I remember well those days in the fall of 1958. The news that I was going with other Soviet master's candidates and students to do research in the United States excited me greatly; I was happy to get an opportunity to see the country where the famous author had lived and struggled. I was a member of the first group of twenty students in a cultural exchange program between American and Soviet governments.

Finally, the 26 hours of exhausting flight were over; also in the past was the hotel on Broadway in New York City and the sleepless night caused by the jet lag. The time in San Francisco is eleven hours behind Moscow time. Annoying reporters from radio, newspapers, and television were finally gone, too. However, before they left, they enthusiastically announced to the people of the United States that a number of young Soviet citizens, not diplomats, would be living in this country, and that eight of them—almost half of the entire delegation—would be living in California.

We arrived in California, the "Golden State," as Americans called it, where there is no winter and the trees always stay green, the place where the best fruits in America are grown and where the best American wine is made. We would be studying at Berkeley, a small city, with scattered two-story houses along the slopes of picturesque hills, in the university where Jack London himself studied. He was born in San Francisco, which was visible on the other side of the bay; he spent his childhood and youth in Oakland, which has since spread out and almost merged with Berkeley, so it is impossible to discern where one city ends and the other starts. It was here that he was "the oyster pirate," and it was from this place that he had left for his voyage around the world. Fifty miles away is the Valley of the Moon, the place where he wrote many of his books; that's where he lived and where he died.

At the end of last century, San Francisco was a rapidly growing but still provincial town. Market Street divided it into two parts. To the North of Market Street, there were bank buildings, well-to-do companies, luxurious stores, theaters, and houses of wealthy people. To the South there were factories, laundries, taverns, gloomy dens, and housing for the poor. Here, in one of the poor districts, in the house on the corner of Third and Bryant Street, on January 12, 1876, a boy was born to the music teacher Flora Wellman; the boy that would become the famous writer, Jack London.

San Francisco is located on a peninsula, on the coast of the bay, safely hidden from the storms of the troublesome ocean. Numerous towns are scattered along the coast. In the quest for a better life, the Londons were constantly migrating along the coast until they finally settled in Oakland.

After classes, I wandered along the streets of Oakland. For a long time I stood on the square in front of the writer's bust, recently erected near an oak tree which had been planted in his memory by admirers of his talent. I sat on the shore of Lake Merritt, which used to be a place for out-of-town walks, but now is located right downtown. Along the waters of this lake, Jack had been rowing in a boat with his first love, dark-haired Haydee. Here were the lovely green hills of Berkeley. I wondered how many weekends London had spent there! San Francisco can be clearly seen from there as well as the Golden Gate Strait and the tiny island in the bay, Alcatraz, which was once used as a prison.

Telegraph Avenue was where the young writer lived and quickly achieved recognition. And there was the port of Oakland. There, near the shore, Jack spent his childhood; he ran barefoot with his friends, and taught his dog Rollo funny tricks. From this very place, in order to taste all the joy of an independent journey, he sailed away on the boat that he bought with his first earned money. It was there, in the port of Oakland, that he met many of his heroes. Among them, perhaps, was a model for Wolf Larsen — the cruel captain of the ship Ghost, from the novel The Sea-Wolf. The first thing I wanted to do when I traced London's steps to find the houses in which the writer once lived. I use the word "houses" intentionally. Depending on income, the Londons had to change their place of living quite frequently. Oftentimes, he was hungry. As he wrote in a letter dated November 30, 1898: "Meat, I was that hungry for it I once opened a girl's basket and stole a piece of meat — a little piece the size of my two fingers. I ate it but I never repeated it."

I probably could not have found these houses on my own. There were no memorial signs. The city had grown, most of the old buildings were torn down, and those that were left untouched had changed their numbers. An old citizen of Oakland, a member of the Bohemian Club, helped me. Henry Perry, a thin, gray-haired man with awkward, quick gestures personally knew Jack London. We managed to find the first place that was on our list but we were about ten years too late. The historic building has been destroyed. As Henry walked quickly along the streets of Oakland, he made gestures of distress with his hands, shrugged his shoulders, and pointed out a place where this or that house had existed. From the eight addresses that we had, only three of the houses were actually still standing. The house in which the London family lived in 1893 presented a special interest. Having just come back from his first sea journey, seventeen-year-old Jack, following the advice of his mother, spent two nights in the back room of this plain wooden cottage, writing his first work, "Typhoon Off the Coast of Japan." The story was submitted to the San Francisco Call, and got the first prize. On that day, Jack London believed in his calling for the first time, since he, an uneducated boy from the streets, surpassed even the students of Stanford and U-C Berkeley, who shared the second and the third places. However, it took him more than five years to make his dream come true and become a writer.

Mr. Perry and I came upon an old saloon. This small, sunken wooden building was the only structure on the shore that remained from London's times. The ground around it was covered with a thick layer of bottle caps. No one made an effort to remove them, and time had ravaged these mute witnesses of the past.

Here was the gathering place of the stevedores and sailors, who came back from long journeys, imbued to their bones with sea salt and full of marvelous legends. Once in a while, there were journalists and cab drivers as well. This saloon had a name: "First and Last Chance." Also at this location began the bridge to Alameda Island, where the ocean ships landed, explained Mr. Perry. It was the first and the last chance to get a drink.

Mr. Perry worked as a newsboy at the time, around 1898. He remembers how, having come back from Alaska, Jack used to come here often and tell his old friends about the Yukon. Also, Martin Egan, from the Philippines, liked to come over to the saloon and tell his own stories.

He and Jack used to compete in strength, even though Martin was much broader in the shoulders than Jack. Jack would give his name to one of the heroes of his novels, but Egan strongly opposed that idea. Therefore, in the novel Martin Eden, London changed the last name from Egan to Eden.

Mr. Perry sang a lovely song that someone composed for Jack London and later sent me the words of that song as well as Jack's letter to his uncle with the part from a previously unknown story. I wanted to find some more people who remembered the outstanding writer. However, I did not know where to begin. I knew that London's second wife, Charmian, had died, so I set out to contact Joan, the elder daughter from his first marriage. On my inquiries as to her whereabouts, all I could discover was that she lived somewhere near Oakland. However, no one knew her exact address. I was lucky, though.

After it was announced in the newspapers and on the radio that one of the Soviet researchers would be studying the work of the famous Californian Jack London, I received dozens of letters and telephone calls. Once I received a call from Mr. Albert Norman, a distant relative of Jack London. He said he knew the daughter of the writer, Joan, and would be happy to take me to meet her. Several days later, Mr. Norman and I rushed through the Berkeley Hills to the Northeast of Oakland, to a small town called Concord.

Jack London's daughter had dark-gray eyes and black hair. Her forehead and the entire upper part of her face were just like her father's. She was about 50 years old, a youthful and attractive woman. Joan told us she had begun writing a new book about her father. Her first book was historical—literary research. This new one would be a memoir. She was convinced that this second book would be more objective than the first, which she considered to be too harsh on her father. Joan said that Jack's father, astrologer Chaney, left Jack's mother before his son was born. And his mother, Joan's grandmother, was not a good mother. Jack's childhood lacked love.

Her voice trembled. Joan stopped to think for a while, looking off to the side and upward.

"He loved life. . . he gave his whole essence to life," she added.

"What novels do you like most of all?" I inquired.

"Martin Eden, The Iron Heel, and The Valley of the Moon I consider most important among his big works," replied Joan. The Star Rover, for example, marks an important period in his life. One of the prisoners of San Quentin, a gloomy California prison, provided Jack the material for that novel."

Joan got comfortable in her armchair. We talked about the workers' movement in the United States. Joan told us about her social work. She was in charge of the library in the headquarters of the California State Labor Federation. She asked about the USSR, where she had traveled in the 1930s; she inquired about Seifullina, Gladkova, Kataev, and other Soviet writers. I took a look at Joan's library. Here were the books of her father, lots of works on philosophy and economics, and on the Labor Movement in America. Among the authors represented were Oldgridge, Steinbeck, and Faulkner. Finishing our coffee, we moved into a small backyard. There was an aquarium with gold fish. At the end, I took a picture of Joan. For a long time, she stood in the doorway with her husband and waved goodbye to us.