Lyudmila Sergeyevna was carefully arranging porcelain cups on the shelf when she heard the familiar rumble of an engine in the yard. Her heart skipped a beat—the sound took her back to childhood, when her father would arrive in his old Volga. Now her brother Viktor drove one just like it.
“Tolya!” she called to her husband, who was fussing with fishing rods on the veranda. “Looks like we’ve got company.”
Anatoly Petrovich looked out the window and sighed heavily. A blue Volga really was parked by the gate, and out of it, one by one, climbed familiar figures: Viktor with Irina, their son Dima and daughter Nastya. The trunk was crammed with suitcases.
“Lusya!” Viktor shouted cheerfully, waving his arms. “We’re here to spend our vacation with you!”
Lyudmila Sergeyevna felt everything clench inside. She and Tolya had only just settled into the dacha they’d bought a year earlier after many years of saving. The little house fifty kilometers from the city had become their quiet haven. Tolya could finally fish at the local pond, and she could tend the garden and flowers without city noise.
“Vitya, you couldn’t have warned us?” she said, flustered, stepping into the yard.
“What’s there to warn about?” her brother waved it off. “We’re family! We thought—vacation time, so where do we go? The sea is expensive, and now our dear sister has a dacha. Right, kids?” he turned to his offspring.
Thirteen-year-old, long-limbed Nastya nodded, bored, without looking up from her phone. Dima, three years younger, was already tearing around the plot, kicking a ball.
“Dima, careful!” cried Lyudmila Sergeyevna, noticing the boy heading straight for the flowerbed.
Too late. The ball landed square in the center of the floral arrangement she’d been cultivating for two months.
“It’s nothing, Lusya,” Irina said breezily, hugging her sister-in-law. “Kids will be kids. But the air here, my goodness! We’re suffocating in the city.”
Anatoly Petrovich came out onto the porch with a strained smile.
“Hello. How long are you staying?”
“A week, we’re thinking,” Viktor answered, starting to unload the suitcases. “Maybe longer, if we like it. My vacation runs through the end of the month.”
Lyudmila Sergeyevna and Anatoly Petrovich exchanged glances. A week… maybe more.
“Well then,” the hostess sighed, “come inside. We weren’t expecting guests…”
“Oh, come on!” Viktor brushed it off. “We’re simple folks. Where are we going to sleep?”
“There are only two rooms in the house,” Lyudmila began to explain.
“That’s fine! We can sleep on the floor, on the couch. The main thing is you’ve basically got nature right here!”
The next few hours passed in a blur. Irina and Nastya took the bedroom, Viktor settled in the living room, and Dima got a folding cot on the veranda. Lyudmila Sergeyevna darted between the kitchen and the garden, trying to feed the relatives who had suddenly descended on them.
“And what’s this dishware you’ve got?” Irina asked, eyeing the set Lyudmila had carefully arranged in the china cabinet. “Pretty.”
“It was our mother’s,” the hostess replied. “Soviet porcelain, rare. I brought it out here cup by cup—I was afraid of breaking it.”
“Why keep it here? At the dacha?” Irina was surprised.
“Well, it’s pretty. And it’s something nice to serve guests with.”
Irina shrugged and reached for one of the cups. At that moment Dima burst into the room, chasing imaginary enemies with a toy gun.
“Bang, bang!” he shouted, waving his arms.
Irina flinched and dropped the cup. It hit the floor and shattered into several pieces.
“Oh,” she said, flustered. “Dima, what are you doing!”
Lyudmila Sergeyevna crouched and began gathering the fragments. Her throat tightened—it had been their mother’s favorite cup from the 1954 set.
“Lusya, I’m sorry,” Irina said guiltily. “We’ll buy you a new one.”
“It’s fine,” Lyudmila answered quietly. “It happens.”
But inside, she was boiling.
By evening the dacha had turned into a branch of a kids’ camp. Dima tore around the plot knocking over everything in his path. Nastya complained about lousy internet and demanded a trip into town for “proper Wi-Fi.” Viktor and Irina stretched out in lounge chairs and discussed plans for tomorrow.
“Tolya, will you take us fishing tomorrow?” Viktor asked his brother-in-law. “I brought rods.”
Anatoly Petrovich nodded, though he’d planned to sit alone at the pond with his rod the next day.
“And will you take me to the woods for mushrooms, Lusya?” Irina asked. “I’ve always dreamed of mushroom-picking, but where do you find them in the city?”
“Of course,” Lyudmila smiled, mentally saying goodbye to her own plans.
“Great!” Viktor exclaimed. “And in the evening we’ll do shashlik! Tolya, do you have a grill?”
“I do.”
“And the meat? I figured you’d stock up…”
Anatoly wanted to say they’d been expecting an ordinary weekend, not a week-long feast, but he held his tongue.
“I’ll go to the store tomorrow,” he promised.
“Excellent!” Viktor brightened. “You know, Tolya, Irka and I haven’t had a real rest in ages. Three years we haven’t seen each other properly. You could show us a good time, right?”
Lyudmila felt the familiar irritation. It had always been this way with Viktor—he had a knack for presenting his wishes as something self-evident. As a kid he’d “borrow” her toys and then forget to return them.
Dinner was noisy. Dima smeared ketchup over the white tablecloth, Nastya complained about the simple country food and demanded French fries, Viktor told jokes, and Irina planned the mushroom outing.
“What’s over there, beyond the forest?” she pointed out the window.
“There’s a lake,” Lyudmila replied. “But it’s private; you can’t swim there.”
“So what if it’s private!” Viktor waved it off. “Who’ll see us? The kids can swim—nobody will know.”
“Vitya, there are guards…”
“Oh, don’t be so proper. You only live once!”
After dinner the guests finally dispersed to their rooms. Lyudmila and Anatoly stayed in the kitchen to do the dishes.
“Well, what do you think?” Tolya asked softly.
“What can I do?” his wife answered wearily. “He is my brother.”
“A week…” Anatoly shook his head. “Maybe more.”
“Maybe they won’t last here. They’re city folk, after all.”
But that hope didn’t pan out. In the morning Viktor enthusiastically set about rearranging their lives. He moved the furniture in the living room “to make it more convenient,” found an old folding cot in the shed and set it up outside—“for a healthy afternoon nap in the open air.” Irina rearranged all the pots in the kitchen and even managed to advise Lyudmila on the proper way to make okroshka.
“You know, Lusya, you make it with kefir, but you really should buy the right kvas. We’ll go to the store—I’ll show you which one.”
Lyudmila had been making okroshka with kefir for thirty years, but she stayed silent.
Fishing turned into an ordeal. Viktor kept switching spots, loudly discussing every little thing and scaring off the fish. Anatoly sat with his rod and dreamed of silence.
“Are there even fish here?” Viktor asked after half an hour. “Maybe we should go somewhere else?”
“It’s good here, you just need to keep it down,” Tolya asked.
“Come on! Fish aren’t that timid. Look—the ducks are swimming and it’s fine.”
In the end, after three hours, they caught one little crucian carp and let it go at once.
The mushroom-picking also turned into an adventure. Irina took plastic bags instead of baskets, kept shouting “don’t go far” to the kids, and every five minutes asked whether the mushroom she’d found was edible.
“And this one? And this one? And this pretty one with the red cap?”
“That’s a fly agaric,” Lyudmila explained patiently.
“And why can’t we take it? It’s so bright!”
By the end of the week, Lyudmila and Anatoly felt wrung out. Their quiet dacha had turned into a waystation. Every day demanded new entertainments, purchases, and cooking. Irina managed to break the garden watering can, Dima trampled the carrot bed, and Nastya drained the dacha radio’s battery by leaving it on all night.
“Lusya, the mosquitos here are vicious,” Irina complained at breakfast. “I didn’t sleep all night. Maybe you could buy something for them?”
“I’m bored,” Dima whined. “Can we go into the city? There’s an amusement park.”
“And decent internet wouldn’t hurt,” Nastya added.
Meanwhile Viktor was making plans for a second week:
“You know, Tolya, maybe we should put up a gazebo here? I’ll buy the materials in the city; you and I can knock it together over the weekend. There’s nowhere proper to sit.”
Lyudmila looked at her husband and saw in his eyes the same desperate exhaustion she felt herself. In the evening, when the guests finally settled down, the couple stepped out onto the porch.
“Tolya,” his wife said quietly, “I can’t do this anymore.”
“Me neither. But what do we do? We can’t throw them out.”
“What if…” Lyudmila looked thoughtfully at the stars. “What if we get sick?”
“How do you mean?”
“Pretend to be ill. So they’ll leave on their own.”
Anatoly smirked.
“And what will we be sick with?”
“Something contagious. Something the kids could catch.”
They discussed the plan late into the night. By morning, everything was decided.
Lyudmila got up before everyone and coughed loudly in the kitchen on purpose. When Irina asked what was wrong, she put a hand to her forehead.
“I don’t feel well. I think I’ve got a fever.”
“My head hurts too,” Anatoly chimed in, appearing in the kitchen. “And kind of a dry cough.”
“And I’m itchy all over,” added Lyudmila, ostentatiously scratching her arm. “Maybe we picked up something in the forest yesterday.”
Viktor frowned.
“Maybe you should see a doctor?”
“What doctor out here,” Lyudmila sighed. “It’s an hour and a half to the clinic.”
“Listen,” Irina fretted, “you don’t think it’s something contagious, do you? I’ve got the kids…”
“I don’t know,” the hostess said thoughtfully. “Could be.”
By midday the “patients” were already in bed, periodically coughing and complaining about the itch. Lyudmila even drew red spots on her hands—“a rash from some unknown illness.”
“Mom, what if it’s chickenpox?” Nastya worried. “I never had it as a kid.”
“Or ringworm,” Dima added. “A kid in Seryozha’s class had ringworm—they put him in the hospital.”
Irina rushed about the house, peeking in on the “sick” every so often and torn by doubts. Viktor tried to keep up a brave front, but he too kept casting uneasy glances at the children.
“Listen,” Irina said at last, “maybe we shouldn’t risk it? The kids are little—if they catch something…”
“Yeah,” Viktor agreed. “Especially since Dima’s starting school soon. If he gets sick, he’ll miss the start of the year.”
By evening, the suitcases were lined up in the hallway.
“Lusya, I’m sorry it turned out this way,” Irina said contritely. “We’d stay to help, but the kids…”
“Oh, please, of course—go,” Lyudmila replied in a weak voice. “No point in risking it.”
“Get well soon,” Viktor said as they said goodbye. “Call if you need anything.”
The blue Volga disappeared around the bend, leaving a cloud of dust. Lyudmila and Anatoly stood by the gate, watching the car go.
“Well,” Tolya said. “We’re free.”
“At last,” his wife breathed.
They walked around the plot, taking stock of the damage. Trampled flowerbeds, a broken watering can, greasy skewers left on the wooden table from the shashlik… But the dacha was theirs again.
“You know,” Lyudmila said, wiping the last traces of her ‘illness’ off her hands with micellar water, “we handled that pretty well.”
“Oh yes,” Anatoly smirked. “Practically actors.”
They sat on the porch and, for the first time in a week, truly relaxed. Evening quiet wrapped the dacha; somewhere in the pond a fish splashed, and grasshoppers chirred in the grass.
“How about fishing tomorrow morning?” Tolya asked.
“And I’ll set the beds to rights,” Lyudmila nodded.
They sat in silence, savoring the peace. The dacha was their home again, their quiet refuge from the bustle. And next time, if relatives suddenly decided to show up uninvited, they would already have a defense plan ready.