I am sitting on my bed, half-awake, with my eyes still closed. The light is barely glimmering outside. Mom is already up and about. It’s early morning. Summer. ‘There are baked potatoes in the oven. Mash them and feed the piglet. Be careful, don’t let it run away…’ I remember that it once tried to run away, and it was so fast that mom caught it only at the last moment. Still half-asleep, I nod in agreement… I finally open my eyes, and mom is already standing next to me all dressed up, with a bundle of food she is going to take to work. She says, ‘Well, you’ve heard everything. Okay, you can go back to sleep.’ Back then, parents would leave someone in charge when they went to work. The ‘elder one’ was put in charge of everything. Vanka the Lame has an elder sister, Nadezhda. Pyotr Popov can also sleep peacefully because his nanny Tasya will take care of everything — they say she looked after me too when I was little. But I’m alone now, and Vasya Makarkin (this is what we used to call Vasily Shukshin) also doesn’t have an elder sibling… Okay, I have to get up, there is so much to do today! Outside, I can hear the piglet squealing in the old ramshackle clay bathhouse. It is no good, made of wattle and clay. My father Pyotr Stepanovich never got around to building a better one…