“And… vacate the apartment. Divorce comes next. All that space is too much for you alone,” the husband declared, pleased with his idea.
“You understand that this isn’t merely a whim, but a biological necessity, don’t you?” The man’s voice was even, carrying the same professional chill he normally used when reprimanding suppliers for delivering poor-quality milk. “A man needs a branch of his family tree. Someone to carry on his line. But with you, there’s nothing but a dead end and your little pieces of colored glass.” Without taking her eyes off the soldering iron, Agata carefully applied a drop of solder to the copper foil. Acrid rosin smoke rose into the air, twisting into a spiral beneath the work lamp. She pretended to be completely absorbed in joining two pieces of blue iridescent glass, but inside, everything had tightened into a hard, throbbing knot.
“Ruslan, we’ve discussed this hundreds of times,” she replied quietly, finally setting down the tool. “The doctors said there is still a chance. We only need time and patience.”
“TIME is up, Agata. I don’t have any left. And I don’t have any patience either.”
Ruslan sliced off a piece of hard cheese, turned it over on the blade as though examining its structure, and put it into his mouth. He worked as the chief technologist at a cheese factory and was accustomed to judging everything in life according to its level of maturity and the presence of defects. In his opinion, their marriage was a batch with a flaw that could not be corrected.
Agata removed her protective glasses, leaving red marks across the bridge of her nose. She looked at her husband. Tall, well-groomed, dressed in a sand-colored linen suit. Once, he had seemed like the embodiment of reliability, as sturdy as an oak frame around a stained-glass window. Now she saw a man who replaced people as casually as he changed gloves.
“I have another woman,” he announced matter-of-factly, brushing crumbs from his lapel. “Her name is Bella. She doesn’t waste her time on nonsense like soldering glass together. She does something meaningful. And she’s pregnant.”
Agata felt the floor sway beneath her feet, even though the parquet in their spacious apartment on Rubinstein Street had been laid to last for centuries.
“Congratulations,” she said, her voice muffled, as though wrapped in cotton. “You’ve finally found a suitable vessel for your precious gene pool.”
“Don’t be sarcastic. It doesn’t suit you,” her husband said with a grimace. “This isn’t only about the baby. I need room for my new family. The infrastructure here in the city center is excellent. There are parks and clinics. It will be convenient for Bella.”
“Room? Space?” Agata repeated, feeling anger begin to displace her shock. “You want to bring her here?”
“I want you to move out. Right now. You can collect the rest of your things later, after we’ve set up the nursery.” “WHERE?” was all she managed to force out.
“To the apartment on Nalichnaya Street. My one-bedroom place. It’s empty right now—I checked. Of course, the neighborhood isn’t as prestigious and the winds blow in from the gulf, but you don’t need much space when you’re alone. You can set up your workshop on the balcony.”
Agata silently stared at the man with whom she had lived for seven years. She remembered how they had chosen the wallpaper for this living room and argued over the color of the curtains. She remembered how she had poured her soul and every ruble she earned from commissions into this home. And now he spoke as though he were merely rearranging the furniture.
“You’re throwing me out of the home where I personally chose every tile?”
“Legally, we’re married and the property is shared, but let’s be honest: I need this apartment more than you do. I have an heir. All you have is a hobby and empty hopes. Start packing. Bella will be here in two hours.”
Ruslan glanced at his watch—an expensive timepiece Agata had given him for their anniversary.
“I don’t want a scene, Agata. Just take the essentials and LEAVE. The keys to the apartment on Nalichnaya Street are on the cabinet.”
Agata slowly rose. Her fingers, accustomed to working with fragile materials, now longed to close around something heavy. But she restrained herself. In her craft, one wrong movement could destroy months of work. Right now, she needed to preserve her integrity, at least outwardly. Most of all, at that moment, she hated him and did not want to remain beside someone who had betrayed her so easily.
“All right,” she said, looking straight through her husband. “I’ll leave.”
She went into the bedroom and took out a travel bag. Her hands moved mechanically: underwear, two dresses, her favorite sweater. Her gaze fell upon a framed photograph on the dresser. The two of them stood on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, happy, with the wind whipping through their hair.
Agata turned the frame facedown.
“Two hours,” Ruslan reminded her from the living room. “Don’t take too long.”
Agata did not look back as she left the apartment. She heard the lock click behind her, cutting her off from her former life. A crowd bustled along Rubinstein Street, and music drifted from the bars, but Agata’s world had turned black and white, stripped of all its color.
“Where to, miss? Hell or Vasilievsky Island?” Agata muttered under her breath as she climbed into her old but reliable Volvo.
The car started immediately, like a faithful animal ready to carry its owner far away from danger. Agata pulled onto Nevsky Prospect. The city continued living its frantic life: tourists photographed the horses on Anichkov Bridge, taxi drivers cut one another off, and advertising signs promised eternal happiness at half price.
The tears she had held back in front of her husband now poured freely. Agata did not wipe them away, allowing the salty drops to fall onto her blouse.
“Why?” she whispered, gripping the steering wheel. “I loved him. I tried so hard.”
Images from the past surfaced in her memory. They had just married and were living in that same one-bedroom apartment on Nalichnaya Street. Ruslan had not yet become an important technologist, and she had only just begun her career as a stained-glass artist. They never had enough money, but life had been fun. They dreamed of a large family, a dog, and traveling together.
Then came the visits to doctors. Endless tests, procedures, hopes, and disappointments. At first Ruslan supported her and held her hand. But with each negative test, his hand became colder and his gaze more distant. He began staying late at work and leaving on “business trips” to European cheese factories.
Agata remained alone, finding refuge only in her work with glass. She cut, polished, and soldered, creating beautiful pictures from fragments, trying to piece her soul together in the same way she joined pieces of smalt. “Bella…” Agata said the name, testing its taste. Bitter. “So it means ‘beautiful woman.’ How fitting.”
She turned onto Palace Bridge. The lead-gray Neva carried its waters toward the gulf, indifferent to human tragedies. The wind grew stronger, making the overhead wires sway.
As she approached the building on Nalichnaya Street, Agata felt a familiar melancholy. The neighborhood had always seemed too exposed to the wind and too uncomfortable. A standard prefabricated apartment block rose like a gray cliff.
Agata parked, picked up her bag, and trudged toward the entrance. The intercom was broken—typical for this place. Creaking and groaning, the elevator carried her to the eighth floor.
She took out the keys Ruslan had carelessly tossed onto the cabinet. Her hand trembled when the metal touched the keyhole.
“Well, hello, my new old life,” Agata breathed, turning the key.
The door would not open. Agata frowned and tried again. The lock worked, but the door appeared to be secured from the inside, or perhaps…
Suddenly, she heard footsteps behind the door. Someone looked through the peephole. Then the lock clicked, and the door swung open.
A young woman with disheveled hair stood in the doorway. She was wearing an oversized T-shirt printed with the name of the band Kino and a pair of paint-stained jeans. She held a paintbrush in one hand, and a pencil was tucked behind her ear.
“Good evening,” the young woman said, blinking in surprise. “Are you from the building management company? I thought we had already paid the water bill.”
Currency and Foreign Exchange
“Who are you?” Agata asked in shock, lowering her bag onto the dirty floor of the landing.
“I’m Polina. I live here. Who are you?”
“I’m… I’m the wife of the owner of this apartment. Ruslan.”
Polina’s eyes widened.
“Wow. That’s an interesting twist. Ruslan told me he was single and was leaving on a long expedition to the Alps to study mountain herbs.”
“To the Alps?” Agata gave a bitter laugh. “More like maternity leave.”
“Come inside. I think we need to talk. Just be careful—some of my books are drying in there.” The apartment Agata remembered as half-empty and impersonal now resembled a library after a hurricane. Stacks of antique books lay everywhere, jars of glue stood on every surface, and tools for embossing leather were scattered around. The air smelled of old paper, leather, and, for some reason, lavender.
“Sorry about the mess,” Polina said, sweeping a pile of sketches off a stool. “I restore books. I work from home.”
Agata sat down, trying not to disturb the sheets covered with engravings that had been spread across the table.
“How long have you been living here?” she asked.
“Four months. We signed a contract for an entire year. I paid in advance, and your husband gave me a generous discount because of it. He said he urgently needed the money for development…”
“Development…” Agata muttered. “More likely for presents for his Bella.”
Polina reached into the depths of a cabinet and pulled out a folder of documents.
“Here, take a look. Everything is official. The contract and the receipt confirming that he received the money.”
Agata took the papers. Ruslan’s signature was large and confident. The amount written out in words was substantial. He had accepted an entire year’s rent in advance.
And then he had sent his wife to the apartment, knowing that someone was already living there.
“He knew,” Agata whispered. “He knew people were living here. He only wanted to humiliate me and make me wander around the city. Or perhaps he hoped I would be too embarrassed to throw you out.”
“Wait. He actually sent you here to live? Right now?” Polina frowned, and her previously plain-looking face took on an expression of astonishment.
“Yes. He said, ‘It’s empty. Go live there.’”
“What a BASTARD,” the restorer exclaimed with genuine outrage. “Listen, I could make room for you for a couple of days, but I have nowhere else to go. I have commissions and deadlines, and I don’t have any spare money. I gave all of it to him.”
“NO, please,” Agata said, raising her hand. “I’m not going to throw you out. You have a contract. You are legally protected. Besides, if I evict you before the contract expires, I’ll have to pay a penalty. And right now, I don’t exactly have much money.”
Agata felt the anger she had lacked while speaking with her husband begin to boil inside her. Ruslan had not merely betrayed her. He had planned everything. He had created a financial cushion for himself, rented out his “backup airfield,” and thrown her into the street like an unwanted cat.
“You know, Polina,” Agata said, rising and pacing around the tiny kitchen, bumping her hip against stacks of heavy books, “he’s probably convinced that I’m crying right now and begging him to take me back. Or that I’ll go to my mother in Saratov.”
“And what are you going to do?” Polina asked, handing her a mug of herbal tea.
“I’m going to Tamara. And together, we’re going to come up with a plan.”
“It’s thyme tea. It helps calm the nerves,” Polina said. “And should you need assistance, just ask. I know how to restore more than book spines. I can restore justice too. My brother is a lawyer, just so you know.”
“Thank you. I’ll remember that. In the meantime, live here peacefully. No one will disturb you.”
Agata left the building in a completely different mood. The wind from the gulf no longer seemed cold. It felt invigorating. She took out her phone and dialed a number.
“Tamara? Are you home? Put the kettle on. And take out the box of props we used for the play The Queen’s Revenge.” The door of an apartment on Mokhovaya Street was opened by a short-haired woman wearing enormous scarab-beetle earrings.
“Agata! My God, you look terrible. Come inside quickly, or my Madagascar cockroaches will become nervous because of the draft.”
Tamara was an entomologist, but she did not work in a dull research institute. Instead, she created unique insectariums for private collections and museums. Her apartment resembled a jungle. Terrariums stood everywhere, vines hung from the walls, and things rustled and moved inside glass jars.
“Aunt Agata!” Tamara’s five-year-old daughter Varya came running toward her, dressed in a ladybug costume. “Look, I’m a beetle!”
“Hello, little bug,” Agata said, hugging the girl and breathing in the scent of children’s shampoo and cookies.
For a moment, her heart was pierced by the familiar pain, but she pushed it away. This was not the time for self-pity.
“Tell me everything,” Tamara commanded, seating her friend on the sofa between two terrariums filled with stick insects.
Agata told her the entire story: about Bella, the pregnancy, the apartment on Rubinstein Street, and Ruslan’s despicable trick involving the one-bedroom apartment on Nalichnaya Street.
“What a dung beetle!” Tamara cursed, using her professional vocabulary. “What are you planning to do?”
“He said the apartment belonged to both of us, but that he needed it more. However, he forgot one detail.”
“What detail?”
“My father gave me the apartment on Rubinstein Street as a gift. It happened one month before the wedding. Ruslan was away on a business trip and never paid attention to the documents. We simply moved into it after the wedding, and he always assumed it was our jointly owned property, purchased with my father’s money during the marriage. But the deed of gift was issued in my name. Mine alone.”
Tamara whistled so loudly that the stick insects inside the terrarium froze.
“That changes everything! Gifts aren’t divided during a divorce. That apartment belongs ONLY to you.”
“Exactly. But right now, he’s there with his mistress. And getting him out won’t be easy. He’s stubborn.”
“We’re not merely going to throw him out. We’re going to exterminate him,” Tamara said, her eyes flashing predatorily. “Listen, I have an idea. You need moral support. And a witness. Varya, come here!”
The girl came running, the wings of her ladybug costume rustling.
“Would you like to play spies with Aunt Agata?” her mother asked.
“YES!” Varya squealed enthusiastically.
“Agata, take Varya with you. She’ll be your shield. Ruslan won’t dare raise his hand or swear in front of a child. Besides, he has always presented himself as some noble father of the nation. I’ll arrive thirty minutes later with a couple of strong men from a moving company, just in case.”
“Do you think it’s safe?”
“With Varya? Absolutely. That girl can talk anyone into submission. She’ll tell him about the life cycle of butterflies until he wraps himself in a cocoon and wants to pupate somewhere far away. Let’s go.” It was already close to ten in the evening when Agata turned the key in the lock of her apartment. Laughter and the clinking of glasses could be heard behind the door.
She pushed the door open. Holding Agata’s hand, Varya stepped inside after her and looked curiously around the hallway.
An idyllic scene filled the living room. Candles, expensive cheeses—products from Ruslan’s factory, naturally—and wine had been arranged on the table. Bella, a pretty blonde with an already noticeable belly, was sitting in Agata’s armchair with her feet resting on the ottoman. Ruslan was pouring wine.
“You’ve made yourselves comfortable,” Agata announced loudly.
Ruslan flinched and spilled wine onto the tablecloth—a handmade linen cloth Agata had brought back from Suzdal.
“You?!” His face turned pale. “What are you doing here? I told you to go to Nalichnaya Street!”
“Aunt Agata, who is that?” Varya asked loudly, pointing at Ruslan. “An evil wizard?”
Bella choked on a grape.
“Who is this child?” she shrieked. “Ruslan, you told me she didn’t have any children!”
“This is Varya. She is my… family,” Agata said firmly. “The real question is: what are YOU doing in MY apartment?”
“Our apartment,” Ruslan corrected her, recovering and putting his usual mask of arrogance back on. “Agata, don’t create a circus. Why did you drag someone else’s child in here? And why aren’t you on Vasilievsky Island?”
“Because Polina is living in the apartment on Vasilievsky Island. You signed a one-year rental agreement with her and took the rent in advance.”
Agata threw the copy of the agreement Polina had given her onto the table.
“You deceived me. You sent me to an occupied apartment.”
Bella looked from Agata to Ruslan.
“You rented the apartment out? You told me we would live here and sell the other place to buy a country house!”
“Bella, be quiet. It’s business,” Ruslan said through clenched teeth. “Agata, this is a misunderstanding. I’ll give the tenant her money back…”
“No, darling, you won’t. According to the agreement, the penalty for terminating it early is equal to three months’ rent. Do you have that kind of money right now? You invested everything in ‘development,’ didn’t you?”
Ruslan’s face reddened. Angry blotches spread across his neck.
“GET OUT,” he hissed. “And take the girl with you.”
“No, Ruslan. You’re the one who will be getting out.”
Agata took a folder of documents from her bag.
“Here is the deed of gift. The apartment on Rubinstein Street belongs to me. Exclusively. You are no one here. You’re merely a registered resident, and tomorrow I’ll begin the court process to have you removed from the register. In the meantime, get out.”
“You’re lying.”
He grabbed the papers and quickly scanned the text. His hands began to tremble. As a technologist accustomed to precise recipes, he had overlooked the most important ingredient: ownership rights.
“You have fifteen minutes,” Agata said calmly, glancing at the watch she had once given him. “After that, my friend will arrive with some movers. They’re simple men and amateur entomologists. They might mistake the two of you for harmful insects.”
“Ruslan, is this true?” Bella’s voice trembled. “Are we going out onto the street?”
“We’ll stay at a hotel!” he barked.
“With what money?” Agata asked mockingly. “You spent everything on Alpine herbs—in other words, on showing off. And you’ve probably already spent the rent money on a new ring for your ‘heir.’”
Ruslan shot her a look filled with pure, undiluted RAGE.
“You… lonely, empty woman.”
“Mister, you’re as rude as a stag beetle, except your horns are tiny!” Varya declared in a ringing voice.
Agata laughed. It was a light, liberating laugh.
“Start packing, Ruslan. And take your cheese with you. It’s already beginning to dry out.”
Twenty minutes later, the apartment was empty. The smell of Bella’s perfume and Ruslan’s pretentious cologne quickly drifted out through the open window.
The doorbell rang. Tamara stood outside with two strong men.
“Well?” she asked briskly. “Do we need to carry out the bodies?”
“They left on their own. They evolved into upright-walking creatures and went out through the door,” Agata said with a smile.
“Excellent. Stand down, boys! We’re going to have tea. Varya, go wash your hands immediately!”
Agata locked every lock on the door. She approached her worktable, where the unfinished stained-glass panel was waiting.
Now she knew what it would become.
Bright and strong, assembled from thousands of different fragments and soldered together so firmly that they could never be separated.
“Aunt Agata, are we going to paint on glass?” Varya asked, tugging at her sleeve.
“We are, sweetheart. We definitely are.”
Agata looked into the girl’s large, clear eyes. Somewhere deep inside her soul, in the place where there had once been a black hole of despair, a small but very warm flame of hope began to glow.
Perhaps family was not always about blood.
Family was made up of the people who remained beside you when your world shattered into pieces.
“You know,” Agata said to her friend as she poured the tea, “Polina, the tenant, restores books. She and I have quite a lot in common. I should visit her and make sure the walls are still standing.”
“You should,” Tamara said with a nod. “Perhaps the two of you will even establish an association called Glass and Paper.”
Outside the window, Rubinstein Street hummed with activity. The city lived, breathed, loved, and separated.
But inside Agata’s apartment, everything was now quiet and peaceful.
For the first time, she truly felt at home.
