Ilya: What we're doing is making a film about our building.
Anna Matveevna: Oh?
Ilya: Tell us how long you have been living here. How many years?
À. Ì.: Since 1931.
Ilya: Since 1931?!
À. Ì.: Yes.
Ilya: Do you remember how you first came here?
À. Ì.: Yes I do. I was little when they brought me here, 8 years old. There were people I knew here, relatives, they took me in. Our father died, mother had 5 children, each one smaller than the next. They gave me room and board. And then I stayed. I went to school, and I grew up and so on, and I went to work.
Ilya: Were you here during the Siege?
À. Ì.: I was here. I worked in Clinic 32. I got my nursing certificate.
Ilya: Uh-huh...
À. Ì.: Yes! You should see how many medals I have! Because I was taking care of the wounded at the front, that's the phrase. My commander was a Russian, Sasha, and my heart was always breaking, I was always crying: I felt so sorry for them! Young pilots, and once one of them, one of the boys, told me "I learned airplanes at the front. To drive an airplane." And he ended up in a battle. He got wounded. So. He was crying, and I was crying.
Ilya: Were there a lot of people? A lot of tenants?
À. Ì.: No, very few. A lot of them died.
Ilya: Hello, Iraida Yakovlevna. So was Nina Vasilievna living here?
À. Ì.: Yes she was. Nina Vasilievna and me. She buried her father here.
Iraida Yakovlevna: I had a stroke, yes.
Ilya: How dreadful! When was that?
Iraida Yakovlevna: What do you mean? In January.
Ilya: We'll come to see you in a little while, okay?
Iraida Yakovlevna: Come, of course. Are you going to Nina's now?
Ilya: No, Nina's resting now, maybe...
Iraida Yakovlevna: Oh what a lady, what a lady, she's resting... She's tired out. From what?
À. Ì.: This is what we were like when we was young.
Ilya: Oh. You were so pretty! Did you always live in this room?
À. Ì.: In this room. In this room. And Nina was next door.
Ilya: Always? From the very beginning, when you first moved in?
À. Ì.: Yes. When I moved in, Grandma was still living, Nina's grandma. But then she died. Ilya: Who was Nina's grandma?
À. Ì.: Her own grandma. Not mine. She wasn't anybody to me.
Ilya: I see.
Ilya: Did everybody get along?
À. Ì.: We had a good apartment. Very good people. Very good. All college graduates. There was a family here. They had children, they had a maid. And they worked.
Ilya: Yes, you were very pretty. Very nice.
À. Ì.: Well, I was still very young. Very young. Maybe, forty.
Ilya: Well thank you. I've turned this off. Let me turn it on again, so you can hear.
Ilya: Who is this?
À. Ì.: This is my sister. And this is me. And this is my sister. She's no longer with us either.
Ilya: All right. I think we'll go see Nina Vasilievna now; let's go ask...
À. Ì.: She just got back from church. You know that today...
Ilya: She went to church?
À. Ì.: Do you go to church? It's a holiday, it's hard to explain...
À. Ì.: Nina, open the door! Get up, put on something warm.
Nina Vasilievna: It's cold, it's cold.