Fyodorov, the father, had himself been in the war from the first day to the last and was under no illusions. Sometimes, when he had been drinking and could stand it no longer, exasperated by his wife's daily expectation, he would yell right through the apartment: "Oh sure, you can count on it. He'll be coming back. But if he's discharged from the POW camp he's not coming back here to you. He'll be sent beyond the Urals – or even farther!"

Sofia Abramovna belonged to the old Moscow intelligentsia. In the 1930s she had been sent to a camp and had only been released in 1946, subject to a ban on living in Moscow and some hundred other cities. During her ten years in the camp she had lived through what human language was incapable of expressing. But her neighbors guessed it. When a quarrel broke out in the kitchen Sofia did not try to stand on the sidelines but lost her temper, cursed and swore, using surprising language. Sometimes she hurled turns of phrase at her adversaries contemptuous in their exaggerated politeness: "I give you my most humble thanks, Comrade Fyodorov. You are the very pinnacle of courtesy." On other occasions she would suddenly come out with expressions she had picked up in the camps: "See here, Fedotov, you keep your damned thieving hands off the stash in my sideboard. You're wasting your time casing it. There's no liquor in there."

But even at the height of these neighborly quarrels Sofia 's eyes were always staring into space to such an extent that it was clear to everyone: she was still back there beyond the Urals. Which was why arguing with her was not very rewarding.

Whether they liked it or not, the Demidovs used to find themselves drawn into these conflicts. But their role was generally confined to acting as conciliators between the Fyodorovs and the Fedotovs when they squabbled and calming the wives as they sobbed noisily.