“Do you know what a “prep” is? Once upon a time before the war, this was the name in Russia for boys who studied in preparatory classes in gymnasiums. A man about eight years old, ruddy, with cheerful protruding ears. He walked to the gymnasium not straight along the sidewalk, like all people, but somehow zigzag, like a Norwegian speed skater. On his back hung a monstrous backpack made of hairy and piebald cow skin. In the backpack rattled a pencil case, a handful of walnuts, a cast black ball, arithmetic and the Law of God. In your hand is a bitten apple. The skirts of his light mouse overcoat, lined with quilted cotton, turned away as he walked, like pig ears...”