Alexander always said that the debt of honor he had with me was unpayable, and that not all the money in the world would be enough to thank me for setting aside instinctive terror and having saved him and his children from an almost certain death. However, I am convinced that his own survival was what mattered least to him in the matter, that it was the commitment I had assumed for the children that drove him to be so rooted in that idea that he owed me “something.”
Or maybe, who knows? Maybe it was something else. Something I refused to see in him.
More than once, I also told him that it wasn’t necessary for him to keep thinking about that, he had his life in Russia and many responsibilities far more important than my simple person. I was satisfied (and very happy) with that promise of
