«Mm-hm!» sighed Filippovich, and took a good look at her. «You don’t look a day over seventy! You’re sure you’re not kidding me?»
«What for?» the old woman asked in surprise. «Just think: I was born when Alexander III was on the throne – I was born in the residency perimeter.»
«And what might that be?»
«What was that? A za jahr af mir! (I should have lived like that!) What was that, indeed? A perimeter for Jews.»
«What kind of perimeter?»
«Designating where we could live, where we couldn’t!»
«Some kind of border?»
«It’s obvious, isn’t it – you have to agree I’ve got to…»
«Got to do what?»
«Tell my story, of course! Seeing youngsters like you don’t know anything! Where did you go to school?»
«I graduated from the Bauman,»14 Filippovich boasted.
«What’s that supposed to mean?»
«I was an engineer!»
«An engineer, and here you’re looking after a cemetery?!»
«Gelt (Money),» was Filippovich’s only answer.
«Maybe you’re Jewish?» queried the old woman in amazement.
«No, I’m just a regular guy. You think Jews are the only smart people?» Filippovich took offense. «Don’t you remember it all?»
The old woman didn’t answer for such a long time that the driver was already starting to get concerned and stole a glance over his shoulder.
«The things I remember – well, they’re better to forget,» she said quietly. «Back then I could have been sent to jail just for talking about them. Even now they still won’t publish my memoirs. Why get my grandson all worked up about it? Better they go to the grave with me. He’s not to blame that I’m his grandmother!»
«Know something? I’m going to drive you right home! Where are you headed? It’s dark out, and with those legs of yours?»
«No,» the old woman protested. «I ought to get home on my own. That’s the way it should be. Besides, I owe it to him.»
Filippovich didn’t understand who the «him» referred to, but he wasn’t about to ask for clarification. He let her off at the stop, helped her on to the trolleybus, and then spent a long time just standing there, reflecting on what had happened and envying a grandson he had never met. There weren’t any elderly relatives in his life. They were all dead and buried – either in battlefields far away on the western front, or in the Siberian labor-camps far to the east, and nobody could even tell him where to find their graves.