Liliya didn’t remember her parents’ faces or voices. Her very first, most fragile memories were like a watercolor washed out by rain. In them, as if through a thick morning mist, there barely emerged the image of an elderly woman in an elegant, slightly timeworn hat and old-fashioned glasses with a thin metal frame. She would come on weekends, and she always smelled of violets and something else elusive and sweet, vanilla—as if from freshly baked cookies. That scent became, for the girl, a synonym for happiness, a brief foretaste of a holiday in the gray succession of institutional days.
The woman would sit tiny Liliya on her lap—her wool coat pleasantly pricked the girl’s tender cheek—and give her chocolate candies with a whole hazelnut inside. Completely absorbed in the magical process of freeing the treat from its shiny, rustling wrapper, Liliya didn’t listen to the quiet voice that burbled like a brook; yet with her whole being she soaked up that rare, precious warmth, that instant sense of safety. Instinctively, she nestled against her mysterious visitor, trying to remember every moment, to prolong it, to make it last forever.
These were short, bright islands of light in the boundless, cold ocean of orphanage life. So as not to drown in that all-consuming grayness, the younger children invented fantastic, colorful biographies for themselves. Their parents weren’t ordinary people but secret agents, brave polar explorers, or great cosmonauts who would soon return from a dangerous mission and take them away to a world where every day meant joy, laughter, and love. They fell asleep with these thoughts so that sweet dreams might, for a little while, replace harsh reality.
In truth, reality consisted of a daily, sometimes cruel struggle for the attention of rare prospective adopters. The children learned to put on the proper angelic smile, to recite touching, memorized verses with expression, and to hide their real feelings so deep that no one would ever guess at their inner pain and all-consuming loneliness. They became little actors in a big theater that was indifferent to their fate.
By fifteen, Liliya had finally stopped playing those naïve children’s games. She had firmly and irrevocably learned the main, harsh lesson of that institution: in this vast, cold world you can rely only on yourself and no one else. While other girls dreamed of fairy-tale princes and rich husbands, she entered a vocational school after ninth grade and acquired a simple but reliable, solid trade—painter-plasterer. She understood perfectly, knew for certain: skillful, hardworking hands would always find work and be able to feed their owner.
On her eighteenth birthday, Liliya stood at the gates of the orphanage, which had been her only home all those long years. In one hand she clutched a battered folder with her only documents; in the other—cold, shiny keys to a strange, unknown apartment. The director, a stout woman with a tired, impassive face, delivered the standard, well-worn parting words, but in her habitual, even voice Liliya, for the first time, caught an unfamiliar, metallic, prickly note. It was undisguised, almost childlike envy. Envy that this gray, inconspicuous mouse, an ordinary orphanage girl, was stepping into adult, independent life not empty-handed but with her own apartment—unknown though it was—in the very center of the big city.
The dance with the old, temperamental lock lasted at least ten agonizing minutes. It was as complicated and unyielding as the character of a cantankerous, mute old man. The key went into the keyhole but refused point-blank to turn, and Liliya, already on the verge of sitting down in despair on the dusty, cold steps, suddenly heard behind her the soft, friendly creak of the neighboring door. A plump, good-natured woman came out onto the landing carrying a big basin of freshly washed laundry that smelled of sunshine.
“Oh, dear, I see you’re wrestling with this stubborn thing? Let me try—I’ve got the knack,” she said kindly, looking at the bewildered girl with genuine sympathy. “This old lock used to drive your granny—poor Anna Sergeyevna—right up the wall. You’ve got to know the little trick of how to handle it.”
The woman, introducing herself as Aunt Maryana, took the key, made a few subtle, crafty, almost magical movements, and the lock, with a muffled, creaking groan, finally yielded. The door slowly, ceremoniously swung open, admitting Liliya into her new, unexplored life. Crossing the threshold, she froze in astonishment. A dense, complex smell of mothballs, old yellowed paper, and century-old motionless dust hit her nose—this was the scent of time come to a halt. She had expected to see a shabby little studio on the city’s outskirts, and instead found herself in a huge, museum-like apartment with soaring, molded ceilings and massive oak parquet floors.
Seeing her speechless shock, Aunt Maryana sighed heavily, with a touch of sadness, and, perching on the edge of an antique, threadbare ottoman in the hall, began a long, confessional tale. She had been the best, most faithful friend of Liliya’s grandmother, and the truth she had kept all those years was heavy as a stone and bitter as wormwood.
“You are not an orphan, Liliya. Not a full orphan, as you always thought,” she began softly, almost in a whisper. “You had a mother and a father, and a grandfather and grandmother who adored you—you were their little sunshine.”
Aunt Maryana related that Liliya’s parents, Artyom and Svetlana, were late, overly doted-on children in a family of well-known physicists in the city. Brilliant, respected intellectuals, her grandfather and grandmother turned out, unfortunately, to be hopeless, irresponsible parents. Their own children never grew up, remaining eternal, immature teenagers living for the moment. Liliya’s father, the handsome, strapping Artyom, became a typical rich kid—a carefree squanderer of life. In the large, spacious parental apartment, while the elders spent days and nights in their labs, loud music blared constantly and noisy, drunken, merry crowds gathered.
The tragedy was a terrible yet logical outcome of such a reckless way of life. At one of those noisy parties, a drunken, senseless fight flared up over some trifle. A random but incredibly strong blow to the temple—and her father was gone in an instant. Her mother, Svetlana—weak-willed and entirely emotionally dependent on her husband—was immediately, without ceremony, stripped of parental rights. Her grandfather, a man with a bad heart and a sensitive soul, could not survive the double blow—his adored son’s sudden death and the public disgrace—and soon quietly faded away from a massive heart attack.
And her grandmother, Anna Sergeyevna—the very gentle woman in the hat, with that warm scent of violets—already elderly and with a very sick, worn-out heart, could not legally secure guardianship of her beloved granddaughter. But until the very last day of her brief remaining life, she secretly visited the girl, bringing the only things she could give—sweet candies and her boundless, unspent, enormous love.
“Anna Sergeyevna made me promise, on my honor, that I would wait for your coming of age and tell you everything—the whole truth,” Aunt Maryana wiped away her tears with the corner of her chintz apron. “She dearly wanted you to know your roots, your family. And to be prepared.”
“Prepared? For what?” Liliya still couldn’t recover from what she’d heard; her world had flipped in an instant.
“For other relatives,” the neighbor’s voice suddenly grew firm, hard, and deadly serious. “Your mother Svetlana’s kin. Oh, my girl, they’re not people—they’re real carrion birds, predators. Even while Anna Sergeyevna was alive, they tried to worm their way in here and lay claim to this apartment. Your grandfather’s body had hardly gone cold and they were already haunting the thresholds, asserting their imaginary rights. They never cared about Svetlana herself—much less about you, small and defenseless. Only these sturdy walls, only these coveted square meters.”
Aunt Maryana slowly swept her hand around the vast living room, sunk in a mysterious, half-dark gloom.
“Just take a good look around! Five whole rooms, a twenty-meter kitchen, molded ceilings four meters high! This is a fortune, a real ancestral nest. A juicy, fatty piece for the ravenous. As soon as they find out the apartment didn’t revert to the state, that you’re living here alone—they’ll swoop down at once, like crows on carrion. Be very careful, Liliya. Don’t believe a single honeyed word, not one crocodile tear.”
Liliya listened, unable to believe her ears. Her pragmatic mind, tempered by the harsh conditions of the orphanage, refused to accept such a far-fetched, tangled melodrama. She was absolutely sure that in eighteen long years everyone had long since forgotten she existed. What relatives? Who would need her—a simple orphanage girl with a painter-plasterer’s certificate? She thanked Aunt Maryana politely and restrainedly for the candid story and timely warning, but deep down wrote it all off as an elderly woman’s exaggerated fears and natural love of drama.
She was bitterly, irreparably mistaken. Exactly two months later, when Liliya had settled in a bit, thoroughly washed off the century-old dust, and even begun, with some enthusiasm, her first renovation in the smallest room, someone rang her sturdy doorbell—insistently and imperiously, insistently again. A whole unfamiliar delegation stood on the threshold.
At their head was a woman battered by life, degraded, with a completely extinguished, empty gaze—in whom Liliya, with great difficulty and by a single old photograph from her grandmother’s album, recognized with horror her own mother, Svetlana. Behind her, like ominous, silent shadows, crowded two of her sisters—twins who looked like spiteful, puffed-up crows; a sullen, unkempt man with shifty, darting eyes who turned out to be their brother, Sergei; and a tiny, poisonous-looking old woman—their mother, Grandma Vera.
They performed before the astonished girl a spectacle worthy of the most dramatic provincial theater. They fell to their knees before her, beat their breasts, cried loudly, repented of every mortal sin, and swore they hadn’t been able to take their “own flesh and blood” earlier because of an “unbelievably difficult, tragic life situation.” In chorus they declared they had searched for her all these endless years, that they lay awake nights with yearning, and that at last a great miracle had occurred—they had found their girl. Then, quickly wiping away the hastily squeezed-out fake tears, they casually asked to stay “just a couple of weeks,” until their “temporary, minor financial troubles” were resolved.
Overwhelmed by such a powerful emotional onslaught and, by upbringing, utterly unable to say a firm “no,” Liliya faltered and silently stepped aside, letting them into her home. That evening, after an awkward “festive” dinner bought entirely with her modest money, Uncle Sergei, well pickled with cheap, pungent vodka, ran a bleary, hostile eye over the spacious living room and, suddenly jabbing a thick finger at Liliya, let slip the thoughts they’d all been harboring:
“Tell me, dear niece… what the hell does a girl like you need a place like this for all by yourself? You’ve got to live as a family—together, tight-knit—so everyone’s in sight!”
Liliya instantly grew wary; her internal alarm bells clanged at full volume. In that drunken, brazen, forthright question she clearly heard the very greed Aunt Maryana had so carefully warned her about. From that day on she became as vigilant as a sentry at his post. The newfound relatives, with intrusive concern, constantly tried to treat her to “signature” homemade tinctures “to strengthen the health” and fragrant teas with “secret, healing Siberian herbs.”
But Liliya, raised in an orphanage where teenagers experimented with anything and everything, recognized at once—by the peculiar, rancid, unpleasant odor—the dangerous hallucinogenic mushrooms in those “beneficial additives.” She pretended to drink obediently, smiled sweetly, and said thank you, then, seizing the right moment, quietly poured the contents of her cup into a big pot with a withered, forgotten geranium.
One day, though, they caught her—snared her in their trap. Her mother asked her to bring a simple glass of water, and while Liliya went to the kitchen, one of the crow-aunties quickly and deftly slipped something into her half-finished glass of apple juice. Suspecting nothing, she returned, took several big, thirsty gulps, and almost immediately felt something was very wrong. The familiar room swam before her eyes, the walls undulated in steep waves, all sounds turned unnaturally viscous and unbelievably distant. The relatives at the table fell silent all at once and fixed their gazes on her—waiting, intent—wearing predatory, impatient, hungry smiles.
Summoning the very last scraps of will into a fist, Liliya sprang from her chair as if scalded. She didn’t run—she practically swam, forcing her way through a thick, gelatinous distortion of space. The bathroom door now seemed impossibly far away, like the other end of the galaxy. She barely made it, crashed against it with her whole body, and managed to slide the tiny latch a split second before someone began to pound and shove the door with angry force. Her hands scarcely obeyed; her fingers treacherously slipped on the smooth screen of her mobile phone. By a miracle, almost by feel, she still managed to dial the treasured three digits: 112.
“Please help…” she whispered into the receiver with parched, cottony lips, feeling her clear consciousness slowly but surely slipping away. “Severe poisoning… my apartment… unlawful entry… they’re threatening my life…”
With enormous effort she dictated the exact address, and the phone immediately fell from her weakening, uncooperative hand. The last thing she heard through the growing, muffling cotton in her ears was the thunderous crack of a door being broken down and a loud, commanding shout: “Police! Everyone stay where you are! Hands on your head! Now!”
The squad that arrived found the whole “loving” family assembled. In the bag of one of the crafty aunts, a quick but thorough search turned up several more neatly packaged little packets of suspicious powder from those very dried mushrooms. Liliya was taken by a rush-called ambulance to the hospital for urgent examination and immediate stomach pumping, and the rest of the clan—to the nearest police station to give detailed statements at once.
The next day Liliya, with a splitting, heavy head and a nasty, bitter taste in her mouth, returned home. The first thing she did was call a locksmith and, for a hefty fee, change all the locks and install the most reliable armored door. Then, for several hours straight, she scrubbed the entire apartment with caustic bleach, trying to drive out not only the physical grime but also the clinging, repulsive spirit of those horrible people. By evening, as she had expected, they showed up again. The entire “loving” company—except Uncle Sergei, who had apparently been kept under arrest as the main instigator and organizer.
They began to pound on her new, impregnable door. First—timidly, like innocent lambs; then more insistently and louder; then heavy fists and sturdy feet joined in. They shouted, demanded to be let in at once, shifting from crude threats to appeals to pity and back, plucking every string.
Liliya stood in the middle of the clean hallway and calmly listened to this farewell concert. There was no fear left at all. Only a cold anger remained, ringing like a blade. She stepped right up to the door.
“Get out, or I will call the police again this instant!” she shouted as loudly and firmly as she could. “For incorrigibles like you, there are special correctional orphanages for adults! They’ll teach you in no time to love the motherland and keep your hands off other people’s property!”
“Open up this minute, you ungrateful brat!” wailed her own mother from behind the door. “We’re your only family! We’re your own blood!”
“I have never had and do not have a family,” Liliya enunciated mockingly, syllable by syllable. “By the way, some good news for you. My neighbor, Aunt Maryana, has a brand-new camera installed right above your heads. With excellent audio. It’s recording your entire riveting performance in HD quality right now. If you don’t vanish from here in five minutes, I’ll call a squad and file a lengthy report about conspiracy to seize another person’s property and attempted murder. I think Sergei won’t be lonely or bored in his cell with the warm company of his big family.”
At the words “hidden camera,” the relatives behind the door fell silent in an instant, as if on command. After a short, hissed, spiteful consultation, she heard hurried, chaotic footsteps quickly receding. They vanished as if they had never been there. They never appeared in her life again, under any circumstances.
But Liliya understood perfectly that she could never again live in that huge apartment, saturated with ghosts of the past and poisoned by the recent horrors. Too much pain, disappointment, and bitterness were tied to those high ceilings and the old creaking parquet. A month later, after completing all the necessary paperwork, she sold her grandmother’s vast legacy—this monument to someone else’s life.
With the money she bought herself a bright, very cozy two-room apartment in a quiet new district, with big windows looking out onto a green, well-kept park. The substantial remainder was more than enough for her to live calmly, without fussing over day-to-day work, and finally to get the long-desired higher education. Without much difficulty, she enrolled in the biology faculty of a prestigious university—the very one where, many years ago, her famous grandfather and grandmother had taught with distinction.
“The granddaughter of renowned, brilliant scientists cannot spend her whole life painting other people’s walls and breathing caustic lime,” she decided firmly, unpacking large boxes of brand-new textbooks that smelled of printer’s ink. In her veins truly flowed the blood of intelligent, gifted people who had devoted themselves to great science. And now, starting her life from an absolutely clean, new page, she suddenly felt she had every chance to follow in their footsteps, to continue the family’s work. Her orphanage past—full of grievances, humiliations, and an endless struggle for survival—was far behind, like a heavy, prolonged bad dream. Ahead lay a new, her own, unique life, which she would build herself, with her own hands, exactly as she had always dreamed of seeing it.
And the first thing she carefully hung on the wall in her new living room was an old, slightly shabby retro hat that, even after so many years, still smelled of quiet, gentle happiness and dry, unfading violets. It was her most important talisman, a reminder that she had been loved, awaited, and believed in. Now it was up to her to live up to that faith—and the white, clean canvas of her future was ready to receive the brightest and most beautiful colors.