Part 1. The Calculation of Absurdity
Zhanna looked at her husband as if he were an error in an annual financial report.
The kitchen smelled of fried onions, but the aroma did nothing to awaken her appetite. Sergei, carefully working his spoon through his borscht, was finishing his dinner with complete dedication, entirely unaware that the air around him was thickening like the sky before a thunderstorm.
“Mom called,” he said casually, breaking off a piece of bread. “She said we need to be at their place by seven on Saturday morning. The fence is leaning, and she’s also come up with some plan to replant the shrubs. She says they can’t manage without us.”
Zhanna slowly set down her fork.
An invisible calculator switched on inside her head.
Five workdays, nine hours each. Commute: two hours a day. Total: forty-five hours of pure mental load, plus ten more hours in traffic. The body’s resources were depleted by eighty percent. The need for sleep had reached critical level.
“Sergei,” Zhanna said evenly, though her voice carried the dangerous hum of high-voltage wires. “I have a counterproposal. I take a calculator, add up our fuel costs, car depreciation, and the value of my hourly labor. Then we compare that number to the price of the berries we’ll bring back from there. Spoiler: we’ll be deeply in the red.”
Her husband froze with the spoon halfway to his mouth. His face showed genuine confusion. For him, trips to his parents’ country house were as unavoidable as the changing seasons or rising utility bills.
“What does money have to do with it?” he said, offended. “It’s my mother. She’s waiting for us. She’s already baked pies and planned the menu. Marina and her husband will be there too. Everyone’s getting together.”
“Marina is coming because she doesn’t know how to say no,” Zhanna cut in. “I do. I planned to spend two days lying completely still. My nervous system requires a reboot, otherwise the whole system is going to crash.”
“Zhanna, don’t start, please,” Sergei grimaced as if she had touched a sore tooth. “You know Mom will be hurt. She thinks of you as a daughter. She tells everyone, ‘My Zhannochka is golden, she never refuses anyone.’ Do you really want to upset her?”
Golden, Zhanna repeated silently.
Gold was a soft metal. Easy to twist into wires.
Her mother-in-law, Galina Ivanovna, possessed a rare talent: she could wrap forced labor in the packaging of family values. Every weekend turned into a survival marathon under the banner of “But we’re family!”
“I don’t want to upset her. I want to survive,” Zhanna said, rising from the table and feeling the dark flame inside her begin to burn, the one she usually extinguished with logic. “I work with my brain, Sergei. By Friday, my brain turns into an overheated processor. It needs cooling.”
“There’s fresh air there!” her husband offered as his ironclad argument. “We’ll do some physical work, get the blood moving. It’s healthy.”
Zhanna closed her eyes.
In her mind appeared a vivid image: herself, a qualified logistics specialist, hauling buckets of manure while Galina Ivanovna stood under an umbrella, supervising the process and pointing out her “insufficient depth of effort.”
“Your mother has a son. She has a son-in-law. She has a husband, for that matter. Why should I, a fragile woman weighing fifty-five kilograms, become part of your construction crew?”
“Because we’re one team!” Sergei declared with pathos, unaware that he was walking through a minefield. “And besides, I already promised. I can’t call and say my wife is too lazy.”
The word lazy struck Zhanna harder than a slap.
She exhaled sharply. Her mind, trained to operate with numbers and facts, produced the only correct solution for the situation: agree, and let the evidence accumulate.
Sometimes, in order to collapse a market, you have to let the bubble inflate to its limit.
“Fine,” she said in an icy tone. “We’ll go. But keep this in mind, Sergei: every hour of my time there will be recorded on an invoice. And when that invoice is presented, you won’t be able to say I didn’t warn you.”
Sergei nodded happily, letting the threat fly right past him.
All he heard was: we’ll go.
Part 2. The Coefficient of Insolence
Sergei’s parents’ country house resembled a testing ground for human patience.
There was a house that was forever being renovated, a vegetable garden that demanded sacrifices like an ancient pagan deity, and Galina Ivanovna sitting on the porch like a prison guard in a watchtower.
When Sergei and Zhanna’s old Toyota rolled through the gate, they were already being welcomed.
Galina Ivanovna, in her usual floral housecoat, was smiling broadly, but her eyes scanned the arrivals for signs of readiness to work. Beside her stood Marina, Sergei’s sister. She looked as if she had just returned from hard labor, even though it was only eight in the morning.
“Zhannochka! Seryozhenka!” cried the mother-in-law before they even had a chance to get out of the car. “Finally! Your father and I have been waiting and waiting. So much to do, so much to do!”
Zhanna stepped out of the car, adjusted her sunglasses, and started the stopwatch on her wristwatch.
“Good morning, Galina Ivanovna.”
“What’s good about it when the sun is already high and the beds haven’t been weeded?” her mother-in-law immediately attacked, then softened her tone with a sugary smile. “I’m joking, joking. Zhannochka, go change quickly. I found you some old trousers and a jacket so you don’t ruin your beauty. Here’s the plan: the men will handle the fence, and you, Marina, and I will work in the greenhouse. The soil needs replacing. All of it.”
“All of it?” Zhanna repeated, feeling her eyelid twitch. “Galina Ivanovna, that greenhouse is twenty square meters. One spade-deep layer. That’s roughly five cubic meters of soil. Are you asking us to move five tons of earth by hand?”
Her mother-in-law waved her off as if dismissing an annoying fly.
“Oh, stop showing off with your numbers. The eyes are afraid, but the hands get it done. I’d do it myself, but you know, my back… And for you young people it’s useful. Free fitness!”
Zhanna looked at Marina.
Her sister-in-law stood with her shoulders slumped, scraping the dust with the toe of her sneaker. Her posture carried the hopelessness of a condemned prisoner.
“Mom, maybe we should hire someone?” Sergei suggested timidly while unloading the bags.
“Absolutely not!” Galina Ivanovna snapped. “Do we have money to throw around? We have a big family, we’ll manage ourselves. Aunt Lyuba used to make her daughters-in-law give birth in the field, and nothing happened, they all turned out healthy. You people are spoiled by your offices. Enough talking. Zhanna, the shovel is by the shed. Move.”
Slowly, very slowly, Zhanna turned her head toward her husband.
She waited.
She waited for him to say, “Mom, that’s too much. Zhanna isn’t a laborer.”
But Sergei was already obediently pulling off his T-shirt, preparing for heroic deeds in the name of maternal approval.
He had chosen a side.
And it was not his wife’s.
“Fine,” Zhanna said quietly. “I’ll go to the greenhouse.”
Inside the greenhouse it was suffocating, like the entrance to hell. Marina silently picked up the second shovel.
“You know this violates the Geneva Convention, right?” Zhanna asked, driving the tool into the dry soil.
“She won’t stop,” Marina answered flatly. “It’s easier to do it than listen to her whine about ungrateful children for the next six months. Last weekend I cleaned the cellar here. Alone. My husband hurt his back, so she called him a faker.”
“Why do you put up with it?”
“Habit,” Marina said, wiping sweat from her forehead with a dirty hand. “We were raised that way. Sergei is the same. He’s terrified of upsetting Mom. The fear of disappointing Mommy is stitched into their DNA.”
Zhanna calculated: at this pace, in a greenhouse at plus thirty degrees Celsius, heatstroke would arrive in forty-five minutes. The efficiency of their labor was approaching zero, especially since the pile of compost had been dumped fifty meters away.
“Girls!” Galina Ivanovna’s voice rang out from outside. “Why are you dawdling in there? I haven’t even had my tea yet, I’m waiting for you to finish your quota! Faster, faster!”
“You hear that?” Marina said with a crooked smile. “Faster.”
At that moment, a fuse blew inside Zhanna’s head.
She remembered her bank account, her projects, which she managed with surgical precision, the respect of her colleagues. Then she compared all of that to this: a woman in old sweatpants throwing manure around at the whim of an energy vampire.
The equation did not balance.
Debit and credit refused to meet.
A critical system error had occurred.
Part 3. The Exponential Growth of Rage
Zhanna dropped the shovel.
The sound of metal striking earth rang out like a gong.
“What are you doing?” Marina asked, frightened.
“Enough,” Zhanna said. “The limit has been reached.”
She walked out of the greenhouse.
The sun was merciless. Sergei and his father, Pyotr Ilyich, were sluggishly fiddling with fence posts. Galina Ivanovna sat in a deck chair under an apple tree, drinking kvass.
“Oh, a break already?” her mother-in-law asked sternly when she noticed Zhanna. “A bit early, dear. I don’t see a mountain of soil.”
Zhanna walked straight up to her.
There were no tears in her eyes. No pleading. Only cold, calculated fury multiplied by higher mathematics.
“Galina Ivanovna,” Zhanna began, and her voice rang clearly enough to draw the men’s attention. “Let’s count. My work hour costs two thousand rubles. I have already been here for three hours. That’s six thousand. Marina is a chief technologist; her hour is fifteen hundred. That’s four and a half thousand. Add fuel. Add clothing wear. Add moral damages. Right now, this garden bed is costing us fifteen thousand rubles. Do you understand that it would be cheaper to bury gold bars than to move this soil?”
Her mother-in-law choked on her kvass.
“You’ve decided to count my money now? Stick your nose into someone else’s pocket? I’m a mother! I raised you!”
“You raised Sergei and Marina!” Zhanna’s voice rose, but even her shouting remained frighteningly logical. “My parents raised me! And they did not raise me to become free labor for your landscaping ambitions!”
“Seryozha!” Galina Ivanovna screeched. “Control your wife! She’s completely lost her conscience!”
Sergei dropped his hammer and hurried over. He looked confused and pitiful.
“Zhanna, stop it. You’re overheated. Mom just wants everything to look nice…”
“Nice?!” Zhanna shouted so loudly that birds flew out of the nearby apple tree. “Nice is when people rest on their days off! Nice is when other people’s time is respected!”
She turned to her mother-in-law, and the woman instinctively shrank back into the deck chair.
“I will spend my weekends doing what I want! I don’t care what you need or what you think of me!” the daughter-in-law said, putting her mother-in-law in her place, each word sharp and precise. “You are not the director of the universe, Galina Ivanovna. You are simply a woman who decided that by giving birth to children, you received them as lifelong slaves. Your demands are irrational. Your tomatoes are economically unprofitable. Your behavior is toxic.”
Silence fell.
Only the buzzing of a bumblebee could be heard.
Galina Ivanovna opened and closed her mouth like a fish thrown onto dry land. No one had ever spoken to her in the language of numbers and such open, ringing anger before.
“Marina!” Zhanna suddenly shouted toward the greenhouse. “How long are you going to rot in there? You have a vacation in a month. Do you want to spend it in a hospital with a hernia? Drop that bucket!”
Marina came out of the greenhouse.
She was dirty and sweaty, but there was suddenly a spark in her eyes, reflecting Zhanna’s fire.
“Mom,” Marina said quietly but firmly. “Zhanna is right. I… I’m not doing this anymore either.”
“What?!” Galina Ivanovna grabbed at her chest, or at least at the place where her heart was supposed to be. “Traitors! I spent my whole life on you… And this is how you repay me! Sergei! Say something!”
Sergei’s gaze darted between his mother and his wife.
It was the moment of truth. The moment when a man should become a man.
But Sergei chose to remain a son.
“Zhanna, you’re acting hysterical,” he blurted out, trying to regain control. “Apologize to Mom. Right now. We’ll finish the work, and then we’ll go home.”
Zhanna looked at him with the curiosity of an entomologist discovering a new species of dung beetle.
“No,” she said calmly. “You are staying. You will dig. You will listen to how awful I am. And I am leaving. Marina, do you want me to drop you at the station, or are you coming with me to the city?”
“With you,” Marina answered immediately, pulling off her work gloves and throwing them into a currant bush.
“GET OUT!” Galina Ivanovna shrieked, feeling her empire collapse. “Don’t you dare set foot here again! I’ll cut you out of the inheritance! I’ll curse you!”
“An inheritance consisting of a collapsing shed with negative profitability?” Zhanna smirked. “Keep it. That is a liability, not an asset.”
She turned and walked to the car.
Marina hurried after her.
Sergei remained standing in the middle of the yard, clutching a useless hammer, while his mother began a long aria about the viper he had warmed on his chest.
Part 4. The Theorem of Loneliness
They drove back to the city in silence.
Only when they reached the highway did Marina suddenly begin to laugh. At first quietly, then louder and louder, until tears came to her eyes.
“Did you see her face?” she managed through laughter. “‘Economically unprofitable tomatoes!’ Zhanna, you’re a genius. I put up with this for thirty years, and you sorted everything out in thirty minutes.”
“It’s not genius. It’s basic logistics,” Zhanna said, gripping the steering wheel a little tighter, though her hands were not trembling. The adrenaline had receded, leaving crystalline clarity behind. “I just removed the inefficient links from the chain.”
Sergei did not call until Sunday evening.
Zhanna knew exactly what was happening there. Galina Ivanovna was washing his brain, filling him with guilt and a sense of his own importance. Sergei, most likely, was digging for three people in order to redeem his wife’s “sin.”
He returned late that evening, dirty, exhausted, but wearing the expression of a righteous martyr. Zhanna was sitting in the kitchen with her laptop.
“I’m waiting for an apology,” he announced from the doorway, not even taking off his shoes. “You caused a scandal. Mom had to drink valerian. Dad hasn’t said a word all day.”
“Take off your shoes,” Zhanna said without looking up from the screen. “Mud on the laminate increases cleaning time by twenty minutes.”
“Are you starting again?” Sergei roared. “Do you care about feelings at all? Are you a robot?”
“I am a person who values herself,” Zhanna finally looked up. “Sergei, I conducted an audit of our relationship. And I found an enormous financial and emotional hole. Your mother demands resources but gives nothing in return except complaints. You indulge her by using my resources. That is theft, Sergei.”
“What theft? We’re family! My money is our money!”
“Your money?” Zhanna turned the laptop toward him. An electronic spreadsheet was open on the screen. “Look. This is the mortgage payment schedule. The apartment we live in was purchased with a mortgage I took out before our marriage. You live here and only pay for food and utilities. Half of that food you take to your mother. I paid for the bathroom renovation with my bonus. We bought the car on a loan that I pay, while you only fill the tank so you can drive your mother to the country house.”
Sergei blinked.
The numbers were merciless.
Red columns showed Sergei’s expenses for “family,” which in reality meant his mother. Green columns showed Zhanna’s contributions.
“But I… I bring home my salary…”
“Your salary is thirty percent lower than mine, and you spend it on the garage, fishing gear, and ‘helping your parents.’ I tolerated it because I considered it an investment in the future. But yesterday showed that the investment is unprofitable. You are not a partner, Sergei. You are a dependent trying to exploit me for the benefit of third parties.”
“You mercenary bitch!” he spat out, using the main argument of losers. “All you think about is money! What about soul?”
“My soul died when you let your mother scream at me while I was expected to shovel manure,” Zhanna answered coldly. “I’m filing for divorce.”
Sergei laughed. Nervously. Jerkily.
“Where will you go? Who needs you with your calculators? And anyway, we’ll split the apartment. I lived here for five years. I have rights!”
“Article 36 of the Family Code of the Russian Federation,” Zhanna said, pressing a key. “Property that belonged to each spouse before marriage remains that spouse’s property. I paid the mortgage from my personal account, and the income into that account is fully documented and exceeds the payment amount. You did not contribute a single kopeck to the principal debt. I saved every receipt, Sergei. Every transfer you made to your mother, every spare part you bought for your bucket of bolts. The court will leave you with nothing.”
Sergei turned pale.
His confidence, built on arrogance and his mother’s instructions, collapsed like a house of cards.
“Zhanna, wait… Let’s talk. Yes, Mom went too far, but these things happen… I’ll talk to her…”
“Too late. The project is closed. The payback period has expired.”
Part 5. The Inevitability of Payback
Two months passed.
Zhanna was sitting in a café with Marina. Her former sister-in-law looked refreshed: a new haircut, a bright dress.
“You know,” Marina said, stirring her cocktail with a straw, “I stopped going there too. I told Mom, ‘I’m allergic to shovels.’ She screamed, cried, called every relative she could think of. And me? I didn’t care. Your formula works. I calculated it: hiring someone to dig up the garden costs two thousand rubles. My nerves are priceless. So I just sent her money. She was offended, but she took it.”
“And Sergei?” Zhanna asked, though she already knew the answer.
“Oh, that’s a whole song,” Marina smirked. “He lives with our parents now. In his old childhood room. Mom nags him from morning till night. He has no money since you threw him out so efficiently, basically with nothing. The car broke down, and he couldn’t keep up with the loan, so he had to sell it for almost nothing.”
Zhanna nodded.
Mathematics was an exact science.
Sergei had failed to consider that Zhanna had been keeping a second set of books on their life, preserving proof of her financial independence and his wastefulness. When the divorce proceedings began, he tried to claim a share based on improvements to the apartment, but Zhanna presented the estimates: the renovations had been done by a crew paid from her card. Sergei could not prove he had even bought the wallpaper.
“Mom says you’re a witch now,” Marina continued. “That you bewitched him and then robbed him. And Sergei… he drinks beer in the evenings and complains to Dad that women have become greedy. But that’s not even the funniest part.”
“What is?”
“Mom made him build that same fence. And dig that same soil in the greenhouse. Now he’s the only slave there. He called me yesterday asking to stay at my place. I told him, ‘Sorry, brother, my apartment is small, and you’re noisy and expensive.’ I used your words exactly!”
Zhanna smiled.
It was not a malicious smile. It was the smile of a chief accountant whose annual balance had finally reconciled.
The negative character had been punished not by fate, not by mysticism, but by his own stupidity and greed. He wanted a convenient wife and a satisfied mother, but forgot that in an equation with three unknowns, one element is always unnecessary.
At that very moment, Sergei was standing knee-deep in mud at the country house.
A light rain was falling, though it did not wash away sins; it only made everything nastier. Galina Ivanovna stood over him under an umbrella.
“Seryozha! Who digs like that? Go deeper! Lazybones! Just like your father! And that ex-wife of yours, that parasite, she ruined you!”
Sergei drove the shovel into the heavy clay.
He wanted to scream, to throw everything down, to walk away.
But there was nowhere to go.
He had no money for rent. His salary had been cut because of absences after his nervous breakdown following the divorce. And Mom… Mom was sacred.
That was what he had been taught since childhood.
“I’m digging, Mom. I’m digging,” he muttered through clenched teeth.
He had fallen into the very trap he had spent years preparing for Zhanna.
And mathematically, there was no visible way out.
