Gavrilych lived in the cellar, which three families shared with him. The narrow window of his room was located at ground level, and when spring came, it was obstructed by wild plants. The babushkas, sitting on their bench a few yards away, would cast anxious glances at it from time to time – it was not uncommon to see the broad face of the "scandalizer" between the stems at the open window. His head looked as if it were rising out of the earth. But at these moments of contemplation Gavrilych always remained calm. He would tip his face backwards, as if he wanted to glimpse the sky and the brilliance of the sunset in the branches of the poplar trees… One day, making our way right up to the loft of this great black izba, underneath its roof, warmed by the sun, we pushed open the heavy shutter of a skylight. On the horizon a terrifying fire was setting the steppe ablaze: the smoke was soon going to eclipse the sun…

When it came down to it, the revolution had achieved only one innovation in that quiet corner of Saranza. The church, which was situated at one end of the courtyard, had had its cupola removed. They had also taken out the iconostasis and installed in its place a great square of white silk – the screen made up of curtains commandeered from one of the bourgeois apartments in the "decadent" block. The Barricade cinema was ready to welcome its first audience…

Yes, our grandmother was a woman who could happily converse with Gavrilych, a woman who was opposed to all the campaigns and who had one day referred to our cinema, with a wink, as "that decapitated church." Then we had caught a glimpse of the soaring silhouette of a gilded onion and a cross, rising up above the squat edifice, whose past was unknown to us.

Far more than her clothes or her physique, it was these little touches that revealed to us that she was different. As for the French language, we basically regarded it as our family dialect. After all, every family has its little verbal whims, its tics of language, and its nicknames that never cross the threshold of the house – its private slang.