"We traveled a lot when I was younger, the whole family. I think we probably won't travel much more really, not with mum like this now. But we got to see all kinds of amazing things wherever we were. I saw an elephant before, without any fencing to keep her in, that's one reason I think that journal's so special. Because she was dying because some men had hunted her down to cut off her teeth -"
"Tusks."
"Tusks," he corrected in his perfect parroting tactic. It wasn't his English, Feddin would always call them teeth, just like a little kid.
"But she was dying, and you could smell it, it was all over her, flies, and - well and it was very difficult to watch that. But there were good things too, when we still traveled, back before father had made his big deals with the shipping companies and the..." he waved his hands like he'd forgotten the words, "some general board. But we visited St. Petersburg once, and a few other cities around that place. In these cities there were wooden dolls and we loved them so much. And I bought one as a gift from a woman on the streets. I used some money I'd gotten as allowance and I must have run back to the family - sprinted all the distance and we took rotation then opening up the doll, because they did open at the middle, and they were hollow inside with nothing. And you'd open them one after another and I opened up the very last doll and it was very exciting because she was hidden so far inside and she came around directly at my turn like she was meant to."
"And what was there? Inside the last doll?" The tutor took her cue perfectly.
"It was my fortune." He smiled. "It wasn't very accurate, though."