“Tomorrow we get up at exactly five in the morning, so wrap it up with all your little bottles. Pack your things tonight so we don’t have to fumble around in the dark tomorrow and waste time. I brought our old backpacks from the garage, checked the boots, the soles are fine. Father called half an hour ago. He said the soil on the plot has dried out perfectly, so we’re spending the whole weekend planting potatoes.”
Yulia froze, still holding the expensive bottle of body oil above her stylish leather bag. Slowly, she turned her head toward the hallway, feeling a tight knot of irritation instantly pull inside her chest. On the pale porcelain tile, right beside the soft ottoman, stood her husband, Roman. In one hand he held a worn canvas backpack that stank, even from a meter away, of damp cellar mold and old mouse droppings. In the other hand he gripped a pair of huge rubber boots with chunks of dried gray mud stuck in the treads. Beside the boots, on the cabinet, lay a clear package of cheap cotton work gloves with blue rubber dots.
“We are not going to dig up your parents’ garden! I have one day off! Or do they think I’m free labor? Why should I break my back at their dacha while your sister is sunbathing by the sea? I’m not a slave!” Yulia said, pronouncing every word sharply as she carefully placed the heavy glass bottle onto the smooth surface of her dressing table.
Roman exhaled loudly and heavily, making a show of his deep displeasure. He threw the backpack onto the floor without caring that the metal buckle struck the expensive tiles with a sharp clang. His eyes showed genuine confusion, as if he truly could not understand how anyone could choose rest and “little beauty jars” over the sacred family ritual of planting potatoes.
“Here we go,” he said. “Yul, we discussed this two weeks ago. My parents are waiting for help. They have two hectares of land. Physically, the two of them can’t handle the planting alone. Father hired a tractor only to plow the rows, but the potatoes still have to be dropped into the ground and covered by hand. We’re obligated to go and help. This isn’t up for discussion. And don’t drag Lenka into this. Her vacation package was bought six months ago. She’s exhausted from work and has every right to a proper holiday.”
“Oh, so your thirty-year-old little sister has the right to sip cocktails on a sun lounger in Turkey because she got tired of pushing papers around an office, but I don’t have the right to spend my legal day off at a spa?” Yulia sprang up from the bench. Her eyes narrowed as she looked her husband up and down, as if seeing him for the first time. “Are you seriously standing here, bringing this stinking rubber nightmare into a clean apartment, and suggesting I trade a paid massage course for standing bent over like an ostrich in the middle of a manure pile under the blazing sun? Do you have any idea how much I worked this week? I closed a three-million deal, Roman! I slept four hours a night!”
“You can reschedule your massage. Nothing terrible will happen. Call the administrator right now and cancel the appointment,” Roman said, his tone hardening. He stepped forward, pulled off his light windbreaker, and carelessly tossed it onto the rack. “The soil won’t wait. If it dries out, we’ll be left without crops for the whole winter. We eat those potatoes. We regularly take jars, vegetables, and greens from Mother. You have to work off what you consume. Take the gloves. I specifically looked for your size at the construction market. I chose the smallest pair so they won’t slip off your hands while you carry the buckets.”
He picked up the package of work gloves from the cabinet and held it out to his wife with the expression of someone offering an incredibly generous gift, as if that alone could instantly solve the conflict and make her run joyfully to the car. Yulia stared at the absurd scene for several long seconds. A dull, burning rage began to boil inside her.
Everything about the situation irritated her: the gloves that smelled of cheap rubber, and her husband’s fanatical certainty that his parents had every right to command her time. She thought of her hands, her slim fingers with a flawless manicure that had cost her a good amount of money and two hours of her Thursday evening. The thought of those nails digging into black soil, of sharp dust getting under her cuticles, was unbearable.
“I don’t eat your potatoes, Roman. I buy arugula and avocados for myself at the store around the corner. And those three jars of pickles your mother forced into our trunk last autumn are still unopened in the refrigerator because there’s so much vinegar in them you could dissolve bolts. If that garden is so precious to your parents, let them hire a tractor driver with a planter or some local men. I’ll give them money if that’s the issue. But I am not going.”
“You think everything in life can be bought?” Roman stepped toward her, his face turning red, his voice breaking into a growl. “It’s a family tradition! It’s helping loved ones! Mother has been on her feet since six in the morning. She’s already sorted the potatoes and checked the sprouts. She’s waiting for us! And you’re standing here talking about your manicure and avocados? Have you ever seen real work in your life, instead of spinning around in a leather chair?”
Yulia felt something inside her snap completely. Five years of marriage, and he still thought her work was “spinning around in a chair.” All her stress, her responsibility for an entire team, endless numbers and plans — to him, it was only a prelude to real work, which apparently meant hauling buckets of rotten tubers.
With a sharp, predatory movement, she snatched the gloves from Roman’s hand. The rough cotton fabric scratched unpleasantly against the well-kept skin of her fingers. She looked at them with such contempt, as though she were holding a piece of trash.
“Go alone and dig all the way to China if you want, but I’m staying home! And don’t you dare bring back even one sack of potatoes!” Yulia spat, then swung her arm with force and threw the stiff pair of gloves straight into her husband’s face.
The bundle struck Roman’s cheekbone with a dull slap and fell to the floor, brushing his shoulder. He instinctively recoiled, blinking rapidly from surprise and hurt. A heavy, thick silence settled over the hallway, broken only by the quiet ticking of the wall clock. Roman slowly raised a hand to his face, feeling the sore spot where the hard edge of the package had hit him. His gaze, filled a moment earlier with righteous anger, turned cold and calculating, like that of a man who had just made a final and deeply unpleasant decision.
“So that’s how you’re talking now,” he said quietly, almost in a whisper, and that whisper was more frightening than any shouting. “So my family is trash to you, and I’m a servant who’s supposed to provide your comfort. Fine, Yulia. I heard you.”
He bent down, picked up the gloves from the floor, and slowly, with frightening calm, placed them back on the cabinet. Yulia stood with her hands pressed to her chest, her heart pounding somewhere in her throat. She understood that this argument was no longer just a household quarrel about a trip to the dacha. It was a tectonic shift, after which their familiar world would never be the same again. Roman turned his back to her and began methodically fastening the backpack, each movement echoing in Yulia’s ears like a funeral bell tolling for their peaceful weekends.
“Have you completely lost your mind because of your salons?” Roman barked, instinctively pressing his palm to the reddened cheekbone where the heavy bundle of rough fabric and rubber dots had just hit him. “I’m explaining the situation to you in plain language, and you’re throwing things like a lunatic! My old parents are going to break their backs alone on two hectares. Father’s lower back is falling apart, Mother struggles with blood pressure, and all you care about is filing your nails and getting your back massaged!”
“Oh, blood pressure, is it? His back is falling apart?” Yulia stepped over the gloves on the floor with disgust, as if they were a dead rat, and quickly crossed to the chest of drawers where her smartphone lay. She unlocked the screen with a swift motion, opened a social media app, and held the bright display almost right in her husband’s face. “Let’s see how desperately your sick pensioners need our help! Look, Roma. Look carefully, and read it out loud if your eyesight allows.”
Roman reluctantly glanced at the glowing rectangle. In the photo, posted just fifteen minutes earlier, his own sister Elena was posing in a revealing turquoise swimsuit against a sparkling pool and palm trees. In one hand she held a tall glass with a bright layered cocktail decorated with a paper umbrella, and a carefree, satisfied smile shone across her face. Underneath was a fresh caption full of cheerful emojis.
“Well, read it!” Yulia demanded harshly, tapping her perfect French-manicured nail against the phone screen. “‘My parents sponsored the best vacation on the coast! Love them so much, what a gorgeous holiday gift!’ Oh, how interesting. So your poor sick elderly parents have money for an elite trip to Turkey for their thirty-year-old mare of a daughter, but they don’t have money to hire two local workers from the village for a couple thousand rubles to plant this damned potato field in one day?”
“Don’t you dare count other people’s money. It’s their pension and their personal savings!” Roman tried to wave the phone away. His face turned ugly blotches of burgundy from anger and from his inability to find a convincing counterargument. He shifted from foot to foot in his clean city sneakers, looking utterly ridiculous among the dirty country tools scattered around the hallway. “They decided to give Lenka a gift. She lives alone, she pays a mortgage, life is hard for her. And we’re family. We have to help physically. You won’t collapse if you carry a few buckets across a field!”
At that exact moment, a loud, insistent ringtone burst from the pocket of Roman’s jeans. It was a video call. On the screen appeared a photo of his mother taken in front of a blackcurrant bush. The man instinctively flinched, ready to reject the call so as not to worsen the already heated situation, but his wife was faster.
“Answer it. And put it on speaker. Now,” Yulia commanded in the tone of a general giving orders on a battlefield. Her sharp, icy gaze promised nothing good.
Roman slowly, as if hypnotized, pulled out the phone, swiped the green button, and activated the speaker, holding the device out in front of him. The large, sweaty face of Antonina Petrovna appeared on the screen. Behind her were the darkened log walls of an old dacha shed, rusty rakes leaning against a fence, and faded work jackets hanging on a line.
“Romochka, son, are you packed yet?” his mother’s demanding, creaky voice sounded from the speaker, instantly filling the clean, bright hallway. “I hope that Yulka of yours left her trinkets at home and cut her nails. Tomorrow at five-thirty, you must be at the gate like soldiers. Father and I cut the potatoes for planting. There are about forty buckets. Let your city princess put on old pants right away. There’ll be no time to change. There’s endless work, and the soil is drying out!”
“Your city princess, Antonina Petrovna, will be putting on a white terry robe tomorrow morning and going to the pool,” Yulia said loudly and clearly, leaning straight toward her husband’s phone microphone. “And you will plant your potatoes entirely on your own. Or you can call your dear Lenochka in Antalya. Let her urgently leave her sun lounger, take the nearest flight back, and save your precious harvest. Her swimsuit is just right for garden beds.”
“What kind of talk is that?” The mother-in-law’s face on the smartphone screen instantly twisted with wild indignation. Her eyebrows shot upward, and her voice rose into a piercing screech that made the phone speaker crackle unpleasantly. “Roma, why are you allowing your wife to speak to your mother like that? We feed you, we carry bags of vegetables from the dacha for you, we grow vitamins for you, we ruin our health in this damned soil, and she’s going to a pool? Are you a man or not? If you tell a woman to go to the garden, then she goes to the garden! No salons, it’s planting season! We’re counting on her. Who will carry buckets after your father?”
“You do not feed us, Antonina Petrovna. Roman and I earn enough to buy absolutely any food we want in the nearest supermarket — washed, packaged, and without a ton of dirt stuck to it,” Yulia said, each word sharp as she stared straight into the tiny black camera lens, sending her fury directly into her mother-in-law’s face. “And your regular handouts in the form of crooked carrots and tiny sprouted potatoes, which you force into our car trunk every autumn, cost me ruined weekends, a destroyed mood, and a strained lower back. I’ve had enough. I will spend my day off at the spa. And you can dig around in your manure yourselves.”
Roman jabbed frantically at the red button, rudely ending the catastrophic call. The screen went dark, but the heavy electric tension in the air remained. He clenched the phone in his fist with such animal force that the plastic case cracked pitifully. He breathed heavily, nostrils flaring like a bull cornered in an arena.
“You humiliated me in front of my mother on purpose, didn’t you? You decided to show that my relatives mean nothing to you and that you couldn’t care less about them?” he hissed, taking a threatening step toward his wife and stepping directly onto one of the dirty rubber boots lying on the floor. “Fine. If you are not sitting in my car tomorrow morning ready to leave, you can forget that you even have a husband. I will not allow you to treat my parents like that.”
Yulia did not move a millimeter. She looked at the man she had legally been married to for five years and saw a completely foreign, hostile person in front of her. He stood in the middle of the bright corridor, surrounded by his dirty agricultural junk, and was seriously demanding her slave-like submission to other people’s whims.
“Forget that I have a husband?” Yulia repeated in a perfectly even voice, stripped of all emotion. She did not step back, continuing to scan Roman with a cold, assessing look. “Wonderful. Remember this, Roman. Since you’ve made a conscious choice in favor of other people’s ambitions, go alone. Dig, carry buckets, follow Antonina Petrovna’s orders. But I have one strict condition.”
“Now she’s setting conditions for me in my own home!” Roman snapped, kicking the backpack on the floor with the toe of his sneaker so hard that it scraped dully across the smooth porcelain tile. “I’m going to fulfill my duty as a son while you laze around and spend the family budget on entertainment!”
“I spend my own salary, which I earn with my head, not a shovel,” Yulia shot back, slowly turning toward the tall chest of drawers. “And the condition is very simple. I categorically forbid you to bring even one potato tuber, one crooked carrot, or one bunch of dill from those dacha plantations. If you cross the threshold of this apartment with a sack of so-called gifts of nature, I will personally empty it into the garbage chute along with your dirty boots and that stinking canvas.”
“Have you completely lost it?” Roman threw up his hands, his face distorted with wild outrage, tense veins standing out on his neck. “People pay huge money at farmers’ markets for this clean, natural food! Mother and Father break their backs all summer so we don’t eat supermarket poison, so the cellar is full in winter! This is our food. We’ll eat it together!”
“We? No, my dear. You’ll eat it if you want to choke on the results of your slave labor,” Yulia said, placing her hands on the edge of the dressing table and pronouncing every word with merciless sharpness. “Let’s calculate the real cost of your ‘free’ potatoes, great agronomist. Fuel there and back in your heavy SUV every weekend. Suspension wear on that destroyed gravel road. Buying manure, fertilizers, paying for the hired tractor. Ointments and pills for your constantly aching back after every trip. And most importantly — the value of our working time. For the money that disappears into maintaining this endless agricultural obligation, I could order selected, washed vegetables from an elite delivery service straight to the door all year round. So you can eat your golden potatoes yourselves. I am no longer taking part in this theater of absurdity.”
She turned sharply and headed into the bedroom, her footsteps striking loudly across the parquet. Roman remained standing in the hallway, breathing heavily and digesting what he had just heard. His wife’s simple, dry mathematical logic infuriated him even more than the gloves she had thrown in his face. He could not find strong counterarguments against bare numbers, so he chose to move into aggressive action instead.
A surreal scene of separate packing unfolded in the apartment, finally dividing the space into two enemy camps.
Yulia opened the sliding wardrobe in the spacious, bright bedroom. Methodically, with emphasized calm, she took a stylish sand-colored sports bag from the closet. Onto the wide double bed she laid items that symbolized comfort and self-care: a snow-white two-piece swimsuit made of thick expensive fabric, a soft silk pareo, a large bottle of sunscreen scented with coconut and macadamia, and a set of moisturizing face masks. She packed everything slowly, gently smoothing imaginary wrinkles from the fabric, completely ignoring the sounds coming from the hallway.
At the same time, in the hallway, Roman furiously stuffed his own bag. He dragged an old faded sports bag with a jammed zipper out of the built-in storage closet. Into it flew stretched gray pants with ingrained grass stains on the knees, a faded T-shirt that should have been turned into rags long ago, and thick scratchy socks. He shoved in two bulky metal thermoses for tea, which struck each other with a sharp clang.
“You’re just an egoist obsessed with your nails and creams!” her husband shouted angrily from the hallway, accompanied by the furious rustling of thick plastic bags as he wrapped his muddy work boots. “Nothing is sacred to you except your own comfort! I’ll see how you act in winter when you reach for another helping of homemade mashed potatoes!”
“Mutual support means mutual benefit and respect for other people’s time, not mindlessly carrying out someone else’s orders,” Yulia answered loudly from the bedroom, raising her voice over the noise of his packing. She carefully zipped the side pocket of her bag, checking that her spa-club pass was inside. “And I’ll make mashed potatoes from whatever I buy at the supermarket. Just make sure you don’t put your dirty buckets of soil on my light-colored rug while you’re packing.”
Roman yanked the zipper of his bag with force. The lock could not withstand the sharp pull and split open in the middle, leaving the bag half-open. He cursed under his breath and kicked the stubborn heavy fabric. The atmosphere in the apartment reached its breaking point, soaked with a persistent mutual hatred. The distance between the spouses was no longer measured by the meters of hallway between them, but by a chasm of absolute misunderstanding. In one room it smelled of refined perfume and the anticipation of relaxation; in the other, it reeked of damp rubber, stale canvas, and blind stubbornness. Neither of them intended to give up their position.
Early Saturday morning seeped into the apartment with dull gray light barely breaking through the thick blinds. On the electronic clock built into the oven panel, red neon numbers glowed: five fifteen. In the kitchen, the expensive automatic coffee machine hummed steadily, filling the space with the rich, dense aroma of freshly ground Arabica. Yulia sat at the high breakfast bar in a flawless snow-white tracksuit made of thick cotton, which she had prepared specially for her trip to the countryside spa club. Her hair was neatly gathered, her face touched with light, refreshing morning makeup, and beside her on the marble countertop stood the very same sand-colored bag she had packed the night before. She took a small sip of scalding double espresso, watching what was happening in the corridor with the icy calm of a spectator who had bought a front-row ticket to a disgusting performance.
Roman stood near the built-in shoe shelf, breathing heavily and puffing loudly with effort. He was wearing the same stretched gray pants with ingrained stains from grass and soil, along with a shapeless washed-out dirty-green jacket. Furiously, he pulled the heavy rubber boots onto his feet, hooking his uncooperative fingers into the rough shafts. Beside him, on the perfectly clean floor, stood a whole battery of dirty plastic buckets stacked inside one another, and the handle of an old spade stuck out — something he had brought from the shared balcony. The man straightened up, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, and took a heavy step toward the kitchen, leaving barely visible dusty marks on the pale porcelain tile.
“You have exactly three minutes to change into proper work clothes and come out to the elevator,” Roman said roughly, leaning his dirty hand against the clean doorframe. “I’m not going to listen to reproaches from my parents because of your whims. You are getting up now, taking your gloves, and coming with me to fulfill your direct duty to my family. You played independent elite long enough. There’s at least two days of work there.”
“The sight of you right now inspires only pity and a slight feeling of disgust, Roman,” Yulia said without moving, still elegantly holding the small porcelain cup between two fingers. “You’re standing in the middle of a modern apartment with a dirty shovel in your hands, dressed like some vagrant from a heating pipe, and you’re seriously trying to give me orders. I made my plans for this weekend perfectly clear yesterday. My spa membership is paid. My specialist is waiting for me for a peeling and massage at nine in the morning. And your direct duty to your family is exclusively your personal problem, which you voluntarily threw onto your own shoulders.”
The mobile phone in Roman’s jacket pocket screamed sharply. The loud, rattling ringtone sounded deafening in the quiet morning apartment. The man frantically reached into the deep pocket, pulled out the device, and when he saw his father’s name glowing on the screen, he instinctively shrank, like a guilty subordinate before a harsh boss. He pressed the answer button and brought the speaker to his ear, but Yulia slid off the high bar stool with a sharp, predatory movement, stepped right up to her husband, and forcefully snatched the phone from his hand while pressing the speakerphone icon with her thumb.
“Hello! Where the hell are you stuck?” his father-in-law’s rough, smoke-hoarse voice barked from the speaker, immediately filling the entire kitchen. “Mother and I have been standing in the beds for half an hour already. The tractor cut the rows, and the soil is drying in the sun instantly! Why isn’t your car at the gate yet? Are you sleeping until noon while we break our backs in our old age to feed you?”
“Good morning, Viktor Stepanovich,” Yulia said in a clear, steady voice, looking straight into her husband’s eyes, which had gone pale with boiling rage. “Your son is being delayed by his incredible slowness in putting on rubber boots. He will be leaving for you any minute now in proud solitude and full combat readiness. As for me, I strongly recommend that you call your daughter Lenochka right now. It’s a perfect morning at her resort for her to support your agricultural dictatorship from a distance.”
“What the hell are you saying, you city filth?” A stream of uncontrolled aggression burst from the speaker. Her father-in-law shifted into an open, hysterical shout, so loud that the phone in Yulia’s hand trembled slightly. “You are obligated to be here and plow alongside everyone else! We’re trying for you, you ungrateful beasts, breaking our backs! Don’t you ever set foot on our land again, you useless soft-handed woman!”
“With great pleasure, Viktor Stepanovich. From the very beginning, I planned never again to step into your manure or ruin my manicure on your weeds,” Yulia said, then tossed the phone back into Roman’s hands with two fingers, as if it were something filthy. “Enjoy digging in the dirt under the heat. And don’t forget to send Lenochka a few colorful photos of the dug-up field so she can rejoice for you while lying on her sun lounger.”
Roman stood crimson, his chest heaving with animal rage. He clenched his fists so hard his joints cracked. In that second, every last trace of respect, attachment, and shared past collapsed between them. Two sworn enemies stood in the kitchen now, and neither of them intended to seek compromise or choose careful words.
“You are a complete piece of filth,” Roman said through tightly clenched teeth, radiating pure, concentrated hatred and no longer trying to hide his contempt. “You just dragged my parents through the mud and humiliated my father. I will never forgive you for this. From this minute on, you are nothing to me.”
“Dragged them through the mud? They’re sitting in it up to their ears entirely by choice, and they’re pulling you along on a chain,” Yulia smirked, brushing an invisible speck of dust from her perfectly clean cotton sleeve. “You made your choice. You preferred to be free farm labor for people who don’t value you and use you as a draft animal. Go work off your ration of rotten potatoes.”
Roman spun around abruptly, grabbed the rattling bundle of plastic buckets from the floor, which slammed against his leg, seized the shovel handle, and stormed out into the stairwell. The front door lock clicked shut with a dull, heavy metallic sound. Yulia calmly returned to the breakfast bar, finished her cooled espresso, gracefully slung her sand-colored bag over her shoulder, and headed for the exit. Ahead of her was a perfect day of rest, and no dug-up garden in the world could stop it now.
