A year later, they moved into the corner of the kitchen—a substantial improvement. It was a large room with a potbelly stove and two windows. Grandma had to seal one window with plywood, to keep out the draught, but there were consolations too: the washbasin and the lightbulb. The years marched forward. Dad finished school.

“Mum made me a suit for graduation,” he sighed. “She wore a dress sewn out of the material of a large umbrella, and an old blouse made from a yellow floral pillowcase. With the money she’d put aside, she bought me a crimson tie and—oh, can you imagine—pointy patent leather shoes. I’ll remember how they looked as long as I live, they were so wonderful. Me, a little grey mouse, on an equal footing in the class with the sons of professors. A year later, two young women started dropping by the kitchen. One was a writer’s daughter, the other the daughter of the head of a steel workshop. I would have gone on seeing both of them for a long time had Mum not told me to pick one. But I couldn’t, so I had to let go of both.”

Then Grandma told him to apply for university, so he did. Then she told him to get a job and do something useful, and he did that too: he wrote short, “socially useful” articles for Union magazines and newspapers. There was a time when he had been forecast a bright literary future, but he shied from the move to Moscow and Kyiv, where careers were to be made. Grandma talked him out of it, admonished his selfishness. Times were hard and lean, there were no men around. The accountant’s job at the coal mine brought in a meagre income. She didn’t want to be left alone.

Year after year, departure was postponed. This part of his life is a blank for me, but they clearly weren’t good years. He kept writing, dabbled in weightier genres, plays and novels, tried to break out of the Soviet mould, and reached for something more universal. The Union of Writers, his acquaintances, and his family greeted this with incomprehension and ridicule, so he never completed anything. Symbolism was old hat, his writing impenetrable and outmoded. The manuscripts were stuck into a drawer, and he took to drink. I say took; that’s putting it mildly. My questions about that period elicited only a cold wall of indifference and a look of detachment that puzzled me: sadness entangled with arrogance—that’s a powerful cocktail for a weak person. One thing I know for sure: it was then that Grandma’s influence became total, extending to all aspects of his life, from his creativity to his relationships with women. She had completely stifled him.

Papa . . .

Isn’t it incredible how that simple arrangement of letters sounds so portentous? As though biological reality and the romantic imagination were at odds, and there’s no deciding which one is the more important. As though those imperatives were forced to cohabit within these assonant syllables. If ever I have children, and I will, they should not be like him or me. They must be happy.