Since Mama was from the near Moscow region, a train ride to Moscow was always a pleasant journey for her. Of course she took me with her. I still remember how they coupled a steam locomotive to the train! Ah, those times! In the evening we boarded the train, and in the morning we approached Moscow. And when I saw the MGU building, I already waited excitedly for the meeting with Grandfather. ...

Papa came home from duty very late. I rarely fell asleep before he arrived. I waited for him… that is where “owls” come from. From childhood! I was a typical owl. Mama could not take it — she went to bed before me. The thing is that I did not go to kindergarten, so I had a free schedule. I could not “settle in.” In the morning Mama would take me there all starched and ironed, and in the evening she would pick me up with a high temperature. ...

In our officers’ barracks there were two front entrances. In each entrance lived five families. Each family occupied one room, regardless of the size of the family. There was a long shared corridor; along the corridor wall stood (at this point I can barely keep from laughing!) well, what could have stood there? By the door of our room stood a wooden table, probably knocked together by someone, an old stool, and at the end, along the other wall, there was a small niche where Mama put the green basin with black speckles. ...

It is time to tell about my papa. Aleksandr Mikhailovich married late and swiftly, at the age of 35. I think he fell in love with Mama at once, at first sight. And he was ready, morally and materially. An officer, a captain. At that time officers had a good salary. If only there had been somewhere to spend it! He had been called into the Army even before the war, served in the Far East, took part in the war with Japan. After the war he bought a house in Blagoveshchensk and brought there his elder sister and niece from a village in Smolensk province (everything there had been destroyed during the war). And so the elder sister ran the household. And suddenly my papa brought a wife… ...

I first heard this saying from Mama herself. Now I call this part of my narrative — in Norwegian — an episode. An episode thirty years long… Once, someone came to my grandmother, who lived in the Moscow region, and said that a colleague of her husband’s from Blagoveshchensk was staying with them and could take a parcel for Mama. And this is what Grandmother told me when I was already grown up. She packed a little parcel and arranged to bring it to the train on which this military man was to leave. ...

It just occurred to me that I wanted to begin Mama’s travels with airplanes — but no! Mama’s first journeys were short, but hard. She was born in the near Moscow region, in a place well known to many today, in the settlement of Bolshevo. And of course her first trips were to Moscow, to the theatre. That was rare, but very festive. And then the war began….. And Mama’s childhood ended. She was 14 years old; her father went to the front as a volunteer. Sergei Sergeyevich Dorofeev was 40. Only quite recently did I think about the age of my grandfather, who went through the whole war — really went through it, and in the song they sang “we crawled all of Europe on our bellies.” He did not like to talk about the war. ...