Midnight had finished its dark ball outside the Khrushchyovka windows when Veronika, practically dragging her feet, slid the key into the lock. It felt as if even the metal resisted, unwilling to let this exhausted shadow of a woman back in. Not “without hands and feet”—that would be too gentle. She felt like a broken mechanism whose gears were worn smooth and wires burned out. Hunger was vicious, sharp, and nauseating all at once, and rage was a thick, black tar flooding her from within.
“How much longer? — her temples pounded. — Where’s the limit? When will I finally break?” She had asked herself this requiem of a question every night for a full year now, ever since her life had turned into hell under the sign “VinoMir.”
Veronika worked at that cursed shop—an aquarium of alcohol and human vices—from eight in the morning until eleven at night. Hard labor. Lightless, soul-draining. The owner, a greedy spider named Arkady Petrovich, had spun a web of surveillance cameras, and each glance of his through a lens seared her back like red-hot iron. Sit down? A privilege punished by a hefty fine. “If you’re sitting, you’re not working!”—that motto had been branded into the subconscious of every saleswoman. By evening her legs burned like fire, swelled, throbbed, begging for mercy.
And those crates… Heavy, clattering coffins full of bottles that they—the women—had to unload themselves. Fifteen minutes to grab a bite—and back to the front line, to the counter, where customers, not always sober or sane, were waiting. She had to smile. Smile at drunks, at rude, tipsy louts, at quarrelsome ladies. Smile when all she wanted was to cry from helplessness or scream from rage.
Her coworkers considered Veronika the paragon of patience, an iron lady nothing could break. Few lasted here more than six months. Staff flowed away like a river, slipping off the hook of this infernal fishing net and vanishing who-knew-where. Veronika held on. Because there wasn’t just air behind her back. The entire meaning of her existence stood there—her seven-year-old son, Stepan. She desperately needed money. That grimy money reeking of vodka and sweat was the only thread tying them to a normal life. Where else could she go? Their town, once noisy and industrial, was now quietly dying. The sawmill and the hydrolysis plant, once the breadwinners of thousands, now stood like grim monuments to a bygone era, guarded by ghostly watchmen keeping an eye only on dust and memories.
Crossing the threshold, Veronika struggled out of her jacket and froze, hearing muffled voices from the kitchen. Her heart skipped—a heart trained to expect trouble. Only then did a scrap of her morning conversation with her mother float up: “Veronichka, don’t forget, Aunt Irina is coming today.”
Aunt Irina. Her mother’s older sister. From Irkutsk. From another, bigger life. She hadn’t been around in five years.
The kitchen smelled of freshly brewed tea and homemade pie. Two sisters, both no longer young, gray at the temples, fine lines at the eyes, sat at the table wrapped in the warm glow of the lampshade. And that light fell on Veronika—on her gaunt, pale face with dark circles under her eyes.
“My dear!” Aunt Irina was the first to jump up, a woman with gentle features and radiant eyes. “Our beauty, you’re completely worn out, poor girl!”
She hugged her niece, and for a moment Veronika was enveloped by a long-forgotten sense of safety, of childhood warmth. They kissed her, sat her down, and made her eat her fill.
Then Aunt Irina, taking a sip of tea, looked straight at Veronika, frankly, the family way, without beating around the bush:
“Verochka, sweetheart, how much longer can this go on? Look at yourself! You’re burning alive in that bondage. Drop it all and move to us. Irkutsk is a big city, more opportunities. We’ll find you work—good work, decent. And…”—she paused—“life doesn’t end here. You’re only thirty. You’re a young, beautiful woman. Maybe you’ll find your happiness yet. Anything can happen!”
The words fell into the silence like stones into a bog. Veronika felt everything inside tighten into a lump of bitter, compacted experience.
“No, Auntie, I’ve had enough,” she exhaled, her voice hoarse and tired. “I’ve had two tries at being ‘made happy.’ Two loud, bright ones, and both failures. Enough. But in two months, on vacation, I promise, Stepa and I will come to you. Just for a week. I’ll take him to the circus, the theater, the amusement park. He dreams about it.”
She kissed her aunt on the cheek and, pleading bone-deep exhaustion, shuffled off to her room. Stepa was sleeping peacefully, his even breathing the only sound that brought calm. But Veronika herself, despite her fatigue, couldn’t sleep. Seeing her aunt had stirred up the silt of feelings long buried at the bottom of memory.
And consciousness, like a malicious demon, began methodically hauling from the storerooms of the past those very scenes she had spent years trying to forget.
…She was eighteen. With a gold medal behind her and a burning desire to become a doctor, she had enrolled in a medical college in Irkutsk and was living with Aunt Irina. Her studies came easily; she burned for her future profession. One day their group went on an excursion to the Anatomy Museum at the medical university. And there, among exhibits frozen in eternal stillness, her heart suddenly beat fast—alive. She met Him. Artyom. A final-year dental student, charm and confidence embodied. He saw her—a modest girl with a luxurious chestnut braid and vast, bottomless eyes the color of a summer sky—and was smitten.
He was perfect. Self-assured, brilliantly educated, dressed to the nines, witty, gallant. He seemed like a knight from a novel who rode in one day and carried her off to a fairy tale. They had been seeing each other barely more than a month when he introduced her to his parents and proposed. Veronika floated somewhere on cloud nine.
Artyom’s parents, successful dentists and owners of their own clinic, threw a lavish, opulent wedding. On Veronika’s side there were only her mother, her aunt and uncle, their son with his wife, and one friend from college. The friend served as witness. Her father was gone—he had died long ago—and her mother never remarried, dedicating herself to her daughter.
The newlyweds were given a chic apartment downtown, furnished to the last word in fashion. Artyom finished his studies brilliantly and joined the family business. He earned a lot right away, more with each month. He traded his car up for an expensive foreign model. Their life seemed cloudless. At nineteen, Veronika gave birth to their son, Stepa. She had to leave college.
And then… then something went wrong. First, Artyom began staying late at work. Then disappearing for a day. Then two. He always had ironclad, unassailable explanations. She believed him. Desperately, hysterically, blindly wanted to believe.
But one day, out walking with the stroller, she stepped into a small café to buy water. And she saw him. Her husband, her knight. He sat at a table with a slender blonde and looked at her with the same adoration he had once turned on Veronika. She froze, unable to move. Then he leaned over and kissed the girl on the lips. Gently, passionately.
The scene at home was awful. He didn’t excuse himself. He explained.
“Verka, just look at me!” he protested, almost sincerely. “I’m a successful man! I have everything! And you think in our circle it’s normal to be faithful? Everybody lives like this! Everyone has mistresses. Being a faithful husband is laughable—low-status! Put up with it. You’re a smart girl.”
And she put up with it. Five long, humiliating years. She was ashamed to return to her mother—a miserable, broken, disgraced woman. She kept hoping he would come to his senses, that the mask of the successful macho would slip and she would see the Artyom from the museum.
But everything has a limit. So did her patience.
She left. She packed her son’s things and her few belongings and returned to her mother. She returned empty-handed. Their luxurious apartment had somehow, through legal sleight of hand, been registered to her mother-in-law; the car and garage—to her father-in-law. Aunt Irina begged her to sue, but Veronika was in a profound depression. She knew—they would have the best lawyers, they would grind her to dust, and she would be left with astronomical court costs on top. Artyom didn’t refuse to pay child support—small mercy. Though to her, the sums were paltry. Apparently Daddy’s accounting showed only a fraction of his real income.
“So that’s it? It’s all over?” her mother asked, looking at her emaciated daughter, aged ten years, with bluish shadows under her eyes.
After getting Stepa into kindergarten, Veronika went to work. At that very “VinoMir.”
But youth has its way. Her heart—wounded and deceived—still thirsted for love, her body for tenderness. A year later she met Him. The second one. Grigory. Tall, broad-shouldered, with a roguish, charming smirk. He had a little bar he grandly called a “café-restaurant.” The local noisy youth flocked there. He worked until three in the morning; he smelled of expensive tobacco, alcohol, and the spirit of easy money.
“Here he is, the real one,” naive Veronika thought then. “Simple, one of us. Not like that lying aristocrat Artyom. Now I’ve truly found a faithful partner.”
And… she was cruelly mistaken. Very soon the rose-colored glasses cracked. The honeymoon was short. Nearly every night Grisha came home dead drunk, reeking of cheap perfume and other women. If anything, Veronika had learned to recognize that specific “scent of betrayal” among a thousand.
The quarrels began—fights, smashed dishes, tears. They broke up and got back together, as if tied by some toxic thread. It went on for two years. Two years of humiliation, empty promises, and belated remorse. And then one day, after yet another of his nocturnal sprees, looking at sleeping Stepa, she realized—enough. The end. Final and irrevocable.
She left. Again. Disillusioned with life, with love, with men, with herself. Her soul was scorched and hollowed out. She drew a bold cross over her private life. No dates, no meetings, no hopes. Only work. Home. Son. And a quiet, gray hopelessness. And today Aunt Irina, with her talk of moving and new happiness, had painfully dug into wounds that had barely begun to heal.
…Her aunt left, but extracted a firm promise from Veronika that she would come in the summer with her son, just as she’d said.
And Veronika kept her word. In the summer the three of them—she, her mother, and Stepan—came to Irkutsk. Her aunt threw a real feast, laid a splendid table, beamed with happiness.
At the table, besides the family, there was her aunt’s son with his wife and… another guest. A man of about thirty-five, short, solidly built, with kind, slightly sad eyes and a broad, honest bald patch he made no effort to hide. He was introduced: “Nikolai Petrovich, my late friend’s son—God rest her soul. Works at city hall. And, by the way, a bachelor.”
Veronika understood everything. Auntie had decided to play matchmaker. She tensed inwardly, ready to defend. Nikolai Petrovich turned out to be pleasant and incredibly courteous. All evening he paid Veronika quiet attentions—poured her tea, offered pie, joked lightly and cleverly. But… she didn’t like him. Not at all. Not her type. Not her hero. Beside the ghost of stately Artyom and the brawny Grigory, he seemed ordinary, simple, too down-to-earth.
When they said goodbye, he, a little embarrassed, invited her to a café for the next day. It would’ve been rude to refuse, so Veronika, gritting her teeth, agreed.
The meeting went surprisingly well. He arrived with a modest but very beautiful bouquet of irises (how did he guess they were her favorite flowers?). He was gallant, a good listener, his jokes were subtle and kind. He didn’t boast, didn’t show off—he was… genuine. Walking her home, Nikolai Petrovich suddenly stopped and, looking straight into her eyes, spoke quietly but very distinctly:
“Veronika, I understand we’ve only just met. But I’ve seen a lot of people in my time. And I see that you are an extraordinary, strong, and beautiful woman. I like you very much. I don’t promise storms and passions. But I am ready to love you and your son. Seriously and for the long haul. Think about it. Give me a chance.”
He gave her three days to decide. Veronika walked home thinking: “I’ve already married for great, passionate love. How did that end? I’ve tried infatuation, desire—how did that end? Maybe I should try something else. Something rational. Calm.”
She agreed. A month later they had a very modest wedding with only the closest family. Veronika and Stepa moved in with Nikolai, into his cozy three-room apartment that smelled of books and coffee.
And then the most amazing thing began. Outwardly calm, even a bit phlegmatic, Nikolai turned out to be a man of iron will and remarkable organizational talent. First, he found Artyom and had a man-to-man talk with him. He didn’t threaten or demand. He persuaded. And he secured an official consent for Stepa’s adoption.
“We’re one family now. And our surname should be one, too,” he told Veronika gently, leaving no room for objection.
He didn’t keep her like a pampered toy. He did something greater. Nikolai handled all the paperwork, rented a small but cozy space in a good neighborhood, bought the first batch of goods—quality, fashionable women’s clothing. And overnight Veronika became the owner of her own little boutique and its sole salesperson.
“A woman must be independent, Verochka,” he said. “Not just ‘attached to her husband,’ but self-sufficient. Then confidence appears, and the respect of others, and a different happiness—real happiness.”
And he was absolutely right. In just a year—year and a half—the cowed, perpetually tired, unsure woman began to turn into someone else. Straight back, steady gaze, a business suit, the ability to negotiate with suppliers. Her business grew. Soon she no longer rented the premises—she bought them. Then she opened a second location. Then a third.
Nikolai turned out to be not just a kind man. He was her rock, her quiet harbor, her most reliable rear guard and partner. He didn’t envy her success; he was sincerely proud of it. He got along wonderfully with Stepa, helped with homework, went to parent-teacher meetings. And three years later their daughter, Masha, was born.
They’ve been together seven years now. Seven years of quiet, solid, absolute happiness. Without storms and scenes, without suspicion or betrayal. With mutual respect, support, and a deep, hard-won gratitude to each other.
Veronika loves her husband. She loves him with a quiet, calm, but unbelievably deep love. The kind that is stronger than any passion. She grasped a simple, brilliant truth: happiness is not a bright, blinding flash that leaves your eyes aching and a scorched wasteland behind. Happiness is a steady, warm, gentle sun that shines every day. It is the quiet harbor after a long and terrifying voyage across a raging ocean. And it is worth it.