Shh, don’t make noise, she’s just lain down after the trip,” Viktor said, pressing a finger to his lips as he greeted his wife not with a kiss, but with a hiss for silence.
His eyes were shining with that special, foolish joy found in schoolboys who have done something naughty and are convinced their prank is actually a brilliant heroic deed worthy of a medal. Alina froze in the hallway, not even managing to unzip her boot. The heavy laptop bag pulled at her shoulder, and a dull ache throbbed in her temples after a twelve-hour shift. She wanted only one thing: a hot shower and silence. But instead of silence there was her husband’s excited whisper, and instead of the smell of a freshly cooked dinner, there was a strange, thick odor that seemed to seep through the closed doors of the rooms.
“Who is ‘she’?” Alina asked, feeling a bad premonition begin to rise inside her. “Vitya, did you bring another cat in from the street? We agreed.”
“What cat, Alina! Think bigger!” He beamed like a polished samovar. “I moved Mom in! Surprise!”
Viktor grabbed her cold, frost-chilled hand and pulled her deeper into the apartment, not even letting her take off her coat. Alina followed him mechanically, stumbling over her own feet. Her brain refused to process the information. His mother? Here? In their two-room apartment, where every square meter had been suffered for, calculated, and paid for with her sleepless nights over reports?
“Just look at how we arranged everything,” Viktor rattled on, throwing open the door to the room they had called, for the last six months, only “the nursery.” “Do you know how lonely she is there in the village? Winter is coming, it’s hard for her to carry firewood, and she says the wolves have started howling right behind the garden. But here it’s warm, bright, there’s hot water. When I thought of her sitting there alone in the dark, my heart clenched. So I rushed over in one day and hired a Gazelle van…”
He pushed the door open, and Alina involuntarily held her breath.
The room — her favorite room, her project, her dream — had been destroyed. That very morning, it had smelled of fresh paper from expensive eco-friendly mint-colored wallpaper and lacquer from the parquet boards. Alina had personally chosen that shade for two weeks, comparing palettes so that their future baby would feel calm and cozy. Now, however, a heavy, dense smell hit her nose: mothballs, dusty wool, old matted rags, and something sour, like sauerkraut.
“There!” Viktor announced proudly, sweeping his hand around the space.
In the middle of the room, right on the perfectly even oak parquet that Alina had forbidden anyone to wash with a wet rag — only with a special cleaner — stood a mountain. These were not suitcases. They were bundles. Huge, shapeless sacks wrapped in bedsheets, checkered shuttle-trader bags from the nineties, bound with brown packing tape, and cardboard egg boxes tied with twine.
Against the wall, blocking the designer photo wallpaper with forest animals, stood a carpet rolled into a tube. Even rolled up, it looked threatening: burgundy, with bald patches, stiff threads sticking out of it, and a smell so strong it made her throat itch. Beside it were some buckets, mops with worn-out fibers, and even, it seemed, an old Soviet washboard.
“Vitya…” Alina finally exhaled, feeling her fingers go numb from shock. “What is this?”
“What do you mean? Things. A dowry, so to speak,” her husband chuckled, not noticing her state. “Mom can’t sleep without her featherbeds, you know that. And this carpet is a keepsake, it belonged to Grandma, real wool, they don’t make them like this anymore. We’ll lay it on the floor, and it’ll immediately become cozy and warm. Otherwise it’s like a hospital in here — everything bare and empty.”
Alina took a step forward, stepping onto a dirty boot print someone had left right in the middle of the room. Dirt on the new floor.
“This is the nursery,” she said quietly but clearly. “Vitya, we spent six months renovating this room for the baby. We saved up for a crib. We chose a dresser. Where did you drag all these… these bundles?”
Viktor waved her off as if she had said something foolish.
“Oh, come on! What nursery? There isn’t even a baby yet. The room’s just standing empty, collecting dust. What’s the point of keeping it vacant? And Mom is here — a living person who needs help. We’ll have a baby someday, then we’ll think about it. A newborn doesn’t need much space. We’ll put a cradle in our bedroom; at first the baby will sleep with us anyway. And Mom will have plenty of room here. I already connected my old TV for her, now we’ll fix the antenna, and we’ll live just fine!”
He went up to one of the bundles and lovingly patted its side, knocking up a cloud of acrid dust.
“Can you imagine, Alina, she even brought her jars. Cucumbers, tomatoes, cherry jam. She said, ‘I can’t come to my daughter-in-law empty-handed, it’s embarrassing.’ She cares about us. And you’re standing there like a stranger. You could at least smile.”
Alina looked at her husband and saw a completely unfamiliar man in front of her. Three years of marriage, shared plans, evening conversations — all of it now seemed like some stage set, a cardboard house blown away by one gust of village wind. He had not asked. He had not called. He had simply taken their future and turned it into a storage room for his mother’s old things, sincerely believing that Alina should be jumping for joy.
“Take it out,” she said. Her voice sounded hoarse, foreign.
“What?” Viktor stopped smiling, a foolish look of incomprehension appearing on his face.
“Take all of this back. Or to a garage. Or to the dump. I don’t care. But in one hour, this stench had better be gone from here.”
Viktor frowned, his lips twisting in hurt indignation.
“What are you starting now? Are you tired or something? What stench? That’s the smell of home, of the village! Mom is old, she needs peace. Are you suggesting I throw my own mother out into the cold because you don’t like the smell? Do you even hear yourself?”
At that moment, one of the bundles moved. Or rather, the pile of rags on the old sofa moved — the sofa they had temporarily left in the corner, planning to sell in a few days. From under a heap of gray scarves, a disheveled gray head appeared. Antonina Petrovna had woken up.
The pile of scarves and old sweaters began moving more actively, and Antonina Petrovna emerged into the light of day. She lowered her legs from the sofa, and Alina noticed with horror that her mother-in-law had already changed into house clothes. She was wearing a washed-out flannel robe, once blue but now some undefined gray color, with a torn pocket, and worn felt slippers whose backs had been flattened like pancakes. She looked as if she had lived in this apartment forever, and Alina had simply come to the wrong door by mistake.
“Oh, Vitenka, you woke me,” Antonina Petrovna creaked, yawning and completely ignoring her daughter-in-law’s presence. “I had only just dozed off. It’s a long road, shook me all over.”
She scratched her lower back like the mistress of the house and finally deigned to turn her head toward Alina. Her gaze was appraising, sharp, and, as it seemed to Alina, slightly triumphant.
“Ah, the worker has appeared,” she tossed out instead of a greeting. “Well, hello, if you’re serious. Why are you walking on the parquet in boots? I just swept here; you’ll drag sand in.”
Alina was dumbfounded. She was standing in the hallway of her own apartment, which she paid for every month, denying herself vacations and new clothes, and listening to complaints from a woman who had turned the designer nursery into a branch of a flea market.
“Hello, Antonina Petrovna,” Alina forced herself to be polite, though everything inside her was boiling. “Actually, I am in my own home. And this, by the way, is the baby’s room. We renovated it specially.”
Her mother-in-law snorted, rising from the sofa and shuffling across the new floor. The sound of her shuffling was unbearable, like sandpaper on glass. She went to the wall, ran a crooked finger over the mint wallpaper, and left a barely visible mark on it.
“Renovation…” she drawled with obvious contempt. “And what kind of color is this? Like a hospital, honestly. So pale, and not practical at all. Every bit of dirt will show here! And the floor?” She stamped her foot. “Cold, slippery. A child would crack his skull here in no time. I told Vitya right away: carpets need to be laid down. Mine are over there, good wool ones. We’ll lay them down, and at least the room will look fit for a human being. Right now it’s some kind of crypt.”
“Mom is right, Alina,” Viktor agreed, taking off his jacket. “It’s somehow uncomfortable here, empty. With Mom’s things it immediately feels more soulful.”
Alina silently turned and went to the kitchen. She needed to drink some water so she would not scream. But in the kitchen, another surprise awaited her.
On her perfect artificial-stone countertop, where there was usually not a single crumb, chaos reigned. Jars of cloudy brine, their lids covered in rust, stood in a row, leaving wet rings on the surface. Alina’s towel lay on the floor, and on the oven handle hung some greasy rag.
But the last straw was the mug. Her favorite large handmade ceramic mug, which Alina had brought back from a business trip and from which only she drank. Now that mug stood in front of Antonina Petrovna, who, shuffling in after her, had already managed to plop down on a chair. Tea steamed inside the mug, and in it floated a piece of buttered white bread.
“Pour your husband some tea. What are you standing there for?” her mother-in-law commanded, sipping noisily from someone else’s cup. “He’s tired, he moved me. And you only think about yourself.”
Alina felt a lump rise in her throat. She approached the table and gripped the edge of the countertop so hard her knuckles turned white.
“Antonina Petrovna, that is my cup,” she said quietly.
“So what?” the woman was sincerely surprised, not letting go of the mug. “Are you sorry for it or something? You have plenty in the cupboard. I took the first one that came to hand. Everything in your place is inconveniently placed, too high. I rearranged things a little, moved the grains down so I could reach. And I threw out that sea salt of yours and poured in normal rock salt. That other stuff doesn’t salt anything properly.”
Alina opened the cabinet. Her storage system, her neat labeled jars — everything had been shifted around, mixed up, stuffed with some bags of rusks and dried mushrooms that reeked of mustiness.
“You… threw out my salt?” Alina asked again, turning to her husband. “Vitya, did you see this?”
Viktor came into the kitchen, already changed into sweatpants, and immediately reached for a plate of sandwiches his mother had cut.
“Oh, Alina, don’t start, huh?” He grimaced as if from a toothache. “It’s just salt. Mom wanted to make things better, she’s settling in. She’ll be living here now, so it has to be convenient for her.”
“Living?” Alina looked at both of them. At her chewing husband and at her mother-in-law, who was crumbling bread directly onto the table. “Vitya, we didn’t discuss this. We did not agree that your mother would live here. This apartment is not made of rubber. We don’t have an extra room. That room is for the baby.”
Antonina Petrovna set down the mug, leaving a greasy mark on the table, and pursed her lips.
“Well, well,” she drawled venomously. “So that’s how it is. I raised a son, and now they won’t even let me through the door. Do you hear what your fancy girl is saying, Vitya? She begrudges space for your mother.”
“Alina, stop it,” Viktor’s voice grew harder. He stopped chewing and looked at his wife reproachfully. “Mother is sacred. She feels bad there alone. And that child of yours… well, where is this child? For now it’s only a project. It doesn’t exist. Maybe it won’t for another year, maybe two. So should the room just stand empty while we try?”
“A project?” Alina repeated. The word struck her harder than a slap. “So our future child is just a project to you, something that can be postponed because your mother got bored in the village?”
“Don’t twist my words!” Viktor slammed his palm on the table. “A baby doesn’t need a separate room at all; it doesn’t understand anything. We’ll put a cradle in our bedroom like normal people do. And Mom will live there. She’ll help us, cook, clean. You’re always disappearing at work; there’s nothing at home. But now you’ll come home to hot borscht and pies. You should be happy!”
“I didn’t ask for borscht,” Alina said sharply. “And I didn’t ask for help. I asked you not to touch my home. This apartment was bought with a mortgage that I pay. You, Vitya, have been ‘finding yourself’ for the third year already and writing music nobody buys. And I work like a horse. I have the right to come home to my clean home, not to a storage room full of old things and not to a communal apartment!”
“Are you reproaching him?” Antonina Petrovna shrieked, throwing up her hands. “Reproaching your husband with a piece of bread? How does your tongue even turn that way? I raised Vityusha, I didn’t sleep nights so he would grow up like this, and you… Money is more important to you than a person! That’s modern youth for you. Rotten!”
Viktor stepped between them, shielding his mother with his back.
“Shut up, Alina. You are crossing every line now. Mom is staying here. This is my decision as the man. Accept it and be kinder. And if you keep acting up, you’ll regret it.”
A heavy pause hung in the kitchen. Alina looked at her husband’s back, at her mother-in-law’s satisfied face peeking out from behind his shoulder, and felt something break inside her. The thin thread of patience snapped with a distinct ring. She understood that the conversations were over.
Viktor demonstratively turned away from his wife and pulled the plate of sliced food toward himself. It was an expensive dry-cured sausage Alina had bought yesterday for her birthday — which was supposed to be tomorrow. Now that sausage was disappearing into Antonina Petrovna’s mouth at a frightening speed. Her mother-in-law ate greedily, grabbing slices with her hands without even using a fork, chasing them with her murky salted tomatoes that smelled sour, their brine already spreading in a puddle across the stone countertop.
No one offered Alina a seat. They had not even cleared a place for her — on the third chair towered a pile of old newspapers in which jars had been wrapped. She stood in the doorway of her own kitchen like a poor relative and watched the feast.
“Mmm, Vityusha, the tomatoes turned out well, didn’t they?” Antonina Petrovna smacked her lips, wiping her greasy fingers on the edge of her robe. “Strong ones! Not like your store-bought chemical stuff. Eat, son, eat. You need strength. You’ve gotten so thin on that institutional food.”
“Delicious, Mom, very,” Viktor nodded with his mouth full, looking devotedly into his mother’s eyes. “You’re a master.”
He reached for the kettle but found it empty.
“Alina, why are you frozen there?” he threw over his shoulder without even looking at his wife. “Put the kettle on. Can’t you see Mom’s throat is dry from the road? And get the cookies from the top drawer.”
Something clicked inside Alina. Not loudly, not hysterically, but dully and terribly, like a gun bolt. She looked at the man with whom she had lived for three years and understood: he did not simply disrespect her. He did not see her. To him, she was a function. An ATM, a cleaner, a cook. A servant who should be grateful for the right to serve his “sacred” mother.
“The kettle?” she repeated in an icy tone, not moving from her place. “Maybe your mother can put it on herself? She’s the mistress here now, after all. She threw out my salt and rearranged the grains. Let her press the button too. Or will her hands wither from the tomatoes?”
Viktor choked. Antonina Petrovna froze with a piece of sausage by her mouth, slowly turning crimson.
“How are you speaking to my mother?” her husband hissed, jumping up from the chair. “Have you completely lost your mind? A person came to us with all her soul, with gifts! She brought half a trunk of food so we could save money! And you turn up your nose?”
“Food?” Alina laughed, and the laugh was dry and short. “You call those rotten tomatoes food? Vitya, wake up! I earn enough for us to eat fresh vegetables, not that mold. We don’t save on food — we save for your ambitions! Who is paying for this banquet? Who pays for the apartment? For the electricity you’re wasting right now? For the water your mother will pour without measure?”
“There you go again with your money!” Viktor slammed his fist on the table, making the plate jump. “Mercenary bitch! All you think about is cash! You have a meter spinning in your eyes instead of a soul!”
“Yes, I think about money!” Alina roared, stepping into the kitchen. “Because you don’t think about it! You’re ‘finding yourself’! You’ve spent three years writing your genius album while sitting on my neck! I pay the mortgage, I buy the groceries, I pay for the renovation! And you simply bring your mother here and put her on my head!”
Antonina Petrovna, realizing her finest hour had come, theatrically clutched at her heart.
“Oh, Vitenka, I feel faint…” she wailed in a syrupy voice, glancing at Alina with an evil, prickly look. “I told you, son, she isn’t a match for you. Hard-hearted, empty. Doesn’t want to have children, doesn’t value her husband. A damned career woman! All she wants is to wag her tail at work, and there’s no comfort at home. She’ll throw you out, son, remember my words. She’s a snake.”
Alina looked at her mother-in-law. At her fake grimace of pain, at her greedy hands still clutching a piece of someone else’s sausage. Pity disappeared. Only cold rage remained, and a clear understanding of what needed to be done.
“A snake, you say?” Alina said quietly, coming right up to the table. “Then here’s how it is. Listen to me carefully, dear relatives.”
She drew air into her chest and shouted what had been boiling inside her for the last half hour, enunciating every word so it would hammer into their heads like a nail:
“I did not work myself to the bone for ten years for this apartment so your dear mommy could start imposing her rules here! Oh, she got bored in the village during winter, did she? What do I care? Let her be bored! If she crosses this threshold with suitcases, both of you will fly out of here, along with her jars and knitting!”
The kitchen went silent. Only the hum of the refrigerator and her mother-in-law’s heavy breathing could be heard. Viktor stared at his wife with bulging eyes, as if he had just discovered for the first time that she knew how to open her mouth.
“You… you wouldn’t dare,” he mumbled, but there was less confidence in his voice now. “This is my home too. We’re married.”
“This home was bought with a mortgage in my name,” Alina reminded him harshly. “The prenuptial agreement, Vitya. Have you forgotten? We signed it because you had debts from old loans, and the bank wouldn’t approve the mortgage with you as a co-borrower. Legally, you are nobody here. And your mother is nobody. You have ten minutes.”
“She’s not going anywhere!” Viktor turned red again, trying to reclaim his dominance. “I said she’s staying! I am the man here! I decided so! And if you don’t like something, you can get out yourself!”
“Oh, is that so?” Alina narrowed her eyes. “Are you throwing me out of my own apartment?”
“I’m putting you in your place!” he screamed, spitting saliva. “Know your place! Mom will live in that room, period! And you’ll accept it if you want to keep this family!”
Behind them, Antonina Petrovna smiled smugly, feeling powerful support.
“That’s right, son,” she added fuel to the fire. “Teach your wife some sense. Look how spoiled she’s become. Don’t worry, I’ll quickly teach her order. Tomorrow I’ll make a duty schedule and teach her to wash floors properly. They’ve made such a mess…”
Alina was no longer listening. She looked at her husband with a long, heavy gaze in which there was no love and no offense — only disgust, as if she were looking at a cockroach.
“Family?” she repeated calmly. “I no longer have a family, Vitya. You made your choice.”
She sharply turned on her heels and left the kitchen. No tears. No hysterics. A plan had formed in her head, simple and effective like a hammer blow. She headed straight for the former nursery, where it smelled of mothballs and the collapse of her illusions.
“What are you doing, you hysterical woman? Put that back right now!” Viktor burst into the room at the moment Alina was dragging across the floor the largest checkered bag, stuffed, judging by its weight, either with bricks or with those very “priceless” jars.
She did not answer. Her breathing was even, her movements economical and precise. Alina felt not rage, but the icy calm of a surgeon amputating a gangrenous limb. She dragged the bag to the nursery threshold, kicked it hard with her foot, and it slid rustling down the corridor toward the front door.
“I’m talking to you!” Viktor leapt toward her and grabbed her shoulder. His fingers painfully dug into her skin through the fabric of her blouse. “Have you completely lost it? Those are Mom’s things! There’s glass in there!”
Alina jerked her shoulder sharply, shaking off his hand like an annoying insect. She turned and looked at her husband in such a way that he involuntarily stepped back. There was neither fear nor doubt in her eyes, only emptiness in which all his threats drowned.
“Glass?” she repeated in a lifeless voice. “Then there’ll be a ringing sound. Open the door, Vitya. Or I’ll throw this right through it, frame and all.”
“Don’t you dare!” shrieked Antonina Petrovna, who had arrived just then. She stood in the doorway, clutching a three-liter jar of cucumbers to her chest like a baby and trembling with tiny shivers. “Monster! Barbarian! That’s my dowry! Vitya, do something! She’s going to break everything!”
But Viktor stood frozen, paralyzed by the change in his wife. He was used to seeing Alina tired, compliant, ready to negotiate. This woman — with a straight back and a hard gaze — was a stranger to him.
While he blinked in confusion, Alina had already grabbed the edge of the carpet rolled into a tube. That same smelly, dusty monster. She planted her feet on the floor and yanked it toward herself. The heavy roll fell onto the parquet with a dull thud, raising a cloud of acrid dust.
“Achoo!” Viktor sneezed loudly, covering himself with his elbow.
“Bless you,” Alina threw out, continuing to drag the carpet toward the exit. “You’ll breathe easier in the fresh air.”
She dragged the carpet into the corridor. Antonina Petrovna, seeing her treasure crawling toward the exit, howled like a siren and rushed to block the way, trying to shield the front door with her body.
“Only over my dead body!” she screamed, spreading her arms, one of which still held the jar. “I won’t let you! This is my home now, my son said so! Vitya, call the doctors, she’s rabid!”
Alina stopped a meter away from her mother-in-law. She did not scream or wave her hands. She simply walked over to the coat rack where Viktor’s jacket and laptop bag were hanging.
“Your home?” Alina repeated, taking down her husband’s jacket. “You’re mistaken. Your home is where the wolves howl. And here — this is my territory.”
She unlocked the door and threw it wide open. Cool air from the stairwell burst into the apartment, mixing with the smell of mothballs.
“Out,” Alina said to her mother-in-law, pointing to the landing.
“I won’t go!” the woman resisted.
“Fine.”
Alina threw Viktor’s jacket straight onto the dirty concrete floor of the stairwell. His bag flew after it. The laptop inside made a pitiful crunch as it hit the wall, but Alina did not care.
“My computer!” Viktor yelled, forgetting about his mother, and shot out onto the landing to save his equipment, which contained his “genius” unreleased tracks.
As soon as he stepped over the threshold, Alina grabbed the first bundle she saw and shoved it hard into her mother-in-law’s back. Losing her balance from the unexpected push with the soft bag, Antonina Petrovna took several steps backward into the stairwell by inertia, clutching the jar to herself.
“Get out,” Alina said quietly but terribly.
Her mother-in-law found herself on the landing. She blinked in confusion, looking first at her son, who was crawling on his knees over the bag, then at her daughter-in-law.
“What… what have you done?” Viktor rasped, rising from his knees. His face twisted with malice. “You broke my laptop! You’ll pay me for it! Do you even understand that you just destroyed the family? I’ll file for divorce! I’ll make sure you end up with nothing!”
Alina began methodically throwing out the remaining things. The carpet flew out next, almost knocking Viktor off his feet. Then came a box of knitting, from which colorful balls of yarn rolled all over the stairwell. Then a bag with someone’s old long underwear.
“Family?” Alina stopped in the doorway, resting her hand on the doorframe. She was breathing heavily, strands of hair had escaped her hairstyle, but there was a smile on her face. A frightening, relieved smile of a person who had thrown a bag of stones off her shoulders. “Vitya, you didn’t understand. I’m not just kicking you out. I’m erasing you. I don’t need a husband who is married to his mother.”
“Alina, come to your senses!” Viktor suddenly changed his tone, realizing the door was about to close and he had no keys — they were still on the small cabinet inside. “We got carried away, these things happen! Mom will clean everything up now! Where are we supposed to go at night?”
“To Mom’s,” Alina answered. “To the village. Winter is close, Vitya. The firewood won’t chop itself.”
“Shameless woman! Rude thing!” Antonina Petrovna began wailing, realizing her situation. “May your life be empty! May you be left alone with no one to bring you a glass of water! I’ll curse you!”
“And good health to you too,” Alina nodded.
She saw the last object that needed to be returned to its owners. That very mug with unfinished tea and a piece of soggy bread, which her mother-in-law had never carried back to the kitchen, leaving it on the small cabinet in the hallway. Alina picked it up, stepped out into the stairwell, and carefully placed it at her mother-in-law’s feet, right on the dirty concrete.
“Finish it. You can keep the dishes.”
“Alina!” Viktor lunged toward the door, trying to wedge his foot into the gap. “You have no right! This is illegal! I’ll call the police! Open up immediately!”
Alina pushed the door with force. The heavy metal panel struck Viktor on the shoulder, making him jump back.
The click of the lock sounded in the stairwell like a gunshot. Then the second turn. Then the clang of the night latch.
Alina pressed her back against the cold metal of the door. On the other side came muffled pounding fists, Viktor’s filthy curses, and Antonina Petrovna’s shrill maledictions, promising every punishment from heaven. But those sounds already seemed distant, like the noise of a television in a deaf neighbor’s apartment.
She slid down the door and sat right on the hallway floor. Around her lay the trash left behind by the “intervention”: scraps of paper, pieces of tape, dirt from boots. The smell of mothballs and sour cabbage soup still hung in the air. Alina closed her eyes and breathed deeply. She would need to call a cleaning service. Tomorrow. Or replace the wallpaper. Yes, she would replace the wallpaper. She would buy different wallpaper, not mint. Maybe yellow. Sunny.
The apartment was quiet.
And in that silence, for the first time in three years, she heard herself.
She was alone, but she was not lonely.
She had space.
