Two years after the children's arrival in Moscow Anatoly Petrovich was given another room, bigger and more comfortable, at 7, Alexandrovsky Street.
You would not know Alexandrovsky Street now: large new houses have sprung up along each side; the road and pavement are covered with smooth asphalt. In those days there were hardly a dozen cottages 'here, very rural in appearance, with truck gardens and a big, desolate stretch of wasteland behind them.
Our house stood by itself, off the beaten track, as they say, and coming back from work I could see it from a good distance as soon as I stepped out of the tram. We lived on the second floor. The new room was far better than the one we had before: warmer, lighter and bigger.
The children liked their new home very much. They loved everything new, and the move gave them great pleasure. They spent much time packing. Zoya carefully collected together the books and copybooks and the pictures out of the magazines. Shura also busily assembled and packed away his belongings: bits of glass, pebbles, hooks, pieces of iron, bent nails and a lot of other things the purpose of which was a mystery to me.
In the new room we allotted a corner to the children, placed a small table there, and fitted up a shelf for schoolbooks and notebooks.
On seeing the table Shura at once shouted:
"Left side is mine!"
"And the right side is mine," agreed Zoya willingly, and as often happened, the cause for a quarrel disappeared by itself.
Our life went on as before; the days passed by in work and study. On Sundays we would explore some new part of Moscow, going either to Sokolniki or to Zamoskvorechye, or ride on tram "B" round the city, or take a walk in Neskuchni Gardens.
Anatoly Petrovich knew Moscow well, both the old and the new, and could tell us quite a lot about it.
"But where is the bridge?" asked Shura once, when we were walking up Kuznetski Bridge Street. And Anatoly Petrovich told us the interesting story of how in the old days there had been a real bridge here and how the river Neglinka was piped and taken underground.
And so we learnt how these various "walls" and "gates" and such streets as Table Street, Tablecloth Street, Grenade Street, Armoury Street, Dog Square, had come to be in Moscow.
Anatoly Petrovich would also tell us why Presnya was called Red, why there is a Barricade Street and an Uprising Square. And page after page of the history of our wonderful city was unfolded before the children, and they learnt to understand and love its past and present.
Next: Grief