A Glance Across the Years

Mark Shcheglov did not know those joys which fall to the lot of almost every child, no matter the conditions in which it spent its childhood. From his early years he was ill with osseous tuberculosis; and later, when his peers had to go away to wind up the war, then went on to study, to play Chapaev, to pass the tests of the GTO and join the Komsomol circles and sections, he, imprisoned in his gypsum fetters, made the rounds from one hospital to another, from outpatient clinics to sanatoria; and often, for months, even for years, his only companions and interlocutors were books. Books, books, and more books.