And then we were sent to England, and here I was full of hopes, which, unfortunately, did not come true. We were put on board a ship, warned that it was so dilapidated that if there was a storm, it would certainly be wrecked. And I read Robinson Crusoe and all sorts of interesting things, and, of course, I dreamed of a storm. In addition, the captain was full of imagination, if not reason, and decided that all the members of the family should not die at once, and so he assigned my mother to one rescue boat, my grandmother to another, and me to a third, so that at least one of us would survive if we died. My mother was very unsympathetic to the idea of a shipwreck, and I couldn't understand how she could be so unromantic.

     For twenty-three days we sailed from Bombay to Gibraltar, and in Gibraltar we remained so: the ship had decided never to move again. And we were disembarked, and we received most of the luggage, but one big wooden box floated away, that is, it was transported to England, and we received it very many years later; The British found us somewhere and forced us to pay a pound sterling for storage. It was a huge event because it was one of those boxes where you dump everything at the last minute that you can't leave at the last minute. At first we wisely packed what we needed, then what we could, and left what could no longer be taken, and at the last minute the heart is not a stone, and in this drawer there were, of course, the most precious things, that is, those that later interested me as a boy a thousand times more than warm underwear or useful shoes. But this happened later.

     And so we traveled through Spain, and my only memory of Spain is Cordoba and the mosque. I don't remember her with my eyes, but I remember the impression of some breathtaking beauty and silence. Then the north of Spain: wild, dry, rocky and which explains the Spanish character so well.

     Then we got to Paris, and there I made two more discoveries. One thing: for the first time in my life, I discovered electricity – that it exists at all. We drove somewhere, it was dark, and I stopped and said: we need to light the lamp. Mom said: no, you can turn on the electricity. I did not understand what it was at all, and suddenly I heard: chik - and it became light. It was a big deal; You know, in later generations you can't understand this, because they are born with it; But then it was such an incomprehensible phenomenon that the light could suddenly appear, suddenly go out, that there was no need to fill the kerosene lamp, that it did not smoke, that there was no need to clean the glass – the whole world of things had disappeared...

     And the second discovery is that there are people who cannot be crushed on the street. Because in Persia it was like this: a horseman or a carriage rushes down the street, and every pedestrian saves his life by throwing himself against the wall; If you don't rush fast enough, you'll be whipped, and if you don't, you'll be overturned: it's your own fault for getting under the horse's feet! And so we were driving, I think, on the first day from the station by taxi along the Champs-Elysées, that is, along a huge street – there were almost no cars then, everything was very open, there were no shops along the street, it was very beautiful – and suddenly I saw: a man was standing in the middle of the street and was not rushing anywhere, he was just standing as if rooted to the ground, and strollers, Cars pass like this. I grabbed my mother by the hand and said: Mom! He must be saved.. After all, we were also in a car, we could stop and say: hurry, hurry up, we'll save you.. And my mother told me: No, it's a policeman. "Well, what is it, that he is a policeman?!" Mom says: You can't put pressure on the policeman... I thought: this is a miracle! If you become a policeman, you can save yourself from all troubles and misfortunes for life.. Over time, I changed my views somewhat, but at that moment I really experienced it as diplomatic immunity: you stand there and they can't crush you! Do you understand what this means?!. This was the second big event in my European life.

     That's all I found in Paris then. Then we went to Austria, all looking for some work for my mother, and my grandmother's older sister, who was married to an Austrian, was still alive in Austria. Then we went to northern Yugoslavia, to the region of Zagreb and Maribor. There we lived for some time on a farm, I was then seven years old, and I worked part-time, doing some work that probably no one needed. Then we returned to Austria again, because there was nothing to do in Yugoslavia, and we spent a year and a half in Vienna.

     And there I had to go through my first encounters with culture: they began to teach me to read and write, and I was very reluctant to give in to this. I could not understand why I needed this, when I could sit quietly and listen to my grandmother read aloud – so smoothly, so well – why else would I need anything else? One of my relatives tried to reason with me, saying: you see, I studied well, now I have a good job, good earnings, I can support my family... I only asked him: could you do it for two?

     In any case, in Vienna I went to school and studied for a year and a half, and distinguished myself at school in a very shameful way – in general, school was not good for me in terms of honor and glory. I was once taken to a zoological garden, and, unfortunately, the next day we were given a class paper on the topic of "what do you want to be in life". And, of course, little Austrian women wrote all sorts of virtuous things: one wanted to be an engineer, another a doctor, a third something else; and I was so inspired by what I had seen the day before that I wrote – even with a wonderful illustration from my point of view – a cool paper on the topic: "I would like to be a monkey". The next day I came to the school with the hope that my creative talents would be appreciated. And the teacher came into the classroom and said: "Look, I got one of the extraordinary works." I got up, and then I was scolded that "it is really clear that the Russian barbarian, the savage, could not find anything better than to return to the bosom of nature," and so on and so forth.

     These are the main events from school life there. Two years ago I went back to Vienna for the first time and spoke radio tapes; and the person who made the recording asked me if I had ever been to Vienna. "Yes." - "And what did you do then?" - "I was at school." – "Where?" – "In such-and-such"... It turned out that we were classmates, after fifty years of age, we met; Well, of course, they did not recognize each other, and the acquaintance did not go further.

     And what languages have you spoken since childhood?

     From childhood I was forced to speak Russian and French; I spoke Russian with my father, French with my grandmother, and both languages with my mother. And the only thing that was forbidden was to mix tongues, it was persecuted very strictly, and I was just not used to it. Well, he spoke Persian fluently. This, of course, I forgot during the three or four years when we left Persia, but it is interesting that when I later lived in a boarding school and in my dreams I talked, dreamed and spoke, I spoke Persian, whereas in reality I could no longer pronounce a sound and could not understand a single word. It is curious how it remained somewhere in the subconscious, while it was completely erased from consciousness. Then German: I was taught to pronounce German in German at an early age, it helped a lot and now it helps. On good days, I generally have less accent in German than in French. When you don't speak a language for a year, then you can't do anything. But the most remarkable compliment I received not long ago about my German was from the Cardinal of Cologne, who was blind; when I met him, we talked and he said to me: "Can I ask you an immodest question?" "How did you, a German, become Orthodox?" I turned up my nose, because a blind person is mostly sensitive to sound. But it was a good day, just because on more tired days I don't always speak so well, but I can, when it happens... Spanish – I read; Italian is not a problem at all; Dutch is easy, because it is terribly similar to the German language of the XII-XIII centuries. When my head is completely dull, I read German poems of this era to relax.

     And when you were little, did you have any responsibilities, or just grew up as you grew?

     Oh no! First of all, nothing unreasonable was demanded of me, that is, I never had the feeling that they were demanding, because parents are big and strong and therefore can break a child. But on the other hand, if something was said, they never retreated. And – I don't remember this, my mother told me later – she once told me something, I resisted; I was told that it would be so, and I rolled on the floor for two hours, gnawing on the carpet and screaming with indignation, despair and anger, and my mother sat down in an armchair in the room, took a book and read, waiting for me to finish. The nurse came several times: "Lady, the child will tear up!" And my mother said: Nanny, go away.. When I finished, I screamed, she said: Well, have you finished? Now do what you have been told... It was an absolute principle.

     And then the principle of upbringing was that I had to form my own convictions in due time, but I had to grow up to be a completely truthful and honest person, and therefore I was never given a reason to lie or hide, because I was not persecuted. For example, I could have been punished, but it always made sense, I did not have to have a secret life, as sometimes happens when children are treated excessively harshly or unfairly: they simply begin to lie and arrange their lives differently.