My father traveled a great deal. If I wanted to flee his domain, it had to be at a moment when he could not catch me. I had direct orders (and in any other circumstance, unbreakable ones) not to do anything stupid. But leaving the country, abandoning Mother Russia with Anya, did not seem stupid to me. I talked it over with her. I explained that it would be hard and difficult, that during the first months it would cost us a lot and we would want to give up, but that if we wanted to be together, we had no other way out. It was quite an adventure that sounded very good when put into words.
Anya was very frightened, because she did not fully understand it. She knew who my father’s public persona was, and she knew that I, for being his son, was also a very important person. That was all the wo
