There were three sisters; the eldest (she was later married to an Austrian) was intelligent, lively, energetic, and remained the same until a late old age; and it was sacrificial to the end. She had diabetes, and finally she had gangrene; They wanted to operate on her (she was then about eighty years old), she said "no": she would die anyway, the operation would cost money, and she could leave this money to her sister – and so she died. So it's courageous and beautiful. The younger sister was married to a Croatian and was extremely unhappy.

     My grandfather Scriabin was a Russian consul in Trieste and got acquainted with this family, and decided to marry my grandmother, much to the indignation of her family, because the elder sister had to be married first, of course, and my grandmother was the middle one. And so, at the age of seventeen, she got married. She was probably surprisingly sincere and naïve, because even at ninety-five years old she was surprisingly naïve and sincere. She, for example, could not imagine being lied to; you could tell her the most impossible thing – she looked at you with such childish, warm, trusting eyes and said: "It's true?.."

     Вы пробовали? В каких случаях? При необходимости?

     Конечно, пробовал. Без необходимости, а просто ей расскажешь что-нибудь несосветимое, чтобы рассмешить ее, как анекдот рассказывают. Она и я никогда не умели вовремя рассмеяться; когда нам рассказывали что-нибудь смешное, мы всегда сидели и думали. Когда мама нам рассказывала что-нибудь смешное, она нас сажала рядом на диван и говорила: я вам сейчас расскажу что-то смешное, когда я вам подам знак, вы смейтесь, а потом будете думать…

     Дедушка решил учить ее русскому языку; дал ей грамматику и полное собрание сочинений Тургенева и сказал: Теперь читай и учись… И бабушка действительно до конца своей жизни говорила тургеневским языком. Она никогда очень хорошо не говорила, но говорила языком Тургенева, и подбор слов был такой.

     Вы, значит, еще и итальянец?

     Очень мало, я думаю; у меня реакция такая антиитальянская, они мне по характеру совершенно не подходят. Вот страна, где я ни за что не хотел бы жить; когда я был экзархом, я ездил в Италию, и всегда с таким чувством: Боже мой! Надо в Италию!.. У меня всегда было чувство, что Италия – это опера в жизни: ничего реального. Мне не нравится итальянский язык, мне не нравится их вечная возбужденность, драматичность, так что Италия, из всех стран, которые я знаю, пожалуй – последняя, где я бы поселился.

     After the wedding with her grandfather, they came to Russia. Later, my grandfather served in the East, and my mother was then in Smolny and came on vacation to my parents (six days by train from St. Petersburg to the Persian border, and then on horseback to Erzurum), where she met my father, who was a dragoman, that is, in Russian, an interpreter at the embassy. Then my grandfather finished his term of service, and, as I said, they went to Switzerland – my mother was already married to my father. And then there was the war, and my grandmother's first son died in the war; then, in 1915, Sasha, the composer, died; by that time we ourselves – my parents and I, with my grandmother – had come to Persia (my father had been assigned there). My grandmother was always in tow, she was passive, very passive.

     And the mother was, apparently, very intense?

     She was not intense, she was energetic, courageous. For example, she rode with her father all over the mountains, rode well, played tennis, hunted wild boar and tiger – all this she could do. Another thing is that she was not at all prepared for the émigré life, but she knew French, knew Russian, knew German, knew English, and this, of course, saved her, because when we came to the West, the time was bad – 1921 and unemployment, but nevertheless, with knowledge of the language it was possible to get something; Then she learned to knock on a typewriter, learned shorthand and worked all her life.

     How my father's ancestors came to Russia is not clear to me; I know that in the time of Peter the Great they came from Northern Scotland to Russia, and settled there. My paternal grandfather was still in correspondence with a cousin who lived in the northwest Western Highlands; She was already an old woman, lived alone, in complete solitude, far from everything, and, apparently, was a courageous old woman. The only anecdote I know about her is from a letter in which she told her grandfather that she had heard someone climbing up the wall at night; She looked and saw a thief climbing up the drainpipe to the second floor, took an axe, waited for him to take hold of the windowsill, cut off his hands, closed the window, and went to bed. And she described all this in such a natural tone - they say, this is what troubles can be when you live alone. What struck me most was that she could close the window and go to bed; The rest is his business.

     They lived in Moscow, my grandfather was a doctor, and my father studied at home with two brothers and a sister; and my grandfather demanded that they speak Russian for half a day, because naturally it was the local dialect; and the other half a day – one day in Latin, another day in Greek in addition to Russian and one foreign language that had to be learned for the matriculation certificate – this is at home. Then he entered the mathematics department, graduated, and from there he went to the school of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the diplomatic school, where Oriental languages and what was needed for the diplomatic service were studied.

     His father began to travel to the East early; as a seventeen-eighteen-year-old youth, he traveled to the East in the summer, during vacations, on horseback alone through all of Russia, Turkey - this was considered useful. I know nothing about his brothers, they are both dead; One was shot, the other died, I think, of appendicitis. And my sister was married in Moscow to one of the early Bolsheviks; but I do not know what has become of her, and I cannot remember her name; I remembered it for a long time, but now I can't remember. Suddenly it would turn out that someone else exists: I have no one on my father's side...

     My grandmother on my father's side was my godmother; She was not present at the christening, only "registered". In general, I think it was not taken very seriously, judging by the fact that none of my people ever went to church before I later began to go and "lead" them; My father began to go before me, but it was much later, after the revolution, in the late twenties and early thirties.