We had a common life; They demanded responsibility from me – for example, from early childhood I cleaned my room: I made my bed, cleaned after myself. The only thing I was never taught was to clean shoes, and it was only later, during the war, that I found a spiritual reason not to do so, when I read the phrase in Curé d'Ars that wax for shoes is the same as cosmetics for a woman, and I was terribly glad that I now had an excuse. You know, every child has some things that he finds terribly boring. I always found it terribly boring to wipe the dust and clean my shoes. Now I have learned to do both. Well, then we did all the housework together, and exactly together: not just "go and do it, and I'll read", but "let's wash the dishes", "let's do this or that", and I was taught as if.

     Is it still in Persia?

     No, then, as far as I remember, there was a completely free life: a large garden at the embassy estate, a donkey - nothing, in general, was required. Except for order: I would never have been allowed to go for a walk if I hadn't cleaned up books or toys, or left the room in disarray – it was unthinkable.

     And now I live like this; for example, I remove the vestments and the altar after each service, even if there is only an hour and a half between the services of the Bringing out of the Shroud and the Burial, I put everything away. Precisely on the basis that at the moment when something is finished, it should be as finished as if, on the one hand, nothing had happened, and on the other hand, everything can be started again: it helps to live so much!, For example, I was taught to prepare everything for tomorrow in the evening. My father used to say: I have a good life, because I have a servant Boris, who will fold everything in the evening, clean his shoes, cook everything, and in the morning Boris Eduardovich will get up - he has nothing to do.

     Did you spoil yourself as a little girl?

     They were affectionate, but not pampered - in the sense that it did not come at the expense of order, discipline or upbringing. In addition, I was taught from childhood to appreciate small, small things; and when emigration began, then it was especially important to value, say, one object; One thing was a miracle, it was a joy, and it could be appreciated for years. For example, some tin soldier or some book – they lived with them for months, sometimes years, and for this I am very grateful, because I know how to rejoice at the smallest thing at the moment when it comes, and never devalue it. Gifts were made, but not drowned in gifts, even when there was an opportunity, so that the eyes did not run away so that you could rejoice at one thing. At Christmas, I once received as a gift – I still remember it – a small Russian tricolor flag made of silk; And I carried this flag so much, I still somehow feel it at hand when I stroked it, this very silk, its tricolor composition. Then they explained to me what it meant, that this was our Russian flag: Russian snows, Russian seas, Russian blood – and it remained with me: snow-white snow, blue waters and Russian blood.

     In France, when we got there with my parents, it was quite difficult to live. My mother worked, she knew languages, and they lived very differently, in particular, all in different parts of the city. I was sent to live in a very, I would say, difficult school; it was a school on the outskirts of Paris, in the slums, where the police did not go at night, starting at dusk, because they were slaughtered there. And, of course, the boys who were at school were from there, and it was extremely difficult for me at first; I just didn't know how to fight then and I didn't know how to be beaten. I was beaten mercilessly - in general, it was considered normal that a newcomer was beaten during the first year until he learned to defend himself. Therefore, you could be beaten to the point that you would be taken to the hospital, in front of the teacher's eyes. I remember once I rushed out of the crowd, rushed to the teacher, crying out for protection – he just pushed me away with his foot and said: Don't complain! And at night, for example, it was forbidden to go to the toilet, because it interfered with the warden's sleep. And you had to crawl silently out of bed, crawl under the other beds to the door, manage to open the door silently, and so on; For this, the warden himself was beaten.

     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?