— That sour stuff again? Len, are you pouring vinegar into the borscht or what? I’ve told you a hundred times—my mother’s was sweet, rich. And this? Beet water. And sour, too.”
Pavel pushed the plate away with disgust, and the scrape of china against the tablecloth cut Lena more sharply than any shout. She watched in silence as he rose from the table, opened the fridge, and took out a stick of “Doktorskaya” sausage. The usual ritual. The knife thudded dully against the cutting board, hacking off a thick, uneven slice of sausage. A slice of white bread. That was it. His dinner. He bit greedily into his sandwich, staring at her in challenge, as if saying, “Look, this is real food. Not your slop.”
It was like that almost every time. Whatever she cooked, it was wrong. The soup—too thin. The cutlets—too dry. The mashed potatoes—lumpy. The stew—oversalted. Every dish she spent time and effort on was subjected to a humiliating critique and compared to the unattainable ideal—his mother’s cooking. He poked at his plate like a bored taster, delivering verdicts with the gravity of a man who held her life in his hands. And in a sense, he did. Each comment was a little nail hammered into the lid of her self-esteem.
But that Tuesday everything was going to change. She decided to go all in. She took a day off work and went to the market first thing in the morning for the best veal tenderloin. She’d found a complicated French recipe for a meat roulade with mushrooms, herbs, and a cream sauce with white wine. This wasn’t just cooking; it was a rite. She finely chopped the champignons, sautéed them with onions to a golden color, breathing in the savory aroma. She carefully pounded the meat into a thin sheet, salted, peppered, sprinkled with fresh thyme. She rolled the roulade with such tenderness it was like swaddling a baby, tied it with kitchen twine, and slid it into the oven.
The whole house filled with a thick, maddening smell of roasting meat, garlic, and wine. When Pavel came home from work, the aroma met him at the door. He sniffed in surprise and walked to the kitchen. Lena’s cheeks were flushed from the heat as she pulled the roulade from the oven. It was perfect: a golden, crackling crust, clear juices seeping out. She sliced it into thick pieces, and the cross-section revealed a beautiful spiral of dark mushroom filling.
“— What’s with the fancy stuff?” Pavel snorted, sitting down at the table.
She set a plate before him, bathing the meat in velvety sauce. Her heart was pounding up in her throat. Now. He’ll taste it and won’t be able to say a word. It wasn’t just delicious. It was divine. He lazily speared a piece with his fork and put it in his mouth. He chewed slowly, the same bored expression on his face. Lena froze, holding her breath. He swallowed. Looked at her.
“— Well, it’s edible,” he said indifferently, and set the fork aside.
Then he got up. Went to the fridge. Took out the “Doktorskaya” and bread. Right in front of her, next to the plate where a culinary masterpiece was still steaming, he started assembling his primitive sandwich. He bit off a huge piece, smacking loudly with pleasure.
“— There! Simple, understandable food. Not this… French paste of yours. No flavor at all.”
And in that moment Lena felt nothing. No hurt, no anger, no urge to burst into tears. Something clicked inside her and went still. As if a crucial fuse had burned out—the one responsible for trying to prove anything to this man. She simply looked at him, at his chewing mouth, at the bread crumbs on the tablecloth, and a single thought formed in her head with absolute, icy clarity. Fine. You want simple food? You’ll get it.
The next evening Pavel walked into the apartment and stopped short. He was met by unusual silence and the sterile scent of cleaner. Usually by the time he arrived the kitchen already carried the aromas of dinner—something he would inevitably criticize. Now the stove was cold and dark, and there wasn’t even a plate of sliced bread on the table. Lena sat in the living room with a book, lifting to him an utterly calm, almost indifferent look.
“— Where’s dinner?” he asked as he kicked off his shoes. The question sounded not demanding, more puzzled.
“— There won’t be any dinner,” she answered evenly, turning a page.
“— Meaning? You didn’t cook?”
“— I cooked,” she set the book aside and slowly stood up.
He followed her with his eyes as she went into the kitchen. She didn’t rattle pots. She took one beautiful porcelain plate from the top shelf—the kind they used only on holidays. Set out a single set of silverware. Took a piece of meat wrapped in parchment from the fridge. It was a perfect ribeye steak with fine marbling. On a smoking-hot pan with a drop of oil and a sprig of rosemary, the meat hissed, flooding the kitchen at once with a rich, teasing aroma.
Pavel stood in the doorway, watching this silent performance. She didn’t fuss. Her movements were precise and smooth. She seared the steak exactly three minutes on each side, let it “rest” on the board, and poured a little red wine into a tall glass. One glass. She sliced the meat into neat strips and laid them on a warm plate beside a handful of arugula drizzled with balsamic. Then she sat down at the table.
She ate slowly, with visible, almost theatrical pleasure. She closed her eyes as she cut the next piece, chewed thoroughly, washed it down with wine. She didn’t look at him. She was completely absorbed in her dinner, her ritual. A dull irritation began to boil inside Pavel. He wasn’t even hungry; he could eat the whole stick of sausage if he wanted. It was the act itself that enraged him. Her detachment. Her demonstrative enjoyment.
“— What’s this? Opened a restaurant for yourself?” he couldn’t hold back.
Lena swallowed a piece of meat, dabbed her lips with a napkin, and only then looked at him. There was no challenge or anger in her eyes. Only cold, polite calm.
“— I’m simply eating. And there’s sausage and bread in the fridge for you,” she nodded toward it. “You like simple food. I decided not to torment you with my dishes anymore. Eat what you actually enjoy.”
On the second day the story repeated, only on a grander scale. When he came in, the apartment was filled with the divine smell of garlic, cream, and seafood. Lena sat at the table before a plate of fettuccine swimming in a delicate sauce with king prawns and mussels. A small bowl of fresh parmesan stood nearby. Again she ate alone, slowly twirling the pasta onto her fork.
Pavel didn’t ask this time. He walked silently to the fridge, yanked the sausage off the shelf with a crash, and slammed it on the table. He cut the bread as if he were hacking at an enemy. He didn’t look at her, but he could feel her calm with his skin. He choked down his dry sandwich while the creamy garlic aroma stabbed at him—it now felt like mockery, a personal insult. He didn’t understand what was happening. She didn’t scream, didn’t cry, didn’t argue. She had simply deprived him of the main thing—his power to pass judgment. She had taken from him the role of the judge and left him alone with his “signature” sandwich, which suddenly seemed pathetic and tasteless. He finished, clenched his fists, and looked at her. She was just finishing her glass. Pavel’s gaze darkened. He was no longer surprised. He was furious.
The third day greeted Pavel with a smell that was almost offensive in its sophistication. A thick, enveloping aroma of mushrooms fried in butter with thyme and garlic. The smell promised not just food, but pure, unclouded pleasure. He entered the kitchen like a battlefield, already primed. Two days of humiliating sandwich-eating accompanied by her quiet feasting had brought him to a boil.
Lena sat at the table. Before her, in a deep ceramic bowl, steamed a cream of wild mushroom soup, garnished with golden croutons and drops of truffle oil. She raised the spoon to her lips unhurriedly, with regal poise, her face absolutely unreadable. She knew he was standing behind her. She felt his heavy, ragged breathing, but didn’t turn.
“— Had your fun?” his voice was low and hoarse, stripped of any irony. It was the voice of a man whose patience had snapped.
She slowly swallowed the soup, set the spoon on the napkin, and only then turned her head. Her look was cold as December ice. She said nothing, and that silence struck him like a lash. He had expected anything—tears, shouts, pleading—but not this icy, annihilating composure.
“— I’m talking to you!” he barked, stepping forward. “You decided you can ignore me in my own house? Put on a circus of showpieces here?”
“— I’m just having dinner,” she said evenly, and that simplicity made him snap.
Everything in him exploded—not just the past three days, but years’ worth. All his wounded pride, all his rage that his familiar world, where he was king and god, had collapsed. With one motion he swept her bowl off the table. Hot soup and shards of ceramic flew across the floor. But that wasn’t enough. His eyes fell on the pot on the stove. He grabbed it and, with a wild roar, hurled it to the floor. The thick mushroom mass splattered over the walls and cabinets, leaving disgusting, steaming blotches.
Lena jumped back, recoiling. But he was already there. He seized her by the shoulders and shook her so hard her teeth clicked.
“— Think I’m going to put up with this?! Think you’re the clever one?!”
His hand flashed up, and a sharp, searing slap threw her back against the kitchen unit. Her hip struck the edge of the countertop, but she didn’t scream. She only clutched at her flaming cheek, staring at him with eyes wide from shock. He drew back to hit her again, but punched the wall beside her head instead.
“— I told you what’s going to happen!” he hissed into her face, panting with rage. “From this minute you cook for me—what I say, when I say! And you’ll sit and watch me eat! You got that? Or I’ll beat the soul out of you—you’ll wish you’d never been born!”
He stepped back a pace, breathing hard, surveying the fruits of his anger: the wrecked kitchen, food smeared across the floor and walls, his wife pressed against the cabinet. He felt like a victor. He’d put her in her place.
But Lena slowly straightened. A livid mark was blooming on her cheek. She looked him straight in the eyes, and there was no shock or fear left there. Only a desert burned to ash.
“— If my cooking is so tasteless to you, why this tantrum? Cook for yourself! You’ve got your signature sandwich, don’t you? Then choke on it!”
She walked around him without touching and left the kitchen, abandoning him alone in the chaos he himself had created. He heard the bedroom lock click. Suddenly, victory tasted bitter and empty.
The night passed in a thick, viscous silence, separated by a wall and a locked door. Pavel didn’t sleep. He scrubbed the congealing soup off the walls and cabinets, washed the floor, collected shards. He did it not out of remorse, but out of a stubborn, angry desire to erase the traces of his defeat, to restore the kitchen to its former state, as if nothing had happened. As if he were still the master of this space, of this order. In the morning he went to the bedroom door several times and knocked—first demanding, then almost conciliatory—but there was no answer. That silence infuriated him more than any scream.
Around noon, as he sat in the kitchen exhausted and angry, drinking cold coffee, the doorbell rang. A short, peremptory ring, with no repeat. Pavel started. He wasn’t expecting anyone. He opened the door and froze. On the threshold stood Viktor Danilovich, Lena’s father. A tall, heavyset man with a hard, unreadable gaze that always made you uneasy. He didn’t greet him. He simply stepped inside, making Pavel back away.
Viktor Danilovich slowly removed his coat and hung it up. His movements were unhurried, but there was a contained strength in them. He walked into the kitchen; his nostrils flared slightly as he caught the faint sour smell of yesterday’s soup that had seeped into the air. His eyes slid over the suspiciously clean floor, the wall where a slightly darker, damp patch could still be made out. He said nothing. He just looked.
“— Hello, Viktor Danilovich, we were…” Pavel began, trying to sound welcoming.
“— Where’s Lena?” her father interrupted, without raising his voice. It didn’t sound like a question, more like a statement of fact: I’m going to see her now.
At that moment the bedroom door opened. Lena came out. She wore a simple house dress, her hair up. She didn’t look at Pavel. Her gaze was fixed on her father. On her cheek the livid mark from the slap still burned, only brighter and uglier after the night. Viktor Danilovich looked at his daughter for a long time, at her cheek; then he turned his heavy gaze on Pavel. There was no anger in his eyes. Something worse—cold disgust.
“— What is this?”
The voice was quiet, but so heavy and dense it seemed to fill the entire kitchen. Pavel, who was sitting at the table staring blankly at the remains of his sandwich, flinched and turned. Viktor Danilovich stood in the doorway. He wasn’t enormous, but there was something monolithic, immovable about him. He didn’t look at Pavel. His gaze moved slowly, with methodical distaste, over the ruined kitchen: bits of soup stuck to the wall, dirty streaks on the floor, a shard of a plate near the baseboard.
Pavel jumped to his feet, instinctively trying to assume a host’s posture, to straighten his back. It flashed through his mind that Lena hadn’t locked herself in the bedroom to cry—she’d locked herself in to make a call.
“— Viktor Danilovich… We… had a bit of a quarrel. It happens—family matters.”
At last Lena’s father looked at him. His eyes, gray and cold like river pebbles, showed neither anger nor surprise. Only weary contempt. He stepped into the kitchen, and Pavel involuntarily retreated.
“— Family matters, you say?” Viktor Danilovich went up to the wall and ran his finger over a mushroom blotch, then regarded his soiled finger as if examining an insect. “Looks like a pigsty. Were you in here oinking?”
“— She drove me to it!” Pavel’s voice wavered between defensive and aggressive. “Put on performances, eating alone, mocking me! I’m the man in this house, after all!”
Lena appeared from behind her father’s back. She stood silently in the doorway, arms folded. The red imprint of a hand was stark on her cheek. Viktor Danilovich cast a brief glance at his daughter; his face turned to stone for a second. Then he turned back to Pavel, and even the shadow of irony left his voice. Only pure, cold steel remained.
“— You’re not a man here. You’re a tenant. Temporary.”
Pavel was dumbstruck. He’d expected shouting, reproaches, a lecture on how to treat a daughter. But that line knocked the ground out from under him.
“— What do you mean—tenant? This is my home! Lena is my wife!”
“— This apartment is mine,” Viktor Danilovich said crisply, taking another step and closing the distance to a minimum. “I bought it for my daughter. And you live here because she allowed it. The key word is ‘allowed.’”
The air in the kitchen thickened. Pavel stared at his father-in-law, and all his bluster began to crumble like bad plaster. He wanted to argue, to shout that he worked, that he contributed too, but his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He wasn’t seeing his wife’s father—he was seeing the owner. A man who could erase him from this life with a single word.
“— Pack your things,” Viktor Danilovich said as calmly as he had commented on the mess. It wasn’t an order, it was a statement of fact. As if he’d said, “It’s raining outside.”
“— I’m not going anywhere!” Pavel cried in desperation, grasping for a shred of control. “She’s my wife and she’ll stay with me!”
Viktor Danilovich looked at him in silence for several long seconds. Then he did the last thing Pavel expected. He smirked. A short, nasty smirk.
“— You really didn’t understand anything. You have half an hour. Take the essentials. You can pick up the rest later. Or not. I don’t care.”
He turned and left the kitchen, leaving Pavel alone in the humiliating wreckage. Pavel stood there, glancing from his father-in-law to Lena, who didn’t move a muscle. There was no gloating in her eyes, no regret. Nothing. Emptiness. And that emptiness was more frightening than any sentence. He understood it was over. Completely and irrevocably.
He darted into the bedroom, yanked a jacket off the hanger, shoved his phone and wallet into a pocket. When he came back to the hall, Viktor Danilovich was already at the front door, holding it open. He didn’t hurry him; he simply waited. Passing the kitchen, Pavel suddenly stopped, went back, grabbed the half-eaten stick of “Doktorskaya” and the remaining bread from the table, and stuffed them into a bag. It was a final, pitiful reflex—to take with him the symbol of his power, which had now turned into the emblem of his total collapse.
He walked past Lena without looking at her and stepped into the stairwell. Viktor Danilovich, without another word, simply closed the door behind him. The click of the lock sounded like a gunshot. The final one…
