The reek of camphor and stale sweat had soaked into the apartment walls so deeply that neither days of airing-out nor expensive sprays could touch it. Vera Pavlovna loathed that heavy stench—but what she hated even more was her own helplessness in the face of it.
“Vera!” The voice from the bedroom came sharp and commanding, with that special squeal people get when they’re convinced they have a sacred right to give orders. “What, are you deaf in there?”
A towel slipped from her hands and fell softly to the floor, but Vera didn’t even swear.
She drew a long breath to steady her heartbeat and hurried to her husband’s room, smoothing her house dress as she went.
Igor lay on a wide orthopedic bed, surrounded by pillows like an eastern ruler at leisure. His legs, covered with a prickly wool blanket, were stretched straight and looked completely lifeless.
“I’m here, Igorek,” she said quietly, stopping by the headboard. “What’s wrong?”
“The pillow’s shifted,” he contorted his face in suffering as if he were enduring torture. “It’s hard, Vera. You know my circulation is poor—I can’t have pressure on my neck.”
Vera bent obediently, lifted her husband’s heavy head with the practiced motion of routine, and fluffed the down. Igor didn’t even try to help; he let his full, solid weight sink into her tired arms. Six months earlier he’d been seized by pain right at the country house, and since then their life had turned into an endless marathon.
Back then, the doctors at the district hospital had shaken their heads for a long time, speaking of a complicated case and pinched nerves that “don’t show up on scans, but the clinical picture is obvious.”
Vera, who had been a chief accountant, resigned in a single day without hesitating. How could she think about quarterly reports when the person she’d lived with for thirty-five years had become a helpless invalid?
“Water,” Igor grunted, eyes closed, not bothering to thank her.
She darted into the kitchen, filled a glass, and came back immediately, afraid of displeasing him. He took one tiny sip and made a point of grimacing, pushing her hand away.
“It’s warm. I asked for cool. Do you want me to throw up?” He fell back dramatically onto the pillows. “You do everything to finish me off. Taking care of me is a burden to you—I can tell.”
It was his favorite record, the one he played whenever Vera allowed herself even a minute of rest: You want me dead. I’m in your way. Put me in a nursing home and live in peace. Vera felt guilt wrap around her throat like sticky cobwebs, leaving her unable to protest.
And yes—sometimes she was so exhausted she wanted to walk out the door and never return. Washing his heavy body, listening to endless demands, running to the market for special cottage cheese because the store kind “tasted sour” to him.
“Why would you say that, Igorek?” Vera stroked his shoulder carefully. “You’re my husband. In sickness and in health, remember?”
“Enough of the poetry,” he cut her off roughly. “Lenochka will come today—the massage therapist. Put clean sheets on. And go to the shops. No reason for you to sit around here.”
“In this weather?” Vera faltered, glancing at the gray clouds outside the window. “It looks like a downpour.”
“Vera!” He opened his eyes—and there wasn’t a trace of helplessness in them. “Lenochka said I need complete quiet during the session. Your presence makes me tense. I’m ashamed for you to see me so weak!”
Vera understood: of course a man would feel embarrassed having his wife watch a stranger knead his atrophied muscles.
Lenochka—a young, rosy-cheeked nurse from a private clinic—came three times a week and cost a small fortune. But Igor insisted that after her sessions he at least felt tingling in his toes, and that gave Vera hope.
She put on an old raincoat, took an umbrella, and stepped out, feeling like an unwanted guest in her own home. She was sixty, but in moments like this she felt like an ancient woman whose life had already ended.
A week later, Vera felt a strange, frightening malaise. At first she blamed the itching and burning on stress—or on the new laundry powder she’d used for her husband’s bedding. But the symptoms intensified, discomfort appeared, and ignoring it became impossible.
Humiliated to the core, she booked an appointment at the women’s clinic, choosing a time when there would be as few people as possible. Sitting in the corridor, wrapped in a scarf and avoiding the eyes of young girls, felt unbearably degrading. The exam room carried a sharp medical smell mixed with the aroma of cheap coffee.
The doctor—a heavy man with a rumpled face and tired eyes—took swabs in silence and told her to wait for the rapid results. Those twenty minutes felt longer than the entire past half-year beside her husband’s bed. She went over every place she could have caught an infection: public transport, the polyclinic, a stranger’s bathroom?
When she was called back in, the doctor was already scribbling in her chart without looking at her. Then he lifted his eyes over his glasses; the look was appraising, heavy, and unpleasant.
“Sit down, dear,” he said, putting his pen aside. “The situation, frankly, is… rather delicate.”
“So it’s inflammation?” Vera’s voice trembled. “Did I catch a chill somewhere?”
The doctor snorted and slid the test sheet toward her, covered in Latin terms and bold plus signs.
“Inflammation, yes—only very specific. In the most active stage, plus a whole accompanying bouquet.”
Vera froze, feeling the air in the room turn thick, like jelly.
“This is a mistake,” she whispered with lifeless lips. “That can’t be.”
“Tests are stubborn,” the doctor said indifferently, grimacing with open disgust. “Where did you manage to pick up this filth at sixty?”
Vera’s cheeks flared as if she’d been slapped.
“Doctor, how dare you! I’ve been married for thirty-five years. I’m a respectable woman!”
“We’re all respectable until we see the paperwork,” he replied, taking up his pen again and writing a prescription. “Your partner must be treated too, otherwise you’ll be passing it back and forth forever.”
“I don’t have partners!” Vera shouted, her voice breaking into a shriek. “I have a husband who’s almost completely paralyzed! He hasn’t gotten out of bed for six months. I feed him with a spoon! Once a year he tries to fulfill marital duty—somehow. That’s it!”
The doctor stopped writing and looked at her not with disgust anymore, but with a sharp, professional kind of irony.
“Paralyzed, you say?” He tapped his pen on the desk. “Then the wind must have brought it—or the Holy Spirit, since you’re so pure.”
He leaned forward, his face too close, breaking every boundary.
“Listen to me, Vera Pavlovna. You can’t fool biology, no matter how hard you try. This infection isn’t transmitted through household contact—neither by towels nor handshakes. Only by direct contact.”
Vera shook her head, refusing to believe it, but her world was already starting to collapse.
“If you’re clean,” the doctor said, stamping each word with cold certainty, “then your ‘paralyzed’ husband isn’t as immobile as you think. Or someone’s hopping into his bed while you’re emptying the bedpan.”
Vera left the clinic with no memory of how she got down the stairs and out onto the street.
Her fingers clenched the crumpled prescription until it hurt, and the words pounded in her ears: not as immobile as you think. She sank onto a wet bench in a small square, not even noticing the cold.
Images flashed before her: Igor demanding the door be shut tighter. Igor sending her away during visits from “the massage therapist” Lenochka, claiming he was embarrassed. Lenochka—rosy, sturdy, strong-armed—and that strange, sweetish smell in the bedroom after she left.
Scattered details Vera had always pushed aside now snapped together into one ugly, unmistakable picture. Inside her, where pity and care used to live, a cold, calculating rage began to rise. She stood, brushed off her raincoat, and walked with purpose to the pharmacy—and then to a hardware store.
She returned home after dark, when the windows of neighboring buildings glowed with cozy yellow light.
The apartment smelled of medicine and that same sweet, cheap perfume Lenochka wore. Before, Vera hadn’t paid attention. Now it hit her like ammonia.
“Where the hell have you been?!” the familiar shout rang out from the bedroom. “I’m starving! The bedpan hasn’t been emptied since lunch! Have you decided to let me rot alive?”
Vera stepped into the room. Igor lay in the same martyr’s pose, eyes rolled dramatically toward the ceiling. An empty mug stood on the bedside table, though Vera clearly remembered not leaving him anything to drink before she went out.
“Sorry, Igorek,” Vera said evenly—too evenly. “The line at the pharmacy was enormous. I was getting you new vitamins.”
“What vitamins? I don’t need anything except peace and proper care!” he barked.
She went to the kitchen, cooked dinner, and fed him, trying not to look into his darting eyes. Every movement, every swallow now seemed fake—performed, like bad theater. She saw the muscles in his “paralyzed” legs tighten when he shifted for comfort, heels pressing into the mattress.
“I’m very tired today, Igor,” she said while clearing the dishes. “My head is splitting. I’m going to take something and go to bed early. Don’t wake me.”
“About time,” he muttered, turning to the wall. “Close the door tight. And turn off your phone so it doesn’t beep in my ear.”
Vera went to her room, slammed the door loudly, and made a point of clicking off the light. She made the bed and fluffed the pillow—but she didn’t lie down. Instead, she sat in the armchair in the corner where she couldn’t be seen from the doorway and turned herself into pure listening.
Time dragged, thick and slow, like syrup dripping from a spoon. Midnight. One a.m. Outside, the city’s sounds faded into night calm. But inside the apartment there was no calm—only a stretched, tense waiting, ready to explode.
At half past one, a floorboard in the hallway creaked treacherously. Vera held her breath, fingers digging into the armrests. The sound came again, and then—soft, confident footsteps. Not the shuffle of a sick man, but the stride of someone healthy.
The front-door lock clicked, letting someone in.
“So where are you, my tiger?” Lenochka’s playful whisper floated in. “Is your guard dog asleep?”
“Asleep, the bitch,” Igor answered in a low, energetic voice—no trace of illness. “I told her to take a double dose. Come on in, kitty. The cognac’s in the bar—I’ll grab it.”
Vera stood, feeling everything inside her compress into a tight spring. She waited until she heard glasses clink in the kitchen and the familiar pop of a cork. When bright female laughter rang out, Vera stepped into the hallway.
The kitchen light blazed, slicing her eyes after the darkness. The door was ajar. Vera didn’t bother with politeness—she kicked it fully open.
What she saw made her stop on the threshold even though she’d been braced for anything.
Her “paralyzed” husband was standing in the middle of the kitchen on two solid legs—actually bouncing as if dancing. In one hand he held an uncorked bottle of expensive cognac; with the other he had his arm around the waist of “massage therapist” Lenochka, who wore nothing but a short robe.
At the sight of Vera, Lenochka shrieked and sprang back toward the refrigerator, covering herself with her hands. Igor froze. The bottle slipped from his fingers and smashed onto the floor with a heavy crash. Cognac spread across the linoleum in a dark puddle, filling the small kitchen instantly with sharp alcohol fumes.
“Verochka…” Igor rasped, his face turning an ashen gray.
Instinctively he grabbed the edge of the table and bent his knees, pathetically trying to imitate a sudden attack.
“My legs… my legs let go… it’s a miracle…”
“A miracle, is it?” Vera stepped forward—straight into the puddle of cognac. “Stand up properly.”
“Vera, you don’t understand, it’s a shock method! Lena developed a new system…” he bleated.
“I said: stand up straight!” she snapped, and the force of her voice made Lenochka flatten against the fridge door.
Igor straightened. He stood before his wife in a stretched-out undershirt and old family briefs, belly sagging. He looked pitiful, ridiculous—and sickeningly revolting in his lie.
Vera turned her heavy gaze to the woman.
“And you, sweetheart—get dressed. And in one minute, you’re gone.”
“I… my things are in the bedroom…” the girl stammered, trembling.
“Don’t care. Out as you are—in that robe,” Vera took a step forward.
Lenochka squeaked, grabbed her handbag from the windowsill, and bolted into the hallway, nearly knocking Vera over. The front door slammed. And Igor was left alone with the woman he’d called his “caretaker.” He shifted from foot to foot, hiding his eyes like a schoolboy caught stealing.
Vera stared—and saw not a husband, but a parasite who had been drinking her life for six months.
“Vera, come on, let’s talk calmly,” he whined, switching back on the familiar victim’s tone. “The devil got into me, I’m a man, I wanted affection—you’ve been busy with care and all. And my legs… yes, they got better, I wanted to surprise you for our anniversary.”
“Surprise achieved,” Vera nodded, and pulled a crumpled paper from her robe pocket.
She flung the prescription into his face. The slip fluttered down into the wet floor.
“What’s that?” he glanced sideways.
“That’s your diagnosis, Igorek. And mine, too. Fresh, active gonorrhea—which I apparently ‘picked up’ at sixty.”
Igor flushed so hard it looked like steam might come out of his ears.
“It’s… it’s a mistake… the hospital instruments were dirty…”
“Shut up,” Vera said, tired but steady. “Just shut up. You have five minutes to get dressed and get out of my apartment.”
“You have no right!” he shrieked. “Where am I supposed to go at night? I’m a sick man!”
“You’re a healthy stallion, Igor. You were just standing here dancing. And this apartment belonged to my parents—you’re nobody here. Forgot that?”
“I’m not leaving. Call the police. Sue me!” He tried to look threatening.
Vera gave a small smile—and that smile frightened him more than shouting ever could.
“The police? Fine. I’ll tell them you faked disability to collect benefits—that’s fraud. And I’ll also tell your precious ‘fishing club’ how you made your wife carry out bedpans while you entertained girls.”
Igor went completely pale. His reputation with his friends mattered to him more than honor ever had.
“You’re a witch,” he hissed, backing toward the door. “What a monster you are, Vera. I suffered for six months…”
“Your time has started,” she said, pointedly glancing at the wall calendar.
Igor rushed into the bedroom. Vera heard him clattering through drawers, shoving things into a bag in a panic. Four minutes later he burst into the hallway in inside-out trousers and an unzipped jacket.
“You’ll regret this!” he shouted from the threshold, spitting as he yelled. “You’ll come crawling back—who needs you, old hag?!”
“The keys,” Vera said, simply holding out her palm.
With hatred he threw the keyring onto the floor, cursed, and stormed out to the landing. Vera calmly picked up the keys, locked the door with two turns, and latched the chain. Then she returned to the kitchen, took a rag—Igor’s favorite T-shirt from the back of a chair—and tossed it into the cognac puddle.
Epilogue
The next day, Vera called a locksmith and replaced the locks with stronger ones. Then she phoned a disinfection service and ordered a full treatment of the apartment, telling the dispatcher she needed to get rid of parasites. She didn’t cry; her tears had dried up the day before, leaving behind a sterile clarity.
The orthopedic bed was taken away by evening—young guys bought it for their sick grandmother.
When the furniture was carried out, the bedroom felt strangely empty, but the emptiness didn’t frighten her. It promised freedom. Her cross, her thirty-five-year marriage, her naïve illusions—everything that had lain there—was gone.
Vera flung the window wide, letting cold autumn air pour in, smelling of wet leaves.
She stepped to the mirror. A tired woman with dark circles under her eyes looked back—but there was no longer the despair of a trapped animal in that gaze.
Igor called many times—first with threats, then with drunken pleas—but Vera simply blacklisted his number. She filed for divorce online, attaching a scan of the clinic certificate as the only explanation she owed anyone.
That evening she brewed fresh thyme tea—strong and fragrant, exactly the way she liked it. She poured it into the nice porcelain cup Igor had always forbidden her to use, afraid she’d break it.
The apartment held no sounds at all, yet the silence no longer pressed down on her shoulders. It wrapped around her and soothed.
Vera took a sip, feeling warmth spread through her body, and looked at the empty corner where Igor’s hated ficus used to stand. Tomorrow she would buy a palm—or get a dog. After all, there was finally enough oxygen in this home for two.
