“We live in my mother’s apartment, which means she can come here whenever she wants. But your mother has absolutely nothing to do with this place, so these doors are closed to her. And if that still isn’t clear enough for you, then believe this too—you won’t be living here much longer either,” his wife said as she fastened the button on the cuff of her crisp white blouse.
Her voice was steady, completely free of hysteria, as if she were calmly reading the operating manual for a dishwasher instead of delivering a verdict on their marriage.
Sergey stood by the window holding a mug of cold coffee and felt a dense, heavy anger begin to boil inside him. He hated Katya’s tone—that schoolteacher tone, the kind used to scold a naughty little boy. The morning sunlight filtering through the blinds cruelly illuminated every particle of dust in the air, making the kitchen feel even more stifling and strained.
“Katya, do you even hear yourself?” he said through his teeth without turning around. “That’s my mother. She’s worked herself half to death her whole life in the village—garden, livestock, that falling-apart old house. She just wants to rest. Spend a month in the city, go to a proper hospital, take walks in the park. We’ve got a three-bedroom place. There’s plenty of room. What exactly is the issue? Your mother stays here for weeks at a time, and I never say a word, even though she rearranges my tools on the balcony every single time.”
“My mother bought this apartment, Sergey,” Katya replied, stepping toward the mirror in the hallway and fixing her perfectly styled hair. “She paid the mortgage for ten years. She paid for the renovation. This is her territory. And you, forgive me for being blunt, are living here on borrowed privilege. We discussed this before the wedding. You agreed.”
Sergey slammed the mug down on the windowsill so hard that the crack of ceramic against plastic sounded like a gunshot. He turned toward his wife, red blotches spreading across his face.
“So I’m nobody here? A freeloader?” He took a step toward her. “I buy groceries, I pay utility bills, I fix the faucets. But the moment it concerns my family, suddenly I’m here ‘on borrowed privilege’? That’s not fair, Katya. It’s disgusting, that’s what it is.”
Katya didn’t flinch. She picked up her car keys from the small table and looked at him with a cool, assessing gaze that held not the slightest bit of sympathy.
“Fairness is a concept for children,” she said. “Adult life runs on agreements and property rights. I do not want a stranger living here for a month. I do not want to deal with чужие smells, чужие habits, and endless evening conversations about seedlings. I come home exhausted from work. I need peace. Your mother may be a wonderful woman, but let her relax at a health resort. Buy her a stay there if you’re such a devoted son.”
“I don’t have money for a resort, you know that—we just had the car repaired,” Sergey snapped. “And she doesn’t need a resort. She needs her son’s attention.”
“Then go to the village and give her all the attention you want. A month, a year—I don’t care,” Katya cut him off, slipping on a light coat. “This conversation is over, Seryozha. I am not joking. If I come back tonight and see Valentina Ivanovna here with suitcases, you’ll be spending the night right along with her—at the station, in a hotel, wherever you like. You can leave your keys on the table now.”
She opened the door, and cool air carrying the scent of someone’s perfume drifted in from the stairwell.
“Have a nice day,” she said over her shoulder and stepped out, carefully closing the door behind her.
The lock clicked, sealing Sergey inside and leaving him alone with his powerless fury.
He remained in the hallway, fists clenched so tightly his knuckles turned white. He was shaking. This wasn’t merely hurtful—it was humiliating to the point of nausea. She hadn’t even let him argue. She had crushed him with facts as casually as stepping on an insect. My mother’s apartment. Borrowed privilege. Stranger. Those words kept spinning through his head, feeding the fire of rebellion.
He went back into the kitchen, sat down at the table, and stared at the perfect order Katya adored. Not one thing out of place. Sterile cleanliness. Fashionable gray cabinet fronts. Everything in this apartment shouted that it was not his home. And yet that exact feeling of being an outsider suddenly triggered in him a wild, almost teenage urge to do the exact opposite. To show her who the man was here. To prove that his word meant something too.
“We’ll see,” he muttered, pulling out his phone. “We’ll see what tune you sing when Mom is already here. She won’t throw an elderly woman out into the night. She won’t have the nerve. She’ll yell, sulk for a few days, then calm down. And meanwhile Mom will get some rest.”
He was convinced Katya was bluffing. No normal woman, even a strong-willed one, would actually throw her mother-in-law out the door. That would be savage, against every moral norm. She was just trying to frighten him, train him.
Sergey found “Mom” in his contacts and pressed call. The phone rang a long time; Valentina Ivanovna was probably out in the garden. At last her breathless, familiar voice came through.
“Hello, Seryozhenka! Did something happen, son? Why are you calling so early?”
“Hi, Mom,” Sergey said, trying to sound upbeat and confident. “Nothing happened. Get your things together. I’m coming to pick you up today, like we planned.”
“Oh, really?” Her voice trembled with joy and nervousness. “And Katya doesn’t mind? You said she works hard, gets tired… Maybe I shouldn’t, son. I’ll manage somehow. The garden beds still need weeding…”
“Mom, stop,” Sergey interrupted sharply, feeling his resolve harden. “Katya suggested it herself. She said, ‘Let Valentina Ivanovna come, get a change of scenery, we’ve missed her.’ So forget the garden, pack your things. And bring some fish if you have any—salted or fresh. We’ll fry it up.”
“Oh, what wonderful news!” his mother fluttered excitedly on the other end. “Of course I do! Uncle Misha brought crucian carp yesterday, fresh as can be! I’ll get ready right now, son. I’ll be ready in two hours!”
“Be ready. I’m coming,” Sergey said, ending the call and staring defiantly at the empty chair where his wife had been sitting only moments before.
He felt triumphant. He had made a man’s decision. He had refused to be pushed around. In his mind, he could already picture a cozy family evening: his mother frying carp, him drinking tea, Katya seeing the domestic warmth and softening, realizing she had been wrong. He had no idea how badly he had misjudged his wife.
He changed quickly, grabbed his car keys, and hurried out of the apartment, not suspecting that he would not be returning for long.
Sergey flung the front door wide open as if inviting someone into a royal suite. Valentina Ivanovna, huffing and puffing after climbing to the third floor—they had, naturally, decided not to wait for the elevator—stumbled into the hallway. In both hands she clutched the handles of enormous checkered bags, the exact kind shuttle traders hauled across borders in the nineties. The bags and Valentina Ivanovna herself smelled of the countryside: damp soil, cellar air, and old fabric that had sat too long in a closet. That thick, dense odor instantly clashed with the delicate scent of the expensive sandalwood diffuser Katya had bought from a specialty store.
“Oh, this is heavy,” Valentina Ivanovna exhaled, dropping the bags onto the pale beige rug with a dull thud. Dirt from the bottoms of the bags immediately ground into the fibers. “Well then, hello, dear home! It’s so clean here, Seryozhenka—like an operating room. Not a speck of dust anywhere. You can tell straight away there are no children here yet. It feels empty somehow. Cold.”
Without taking off her shoes, she walked several steps across the laminate floor, leaving faint damp marks behind her. Sergey, instead of stopping her, merely smiled with satisfaction. To him it felt as though the apartment was finally coming alive, finally filling with something real rather than that sterile showroom perfection Katya cherished so much.
“Come in, Mom, make yourself comfortable,” he said, lifting one of the bags. “You head to the kitchen for now. I’ll carry your things to the guest room. Actually—no, go ahead and get the fish out now. I’m starving.”
“Yes, son, yes, my provider,” Valentina Ivanovna fussed. She tossed her old wool coat directly onto the bench without bothering with the coat rack and marched into the kitchen like she owned the place.
Ten minutes later, the kitchen—which had once looked like a model of minimalist perfection—resembled a village market stall. Three-liter jars of pickles, sacks of potatoes spilling sand, and bundles wrapped in greasy newspaper covered the artificial stone countertop where Katya wouldn’t even allow someone to leave a glass of water.
Valentina Ivanovna unwrapped the main parcel. River carp, slippery and dull-eyed, reeked of mud and stagnant water. The smell was sharp and invasive, filling the room almost instantly and driving out all other air.
“Now then, my pretties,” she muttered, digging a bottle of cloudy sunflower oil out of one of the bags. “I brought my own—homemade, fragrant. Frying on your refined stuff just ruins food. No taste, no color.”
She poured the thick, dark yellow oil generously into Katya’s expensive nonstick frying pan, the one Katya guarded like a treasure and washed only with a special sponge. Sergey sat at the table, leaning back in his chair, watching with tender approval. He liked the way his mother moved around this foreign, overly complicated kitchen so confidently and simply.
“Mom, be careful with the stove, it’s induction, touch control,” he warned lazily, biting into a salty pickle straight off the knife.
“I’ll figure it out, I’m not some helpless lady,” Valentina Ivanovna waved him off, jabbing hard at the glass panel.
The pan hissed. The moment the fish hit the hot oil, a column of bluish smoke shot upward. The kitchen was immediately swallowed by the suffocating stench of frying river fish mixed with the burnt-seed smell of unrefined oil. Grease spat in every direction—onto the white backsplash, the chrome faucet, the glass cabinet doors. Valentina Ivanovna refused to turn on the hood. It made too much noise, she said. It interfered with conversation.
“And can you believe Tanya from next door sold her goat?” she chattered loudly while flipping a fish with a fork and scraping the bottom of the pan. The harsh screech of metal on Teflon sliced through the air, but Sergey didn’t so much as wince. “Says it’s not profitable anymore. Foolish woman. Meanwhile she’s secretly brewing moonshine and selling it to the district officer. Oh, Seryozha, don’t you have any black bread? Just this soft white loaf? What kind of food is that?”
Sergey listened to her chatter and felt a strange, intoxicating sense of satisfaction. He felt as though he had taken back control of his life. Here he was, sitting in his kitchen—yes, his kitchen, he lived here, didn’t he?—while his mother cooked him dinner. The apartment smelled like food, not chemicals. To hell with Katya’s rules. To hell with her “property rights.” Family mattered more than square footage.
“Smells good, Mom,” he said, breathing in the rancid haze. “I haven’t had fish like this in years.”
“Then eat, son, eat. A man needs strength,” Valentina Ivanovna said, dumping the first batch of half-burnt carp onto a plate without even lining it with paper. Oil pooled beneath the fish in a murky puddle.
The smoke began creeping through the apartment—into the bedroom, the closet, soaking into the clothes, the curtains, the upholstery of the sofa. It was the smell of brazen, uncompromising invasion. Sergey was sure that when Katya came home and saw this domestic warmth, this table set for supper, she would wrinkle her nose, maybe complain about the smell for appearance’s sake, but then she would sit down, eat, and calm down. She would realize that fighting reality was pointless. His mother was already here. The fish was already fried. Facts were stubborn things.
He looked at the clock. Katya should be home any minute.
“You sit down too, Mom, stop fussing,” Sergey said contentedly. “Katya will be here soon, and we’ll all have dinner together. It’ll be a surprise.”
“Oh, it certainly will be,” Valentina Ivanovna cackled, wiping her greasy hands on the decorative linen towel hanging from the rail—the very one Katya kept purely for appearance. Hideous yellow stains immediately spread across it. “I just hope the daughter-in-law appreciates it. I’m doing this for both of you.”
Part 2
The trip to the village and back took longer than Sergey had expected. By the time they reached the city, it was already past lunch, and the sun was beginning to sink, painting the concrete apartment blocks in ominous shades of red. The trunk of his old sedan was stuffed full—sacks of potatoes, jars of preserves, bundles of knitted things that Valentina Ivanovna stubbornly called “a dowry,” and of course the ill-fated bag of fish.
The moment they stepped into the apartment, the silence of the immaculate space shattered. Valentina Ivanovna was a large, loud woman who seemed to occupy the entire place at once. She brought with her the smell of the street, cheap laundry detergent, and something distinctly rural—a mixture of smoke and old belongings.
“Oh, what a palace!” she cried, kicking off her heavy boots right in the middle of the mat and ignoring the shoe rack altogether. “It’s so clean you’re afraid to even step inside. Never mind, we’ll fix that, we’ll give it some life. Feels like a hospital in here, honestly.”
Sergey felt a faint stab of worry and quickly pushed her boots to the side, but immediately scolded himself for it. He was the master here. He had every right not to tremble over every inch of laminate floor.
“Come on, Mom, into the kitchen,” he said as he carried the bags in. “I’ll unpack your things in a moment.”
“Oh, what things, Seryozha? Just look at yourself, you’ve grown thin!” his mother cried, already heading straight for Katya’s holy sanctuary—the kitchen. “Skin and bones! Your wife probably feeds you nothing but salads. No matter, Mother’s here now. Mother will fatten you up. I brought carp, nice and rich, sweet as anything. We’ll fry them with sour cream!”
Sergey froze for a second. He knew Katya hated the smell of fried fish. In fact, she couldn’t tolerate strong smells in the apartment at all; she preferred the aroma of coffee and expensive diffusers. But hunger and his desire to assert himself outweighed common sense.
“Go ahead, Mom,” he said with a wave of his hand. “Fry them. I haven’t had proper food in ages.”
A frenzy of activity began in the kitchen. Humming to herself, Valentina Ivanovna opened the bag. The heavy, raw smell of mud and river fish spread through the room, overwhelming the delicate vanilla fragrance. She pulled out a large cast-iron skillet she had brought with her—“You people probably only have those modern pans that can’t fry anything properly”—and set it down on the glass-ceramic stove.
“Mom, be careful with the stove, it scratches,” Sergey warned weakly as he watched her pour a lavish amount of unrefined sunflower oil into the pan.
“What’s going to happen to it? It’s just metal,” Valentina Ivanovna said dismissively. “You’d better tell me where you keep the flour. And the salt. Everything’s hidden away; you can’t find a thing. Normal people keep things where you can see them. But here… these handleless cabinets, honestly, what nonsense.”
She began opening every drawer in sight, carelessly rearranging spice jars, disturbing the perfectly lined-up rows of grains. When she found the flour, she tipped a heap of it directly onto the cutting board Katya used only for fruit.
Within five minutes the kitchen filled with bluish smoke. Valentina Ivanovna flatly refused to turn on the extractor hood, claiming it “roared like a tractor” and made conversation impossible. The oil crackled, grease splattered in every direction, leaving fatty drops on the white backsplash, the artificial stone countertop, and the chrome fixtures.
“You know what Aunt Lyuba from next door used to say?” the mother rambled while flipping the sizzling fish. “She said you were wrong to leave for the city. But I told her, my Seryozhka has made something of himself! He has an apartment, a city wife. And she told me, ‘Mark my words, Valka, they’ll work him into the ground there.’ And now I look at you—and she was right! You’re pale, dark circles under your eyes. Working too much, are you?”
“A lot, Mom,” Sergey sighed, sitting down at the table and breathing in the thick oily smell that reminded him of childhood. Suddenly he felt deeply calm. This was real life. Not those cold delivery dinners. Not those conversations about market trends and next year’s vacation plans. This—fried fish, his mother in a bright housecoat, warmth—this was life.
“Well then, first batch is ready!” Valentina Ivanovna announced triumphantly, tipping a pile of golden fish dripping with oil onto a plate.
She set the dish on the table, shoving aside a vase of dried flowers that nearly toppled over. A greasy ring spread across the designer placemat beneath it.
“Eat, son, while it’s hot! Use your hands, it tastes better that way!”
Sergey bit into the crisp crust. Delicious. Incredibly delicious. He ate with greasy fingers, spitting little bones onto the edge of the plate, and with every bite his certainty grew stronger. Katya would come home, see this cozy scene, taste the fish, and her heart would soften. Surely she couldn’t be so cold-hearted as to ruin a family evening over a few principles.
“What time will your Katka be home?” his mother asked, loading the second batch of fish into the pan. By now the smoke was hanging in the air in thick layers, seeping into the curtains, the upholstery of the chairs, the wallpaper.
“She should be here soon,” Sergey said, checking his watch. “About half an hour.”
“Well, good. I saved some of the biggest ones for her too. Let the woman eat, she’s probably starving herself on those diets, so skinny it hurts to look at her. Oh, and by the way, Seryozha, I moved your towels around in the bathroom—they were hanging awkwardly. And I put the shampoos away in the cabinet so they wouldn’t collect dust. The lady of the house doesn’t have time, so I helped.”
Sergey choked on a bite of fish. He pictured Katya’s face when she realized someone had touched her bathroom products. But he immediately soothed himself. His mother had meant well. It was help. People thanked you for help, they didn’t get angry.
“Thanks, Mom,” he said, wiping his oily lips with a paper napkin. “You’re wonderful.”
Valentina Ivanovna beamed, her face flushed from the heat of the stove. She felt useful here, needed, almost like the mistress of the house. She had no idea that every movement she made, every splash of grease, every item she moved, was signing the end of her stay.
Sergey leaned back in his chair, full and satisfied. He didn’t notice that the apartment, saturated now with the smell of smoke and fish, had ceased to be the stylish home his wife was so proud of. It had become simply living space overtaken by чужой domestic life. And down below, near the entrance, Katya’s car had already pulled in.
The lock resisted at first, as though the apartment itself did not want to let its owner inside. Katya, worn out after a meeting, wanted only silence, a glass of chilled wine, and the perfect order that always soothed her. She turned the key, pressed the handle, and stepped over the threshold.
The blow was almost physical. Instead of the familiar delicate scent of sandalwood and freshness, she was hit by a dense, nauseating wall of burnt oil and cheap river fish. The stench was so thick it felt as if it could be sliced with a knife. It filled her lungs, clogged the air, and made her stomach seize instantly. Katya froze, unable to breathe. Her eyes dropped to the floor: on her impeccably clean beige mat—the one she had ordered from Italy—stood filthy, flattened boots with clumps of black soil still stuck to them. Nearby lay large checkered bags with rags sticking out of them.
“Oh, and here’s our little homemaker!” came a shrill voice from the kitchen.
Katya slowly, as if in a dream, took off her shoes, trying not to step in the dirt, and walked down the hallway. With every step the smell became more unbearable. She entered the kitchen and stopped in the doorway. The scene before her could have illustrated a film about vandalism.
Her kitchen—her pride, her immaculate white kingdom of minimalism—had been destroyed. Yellow greasy smears spread across the artificial stone countertop. Fish scales lay everywhere, sticking to surfaces like tiny bits of mica. The sink was piled high with dirty dishes. And in the center of this chaos, at a table now covered with newspaper—newspaper on her table—sat Sergey. He held a piece of fried fish in his hand, oil running down his chin, his face glowing with full-bellied satisfaction.
Beside the stove stood Valentina Ivanovna. She wore an old faded robe with Katya’s favorite linen apron thrown over it, already hopelessly ruined by splashes of grease.
“Well hello there, Katyenka!” Valentina Ivanovna cried, spreading her arms as if to hug her. She smelled of sweat and fried onions. “We’ve been waiting for you! Look at the feast we made! You must be hungry—so thin it’s painful to look at you. We’ll fatten you up now. These little carp are wonderful, sweet as honey!”
Sergey wiped his hands on a paper napkin, crumpled it up, and tossed it onto the plate with the fish bones. He was smiling that smug, patronizing smile Katya hated more than anything—the smile of a man convinced he had outsmarted the system.
“Hi, kitten,” he said lazily. “See? Mom came, I wanted to surprise you. Don’t be mad, okay? Look how cozy this is. Didn’t you say yourself the place lacked warmth?”
Katya said nothing. She looked at her husband, and something inside her snapped cleanly in two. There was no hysteria, no urge to scream, no tears. There was only a cold, crystal-clear understanding: it was over. This man did not merely fail to respect her. He did not hear her at all. He treated her words as empty noise, a whim to be broken by brute fact. He had brought a stranger into her home in direct defiance of her clear refusal and now sat there expecting her to swallow the humiliation along with the stinking fish.
“Katya, why are you standing there?” Sergey’s voice lost a little confidence under the weight of her glassy stare. “Sit down. The fish is getting cold. Mom worked hard, brought it all the way across the region.”
“Oh, don’t be shy, dear!” Valentina Ivanovna chimed in, oblivious to the tension. “I tidied up your cupboards a bit—your grains were in a terrible mess—and I rehung the towels in the bathroom because they were awkward. Don’t be upset, I just made myself useful.”
That was the final drop.
Tidied up your cupboards.
Rehung the towels.
Katya felt a cold rage flood her mind, washing every other emotion away. Slowly she lifted her eyes from the filthy stove to her husband.
“I warned you, Sergey,” she said quietly. Her voice was flat, almost mechanical. “This morning I told you: if your mother is here, both of you are leaving.”
Sergey snorted, still refusing to believe she was serious.
“Oh, come on. Don’t start. You said it, fine, you were upset. You’re not actually going to throw your husband’s mother out into the street at night, are you? That’s ridiculous, Katya. Enough drama. Sit down and eat while it’s hot.”
Katya did not answer. She turned sharply on her heel, precise and controlled like a soldier, and walked out of the kitchen.
“Where are you going?” her mother-in-law called after her. “To wash your hands? I hung you a clean towel, the one with the roosters on it!”
Katya walked into the bedroom. Smoke hung there too; the door had been left open. She stepped to the wardrobe and slid the mirrored door aside. There it was—Sergey’s favorite leather jacket. Beside it, the jeans he had worn to work. She scooped them up in her arms and returned to the hallway.
From the bench she took Valentina Ivanovna’s heavy wool coat, thick with the dust it had absorbed over the years. She threw Sergey’s jacket on top of it. Then she picked up his boots—still dirty, exactly as they were.
“Katya, what are you doing out there?” Sergey’s voice from the kitchen had changed now; there was worry in it. A chair scraped loudly against the floor.
Katya opened the front door. The landing beyond lay empty under the dull light of a weak bulb. She stepped across the threshold and with one hard swing hurled the clothes onto the concrete floor of the corridor. The boots struck the metal elevator door with a heavy clang. The coat fell in a heap on the tile.
Sergey rushed into the hallway, still chewing. When he saw the open door and the empty coat rack, he stopped dead. The contented self-satisfaction vanished from his face, replaced by confusion and fear.
“What… what the hell are you doing?!” he shouted, lunging toward the entrance. “Are you crazy? That’s my mother’s coat!”
Valentina Ivanovna came scrambling after him, wiping her hands on her apron.
“What happened? Seryozha?” She saw her belongings thrown onto the filthy floor of the landing and gasped, clapping a hand over her mouth. “Lord have mercy, what is this…”
“Out,” Katya said.
She stood in the open doorway, one hand still on the handle, pale but utterly calm.
“Both of you. Right now.”
“You wouldn’t dare!” Sergey turned crimson, his fists clenching again. “You have no right! We’re married! This is my home too!”
“This is my mother’s apartment,” Katya said clearly, staring straight between his eyes. “You are nobody here. And today you proved exactly why you should not be here. Go to your fish, your garden beds, your mother. Get out.”
Sergey took a step toward her, clearly intending to grab her arm or shove past her back into the apartment, to show who was in charge. But there was so much icy determination in Katya’s face that he stopped involuntarily. He understood at last: she was not joking. She was not putting on a show. This was the end.
He stood on the landing staring at the pile of belongings dumped beside the trash chute as though it were some surreal installation. His brain simply refused to process what was happening. It was too absurd, too insane. He—a grown man, the head of the family—was standing outside in the stairwell in socks and lounge pants while his quiet, always-so-correct wife was throwing out his things like he was some naughty pet.
“Have you completely lost your mind?” he screamed, turning back to her, face twisted with fury, veins bulging in his neck. “Open the door right now and bring everything back inside! Do you even understand what you’re doing? That’s my mother! You’re humiliating an elderly woman!”
He lunged toward her, meaning to force his way past, push her aside, show who was boss. But Katya did not move. She stood in the doorway with her shoulder against the frame, and there was such solid, leaden force in her posture that he involuntarily stopped half a meter away. There was no fear in her eyes, no hysteria—only disgust, the same expression one might wear while looking at a crushed insect.
“I understand perfectly well, Sergey,” she said, her voice frighteningly quiet in the echoing stairwell. “I am cleansing my apartment of filth. Of fish stink, other people’s boots, and a man who does not understand the word no.”
By now the horror of the situation had finally begun to dawn on Valentina Ivanovna too. She shuffled out onto the landing after her son in her flattened slippers, pressing her hands to her chest, her eyes darting desperately between him and her daughter-in-law.
“Katyenka, dear, what are you doing…” she wailed, trying to catch Katya’s eye. “So we fried some fish, so maybe I made a mess—well, we can air it out! Why do this now, at night? Where are we supposed to go? Seryozha, tell her!”
“I’m not telling her anything!” Sergey roared, his fear hardening into rage. “She’ll come to her senses in a second. Katya, move aside. I’m coming in, and we’ll forget this nonsense like a bad dream. Otherwise…”
“Otherwise what?” Katya cut in without blinking. “You’ll hit me? In my own apartment? Try it.”
Sergey choked on his outrage. He was used to Katya softening every edge, looking for compromise. He had expected shouting, a scene, tears—but not this cold, impenetrable wall. He stepped forward again, trying to squeeze past her into the hallway.
“Move, idiot!”
Katya reacted in a split second, almost instinctively. She did not grab his hair or scratch his face. She simply planted both palms against his chest and shoved him hard with every ounce of anger she had built up that evening.
Sergey, unprepared for physical resistance and standing on slippery tile in his socks, lost his balance. He flung his arms out awkwardly and stumbled backward, tripping over his mother’s coat and nearly sprawling across the dirty floor.
“You bitch!” he hissed, grabbing the railing to keep from falling.
Valentina Ivanovna shrieked and rushed to support her son by the elbow.
“Seryozhenka! Oh Lord! Katka, have you gone mad? Pushing your own husband!”
Katya stepped backward across the threshold and into the safety of her apartment. Then she bent down, lifted Valentina Ivanovna’s bag—the one still half full of fish and jars she had not managed to unpack—and flung it at Sergey’s feet. Glass shattered. One of the pickle jars had not survived the flight. Brine spread over the concrete floor, mixing with dirt.
“Take it,” Katya said. “It’s yours. The fish is yours. The stink is yours. I don’t need anything that belongs to you.”
“You’ll regret this!” Sergey shouted, his face mottled red. He looked pathetic—rumpled, in house clothes, standing beside the trash chute. “You’ll come crawling back! You’ll be all alone in that sterile little box of yours! You have nobody except me!”
“I have myself,” Katya said. “And I have an apartment that is about to be clean again.”
She took hold of the heavy metal door.
“Katya! Wait! My keys! My keys are on the table!” Sergey suddenly realized, and real panic broke into his voice. His swagger vanished instantly. He finally understood this was no game. He was standing in the stairwell without keys, without money, without his phone, which was still charging on the kitchen counter.
“Katyenka, don’t!” Valentina Ivanovna cried, lunging toward the door, but she was too late.
Katya looked at them one last time. There was no triumph in her eyes, only exhaustion and disgust, as though she were taking out trash that had been piling up for far too long.
“I warned you,” she said clearly, looking directly at her husband. “Now live together wherever you please. In the village, at the station—I truly do not care.”
The door slammed shut with a heavy, final thud, cutting them off from warmth and light. The lock turned once, then again. Then the security latch slid into place—the night bolt that no key could open from outside.
For one second there was silence.
Then the metal door shook beneath a rain of blows.
“Open up! Open the damn door, you bitch!” Sergey bellowed, hammering his fists against the steel. “You can’t do this! Let me in! I have work tomorrow! Give me my phone!”
“Seryozha, what are we going to do? Seryozha!” wailed Valentina Ivanovna beside him.
Katya stood in the hallway with her back pressed to the cold door. Every удар sent vibrations through her spine, but there was no fear left in her. With every blow, every curse hurled from the other side, she felt the tension of the past several years leaving her. She inhaled deeply. The apartment still smelled of smoke and fish, but now it was only a smell—something that could be aired out. She knew the cleaning service would come tomorrow morning. She knew she would change the locks. She knew she would never see these people again.
Slowly she slid down the door until she was sitting on the floor. She covered her face with her hands and… smiled. For the first time in a long time, she was home alone. And it felt wonderful. Absolute, ringing freedom.
Outside the door, a stranger continued raging.
But that was now a matter for building maintenance, not for her family.
She no longer had a family.
And thank God for that.
