I turned my attention to a thin, swarthy girl who looked to be about fourteen years old. With what persistence she knocked on the roots of trees to remove the first layers of earth! And next to the girl invariably stood her beautiful old grandmother, tall, still straight, but wrinkled like a skeleton covered with brown skin. I saw that the grandmother was wringing her hands in front of her granddaughter, almost on her knees begging the girl to rest and save her strength, but the baby stubbornly knocked with a shovel that could not cut the tree.

"I feel sorry for my grandmother. And the girl is so weak," I said to the women.

"Aren't you the same?" I heard in response.

"I don't!" I am strong, I have muscles! Then there was a merry burst of laughter.

"Our Natasha has muscles!" Everyone was pouring in.

I was not offended, I laughed with everyone, showing my bare hands. And my legs were all scratched, especially the calves of my legs were torn. After all, when we dragged the logs, we did not pay attention to the spruce forest, to the branches under our feet, walking in a line. When I got home, my mother told me to wear stockings, ashamed of my torn legs, and I was stupid and proud of them. Instead of the expected three weeks, I worked on the labor front almost all summer. Only in August did I take up books again, but this time in the 10th grade. "What's wrong with you? How you have changed!" the teachers told me. And I myself felt that my childhood was over, that I had become more serious, more thoughtful. I was no longer interested in secular literature. What can it give to the soul? I now understand that our life is in the hands of the Lord, that He is free to take it whenever He wants, and therefore we must protect every hour. It will not be repeated, and eternity is near...

Graduation

The winter of 1942-1943 was not easy. The building of the external school was not heated, we sat in lessons in wadded coats, hats, felt boots. In frozen buildings, there is no water or toilet. It is impossible to write in mittens, and the paper is ice-cold. My brother Seryozha and I had frostbitten skin on my little finger and other fingers. They swelled and cracked to the point of blood. And yet we wrote. Seryozha graduated from the 7th and 8th grades in two years, and I graduated from the 9th and 10th grades. In the summer, he entered the Power Engineering Institute, which gave students reservations, that is, they were not drafted into the army. So my younger brother escaped the front and survived, and my older brother Nikolai was killed in the very first battle, on August 30, 1943.

Kolya was my friend, adviser, I never quarreled with him. I remember how I persuaded him to go to church with me on Saturdays instead of defending my father's all-night prayers in his office. The service in the Elokhovsky Cathedral, which was a ten-minute walk from us, Kolya liked very much. Father Nikolai Kolchitsky, who was known as an agent of the NKVD, very clearly and with feeling pronounced all the priestly exclamations. And his pleasant voice carried every word to our hearts. In seventy years of my life, I have heard a lot of wonderful priests, but Father Nicholas is unique! "Christ, the true Light, enlighten and sanctify every man who comes into the world," still rings in my heart. Then I understood that it was Kolya and me, entering the world. "Let the light of Thy countenance shine upon us..." And we waited for this last prayer of the All-Night Vigil and did not leave without reaching the end. May the Lord forgive His servant Priest Nicholas for his sins, may He rest his soul for his diligent service in the church. After all, it touched our hearts, and this is what the Lord needs, Who said: "Son, give Me your heart."

I also called Seryozha to church, but he replied dryly: "Here (at dad's house) I lose one hour, and there (in church) three hours." "I'm losing..." How painful it was that he didn't realize how many hours we really lost every day studying things that we didn't need in life at all. If Sergei needed the sciences for the formation of this temporal life, then our life here will soon end, and the time dedicated to the Lord opened the doors to eternal life for us.

A great sorrow befell us, which united us with the sufferings of the entire Russian people, when we lost our Kolenka!

In the autumn of 1942, Kolya was drafted into the army. Seeing him off, his mother cried, and he sang a merry song. He was eighteen years old, but he had not yet experienced a single separation from his family. But in a year he went through a lot, grew spiritually, as evidenced by his letters from military school.

In the autumn of 1943, dad, entering the room, saw a postcard on the table, which reported that his son had been killed in battle. For two or three hours, my father was alone, I was late from the institute, I went to lectures at the Tretyakov Gallery. Dad opened the door for me and ran away without looking at me. I rushed after him, realizing that something was happening to him. He stood facing the icons, held on to the wardrobe, and turned away from me and shuddered all over, without saying a word.