Two Captains

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"Awaiting your reply, I remain your obedient servant.

"I. Klimov, Navigating Officer."

The address had been washed away, but had obviously been written in

the same bold upright hand on the thick yellowed envelope.

This letter must have become for me something in the nature of a

prayer, for I used to repeat it every evening while waiting for my father

to come home.

He used to come in late from the wharf. The steamers arrived now

every day and took on cargoes, not of flax and grain as they used to do,

but of heavy cases containing cartridges and gun parts. Burly, thickset

and moustached, he used to come in wearing a cloth cap and tarpaulin

trousers. Mother would talk and talk, while he ate in silence, once in a

while clearing his throat or wiping his moustache. Then he would take

us children-my sister and me—and lie down to sleep. He smelt of hemp,

sometimes of apples or grain, and sometimes of rancid machine-oil, and