Veniamin Kaverin: Two Captains

Translation from the Russian

Translated by Bernard Isaacs

(Abridged by the Author)

The Foreign Languages Publishing House

MOSCOW 1945

Author's Preface

Chapter 1. The Letter. In Search of the Blue Crab

Chapter 2. Father

Chapter 3. The Petition

Chapter 4. The Village

Chapter 5. Doctor Ivan Ivanovich. I Learn to Speak

Chapter 6. Father's Death. I Refuse to Speak

Chapter 7. Mother

Chapter 8. Pyotr Skovorodnikov

Chapter 9. Stroke, Stroke, Stroke, Five, Twenty, a Hundred

Chapter 10. Aunt Dasha

Chapter 11. A Talk with Pyotr

Chapter 12. Scaramouch Joins the Death Battalion

Chapter 13. Journey's End

Chapter 14. We Run Away. I Pretend to Be Asleep

Chapter 15. To Strive, to Seek, to Find and Not to Yield

Chapter 16. My First Flight

Chapter 17. Clay Modelling

Chapter 18. Nikolai Antonich

Chapter 1. I Listen to Fairy-Tales

Chapter 2. School

Chapter 3. The Old Lady From Ensk

Chapter 4. More Food for Thought.

Chapter 5. Is There Salt in Snow?

Chapter 6. I Go Visiting

Chapter 7. The Tatarinovs

Chapter 8. Korablev Proposes

Chapter 9. The Rejected Suito

Chapter 10. I Go Away

Chapter 11. A Serious Talk

Chapter 12. I Start Thinking

Chapter 13. The Silver Fifty-Kopeck Piece

Chapter 1. Four Years

Chapter 2. The Trial of Eugene Onegin

Chapter 3. At the Skating-Rink

Chapter 4. Changes

Chapter 5. Katya's Father

Chapter 6. More Changes

Chapter 7. Marginal Notes

Chapter 8. The Ball

Chapter 9. My First Date. Insomnia

Chapter 10. Troubles

Chapter 11. I Go to Ensk

Chapter 12. Home Again

Chapter 13. The Old Letters

Chapter 14. A Rendezvous in Cathedral Gardens. "Do Not Trust That Man"

Chapter 15. We Go for Walks. I Visit Mother's Grave. Day of Departure

Chapter 16. What Awaited Me in Moscow

Chapter 17. I Burn My Boats

Chapter 18. An Old Friend

Chapter 19. It Could All Have Been Different

Chapter 20. Maria Vasilievna

Chapter 21. In the Dead of Night

Chapter 22. It Isn't Him

Chapter 23. Slander

Chapter 24. Our Last Meeting

Chapter 1. Flying School

Chapter 2. Sanyo's Wedding

Chapter 3. I Write to Doctor Ivan Ivanovich.

Chapter 4. I Receive a Reply.

Chapter 5. Three Years

Chapter 6. I Meet the Doctor

Chapter 7. I Read the Diaries.

Chapter 8. I think we have met.

Chapter 9. Good Night!.

Chapter 10. The Flight

Chapter 11. The Blizzard

Chapter 12. What Is a Primus-Stove?

Chapter 13. The Old Boat-Hook

Chapter 14. Vanokan

Chapter 1. I Meet Katya

Chapter 2. Korablev's Anniversary

Chapter 3. Without Title

Chapter 4. News Galore

Chapter 5. At the Theatre

Chapter 6. Still More Comes to Light

Chapter 7. "We Have a Visitor!"

Chapter 8. True to a Memory

Chapter 9. It Is Decided-She Goes Away.

Chapter 10. Sivtsev-Vrazhek

Chapter 11. A Hectic Day

Chapter 12. Romashka

PART SIX. From the Diary of Katya Tatarinova YOUTH CONTINUES

PART SEVEN. From the Diary of Katya Tatarinova SEPARATION.

Chapter 1. He

Chapter 2. All We Could

Chapter 3. "Is That You, Owl?"

Chapter 4. Old Scores

Chapter 5. In the Aspen Wood

Chapter 6. Nobody Will Know

Chapter 7. Alone

Chapter 8. The Boys

Chapter 9. Dealing with Love.

Chapter 10. The Verdict

Chapter 11. I Look for Katya

Chapter 12. I Meet Hydrographer R.

Chapter 13. Decision.

Chapter 14. Friends Who Were Not at Home

Chapter 15. An Old Acquaintance. Katya's Portrait

Chapter 16. "You Won't Kill Me"

Chapter 17. The Shadow

Chapter 1. This Is Not the End Yet.

Chapter 2. The Doctor Serves in the Arctic

Chapter 3. To Those at Sea

Chapter 4. Ranging Wide

Chapter 5. Back at Zapolarie

Chapter 6. Victory

Chapter 1. The Riddle Is Solved

Chapter 2. The Unbelievable

Chapter 3. It Was Katya

Chapter 4. The Farewell Letters

Chapter 5. The Last Page

Chapter 6. The Homecoming

Chapter 7. Two Conversations

Chapter 8. My Paper

Chapter 9. And the Last.

Epilogue

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.