— “And the dust is still there, just where it was,” came Alla Sergeyevna’s voice, dry and colorless as last year’s herbarium, slicing through the kitchen’s morning hush. She ran her index finger along the top shelf of a cupboard, then examined the dark smear on her fingertip with fastidious disgust. “Looks like the lady of the house has no time.”
Daria didn’t turn around. She kept methodically chopping vegetables for a salad, the knife in her hand moving evenly, without a single hitch. The thud of the blade against the cutting board was the only reply she allowed herself. The air in the little kitchen, already heated by the stove and the smell of coffee, grew thick and heavy, something you could eat with a spoon. Every visit from her mother-in-law turned their apartment into a minefield where any wrong move or word could set off an explosion.
Yevgeny came out of the room. He rubbed his sleepy face and, seeing his mother, forced a smile.
“Morning, Mom. We just woke up; we haven’t had time to tackle everything yet.”
“Morning is never good when a home’s gone to seed,” snapped Alla Sergeyevna, flicking imaginary dust from her finger. Her X-ray gaze shifted to the pan where something green was sizzling. “And what is that brew supposed to be? Greens again? I told you, Zhenya, a man needs meat. Strength comes from meat, not from this… foliage. Look at you, you’re all drawn.”
Yevgeny cast a pleading glance at his wife, but Daria seemed to have turned to stone, absorbed in her culinary ritual. She only gripped the knife handle a little tighter.
“We eat what we like, Alla Sergeyevna,” she said, not raising her voice but enunciating every word. In that “we” there was a challenge—a clear marking of territory to which the mother-in-law had not been invited.
“Exactly! ‘We’!” picked up Alla Sergeyevna, turning to her son. She moved toward him as if he were the defendant and she the prosecutor. “You used to love my cutlets, you praised my borscht. And now what? She’s got you hooked on her diets, soon you’ll be see-through. She’s completely out of hand, and you’re glad of it. Where’s your backbone, Zhenya? She’s twisting you into ropes and you don’t even notice.”
Yevgeny felt a dull irritation boiling inside him. He was wedged between two fires, and each demanded he take its side. Any attempt to defend one meant betraying the other.
“Mom, stop it, please. No one’s twisting me into anything. Dasha cooks wonderfully. We just eat differently, that’s all. Better tell me, how are you?”
This was his standard tactic—changing the subject. A feeble attempt to steer the conversation into safe waters. But it didn’t work today. Alla Sergeyevna looked at him with open disappointment, like a failed project.
“My affairs don’t interest you. You’re interested in keeping her satisfied. So her majesty doesn’t frown. Look at her—she doesn’t even say a word to you, silent as an idol. That’s how she shows her disdain. For you, her husband. And for me as well.”
Daria set the knife down on the table. Loudly. She finally turned, and her eyes met her mother-in-law’s. There was no fear there, no anger. Only a cold, endless weariness.
“I’m not showing disdain, Alla Sergeyevna. I’m cooking breakfast for my husband. If you don’t like something in my home, you know where the door is.”
Alla Sergeyevna gasped—not from offense, but from triumph. There it was! What she’d been waiting for: open hostility. Now she had all the trump cards.
“Did you hear that, Zhenya? Did you hear? She’s throwing me out of your house! Me! Your mother!”
She said nothing more. She turned and marched into the hallway. Her movements were full of wounded dignity. Deliberately slowly, she pulled on her gloves, buttoned her coat, her whole demeanor broadcasting the mortal insult she had been dealt. Yevgeny stood in the middle of the kitchen, silent, not knowing what to do—run after his mother with apologies or stay with his wife. He did nothing. The door closed. Quietly, but decisively. Alla Sergeyevna left, but her poisonous presence hung in the air. She left with a firm, cold resolve that things could not be left like this. Something had to be done. And she knew exactly what.
“Zhenya, we need to talk.”
His name, spoken in that familiar yet now alien voice, made Yevgeny flinch. He had just stepped through the clattering turnstile of the factory gate, drawing a deep breath of damp evening air that smelled of cooling asphalt and metallic dust. Ahead lay the road home, dinner, quiet, Daria. And there, right by the gate, like a dark, misshapen figure cut from cardboard and propped against the gray concrete wall, stood she—his mother.
She was dressed not for home but in her best “going-out” coat, a headscarf tied tight, giving her face a stern, almost fanatical look. She had clearly been waiting. Lurking. This wasn’t a spontaneous wish to see him. It was a planned operation.
“Mom, don’t start,” Yevgeny sighed wearily, not even trying to fake pleasure. The fatigue of the long shift seemed to drop on his shoulders all at once, pressing him to the ground.
“No, you listen,” she hissed, stepping closer and grabbing the sleeve of his work jacket. Her grip was talon-strong. She glanced nervously at the workers passing by, who threw them sidelong, indifferent looks. “Your Daria has completely run wild. She’s tormenting me. On purpose. This morning she threw me out. Me!”
Her voice didn’t tremble with hurt; it vibrated with contained fury. It wasn’t the wail of a humiliated woman—it was a battle cry.
“She didn’t throw you out. She said—”
“I know very well what she said!” snapped Alla Sergeyevna. “And I know what she meant! She showed who’s master in that house. She’s ground you down, made you a rag. You’re no longer a man in your own home—you’re her help. She decides what you eat, who you talk to. Soon she’ll be telling you when you’re allowed to breathe!”
Yevgeny looked at her in silence. He saw the face contorted by malice, the tightly pressed lips, the eyes burning with an unhealthy fire. He tried to find in that face the features of his mother—the one who used to read to him and bake pies—but couldn’t. Before him stood a stranger, embittered, obsessed with a war she had invented for herself.
“What do you want, Mom? For me to talk to her? I’ll talk to her.”
“Talk?” She snorted with contempt. “You’ve been ‘talking’ to her for ten years! And she’s only gotten bolder. Words don’t work on the likes of her. They need to be shown strength. Physical strength.”
She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial, repulsive whisper, leaning to his ear. The factory noise, the rumble of a passing truck—all receded, and only her words screwed straight into his brain.
“You’re a man—teach her a lesson. Give her a good thrashing so she turns silky. So she’s afraid to answer back. Once is enough, but do it properly. So she understands where her place is. And where her husband’s mother’s place is.”
Yevgeny froze. Air stuck in his lungs. He stared at her, eyes wide, and the world narrowed to a single point—her face. He no longer saw the gate, the road, the sky. He saw only the ugly, spiteful thirst for power sloshing in her eyes. This wasn’t concern. It was the urge to humiliate another human being with his hands. To use him as a weapon. As a fist.
All his fatigue fell away at once. Cold took its place. An icy, detached revulsion. He slowly pulled her hand off his sleeve as if brushing away something sticky and filthy.
“What do you want from me? To start hitting my wife, Mom?! Have you completely lost your mind?!”
He recoiled from her as from a leper. For an instant surprise flashed in her eyes, then was swept away by a new wave of righteous rage. She was about to say something, open her mouth for another dose of poison, but he didn’t give her the chance.
He didn’t say anything else. He simply turned and walked away with a quick, firm stride, in the direction opposite home—just to get away from her. He left her standing alone by the gray factory wall, a small, hunched figure in a neat coat, full of hatred that was devouring her from within. In that moment, under the hum of the indifferent city, he understood with absolute clarity that his mother was a stranger to him, and a frightening one. And that this person had just declared war on his family. And he would have to fight it.
Yevgeny didn’t go home. He walked the other way, along the broken sidewalk past endless fences and blank industrial walls. The mechanical rhythm of his steps beat time in his head, pushing out everything but disgust. It was a pure, chemical feeling, like the smell of acid eating through metal. He felt no hurt for himself. He felt a sickened loathing for her—for what she had become, or perhaps always was, only he hadn’t wanted to see it. His mother’s words hadn’t just wounded; they had performed surgery without anesthesia, cutting open his childish notions of family and revealing a hideous, rotting tumor where a heart should have been.
He wandered the empty evening streets for a long time, until the cold air chilled him to the bone. The rumble of a tram, a distant wail of a siren, the dim glow of streetlamps—all were scenery against which a whole world was collapsing in his mind. A world that had “Mom” in it. That word no longer existed. There was only “Alla Sergeyevna.” A woman who had suggested he become the executioner of his own wife.
When he finally slid the key into the lock, it was already quite dark. The apartment smelled of fried meat and herbs. Daria was in the kitchen. She didn’t rush at him with questions, didn’t ask why he was late. She simply looked at him when he came in, and in her gaze there was neither reproach nor anxiety. There was a quiet, attentive waiting. She knew. Not the details, but she felt that something had finally and irreparably broken today. She saw it in his face—it had become different. Not tired, not angry. It had become hard, as if forged from cold iron.
“Will you have dinner?” she asked calmly, nodding at the table with two plates set. He shook his head and sat on the stool across from her. He wasn’t looking at her, but somewhere through the wall.
“I talked to my mother,” he said at last, his voice as even and cold as his gaze. “She was waiting for me at the gate.”
Daria set down her fork. She didn’t say “I told you so,” or “What did she want this time?” She simply waited, turned wholly into listening.
“She thinks you’ve made a rag of me,” he went on in the same monotone, as if reading a protocol. “That you’re poisoning me with your food and driving her out of our home. That you’re humiliating her on purpose.”
He paused, not to soften the blow, but to convey all its vileness without distortion.
“She said words don’t work on people like you. That you have to show strength. She suggested I… teach you a lesson. So you’d turn silky. That I should hit you.”
He finished and looked straight into her eyes. He wasn’t seeking sympathy or support. He was informing her. Reporting the situation before a battle. Daria didn’t gasp. Her face didn’t change; only for an instant something darkened in the depths of her eyes, as if a stone had dropped to the bottom of a deep well. Her fingers on the table clenched slightly, the knuckles going white. That was the only movement.
“I knew it was coming to this,” she said quietly. There was no fear in her voice. Only a bitter confirmation of what she had long suspected but had been afraid to say out loud. It wasn’t a revelation. It was the pronouncement of a sentence on their former life.
“This is the end, Dasha. Absolute.” In that word “end” there was no tragedy. It was a statement of fact, like during a post-mortem. There was no life here anymore.
“She’ll come here,” Daria said just as quietly, but firmly. It wasn’t a question; it was a statement.
“After this, she won’t calm down. She’ll come to finish what she started.”
“Let her come,” he answered, and for the first time that evening a live, angry metal rang in his voice. “Only the conversation will be different.”
He stood, went to the window and looked at the black squares of the windows in the building across the way. He was no longer a buffer. No longer a peacemaker trying to sit on two stools. The stools had burned. Only ash remained.
“We won’t shout. We won’t try to prove anything. We’ll just give her what she wants so badly. A final answer.”
Daria silently came to stand beside him, shoulder to shoulder. They stood like that for several minutes, staring into the dark. They were no longer a husband and wife dealing with a domestic problem named “difficult relative.” They were allies. Two people in the same trench who had heard the clatter of an enemy tank’s treads. And they weren’t going to retreat. They weren’t afraid. They were waiting.
The doorbell rang two days later. Not sharp and demanding, but short and assured, like the push of a button that starts a mechanism. Yevgeny and Daria exchanged glances. Neither of them flinched. They simply stood up—he from the table, she from the stove—and walked silently to the hallway. This was not a visit. This was an arrival on a field of battle.
Yevgeny opened the door. Alla Sergeyevna stood on the threshold. She wore the same severe coat as at the gate, as if she hadn’t taken it off all this time, preparing for the decisive assault. She didn’t greet them. She stepped over the threshold like an inspector arriving for an audit, and her gaze locked on Daria standing behind her husband.
“I see you got what you wanted,” said Alla Sergeyevna, her voice even and hard as frozen ground. “You’ve finished brainwashing him. Now he looks at you like a dog at its mistress.”
She hadn’t come to make a scene. She’d come to humiliate, to scorch the earth her enemy stood on.
Daria stepped forward from behind Yevgeny’s shoulder. She met her mother-in-law’s gaze without a shadow of fear. Her face held the calm of a surgeon preparing for a complicated but necessary amputation. “People aren’t ‘worked over,’ Alla Sergeyevna. Parts get worked over at the plant. Or people like you—pathetic and lonely—who need to break other lives to feel alive.”
For a moment, Alla Sergeyevna was at a loss for words. She had expected tears, excuses, screaming—the usual female arsenal. Instead, she ran into icy, dissecting contempt. It knocked her off balance.
“How dare you—” she began, but her voice cracked.
“What, ‘I’?” Daria continued in the same mercilessly calm tone. “Saying what is? You didn’t come here to make peace. You came to check whether your brilliant plan worked. To see if your son ‘taught me a lesson.’ Well, look. There he is, standing. And here I am. Whole and unharmed. Your order wasn’t filled. Your son turned out to be a human being. What a disappointment that must be for you.”
Each word was a precise jab at the sorest spot—her thwarted omnipotence. Alla Sergeyevna shifted her gaze to Yevgeny, seeking support in him, an ally, a son.
“Zhenya, do you hear what she’s saying? Are you going to let her talk to your mother like that?”
Yevgeny took a step and stood next to his wife. Not between them—next to her. A single front.
“Yes, Alla Sergeyevna, I hear,” he said. For the first time he addressed her by name and patronymic, and it sounded like a point-blank shot, tearing the last thread that bound them. “And she’s telling the truth. You didn’t come here as a mother, but as an enemy. You declared war on my home and my wife.”
“I wanted what’s best! For you! To make a man of you, not a henpecked weakling!”
“To make a man of me, you suggested I beat a woman,” Yevgeny said, each word clipped. “The woman I love. That isn’t ‘what’s best.’ That’s the bottom. A moral bottom you’ve hit.”
He looked at her without hatred. With cold, final understanding. Like a doctor delivering a hopeless diagnosis.
“So here it is, Alla Sergeyevna. The battle’s over—you lost. My future son or daughter will not have a grandmother like you. My wife will not have a mother-in-law like you. And I… I no longer have a mother. Leave.”
The last word he spoke quietly, almost soundlessly, but it hung in the air, heavy and absolute as a tombstone. Alla Sergeyevna looked from him to Daria. There was no longer malice or righteous fury in her eyes. Only incomprehension, the realization of complete, crushing defeat. She had lost not because they were stronger. She lost because her weapon—kinship, duty, the very idea of “mother”—had been destroyed by her own hands. She herself had reduced it to ash.
She turned in silence. Her shoulders, always so straight and proud, drooped. She walked out without another word. Yevgeny closed the door behind her and turned the key.
The apartment grew quiet. But it wasn’t a ringing or heavy silence. It was the empty, sterile quiet of an operating room after everything unnecessary has been cleared away. He and Daria stood in the middle of the hallway, not looking at each other. They had won. But there was no joy. There was only emptiness and the cold realization that part of their lives had just been amputated forever. The war was over. There were no victors.