Anna slammed the archive cabinet door a shade harder than usual. Her phone had rung for the third time in an hour—the ringtone boring into her like a nagging drill.
— Where are you hiding? — Mikhail’s voice cut through the storage room’s silence. — Playing your paper games again?
— I’m at work, — Anna answered without looking up from the documents.
— At work! — he laughed acidly. — Digging through dusty folders for pennies. When will you finally understand this isn’t a career but a pathetic pastime for losers?
— Those “papers” preserve our city’s history, — Anna replied calmly. — Perhaps that’s beyond your understanding of value.
— Don’t get smart with me! — Mikhail barked. — Your “history” won’t bring us money. You live in a world of illusions!
Anna quietly ended the call. Six years at the local-history archive, the respect of colleagues, letters of thanks from researchers—Mikhail called all of it “paper games.” Her history degree with honors was, to him, mere wall décor, and her dissertation—a waste of time.
The storage-room door opened. An unfamiliar woman of about forty walked in—elegant, self-assured.
— Excuse me, are you Anna Viktorovna? I’m Yekaterina. Your husband’s ex-wife.
— Oh! — Anna raised her eyebrows. — Unexpected. Come in. I hope this won’t be a scene?
— No. — Yekaterina glanced around. — I’m sorry to intrude like this, but we have something to discuss. Where could we talk?
— There’s a café nearby. It’s quiet. I only ask—no dramatics.
Yekaterina sat across from her in a small café next to the archive and gracefully slipped off her gloves.
— Has Mikhail told you about me? — she asked, stirring sugar into her cup.
— Yes. He said you were incompatible. A version so concise it’s indecent.
— Incompatible? — Yekaterina smiled bitterly. — Elegant phrasing. I’m a literature lecturer. I was one for six years. When I met Mikhail, he admired my erudition, my quotations from the classics, called me his “muse.”
Anna set down her spoon, listening closely.
— And a year later he started calling me a loser who couldn’t earn real money. “What do you need those dead poets for?” he’d say. “Do something useful!”
— Familiar notes, — Anna remarked with sarcasm. — He has a very limited repertoire.
— He deliberately chooses women like us, — Yekaterina continued. — Educated women in socially important professions. First he admires the intellect, then he systematically destroys your self-esteem. Museum workers, librarians, teachers—we’re all the same to him. Smart, but “impractical.”
— Why are you telling me this? — Anna asked, though the answer was already forming.
— Because after the divorce I went back to teaching. I now chair a department at the university. Turns out I’m not a loser at all. I just lived with a man who convinced me otherwise.
— And what changed?
— Everything. When the poisonous voice goes silent, you suddenly realize you can breathe fully, — Yekaterina smiled. — My students win grants, my articles are published in top-ranked journals. And Mikhail still thinks literature is a frivolity.
— It seems his opinion of the humanities is unshakable, — Anna shook her head.
— Darling, he’s afraid of educated women. But he’s even more afraid of our independence. So first he tames you, then he breaks you.
After lunch, Pyotr Aleksandrovich, the head of the archive, came into the office with an envelope and a ceremonious look.
— Anna Viktorovna, I have a proposal for you. The regional TV company is planning a documentary series on local history. They need a consultant and scriptwriter.
Anna opened the envelope. The fee was triple her monthly salary.
— They want you specifically, — Pyotr Aleksandrovich went on proudly. — Your talent for turning archival documents into living stories impressed the producers. The project is slated for a year with the possibility of extension.
— Tempting, — Anna admitted. — I need to think.
— Anna, this is a chance not only for you, but for the entire archive. Regional history will reach a wide audience. People will learn what treasures these walls hold.
— You’re right. It’s a chance to show the value of our work.
— And to dispel the myth that history is boring. In your hands it comes alive.
At home, Anna carefully told Mikhail about the offer, bracing for a storm. His reaction was predictable—yet exceeded expectations.
— You’ve lost your mind! — he leapt up from the couch, his face contorted with rage. — You’ll parade yourself in front of the whole region? People will think I can’t provide for my wife! That my woman works on television!
— It’s my profession, Mikhail. And quite a prestigious one, by the way.
— Profession? You paw through papers for peanuts! And now you want to disgrace me on TV, talking about a bunch of dead people?
— Disgrace? — Anna looked at him in surprise. — I’ll be talking about our region’s cultural heritage. Where’s the disgrace in that?
— Where? — he grabbed his head. — All my colleagues will laugh! “Look, Mikhail’s wife is pretending to be a scholar!” Don’t you get it?
— I get that you care more about your colleagues’ opinions than about my achievements, — Anna replied evenly.
— I forbid you to disgrace our family!
Anna calmly took out her phone and dialed the producer.
— I accept your offer, — she said, looking straight at Mikhail.
— You will call back and refuse, right now! — he grabbed her by the arm. — I forbid it! Do you hear me? I forbid it!
— No.
The word sounded quiet but firm. Mikhail froze, not believing what he’d heard.
— What did you say? Say it again!
— No. I won’t refuse. And take your hands off me.
— Oh, that’s how it is! — Mikhail’s eyes narrowed. — Then choose: either that stupid television or the family! Either your dead documents or your living husband!
Anna looked at him—the handsome, “successful” manager who had spent four years convincing her she was worthless. Now she saw not confidence in his eyes, but fear. He was afraid of her independence.
— You know what’s funny? — she said thoughtfully. — You call my work dead, but you’re the one afraid of a living woman.
— What? What nonsense are you spouting?
— I choose freedom, Mikhail. And it turned out to be easier than I thought.
In half an hour Anna had packed. Surprising how little had accumulated in four years—Mikhail considered her purchases unnecessary waste, her books junk, and her hobbies stupidity.
— You’ll regret this! — he shouted after her. — Without me you’re nobody! You’ll crawl back in a month!
— We’ll see, — Anna tossed over her shoulder. — I have a TV contract. And what do you have?
The door slammed. Anna felt no fear, only relief—as if she’d shed tight clothes after a long day.
Valentina Petrovna, a veteran of the archive, welcomed Anna with understanding and hot tea.
— Stay as long as you need, dear, — the elderly woman said. — I divorced at your age. I know what it’s like to start life over.
— Thank you, Valentina Petrovna. I’ll find a place quickly.
— There’s no rush. Solitude after marital hell is a luxury to be savored.
The next day the journalist Svetlana called:
— Anna Viktorovna, I have a proposal. A cultural center is opening in the regional capital. They’re looking for a head of the history department. The pay is solid, staff housing, room to grow.
— Sounds interesting. I’m interested.
— Excellent! Your work on regional history impressed the committee. Especially your article on merchant dynasties. When could you come for an interview?
— As soon as tomorrow. I have no more constraints.
A week later Mikhail showed up with a bouquet of roses and tears in his eyes—the classic set of a repentant tyrant.
— Forgive me, Anechka, — he dropped to his knees right in the hallway. — I see my mistakes now. I’ll support your career, I promise! Even on that television!
— Stand up, — Anna said calmly. — We have nothing to discuss.
— But… I realize I was wrong! You can work wherever you want!
— You realized you lost control. Those are different things, dear.
— Anechka, come on! We love each other! Four years together!
— No, Mikhail. You loved the obedient toy in me. And I spent four years playing a role you assigned. The show is over.
— Are you out of your mind? You’re breaking up a family over some job!
— Over a job? — Anna smiled faintly. — Sweetheart, you still don’t get it. I’m not leaving for work. I’m leaving you.
In the regional capital, Anna found a new life. The cultural center offered endless possibilities for creativity: exhibitions, conferences, international partnerships. She discovered leadership skills she hadn’t suspected in herself.
Financial independence let her rent a good apartment, travel, and meet interesting people. Old friends, from whom Mikhail had isolated her, happily reconnected.
— You’ve blossomed, — her friend Marina said over dinner. — I haven’t seen you this alive in years.
— You know, it turns out I’m not a gray mouse, — Anna laughed. — I just lived in a gray world for too long.
— And how’s the TV project?
— Wonderful! The first episodes got great reviews. Viewers are writing to thank us. It turns out people are interested in the history of their home region when you present it vividly.
— And no one laughs at “digging through papers”?
— On the contrary. I’m being invited to conferences and consultations. Last month I spoke at a university—students listened with their mouths open.
Meanwhile Mikhail, true to habit, started dating Olga six months later—a young art historian from a museum. As before, at first he admired her education and refinement, as if trying on a new mask for the next act of his one-man theater.
At a conference in the regional capital, Anna met Olga. The young woman looked tired but tried to hold herself together.
— Are you Anna? — she approached during the break, uncertainty in her voice. — Mikhail told me about you. He said you just couldn’t get along, that you have different views on life.
— I see, — Anna smiled with mild irony. — And how are things between you? Still as romantic as at the beginning?
— Honestly? — Olga lowered her voice, glancing around. — He’s started calling my work a hopeless whim. Says art history is an expensive hobby for losers who are afraid of real life. He also says I live in a world of illusions.
— And what about the education he so admired? — a hint of mockery colored Anna’s tone.
— Now he calls it showing off. Says I play the intellectual just to seem better than others.
Anna recalled her talk with Yekaterina and her own last years of torment.
— Olga, let me tell you something important. Something that might save you a few years of your life.
— I’m listening, — the young woman tensed.
— The most insidious thing about his methods? He begins by admiring exactly what he will later methodically destroy. First you’re an educated, refined soul; then you’re a conceited upstart. First your work is a calling; then it’s a worthless waste of time.
— But he says he wants to help me become better…
— Darling, a man who truly loves you doesn’t try to remake you to his liking. He accepts you as you are and helps you blossom, not wither.
Three days later Olga called.
— Anna, thank you from the bottom of my heart. I broke it off with Mikhail. After our conversation everything fell into place, like a puzzle that finally came together.
— How did he react? It must have been difficult.
— At first he tried to threaten me, said I’d regret it for the rest of my days. Then he switched to begging, swore he’d change, said I’d misunderstood everything. And at the end he started calling me an ungrateful fool who traded a real man for feminist nonsense.
— And you held firm?
— Yes, and you know what? It was easier than I thought. Once you see the whole picture, the manipulations become laughably primitive.
— You made the right choice. Life’s too short to waste it on those who don’t value us.
— Anna, how did you deal with the guilt? He was so convincing that I was destroying our happiness…
— Darling, the only thing you destroyed was his plan to turn you into a convenient marionette. And that, believe me, deserves applause, not tears.
Deprived of the chance to control a third woman in a row, Mikhail lost his usual footing. He began bouncing between jobs, quarreling with colleagues, losing friends one by one. His tried-and-true pattern had glitched badly—educated women no longer succumbed to his refined manipulations.
A month later he tried to contact Anna, leaving several voice messages.
— Anna, it’s Mikhail. Listen, I get that we’re over, but why are you turning other women against me? — his voice sounded irritated. — Olga told me you talked to her. What is this, kindergarten? We’re adults.
Anna didn’t respond to the first message. The second came a week later:
— You know, Anya, maybe I really was wrong about some things. Maybe we should meet, talk? I miss our conversations, your mind. You understand there’s no one like you.
And a third, openly angry:
— Well, good thing we broke up! You’ve turned into a bitter feminist who can’t sort out her own life and so ruins others’! Olga was stupid to listen to you. But it’s fine—she’ll realize what a mistake she made!
The last time she saw Mikhail was in a supermarket six months after the breakup. He looked older, lost, a kind of doom in his eyes. Seeing her, he tried to approach, but Anna walked past without slowing.
— Anna, wait! — he called after her. — Can’t we talk like civilized people?
She turned and looked at him steadily:
— Mikhail, we have nothing in common to talk about. I wish you to find yourself—and to stop looking for culprits for your own failures.
— You’ve become so callous… — he muttered.
— No, — Anna replied calmly. — I’ve become honest. And that’s a big difference.
The game of destruction was over for good.