After 2 weeks at Pepa’s apartment on Beacon Hill, I moved to 170 Babcock Street in Brookline. Pepa had found me the room, since his girlfriend wanted to move in and he only had one bedroom. The room and board cost 50 dollars a month, which was manageable on my dishwashing wages.

The house was an old Victorian, 3 stories tall, and it was impressive. The ground floor had a large foyer with a turning staircase going up to the second floor, a living room with a fireplace, a dining room, and an extra room for the piano. All of those downstairs rooms could be opened completely into each other with large double pocket doors, so the whole floor became one space. There was also a big kitchen in the back. The second floor had 4 bedrooms; the master bedroom had its own small “breakfast” room with a fireplace. The 3rd floor had 3 rooms — a large art room, a bedroom for a housekeeper, and the bedroom where I lived.

The house belonged to Jeanne’s ex-husband’s father, who was the head of veterans’ hospitals in New England. Jeanne was a recently divorced woman, 11 years older than me, and she was a full-time mother to her son Alan, who was 5 years old. She was a nice, calm person. In the evenings, when she read books aloud to Alan, I would sit nearby and listen, since I was learning English at the same time and it helped me more than I expected.

Also living on the 3rd floor was an old Black woman named Liz, who was close to 80 years old. She took care of the household and looked after an old man who also lived in the house — the grandfather of Jeanne’s ex-husband, who was in his 80’s. He had once been a millionaire, but lost everything in the Depression. He was always well-groomed and did not talk much. A young nurse came by sometimes to check on him and take him for a walk. He was very nice to me, but he was also puzzled by me, because he could not understand why anyone would need to “escape” from his own country; I think he assumed I had done something criminal. Jeanne’s ex-husband’s father paid Liz’s wages and covered Jeanne’s expenses, since Jeanne was raising his grandchild. Everyone in that house was kind to me.

Jeanne had a small circle of good friends, most of them doctors or connected to doctors, since her ex-husband had been a doctor himself. One couple stood out above the rest — Ben and Tess Toy. I always called him Ben and her Mrs. Toy. Mrs. Toy was a psychologist and was also involved in a Jewish organization that helped Jewish refugees. When she learned about my background and my situation, she found me a job at KLH, a company that made high-quality record players and audio equipment. Because of my language difficulties at the time, she got me in as a laborer, unpacking equipment and helping to set up the record players.

Ben Toy was one of the most extraordinary people I have ever met. He had started out as an electrical engineer, then went back to school and became a dentist, and then went back again and became a doctor — a pathologist. Between 1967 and 1970 he was studying law. He knew more about electronics than I did. He could repair cars; one time I had a bad starter on my old Corsair and Ben went under the car on my driveway on Babcock Street and replaced it himself. He had bought an old Mercedes from some embassy and completely rebuilt the engine from scratch, doing all the body restoration work himself as well. He knew more about Czech composers than I ever did, and he traveled widely and published his photographs in National Geographic magazine. He and Mrs. Toy had no children, but they had a professional library room in their house in Newton that looked like it belonged to a university. I could not believe how one person could absorb that much knowledge at his age.

At the beginning I was often frustrated with him, because he was very sharp with his words and he would make fun of me in a witty way — gently, but I felt it. The problem was that I understood him well enough to know what he was doing, but I did not yet have the English to respond the way I wanted to. I could not match him and it bothered me. Over time I understood that it was his way and there was no real cruelty in it. I went to him whenever I needed advice, since he had already lived several professional lifetimes and his judgment was always sound. I was shocked and very sorry when he died in 1970. He was not old, and there was clearly more he would have done.