When Vitaly was about 4 years old, he disappeared. His mother Eva Ovseyvena could not find him anywhere. She raised a big panic and half the town came looking for him. The hunt for Vitaly lasted several hours and then out of the blue, Vitaly popped up from behind the communal compost bin. When he was asked why he was hiding there he said it was because he didn’t want to eat mannaya kasha (cream of wheat). Baba Eva supposedly was such a bad cook she couldn’t boil an egg. Before the Revolution, she never had to cook; the family always had maids. In fact, she never worked a day in her life. Also because she was a romantic revolutionary – this kind of high aspirations she had were not to do anything but be something, be refined. Eva Ovseyvena considered herself to be the cream of the intelligentsia, worthy of a better fate.