Sanya Grigoryev Aleksandr Mikhajlov retrieves a mailbag from the river, left behind by a drowned postman. The letters inside are water-damaged and the addresses illegible, yet one sailor’s note captivates him so deeply that he commits it to memory. Dreaming of distant horizons, he runs away from home to see the world, but ends up in Petrograd as a street child.
In Petrograd, the young wanderer is taken in by Ivan Pavlovich Korablyov Bruno Frejndlikh, a patient teacher who places him in a communal school overseen by Nikolai Antonovich Tatarynov Leonid Gallis. Sanya forms a bond with Katya Tatarynova Olga Zabotkina, the daughter of the late Captain Ivan Lvovich Tatarynov, whose memory weighs heavily over the town. As Sanya pieces together the sailor’s letter, he discovers it belonged to Captain Ivan Lvovich Tatarynov, and learns that Nikolai played a central, troubling role in the expedition that ended in tragedy. The revelation sets off a chain of consequences: Maria Vasilievna Inna Kondratyeva, Ivan Lvovich’s widow and Nikolai’s wife, poisons herself, and Nikolai accuses Sanya of slander and tries to silence him. Undeterred, Sanya vows to uncover the truth and locate the missing expedition, driven by a stubborn belief in his own innocence.
After finishing school, Sanya grows into a capable polar aviator and marries Katya, weaving his personal dream with a harsher, real-world purpose. When World War II erupts, he goes to the front and, on a perilous mission, his damaged aircraft crash-lands at the last known campsite of Captain Tatarynov’s expedition. There, he uncovers the remains of the ill-fated journey and begins to piece together a broader history that had long been obscured. A public lecture delivered by a Soviet professor Konstantin Adashevsky lays out the expedition’s discoveries, the brutal fate that befell it, and Nikolai’s culpability, reframing the narrative that Sanya has chased for years.
As the war rages on, Sanya remains steadfast in service to his country, his loyalty never wavering. The search for truth becomes an intimate mission of reconciliation: he continues to defend the nation while the missing expedition’s shadows begin to fade, and finally, in the midst of upheaval and danger, he is drawn back to Katya—the woman who stood by him from childhood through the sieges and the long, arduous years that followed. In the end, the threads of memory and duty weave together, and Sanya and Katya facing an uncertain future find a quiet, hard-won connection that endures beyond the confines of the war.
