Elvira Baryakina - The Prince of the Soviets

“How are you getting on in the search for Nobile?” Nina had written. “We are fine. We are swimming and sunbathing.”

Klim had answered in a similar tone: “The pilot Chukhnovsky has spotted some people stranded on an ice floe. Do you have enough food? Is Kitty well?”

There was not a trace of affection in these messages. Once, Nina had written to him, “Please come soon! We miss you!” But Klim had just ignored her appeal.

1 ^{BOOK OF THE DEAD}

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.

2

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.”

3

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?

4

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.”

5

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.