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“Some Coffee?”

“Yes.”

“Turkish?”

“Eh?”

“Turkish coffee,” the waitress crowed and flounced away between the tables.

“She’s nothing to write home about,” Kirpichenko consoled himself as he watched her go.

“Fuss about nothing!” he thought, wincing from his headache. “Fifty minutes left. Any moment they’ll be calling the flight and I’ll get the hell out of this place. Some town, I must say. What a dump. It’s no Moscow. There may be those who like it, but they can have it as far as I’m concerned. To hell with it! Maybe it’ll look different next time.”

He’d been doing some really hard drinking—not what you might call a real binge, but they’d got pretty tight. For three solid days. All on account of that swine Banin and his precious sister. They’d really messed him up, and all on his hard-earned roubles!

Kirpichenko had run across Banin three days earlier at the airfield in Yuzhny. He hadn’t even known they’d both got leave at the same time. He hadn’t really much time for him. At the lumber camp there’d always been a lot of fuss about him, with people shouting all the time: ‘Banin, Banin! Take your cue from Banin’—but Kirpichenko never took much notice of him. He knew the name, of course, and he knew who the fellow was—Banin, the electrician—but by and large he didn’t stand out in a crowd despite all the fuss kicked up about him on the big holidays. But a fat lot of use Banin was!

There were fellows at the lumber camp who did just as good a job as Banin—they could run circles around him—but the bosses are always the same: when they pick out one man and start a song-and-dance about him, there’s no reason for envying such a fellow, he’s fit only for pity. There was a fellow called Sinitsyn at Bayukly—drove a tractor like Kirpichenko. The journalists took to him and gave him the full treatment. At first he kept all the newspaper cuttings, but then he couldn’t stand it any longer and cleared out to Okha. But Banin didn’t mind and put up with it all. Neat little fellow he was, and always on his toes—seemed just an ordinary sort who kept very much to himself. Last year they brought 200 girls from the mainland to the cannery—seasonal workers to gut the fish. The boys went off to see them and were climbing on the truck, yelling and shouting . . . Then they saw Banin sitting in a corner inside as quiet as a mouse, there’d been neither sight nor sound from him.

“Oh, it’s Banin, for God’s sake,” they said.

At Yuzhny airfield Banin pounced on Kirpichenko as if he were his best friend. He was choking with delight, he shouted that he was terribly pleased, that he had this sister in Khabarovsk, and that she had some girl friends who were really quite something. He began to embroider the whole thing in detail till Kirpichenko started to feel dizzy. After the batch of girls had left the cannery, Valeri Kirpichenko had spent the whole winter without seeing more than two women—or rather two old bags: the one who kept the time-sheets and the cook.

In the plane Banin kept shouting to the crew:

“Hey there, you pilots! Shovel on a bit more coal!”

You could hardly recognize the fellow, what with all those wisecracks . . .

*  *  *  *  *

The house where this sister of Banin’s lived was almost buried in a snowdrift. The hump-backed street had obviously been cleared by special machines, but the piles of snow had not been taken away, and they almost hid the tiny cottages from view. It was as if the cottages were in a trench. In the crackling, frosty air there were blue columns of smoke above the chimneys, and aerials and poles with boxes for the starlings stuck out at all angles. It was just a country lane to look at. It was even difficult to believe that there was a trolley-bus route along the highway on the hill.

Kirpichenko had been a bit dazed back in the airport when he saw a long row of cars with green lights in front of a restaurant with a plate-glass wall; you could make out the prim dance-band through the frost patterns. In the shops on the main street he’d really let himself go. He pulled out green fifty-rouble notes, laughed loudly, shoved bottles into his pockets and swept up a whole armful of tinned goods. Banin was tickled pink and laughed even more than Kirpichenko, and just kept picking up cheeses and tinned goods, then he had a talk with one of the managers and took a lot of salami. Banin and Kirpichenko drove to the cottage in a taxi loaded with all kinds of food and bottles of Chechen-Ingush cognac. You might say they didn’t come to that sister of his empty-handed.

Kirpichenko went into the room, his shaggy fur hat touching the ceiling, put the stuff down on the white-quilted bed, straightened up, and caught sight of his red, thin, and cross-looking face in a mirror.

Larisa, Banin’s sister, who looked like a plump little nurse, was already unbuttoning his overcoat and saying:

“Any friends of my brother are friends of mine.”

Then she put on a coat and boots, and went outside.

Banin got busy with a corkscrew and knife while Kirpichenko looked around. The room was decently furnished with a sideboard and mirror, a chest-of-drawers and a radiogram. A picture of Voroshilov, taken before the war (without epaulets and with his marshal’s stars on the lapels), was hanging above the chest. Next to it was a framed certificate: “To First Class Marksman of the Guard for proficiency in military and political training. From the Administration of the North-Eastern Corrective Labour Camps.”

“Dad’s certificate,” Banin said.

“What, you mean he was a concentration-camp guard?”

“He was, but now he’s had it,” sighed Banin. “Dead.”

But he soon cheered up and started to play some records. They were nothing very new: ‘Rio Rita’, ‘The Black Sea Gull’, and some kind of French tune with three men singing in harmony as splendidly as if they’d been round the whole wide world and seen things you’d never see yourself.

Larisa came back with a girl friend called Toma. She started setting the table and kept running to and from the kitchen, bringing gherkins and mushrooms, while Toma sat in a corner, just sat there stock-still with her hands on her knees. Kirpichenko didn’t know how things would turn out with her and tried not to look at her, but every time he did look he felt dizzy.

“We’re caught in winter’s icy grip,
So now’s the time to have a nip,”

Banin said cheerfully, but he was nervous. “Supper is served, ladies and gentlemen.”

Kirpichenko was smoking long cigarettes called “Forty Years of the Soviet Ukraine” and blowing smoke-rings. Larisa was giggling and threading them on her little finger. It was stuffy in the low room. Kirpichenko’s feet had got damp in his felt boots and it was probably from them that the steam came. Banin danced with Toma, who didn’t say a word all evening. He was whispering something to her and she gave a smile without opening her mouth. She was a well-built girl with pink underwear showing through her nylon blouse. Before Kirpichenko’s eyes everything swam in dark orange circles—the walls, Voroshilov’s picture, the little porcelain elephants on the chest-of-drawers. The smoke rings he had blown were swirling about, and Larisa was making some sort of signs with her fingers.

Banin and Toma went into another room. The spring lock clicked quietly behind them.

“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed Larisa. “But why didn’t you dance, Valeri? You should have.”

The record ended and there was silence. Larisa looked at him, screwing up her slanting brown eyes. There were muffled squeals from the next room.

“You’ve got the bread and butter, Valeri,” Larisa sniggered. “But where’s the jam?” And Kirpichenko suddenly saw that she was getting on for thirty and that she had been around.

She came over to him and whispered: “Let’s dance.”

“But I’m wearing felt boots,” he said.

“Doesn’t matter, come on.”

He got up. She put on a record, and the three French boys struck up their chorus again in the room, which smelled of tomatoes and Chechen-Ingush cognac. They sang about how they had been round the whole wide world and seen things you would never see.

“Not that one,” Kirpichenko said hoarsely.

“Why not?” shouted Larisa. “It’s a real good record! Right in the groove!”

She started whirling round the room, with her skirt swishing around her legs. Kirpichenko took the record off and put on ‘Rio Rita’. Then he strode over to Larisa and seized her by the shoulders.

*  *  *  *  *

That’s what it’s always like when fingers stroke your neck in the dark, and it seems as if they’re the fingers of the moon, whatever cheap tart might be lying next to you . . . all the same, afterwards, when these fingers touch your neck . . . and you ought to send her packing . . . you think . . . but what don’t you think with the moon high up and looking like a broken egg-yolk through the frosted window? But it never does happen, and don’t kid yourself that it ever will. You’re already twenty-nine and you’ve had your ups and downs in this lovely life, but when there are fingers on your neck in the dark, you think it’s . . .

“When were you born?” the woman asked.

“In thirty-two.”

“You’re a driver, are you?”

“Yes.”

“Earn much?”

Valeri lit a match and saw her round face with its slanting brown eyes.

“Why do you want to know?”

*  *  *  *  *

Next morning Banin was shuffling about the room in warm Chinese underwear. He was squeezing gherkin juice into a glass and throwing the wrinkled skins into a dish. Toma sat in a corner, as neat and quiet as on the night before. After breakfast she and Larisa went off to work.

“Proper good time we had, eh, Valeri?” said Banin with a fawning laugh. “OK then, let’s go to the cinema.”

They saw three films in a row and then called at the store, where Kirpichenko really let rip again. He kept pulling out red banknotes and piling cheeses and provisions into Banin’s arms.

It had gone on like this for three days and nights, but this morning, after the girls had left, Banin had suddenly said:

“So you’re one of the family now, Valeri?”

Kirpichenko choked on the gherkin juice he was drinking for his hangover.

“Wha-at!”

“What do you mean, ‘what’?” Banin yelled. “Do you sleep with that sister of mine or don’t you? Come on, tell me when we’re going to celebrate the wedding, or else I’ll report you—for immoral behaviour—see what I mean?

From right across the table Kirpichenko hit him on the side of the face. Banin went crashing into a corner, jumped up straight away and picked up a chair.

“You bastard!” Kirpichenko snarled and went towards him. “Think I’m going to marry the first slut that comes along . . .”

“You concentration-camp rat!” screamed Banin. “Jail bird!” And he threw the chair at him.

And now Kirpichenko really showed him what was what. Banin snatched up his sheepskin coat and rushed outside. Kirpichenko’s teeth were chattering, he was so furious and upset. He dragged out his suitcase, threw his belongings into it, put on his raincoat and his fur overcoat on top of that, pulled out of his pocket a photograph of himself (wearing a tie and his very best cowboy-style shirt), quickly wrote on it ‘To Larisa, in fond memory’, put it on the pillow in Larisa’s room—and left the house. In the yard Banin, spluttering and cursing, was untying a savage dog. Kirpichenko kicked the dog away and went out through the gate . . .

*  *  *  *  *

“Well, how do you like the coffee?”’ the waitress asked.

“Not bad, it’s working,” sighed Kirpichenko, and patted her hand.

“Take it easy,” smiled the waitress.

Then their flight was called and it was time for the passengers to take their seats.

Light-heartedly Kirpichenko marched towards the airfield with long, powerful strides. ‘Onward, onward, ever onward!’ he thought. What’s the point of getting leave once in a month of Sundays if you spend it stuck in a shack on a diet of mushrooms and cheese? There are fellows who spend their whole holiday stuck in that kind of cottage, but he wasn’t that stupid. He’d go to Moscow, buy three suits and a pair of Czech shoes in the State Universal Stores, then on, on to the Black Sea—where he’d eat Crimean pastries and lounge around in beach pyjamas.

At that moment he seemed to see himself through someone else’s eyes—big and strong, in an overcoat with a fur coat on top, in a muskrat hat and fur boots, striding along like nobody’s business. A woman he’d had an affair with a couple of years ago said he had a face like a Red Indian Chief. She was the leader of a geological expedition, of all things. She was a good girl, this Anna Petrovna, a university lecturer or something of the sort. She wrote him letters and he wrote back: ‘Greetings, dear Anna Petrovna! The writer of these lines is your old friend Valeri Kirpichenko . . .’ all kinds of fancy things like that.

A big crowd of passengers had already gathered by the turnstiles. Not far away Larisa was hopping around. Her face was white with a touch of blue, her lips were bright red, and the brooch on her collar, shaped like a running stag, looked terribly stupid.

“What did you come for?” asked Kirpichenko.

“T-to see you off,” Larisa could hardly get the words out.

“Oh, cut it out,” he said. “You and your darling brother messed me up for three days . . . That’s fine, but don’t try on any of that love stuff.”

Larisa burst into tears and Valeri got scared.

“Now, now, don’t take on . . .”

“All right,” she snivelled. “All right, so that’s the way it was . . . OK . . . I know what you think of me . . . and you’re right . . . But can’t I love you if I want to?”

“Cut it out.”

“No, I won’t, I won’t!” Larisa almost shouted. “Valeri, you . . .” She came up close to him. “You’re not like the others . . .”

“I’m just the same as everyone else, except that perhaps . . .” And Kirpichenko slowly stretched his lips in a smile.

Larisa turned away and began crying even more. Her pitiful little body was shaking all over.

“Now, now, don’t take on . . .” Kirpichenko said. He was very upset and he stroked her shoulder.

Then the crowd began moving on to the runway. Kirpichenko left without looking back. He was thinking that he felt sorry for Larisa and that he’d come to feel at home with her, though actually that was something which happened to him with any girl on account of his idiotic character. Afterwards he always forgot and everything went back to normal. Back to normal, and that was that.

He walked among the crowd of passengers, gazing at the huge aeroplane gleaming in the sunlight, and very soon he forgot everything—the horror of his three days’ stay here and those fingers on his neck. He wasn’t for sale at that price. That’s the way it always has been. He couldn’t be bought and he couldn’t be broken. He hadn’t only had to do with tarts, he’d had some really fine women too. That university lecturer, for instance, was a real honey. They’d all fallen for him, and Valeri knew that this was brought about not by his cruelty, but by something else—perhaps because he didn’t talk much, perhaps because each woman wanted to be something special to him, or because they could obviously sense that he was like a blind man groping his way in the dark. But he always said to himself: ‘You won’t catch me with these little tricks. You won’t break me down. The thing’s happened and it’s over. And we’re back to normal. Back to normal again.’

*  *  *  *  *

The aeroplane was terrifyingly huge. It was as huge and heavy as a warship. Kirpichenko had never flown in such a plane before, and this one simply took his breath away. The thing he really liked was machinery. He climbed up a high gangway. An air hostess in a dark blue uniform and cap looked at his ticket and told him where his seat was. The seat was up front, but there was some character already sitting in it, a fellow with spectacles and a cloth cap.

“Game on, beat it,” said Kirpichenko quickly, showing his ticket to the man in spectacles.

“Couldn’t you take my seat?” the man asked. “I get sick at the back.”

“Clear out, I tell you,” Kirpichenko barked at him.

“You might be more polite,” said the man in spectacles, looking hurt. For some reason he didn’t get up.

Kirpichenko yanked the man’s hat off and threw it right back towards where he should have been sitting. What he meant was—and he couldn’t have made it clearer—”Next time, take the seat marked on your ticket.”

“Hey, Why are you making trouble?” the air hostess asked.

“Take it easy,” Kirpichenko said.

Completely nonplussed, the man in spectacles went to find his hat, and Kirpichenko sat down in his proper seat.

He took off his overcoat and put it at his feet, to stake out his claim, so to speak.

The passengers were coming into the plane one by one, there seemed to be no end of them. Inside light music was playing. Sunlight was pouring in through the door. The air hostesses were bustling up and down the aisle, all of them wore the same kind of blue uniform, and they had long legs and high-heeled shoes. Kirpichenko read the newspaper. Stuff about disarmament and Berlin, about preparations for the football championship in Chile, and the way to preserve the snow-cover for winter crops.

Some peasant woman with a shawl round her took the seat by the window, and a rosy-checked sailor took the place next to Kirpichenko. He kept making jokes:

“Made your will, lady . . . ?” And he shouted at the stewardess. “Miss, who do we hand our wills to?”

Funny how Kirpichenko was always running into these jokers!

At last the door was slammed and a red notice came on: ‘No smoking. Fasten your seat-belts,’ together with something in English which might have been the same thing or something else. It could have been the opposite: ‘Please smoke. You need not fasten your seat-belts.’ Kirpichenko didn’t know English.

A woman’s voice spoke through the loudspeaker:

“May I have your attention, please! Your Captain welcomes passengers aboard the Soviet airliner TU 114. Our giant aircraft is bound from Khabarovsk to Moscow. We will be cruising at an altitude of 30,000 feet at a speed of 440 miles an hour. Our flying time will be eight hours, thirty minutes. Thank you for your attention.” Then she said some gibberish in English.

“That’s the stuff,” Kirpichenko said with satisfaction, and winked at the sailor. “Everything shipshape.”

“What d’you expect?” said the sailor, just as if the aircraft was his own property and as if he’d laid on the whole thing—the announcements in two languages and all the other stuff.

The plane taxied out for the take-off. The peasant woman was tense in her seat. The airport buildings floated past the window.

“May I have your coat?” the air-hostess asked.

It was the same girl who had ticked him off. He looked at her and went all faint. She was smiling. Her smiling face was bending over him, and her hair—it was dark, no, you couldn’t say it was black—it was dark and must be soft. It was neatly done up and looked like fur, fleece, or nylon—like all the treasures in the world. Her fingers touched the sheepskin of his coat, and he’d never seen fingers like that before. Well, he had seen such things in the magazines, but you never got all this together, with such a smile and the voice of the greatest woman in the world. No, such things didn’t happen.

“See how she took my coat?” Kirpichenko said to the sailor with a silly smile on his face. The sailor winked back and said proudly:

“They know their stuff, eh?”

She came back and picked up the peasant woman’s short fur coat, the sailor’s leather jacket and Kirpichenko’s other coat. She pressed the whole lot to that wonderful body of hers and said:

“Fasten your seat-belts, comrades.”

The engines roared. The peasant woman almost had a fit and crossed herself on the sly. The sailor mimicked her and looked out of the corner of his eye to see if Kirpichenko was laughing. But he was craning his neck and watching that girl. Then she came back with a tray and gave everyone sweets, or maybe they weren’t sweets, but heart pills—or nuggets of gold, for all he knew. Then, when they were airborne, she brought round soft drinks and mineral water, the kind of water which flows only in the highest and purest waterfalls. Then she vanished.

“Play cards?” asked the sailor. “We might get up a game.”

The red sign went out and Kirpichenko knew it was all right to smoke. He got up and went right up front—into a cubby-hole behind a curtain. Clouds of steam were pouring out of it already.

“Here is some information about our flight,” said a voice on the loudspeaker. “Altitude: 30,000 feet. Speed: 470 miles an hour. Air temperature outside: —58°C. Thank you for your attention.”

Far below a rocky wasteland floated past. It even made Kirpichenko shudder to think that in the icy air way above the cruel, bare earth, this metal cigar was sailing along, full of human warmth, politeness, cigarette smoke, muffled talk and laughter, jokes (the kind you wouldn’t tell your sister), mineral water, drops from a waterfall in some fertile region—while he was sitting here and smoking, and somewhere in the tail or maybe in the middle of the plane, there was a woman of the kind that doesn’t really exist, the kind that’s as far away from you as the moon.

*  *  *  *  *

He started thinking about his life and remembering things. He’d never done this before, except when he was spinning some yarn or other to the boys. But now he thought all of a sudden: ‘My fourth trip right across the country, and the first at my own expense. Terrific!’

All his previous trips had been paid for by the Government. In 1939, when Valeri was still a kid, all the members of their kolkhoz in Stavropol suddenly expressed their wish to be transferred to the Far Eastern Coastal Region. The journey had taken a long time. He remembered a little of it—sour milk and sour cabbage soup, with his mother washing clothes in a corner of the railway truck, and hanging them out of the window to dry; they flapped like flags out there and then froze stiff and banged against the side of the train, while he sang: “Pilots sit in the sky, as their aeroplanes fly, and look down on the earth from on high . . .” His mother had died during the war, and his father was killed in action in the Kuriles in 1945. Valeri got seven years of schooling in an orphanage and was then trained as an apprentice in a factory school. After that he worked in a mine, and dug coal for the good old motherland. In 1950 he was called up and they sent him right across the country again—to the Baltic Coast this time. They trained him as a driver in the Army, and when he was demobbed he went to Novorossiisk with a pal. A year after that he was arrested. Some bastard had been pinching spare parts from the garage where he worked, but the cops didn’t waste their time on the business and they picked on him as the ‘materially responsible person’. He got three years, and they sent him to Sakhalin. He spent a year and a half in a camp and was then let out for good conduct. After that he was cleared and given a full pardon. Ever since then he had worked in the lumber camp. He liked the work and the money was good. All he had to do was tow trailers up to the top of a mountain and then bring them down the other side with all the brakes on, drink hard liquor, go to the films, and, in summer, to dances with the girls at the cannery. He lived in a hostel. He’d lived all his life in hostels, barracks, and dormitories. Nothing but bunks, single-decker and double-decker, plank beds, benches . . . He had no friends but plenty of ‘pals’. People were a bit scared of him and thought twice before they fooled around with him. He’d give you a black eye as soon as look at you. And he was very good at his job. He loved machines, and remembered the things he’d driven as other people remember their friends. There was ‘Ivan Willis’ (his jeep in the Army), then a haulage truck, then a one-and-a-half tonner, a Tatra, and the Diesel he had now . . . In the towns out there—like Yuzhny, Sakhalinsk, Poronaisk, or Korsakov—he sometimes stopped on a corner and looked up at the windows of the new blocks of flats, at all the posh standard lamps and window-curtains, and it worried him sometimes. He never thought of his age, and had only recently realized that he’d be thirty in a few months’ time. In Moscow he would buy himself three suits and a green hat, and go down south like one of those big-shots with briefcases. He had travellers’ cheques sewn into his underpants—all the cash in the world. He’d have lots of fun down there. It would really be something.

*  *  *  *  *

He got up and went to look for that girl. Where had she gone to? The passengers were all dying for a drink and there she was standing and jabbering in English to some capitalist.

She was chatting with her eyes all screwed up and smiling, and it looked as if she liked gossiping in English. The capitalist was standing right by her. He was tall and scraggy and his hair was close-cropped and grey, though he was quite young. His jacket was undone and there was a thin gold chain running from his belt to a pocket. He had a booming voice, and the words rattled in his mouth as if they were banging into his teeth. Kirpichenko knew all about this kind of small talk:

HE: Let’s go to San Francisco and drink whisky, my dear.

SHE: You are going a little too far, sir.

HE: In Singapore, with all those banana and lemon trees. . . Understand?

SHE: Do you really mean it? With the banana trees bending in the breeze?

HE: Then we go up to the hundred-and-second storey, and there’s boogie-woogie and jazz.

Kirpichenko went up and jogged the capitalist with his shoulder. The capitalist was taken aback and said: “I am sorry.” By which he meant, of course: “Watch out, young fellow, or you’ll get it.”

“Take it easy,” said Kirpichenko. “Peace and friendship, and all that.”

(He knew his politics.)

The capitalist said something to her over Kirpichenko’s head. It sounded like: “Take your choice. It’s either him or me: Vladivostok or San Francisco.”

And she said with a smile: “I know this comrade, and you leave me alone. I am a Soviet woman.”

“What do you want, comrade?” she asked Kirpichenko.

“My throat’s sort of dry,” he said. “Got anything I can drink?”

“Come this way,” she said, and went ahead, as frisky as a lamb. Like something in the films, she was, like a dream. God, how he’d longed for her while he’d been smoking up front there.

She walked ahead like something out of this world, and took him to a kind of buffet, or it might have been her own home, where there was no one else, and where the tall sun shone with quiet fury through a porthole, or perhaps through a window on the eighth floor of a new block of flats. She picked up a bottle and poured the bubbling liquid into a tumbler. She picked up the glass and it blazed with light in the sun. And he looked at the girl, and he wanted to have a kid by her, but he couldn’t even imagine doing to her what people do when they want to have children; it was the first time this had happened, and he was suddenly warmed by an unexpected glow of happiness.

“What’s your name?” he asked, with the same feeling he always had coming down the mountainside on his tractor—a mixture of fear and a feeling that the worst was over.

“Tanya,” she answered.

“And I’m Kirpichenko . . . Valeri,” he said, and held out his hand.

She gave him her fingers, and smiled.

“You’re not the shy sort,” she said.

“A bit,” he said, feeling crushed.

For a few seconds they looked at each other without speaking. She felt like bursting out laughing. She was trying not to, and so was he, but he couldn’t keep it up and smiled as he had surely never done in his life before.

Then someone called her, and she ran down the steps to the lower deck of the plane.

Kirpichenko turned, and saw his smiling face in a mirror. ‘What a face,’ he thought. ‘Pretty grim—like a real thug. But she doesn’t seem to worry. I’m sure she’s not scared a bit.’

He started back down the aisle and saw the fellow with the specs who’d tried to take his seat. He was lying back with his eyes closed. He had a handsome face, just as if it was cut out of marble.

“Listen, fellow,” said Kirpichenko, prodding his shoulder. “Take my place if you like.”

He opened his eyes and smiled faintly. “Thanks, I’m all right where I am . . .”

Perhaps it wasn’t the man’s first flight in this kind of plane, and he’d taken the seat up front so he could watch the door opening into the cabin and see the members of the crew combing their hair, smoking, laughing, reading newspapers, and taking an occasional look at the instruments.

Tanya began serving dinner. She gave Valeri his tray and looked at him as if he was an old friend.

“Where d’you live, Tanya?” he asked.

“In Moscow,” she answered, and went off.

Kirpichenko ate, and kept thinking that his steak was thicker than other people’s, that his apple was larger, and that she had given him more bread. Then she brought tea.

“So you come from Moscow?” he asked again.

“Yes,” she said brightly, and went off.

“You’re wasting your time, pal,” the sailor said with a grin. “I bet she’s got some smart boy friend waiting for her in Moscow.”

“Don’t worry,” said Kirpichenko with a feeling of his own well-being and happiness.

But flights like this don’t last forever, and aeroplanes have a habit of coming down from their lofty heights. A stewardess’s tour of duty comes to an end, too, and she finishes all the little chores that go with it. She hands back your coat with her frail little hands and her eyes begin to wander. And everything slowly runs down, like clockwork in a toy, and goes as flat and stale as the girl in the magazine with that ad: ‘AEROFLOT, YOUR AIR TRAVEL AGENT’—a real marvel with painted nails, high-heeled shoes, and a smart hair-do all thrown in.

But no, nothing was running down and nothing was going flat, though they were already taxi-ing along the ground . . .

Now there was a great hustle and bustle, but the girl in the blue cap wasn’t there any more.

“Don’t get in the way, comrade . . .”

“Get a move on there . . .”

“Here she is, boys, it’s Moscow . . .”

“Moscow, here we come! . . .”

“Oh, come on, for Christ’s sake . . .”

Still not grasping what was happening to him, Kirpichenko left the plane with the sailor, went down the steps and got into a bus. The bus drove over to the airport building and the ‘Soviet Liner TU 114, Giant of the Air,’ that flying fortress of his dreams, quickly vanished from his sight.

*  *  *  *  *

The taxi sped along a broad highway with two traffic lanes. Lorries, vans, and tip-up trucks hugged the side of the road, while passenger vehicles raced along at top speed and over-took them so quickly they might have been standing still. Then Kirpichenko and the sailor caught sight of the pinkish, thousand-eyed apartment blocks of the south-western suburb. The sailor fidgeted in his seat and put his hand on Valeri’s shoulder.

“The big city! What do you think?”

“Listen, does that plane fly back now?” Kirpichenko asked.

“Of course. They’ll be off tomorrow.”

“With the same crew?”

The sailor gave a mocking whistle.

“Come off it! She’s just one of those posh modern girls. There’s millions like that in Moscow. No need to go off your rocker.”

“I was only just wondering,” mumbled Kirpichenko.

“Where to, boys?” asked the driver.

“Take us to the State Stores in Red Square,” Kirpichenko blurted out and at once forgot all about the plane.

At the stores he bought three suits straight off—blue, grey, and brown. He kept the brown suit on, and taking his old one, which had been made four years previously by a tailor in Sakhalin, rolled it up in a bundle and left it in a lavatory.

The sailor got himself some gabardine for a macintosh and said he would have it made in Odessa. They drank a bottle of champagne apiece in a food shop and did a tour of the Kremlin. Then they went and dined in the National Hotel and ate something with a fancy name—Julienne or something—and drank Georgian wine. There were a lot of girls here who looked like Tanya. Maybe Tanya had been here even. She might have been sitting at their table now and pouring him mineral water, and going off to the kitchen all the time to see how they were getting on with his steak. At any rate, the capitalist from the plane was here. Kirpichenko waved to him, and he stood up and bowed. Then they went out in the street and drank another bottle of champagne each. In Gorky Street, Tanya was all over the place. She skipped in and out of trolley-buses, and ran into shops. She strolled with the teddy boys on the other side of the street, or else smiled from shop windows. Gripping each other firmly by the arm, Kirpichenko and the sailor walked up Gorky Street and smiled. The sailor began humming:

“Madagascar, land of my birth . . .”

It was already dusk, but the lights were not yet on. At the end of the street, on the edge of the world, there was a glow of springtime. Yes, here was the land of dreams come true. They wondered why the girls shied away from them.

Later on they found there were queues for every place that was open, and they couldn’t get in anywhere. They began to think about where to spend the night, so they hailed a cab and went to Vnukovo Airport. They took a room with two bunks in the airport hotel: the moment he set eyes on the white sheets, Kirpichenko realized how tired he was. He tore off his new suit and flopped down on the bed.

An hour later he was woken up by the sailor who was rushing round the room, scraping his cheeks with a ‘Sputnik’ shaver and chortling:

“Get up, Val! I’ve just got hold of some girls, oh boy! . . . Get up, and let’s go! They live right here in the hotel. This is the real thing, believe me, I’ve got a feel for these things . . . Come on, out of bed! Ma—da-gascar . . .”

“Stop clucking around like a hen on a new-laid egg!” said Kirpichenko, taking a cigarette from the bedside-table and lighting it.

“Are you coming or aren’t you?” asked the sailor from the doorway.

“Put the lights out,” Kirpichenko said.

The lights went out, and straightaway the moonlit square of the window was outlined against the wall, criss-crossed by the lattice and the swaying shadows of bare branches. It was quiet, apart from a gramophone playing somewhere far away: on the other side of the wall someone asked “Who’s got the six?” and banged on the table with a domino. Then a plane roared past as it came in to land. Kirpichenko smoked and imagined her lying beside him, both of them lying together afterwards, with her fingers stroking his neck. It all seemed to be real and not just make-believe, because everything he hadn’t understood in his childhood and his youth—the Siberian hillocks standing out in the pink light of dawn, and melting snow, and tiredness after work, and Saturday and Sunday morning—all of these things were Tanya.

‘What a business,’ he thought, and once again that feeling of well-being and happiness came over him. He was glad that this had happened to him. He was scared of only one thing—that a hundred years would pass and he would forget her face and voice.

The sailor came into the room quietly. He undressed and lay down, took a cigarette from the bedside-table, lit up and sang sadly:

“Madagascar, land of my birth, Spring comes like everywhere on earth . . . Oh, damn,” he went on angrily. “What a life! Here today and gone tomorrow . . .”

“How long have you been at sea?” asked Kirpichenko.

“Since ‘fifty-seven,” the sailor answered, and started singing again:

“Madagascar, land of my birth,
Spring comes like everywhere on earth,
We are people, like everyone,
We can love, just like you—
Our skin is black, but our blood is red and true . . .”

“Write down the words for me,” Kirpichenko asked him.

They turned on the light and the sailor gave him the words of this wonderful song. He liked that kind of song very much.

*  *  *  *  *

Next day they took their tickets to be endorsed, so that Kirpichenko could go on to Sochi and the sailor to Odessa. They had breakfast. Kirpichenko bought a book by Chekhov, and a magazine at a news-stand.

“Tell you what,” the sailor said. “My girl has a nice little friend. How about taking a trip into town with them?”

Kirpichenko sat down in a chair and opened his book.

“No, no,” he said. “You two go off, and I’ll sit around here for a bit and read this stuff.”

The sailor semaphored a naval signal: Message received. Good luck. Am setting course.

Kirpichenko loafed around the airport all day, but didn’t see Tanya. In the evening he saw the sailor off on the flight to Odessa—and they drank a bottle of champagne each. Then he walked the sailor’s girl friend to the hostel, went back to the airport ticket office and bought a ticket for the giant TU 114, flight number 901, Moscow to Khabarovsk.

Inside the plane everything was just the same—the signs in two languages and all the rest, but there was no Tanya. It was a different crew. There were some girls like Tanya, every bit as young and pretty, but none of them was in her class. After Tanya this lot came nowhere.

Next morning Kirpichenko was back in Khabarovsk, and an hour later he left for Moscow again in a different plane. But Tanya wasn’t on this one either.

So he flew to and fro between Moscow and Khabarovsk, at a height of 30,000 feet and at 470 miles an hour. The air temperature outside varied from -50 to -60°C. All instruments functioned normally.

By now he knew almost all the stewardesses and quite a few of the pilots on this line by sight; he was afraid they might remember him too.

He thought he might be taken for a spy . . .

He kept changing his suits. He’d do one trip in the blue one, another in the brown, and a third in the grey.

He slit open his underpants, took out his travellers’ cheques and put them in the pocket of his coat. They were going fast.

And still there was no sign of Tanya.

There was a fierce sun high up, rising and setting above a snowy wilderness of cloud. There was a moon, which seemed not far away, and in fact it wasn’t very far off.

For a while he lost all track of time and space and he stopped re-setting his watch. Khabarovsk seemed like a Moscow suburb, and Moscow seemed like a new district of Khabarovsk.

He read a great deal. He’d never read so much in his life.
He’d never thought so much in his life.
He’d never cried so much in his life.
He’d never had such a wonderful holiday in his life.

Spring was beginning in Moscow. Drops from those same high and pure waterfalls dripped down his neck. He bought a grey scarf with a large check pattern.

Just in case they might meet, he had ot a present ready for Tanya—a box of perfume called The First of May and a length of cloth for a dress.

*  *  *  *  *

I ran across him in the Khabarovsk airport building. He was sitting in an armchair with his legs crossed, reading Stanyukovich. A string bag full of oranges was hanging on the arm of the chair. The cover of the book showed a clipper scudding along in a storm with billowing sails.

“You a sailor by any chance?” he asked, after a look at my leather jacket.

“No.”

I stared at his strange, awesome face. He read a bit more and then asked another question:

“Are you sorry you’re not a sailor?”

“Of course I am,” I said.

“So am I,” he said with a laugh. “I’ve got a friend who’s a sailor. Here’s a cable he sent me from sea.”

He showed me the cable.

“Aha,” I said.

Then he asked me:

“When were you born?”

“In thirty-two,” I answered.

He beamed all over his face:

“That means we’re the same age, you and me.”

It really was a tremendous coincidence and I shook him by the hand.

“I bet you live in Moscow, don’t you?” he said.

“You’re right,” I answered. “Moscow it is.”

“I bet you’ve got a flat, haven’t you? And a wife and kid and all that?”

“Right again. Just as you say.”

“What do you say we go and have a meal?”

I was on the point of going with him, but at that moment my flight was called. I was going to Petropavlovsk. We swapped addresses, and I moved off towards the plane. I walked over the airfield, hunched up in the wind and rain and thinking what an odd character he was.

Meanwhile he looked at his watch, picked up his string bag and went out. He took a taxi into town. Both he and the driver had trouble finding that hump-backed country lane because he couldn’t remember the name of it. All the houses in this lane looked the same, and there were great big dogs barking in all the yards. He felt a bit lost. In the end he remembered where the place was. He got out of the taxi, hung his string bag with the oranges on the fence, covered it up with a newspaper to stop neighbours or passers-by from pinching his treasure, and went back to the taxi.

“Step on it, big boy! I don’t want to miss the plane.”

“Where are you off to?” asked the driver.

‘To Moscow, to the capital city.’

He saw Tanya two days later at Khabarovsk airport, when he was already on his way back to Sakhalin, when his travellers’ cheques were already spent and he had only a few red banknotes left in his pocket. She was wearing a white fur coat with a belt round her waist. She was laughing and eating sweets out of a bag, and giving them to some other girls who were also laughing. He felt weak at the knees and sat down on his suitcase. He watched Tanya unwrap the sweets like the other girls; he couldn’t understand why they were all standing there and laughing, not, going anywhere.” Then he saw that spring had arrived, that it was a spring night, with the moon over the airfield looking like an orange. It wasn’t cold now and you could just stand like this and watch the lights and dream for a moment with a sweet in your mouth . . .

“What’s up with you, Kirpichenko?” A friend of his from Sakhalin called Manevich, also on his way back from leave, touched him on the shoulder. “Come on! They’re calling our flight.”

Manevich, do you know how many miles it is to the moon?” Kirpichenko asked.

“Sounds as if you’ve been overdoing things a bit while you were away,” said Manevich peevishly and started to walk off.

Kirpichenko grabbed him by the coat tail.

“But you’re a specialist, Manevich,” he begged, looking over towards Tanya. “You must know, dammit . . .”

“Well, it’s about 186,000,” said Manevich, pulling himself free.

“Not far,” thought Kirpichenko. “Nothing to it.” He looked at Tanya and thought how he would remember her when he went up that mountain on his tractor, and how he would forget her at the top—there were too many things to think of there. He would remember her again later at the end of the way down. He would remember her all evening and all night. He would wake up in the morning with thoughts of her.

Then he got up from his suitcase.