Raisa stepped off the bus that had brought her and her husband from the village into the city. She looked around and then happily walked a few steps, stretching her legs that had gone numb during the trip. After her, her husband Vasily tumbled out of the warm belly of the bus into the frosty air.
He had been dozing the whole way, and now he was shivering a little from the cold. His wife’s idea of going around visiting city relatives did not appeal to him at all. He would much rather spend his day off at home—steam well in the banya, then slowly drink some beer with dried fish. And afterward, he could eat some hot dumplings, which his Raya made so deliciously. Then, after a hearty dinner, lie down on his favorite couch and watch some old heartwarming film on their new big TV. Pure bliss.
But his restless wife had suddenly decided they had to go to the city. She had been pushing him his whole life—no peace at all for Vasily with a wife like that.
“We’ll go to my nephew tomorrow. To Antoshka. Let him host us together with his young wife. We’ll see what kind of fancy lady she is. And what kind of homemaker. Because when she was visiting us here, she seemed way too bold. And what she’s really like, nobody knows.”
“Anton’s wife is fine! Lively, always smiling,” Vasily put in, recalling the friendly Maya.
“Well, we’ll make sure she’s ‘fine’. And I’ll also look at a fur coat for myself in the store!” Raisa surprised her husband.
“A fur coat? What do you need that for? Where are you going to wear it in our little settlement? We don’t have theaters or restaurants, or mausoleums either,” Vasily concluded.
“That’s none of your business where I’ll wear it! Maybe I’ve dreamed of one my whole life.”
Now the displeased Raisa was looking around the parking lot near the bus station.
“I don’t see Anton here to meet us. No nephew! Don’t tell me he didn’t come, just look at that!”
“Well, he’s not here, you’re right. Guess they don’t need any guests,” Vasily confirmed his wife’s words. “I told you, stay home—but no, she just had to go running around visiting people.”
“Don’t grumble. We’ll sort it out now.”
With confident movements Raisa pulled out her phone and dialed Anton. No answer.
“Go on, you try calling. Maybe he’ll answer you,” she said irritably, already starting to get nervous.
Vasily couldn’t reach him either.
“Go get a taxi, what are you standing there for like a poplar on the riverbank?” his wife ordered. “Ah, no! Let me do it myself, I’m quicker at this.”
The “guests” were riding in a taxi to the nephew and his wife, who had already had dinner and were about to go to bed.
“Could you go any faster?” Raisa snapped at the driver. “Why are you crawling along like an ox cart? There’s chaos everywhere. We’re paying him good money and he’s barely moving.”
The driver, hardened by countless heated verbal battles with dissatisfied passengers, preferred to keep silent. He wasn’t breaking any speed limits. Let the husband calm this nervous woman down, he decided.
At last the spouses reached their destination. Barely making it into the entrance with the intercom and climbing up to the seventh floor, where the nephew’s apartment was, the guests rang the doorbell.
“What do you think you’re doing?” the angry aunt began instead of greeting them. “We had to take a taxi. Do you know how much we shelled out, Anton? You mean you couldn’t come meet us?”
“First of all, hello,” Maya said sternly. “And second, for your information, we didn’t invite you.”
“And third what?! Did you at least set the table for your guests? I got hungry on the way,” Vasily rudely interrupted the hostess.
“The table? What table? Of course not! I didn’t even plan to,” the nephew’s wife shot back briskly.
“So that’s how you welcome guests?” the hungry uncle muttered disapprovingly, glancing at the perfectly clean table and the cold, unused stove in the kitchen. “What, you’re not going to eat yourselves now either? Just so you don’t have to feed us?”
Raisa, furious, was only just winding up for a stormy speech. What was happening now in her nephew’s apartment literally took her breath away.
“We already had dinner,” Maya said calmly. “And this is not a canteen for uninvited guests. And not a hotel either, is that clear to you?”
“Oh, listen to how she talks now! So bold, I hardly recognize our little mouse!” boomed Raisa, stepping forward and blocking Vasily with her ample figure, now that her power of speech had finally returned. “When you came to visit us, you were afraid to say a word. And now you’re rattling off like a machine gun. Did someone swap you out?”
“Nothing of the sort! I’m still the same. But I won’t tolerate cheek. And in this apartment, which I share with my husband, only those we ourselves invite will be here!” Maya replied firmly, looking at her husband, seeking his support.
At that moment her husband was sitting on the very edge of a chair, head hanging low. He felt awful because he didn’t like this whole situation one bit.
He was ashamed in front of the guests—his blood aunt and her husband. But he felt even more uncomfortable in front of his wife. And Anton was also afraid that they would end up quarrelling over all this, and then he would again have to put up with inconveniences—sleeping on the floor and living off dry snacks from the store. And most importantly, he would have to forget about his conjugal privileges for a long time.
In just a few hours, early in the morning, the young couple were supposed to go to a small district town where Maya was from. They were invited to her friend’s wedding.
All week leading up to the trip, Maya had been pleasantly busy preparing for the event. She was looking for a beautiful dress and shoes, bought a new shirt for Anton to match her outfit, and memorized a lovely congratulatory poem for the future newlyweds.
And then, when everything was ready and there was only one day left before the long-awaited celebration, Anton’s relatives called and simply presented them with a done deal. They said they were coming to visit.
“Anton, Vasya and I decided to show up at your place this weekend. A return visit, so to speak. You stayed with us last month, remember? So we figured it’s our turn, we’ve been meaning to go to the city for a while. We’re already on our way, we’ll be at your place by dinner. So you meet us at the bus station, okay? And let your wife set the table!” said Raisa, who loved to give orders, in a commanding tone.
Last month the young couple had gone to visit Anton’s parents, who lived in a village next to his aunt. She was Anton’s father’s sister. What she now called their “visit” was actually just a short stop at her house by the young couple. While taking an evening walk through the picturesque village, Anton and Maya had dropped in at Raisa’s place and spent exactly one hour there.
When Anton, stunned by such an unexpected announcement, came back to his senses, he immediately shared the news with his wife.
“What? What guests? That’s impossible! We’re leaving early Saturday morning! And I am not going to cancel this trip because of your brazen aunt! Call her and tell her that,” Maya replied.
“Okay, I’ll call now. I wanted to say it right away, but Aunt Raya didn’t let me get a word in,” Anton excused himself, who had been slightly afraid of his loud and sharp-tongued aunt since childhood.
Raisa’s phone didn’t answer. So he tried calling Vasily. Same result. Anton realized that most likely they were already on the bus and simply couldn’t hear his calls.
For a moment he broke into a sweat. The young man imagined what would happen if they did in fact arrive that day. There would be a scandal! And what a scandal! That was the last thing he needed now.
“Well?” his wife demanded.
“Couldn’t get through,” Anton said helplessly. “They’re not picking up, neither Aunt nor Uncle.”
“Well, that’s that then. It’s their own fault. Nobody invited them here. And you are not going to pick them up. And if they call and ask why you didn’t meet them, you’ll tell them we already left for Svetly. We’re not home, period. And I’m not going to cook for them either, obviously.”
“Yeah, of course, you’re right,” Anton agreed, not very confidently.
“Your aunt is unbelievable! She acts like a lady of the manor—‘meet us, cook food, feed us, wash us in the banya.’ Why not also give them a massage, or maybe order a private Philip Kirkorov concert for them?” his wife went on indignantly.
When Raisa and Vasily got off the bus and didn’t see their nephew, they started calling him from two phones at once. At that time, he and Maya were walking around the supermarket. He didn’t hear the calls—or maybe he ignored them on purpose, hoping the problem would somehow resolve itself.
And now, when they had already had dinner and even washed the dishes, the doorbell rang.
“They’re here,” said Anton, turning pale.
“Well, go open the door, they’re your relatives. Besides, what, are we going to hide from them now? We’ll tell them to go to a hotel, and that’s that.”
But Maya didn’t really know her husband’s aunt.
The situation was escalating. And judging by everything, the guests had no intention of leaving.
“Don’t you understand that you can’t just burst into people’s home like this without warning? It’s rude and disrespectful to us,” Maya said, walking over to her husband and jabbing him sharply in the side so he would finally snap out of it and take his wife’s side. “Anton, why are you silent? You agree with me, don’t you?”
“What rudeness are you singing about, exactly? You call it rudeness that Vasya and I wanted to visit our beloved nephew? Once in a blue moon we decided to come for a couple of days, and that’s ‘rudeness’ now? In your opinion, dearie, it turns out that we, his own family, can’t even come visit him?” Raisa would not calm down, her loud voice filling the room.
“Aunt Raya, I didn’t get the chance to tell you… We’re leaving ourselves. You see—our bags are packed. We were invited to my wife’s friend’s wedding. And Maya and I have to leave very soon. That’s why we didn’t come meet you and didn’t set the table,” Anton began to make excuses, realizing he would still have to make some effort to somehow resolve the situation.
“So you’re saying some friend of your wife’s, a complete stranger to you, is more important than your own aunt? The one who looked after you when you were little, who played with you, brought you presents and never spared her money for you. Remember the stuffed rabbit? And the dump truck, the red one with the big cab? There, you remember! And how I ran to the hospital to see you when you had your tonsils removed. And how I didn’t sleep at night, worrying and crying when we sent you off to the a.r.m.y. And now? Now you don’t even have a single cup of tea for your dear aunt?”
Raisa said all this so theatrically that Anton really did start to feel guilty. His nose stung, and for a moment he even felt like a traitor.
“Well… we can give you some tea, Aunt Raya,” he said quietly, afraid to look at Maya. “But we really are leaving, we’re in a hurry…”
“No, absolutely not, no tea!” his wife cut Anton off sharply. “I repeat — this is not a hotel. And not a cafeteria. There’s a café across the street, right there. And a cheap diner too.”
“Decent people don’t behave like this!” Vasily chimed in. “What kind of tactlessness is this? Who taught you that, Maya? In our family we don’t treat guests like that, just so you know.”
“And in our family we don’t barge into people’s apartments, ruining all the hosts’ plans,” Maya fired back immediately. “We didn’t invite you! Anton, why are you quiet?”
“Yeah, yeah… we didn’t invite you, no…” he responded reluctantly.
“So I’m asking you to leave our home immediately. Right now! Anton and I need to get ready for the trip. We’re not up to hosting guests.”
“Just listen to her! Look at that, Vasya, how she rattles on! And she doesn’t even trip over her words, not once, and doesn’t even blink. And she’s not the least bit ashamed to say such things to her husband’s family!” Raisa sneered, still not quite believing they might actually be thrown out.
“That’s right, Raya. It’s unbelievable, she’s not ashamed at all. And Anton can’t say a word to his own wife. Looks like he has no authority with her whatsoever. What a moral decline!” Vasily agreed with his wife.
“Enough talking! It’s pointless. Set the table already and let’s have dinner. All this stress has really made me hungry,” the aunt continued to push her luck.
“You didn’t understand me, did you? Let me explain one more time — now you’re leaving and going to a hotel. By the way, there’s a decent and inexpensive one just around the corner. And there you can have dinner, rest, and do whatever you like. And Anton and I are going to lie down and rest, and tomorrow morning we’re leaving for the wedding, just as we planned.”
“Yeah? Just like that? No other options?” the aunt still wouldn’t let up.
“Yes, exactly like that!” Maya said, ignoring Raisa’s theatrics. “And if you ever decide to come visit us again, be so kind as to warn us in advance. Then we’ll definitely meet you. And we’ll treat you and spend time with you. The way it’s supposed to be done in such cases.”
With these words, the hostess walked over to the front door and, very demonstratively, flung it open.
“Well I’ll be! They didn’t even offer us tea,” Vasily breathed out, stunned.
“What a shameless woman! How can you live with her, Anton? She’s got no conscience at all! No manners, a real shrew! You know what? I never want to see you in our house again! And don’t you dare even remember that you have an aunt and uncle! I have never endured such humiliation in my life! Never!”
Raisa went on shouting for a long time, and even through the closed door they could hear her ranting in the stairwell, riling up the neighbors.
About ten minutes later, Anton’s mother called.
“Son, Raisa just phoned me. She was screaming into the receiver, it was awful! Cursing you and Maya with every word. But I warned her, son, I told her you two were going to the wedding. But can you talk her out of anything? It’s useless to argue with her. She listens to no one, what a person she is… She only hurt herself in the end. You and Maya don’t you worry too much. You know what your aunt’s temper is like. And tell your wife I send her a big hello. She’s a good one, that girl. She won’t let anyone offend you, a fine wife.”
“Thanks, Mom. I’ll be sure to tell her,” Anton replied, exhaling with relief.
After that, not a single relative ever again showed up at their place unannounced. And in general—they visited rarely.
