I was born in 1938 in the city of Moscow. Ever since my childhood, I was surrounded by contradictions. Our tiny, fragile house, next to other crippled buildings, was standing right next to a gigantic building, named “The Government House”. Now it’s name is “A House on the Beach”. And while in our little sheds, nicknamed by their inhabitants “Varuviovki”, several families shared one apartment, crowding five to ten people in one room, “The Government House” had a spacious, comfortable apartment for each family.

The lavish name of the building was given to it by no coincidence. Indeed, the families of ministers, senior officers, members of the central committee, writers, painters and famous actors lived in it. I was a naughty, audacious child. I played cops and thieves with the young inhabitants of “Varuviovki”, jumped of the roof into piles of snow and ice skating the frozen Moscow river in the winter. During the spring, unbeknown to my mother, I swam in the painfully freezing waters of the river. The old lantern lightener, uncle Vania, took me with him to light the floating lighthouses, and I used to love listening to his stories of the civil war. The neighborhood children did not hit me, because they knew it was risky. Not once, snotty, the came to my mother asking her to patch their shirts up, torn during fistfights with me. But they soon forgot their insult and invited me to play soccer with them. Those were children from struggling families, most of them new residents of Moscow, fleeing the heavy famine in the villages. And despite I heard the word “Zhidovska” for as long as I can remember, throughout my life I found out that the real antisemitism resides “up top”, where it relies upon sophisticated theories and “scientific” excuses and it’s strike is unpredictable and sometimes lethal.

Street language, drunken brawls on the one hand, perfect manners, literature talks and music in the families of my friends from “The Government House” on the other hand, and also my parents’ Juicy Yiddish and my grandmother’s tales of King Solomon and Queen Ester, all of those shaped my view of the world.

I grew up as an only child and of course, proclaimed a “wunderkind”, a wonder child. My parents, who did not receive a formal education, attempted to make it up through me. They taught me all there is to teach, and I caved without complaints to whatever “forced” on me. It all went east for me. The grown ups predicted me a right future, and the neighbors argued about the profession I should choose. My music teacher used to stoke my fingers with a dreamy look, shrinking his thick eyebrows and saying: “These fingers will surprise the world, your destiny lies with the violin, girl”. The host of the voice development class predicted a singer’s future for me, and one known actor said after watching a show I played in: “Young madam, you were meant to be an actor”. During parents day at school, the teachers gave my parents many advice. “If she won’t become a linguist, it would be an actual crime”, said my English and Latin teacher. My chemistry teacher, who was also the class coordinator, loudly shouted: “Forget your fantasies, the girl has a rare talent for analytical thought, she has to become a scientist”. And it was only the one person I was longing to hear but one compliment from, did not advise anything. It was my beloved literature teacher, an exceptionally wise man with an unbounded knowledge. He consistently replied my mother’s inquiries with: “Many of the pupils her age write decent poems. In the meantime, I cannot say anything definitive”.