Well, they beat and beat and, in general, they did not kill! At first they taught him to endure beatings; then they taught me to fight and defend myself a little, and when I fought, I fought to the death; But never in my life have I experienced so much fear and so much pain, both physical and mental, as I did then. Because I was a cunning brute, I made a vow to myself not to say a word about it at home: anyway, there was nowhere to go, why add another concern to my mother? And so I first told her about it when I was about forty-five, when it was already a dead matter. But this year has been really hard; I was eight or nine years old, and I did not know how to live.

     Forty-five years later, I once rode the subway on this line; I was reading, at some point I looked up and saw the name of one of the last stations before school – and fainted. So, probably, it is somewhere very deep: because I am not a hysterical type and I have some endurance in life – and it hit me so hard somewhere in the depths. This shows how deeply an experience can enter into flesh and blood.

The aggressive side in me has not developed very much, but this murderous other side, the feeling that you have to become completely dead and petrified in order to survive – I had to get rid of it for years, really for years.

     At noon on Saturday, they were allowed to leave school, and at four o'clock on Sunday they had to return, because it was dangerous to walk through this block later. And on the free day there were other difficulties, because my mother lived in a small room where she was allowed to see me during the day, but I had no right to spend the night with her. It was a hotel, and at six o'clock in the evening my mother solemnly led me by the hand so that the owner could see; Then she would come back and talk to the landlord, while I crawled on all fours between the master's desk and my mother's feet, turned the corner of the corridor and made my way back into the room. In the morning I crawled out in the same way, and then my mother solemnly brought me in, and this was an official return after a night spent "somewhere else". Morally, it was very unpleasant to feel that you were not only superfluous, but simply positively unwanted, that you had no place, nowhere was it. It is not so surprising, therefore, that I happened to wander the streets in my spare days in the hope that I would be run over by a car and that it would all be over.

     There were still very bright things; For example, this day, which was spent at home, was very bright, there was a lot of love, a lot of friendship, my grandmother read a lot. During the holidays – they were long – we would go somewhere in the country, and I would work on the farms to do some work. I remember the first disappointment: I worked for a whole week, had to earn fifty centimes, held them in my fist, and returned with delight from this village to another village; I walked like a boy, waving my arms, and suddenly these fifty centimes flew out of my fist. I looked for them in the field, in the grass - I did not find them anywhere, and my first earnings were lost.

     Toys? If I remember the toys, I can remember – well, apart from the donkey, which was in a special position, because it was an independent animal, this Russian flag, I remember two soldiers, I remember a small construction set; I remember that in Paris they sold small wind-up sidecars, a motorcycle with a sidecar – that was it... And then I remember the first book I bought myself, Ivanhoe, by Walter Scott; I "chose" it because it was the only book in the shop; It was a tiny shop and the only children's book. Grandmother decided that we could afford to buy a book, and I went; the saleswoman told me: oh, there is nothing, there is some book, translated from English, called "Ivanoe" (the French pronunciation of "Ivanhoe"), and advised me not to buy it. And when I returned home to tell my grandmother, she said: run to buy it immediately, it's a very good book. Before that, back in Vienna, my grandmother and I had probably read all of Dickens; later I became disillusioned with Dickens; He is so sentimental, I did not notice it then, but this is such a caricature, such sentimentality that a lot of things are simply lost. Walter Scott is an uneven writer, that is, he is a wonderful writer in what is good, and boring when he fails, and I immediately liked this book then. Well, Ivanhoe is the kind of book that a boy can't help but like.

     Were there things you were afraid of—a dark room, wild beasts?

     No, I wasn't specifically afraid of wild animals, I just didn't have a chance to be particularly afraid. Well, we used to have wild boars in Persia, they were in the steppe, they went into the garden; There were other wild animals, but they prowled at night, and they still did not let me out of the house at night, so there was nothing particularly terrible. And I was afraid of the dark room, but I did not hide such things. On the one hand, I have never been laughed at for any fears, prejudices, or childish qualities; And my father, in those periods when we were together, developed masculine qualities in me simply by telling me about courageous deeds, about what kind of people they were, and therefore I myself was drawn to this. Not to some special heroism, but to the fact that there is such a concept as courage, which is very high and beautiful; Therefore, as a boy, I brought myself up a lot in discipline. When I began to become more conscious, when I was eleven or twelve years old, I cultivated physical endurance in myself. My father, for example, considered it a shame if you took a hot pot and let it out of your hands: hold it! And if you burn your fingers, then we'll see. This also applied to fatigue, to pain, to cold, and so on. I brought myself up very much in this regard, because it seemed to me that this was true! This is a masculine quality. When I was about fifteen or sixteen years old, I slept for years with the window open without a blanket, and when it was cold, I got up, did gymnastics, went back to bed – well, all this for the future, as it were.

     Then the school years went further, three years at the same school. Why? It was the cheapest, first of all, and then the only one at that time around Paris and in Paris itself, where I could live. Then I was transferred to another one – it was just an earthly paradise, ladybugs, after what I had seen in the first school; The most ardent were just like pictures.

     Did you accept school discipline?

     I was too lazy to be a mischievous boy; I had a feeling that pranks were simply not worth it. I was not interested in school, I was only interested in Russian organizations; And besides, I discovered a very important thing: if you do not study well, you sit in the same class for two years, and since I wanted to get rid of school as soon as possible, I always studied in such a way as not to stay too long; This was my main engine. And some subjects I loved and dealt with them; That is, "some", the plural is almost an exaggeration, because I was fond of Latin. I have always been interested in and fascinated by languages, I liked Latin terribly, because at the same time as Latin I became interested in architecture, and Latin and architecture have the same property: it is a language that is built according to certain rules, just like you build a building – grammar, syntax, word position, and the ratio of words – and this captivated me with Latin. I loved German, German poetry, which I still love. When I was about ten years old, I read a lot about architecture, and then I calmed down, became interested in something else – the military system, what was called Motherland Studies, that is, everything that related to Russia – history, geography, language, again; and life for it. I studied in a French school, and there was no ideological underpinning: they just came, studied and left, or lived in a boarding school, but still there was nothing behind it.

     Were you classmates at school or in the organization?

     No. There were comrades in the organization, that is, people, boys, whom I loved more or less, but I never went to anyone and never invited anyone.

     Principle?