Their home was like a large, quiet, well-oiled machine. Twenty years of marriage. The children had grown up and moved out. At forty-five, Irina finally felt she could exhale. She worked as an art historian and had her own small gallery. Her husband, Oleg, was a successful business consultant. Their huge country house, which they had spent ten years building, had become their safe harbor. Yes, the old passion had faded, but it seemed to her that something more solid had taken its place—partnership, respect, a shared history.
In recent months Oleg had been acting strange. Distant, pensive. He often stayed late at “meetings,” started taking better care of himself, changed his cologne. Irina was not naïve. She felt the cold draft of betrayal. She was bracing herself for the worst. For the conversation that would begin with: “Ira, I’m leaving.” She ran scenarios in her head: how she would hold herself together, what she would say, how they would divide this huge house that now felt empty.
He started the conversation himself. One Sunday after lunch, as they sat on the terrace.
“Ira, we need to talk,” he said, looking not at her but at the perfectly trimmed lawn.
She nodded; her heart tightened. Here it is. It’s begun.
“I know you feel it all,” he went on. “You’re a smart woman. Yes, there’s someone else. Her name is Katya. She has a son—he’s six.”
He spoke about it calmly, almost matter-of-fact.
“I won’t lie to you, I love her. It’s passion, it’s fire, what you and I haven’t had in a long time.”
“I understand,” she said, and her voice was surprisingly even. “When are you planning to move out?”
He looked at her in surprise.
“Move out?”
He turned his gaze on her, and there was no guilt or remorse in his eyes. Only a firm, almost fanatical resolve.
“We’re not getting a divorce.”
She didn’t understand.
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly that. I don’t want a divorce. I don’t want to destroy what we’ve built over twenty years. This house, our life, our respect for each other—this is valuable. I’m not going to give it up.”
“But… what about… her?” Irina stammered.
“That’s simple,” he smiled as if he were delivering a brilliant solution. “I’ll just move my new girlfriend and her child in here. Our house has room for everyone.”
Silence. Somewhere in the garden a cricket chirped insistently. Irina looked at her husband and felt either that she’d misheard him or that he had lost his mind.
“You… you’re suggesting we all live together?” she asked in a whisper, afraid of the answer.
“Exactly!” His eyes lit up. “Ira, think how logical that is! How modern! Why all the drama, the divorces, the broken families? Why split property, traumatize the kids? We can be above all that!”
He stood up and began pacing the terrace like a lecturer before an audience.
“Our house is enormous! The right wing, where the kids’ rooms are, sits empty anyway. Katya and her son can settle there perfectly. They’ll have their own entrance, their own bathroom. We’ll hardly cross paths. You’ll live your life, I’ll live mine. Or rather, we’ll all live one big, friendly, modern family life!”
He laid out this monstrous, insane plan with the enthusiasm of a visionary.
“Think of the benefits! You won’t be so lonely. Katya is a wonderful homemaker; she can take on part of the household. Her son is a lovely boy—there’ll be children’s laughter in the house again. We can have dinner together in the evenings. Like a big Italian family!”
“Did you… discuss this with her?” was all Irina could manage.
“Of course! At first she was shocked, just like you. But she’s a wise woman. She grasped the beauty of my plan. She agrees. She respects you and our past.”
“Respects.” She’s sleeping with my husband and she respects me.
“So,” he stopped and looked at her expectantly, “I think it’s the ideal option. I keep both you and her. No one suffers. Everyone wins.”
He fell silent, waiting for her reaction. Waiting for his clever, level-headed wife to appreciate all the “logic” and “efficiency” of his proposal.
And she looked at him—at her husband of twenty years—and saw not just a traitor. She saw a madman. A madman who had built in his head a utopian world where one could have everything and pay for nothing. A world in which his wife’s feelings, pain, and humiliation were merely annoying, irrational obstacles on the path to his own all-encompassing happiness.
She rose slowly.
“You know, Oleg,” she said quietly, “your plan really is ingenious. But it has one tiny flaw.”
“What flaw?” he asked with interest.
“Me,” she said. “I’m not part of it.”
She turned and went into the house, leaving him alone on the terrace with his collapsed utopia. She knew this was only the beginning. That he would not back down. That he would try to drag her into his insane world by force. But she also knew she would not yield. She’d sooner burn their big, beautiful house to the ground than let it turn into a madhouse.
When Irina left the terrace, Oleg didn’t immediately grasp the scale of what had happened. He finished his wine, staring at the perfect lawn the gardener trimmed. In his head, in his well-ordered, logical world, her “no” was only a temporary emotional glitch. Like a bug in a program that just needed debugging. He was sure that she, his smart, rational wife, had simply been frightened by novelty, but after thinking it over would certainly appreciate the beauty and efficiency of his plan.
He was wrong. For the rest of Sunday she didn’t speak to him. She answered his questions briefly, politely, and coldly. She didn’t argue, didn’t shout, didn’t cry. She simply… wasn’t there. She was in the house, yet it was as if she didn’t exist. That icy, polite vacuum scared him far more than any scandal.
But he did not retreat. He was a creator. He had conceived this brilliant idea, and he was going to bring it to life.
On Monday he began to act.
“Ira,” he said at breakfast, “I understand you need time to get used to it. But Katya and her son need a place to live. They’re being evicted from their rental on Friday. So Saturday morning they’ll move in with us.”
He wasn’t asking. He was informing. He was creating a no-win situation, confident that her innate decency wouldn’t allow her to throw a woman with a child out into the street.
“I hope you’ll prepare the right wing for them,” he added. “And show yourself to be a hospitable hostess.”
Irina calmly finished her coffee, stood up, and left for her office without a word. She spent the whole day on the phone. But she wasn’t calling her friends to cry on their shoulders. She was calling lawyers, realtors, and a psychological support service. She was gathering information. Preparing for war.
On Saturday morning, precisely at ten, a taxi stopped at their gate. A young woman stepped out with a large suitcase and a frightened six-year-old boy. It was Katya. She looked not like a triumphant mistress but like a poor relation begging for shelter. That, obviously, was part of Oleg’s plan—to elicit Irina’s pity.
Oleg came out onto the porch to greet them. Irina followed him out.
“Hello, Katya,” she said evenly. Her voice was calm, almost friendly.
Katya looked at her, bewildered.
“Come in,” Irina opened the door wide. “Oleg, show our guests to their rooms.”
The next few weeks turned into a surreal, quiet nightmare. Their house became a theater of the absurd. Oleg was desperately trying to realize his utopia. He insisted on family dinners. Those dinners were torture. They sat at the large table: he at the head, beaming like the creator of a new world; on one side his lawful wife, Irina, polite and silent as the Snow Queen; on the other his mistress, Katya, quiet and frightened. The little boy, not understanding what was happening, was the only one who behaved naturally.
Irina chose her tactics—the “gray rock” method. She didn’t get into conflicts. She was impeccably polite. She wished Katya good morning and good night. She passed her the salt at the table. But she did not acknowledge her. She lived as if new, invisible neighbors had moved into the house. If she entered the living room and Oleg and Katya were there, she would silently take a book from the shelf and leave for her room. She built around herself an invisible yet absolutely impenetrable wall.
This tactic drove Oleg mad. He wanted drama, dialogue, resistance he could break. Instead, he got polite disregard. His “big, friendly, modern family” wasn’t materializing. What he got was a communal apartment with an icy atmosphere.
Katya began to change as well. Her initial timidity gave way to irritation. She hadn’t come here to be a quiet guest. She had come to become the new mistress of the house. And the old mistress wasn’t yielding an inch of her territory. A quiet war for space began. Katya tried to move a vase in the living room. The next morning, the vase was back in its place. Katya tried to cook her dishes in the kitchen. Irina quietly ate buckwheat and salad in her room.
Oleg found himself between two fires. The two women he was trying to unite in his brilliant scheme were waging a positional war, and he was their only battlefield. Katya complained to him about Irina’s coldness. Irina complained to him (in the rare moments when he pierced her wall) about Katya’s presence. His utopia turned into his personal hell. He didn’t get twice the love. He got twice the problems.
The denouement came a month later. Exhausted and furious, Oleg burst into Irina’s office.
“I can’t do this anymore!” he shouted. “It’s unbearable! You have to do something! You have to talk to her, make friends!”
“Me?” She looked up from her work. “This was your idea, Oleg. Your project. You’re the manager. So manage.”
“She’s miserable! I’m miserable! The child is miserable!” he yelled.
“And me?” she asked quietly. “Have you once wondered whether I’m happy living under the same roof as my husband’s mistress?”
He fell silent.
“I gave you a month,” she said, standing. “I gave you a chance to see that your utopia is madness. It seems you’re starting to understand.”
She went to the desk and took a folder from a drawer.
“And now that the experiment has failed, it’s time to move on to reality.”
She set documents on the table before him.
“This is a petition for divorce. And for division of property.”
He stared at the papers as if they were snakes.
“No…” he whispered. “That’s not what I wanted…”
“What did you want, Oleg?” she looked at him with cold pity. “You wanted two women you were deceiving to peacefully cook you borscht and share your attention? That only happens in bad novels. In life, you pay for everything.”
She picked up a pen.
“You have a choice. Either we go to court. And rest assured, I’ll tell them everything. About your ‘social experiment.’ About how you brought your mistress and her child into our home. And I’m sure the court will take these ‘moral aspects’ into account when dividing the property.
“Or,” she looked him straight in the eye, “we settle this amicably. Right now.”
“How?” he croaked.
“Very simply. The house is sold. Immediately. You get one third. Not half. One third. As compensation for your betrayal and the hell you put me through this month. Katya and her son get nothing. They are not part of our family or our property. They are your personal problem, which you will solve at your own expense.”
He said nothing. He was crushed.
“If you agree, we sign a settlement right now. If not—tomorrow this petition goes to court. Choose.”
He sat staring at one spot. Then he slowly picked up the pen and signed.
The next day Katya and her son moved out. No scandal. Quietly, like the defeated. A week later the house was put up for sale.
Two months after that, Irina sat in her new apartment—small, but entirely hers. Her share from the sale of their “common” house lay in her account. She was alone. But she was not lonely. She was free.
One day he called her.
“Hi. How are you?”
“I’m fine,” she answered.
“She left me,” he said. “Said she wasn’t ready for ‘difficulties.’”
“I’m sorry,” she said. And it was true. She felt sorry for this weak, confused man.
“I was such an idiot, Ira.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “You were.”
They were silent for a moment.
“Well… goodbye,” he said.
“Goodbye, Oleg.”
She hung up. She knew he would call again. That he would try to come back. But the door to her life was closed to him. Forever. She had survived his madness. She had stood her ground. She had won. She sat in her quiet, bright apartment and watched the sun go down. And for the first time in many years, she felt absolute, unclouded peace.