“I remember - the first in my life. … I’m sitting in the bathtub, in front of me are two dark windows. The water is getting colder and I feel despair: life is cold. Suddenly a familiar, kind voice approaches (I still don’t understand the words), and a stream of boiling water, bubbling, pours into the bath, and I, moving animatedly, catch the place of the most acute pleasure, the “point of delight”: so that it burns, but can still be endured. My whole life has been spent searching for such “zones of happiness.” Having barely learned to walk (back in Kazan, during the war), I dragged a small chair across the yard, long and fastidiously looked for a place, set the chair over a steep cliff, took a bottle of sweet water from my trousers and, crossing my legs, sat like a king, looking around the surroundings... I remember well the house - three-story, brick, red, and our windows on the very corner...”