Mama always had a very strong influence on me! I had to submit. As soon as my sister was born, I became an adult at 9! She grew as a restless child, and our whole life “spun” in one room, a five-metre kitchen and a toilet combined with a bath. The parents had no bed; there was a topchan — that is a spring mattress with a wooden frame. It was set on bricks. Well, there was nowhere to buy a bed, nowhere! There was only a huge, boundless country of total shortage.
I slept in the kitchen, on a folding armchair. By day it “served” the whole family, and at night, when I unfolded it, it butted against the gas stove, and while I slept and grew, my legs also grew and… by the 10th graduating class they too began to butt against the gas stove. In the kitchen there was another “sight” — a gas water heater of impressive size for heating water. And when hot water was needed, it hummed terribly. My sister slept in the room in a child’s cot until first class. Luckily she was a very miniature girl!
I want to “return” to the story about Papa. He served in the Soviet Army for 30 years! He went into retirement and received a one-room khrushchoba, continued to work at the plant Arsenal-2. (This was that plant which stood opposite the Lavra.) And at the plant there was enrolment in an evening school to obtain a complete secondary education. And Papa decided to study one more year at evening school and get a certificate (I have already written that he was called into the Army before the war and then he had “no time for study”!) At that moment he was already 49!
I remember well how he sat exams: in one night he would read the textbook, and in the morning he would go to sit the exam and sit it… with “excellent”!!! How surprised my mama was, who all her life had considered him a “half-educated man.” And Papa was a modest, honest, responsive, decent Human being!
…. to be continued…