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Shortly before my flight to San Francisco I met, as I indicated, with Olga Shilina, Nikolai’s mother. We met on the Arbat on one windless morning in early winter. It was a weekday, but I took a day off from my duties at Division X. I had fallen asleep in fall and when I woke up it was already winter: the first snow had fallen that night. That morning I took the commuter train into Moscow and found that the snow was already melting in the streets, but a sprinkling of powder remained in the squares, on the hedges, and in the courtyards of the Arbat where the trees, which had still not dropped all their leaves, seemed to have blossomed lushly overnight, so strewn were they with snowflakes. Moist, loose snow covered the roofs and ledges of the buildings, the windowsills, benches, and trash
