The Prince of the Soviets

22. NORTH AND SOUTH

For several decades now, the world has been on the lookout for a Superman (or Übermensch as the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche called him). Industry has reached unprecedented heights, yet human nature has remained the same. Many people dream of how they might improve it to match our technical abilities.

The Superman should lead us by example to the bright feature. But there are so many candidates eager to take the position, that it’s not quite clear who to pick: a communist, a fascist, or just a chiseled-chinned civilizer carrying the white man’s burden. Only one thing is clear: we need a hero larger than life.

Those who are running for Superman try to prove themselves and climb the highest mountain or fly to the North Pole in an airship. And if you are lucky enough to go a step further and save a life, instead of merely taking a ride over the ice, then your deeds will be lauded to the skies, and your chances of becoming a true hero will be significantly improved. This is why the search for Nobile’s expedition is the cause of such excitement.

The stranded victims are just about the last thing on everyone’s minds. Every day, thousands upon thousands of people are dying as a result of hunger, wars, epidemics, or industrial accidents, but nobody gives a damn about them. What people care about is the idea of conquering the Arctic—one of the last unexplored places on earth. The rescue of the crew of the Italia is simply a particularly striking symbol of the triumph of man over nature.

Weinstein is deluded if he thinks that the world is following the progress of the Soviet icebreaker, the Krasin. In fact, it feels as if we’re all watching some great international competition, like a tournament in which everybody is cheering for their own team. The victims of the disaster have become a trophy to be won by those who most closely fit the bill of Supermen. After all, the Italians, the Norwegians, the Swedes, and the French, among others, have also sent out search parties.

The race is of particular importance to the Russian communists and the Italian fascists, who are prepared to spend any amount of money and risk any amount of lives in the interests of securing a victory. The People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs has decided to send us North in order to capture the Soviet Union’s moment of triumph.

My fellow journalists and I all pretend to be delighted to join the ranks of the Arctic explorers. The very fact that we are on board the Krasin makes us into the heroes deserving of money, fame, and the love of beautiful women. But at the same time, we can’t help recalling Admunsen’s hydroplane, which was lost without trace in the Barents Sea during the search for Nobile, or the plane of the Swedish pilot, Lundborg, which overturned when he landed on an ice floe. The weather around Spitzbergen Island is harsh—extreme cold, fog, and strong wind—and we feel like soldiers going off to the front, unsure which of us will be coming home again.

When I started to imagine what would happen to Kitty if I perished in the North, I decided that it would be a mistake to leave her in Galina’s hands. If I did, she would end up exactly like Tata. It would be better to let Nina take her. At least Mrs. Reich will not turn the child into a brainless propaganda-spouting parrot.

I kept Nina in the dark about my plan though and lied to Galina too, telling her I had sent Kitty off to a summer camp. I don’t know if she believed me or not.

The commanders have refused point-blank to allow any journalists onto the Soviet ships, so we are sitting in a hotel in Archangelsk, waiting for the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs to sort things out with the Commissariat for Military and Naval Affairs.

Our editors beg us to spare their blood pressure and send at least some scrap of news about Nobile’s crew, but our only source of information at the time is a loudspeaker opposite my hotel room window.

As soon as we hear the words “And now—news of the Krasin icebreaker,” my colleagues and I rush to open the top window pane, take out our notebooks, and do our best to catch every word.

The Soviet news agency, TASS, is hardly bombarding us with details, and we need to scrape together something to send back to the editors, and as a result, several correspondents are unable to resist embroidering on the facts.

The other day, Seibert showed me an article he had written about the rescue of two navigators from Nobile’s expedition. The loudspeaker had announced that they had been picked up by the Krasin and that the third crew member, a meteorologist by the name of Malmgren, had died before he could be rescued.

Seibert couldn’t keep from adding some touches of his own. He gave a description of the funeral held for the brilliant scientist with touching valedictory speeches and traditional Russian lamentation chants for the deceased. His report was published in hundreds of papers all over the world, and only later did it come to light that Malmgren had not been buried at all and that he had not been with the navigators.

Now, we are all teasing Seibert mercilessly, telling him it’s time he changed profession: he clearly has a talent for composing obituaries.

He is walking about like a thundercloud, promising to get his back on the lot of us, and particularly on me, as I am a “tiresome pest” with “no feeling for the art of writing.”

Arkhangelsk is home mainly to fishermen, loggers, and political exiles. There are barely any old people here, but a great many children and youngsters.

Following the recent rains, the town is drowning in mud and overgrown with weeds. We can’t walk down the streets and instead have to jump between the boards and bricks that deputize for pavements here.

There is not a lot in the way of entertainment: it’s a choice between going to the cinema to see the film The Poet and the Tsar for the fifth time, admiring the elaborate carved window frames (which are skillfully made hereabouts), or sitting on a bench outside the nursing school and watching the haughty northern girls walk by without a glance in our direction. We foreigners are the object of their undisguised contempt.

The food situation here is far worse than it is in Moscow. There’s no sugar in town whatsoever—it’s all gone into making icebergs.

Recently, there was a confectioners’ competition in our hotel on the subject of “The Rescue of Nobile’s Expedition,” and now, they have put up a display of cakes decorated with snowy plains, tents built out of biscuits, and marzipan figures signaling for help.

I made a deal with the confectioner and got some sweets for Kitty and Nina. I’m planning to send a parcel via one of the conductors on a train. The post is unreliable to say the least: a packing crate takes several months to get to Feodosia from Archangelsk.

As my death in the polar wastes seems to have been postponed for the moment, I am thinking about what I should do about Nina. I’m sure Kitty became attached to her and will want her mother to play a part in her life.

Seeing Nina for a few minutes is enough to set me back for days. I don’t think I could ever get used to meaningless small talks—to “hellos” and “goodbyes” when dropping Kitty off or picking her up.

Unfortunately, I cannot forget Mr. Reich. I go down to the river to watch the huge rafts of logs traveling seawards, hundreds of thousands of them to be sorted, dried, and stacked. As I gaze at all this, all I am thinking is that these are the railroad sleepers that Oscar Reich is sending to Germany.

Back in the hotel, I sit down at the piano in the lobby, open the lid, and run my fingers over the keys. And then I find myself thinking of Mr. Reich’s teeth, which are equally white, even, and false.

It’s silly of me, but what can I do?

Nina received a telegram by Klim telling that he had sent a package with a conductor and asking her to collect it.

Although the bus to Feodosia did not come through Koktebel until twelve o’clock, Nina woke at dawn and wandered aimlessly about the house for some time, too agitated to settle on anything. All her thoughts were of one thing only: Klim would probably have written a letter to go with the parcel. What would it say?

Nina decided to go and have a swim. Taking a towel, she stepped out into the yard, which was bathed in the rays of the early morning sun. Gloria was sitting at her potter’s wheel under a canopy. Softie and Oink lay beside her, watching attentively as their owner shaped a pot-bellied vase.

The cockatoo was muttering sleepily on her shoulder, “Sir, we need to bring in the missiles. What are we going to fight with?”

Gloria slapped down some clay with her hand and stared at Nina. “Sit down!” she ordered, rising heavily to her feet from the rickety bench. “I want to have a look at you.”

“What for?” Nina asked.

“That’s my business. You just shut your eyes and model something with the clay. Whatever you like.”

Nina shrugged and sat down at the potter’s wheel. Closing her eyes, she took a piece of clay in her fingers and began to shape it.

“Stop!” Gloria said.

She looked at what Nina had made as if it was something extraordinary.

“A man trap!” Gloria muttered. “That’s your past…. It’s got a tight grip on you. I can feel it.”

Nina looked down at the clay in front of her: a flat circle with uneven, jagged edges. Actually, she thought it looked more like a beer-bottle top.

Gloria took out another piece of clay from the barrel. “Shut your eyes and have another go.”

It was clear that Gloria was trying to work out what was on Nina’s mind. This time, Nina attempted to make the shape of a heart, but she ended up with a strange shape pitted with holes left by her fingers.

“That’s a piece of cheese!” exclaimed Gloria. “‘At the top of the tree sat Mr. Crow, clutching a piece of cheese in his beak…’ Have you heard this fable? You hold onto your prize tight, or a fox might come running past and take it away.”

Nina was puzzled. “Are you talking about Galina?” she asked, warily.

Frowning, Gloria squashed the “man-trap” and the “cheese” together in her fist to make a single lump.

“Get up!” she ordered, and sitting back down in Nina’s place, she set the wheel turning again with the pedal.

“Daft girl!” she muttered. “Do you have a brain at all behind those curls?”

Nina stood, wiping her fingers with a cloth, waiting for some sort of explanation, but Gloria did not say a word. The wheel turned with a soft hiss, and a new pot began to take shape under the old woman’s gnarled fingers.

“I don’t know what to do,” said Nina timidly. “I don’t know if he still loves me or if he still wants—”

The cockatoo bent its head toward Gloria’s ear and began to jabber something.

“Mm-hm,” nodded the old woman, raising her at Nina.

“You should think about making him feel good with you rather than bad without you. And now, off with you. I have work to do.”

All the way to Feodosia, Nina thought about what Gloria had told her.

When was the last time she and Klim had felt good together? It had been several years ago. Their love had become like opium—it gave a short illusion of happiness but was actually destroying them both. Klim had been the first to realize this and decided to put an end to the torment.

Kitty took her spillikins out of Nina’s bag. Elkin had made her a whole set of tiny models, each no larger than a child’s fingernail. There was a pail with a handle, a samovar, a saw, and a carpenter’s plane, a hundred different items in all. The idea of the game was to tip them into a pile and then take them out one by one with a little hook, making sure not to touch anything else.

Kitty had no luck with the spillikins—the bus bounced too much as it drove over the potholes.

Klim and I have no luck sorting our relationship out either, thought Nina gloomily. But nobody is to blame. It just happened that we have had a rough ride.

The train had arrived early for a change.

Taking Kitty in her arms, Nina ran through the dim station building and onto the sun-drenched platform. Cheerful passengers hurried past them, carrying suitcases, baskets, and butterfly nets.

Nina saw a crowd gathered at the last car and ran toward the back of the train.

“Stop pushing!” the conductor shouted as he handed out parcels and letters. “You’ll all get your turn.”

He sorted deftly through the packages and envelopes with his wrinkled hands. “Not, this one’s not yours, nor this one either.”

At last, he handed over a plywood box to Nina.

Kitty jumped up and down beside her impatiently. “Mommy! Open it quickly!”

Having settle down on the bench under a poplar tree, Nina cut open the package with a knife borrowed from a vendor selling watermelons nearby.

“What’s inside?” fussed Kitty “Are there any toys?”

There were biscuits, sugar, and chocolate wrapped in paper. At the very bottom, under Norwegian canned goods, there was a letter. Klim wrote that the Krasin icebreaker had saved all the crew members of Nobile’s expedition and that the foreign journalists had not been allowed anywhere. He promised that he would soon be coming to Feodosia to bring Elkin his money and to collect Kitty from Nina. It seemed that it was a lot easier to buy long-distance train tickets up in Archangelsk.

“Thank you for helping me out in a tight spot,” wrote Klim at the end of the letter. “I hope Kitty didn’t make too much of a nuisance of herself.”

Nina felt as if the wind had been taken out of her sails. She had been eagerly awaiting Klim’s arrival, but now, she was dreading it. He was planning to take Kitty away and leave her alone.

Elkin saw that Nina was suffering and tried to raise her spirits.

“You and I must definitely go on a tour of the ancient world,” he told her. “I’ll show you such beautiful sights they’ll take your breath away.”

Nina agreed to go. She had to take her mind off her gloomy thoughts in some way.

They spent a day wandering through the rocky spurs of the Kara Dag and staring into the mouths of chasms.

“You and I are standing on an extinct volcano,” Elkin told Nina. “Can you imagine what it would have been like here in prehistoric times? Boiling lava, and the earth shuddering with earthquakes…. But now, everything is quiet and peaceful.”

They climbed a steep cliff and looked down on a breathtaking view.

“It’s so beautiful!” Nina said, almost in tears with emotion. “When you can’t tell where the sea joins the sky, it feels as if you’re on a huge ship floating through the air.”

Elkin took a deep breath. “Nina, I’ve been wanting to say something to you for a while now, and I think now is a good time—”

Nina looked at him in alarm. Had he made up his mind to propose to her? Please, anything but that!

“I have something to say to you too,” she said quickly.

For some time, Nina had been aware that there was only one way to save Elkin from a humiliating refusal: to tell him beforehand all about her relations with Klim.

She told him everything: how she had met her ex-husband, how they had traveled about Russia during the civil war, and how they had emigrated to China.

Elkin listened for a long time, his face frozen into an expressionless smile. Clearly, he understood that Nina was trying to save his dignity, and he was grateful to her for it.

They sat on the edge of the cliff, watching the clouds over the bay turning pink in the sunset.

“I think both of us appeared on this earth at the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Elkin in a thick voice. “I should have been born a hundred years later, and you would have done well in the late eighteenth century. You could have been the ruler of some small, enlightened duchy.”

“What would I have done there?” Nina asked him.

“Well, you would have had secret lovers, a beautiful, well-kept capital city, and loyal subjects. Artists would have painted you as a bright angel surrounded by cupids, and poets would have written ingenious madrigals about you. What else could you wish for?”

“And the story would have ended either with a foreign invasion or a palace coup,” said Nina, getting to her feet. “It’s the same thing in the twentieth century—I was faced with the choice of being sent into exile or put in jail. And there was nothing the greatest intellects could do to help me. It’s just my fate, I suppose.”

They came home after dark. Gloria came out to meet them with the kerosene lamp, her face like thunder.

“Where have you been all this time?” she shouted, taking Nina by the arm and dragging her into the house.

“What happened?” Nina asked in alarm.

Gloria opened the door to Nina’s room and showed her Kitty, lying doubled up on the bed in agony. “See for yourself!”

Nina rushed to her daughter. “What’s the matter with you?”

Kitty’s face had swollen up until her eyes were no more than tiny slits, and a painful rash had broken out all over her cheeks.

“It hurts all over again,” she sobbed, flinging her head back.

Nina looked at the child in bewilderment. She had been sure that when Kitty was with her, her daughter would not be taken sick.

“Mommy’s here…. Mommy will make it better,” Nina said, holding Kitty close to her chest. “We’ll go to Feodosia and find you a doctor.”

“What’s the good of getting the girl to a doctor when her fool of a mother feeds her the devil only knows what?” retorted Gloria, pointing to an empty chocolate wrapper on the floor.

“Her father sent it,” Nina said. “Kitty loves sweet things…”

Gloria stamped her foot angrily. “If you had any sense, you’d have realized what the problem was long ago!”

Then she swept out, leaving the paraffin lamp on the chest.

Nina sat for a long time on Kitty’s bed, shaken to the core. So, this was the cause of Kitty’s illness: Klim had been giving her chocolate. Nina had heard that some people had a serious reaction to it.

Soon, however, Nina’s train of thought went off on a different tack. Now that she knew the secret of Kitty’s illness, she could use it to get Klim away from Galina. Nina could tell him that the child became ill when she was with his new lover, and he would believe it.

Nina heard the door creak and saw Gloria standing on the threshold.

“Here, take this,” the old woman said. “I’ve made a likeness of you.” She held out a pot decorated with eyes with handles for ears and curls around the top.

Nina looked inside the pot. There was a tiny mousetrap with a piece of sheep’s cheese.

“That’s what’s in your head at the moment,” said Gloria. “If you don’t like it, you can put something else inside.”

It is true, Nina realized, horrified. All she thought about, regarding Klim, were lures and traps. I wanted to deceive Klim and at Kitty’s expense. What kind of prize I am being a schemer like that?

Gloria was watching Nina’s face with amusement. “Have fun tonight,” she said, closing the door behind her.

Nina could not get to sleep. She was itching to do something, to make some momentous decision, and to act completely differently from now on.

She pondered for a long time what she might put into the pot as a symbol of her new life but had still not thought of anything when she began to doze off.

In the morning, she saw that Kitty had filled the pot with her spillikins.