There was always a distance in our relationship with my father. In the mornings and evenings, we kissed his hand. He knew nothing about our life. Neither my brother nor I ever had a heart-to-heart talk with him.

We had several estates in the Crimea. The two largest ones were in Koreiz, on the very coast <…> My father inherited Koreiz from his mother and was personally engaged in management and decoration. At one time he was fond of sculpture. He bought a large number of statues and covered the whole park with them. <…> Father’s fantasies sometimes took the most bizarre form. Like now I remember my mother’s surprise when my father gave her for her birthday Ai-Petri Mountain that towers over the southern coast, bald, rocky, the highest on the peninsula.

Sometimes my father would take us to see the priest who kept nightingales. Countless cages were hung from the ceiling. The priest would knock with instruments of his own making, and the nightingales would start singing. He waved his hands like a conductor, could stop, continue, and even tell them to sing in turns. I had never seen anything like it.