even more vivid is my recollection of the occasional moments when i would sneak out of bed in the small hours of the night , wrap myself in a blanket and sit at the top of the wide marble stairway so that i could eavesdrop on the stories coming from the salon stories about things of which i had no knowledge , such as adultery , the misconceptions surrounding the then-topical proletarian utopia , as well as something called nepotism , to which as my liquored-up grandfather kept repeating one night government officials were especially prone .