“Since You Love Sticking Your Nose Into Other People’s Lives So Much, Perhaps You Should Sort Out Your Own First? After All, You Hate Your Son and Want to Drive Us Out.”
“What is this?” Slava’s voice was muffled and completely devoid of emotion, as though he were speaking from beneath a thick layer of water.
He threw several lined pages torn from a notebook onto the coffee table. They landed in a fan-like arrangement, displaying Lida’s neat, tiny handwriting.
“Can you explain what this filth is?”
Lida looked at the pages and then at her husband. She had only just entered the room, exhausted after work, and had not even taken off her shoes yet. The kitchen smelled of bleach and artificial freshness—a sure sign that Raisa Pavlovna had been in charge of the apartment that day.
Her “help around the house” always left behind sterile cleanliness and the feeling that someone had walked across your soul in muddy boots.
Lida had always known that this day would come sooner or later.
“Those are pages from my diary,” she replied in a voice as level as his.
She did not ask where he had gotten them. The answer was obvious, hanging in the air along with the sharp smell of cleaning products.
“I know it’s your diary,” Slava said with a smirk, although his laugh came out ugly and creaking. “Mom found it by accident while she was cleaning your dresser. She says it simply fell out. And of course, she didn’t mean to read it…but then she saw my name. So she read it. She called me afterward, completely devastated. Can you even imagine what she went through?”
Lida stared at him silently.
“Found it by accident.”
“It simply fell out.”
What a predictable, pathetic lie.
She remembered those entries. There had been no hatred in them. Only exhaustion, irritation, and the pain caused by her mother-in-law’s constant interference in their lives. They were words written in moments of weakness, intended for no one but the paper.
Now those words had been torn from their context and served up with a generous helping of maternal outrage, transforming them into poison.
“And what exactly did you read, Slava?” she asked, slowly unbuttoning her coat.
“I read that you call my mother an ‘energy vampire.’ You wrote that she ‘strangles’ me with her love. You wrote that you dream about us moving to the other side of the country just so you never have to see her again!”
He listed her sins one after another, and with every word his face grew harder and more unfamiliar.
“She devoted her entire life to me! She helps us. She does everything for our family! And behind her back, you write things like this…”
He was not shouting. He spoke with cold, annihilating contempt.
In his eyes, Lida was not merely ungrateful. She was an enemy. A traitor.
He had already made his choice. Between his exhausted wife and his mother, whose “purest feelings had been cruelly wounded,” he had chosen the latter without hesitation.
Lida understood that every justification and every attempt at an explanation would shatter against that impenetrable wall of filial devotion.
Arguing was pointless.
It would have been like trying to convince a fanatic that his god was wrong.
Without saying a word, she hung her coat in the wardrobe, removed her shoes, and walked into the kitchen. She poured herself a glass of water.
Slava followed close behind, waiting for her repentance and pleas for forgiveness.
“Don’t you have anything to say?” he asked after she had taken several sips.
Lida placed the glass on the table. She turned and looked directly into his eyes.
Her gaze was clear and perfectly calm.
There was no longer any resentment or pain inside her.
Only coldness.
Pure, ringing coldness, like the silence of a winter forest.
“No,” she said. “Nothing.”
That evening, after Slava left to “comfort” his mother, Lida sat down at the computer.
She opened the website of a large bookstore and searched its catalogue for a notebook identical to the one Raisa Pavlovna had cracked open like a tin can. She ordered it for delivery the following day.
Lida had not declared war.
But since the war had begun, she intended to fight it according to her own rules.
And her weapon would be far deadlier than a few torn-out pages.
The following day, a courier delivered a small, carefully sealed package.
Lida opened it in the kitchen while the kettle was boiling. Inside lay a brand-new notebook.
It was identical to the old one: the same hard, dark-blue cover, smooth and cool beneath her fingers, with the same modest silver embossing in the corner.
It was not merely a copy.
It was a clone.
Lida ran her fingers over it.
There was nothing sinister about this ordinary object, but in her hands it felt heavy and dangerous, like the raw material for the perfect crime.
That evening, after Slava muttered a brief, “I’m going to bed,” and shut himself in the bedroom, Lida remained in the living room.
She switched on a dim floor lamp, sat in an armchair, and opened the first page.
The air in the apartment was heavy and motionless, saturated with unspoken accusations.
This was no longer shared territory. It had become two hostile camps divided by an invisible front line.
Her pen hovered over the untouched white sheet.
For the first few seconds, she felt nothing but emptiness.
Then Raisa Pavlovna’s face surfaced in her memory: her smug smile whenever she lectured someone, her attentive, appraising gaze sliding over shelves and corners in search of dust.
The words began to flow on their own.
This was not a letter.
It was construction.
She was building a structure out of lies, using fragments of truth as its foundation.
“Last night, Raisa Pavlovna started talking in her sleep again. She stayed with us because she claimed her faucet had broken. I went to the kitchen for some water and heard her mumbling from the living room.
She was insulting Slava. She called him a ‘weakling’ who couldn’t take a single step without hiding behind his mother’s skirt. She said I had ruined him, but that she would put everything back in its proper place.
She whispered it so viciously and so clearly that I froze behind the door.
It was terrifying.”
Lida reread what she had written.
It sounded convincing.
Raisa Pavlovna really did occasionally stay overnight under fabricated pretexts. And she truly believed her son lacked determination.
Lida was not creating something from nothing. She was taking her mother-in-law’s genuine traits and pushing them into the grotesque, transforming a supposedly caring mother into a two-faced monster.
Writing became an evening ritual.
She did not write about her own feelings. She chronicled Raisa Pavlovna’s imaginary life and secret thoughts.
Several days later, an entry about money appeared.
“I found an envelope containing a large amount of money in her handbag. She was hiding it in a concealed pocket. I think it was the money Slava gave her for a new coat and her medication.
But she keeps wearing her old coat and complaining about her health. What is she saving it for?
Yesterday, she was talking to one of her friends on the phone and thought I couldn’t hear her. She boasted that her son was a ‘cash cow’ and that she was putting money aside for an ‘independent old age’ because she couldn’t rely on me.”
It was a strike aimed directly at the heart of Slava’s pride as a devoted son.
He had always taken care of his mother and considered it his duty to provide for her. The thought that she might be cynically exploiting his assistance would be unbearable to him.
The pinnacle of Lida’s creation was the entry about the apartment.
She devoted several pages to it, constructing an entire espionage story.
“Raisa Pavlovna’s plan is becoming increasingly clear. She wants us to sell this three-bedroom apartment. She already knows a real-estate agent.
She wants to buy us a one-bedroom apartment in her building and use the difference to renovate her own place and take a vacation.
She is convinced she can persuade Slava.
She told her sister on the phone, ‘They can live in cramped conditions, but at least they’ll be under my supervision. Then I’ll know about every step he takes, and that flighty little tramp won’t be able to hide him from me anywhere.’
She hates our home because the apartment belongs to me.
She wants to destroy it.”
When Lida placed the final period on the page, she leaned back in the armchair.
The diary was almost half full.
This was more than slander.
It was a masterpiece of psychological manipulation, perfectly tailored to her husband’s personality and fears. Every sentence had been designed to destroy his faith in his mother.
She closed the blue notebook.
It was no longer an ordinary piece of stationery.
It was a loaded gun left inside a crowded room.
All she had to do was wait for its intended target to pick it up himself.
A week passed in icy silence.
Slava came home from work, ate dinner while staring at his plate, and disappeared into the bedroom.
They existed in the same apartment like ghosts who had accidentally found themselves occupying the same space.
Lida did nothing to disturb the silence.
She waited.
Every evening, she took out the blue notebook, pretended to write something, and then left it somewhere visible—on the bedside table or on a shelf in the living room.
But the bait remained untouched.
Slava demonstratively ignored it.
The appointed day finally arrived on Wednesday.
That morning, as she prepared to leave for work, Lida casually placed the diary on the coffee table beside the television remote.
At that very moment, her phone rang.
“Yes, hello, I’m already leaving,” she said loudly into the receiver, pretending to be in a hurry. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
She grabbed her raincoat from the hook, slipped into her boots, picked up her handbag, and rushed out the door, “accidentally” leaving the blue notebook in the most conspicuous place possible.
It was a flawless performance for an audience of one who was expected to arrive at any moment.
As always, Raisa Pavlovna entered the apartment using her own key, without ringing the bell.
She brought with her the smell of frosty air and the aura of a proprietor arriving to conduct an inspection.
As was her habit, she first ran a finger over the frame of the hallway mirror to check for dust.
Then she walked into the kitchen and critically examined the sink.
Satisfied that there was enough work to occupy her, she returned to the living room to set down her handbag.
That was when her gaze fell upon the coffee table.
For a moment, she froze.
The blue notebook.
The same one.
Raisa Pavlovna’s heart skipped a beat before accelerating with the excitement of a predator spotting its prey.
How careless.
How foolish of that girl.
Did she truly believe that after the first time, Raisa Pavlovna would never check it again?
The woman glanced around as though someone might be hiding inside the apartment.
Silence.
Only the steady ticking of the wall clock.
Her hands reached for the notebook almost of their own accord.
She opened it eagerly, expecting a new collection of complaints and insults about herself—material that she could once again present to her son.
But what she read on the very first page made her go rigid.
She was reading about herself.
About her alleged nocturnal confessions and the curses she had supposedly directed at her son, calling him a “weakling.”
Her face slowly changed colour.
Her smirk disappeared, replaced first by confusion and then by cold horror.
Page after page, she descended deeper into the carefully constructed and meticulously detailed lie.
The hidden money.
The “cash cow.”
The cynical scheme involving the apartment exchange.
This was more than simple slander.
It was her reflection in a distorted mirror, where every real characteristic had been grotesquely exaggerated.
Yes, she believed she knew better than anyone how her son should live. But in the diary, that belief had become a plan to enslave him.
Yes, she accepted money from him. But here she was portrayed as a greedy thief.
As she read, she understood that this had not been written for the paper.
It had been written for Slava.
It was a weapon aimed directly at the heart of her relationship with her son.
Fury and fear fought within her.
She wanted to burn the notebook or tear it into tiny pieces, but she could not move.
She was paralysed by the monstrosity of this diabolical plan.
That evening, when Slava returned home, he found his mother in a strange condition.
She was sitting on the sofa, staring fixedly into space. An untouched cup of tea stood on the table in front of her.
Usually, by the time he arrived, she was bustling around the apartment, everything shone with cleanliness, and dinner was waiting on the stove.
Today the home was untidy, and tension hung heavily in the air.
“Mom, what’s wrong?” he asked as he removed his jacket. “Did something happen?”
Raisa Pavlovna flinched and raised frightened, shifting eyes toward him.
“No, Slavochka, nothing… I just have a headache. I’m probably tired.”
Her voice was unnaturally high, almost squeaky.
Slava frowned.
He knew his mother.
He had never seen her like this before.
His gaze moved around the room and came to rest on the blue notebook lying on the table.
He recognised it immediately.
“Is that her diary again?” he asked quietly, nodding toward the notebook. “Were you reading it again?”
“No! Of course not! It was simply lying there…I…I didn’t touch it,” Raisa Pavlovna blurted out.
Her hurried lie was the strongest possible confirmation.
Without saying anything, Slava walked over to the table, picked up the notebook, and sat in the armchair opposite his mother.
He opened the first page.
Raisa Pavlovna froze, her face turning as white as a sheet.
She watched her son read.
She watched his eyebrows slowly draw together.
She watched the muscles begin to twitch along his jaw.
He read for a long time without looking up, turning one page after another.
He did not look at her, but she could physically feel an invisible wall of ice rising between them with every line he read.
When he reached the end, he did not slam the diary shut.
He closed it slowly, placed it on his knees, and raised his eyes to her.
There was no love or filial devotion left in his gaze.
Only cold, crushing disappointment, as heavy as a gravestone.
The poison had begun to work.
When Lida entered the apartment, the silence was so dense that it seemed possible to touch it.
A faint smell of burning hung in the air.
In the kitchen, a blackened saucepan stood on the stove. Raisa Pavlovna, absorbed first in her reading and then in its consequences, had forgotten about the soup.
The smell of burned food was the perfect background for what was unfolding in the living room.
Slava sat in the armchair with the closed blue notebook on his knees.
He was not looking at his mother.
His gaze was fixed upon the wall, but it was obvious that he saw nothing except the images painted across the pages of the diary.
Raisa Pavlovna sat stiffly on the sofa, her hands tightly clasped.
Her face was pale and parchment-like, and animal terror had frozen in her eyes.
She knew the trap had closed, but she did not yet understand how deadly its teeth were.
Lida silently removed her raincoat and entered the room.
She did not sit down.
She stopped beside the bookcase, becoming an impassive spectator in a theatre where the main drama was about to begin.
Slava spoke first.
His voice was calm, almost lifeless, and that calmness sent a chill down Raisa Pavlovna’s spine.
“Mom,” he began without turning his head. “I’ve just read some…interesting things. For example, your opinion of my intelligence. ‘A weakling who can’t take a single step without hiding behind his mother’s skirt.’ That is a direct quotation. Yours. Do you really think that about me?”
Raisa Pavlovna jerked as though she had been struck.
“Slavochka, what kind of nonsense is that? Where did you get it? She invented all of this!”
She shot Lida a hateful glance.
“She wrote it all to turn us against each other!”
“I didn’t ask who wrote it,” Slava continued in the same level voice, finally turning his head toward her.
His eyes were cold and empty.
“I asked whether it was true. Did you say those things?”
“No! Of course not! How could you even think that?”
Her voice broke.
“All right,” Slava said with a nod, as though accepting her answer.
He opened the diary to another page.
“Then let’s talk about the money. Do you remember the money I gave you last week for a winter coat? You said your old one was completely worn out. Lida writes that you are saving that money. She writes that you call me a ‘cash cow.’ Is that another one of her inventions?”
He stared directly at her, and under his gaze, Raisa Pavlovna began to shrink into herself.
The trap was perfect.
She could not say, “That is a lie I read in her diary.”
Admitting that she had read the diary would confirm everything she had been accused of—control, interference, and the violation of every conceivable boundary.
“I…I don’t understand what you’re talking about. What diary?” she stammered, choosing the weakest possible line of defence.
“This one.”
Slava raised the blue notebook.
“The one you read today while Lida wasn’t home. Before that, you tore pages out of the old one. Or is that also untrue?”
Raisa Pavlovna said nothing.
The air seemed to thicken to its limit.
Anything she said would be wrong.
She had reached a stalemate created by her own curiosity.
Slava slowly turned several more pages.
“And one final thing. The apartment. The real-estate agent you supposedly know. The plan to buy us a one-bedroom apartment near you so you could keep me under control. Tell me more about that, Mom. I’m very interested.”
He pronounced the word “Mom” as though it were an insult.
At that moment, Raisa Pavlovna understood that everything was over.
Her world, built upon absolute power over her son, was collapsing before her eyes.
Desperation gave her strength, and she sprang to her feet, pointing a trembling finger at Lida.
“It was her! She invented everything! She hates me! She wants to take you away from me! You believe her instead of your own mother!”
At that moment, Lida, who had remained silent the entire time, stepped forward.
She approached the coffee table, picked up her handbag, and looked directly into her mother-in-law’s face, which was twisted with hatred.
Then she spoke calmly and clearly, placing all the coldness in her soul into every word.
“Since you love sticking your nose into other people’s lives so much, perhaps you should sort out your own first. After all, you hate your son and want to drive us out of our apartment.”
It was more than a statement.
It was a sentence.
She had returned Raisa Pavlovna’s supposed words to her, presenting them as an indisputable fact.
Slava slowly stood up.
He looked at his mother as one looks at a completely unfamiliar and deeply unpleasant person.
Then he placed the diary on the table and, without saying another word, turned and left the room.
He did not slam the door.
He simply went into the bedroom and closed it behind him.
The soft click of the lock sounded louder than any scream.
It signified the end.
Final and irreversible.
Raisa Pavlovna remained standing in the middle of the living room, surrounded by the smell of the burned meal and the ruins of her own life, destroyed by the very weapon she herself had set in motion…
