“...On the other side of the court - if only someone would even look at us! – we resembled two Chinese bobbleheads – so tirelessly and smoothly did our heads, cut into a half-box, move. And that's right, we were dummies. Not even dummies, and not Chinese ones at all, but real, Moscow, dacha, eleven-year-old blockheads who spent July evenings turning their heads. Nearby there was a river, a sandy slope, a sandbank, punts - the smells of water and the cries of swimmers reached us without penetrating deep into consciousness. These were the smells and noise of a distant world that we did not need. At dusk our hour came. ..."