Veniamin Kaverin - Two Captains

I had to be up at six and had prevailed upon Katya not to have me waken her. We had even kissed goodbye to each other the night before. But when I opened my eyes I found her already washing up, clad in her dressing gown and propping the wet plates against the electric fire. She knew what military service I was doing, but we never talked about it. Only when I bestirred myself, leaving my glass of tea unfinished, did she ask, as she used to do, whether I was taking my parachute. I said I was.

On leaving the house I gave Katya the Captain's letters. Once before, at Ensk, in Cathedral Gardens, I had left her alone to read one of the letters which Aunt Dasha and I had found in the bag of the drowned postman. I had stood beneath St. Martin's tower and turned cold as I mentally went through that letter with her line by line.

Now I would not be seeing her for several days. Even so, we would be reading together again, and I knew that Katya would feel me breathing at her shoulder.

Here are the letters.

Captain 1st Class P.S. Sokolov, Hydrographical Board, St. Petersburg

My dear Pyotr Sergeyevich,

I hope this letter reaches you. I am writing it at the moment when our voyage is nearing its end, and, I regret to say, I am finishing it in solitude. I do not think anybody in the world could have coped with what we have had to endure. All my companions have died one after the other, and the reconnaissance party which I sent to Galchikha did not return.

I am leaving Maria and your god-daughter in difficult straits. If I knew that they were provided for I would not be greatly distressed at leaving this world, because I feel that our country has no reason to be ashamed of us. We were very unlucky, but we made up for it by returning to the land we had discovered and studying it to the best of our ability.

My last thoughts are of my wife and child. I dearly hope that my daughter makes a success of her life. Help them, as you helped me. Dying, I think with deep gratitude of you and of the best years of my youth when I worked under your guidance.

I embrace you. Ivan Tatarinov.

To: His Excellency, the Head of the Hydrographical Board, From: I. L. Tatarinov, Chief of the St. Maria Expedition

Report

I herewith beg to bring to the notice of the Hydrographical Board the following:

On March 16th, 1915, in observed latitude 79°08' 30" and longitude 89°55' 00" East of Greenwich, from the drifting ship St. Maria, in good visibility and a clear sky, there was sighted east of the ship an unknown large stretch of land with high mountains and glaciers. Signs indicating the presence of land in this area had been observed prior to this: as early as August, 1912, we had seen large flocks of geese flying from the North in a N.N.-E-S.S.-E direction. At the beginning of April 1913 we had seen a sharp-cut silvery strip of the N.E. horizon, and above it clouds of a very queer shape, resembling distant mountains shrouded in mist.

The discovery of land stretching in a meridional direction gave us the hope of abandoning ship at the first favourable opportunity in

order, on coming ashore, to follow the coastline in the direction of the Taimyr Peninsula and beyond, as far as the first Siberian settlements at the mouths of the rivers Khatanga and Yenisei as the case may be. By now the direction of our drift was clear beyond doubt. Our ship was drifting together with the ice on a general course North 7° by West. Even in the event of this course changing to a more westerly one, that is, parallel to the drift of Nansen's Fram, we should not get free of the ice before the autumn of 1916, and our provisions would last only until the summer of 1915.

After numerous difficulties irrelevant to this report we succeeded on May 23, 1915, in stepping ashore on the newly discovered land in latitude 81°09' and longitude 58°36'. This was an ice-covered island, indicated by the letter A on the attached chart. It was not until five days later that we succeeded in reaching the second, very large, island, one of three or four comprising the newly discovered land. The astronomical position finding made on a jutting cape of this island and marked by the letter G, gave the co-ordinates 80°26' 30" and92°08'00".

Moving southward along the shores of this unknown land I explored the coast between parallels 81 and 79. In its northern part the coast is a low-lying stretch under an extensive icecap. Farther south it rises and becomes free of ice. Here we found driftwood. At latitude 80° we found a broad strait or bay extending from the point indicated by the letter S in an E.S.-E. direction.

From the point marked by the letter F. the coastline turns sharply S.S.-W. I intended to explore the southern shore of the newly discovered land, but by that time it was decided that we proceed along the coast of Khariton Laptev in the direction of the Yenisei.

In informing the Board of my discoveries I consider it necessary to point out that the observation for longitude may not be quite reliable, as the ship's chronometers, though carefully looked after, have not been corrected for more than two years.

Ivan Tatarinov

Enclosed: 1. A certified copy of the St. Maria's log.

2. Copy of chronometric record.

3. Canvas-bound notebook with calculations and survey data.

4. Map of the surveyed land. June 18th, 1915, Camp on Island 4 in Russian Archipelago.

Dear Maria,

I'm afraid it's all up with us. I am not even sure that you will ever read these lines. We cannot go any further, we freeze as we move or halt, and cannot get warm even when we eat. My feet are very bad, especially the right one, and I don't even know how and when it got frost-bitten. By force of habit I write "we", though it is three days now since poor Kolpakov died. I can't even bury him because of the blizzard. Four days of blizzard has proved too much for us.

It will soon be my turn, but I am not the least afraid of death, evidently because I have done all I could and more to stay alive.

I feel very guilty about you, and this thought is the most painful, though there are others not much easier.

How much anxiety and sorrow you have suffered these years- and now this, the greatest blow of all, on top of them. I don't want you to consider yourself tied down for life. If you meet a man with whom you feel you will be happy, remember that this is my wish. Tell Nina Kapitonovna this. I embrace her and ask her to help you as much as she can, especially with Katya.

We had a very hard voyage, but we stood up to it well and would probably have coped with our task had we not been delayed by supply problems and had not these supplies been so bad.

My darling Maria, how will you get along without me! And Katya, Katya! 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 that force that kept me bound hand and foot, and 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. I cannot tear myself away from this letter, from my last conversation with you, dear Maria. Look after our daughter, don't let her grow up lazy. That is a trait of mine. I was always lazy and too trustful.

Katya, my little daughter! Will you ever learn how much I thought about you and how I wanted to have at least one more look at you before I died?

But enough. My hands are cold, otherwise I would go on writing and writing. I embrace you both.

Yours forever.

Looking back on the winter of 1943-1944 at Polarnoye I see that it was the happiest winter we had ever had together. This may seem strange considering that nearly every other day I flew out to bomb German ships. But it was one thing to fly on missions without knowing what had become of Katya, and quite another, to know that she was at Polarnoye, alive and well and that in a day or two I would see her pouring out tea at table. A green silk lampshade to which Ivan Ivanovich had pinned the little paper devils cut out of thick paper hung over his table, and everything that Katya and I took delight in that memorable winter is floodlit by that bright circle cast by the green shade, leaving all the fret and worry hidden away outside in the dark corners.