Part 1. The Ritual of Suffocation
Sunday in Alina and Lev’s home did not begin with sunlight on the pillow or lazy stretching under the blanket. It began with a heavy, sticky feeling of inevitability. It was like a toothache that was not sharp yet, but already throbbing somewhere in the gum, warning of a painful visit to the dentist. Only instead of a dentist’s chair, Alina was facing an old, creaky sofa in her mother-in-law’s apartment and a table overloaded with greasy appetizers.
Three years. One hundred and fifty-six weeks. That was how long this torture, disguised as “family togetherness,” had lasted.
Alina stood in front of the hallway mirror, mechanically brushing her hair. A young woman stared back at her from the reflection, her eyes filled with the longing of a trapped animal. Lev, her husband, was already bustling around in the kitchen, clattering cups. He was cheerful, freshly shaved, and radiated the nauseating anticipation of a son hurrying to receive his mother’s approval.
“Alinka, are you ready yet?” he called. “Mom phoned. She said the aspic has already set, and Aunt Lyuba brought her famous cutlets. We can’t be late. You know how upset they get.”
Alina lowered the hairbrush. Her hand trembled. Today was not just another Groundhog Day. Today, she had the right to her own life. Yesterday evening, she had received a message from Lenka, her best childhood friend. Lenka had given birth to a son, little Mishutka, and today she was inviting only the closest people to meet the baby. Not a feast, just quiet tea and conversation for an hour or two. Alina had bought a tiny onesie and a rattle. She had been waiting for this visit like a breath of fresh air.
She stepped into the hallway. Lev was pulling on his polished shoes.
“Lyova,” she said quietly. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Her husband froze with one shoe in his hand. Slowly, he straightened up. His face showed genuine confusion, as if she had suddenly spoken in a dead language.
“What do you mean?” he asked, blinking. “Where aren’t you going? To Mom’s?”
“Yes. To Irina Igorevna’s. I told you on Wednesday and reminded you on Friday. Lena had a baby boy. I’m going to see her.”
Lev frowned. Wrinkles appeared on his forehead, and his lips twisted. He remembered. Of course he remembered. But in his worldview, his wife’s wishes were like background noise: they existed, but they did not affect the main plot.
“Mom is waiting! What do you mean, you’re not coming? What am I supposed to tell her?” he asked, bewildered. “Do you understand that the whole family will be there? Aunt Lyuba, Svetka and her husband, even Zoya Pavlovna from the first floor promised to stop by. It’s a tradition, Alina!”
“Lyova, I want to congratulate my friend. I haven’t seen her in six months. And I see your mother more often than I see my own reflection in shop windows,” Alina said calmly, though inside her, a dark, thick irritation was beginning to boil.
“You can congratulate her by phone!” Lev waved his hand as if swatting away an annoying fly. “Or visit her during the week. Mom prepared everything. She has been on her feet since five in the morning. Do you understand how this looks? ‘Hello, Mom, Alina chose someone else’s child over your family.’ Is that it?”
“He is not someone else’s child. I’m going to be his godmother!” Alina raised her voice. “And stop pressing on my guilt. Your mother ‘prepares’ every weekend as if she is expecting a UN delegation. I’m tired, Lev. I just want to spend one weekend the way I want.”
Lev turned red. His artificial good nature slipped away, revealing the spoiled, rigid personality he usually hid behind smiles.
“You’re selfish,” he spat. “We accepted you. Surrounded you with care. And what about you? Is it so hard to sit at a table for three hours? Eat good food? People dream of having such a close family, and you turn your nose up at it.”
“Close?” Alina gave a bitter laugh. “Lyova, what closeness? Your sister Svetlana is always discussing my clothes and hinting that they look cheap. Your aunt keeps asking when I’m finally going to give birth, as if I’m an incubator. And your mother… she just sits at the head of the table and conducts this parade of hypocrisy.”
“NO!” Lev roared. “Don’t you dare talk like that! Get dressed. We’re going. I’m not going to blush because of your whims.”
He grabbed her jacket from the hanger and threw it at her. The heavy zipper struck Alina painfully across the fingers.
Part 2. Telephone Terror
The pain was sharp, but it cleared her head. Alina looked at her reddened finger, then at her husband. Slowly, she hung the jacket back up.
“Go to hell, Lev,” she said clearly. “Go alone.”
Lev was stunned. In three years, he had grown used to seeing her compliant, silent, sometimes crying in the bathroom, but always obediently getting into the car.
“Are you serious right now?” he hissed. “You want a scandal? You’ll get one.”
He snatched up his phone and pressed speed dial. The speakerphone turned on automatically, or maybe he did it deliberately, hoping to crush her with the authority of the clan.
“Hello, son? Have you left already?” came Irina Igorevna’s commanding, slightly trembling voice. “The cutlets are getting cold, and Zoya Pavlovna brought her famous roll.”
“Mom, there’s a situation here…” Lev shot his wife a look full of spite and resentment. “Alina doesn’t want to come. She says her friend is more important than us.”
There was a pause on the other end. Not a theatrical pause, but a domestic one, soaked in the judgment of a scandal-loving woman.
“What do you mean, she doesn’t want to?” his mother’s voice turned cold. “Give her the phone.”
Lev held out the phone to Alina like a weapon.
“Alina, dear,” Irina Igorevna began sweetly, though steel rang beneath her words. “Is Lyova joking? We have a family lunch. What friend? You are married, sweetheart. Your place is beside your husband, at your mother-in-law’s table. We are family! I got up before dawn, my blood pressure is one hundred eighty, and still I cooked and fried… For whom?”
“Good morning, Irina Igorevna,” Alina said, trying to hold her ground. “I respect your effort, but I warned Lev. I have—”
“I am not interested in your excuses!” her mother-in-law interrupted, rising to a shriek. “You are spitting into my soul! I treated you like a daughter… And you! If you do not leave your house right now, you can forget the way to our apartment forever!”
“Fine,” Alina cut her off. “I’ll forget it.”
She ended the call. Lev stood with his mouth open. Red blotches spread across his face.
“You… you hung up? On my mother?” He was choking with outrage. “Have you lost all fear?”
At that moment, Lev’s phone rang again. The screen read: “Svetlana.”
“Answer it,” Alina nodded. “Let the whole pack have its say.”
Lev turned on the speaker.
“Lyova! Mom is clutching her heart! She’s taking Validol!” his sister Sveta shrieked. “Does your princess have no shame at all? We’re all here, waiting, and she has decided to run off to her little friend! Tell her she’s a rotten bitch!”
“Did you hear that?” Lev looked at Alina triumphantly. “You are upsetting people. Get dressed, now! We’ll go, you’ll apologize, you’ll say your head hurt, that you weren’t thinking clearly. Mom is kind. She’ll forgive you.”
Alina looked at him and saw not a man, but an empty shell stuffed with other people’s thoughts and fears. He was thirty-two years old, but the umbilical cord tying him to his mother was as thick as a fire hose.
“I will not apologize to anyone,” she said quietly but firmly.
“Oh, really?” Lev began pacing around the cramped hallway. “Then blame yourself. I’ll call Aunt Lyuba right now. She’ll straighten your brains out. She has forty years of teaching experience!”
“Call the Pope if you want. Get out of here.”
Part 3. The Siege
The next half hour turned into a surreal nightmare. Lev did not leave. He set up headquarters for a punitive operation right there in the hallway. He called everyone.
Aunt Lyuba boomed through the phone:
“Alina, this is unacceptable. Family bonds are sacred. Your selfishness is destroying your marriage. You are obliged to submit to the collective. Who are you without your husband’s family? Nothing. A zero without a stick!”
Then the phone was taken by the mother-in-law’s neighbor, the very same Zoya Pavlovna whom Alina had seen only twice in her life:
“Shame on you, child! Irina Igorevna is a saintly woman! We are sitting here waiting, and you… Tch! Disgraceful!”
Lev walked in circles around Alina, shoving the phone in her face.
“See? Everyone says you’re wrong! Everyone! You alone against all of us. Are you so stupid you can’t understand that?” He was no longer choosing his words. “Get ready, damn you! You’re humiliating me! What am I supposed to tell the neighbors? That my wife is loose and runs around to friends instead of caring for my sick mother?”
Alina sat on the small hallway bench and remained silent. Inside her, a string was tightening. Every word, every scream from the speaker, every insult from her husband twisted the peg of that string tighter and tighter.
“You’re just pathetic,” Lev suddenly said, looming over her. “I pulled you out of that hole and brought you into decent life. And you turn up your nose at proper food, proper company. So greedy with your time? And who pays for the apartment? I do!”
“We pay equally,” Alina said through clenched teeth.
“What are your pennies worth?” he shouted. “You should wash my feet and drink the water for the fact that I married you! Svetka was right. You’re nothing but a freeloader!”
The string snapped. The sound was almost physical, deafening.
Alina stood up. Slowly. She was no longer shaking. The fear had disappeared, evaporated, burned away in the flames of pure, distilled rage. She looked at Lev, and when he saw that look, he involuntarily took a step back. There were no tears in her eyes. Only emptiness, ready to swallow everything around it.
“A freeloader?” she repeated. Her voice dropped to a whisper that seemed to make the windowpanes tremble. “So that’s how it is?”
Part 4. Hysteria as a Weapon
Alina spun around, grabbed a heavy vase with dried flowers from the shelf — a gift from that same Aunt Lyuba — and hurled it with all her strength at the wall, right above Lev’s head.
Shards exploded like shrapnel. The crash was terrifying.
“GO TO HELL!” she screamed so loudly that Lev ducked and covered his head with his hands. “YOU, YOUR MOTHER, SVETKA, YOUR AUNT, AND YOUR WHOLE DAMN PACK!”
“You… what are you doing?” Lev stammered, his face turning chalk-white. “Are you insane?”
“INSANE?!” Alina grabbed his coat and threw it into his face. The buttons whipped painfully across his cheek. “I put up with this for three years! I ate your greasy cutlets until I wanted to vomit! I listened to your senile neighbor’s nonsense! I endured all of you picking my bones clean! ENOUGH!”
She was not merely shouting. She was raging. This was not a woman’s tearful breakdown, not sobbing and sniffling. It was the fury of a Valkyrie destroying everything in her path. Alina snatched Lev’s car keys from the cabinet and threw them through the open bathroom door. They fell into the toilet with a bright splash.
“GET OUT!” she shrieked, advancing on her husband. “GET OUT OF HERE! I DON’T WANT YOUR SPIRIT IN THIS PLACE! I AM NOT YOUR SERVANT! I AM NOT YOUR TRAINED DOG!”
Lev pressed himself against the coat rack. He had never seen her like this. He had expected tears, pleading, silent resistance. But this? This was a natural disaster. Suddenly, he realized he was physically afraid of this woman.
“Alina, calm down, the neighbors will call—” he began, stammering.
“LET THEM CALL!” she cut him off, grabbing him by the lapels of his jacket and shaking him like a rag doll. “LET EVERYONE SEE WHAT A PATHETIC MAMA’S BOY YOU ARE! ARE YOU A MAN OR YOUR MOTHER’S APPENDIX? GO TO HER! EAT HER ASPIC UNTIL YOU BURST!”
“Go to hell yourself!” Lev tried to snap back, but his voice cracked.
“NO, YOU GO TO HELL!” Alina shoved him toward the door so hard he hit his shoulder against the frame. “MAY YOU SINK INTO THE GROUND WITH ALL YOUR TRADITIONS! I HATE YOU! YOU DISGUST ME!”
She grabbed his other shoe, the one he still had not put on, and launched it at him. It struck him in the thigh. Lev yelped.
“Psychopath!” he squealed, flinging the front door open. “I’m leaving! You’ll come crawling back! You’ll regret this!”
“MAY THE DEVILS TAKE YOU!” she screamed after him into the stairwell. “MAY YOU BURST FROM ALL THEIR LOVE!”
She pushed him out onto the landing, grabbed his document bag — he always took it with him — and threw it after him. The bag hit the railing and burst open, sending papers flying across the concrete floor.
“AND DON’T COME BACK!” Alina slammed the door with a crash.
She did not slide down the wall. She did not cry. She stood in the middle of the wrecked hallway, breathing heavily, and felt an incredible, intoxicating lightness spreading through her. Her blood was boiling. Adrenaline had washed away three years of humiliation. She looked at her hands. They were not shaking.
She went to the kitchen, poured herself a glass of water, and drank it in one gulp. Then she took her phone and blocked Lev’s number, Irina Igorevna’s, Svetlana’s, and even Aunt Lyuba’s unknown number.
An hour later, beautiful, made-up, and calm, she was riding in a taxi to her friend’s house.
Part 5. The Vultures’ Feast
Lev arrived at his mother’s place an hour and a half later. He looked rumpled, was missing one shoe — he had had to search for it on the stairs, but the lace had torn — and had a scratch on his cheek from a button.
Irina Igorevna’s apartment was filled with the thick, heavy smell of fried onions, cheap perfume, and old age. Everyone was sitting at the table: monumental Irina Igorevna, sharp-tongued Svetlana with her quiet husband, loud Aunt Lyuba, and curious neighbor Zoya Pavlovna.
When Lev came in, silence fell.
“Where is… she?” his mother asked, pursing her lips.
“She didn’t come,” Lev muttered, sitting down on the empty chair. “She’s… sick. In the head.”
“I knew it!” Svetlana exclaimed triumphantly. “I told you, Mom! She doesn’t respect us at all!”
And then it began. Usually, Alina was the target. They discussed her, gave her advice, criticized her for being too thin, for her job, for her silence. Alina had served as a lightning rod, absorbing the poison of this family. But today, there was no lightning rod.
The energy that was used to finding release through humiliating the daughter-in-law began looking for a new target.
“Lyova, why are you so wrinkled?” Aunt Lyuba narrowed her eyes. “Did your wife not iron your clothes? Or do you not know how to do it yourself? How can you show up at your mother’s looking like that? Disrespectful!”
“Leave me alone,” Lev snapped, spooning salad onto his plate.
“How are you speaking to your aunt?” Irina Igorevna immediately flared up. “We waited for you, everything got cold! You couldn’t make her come? What kind of man are you if a woman twists you around her finger?”
“Mom, enough!” Lev struck his fork against the plate. “I want to eat.”
“Look at him!” Zoya Pavlovna joined in. “So nervous. Just like his father. He used to snap at everyone too, until he drank himself into the grave.”
“Zoya Pavlovna, go to hell!” Lev finally snapped.
The scandal ignited instantly. Without Alina, who usually smoothed over the edges with her silence and obedience, the family was like a jar full of spiders. Svetlana accused Lev of ruining the celebration. Aunt Lyuba reminded Irina Igorevna of an old debt. Zoya Pavlovna took offense and began demanding an apology.
Lev sat with his head lowered, listening to the roar. And suddenly, he understood with absolute clarity: this was not love. This was madness. And Alina had been the only shield saving him from this avalanche.
A month later, their usual order of life collapsed completely.
Alina never apologized. She filed for divorce. The apartment belonged to her before the marriage — something Lev had conveniently forgotten to mention when he shouted about paying for it, since he had paid only for utilities and groceries — and he was forced to move in with his mother.
Now every Sunday, as well as Monday, Tuesday, and every other day, he became the main dish on Irina Igorevna’s table. The relatives quickly scattered. Aunt Lyuba stopped coming because she quarreled with Svetlana over their grandmother’s inheritance. Svetlana and her husband stopped visiting because, without reliable Alina helping to set and clear the table, Sveta was too lazy to bother, and she did not want to listen to her mother’s lectures. Zoya Pavlovna took offense for life.
Only three remained: eternally dissatisfied Irina Igorevna, constantly complaining about her blood pressure; bitter divorced Svetlana, who occasionally dropped by for money; and Lev.
He sat in that same kitchen, eating cold, greasy pilaf and listening to his mother’s endless monologue about what a good wife he had lost, because “Alina may have had a temper, but she was a good homemaker — not like you, you useless freeloader.”
Lev looked out the window at the gray courtyard and remembered the day Alina had thrown the vase. He remembered her face, distorted yet beautiful in its rage. He had not expected it. He had thought she was weak. But she had turned out to be alive. And now that life was flowing somewhere far away, without him, while he remained here, in this suffocating crypt, among the smell of medicine and reproaches, punished by his own stupidity and his family’s greed.
A happy life had been so close. All he had needed to do was say “no” to his mother once. But now it was too late.
Serves you right, Lyova, he thought, looking at his mother.
You punished yourself.
