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Father agreed. "Anything might happen," he said. "It would be a good idea to arrange with some respected publisher to publish the book at some unspecified future date, but only after we give them the signal from here." He fell silent, and we continued strolling along the path.
By the end of the year we had reached a tentative agreement to publish the memoirs. Passages were removed that might constitute military secrets and incidental references to people then in power in the U.S.S.R. There weren't many such items, and Father agreed to delete them.
The publishers were worried that someone might be palming off a fake. And why not? Everything certainly looked strange. They were afraid of provocateurs and wanted to verify the authenticity of the material they were getting. We weren't in a position to write to them ourselves; it would have been too dangerous. Our colleagues found a solution. Father received two wide-brimmed hats from Vienna, one bright scarlet and the other black. The publishers asked us to send photographs of Father wearing these two hats to verify that they were dealing with us and not some impostor. When I brought the hats to Petrovo-Dalneye, they attracted everyone's attention because they were so outlandish. I explained that they were souvenirs from one of Father's foreign admirers.
Mama was amazed. "Can anyone really think that your father will wear them?"
When Father and I were out for a walk, I explained the real reason for the hats. He got a big kick out of the situation. The plan appealed to him; he liked witty people. When we returned from our walk, he got into the spirit of the game himself. Sitting on the bench in front of the house, he asked me loudly, "Bring me those hats. I want to try them on and see if they fit."
Mama was horrified. "You can't really be thinking of wearing them?"
"And why not?" he said, egging her on.
"Why, they're much too loud," she said, and shrugged.
I brought him the hats, grabbing my camera on the way. Father put one on and said, "Take my picture, let's see how I look." So I photographed him wearing one hat and holding the other in his hand. The publishers received the picture and knew that they were not being led astray.
Father's memoirs were later published in 16 languages. People around the world have been reading them for nearly two decades. But there is still no Soviet edition -- another example of our long-standing, thoughtless, "who cares?" attitude to the history of our homeland.