She already knew beforehand what her girlfriend, her teacher, or her mother would say. Her mother in particular. Very early on, Antonina Naumovna began schooling her daughter in the rare virtue of sacrificing one’s own interests for those of society. The girl seemed to have had an innate sense of justice. When one of the children came out to play bearing a precious piece of bread and butter sprinkled with sugar, Olga was the one (and the only one) entrusted with the task of doling it out among all the mouths present in the courtyard. If the piece of bread was misshapen and hard to divide into even pieces, only Olga knew how to add a piece here, and take away a piece there, so that everyone got the same amount. She didn’t know what bread rations were—she had been born at the end of the war—much less labor camp rations. But the instinct for them was bred in the bone. Antonina Naumovna admired her belated offspring—she was made of the right stuff! She had inherited all her parents’ good qualities.
