“Why not?”
“Because he loved my Mom. In America they had a talk, and my father begged her not to leave him. He loved and appreciated her very much, and she was a strong-willed person herself, so they had been through separations before. It’s hard to say who was in the right. Their relationship was completely stripped of any pretense, they respected each other. But then again, when she was much older, Mom told me: you shouldn’t treat men the way I did.”
“How did Maxim Maximovich really feel about Petrova?”
“My father and I were talking about her once, and I quoted one English writer who said that if a woman can’t be with one man, then she needs an endless number of men. He said: yes. And added: I really don’t know if she’s a lady or a Komsomol activist.”
“But what’s the bottom line, rea
