For most people, a cemetery is a place of farewell, grief, an ending. For Lyonya it had become something like home. Not in the literal sense: he had no roof over his head, unless you counted the weathered granite crypt he crawled into only in the harshest frosts. But in spirit, in his soul, he felt at home here.
Here silence reigned, broken only by birdsong and the occasional muffled sob of those who came to honor the dead. Here no one looked down on him, drove him away, or pointed at his shabby jacket and flattened shoes. The dead were indifferent to everything—and in that lay a strange, calming justice.
Lyonya woke from the cold—the morning dew had settled on his cardboard blanket. The air was crystalline, a mist lay low over the graves as if trying to shelter them from the world. He sat up, rubbed his eyes and, as he did every day, swept his gaze over his realm—rows of crosses and monuments, grass and moss grown wild.
His morning began not with coffee but with a round. He had to check whether wreaths had been disturbed, flowers tipped over, whether the night had left footprints where they didn’t belong. His best friend and, at the same time, his boss was Sanych—a gray-haired, grouchy watchman with a rough voice but kind, attentive eyes.
“Still rooted here like a post?” came his rasp from the watchman’s hut. “Go have some hot tea, or you’ll catch your death.”
“In a minute, Sanych,” Lyonya called back, not breaking off from his task.
He headed for a modest grave in the far corner of the cemetery. A simple gray slab engraved: “Antonina Sergeyevna Volkova. 1965–2010.” No photograph, no words of comfort. But to Lyonya it was the holiest place on earth. His mother rested here.
He barely remembered her—neither face nor voice. His memory began with the orphanage, with institutional walls and strangers’ faces. She had gone too soon. But by her grave he felt warmth, as if someone unseen stood beside him. As if she still cared for him. Mama. Antonina.
He carefully pulled the weeds, wiped the stone with a damp rag, straightened the small bouquet of wildflowers he had brought the day before. He spoke to her, told her about the weather, about yesterday’s wind, about the raven’s caw, about the soup Sanych had given him. He complained, he gave thanks, he asked for protection. He believed she heard. That belief was his support. To the world he was a vagrant, needed by no one. But here, before this stone, he was someone. He was a son.
The day went on as usual. Lyonya helped Sanych repaint the railing around an old grave, earned a bowl of hot soup for his trouble, and returned to his “mother.” He crouched there, telling her how the sun broke through the fog, when the silence was suddenly torn by an alien sound—the hiss of tires on gravel.
A glossy black car pulled up to the gate. A woman stepped out. She looked as if she had come off a magazine cover. Cashmere coat, impeccable hair, a face in which grief could be read but not suffering—rather dignity in sorrow. In her hands she held a huge bouquet of white lilies.
Instinctively, Lyonya shrank into himself, trying to become invisible. But the woman walked straight toward him. Straight toward his mother’s grave.
His heart clenched. She stopped at the headstone, and her shoulders began to shake—silent, deep sobs. She sank to her knees, oblivious to her expensive clothes getting dirty, and laid the lilies beside his modest bouquet.
“I’m sorry…” Lyonya couldn’t keep quiet. He felt like the guardian of this place. “Are you… are you here for her?”
The woman flinched and lifted her eyes to him—wet, shaken.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“You knew my mother too?” Lyonya asked with touching sincerity.
For a moment confusion flickered in her gaze. She slowly took him in—his torn clothes, thin face, eyes full of simplicity and trust. Then she looked again at the inscription: “Antonina Sergeyevna Volkova.”
And suddenly she understood. It hit her like a blow—she drew in a sharp breath, turned pale, her lips trembled. Her eyes rolled back and she began to fall. Lyonya managed to catch her before she struck the stone.
“Sanych! Sanych, over here!” he shouted, panicked.
The watchman ran in, breathing hard, but at once grasped what needed doing.
“Get her to the hut! Don’t just stand there!”
Together they hauled the woman into the little room that smelled of tea and tobacco and laid her on the old cot. Sanych splashed water on her face and held smelling salts under her nose. She groaned, slowly opened her eyes, looked around as if not understanding where she was. Then her gaze settled on Lyonya standing nearby, his worn cap clutched in his hands.
She looked at him for a long time, as if trying to find something in his features. The shock was gone from her eyes—there was only a deep, unbearable sorrow and a strange recognition. She propped herself up, reached out a hand, and whispered the words that turned his life upside down:
“How long… how long I’ve been looking for you…”
Lyonya and Sanych traded incredulous glances. Sanych poured water into a glass and handed it to the woman. She took a few sips, gathered herself, and sat up.
“My name is Natalia,” she said quietly, but more steadily now. “For you to understand why I reacted that way… I have to start from the very beginning.”
And she began. Her story carried them into the past—more than thirty years back.
She had been a young girl from a backwater town, who came to the capital with dreams of a better life. With no money and no connections, she got a job as a maid in a wealthy house. The mistress—a domineering, cold widow—kept everyone in fear. The only light in Natalia’s life was the mistress’s son, Igor. He was handsome and charming but weak, completely under his mother’s thumb.
Their love was secret and doomed. When Natalia became pregnant, Igor was frightened. He promised to marry her, to fight, but under his mother’s pressure he broke. The widow wanted neither a poor daughter-in-law nor an illegitimate child.
Natalia was allowed to stay in the house until she gave birth; afterward, they promised to give her some money and send her away—and the child to an orphanage. Only one woman supported her then—another maid, Tonya. Antonina.
Slight, unobtrusive, Antonina was always there—bringing food, comforting, helping. Natalia considered her her only friend in that alien house, not noticing the shadow flitting in her eyes. Envy. Deep, almost sickly—of her youth, her beauty, her love for Igor, even of the unwanted child Antonina herself had never managed to have.
The birth was difficult. When Natalia came to, they told her the child had been too weak and had died a few hours after birth. Her heart broke. Numb with grief, she was shoved out the door with a small sum of money. Igor didn’t even show up to say goodbye.
Years passed. The pain dulled, but one day Natalia accidentally learned the truth. Antonina quit shortly after Natalia’s departure and left a note with one of the servants. In it, tormented by remorse, she confessed everything: she had switched a living, healthy infant for a stillborn from the hospital, paying a nurse.
She had abducted Natalia’s son. Why? Out of a twisted sense of pity, out of longing for what she could never have. She wanted to be a mother. She wanted to love. She wanted to have at least some fragment of the life she couldn’t touch. In the note she wrote that she would raise the boy as her own, love him with all her heart. And then she disappeared.
From that moment Natalia searched. For years. For decades. She followed every lead, questioned people, hired private detectives—everything in vain. Her son seemed to have vanished into thin air.
Now she finished her story and looked straight into Lyonya’s eyes, who sat as if stunned. Sanych kept silent, forgetting about his cigarette, whose smoke rose in a thin thread to the ceiling.
“Antonina… the woman you called mother…” Natalia’s voice trembled, “she was my friend. And my executioner. She stole you from me. I don’t know what became of her. Perhaps she couldn’t bear the burden of the lie, feared the truth would come out—and left you at the orphanage. And this grave… maybe she purchased it for herself in advance. Came here to repent. It’s the only explanation I can offer.”
Lyonya said nothing. The inner world he had built on faith in a simple, if bitter, truth was collapsing. Everything he had considered sacred turned out to be a deception. The woman before whose stone he bowed his head every morning was not his mother but a kidnapper. And his real mother sat before him—a stranger, wealthy, smelling of expensive perfume.
“But that’s not all,” Natalia went on softly, seeing him shrink from the pain. “A few months ago Igor found me. Your father. All these years he lived with guilt. His mother died, he inherited her fortune, but he never knew happiness. Recently the doctors gave him a diagnosis: he doesn’t have long. Before dying he decided to atone. He spent a great deal of money, hired the best detectives—and they found me. And then… they found you, Lyonya. They traced Antonina’s path, learned which orphanage she had left you in. Igor transferred everything he had to me and begged one thing of me: to find you… and bring you to him. He wants to see you. To ask for forgiveness. He’s in a hospice, Lyonya. He has only a few days left. Perhaps even hours.”
Her voice faltered. The room filled with the ticking of the old clock and the sound of Lyonya’s heavy breathing. The truth was too huge, too cruel to take in at once.
He sat with his head down, looking at his hands—dirty, with broken nails, at his torn trousers, at the shoes with socks poking through. His whole life flashed before his eyes: hunger, cold, contempt, loneliness. And all of it—built on a lie. The woman he loved had been the one who stole his mother from him. And his real mother sat beside him. And somewhere a father he had never known was dying.
“Lyonya…” Natalia said his name in a plea. “Please. Let’s go to him. He’s waiting. He has to see you. Right to the very end.”
He lifted his eyes. A storm raged there: pain, anger, disbelief… and shame. Sharp, searing shame for his clothes, his appearance, for the thought of showing up like this before a dying man—before a father he had never even dared to imagine.
“I… I can’t,” he managed. “Look at me…”
“I don’t care what you look like!” Natalia burst out suddenly, almost a shout. “You are my son! Do you hear? Mine! And we’re going. Now. Immediately.”
She stood and held out her hand. Lyonya looked at it—at the well-kept fingers, the tears in her eyes, the resolve in which no doubts remained. And something inside him gave way. Hesitantly, with a trembling motion, he put his grimy palm into hers. Sanych, standing in the corner, only nodded—briefly, approvingly.
The road to the hospice seemed endless. At first—silence. Lyonya sat on the soft leather seat, afraid to move, as if he might soil a world not meant for him. Then Natalia asked quietly:
“Were you… very cold in winter?”
“Sometimes,” he answered just as softly.
“And you… were you alone all this time?”
“I had Sanych. And… her,” he nodded back toward the cemetery, now somewhere behind them.
And in that moment something broke open. Natalia began to cry—quietly, stifling her sobs. Lyonya could not hold back either. He wept soundlessly, tears running down his cheeks, wiping them away with the sleeve of his torn jacket. They talked—about the lost years, the hurt, how loneliness had burned them both. In that expensive car speeding through the city, two strangers became close for the first time. A mother and her son.
The hospice met them with silence and the smell of medicine. They were led to a private room. On the bed, wrapped in wires, lay a thin, almost transparent man. Igor’s face was wasted, wisps of gray hair on the pillow. His breathing was shallow and rare.
“Igor,” Natalia whispered. “Igor… I found him. I brought our son.”
His eyelids fluttered. Slowly, with effort, he opened his eyes. His gaze slid from Natalia to Lyonya and stopped. He looked for a long time. He tried to comprehend. And then—in the depths of those tired eyes—recognition flared. Pain. Repentance. And—relief. He weakly moved his hand, trying to reach.
Lyonya stepped forward and took his cold, brittle fingers in his own. There were no words. None were needed. In that touch there was everything: the forgiveness he had not asked for and the love the father had not dared to hope for. Lyonya looked into those fading eyes and saw his own reflection there. And in that instant all resentment, all bitterness left him. Only a bright, quiet sorrow remained.
His father squeezed his hand faintly. A shadow of a smile touched his lips. And he closed his eyes. Beside them the monitor let out a long, even tone. Igor died. He died holding the hand of the son he had not seen for almost his entire life. Whom he found only at the last moment.
Natalia came up behind and wrapped her arms around Lyonya’s shoulders. They stood like that—together—in the silence of a new reality where there was no longer any place for lies. Only truth. Only pain. Only a beginning. The beginning of a life in which they would no longer be alone.