“Well, why are you getting worked up over nothing? I already told you, they’ve bought the tickets. Non-refundable, Sveta. The train arrives tomorrow at eight in the morning. We’ll have to go meet them.”
Igor sat at the kitchen table, calmly peeling the skin off a dried fish. Tiny silver scales scattered across the oilcloth tablecloth like sparks and fell onto the floor, but he seemed not to notice. Through the open window came the heavy, humid air of a resort-town evening, soaked with the smell of grilled meat from the café downstairs and the thumping noise of cheap pop music.
“Your brother, his wife, and their three children are coming to live with us for the entire summer so they don’t have to pay for a hotel?! We live in a resort city, but we are not an all-inclusive hotel! I am not going to cook for ten people and wash other people’s sheets! Let them rent a place or not come at all!” Svetlana shouted, throwing her phone onto the sofa.
She stood in the middle of the kitchen with her arms crossed, feeling her temple throb with anger. Igor did not even lift his head. He kept picking roe out of the fish. His calmness was unshakable, thick-skinned, impenetrable — the calm of a man who had already made up his mind and was simply waiting for the noise to die down.
“Not ten. Seven, including us,” he corrected lazily, putting a piece of amber-colored fish into his mouth. “And anyway, they’re family. Vitalik worked at the factory all year, and Lenka is going crazy with the kids in that tiny two-room apartment in Chelyabinsk. They need air, iodine, vitamin D. We have plenty of space here. What are we supposed to do, act like misers and throw my own brother out onto the street? Or charge him rent?”
“We don’t have plenty of space, Igor. We have two bedrooms and a walk-through living room that also happens to be my office!” Svetlana stepped toward the table and pressed her palms into the sticky surface, still marked with beer stains. “I work, in case you forgot. I have three major projects this summer. Retouching. Layout design. I need my monitor, my desk, and absolute silence. And you want to put five people in that room? One of them is three years old. Do you have any idea what will happen to my equipment within an hour?”
Igor grimaced as if she had given him a toothache. Only then did he finally look at his wife. His eyes showed genuine confusion — as if he truly could not understand how she could compare relatives with “sitting at a computer.”
“Oh, stop making yourself sound so important. You can take your laptop to the kitchen. The light is good there in the morning. Or go out onto the balcony. Beautiful view of the sea, inspiration will come pouring in. And put that monitor of yours in the closet if you’re so afraid for it. The kids… well, they’re kids. They’ll make noise and then calm down. Lenka will keep an eye on them. She’s strict.”
“Lenka will keep an eye on them?” Svetlana laughed, but the laugh came out dry and sharp. “Did you forget the last time they came for a week three years ago? Lena lay down on the sofa the moment she arrived and announced, ‘I’m on vacation,’ and only got up to eat. The children destroyed our bathroom, drew all over the hallway wallpaper, and your brother drank your entire bar while complaining that the cognac was too harsh. And now it won’t be one week. It will be three months. Ninety days, Igor!”
Her husband exhaled loudly, put the fish aside, and wiped his greasy hands on his house shorts.
“You’ve become cruel, Sveta. City-minded. Selfish. Have you forgotten how we used to go to my aunt’s place in Anapa when we were students? We slept on the floor, ate whatever we were given, and were happy. Vitalik is my blood. I can’t tell him no just because you want silence to click buttons on your keyboard. That’s not decent.”
“And is it decent to present me with a fact twelve hours before they arrive?” Svetlana lowered her voice, but something dangerous and metallic entered it. “You knew. You knew a month ago when Vitalik called. You planned all of this, and you only told me now so I wouldn’t have time to do anything.”
Igor looked away and reached for a bottle of beer.
“I didn’t want to worry you ahead of time. I thought you’d be happy. We’ll have company. It’ll be more fun. Barbecue in the evenings, wine… Vitalik is bringing his guitar.”
“Who is paying for this feast, Igor?” she interrupted. “We have a mortgage and a loan on your car. Your brother, as usual, will arrive with three thousand rubles in his pocket and a hope for ‘southern hospitality.’ Do you understand how much food a family of seven needs? Have you seen the market prices? Cherries are three hundred. Meat is five hundred.”
Igor slammed the bottle onto the table. Foam spilled over the neck and flooded the fish scales.
“I’m a man. I’ll earn it!” he barked, his face turning red in blotches. “Stop counting pennies! We’ll buy a sack of potatoes and macaroni in bulk. Watermelons cost nothing in August. Nobody is asking you to feed them caviar. Cook a pot of soup and that’s enough. What matters is the attitude. I want my brother to feel at home, not like some poor relative standing at the door. And I’ll make sure of that. And you, if you’re so smart, could keep quiet. Don’t shame me with your greed.”
Svetlana looked at him and saw not her husband, but a puffed-up turkey spreading his feathers, trying to look like an important and generous lord. He did not care about her comfort, her work, or her nerves. He needed an audience. He needed Vitalik to return to Chelyabinsk and tell everyone how grandly and generously Igor lived down south. The fact that this “generosity” would be paid for with Svetlana’s hands did not bother him in the slightest.
“Fine,” she said in an icy tone. “You’re the host. Then you provide everything. But I’m warning you right now: I am not a servant. I will not stand at the stove in three shifts. I will not clean up after your nephews and nieces. And my office is my office. If any of them enters it without permission, I’ll throw them out.”
“We’ll see how you sing when they arrive,” Igor smirked, returning to his fish. “You’ll feel ashamed of acting like this. You’ll be the first to start fussing around. Anyway, go to sleep. We have to get up early tomorrow. And we still need to find bedding. I think we have some old sets in the storage shelves, my mother’s old ones. Take them out and shake off the dust. We’re not going to give them silk sheets. They’re children, after all. They’ll ruin everything.”
He said it so casually, handing out instructions as if the matter had already been settled completely and beyond discussion. Svetlana silently turned and left the kitchen. Behind her came the sound of him chewing and the television, where someone was laughing merrily at other people’s problems. Ahead of her lay a night in which she had to figure out how to survive in her own home — a home that by tomorrow would turn into hell.
Morning did not begin with coffee, or even with an alarm clock, but with a nasty scraping sound that seemed to make her teeth vibrate. Svetlana opened her eyes and saw Igor, puffing and straining, pushing her work desk into the darkest corner of the walk-through living room. Her professional calibrated monitor wobbled dangerously on the edge of the tabletop, ready to crash onto the parquet floor.
“What are you doing?” Svetlana jumped out of bed, pulling on her robe as she moved. Sleep vanished instantly. “Leave the desk alone! There are wires there. The computer tower is there!”
Igor straightened up and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. He was already wearing his “formal” sleeveless undershirt and old sweatpants, ready for heroic labor in the name of family.
“Stop yelling, you’ll wake the neighbors. I’m making space. Where do you expect me to put the mattress? Vitalik and Lenka will sleep on the sofa, and the kids need to sleep on the floor. I’m not going to make them lie on bare parquet.”
In the middle of the room, blocking the way to the kitchen, lay something enormous, striped, and lumpy. It gave off a heavy, stale smell of dampness and old dust mixed with a sour note.
“What is that?” Svetlana pointed at the mattress in disgust. “Did you drag that from the trash?”
“What trash? I got it from the neighbor on the first floor, Baba Valya. It was standing on her balcony. A good cotton mattress, Soviet-made. Air it out a little, put a sheet over it, and it’ll be royal sleeping quarters. The kids won’t care. They’ll run around all day and sleep like logs.”
Igor kicked the mattress to test it, and a cloud of dust rose in the beam of morning sunlight, slowly settling onto Svetlana’s keyboard.
“Remove it immediately,” she said quietly. “I’m allergic to dust. You know that. And I’m not going to breathe mold all summer.”
“Don’t invent things. We’ll air it out.” Igor waved her off and leaned into the desk again, pushing it so hard that one leg scraped across the laminate with a crunch, leaving a deep white scratch. “Better help me. We also need to empty the wardrobe. I was thinking we could put your things in boxes and put them on the balcony. Lenka needs somewhere to hang her dresses. They’re coming for three months, after all. They’ll bring a whole wardrobe. And you sit at home anyway. You don’t need to dress up.”
Svetlana stared at the scratch on the floor. A cold, calculating rage began to rise inside her. This was not just furniture being moved. This was a territorial takeover. Igor was methodically destroying her space, her comfort, her life, turning the apartment into some kind of barrack-style dormitory.
“My things will stay in the wardrobe, Igor. If your Lenka has nowhere to hang her dresses, let her hammer nails into the walls. Or hang them from the chandelier.”
“There you go again. Selfish.” Igor spat over his shoulder, but did not argue. Instead, he switched to sorting through the shopping bags he had apparently already brought from the store.
On the kitchen table stood a mountain of food that looked more like humanitarian aid for a disaster zone. Three five-kilogram bags of the cheapest macaroni, gray and brittle. A sack of potatoes that had already left a pile of dirt on the floor. And a whole row of frozen chicken soup sets — essentially bones and skin, pitifully visible through clear plastic.
“There!” Igor announced proudly, placing down the last pack of baking margarine. “Fully stocked. So you don’t whine that there’s no money. This will last a month if you use your head. You’ll make soups. We’ll use the big pot, the ten-liter one I cooked crayfish in. You’ll make macaroni with meat. Cheap and filling. The kids are growing; they need hot food, not your arugula salads.”
Svetlana picked up a packet of bony chicken backs. The icy cold burned her fingers.
“You expect me to feed seven people garbage?” she asked, looking straight into his eyes. “Even dogs would be ashamed to eat this, Igor. Weren’t you boasting that you’d be a generous host? Is this your generosity? Bones and margarine?”
“It’s the base!” Igor snapped, snatching the packet from her hands. “Meat is for holidays. On ordinary days, you have to save money. You’re just spoiled, Sveta. Some people in this country live on buckwheat and don’t complain. And by the way, I bought cookies too. Three packs of Jubilee biscuits. For tea.”
He began stuffing the groceries onto the shelves, carelessly pushing aside Svetlana’s jars of tea, coffee, and spices. A beautiful tin of expensive oolong tea was thrown onto the top shelf, where Svetlana could not reach without a stool, and a pack of coarse salt took its place.
“Here’s how it’s going to be,” Igor said, turning to her with his hands on his hips. “Listen to the schedule. Breakfast at nine, everyone together. Lunch at two. Dinner when they come back from the beach, around eight. You work from home, so it’s easier for you. Between your pictures, you can run to the kitchen, peel potatoes, put broth on the stove. You won’t break. Lenka will help too, but at first she needs to rest after the trip. So you’ll manage alone for a couple of days.”
Svetlana said nothing. She looked at this sweaty, busy man, who was planning her servitude with such enthusiasm, and understood that arguing was useless. He did not hear her. He lived in his own world, where he was the patriarch and benefactor, and she was a silent function — an attachment to the stove and mop.
“I’m not going to cook, Igor,” she said evenly. “I told you yesterday, and I’m repeating it now. I’ll eat what I buy for myself. And you can boil those bones in a bucket if you want.”
“We’ll see,” he sneered nastily. “We’ll see how you eat your yogurt when hungry children are looking at you. You do have a conscience, don’t you? You’re not an animal.”
He left the kitchen, knocking his shoulder against the doorframe, and headed to the bathroom. A minute later, there was a crash — Igor was clearing her cosmetics off the shelves to make room for the toothbrushes and washcloths of the future guests.
“Sveta! Where are the old towels? The ones we use for the floor?” he shouted from the bathroom. “Get them out. The kids can take them to the beach! We’re not giving them the new terry towels. They’ll roll them in the sand!”
Svetlana went to the window. Down below, the first tourists with inflatable rings were already trudging along the heated asphalt. The city was living its sticky resort life. In her apartment, it smelled of an old mattress and cheap margarine. Less than a day remained before the train arrived. The trap had snapped shut, and Igor, without realizing it, had just locked her inside.
“Write this down. Don’t just sit there. Breakfast: oatmeal with milk, but dilute it half with water so it isn’t too rich. Lunch: chicken soup, from those sets. Make a pot big enough for three days so you don’t stand at the stove every time. Dinner: macaroni with canned meat. I bought the canned meat, Red Price brand, three tins. If you chop it finely, it’ll be enough for everyone.”
Igor paced around the kitchen, dictating the menu as if reading out orders to a garrison before a siege. He had already taped a sheet of paper to the refrigerator, divided by crooked lines: “Shower schedule” and “Dish duty.” In the “person on duty” column, beside every day of the week, one name was written in his sprawling handwriting: Sveta.
“Do you seriously think I’m going to follow that?” Svetlana was sitting at her work desk, now squeezed between the wall and that stinking mattress, and did not even turn around. “Canned meat for forty rubles? Do you want them poisoned on the first day? It’s just soy and fat, Igor. Your nephews and nieces are children. Their stomachs aren’t made of iron.”
“Don’t act smart!” her husband waved her off, wiping sweat from his forehead. The apartment was stuffy, the air conditioner could barely cope, and he had forbidden opening the windows because they had to “keep the cool air in.” “It’s normal food. We ate worse in the nineties. As for fruit… well, we’ll buy seasonal apples. Local ones. They’re cheap. Vitalik isn’t a gourmet. He just needs to be full.”
He came close to her, and Svetlana smelled his stale T-shirt and beer fumes — Igor had already managed to “taste-test” beer in honor of the next day’s arrival.
“Speaking of which.” His voice dropped, becoming almost oily, though his eyes remained sharp. “Transfer fifteen thousand to my card. Better yet, twenty. I spent money at the wholesale market, gas is expensive these days, and I had to buy the mattress from the neighbor for a bottle. We’ll also need to treat the kids to ice cream. You’re the rich one in this house, sitting on the internet and raking in money.”
Svetlana slowly turned toward him in her swivel chair. There was so much icy contempt in her gaze that Igor faltered for a second.
“I won’t give you a single kopeck,” she said clearly. “You decided to play the noble lord, so play with your own money. Your salary is enough to buy proper meat, not bones. But you’re greedy, Igor. You want the glory of being a hospitable host, but at my expense and with my hands. Twenty thousand? For that money, you could rent them a room in the private sector for two weeks. But you prefer turning our home into a shelter.”
“That’s my money!” Igor squealed, turning crimson. “I’m saving it for the car! New tires! So you don’t want to contribute to the family? You’re clutching your money? You feel sorry for your own nephews and nieces?”
“They are not my nephews and nieces. They are the children of your brother, whom you see once every five years,” Svetlana cut him off. “And if you think I’m going to sponsor this circus, you’re mistaken.”
Igor choked with indignation and looked ready to shout something, but suddenly went silent. His eyes darted toward the top kitchen cabinet where a bread box, locked with a key, served as their hiding place from the cat. He rushed over, opened the cabinet, and pulled out a bottle of expensive whiskey he had received as a gift at work six months earlier.
“What are you doing?” Svetlana asked, watching him.
Igor, glancing around like a thief, shoved the bottle into a toolbox standing in the hallway, then covered it with screwdrivers and rolls of electrical tape. Then he returned, took out a box of good chocolates that had been saved for New Year’s, and stuffed it deep inside the winter shoe cabinet, right into a felt boot.
“Hiding it,” he muttered without looking at her. “Vitalik is a simple man. He doesn’t know when to stop. If he sees the whiskey, he’ll drink the whole thing in one evening. And this is a status item. I’ve been saving it for a special occasion. I bought vodka for them. Wheat vodka. That’ll do. And these chocolates… the kids won’t appreciate the taste anyway. Loose caramels will be enough for them. No need to spoil them.”
Svetlana looked at him and felt nausea rising in her throat. This was not even rock bottom. This was somewhere below the basement.
“You are pathetic, Igor,” she said quietly, but in the silence of the apartment it sounded like a slap. “You bring your brother thousands of kilometers here, make them sleep on the floor, feed them bones and cheap canned meat, and hide decent food and alcohol from them in corners like a rat. You are not hospitable. You just want them to envy you while you’re terrified they might eat one extra piece of your ‘wealth.’”
“Shut up!” he roared, slamming the shoe cabinet shut. “You understand nothing about brotherhood! I’m the host. I decide what goes on the table! And you… you’re just jealous because I have family, while you’re alone in this world!”
“I have self-respect,” Svetlana replied. “And you don’t. You’d strangle yourself over a kopeck, but you absolutely must show off. Do you know the funniest part? They’ll understand. Children aren’t stupid. They’ll taste the cheap margarine. And Lena will understand too when she sees you hiding the bottle.”
“She won’t see it if you don’t run your mouth!” Igor jumped toward her, looming over her like a threatening cliff. “Just try opening your mouth. Just try ruining my welcome. I’ll make your life so miserable you’ll howl. You’ll walk the line with me.”
He grabbed the air conditioner remote from the table and switched it off.
“We’re saving electricity. Seven people is no joke. The meter will spin like crazy. Get used to the heat, since you’re so delicate. And don’t waste water. I’ll put a brick in the toilet tank so it uses less when flushing.”
Igor left the room, stomping loudly as if hammering nails into the coffin lid of their marriage. Svetlana remained sitting in the stuffy half-darkness. She heard him clattering in the bathroom, actually placing a brick into the toilet tank. The absurdity of what was happening had reached its peak. Tomorrow, a whole noisy crowd would storm into the apartment, but the real ruin had not begun with them. It had begun here and now, with a hidden bottle of whiskey and a brick in the toilet.
Svetlana opened her laptop. On the screen was a message from a client: “Deadline — one week.” She looked at the mattress blocking the way, at the duty schedule with her name written everywhere, and understood: she would not be able to work here. Nor live here.
Igor returned, pleased with his own cleverness.
“That’s it, I’m going to sleep. We get up at six tomorrow and go to the station. You get up too. Make sandwiches for the road. We can’t meet them empty-handed. I bought bread, gray bread, it’s more filling. Spread some butter on it and it’ll be fine.”
He collapsed onto the sofa in his clothes, without making the bed, as if demonstrating that he was already on duty, already in the trenches. A minute later, he began snoring — loud, whistling, triumphant snores of a man utterly convinced of his own righteousness. Svetlana turned off the laptop. She did not lie down. She sat in the darkness and listened to the clock ticking away the final hours of her old life.
Morning filled the apartment with the smell of burnt porridge and nervous commotion that seemed to charge the air with static electricity. Seven in the morning. One hour remained before the “camp” arrived. Igor rushed around the hallway in nothing but his underwear, his hair wet, shouting as though he were commanding an evacuation during a fire.
“Where are the towels? I told you to get the waffle towels! The terry ones are too good. They’ll turn them into rags in a day! And why is the table empty? Sveta! Are you deaf?”
Svetlana sat in the kitchen. She was fully dressed — neat jeans, a white shirt, makeup. In front of her stood a cup of black coffee, which she had not even touched. She looked like a foreign object in the middle of chaos, like a marble statue in a burning trash heap.
“I asked you where the sandwiches are!” Igor burst into the kitchen and almost slipped on the wet floor he had just wiped with an old T-shirt. “They’ll be hungry from the train! I told you to slice the bread!”
“I didn’t slice the bread,” Svetlana answered calmly, without turning her head. “I didn’t cook the porridge. And I didn’t look for waffle towels. I was drinking coffee.”
Igor froze. His chest rose and fell heavily, covered in drops of sweat. His face turned blotchy from neck to forehead. This was not simple anger. It was panic — the panic of a man whose house of cards was collapsing from the lightest breath.
“You… you did this on purpose?” he hissed, coming closer to the table. “You want to disgrace me in front of my brother? You want them to see an empty table? You want Lenka to think I’m a henpecked husband who can’t control his wife?”
“They won’t think it, Igor. They’ll see it,” Svetlana finally raised her eyes to him. There was no fear or pity in them. Only cold, clinical curiosity. “They’ll see an apartment stuffed with old junk. They’ll see a mattress from the dump that you expect their children to sleep on. They’ll taste cheap margarine in the porridge. And of course, they’ll appreciate your brilliant idea with the brick in the toilet tank. That’s the height of hospitality — saving water when guests flush.”
“Shut up about the brick!” Igor shouted, slamming his fist on the table so hard the cup jumped and spilled coffee onto the white tablecloth. “That’s thrift! A spendthrift like you wouldn’t understand! You’re used to having everything handed to you. You sit here coloring your little pictures, never knowing real life! Vitalik is a working man! He doesn’t care about your elite habits!”
“A working man?” she repeated with an icy smirk. “You call your brother ‘simple,’ but you hide whiskey from him in a toolbox? You’re afraid he’ll drink your precious alcohol? You despise them, Igor. You didn’t invite them out of love. You invited them to stroke your ego. Look at yourself: running around in your underwear, hiding chocolates in felt boots, feeding your family bones — just so they’ll say, ‘Wow, Igor really made it down south!’”
Igor grabbed a dirty rag from the counter and threw it into the sink. Greasy water splashed everywhere.
“Who are you to judge me?!” he roared, looming over her. “You’re nobody! A dependent in my apartment! I pay the mortgage! I’m the man! And you’re nothing but an empty space with a computer! Don’t like it? Leave! But as long as you’re here, you’ll do what I say! Get up and slice the sausage! Now!”
Svetlana slowly stood. She was a head shorter than her husband, but at that moment she seemed taller. She looked at him the way one looks at a crushed insect — with disgust, but no longer with interest.
“No, Igor. I will not slice sausage. I will not go meet them. And I will not smile at your Lena while listening to her comment on my manicure. You wanted this circus, so you can be the clown in it. I’m just the audience. And believe me, my front-row ticket has cost me far too much.”
“You bitch…” Igor raised his hand, but did not dare strike her. His arm hung in the air, trembling with powerless rage. “Fine. Sit here. Rot in your pride. But just try leaving this room when they arrive. Just try opening your mouth. I’ll make your life so bad you’ll run away yourself. You’ll beg me for every kopeck. I’ll cut off your internet, understand? You’ll sit here without work and beg me for a piece of bread!”
At that moment, the sharp, piercing sound of the intercom sliced through the heavy air of the apartment. It was not just a ring. It was an alarm signal.
Igor flinched as if he had been shocked. His face changed instantly. The grimace of hatred slipped away, replaced by a fussy, ingratiating mask of hospitality. He rushed to the receiver, smoothing his hair and pulling on his shorts as he went.
“Hello! Yes! Brother!” he shouted into the receiver in a falsely cheerful voice that made Svetlana’s jaw tighten. “Come on up! Third floor! I’m opening! We’re waiting for you, the table’s already set!”
He hung up and turned to his wife. Fear mixed with threat in his eyes.
“You heard that? They’re here. Smile, bitch. Smile so hard your teeth hurt. And if you say one word about the mattress, I’ll destroy you.”
Svetlana silently picked up her cup of cold coffee and poured it into the sink, straight over the dirty dishes.
“Go meet them, brother,” she said quietly. “Your performance begins.”
Igor, breathing heavily, rushed to the front door. A second later came the clatter of the lock, the stomping of many feet on the stairs, children’s cries, and Vitalik’s booming voice:
“Well, hello, resort people! Open the gates!”
Svetlana stood in the middle of the kitchen. She heard the noisy, sweaty crowd pour into the hallway. She heard suitcases banging against the floor. She heard Lena squeal, “Oh, Igorek, you’ve lost weight!” She heard the fake laughter of her husband, the man who only a minute earlier had threatened to cut her wires.
The apartment filled with the smell of other people’s sweat, cheap perfume, and railway dust. That smell instantly pushed out everything that had been there before — comfort, peace, the last remnants of respect.
Svetlana slowly walked into her office. She did not lock the door. It was pointless. The boundaries had been erased. She sat down at her desk, shoved behind the stinking mattress, and looked at the black screen of her monitor. It reflected not her, but some strange woman in a strange house.
In the hallway, something crashed — one of the children had knocked down the coat rack.
“It’s all right, all right!” Igor shouted cheerfully. “Make yourselves at home! Everything here is yours!”
Svetlana closed her eyes. The scandal was not over. It was only beginning, and this time no prisoners would be taken. The family she had once valued died at the exact moment the key turned in the lock.
Now only enemies lived here.