“Denis is going to stay with us for a couple of days. You don’t mind, do you?” Vitya asked his wife.
“If that’s what’s needed,” Lilya replied with a shrug.
“Make up the sofa for him and cook something,” Vitya said, waving his hand dismissively as though telling her she was free to go.
“All right,” Lilya answered calmly and left the room.
“Now that’s what I call training!” Denis exclaimed admiringly.
“A skilled master can accomplish anything!” Vitya declared smugly. “I’m the man of the house and the head of the family! Whatever I say goes!
“And if she dares to squeak a word against me, she’ll be out on the street in three seconds, with no compensation and no explanations!”
“Really? Did you have to throw her out often while you were training her?” Denis asked with interest.
“Once was enough! It was winter, and I was already at the end of my rope. She learned the lesson so well, it was as if she’d absorbed it with her mother’s milk!” Vitya laughed.
“You’re tough!” Denis said approvingly. “I’ve still got a long way to go before I reach that level. But at least now I know what I should aim for!”
“Brother, if you don’t establish your authority from the very beginning, they’ll walk all over you later! In eight years of marriage, Lilya has only gone against me once. But she learned her lesson after that!”
Lilya appeared in the doorway.
“I’ve made up the bed. I’m going to fry some potatoes now,” she said calmly. “Would you like them with onions or garlic?”
“With garlic?” Denis asked in surprise.
“Yeah, they’re incredible! You’ll love them!” Vitya said enthusiastically. “The recipe is more complicated than simply tossing in some onions.
“You have to pour in a little garlic juice at the end to bring out the aroma.” Vitya swallowed. “With garlic!” he called to his wife.
“Okay,” Lilya said with a nod before returning to the kitchen.
“Listen,” Denis said, looking at his brother enviously. “Now this is what I call living! And what about drinking?” He flicked a finger against his neck. “Does she keep quiet about that too?”
“Well, I don’t overdo it, but she buys it herself and brings it to me while I’m watching television!” Vitya sighed blissfully. “A properly trained wife has never ruined a man’s life!
“Learn from me, little brother, while I’m still alive!”
“Wait, why did you tell her I was staying for a couple of days?” Denis asked. “We were only planning to have dinner. My girlfriend is waiting for me!”
“I wanted to demonstrate finesse!” Vitya slapped his brother on the back. “Letting relatives stay in your home is the last thing any sensible person should do. But Lilya didn’t make a sound! She made the bed without a single complaint!”
“Impressive,” Denis said, nodding approvingly. “The next time my parents kick me out because I refuse to get a job, I’ll know where I can stay!”
“And you won’t merely stay here. You’ll stay in comfort!” Vitya smiled. “Now watch this. The most dangerous trick of all!”
Denis tensed with anticipation.
“Denis has changed his mind about staying! Put the bedding away!” Vitya shouted toward the kitchen.
“Give me two minutes,” Lilya replied. “Is he at least staying for dinner?”
“Are you eating with us?” Vitya quietly asked his brother.
“Sure!” Denis nodded. “I’ve never tried fried potatoes with garlic.”
“Yes, we’re having dinner!” Vitya shouted.
“Are you planning to drive anywhere tonight?” Lilya asked.
“No!” the brothers answered in unison.
“All right. Then I’ll put a bottle in the freezer—for the appetite and digestion,” Lilya said.
“Well?” Pride shone in Vitya’s eyes. “What do you think?”
“I’m absolutely amazed!” Denis said, shaking his head.
Lilya prepared dinner, set the table, and left the brothers alone. That caused another wave of admiration.
Denis couldn’t find the words to describe how thoroughly his brother had trained his wife.
Vitya basked in the praise, continuing to repeat phrases about who was in charge of the house and quoting bits of old-fashioned patriarchal wisdom.
After seeing his brother off and going to bed, Vitya thought blissfully:
“It’s a good thing he didn’t know Lilya before! How fortunate that he studied in another city and afterward was more interested in partying than in how his brother lived or what was happening in his family.
“And it’s also wonderful that Lilya is so obedient! I hardly had to train her at all. She always agrees with everything, always remains calm, and always does what she is told. She’s the perfect wife!”
With those thoughts, Vitya drifted off to sleep.
His awakening in the middle of the night was rather unexpected.
The place where his back lost its respectable name throbbed with savage pain and felt as though it were on fire.
Worst of all, he couldn’t move.
If anyone had needed an ideal example of a calm person, Lilya could have been appointed to the position without hesitation.
Her university classmates used to say that it would be easier to make stones angry than to provoke Lilya into showing emotion. Even as a teenager, she had been remarkably unflappable.
It was precisely because of that composure and calmness that Vitya had married her. He had once been in a relationship with a hot-tempered and emotional woman.
Six months with her had been enough to make him swallow valerian tablets for two months afterward. That relationship had even left him with two streaks of gray hair.
With Lilya, however, he felt wonderful. Their relationship developed smoothly, without sudden highs, lows, or emotional explosions. They approached the wedding without fuss or drama.
Vitya’s parents had tried to test their future daughter-in-law. Lilya listened to reasonable criticism, but she simply ignored anything absurd.
No matter how hard her newly acquired mother-in-law tried to provoke her into an argument, Lilya would listen with an expression as still as a statue’s and then say:
“All right. That is your opinion. You have every right to it.”
It was completely disarming. Alla Yuryevna eventually declared that there had to be something wrong with her.
“A normal woman can’t be like that! She’s like a dried fish! She could at least blink! Talking to her is exactly like talking to a wall!”
“Mom, I’m the one who has to live with her, not you,” Vitya said. “And I’m perfectly satisfied.”
“Oh, I can stop speaking to her entirely! I won’t even think about her!” Alla Yuryevna replied.
When Mother said something, she followed through.
Vitya wasn’t especially upset that his mother had lost interest in his young family. Alla Yuryevna had a contradictory and thoroughly exhausting personality. The only person who knew how to tolerate her was Vitya’s father, Semyon Olegovich.
He had suffered from intermittent hearing loss since childhood, which meant he could simply fail to hear his wife’s emotional outbursts. Although Vitya suspected that his father sometimes pretended.
More than once, Vitya had watched his mother scream herself hoarse while his father calmly read the newspaper. Once she had finished shouting, his father would turn his head and ask:
“Darling, did you say something?”
Perhaps that was the secret of their long and happy marriage.
There was another reason Vitya and Lilya had been left alone so easily: Vitya’s younger brother, Denis.
Denis was constantly getting himself into trouble, while their mother fussed over him as though he were a priceless treasure. When he deliberately enrolled at a university in another city, she traveled to see him three times a month.
“I have to know how my little boy is doing!”
After graduation, Denis returned home with no desire to work and an endless need for adventure. That only gave Alla Yuryevna even more problems to solve.
Meanwhile, Vitya lived his peaceful life with his beloved wife and simply enjoyed the absence of outside irritations.
They began their married life quietly in a rented apartment. Their daughter was born just as peacefully. They took out a mortgage without any drama. They even renovated the apartment without a single scream.
They lived and enjoyed their life together.
Vitya never hid his wife from the public, although he didn’t particularly show her off either. They appeared together a few times at company parties, his boss’s birthday celebration, and colleagues’ anniversaries.
Then people began asking him questions.
“How did you train your wife to be so quiet and submissive?”
Had Vitya simply admitted that she had always been that way, there would have been no problem. Instead, he decided to embellish the truth and make himself appear more impressive than he really was.
So he blurted out:
“Training is a powerful thing! If a man wants to live happily with his wife, she needs to be trained even more thoroughly than a German shepherd!”
After that, his imagination knew no limits. Vitya invented stories on the spot about how he had trained and disciplined Lilya, how fiercely she had resisted, and how much trouble she had caused him.
In the end, according to his stories, she had surrendered to the mercy of a strong man and acknowledged his authority.
“That’s why she behaves the way she does now!” Vitya boasted. “She won’t say a single unnecessary word without her husband’s permission!”
He invented the story himself and eventually began to believe it. Then he started broadcasting it to everyone around him.
Lilya overheard fragments of those conversations a few times, but by nature she simply let them pass.
“If he wants to talk that way, let him. Perhaps it makes his life easier,” she said quietly.
No one heard her.
They should have listened. Even those words contained a warning.
The story of Lilya’s life had so far begun when she was about seventeen. The reader had probably already guessed that something had happened before then—something that had intentionally been left unmentioned.
Yes, dear reader, Lilya had not always been so calm and accommodating. She had consciously chosen that manner of behavior for the rest of her life.
She had been forced to grow up far too early.
Lilya was born into an ordinary, happy family. Her mother worked as an investigator, and her father was a combat sambo instructor within the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Lilya couldn’t understand much about her mother’s work, but her father’s profession was perfectly clear to her. As a result, she became much closer to him.
From the age of four until she was sixteen, Lilya spent almost all her free time at her father’s workplace. She intended to become an instructor herself one day.
But because of one particular case…
Lilya’s parents died when she was sixteen.
Their colleagues quickly found the people responsible and sent them to prison. They also advised Lilya not to spend her life waiting for an opportunity to take revenge.
“Girl, you need to live your own life,” her father’s superior told her. “Anger, irritation, and screaming have never brought anyone anything good. Your parents never argued, and that is why you grew up to be such a sweet and kind girl.”
“I understand,” Lilya replied.
From that moment onward, she turned herself into an island of calm in a world of raging emotions. Her grandmother, who became her guardian, was surprised by how much her granddaughter had changed.
“Grandma, everything is fine,” Lilya would say. “It’s just that part of me remained with my parents. Besides, what is the point of tearing yourself apart emotionally? When something isn’t critical, you can simply give way. And when someone tries to climb onto your head, you can simply do things your own way.”
That was the principle by which she lived with Vitya.
“If he wants to give orders, let him. As long as he doesn’t become completely shameless, he can imagine himself to be the leader.”
Lilya didn’t particularly like the stories Vitya had begun telling under the influence of his own imagination.
But when he staged that performance in front of his brother, Lilya realized that someone had crossed the line.
“Ow! That hurts!” Vitya cried.
Another sharp strike landed below his back.
The bedroom light came on, and Vitya saw his wife standing over him with a military belt in her hand.
“What are you doing?” he roared. “Have you lost your mind?”
“Haven’t you?” Lilya asked calmly. “When exactly did you train me?”
“Then perhaps it’s time I started!”
Vitya tore his hands free from the towel loops Lilya had used to restrain him. He freed his legs and lunged at his wife.
The floor and ceiling seemed to exchange places several times, and Vitya found himself lying on the bed.
“That mattress is rather hard,” he thought.
He jumped up again, though not quite as energetically, and charged at her once more.
This time, he found himself on the floor.
“The mattress is actually quite soft,” he thought.
He rose again with considerable difficulty.
“Vitya, the next time I’ll follow through after taking you down,” Lilya said calmly. “It will hurt very badly. Do you really need that?”
Vitya decided to take the risk.
It took him a long time to regain consciousness. A wet towel had been placed on his head.
“Lilya,” he croaked. “What was that?”
“Vityusha, I love you, but I don’t like the things you’ve been saying,” Lilya replied in her usual calm voice. “When you tell fairy tales to strangers, I can overlook it. But Denis is your brother. He is family.
“I don’t want him to form a bad opinion of me. So please don’t do it again.”
Lilya’s behavior didn’t change after the incident that night.
She remained just as obedient, calm, and even-tempered as before.
But now Vitya knew that there was no telling what lurked beneath those still waters, so he simply tried not to provoke her.
Otherwise, they were a happy family.
They merely had one little secret.
Still waters run very deep.
