to put in a word of my own in the conversation that had started between
Gorky and my older companions, a word so profound that it would
make them all sit up. The next minute I shrank so small on that low
uncomfortable ottoman that I felt a sort of Tom Thumb, not that brave
little fellow we all know, but a somewhat timorous Tom Thumb, at once
timorous and proud.
Gorky began to speak with approval about Ivanov's latest short story
"The Brazier of Archangel Gabriel". It was this that started me on my
transformations. Ivanov's story was far removed from anything that
interested me in literature, and I took Gorky's high opinion of it as a
harsh verdict on all my hopes and dreams. Gorky read the story out
aloud. His face softened, his eyes grew tender and his gestures betrayed
that benign mood so familiar to everyone who had seen Gorky in
moments of pure rapture.
He dabbed his eyes with his handkerchief and began to speak about
the story. His admiration for it did not prevent him from seeing its
shortcomings. Some of his remarks applied even to the choice of words.
"What is the work of a writer?" he asked, and for the first time I heard
some very curious things. The work of a writer, it appeared, was simply
work, the daily, maybe hourly work of writing, writing on paper or in
one's mind. It meant piles of rough copies, dozens of crossed-out
versions. It meant patience, because talent imposed upon the writer a
peculiar pattern of life in which patience was the most important thing
of all. It was the life of Zola, who used to strap himself to his chair; of
Goncharov, who took about twenty years writing his novel Obryv
(Precipice); of Jack London, who died of fatigue, whatever his doctors
may have said. It was hard life of self-dedication, full of trials and
disappointments. "Don't you believe those who say that it is easy bread,"
Gorky said.
To describe a writer's work in all its diversity is no light task. I may
get nearest to doing this by simply answering the numerous letters I
have received in connection with my novel Two Captains and thus
telling the story of how this one novel at least came to be written.
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The questions my correspondents ask chiefly concern the two heroes
of my novel—Sanya Grigoriev and Captain Tatarinov. Many of them ask
whether it was my own life that I described in Two Captains. Some
want to know whether the story of Captain Tatarinov was invented by
me. Others search for the name in books of geography and
encyclopaedias and are surprised to find that the activities of Captain
Tatarinov have left no visible traces in the history of Arctic exploration.
Some want to know where Sanya Grigoriev and Katya Tatarinova are
living at present and what rank Sanya was promoted to after the war.
Others ask the author's advice as to what job they should devote their
lives. The mother of a boy, known as the terror of the town, whose
pranks often verged on hooliganism, wrote me that after reading my
novel her son had become a different person, and shortly afterwards I
received a letter from Alexander Rokotov himself which showed that the
boy was intelligent and talented as well as mischievous. Some years
have passed since then, and student Rokotov of the Aviation Institute
has acquired expert knowledge in aircraft construction.
It took me about five years to write this novel. When the first book
was finished the war started, and it was not until 1944 that I returned to
my work. The idea of writing this novel originated in 1937, after I had
met a man whom I have portrayed in Two Captains under the name of
Sanya Grigoriev. This man told me the story of his life-a life filled with
hard work, self-dedication and love of his country. I made it a rule from
the very first page not to invent anything, or hardly anything. In fact,
even such a curious detail as the muteness of little Sanya has not been
invented by me. His mother and father, his sister and friends have been
described exactly as they first appeared to me in the narrative of my
chance acquaintance, who afterwards became my friend. Of some of the
personages of my future book I learned from him very little. Korablev,
for example, was sketchily described in his narrative as a man with a
quick searching eye, which invariably made the schoolchildren speak the
truth; other characteristics were a moustache and a walking stick and a
habit of sitting over a book late into the night. This outline had to be
filled in by the author's imagination in order to create a character study
of a Soviet schoolteacher.
The story, as told to me, was really a very simple one. It was the story
of a boy who had had a cheerless childhood and was brought up by
Soviet society, by people who had taken the place of his dead parents
and had sustained in him the dream he had cherished in his ardent and
honest heart since early childhood.
Nearly all the circumstances of this boy's life, and later of his youth
and manhood, have been retained in the novel. His childhood years,
however, were spent on the Volga and his school years in Tashkent-
places with which I am not very familiar. I have therefore transferred
the early scene of my book to my own hometown, which I have named
Ensk. No wonder my fellow townsmen have so easily deciphered the
town's real name. My school years (the senior forms) were spent in
Moscow, and I have been able to describe in my book a Moscow school
of the early twenties with greater authenticity than I could have
achieved with a Tashkent school.
I might mention another question which my correspondents ask me,
namely, to what extent the novel Two Captains is autobiographical. To
a considerable extent everything, from the first to the last page, that
Sanya Grigoriev has seen has been seen by the author with his own eyes.
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Our two lives ran parallel, so to speak. But when Sanya Grigoriev's
profession came into the book I had to drop the "personal" material and
make a study of the life of pilots, of which I had known very little until
then.
Invaluable assistance in studying aeronautics was given me by Senior
Lieutenant S. Y. Klebanov, who died the death of a hero in 1943. He was
a talented pilot, a brave officer and a fine, upright man. I was proud of
his friendship. During my work on the second volume I came across
(among the materials of the War Study Commission) testimonials of
Klebanov's brother-officers showing that my high opinion of him was
shared by his comrades.
It is difficult, well nigh impossible, to give any complete answer to the
question of how one or another character of a literary work is created,
especially if the narrative is in the first person. Apart from those
observations, reminiscences, and impressions which I have mentioned,
my book contains thousands of others which had no direct bearings on
the story as told to me and which served as the groundwork for Two
Captains. Imagination, as everyone knows, plays a tremendous role in a
writer's work. And it is on this that one must speak before passing to the
story of my second principal character Captain Tatarinov.
Don't look for his name in encyclopaedias or handbooks. Don't try to
prove, as one pupil did at a geography lesson, that it was Tatarinov and
not Vilkitsky who discovered Novaya Zemlya. For the older of my two
captains I used the story of two brave explorers of the Arctic. One of
them supplied me with the courageous character of a man pure in
thought and clear in aim-qualities that bespeak a noble soul. This was
Sedan. From the other I took the actual story of his voyage. This was
Brusilov. The drift of my St. Maria repeats exactly the drift of Brusilov's
St. Anne. The diaries of Navigating Officer Klimov quoted in my novel
are based on the diary of Albanov, Navigating Officer of the St. Anne,
one of the two surviving members of that tragic expedition. The
historical material alone, however, did not seem enough to me. I knew
that there lived in Leningrad a painter and writer by the name of Nikolai
Pinegin, a friend of Sedov's and one of those who had brought his
schooner the St. Phocas back to the mainland after the death of Sedov.
We met, and Pinegin not only told me a lot more about Sedov and gave
me a vivid picture of the man, but explained the tragedy of his life, the
life of a great explorer slandered and refused recognition by reactionary
circles of society in tsarist Russia. Incidentally, during one of my
meetings with Pinegin the latter treated me to some tinned food which
he had picked up at Cape Flora in 1914, and to my amazement I found it
excellent. I mention this trivial detail because it is characteristic of
Pinegin and of the range of interests into which I was drawn during my
visits to this "Arctic home".
Later, when the first volume had already appeared, Sedov's widow
gave me a lot of interesting information. The summer of 1941 found me
working hard on the second volume, in which I intended to make wide
use of the story of the famous airman Levanevsky. My plan was thought
out, the materials were studied and the first chapters written. V. Y. Vize,
the well-known scientist and Arctic explorer, approved the contents of
the future "Arctic" chapters and told me many interesting things about
the work of search parties. But the war broke out and I had to dismiss
for a long time the very idea of finishing the novel. I wrote front-line
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reportage, war sketches and short stories. However, the hope of being
able to take up the novel again apparently did not leave me, otherwise I
would not have found myself asking the editor of Izvestia to send me to
the Northern Front. It was there, among the airmen and submarines of
the Northern Fleet that I realised that the characters of my book would
appear blurred and sketchy if I did not describe how, together with all
the Soviet people, they had borne the dreadful ordeals of the war and
won it.
I had known from books, reports and personal impressions what
peacetime life was like among those people, who had worked to turn the
Northern Country into a smiling hospitable land, who had tapped the
incalculable resources that lay within the Arctic Circle, who had built
towns, docks, mines and factories there. Now, during the war, I saw all
this prodigious energy dedicated to the defence of this land and of these
gains. I might be told that the same thing happened in every corner of
our land. Of course it did, but the severe conditions of the North gave to
it a special, expressive touch.
I don't think I have been able to answer all the questions of my
correspondents. Who served as the prototype of Nikolai Antonich?
Where did I get Nina Kapitonovna? What truth is there in the story of
Sanya's and Katya's love?
To answer these questions I would have to ascertain, if only
approximately, to what extent one or another figure was an actor in real
life. As regards Nikolai Antonich, for instance, no such effort on my part
would be needed. I have changed only a few outward features in my
portrait of the real headmaster of the Moscow school which I finished in
1919. The same applies to Nina Kapitonovna, who could but recently be
met in Sivtsev Vrazhek, wearing the same green jacket and carrying the
same shopping bag. As for the love of Sanya and Katya, I had had only
the youthful period of this story told to me. Exercising the prerogative of
the novelist, I drew from this story my own conclusions, which seemed
to me only natural for the hero of my book.
One schoolboy, by the way, wrote telling me that exactly the same
thing had happened to him-he had fallen in love with a girl and kissed
her in the school grounds. "So that now that your book Two Captains is
finished, you can write about me," the boy suggested.
Here is another incident which, indirectly, answers the question as to
what truth there is in the love of Sanya and Katya. One day I received a
letter from Ordzhonikidze (Northern Caucasus) from a lady named
Irina N. who wrote, "After reading your novel I feel certain that you are
the man I have been looking for these last eighteen years. I am
persuaded of this not only by the details of my life given in the novel,
which could be known to you alone, but also by the places and even the
dates of our meetings in Triumfalnaya Square and outside the Bolshoi
Theatre..." I replied that I had never made any dates with my
correspondent in Triumfalnaya Square or outside the Bolshoi Theatre,
and that I would have to make inquiries of the Arctic pilot who had
served as the prototype for my hero. But the war started and this
strange correspondence broke off.
Irina N.'s letter reminds me of another incident, which equated
literature, as it were, with real life. During the blockade of Leningrad, in
the grim, forever memorable days of late autumn of 1941, the Leningrad
Radio Broadcasting Committee asked me to convey a message to the
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young Communists of the Baltic in the name of Sanya Grigoriev. I
pointed out that although I had portrayed in Sanya Grigoriev a definite
person, a bomber pilot, who was fighting at the time on the Central
Front, he was nevertheless only a literary character.
"So what of it," was the answer. "It makes no difference. Write as if
the name of your literary hero could be found in the telephone book."
I consented, of course. In the name of Sanya Grigoriev I wrote a
message to the Komsomol boys and girls of Leningrad and the Baltic,
and in response letters addressed to my literary hero came pouring in,
expressing confidence in victory.
I remember myself a boy of nine entering my first library; it was quite
a small one, but seemed very big to me then. Behind a tall barrier, under
paraffin lamp, stood a smooth-haired woman in spectacles wearing a
black dress with a white collar. The barrier was so high-at least to me-
and the lady in black so forbidding that I all but turned tail. In a voice
overloud through shyness I reported that I had already turned nine and
was therefore entitled to become a card holder. The forbidding lady
laughed and bending over the barrier the better to see the new reader
retorted that she had heard of no such rule.
In the end, though, I managed to join the library, and the time flew so
quickly in reading that one day I discovered with surprise that the
barrier was not all that high, nor the lady as forbidding as I had first
thought.
This was the first library in which I felt at home, and ever since then I
have always had this feeling when coming into a house, large or small,
in which there are bookshelves along the walls and people standing by
them thinking only one thing-that these books were there to be read. So
it was in childhood. And so it was in youth, with long hours spent in the
vast Shchedrin public library in Leningrad. Working in the Archives
Department, I penetrated into the very heart of the temple of temples.
Raising my eyes-tired, because reading manuscripts makes them tire
quickly-I watched the noiseless work of the librarians and experienced
again and again a feeling of gratitude. That feeling has remained for a
lifetime. Wherever I go, to whatever place fate brings me, I always ask
first thing, "Is there a library here?" And when I am told, "There is," that
town or township, farm or village, becomes closer, as if irradiating a
warm, unexpected light.
In Schwarz's play "The Snow Queen", the privy councillor, a dour
individual who deals in ice, asks the storyteller whether there are any
children in the house, and on learning that there are, he shudders,
because at the sound of children's voices the ice of the blackest soul
melts. So does a house in which there are books differ from those in
which there are none.
The best writers can be compared to scouts into the future, to those
brave explorers of new and unknown spaces, of whom Fridtjof Nansen,
the famous Norwegian explorer, wrote: "Let us follow the narrow tracks
of the sled runners and those little black dots laying a railway, as it were,
into the heart of the unknown. The wind howls and sweeps across these
tracks leading into the snowy wastes. Soon they will disappear, but a
trail has been blazed, we have acquired a new banner, and this deed will
shine forever through the ages."
V. Kaverin

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BOOK ONE

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