The Ambulance, the Dead, and the Others

Abstract

The private hotel had belonged to my family: naval engineers who had come from Germany during Peter the Great’s era. As for me, Nathalie F., I lived with my parents, pottery artists, in Leningrad where both died during World War II. I was six years old then.

The professor […] enjoyed cloudberry tea and lived on Prechistenka in an apartment with five rooms, one of which was occupied by a dry little old lady, the housekeeper Maria Stepanovna, who looked after the professor like a nanny.

—Mikhail Bulgakov. The Fatal Eggs