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Sergei Kladesev was born on Vasilyevski Island, Leningrad. He was a strange boy. While other children were making sand pies and building castles, he was drawing sections of odd-looking machines on the sand. In the second grade he built a portable machine, powered by a pocket flashlight battery, which told each pupil how many good marks he would receive during the coming week. Grown-ups considered the machine uneducational and took it away from him.

After leaving grammar school Sergei attended the Technical School for Electrochemistry. He paid no attention to the many pretty girls he met there—perhaps because he saw them every day.

One fine June day he rented a boat and sailed down the Little Neva to the Gulf of Finland. Near Volny Island he came upon a skiff with two girls in it, strangers to him. They had run on to a sandbar and, in attempting to float their boat, had broken the rudder. Sergei introduced himself and helped them back to the dock where they had rented the boat. After that he visited them frequently; the two friends lived, like Sergei, on Vasilyevski Island, Svetlana on Sixth Street, Liussia on Eleventh.

Liussia was attending a course in typewriting at the time, but Svetlana was resting up from school; secondary school had provided all the education she wanted. Besides, her well-off parents were trying to persuade her that it was time to marry; she agreed in principle, but had no intention of taking the first acceptable fellow that came along.

In the beginning Sergei preferred Liussia, but he knew how to behave toward her. She was so pretty, modest and easily embarrassed that in her presence he too became embarrassed. Svetlana was quite different: gay and quick-witted; in short, a daredevil. Though naturally timid, Sergei felt happy when he was with her.

A year later, Sergei was visiting a friend in Roshdestwenka and there met Svetlana, who was staying with relatives. A coincidence, of course, but Sergei took it as providential. Day after day he walked in the woods and by the sea with her and was soon convinced that he could not live without her.