ABSTRACT
In this chapter the author recollects the memories of his early life. The author's mother would not countenance his leaving for Paris, yet she could not cope with her big-city isolation from any contemporaries. Even the sort of close Russian-Jewish milieu she had found in Oxford could not be recreated in the London wilderness. The author's callous impatience with her concerns only made matters worse. The embrace of a family who seemed to have no sympathy or understanding of what the author was trying to do have almost seemed constraining. At the end of January 1948, author's mother sailed for New York with his brother. She was tearful, quite unreconciled to the coming separation, which they both knew would be a long one. The author accompanied his mother and Tolo to Southampton, where she ruefully handed him £25, most of which the author improvidently spent on his return.
