Her Name Is Yolka

Sergei Alekseevich Baruzdin (born July 22, 1926, Moscow) is a Russian Soviet writer, poet, and prose writer. Member of the CPSU since 1949. A participant in the Great Patriotic War. Graduated from the Gorky Literary Institute (1958). Began publishing in 1946. Author of many books for children and young people.

— I know.
You’re Alexandras Fyodorovna’s grandson.
— How do you know?
— You look alike. Oh, how alike! Really! And why did you never come here before?
Lenka could have expected anything, but not this. They said he looks like his father. That’s probably true. Well—like his mother. Maybe. Partly. But that he, a boy, would look like his grandmother—that’s incredible. Lenka even blushed.
— And why—I'm asking—why didn’t you come here earlier?—she wouldn’t let it go.
Why didn’t he come here earlier? How could she tell her! Maybe it wasn’t good that he’d never been here, to his grandmother. But somehow it had been simple, and he didn’t come. He went to pioneer camps. One shift and then two. And last year—three shifts. Earlier?.. Earlier Lenka had been in kindergarten. Probably funny? Probably… He went out of town with the kindergarten… only he almost didn’t remember that.
— Grandmother stayed with us every year. That’s why he didn’t come, — Lenka mumbled. And inwardly he thought: “Well, what a girl!”
It was in the pre-pre-war thirty-ninth year, when Lenka first ended up in Seryozhki. They met in the store that served the nearby community (selpo), where Lenka went to buy salt.