On the eve of my matriculation exams, two events took place. One showed Mother and her family at their best, the side I most cherished; the other, while not bringing misfortune, showed me as naïve and reckless, prone to falling over myself, which had led to my first brush with the KGB.

A pair of newlyweds in their mid–twenties, on their honeymoon, came to spend a week with us, all the way from Siberia. The girl was a very distant relative of Father's. They didn't know he wasn't living with us anymore. “Why don't you give them his phone number?” I asked. “Let him play host to his own relations.” “No,” Mother said. “They came to me and it's my responsibility to be hospitable.”

They stayed for a week, and Mother fed them. I thought it was crazy. We had no money: Father didn't give her any of the maintenance required by law, and she was too proud to ask. She was a typical—and in many ways exemplary—homemaker (I hate the word “housewife”), cooking and laundering and washing up for the whole family, in difficult conditions, with no running hot water; often with no running water at all. Having dedicated her whole life to her family, she had no profession. And suddenly she was left with no income and had to earn a living, working initially as a saleswoman in a kiosk and then as a bookkeeper at a factory that made washing machines. But she was adamant about not turning out guests who came to her house. She'd inherited this attitude from her parents and grandparents, who—both the educated branch and the simple folks—had been warm–hearted and kind people. Curiously, my father's ancestors—both the learned, including the historian Simon Dubnov, and the illiterate—likewise shared this trait of hospitality and generosity. I'd like to talk more about those grandparents and great–grandparents of mine at some later stage. But it's to them that I owe my own preoccupation with making sure every visitor crossing my threshold does not leave thirsty or hungry.

So we put at their disposal my little room next to the kitchen while I moved into the bigger room where Mother slept.