The Eye

January, 1965

I met that woman, that Matilda, during my first autumn of émigré existence in Berlin, in the early twenties of two spans of time, this century and my foul life. Someone had just found me a house tutor's job in a Russian family that had not yet had time to grow poor, and still subsisted on the phantasmata of its old St. Petersburg habits. I had had no previous experience in bringing up children---had not the least idea how to comport myself and what to talk about with them. There were two of them...