“Gleb, I’m not asking for the impossible,” Veronika said, lowering her book onto the table. “I’m only asking you to be honest. Just once. One tiny bit of honesty, no bigger than a pea.”
“Here we go again,” he muttered without looking up from the magazine in his hands. “You’ve been playing the same old record since morning.”
“I started it?” She smiled. “For your information, I haven’t played that record in almost a year. Consider it a twelve-month vacation from my questions.”
“You should have made it permanent.”
Veronika sat across from him and rested her cheek against her palm.
“Gleb, let’s speak like two normal adults. Your sister called. She says it’s my turn again.”
“So what?” He finally put the magazine aside. “Mom will stay with us for a while. What’s the big deal? She’s my mother.”
“Exactly. She is your mother, while this is my apartment,” Veronika replied evenly. “Funny how those two roads lead in different directions, isn’t it?”
“Not the apartment again!” His voice rose. “Mine, mine, mine—that’s all you ever say. Anyone would think I was begging you for a corner to sleep in.”
“Aren’t you?”
He fell silent and puffed out his cheeks like a child whose candy had been taken away. Veronika knew that expression well. Gleb would sit there snorting and sulking, performing the role of wounded innocence.
“Gleb,” she continued quietly, “do you remember what you promised when your mother sold her apartment?”
“What did I promise?”
“You said most of the money would go toward a larger home for us. I dreamed of buying a three-bedroom apartment. I even imagined having a nursery one day.”
“Well, circumstances changed.” He looked away. “That’s life, you know. You plan one thing, and something completely different happens.”
“Yes. What happened was a car and your magnificent rise to success.” She gave a dry laugh. “Do you remember walking around this apartment announcing that you were about to start making millions?”
“I tried!” He slapped his palm against his knee. “At least I did something instead of sitting around with my hands folded!”
“You did try,” she agreed. “Your mother’s money vanished, the car was sold to someone else for half its value, and the nursery remained nothing more than a dream.”
“Leave my mother out of this!”
“You are the one who keeps bringing her into this apartment,” Veronika pointed out. “Every six months, right on schedule.”
Nina Pavlovna’s life followed a fixed circle: six months with her daughter, then six months with her son. Gleb had established that arrangement years ago, and it continued like the pendulum of an ancient clock that no one had ever thought to stop.
“Gleb, I have nothing against your mother,” Veronika said as she poured the tea. Steam rose from the cups in a steady ribbon. “I have something against being lied to. Those are two very different things.”
“You simply don’t like her.”
“I respect her,” Veronika corrected him. “It’s you I no longer understand. And, just so you know, ‘respect’ and ‘understand’ are two different verbs.”
“Think you’re clever now?” He narrowed his eyes. “Been reading too many of your books?”
“Misfortune rarely travels alone. It usually brings the whole family,” she replied with a smile. “See? I can manage perfectly well without books.”
“That’s exactly what I mean. Everything is a joke to you.” He stood and began pacing around the kitchen. “Meanwhile, we need somewhere to live.”
“We?” Veronika raised an eyebrow. “You keep saying ‘we’ as though that word still has a foundation underneath it.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“Let’s find out.” She folded her hands in her lap. “Answer one question honestly, and I promise I won’t bother you for an entire month. Who is Kristina?”
He froze.
For a split second, his face looked like a bowl of jelly that had suddenly solidified.
“What Kristina?”
“The one who used to work in the same office as me,” Veronika replied calmly. “The woman who rents a small apartment on Ozernaya Street. She’s been living there for five years now, unless I’m mistaken.”
“You…”
“I have an excellent memory for faces and addresses.” She shrugged. “You could call it an occupational habit.”
“It isn’t exactly what you think,” he blurted out far too quickly.
“Gleb.” Veronika laughed softly, almost affectionately. “Whenever a man says that, it always means the situation is exactly what the woman thinks it is. It’s a law of nature, like gravity.”
The scandal did not erupt immediately.
First came an evening of silence. Then an evening filled with anger. On the third night, the mask finally broke away like plaster falling from an old ceiling.
“Yes, I’m seeing Kristina!” Gleb shouted. “So what? Are you happy now? You finally got your confession!”
“I did,” Veronika replied without raising her voice. “Thank you for being direct. At least you’ve managed to be honest about one thing today.”
“She doesn’t nag me every day about apartments and nurseries!”
“Of course she doesn’t.” Veronika nodded. “She has no apartment of her own to worry about. Only the one she rents.”
“You’re just jealous!”
“Jealous of what, Gleb?” She tilted her head. “That my former colleague has taken over the place that legally belonged to me? That would be a very unusual reason for envy.”
“You know what?” He breathed heavily, his nostrils flaring. “I’m filing for divorce. Do you hear me? I’ve had enough! Your sarcastic comments, your books, your precious apartment—I’m sick of all of it!”
“You’re filing for divorce? Wonderful. Now take your mother with you. She is a stranger to me from this moment on.”
“What?”
“You heard me.” Veronika finally rose from her chair. “A divorce is a divorce. Let’s not do it halfway. When you leave, you leave completely, along with your entire caravan.”
“What does my mother have to do with this? You can’t do that!”
“Oh, I certainly can.” She smiled at him almost tenderly. “Unlike you, I always do what I say I’m going to do. Incidentally, ‘doing’ and ‘promising’ are also two different verbs.”
Gleb stormed out and slammed the door behind him, convinced that he would return in a week and settle everything.
He always came back.
Veronika always forgave him.
That was the natural order of things, and he saw no reason why it should suddenly change.
He called his sister.
“Olga, hi. Listen, Mom is supposed to go to Veronika’s place this month, like we agreed. Put her on the minibus and I’ll meet her.”
“Gleb,” his sister said cautiously, “aren’t you divorcing Veronika? Why would Mom go there now?”
“We’ll make up. It isn’t the first time. Just do what I told you.”
“Well, you know your situation better than I do.”
The truth was that Gleb understood absolutely nothing about his situation.
That very morning, Veronika had called a furniture-moving company and given them two addresses: the place they were collecting the furniture from and the place they were delivering it to.
“Take everything from the back bedroom,” she instructed the dispatcher. “The wardrobe, the sofa, the bedside cabinets, the boxes and the rugs. Everything that doesn’t belong to me. Deliver it all to Ozernaya Street. I’ll send you the exact address.”
“Understood,” the dispatcher replied. “We should be finished by two.”
“Excellent. And be careful with the wardrobe. It’s getting old, just like its owner.”
Kristina happened to be at home that day.
She was cleaning a mirror and humming a cheerful melody, completely unaware that her comfortable little world was about to crack apart.
The doorbell rang.
Two broad-shouldered movers stood outside, while the enormous dark shape of a wardrobe loomed behind them.
“Good afternoon,” one of the men said. “We have a delivery. Where would you like us to put everything?”
“What delivery?” Kristina stared at him. “I didn’t order anything.”
“This is the correct address, and the customer has already paid.” The man checked the paperwork. “Ozernaya Street. Everything matches. One wardrobe, one sofa, twelve boxes and several rugs.”
“Whose wardrobe? Whose sofa?” Her voice grew shrill. “Get it away from my door!”
Unable to understand what was happening, she immediately called Gleb.
“Hello?” Kristina pressed the phone against her ear. “What is this supposed to mean? Some men have brought wardrobes to my apartment! Explain yourself immediately!”
“What wardrobes?” Gleb asked in confusion. “Kristina, what are you talking about?”
“The ones blocking my stairwell!” she practically screamed. “There’s an ancient wardrobe out here and some horrible sagging sofa! I’m asking you what this is!”
“Wait. Don’t hang up.” He frantically began dialing Veronika’s number. “I’ll sort this out.”
Veronika answered after the second ring.
“I’m listening.”
“What have you done?” Gleb roared. “Why did you send my mother’s belongings to Ozernaya Street?”
“Logistics,” Veronika answered calmly. “You’re moving in with Kristina, and your mother is coming to live with you. I simply connected the points on the map. Quite elegantly, in my opinion.”
“What Kristina? What logistics? She rents that apartment! We’re not allowed to move all that stuff in there!”
“But it was allowed in my apartment?” Her voice remained perfectly steady. “Gleb, for the past several years, you have been arranging your life inside apartments that belong to other people. I merely helped you put everything in one place.”
“Bring the furniture back!”
“I won’t.”
She sounded as though she were about to yawn.
“You’re filing for divorce, remember? And I agreed. I’m actually an amazingly accommodating woman once people stop treating me like a doormat.”
“I’ve changed my mind!” he blurted out. “Do you hear me? I don’t want a divorce anymore! It was a mistake. I lost my temper!”
“What a pity,” Veronika replied. “I didn’t lose mine. I weighed everything carefully, like a pharmacist measuring medicine, right down to the final gram.”
While Gleb bounced helplessly between one phone call and another, a minibus pulled up outside the building on Ozernaya Street.
Nina Pavlovna stepped down carefully, holding the handrail with one hand and carrying a large travel bag in the other.
“Hello, dear,” she said to the bewildered Kristina, assuming she was a helpful neighbor. “Could you tell me where Gleb lives? His wife said I’m supposed to stay with him now.”
“Gleb?” Kristina went pale. “Here? With me?”
“Yes.” Nina Pavlovna nodded eagerly. “Oh, look! They’ve already delivered my wardrobe. And there’s my dear old sofa. That means I’ve come to the right place. This is where I’ll be staying.”
“No one is staying here!” Kristina turned toward the movers. “I forbid you to bring any of that into my apartment! Do you hear me? Take it away immediately. It isn’t mine!”
“Madam,” one of the movers replied with complete indifference, “we were paid to deliver it, and we’ve delivered it. You can leave it on the landing or put it outside the building. We’re not taking it back unless someone places another order.”
“Gleb!” Kristina screamed into the phone. “Your mother is here! She has a travel bag and she’s standing on my landing next to her wardrobe! Do you even understand what is happening?”
Gleb arrived half an hour later, drenched in sweat and trembling from head to toe.
The sight waiting for him on the landing made his vision blur.
There was the wardrobe, the sofa and the boxes. His confused mother sat on a suitcase, while Kristina stood nearby with a face that no longer held a trace of her former tenderness.
“What is all this?” Kristina demanded, staring at him with hatred. “You promised me a beautiful, independent life. Instead, you’ve brought me a sagging sofa and your entire family?”
“Kristina, I can explain,” he stammered. “Veronika did this deliberately. She’s taking revenge on me.”
“I don’t care who is taking revenge on whom,” Kristina snapped. “I rent this apartment for myself, not so you can move your entire load of baggage into it. Deal with the situation. You have one hour, but none of it is coming through my door.”
“Kristina, wait!”
“I’ve already been waiting for five years,” she said as she stepped back inside. “I’m done.”
The door closed directly in his face.
With shaking fingers, Gleb called Veronika.
One ring.
Two.
Three.
“Yes?” she answered.
“Veronika, forgive me.” His voice cracked and rose almost to a squeak. “I’m an idiot. I understand everything now. Take me back. I made a terrible mistake. Forget Kristina. Forget the divorce. I’ll come home, I’ll get down on my knees…”
“Gleb, darling,” she interrupted gently. “At this very moment, you are standing on someone else’s landing next to an old wardrobe, begging to return to the apartment you spent the past six months calling a burden. Don’t you find that even slightly amusing?”
“No!” He was almost sobbing. “I’m terrified! Where am I supposed to go now?”
“That, my dear, is an excellent question,” she replied. “It’s unfortunate that you waited so long to ask it. You should have thought about it before your mother’s money turned into scrap metal on wheels.”
“I’ll repay everything! I’ll earn the money!”
“You already promised to make millions once, Gleb,” she reminded him. “I remember how that ended. Some things don’t grow back a second time. Teeth, for example. Or trust.”
“Veronika, please…”
“I changed the lock at noon,” she said casually. “So don’t bother looking for your key. It no longer opens anything. Goodbye, Gleb. And give my regards to your mother. The two of you have plenty in common now—a shared wardrobe and a shared housing problem.”
The call ended.
Gleb sank onto the step beside the sofa that had stood in his mother’s room for thirty years.
Nina Pavlovna looked down at her son, unable to understand what was happening.
“Gleb, dear,” she said quietly. “Where are we going now? It’s cold out here on the landing.”
“I don’t know,” he forced out. “I’ll think of something. Just give me a moment.”
He remained seated on the step in front of the locked door, silently adding up everything he had lost.
His mother’s apartment had been sold.
The car had been sold for almost nothing.
His business had burst like a soap bubble.
Veronika was behind a newly changed lock.
Kristina was behind a closed door.
“How did this happen?” he whispered, rocking back and forth. “How did I manage to ruin everything? I had it all. I had a wife, a home, and a place for Mom to stay. And I… What was I even trying to get?”
“Gleb, who are you talking to?” his mother asked.
“Myself.” He kept his face buried in his hands. “There’s no one else left.”
Footsteps echoed from below as the movers returned from the elevator to collect another box, since there was nowhere for them to carry it.
“Where do you want us to put this, boss?” one of them called. “Make up your mind. We still have two more deliveries today.”
“I don’t know,” Gleb groaned. “I don’t know anything anymore.”
“You’re something else,” the mover remarked. “A man with an entire wardrobe to his name and nowhere to put it. Fine. We’ll unload the rest right here on the landing. You can figure out what to do with it afterward.”
Gleb did not answer.
He remained on the step with his arms wrapped around his knees, repeating the same words under his breath like a spell that had long since lost its power.
“Idiot. I’m such an idiot. I had everything. Everything. And I destroyed it with my own hands…”
