“Sveta, accept nature’s bounty! Straight from the garden—courtesy of Mom and Dad!”
Pavel’s voice—deliberately cheerful and ringing—burst into the apartment’s silence. A galvanized bucket clanged as it hit the laminate in the entryway, leaving a dirty, damp circle on the clean floor. Pavel himself beamed as if he hadn’t hauled in a bucket of potatoes but at least a mammoth from the hunt. He shrugged off a light jacket to reveal a snow-white T-shirt and brushed an imaginary speck from his face. Rested, satisfied, smelling of city cologne, not of earth.
Sveta came out of the room, wiping her wet hands on her lounge pants as she walked. She had just finished washing the dishes from the dinner she’d eaten alone. She looked at her husband, then at the bucket. Something inside her tightened into a hard, cold knot. There it was. The crown of her summer sufferings. The final chord of three months of hard labor that Pavel tenderly called “helping my parents.”
Every weekend, from the very start of June. Every Friday night he would find a reason: a “critical project on fire,” or “made plans to meet the guys, can’t let them down,” or simply “headache, won’t make it.” And she went. She’d cram herself into a stifling commuter train, then rattle for another half hour in a packed bus out to their garden plot. There her mother-in-law, Nina Petrovna, would be waiting with a to-do list that seemed never to end.
Weeding. Endless rows of weeds under a blistering sun that made her head hum and her vision darken. A back that by Sunday evening had become one continuous, throbbing ache. Watering with heavy cans that raised blisters on her palms. Hilling potatoes, when clods of dry earth wedged under her nails, and that smell—the dusty tops and her own sweat—would cling to her until midweek. And over it all, the intent, appraising gaze of Nina Petrovna, who never praised but always found fault. “You’re chopping too shallow, Svetlana, leaving all the roots.” “Pour the water right at the base—why are you splashing it everywhere?”
“Well? See this? A whole bucket!” Pavel proudly nudged the bucket’s side with his foot. “Mom said this is the select stuff. Put aside especially for us. We’ll have our own potatoes all winter. Think of the savings!”
Sveta walked closer. The smell from the bucket hit her nose—the damp, heavy reek of a cellar and the first hints of rot. She peered inside. On top, like a shop display, lay about a dozen large, even, almost clean potatoes. Beautiful. Perfect. Exactly the kind she pictured as she gritted her teeth over yet another row of weeds. Beneath that first, showroom layer…
Silently she slid her hand into the bucket, feeling the unpleasant cool damp. Her fingers found something small and shriveled. She raked aside the top layer. What she saw underneath wasn’t just disrespect. It was a slap in the face. Nothing but small, greened, some already sprouting and rotting trash. The very potatoes her mother-in-law had tossed aside with contempt right in front of her into a separate pile “for the bin or to feed the livestock.” Slop. Swill.
She pulled one out. A tiny, green mutant with a soft, slimy patch on its side. The cold rot smeared her fingers. She lifted her eyes to her radiant husband. He was still smiling, waiting for gratitude. He didn’t see—or didn’t want to see—what exactly she was holding. To him it was just “potatoes from Mom.” To her it was the price of her humiliation. The price of her bent back. The price of her ruined summer. And the price turned out to be paltry.
“What is this, Pasha?” Sveta’s voice was quiet, almost soundless, but there was something ominous in that quiet. She still held the little rotting potato out before her like a piece of evidence in court.
Pavel, who had already headed for the living room, turned around. Genuine puzzlement was written on his face. He didn’t understand what the problem was. He’d performed a feat, brought home the spoils, and instead of joy and gratitude—this strange, icy tone.
“Potatoes. What’s with you? Mom sent them, I said so.”
“No,” she said evenly. “Potatoes are these. On top. Ten pieces. For appearances. And this”—she tilted her hand slightly—“what’s this?”
He came closer, reluctantly looked into the bucket, then at her hand. His face showed mild, irritated bewilderment, like someone being told about a trivial, insignificant flaw.
“Well, maybe a couple of little ones slipped in when they poured them. You can’t pick through every single one. Mom gathered them from the heart. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Sveta.”
Those words, tossed out in a breezy, lecturing tone, were the spark. The cold lump inside Sveta flared into a dull, furious fire. Slowly, with disgust, she uncurled her fingers. The rotten potato hit the clean laminate with a wet splat and left a dirty smear.
“A gift horse?” She gave a short laugh, but it came out sharp and vicious, like a dog’s bark. “Do you know what this ‘gift horse’ costs? I’ll tell you. It costs thirteen weekends. Every weekend this summer, Pasha. It costs sun-scorched shoulders I couldn’t even lay a bra strap on afterward. It costs blisters that split open right on the hoe’s handle, and I wrapped them with a filthy kerchief to finish the row. It costs a back that wouldn’t straighten on Mondays.”
She took a step toward him, her voice gathering force, taking on a steely ring. Pavel instinctively stepped back.
“I remember every bed, you hear? Every single one! How I yanked out couch grass with roots that clung to the dry soil like claws. How I hauled watering cans from the well because your pump broke back in May and your father was ‘too busy.’ How I breathed your poison for Colorado beetles because Nina Petrovna decided spraying is women’s work—‘not that hard.’”
As she spoke, scenes from the summer flickered before her eyes. There she was, doubled over in a furrow. The sun burning the back of her head till her vision swam. Her mother-in-law in a clean sunhat, delivering valuable instructions from the apple tree’s shade. And where was Pavel?
“What were you doing, Pasha? On Friday you told me about a project on fire, and on Saturday you were posting photos of shashlik at Seryoga’s. You complained of a migraine and lay around with your laptop on the couch all day. You were ‘helping a friend move,’ when in reality you were drinking beer in his new place. You think I don’t know? I know everything. I’d come back Sunday night, black with dirt and exhaustion, to cook you dinner and pack your clothes for the week while you told me how tired you were in the city. Tired from relaxing!”
“Stop it,” he hissed, color rising in his face. “You’re exaggerating. You’re always unhappy with everything! They asked you to help, and now you’re tallying up a bill! My parents aren’t young anymore!”
“Help?!” she exploded. “Helping is when you do it together! When one plows and the other rides into paradise on their back, it’s called something else! And don’t hide behind their age! Your father spent the whole summer building a new gazebo! He had strength for that! And your mother had plenty of strength to discuss the neighbor with me for three hours while I weeded! They’re not feeble, Pavel, they’re crafty! And they raised a son just like them. Who brought me a bucket of swill as payment for my labor and is now trying to convince me it’s a generous gift.”
“So you’ve put a price tag on your help?” Steel crept into Pavel’s voice. He straightened, casting off the peacemaker role. Now he was offended. His magnanimity, his parents’ generosity, had been trampled in the mud. “I thought you were helping from the heart, like a family member, but turns out you were counting work hours! Maybe I should send you a bill? For room and board? Enough whining! My parents aren’t obligated to feed you!”
“Feed.”
The word hit Sveta like a punch to the gut, knocking out the last breath and self-control. Not “thank.” Not “share the harvest.” “Feed.” Like a stray dog tossed scraps from the table. All that dull, aching pain in her back, the itch of midge bites, the humiliation of her mother-in-law’s nagging, the sweat running in rivulets down her face and stinging her eyes—everything condensed in an instant into that one single word. And the fog of rage clouding her vision suddenly lifted, replaced by an icy, blinding clarity. She saw it all: him, his parents, and herself in this picture. And she loathed the picture.
She looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. Not a husband, not someone she once loved, but a stranger, a smug man standing in the middle of her apartment in his expensive shoes and white T-shirt. Inside her there was nothing left but a scorched, cold emptiness and one single desire, clear as day.
“I broke my back all summer at your parents’ dacha while you ‘relaxed’ in the city! And what did they give me? A bucket of rotten potatoes?! Choke on your potatoes!”
Her shout wasn’t shrill; it was low, guttural, ripped from the deepest part of her. It filled not only the entryway but, it seemed, the whole apartment, bouncing off the walls and ceiling. In the same instant, without giving him time to react, she bent down. Her fingers closed around the cold metal handle of the galvanized bucket. With a jerk she lifted it. It was heavier than she’d thought—full of wet soil, rot, and humiliation.
Pavel lurched back, his eyes widening with incomprehension and nascent fear. He opened his mouth to say something but didn’t have time.
Sveta took a wide, sweeping step forward and heaved the bucket over.
There was a dull, wet crash. A disgusting scatter of tiny, green, shriveled tubers mixed with clods of black soil and rotting tops spilled across the light laminate. It all flew straight onto Pavel’s immaculate shoes, clinging to them, splattering his jeans with muck. The concentrated, nauseating stench of rot and a damp cellar instantly spread through the entryway.
He froze, petrified with shock. He stared down at his feet, sinking into the vile mass, and couldn’t get a word out. It was unthinkable. Beyond any quarrel he could have imagined. It was desecration. His personal little sanctuary—his expensive shoes, his clean apartment—had been deliberately befouled.
Sveta was breathing hard as she let the empty, ringing bucket slip from her hands. It clattered across the floor. She stood over the man-made chaos, over the heap of slop that a minute earlier had been called “a treat from my parents,” and looked at her stupefied husband. There was no triumph in her eyes, no regret. Only a cold, final decision. She had passed sentence.
“Tell your parents,” she said in a flat, lifeless voice, with no trace of her previous shout, “that their slave has resigned.”
Pavel’s stupor lasted exactly three heartbeats. Three seconds for his brain to process the unthinkable sight: his Italian leather shoes, bought only a month ago, buried under a layer of filthy, stinking sludge. His entryway—his fortress—turned into a garden dump. What shook him first out of the trance wasn’t anger, but the shock of material damage.
“What… what have you done?!” his voice broke into a screech, all the lazy velvet gone. “The laminate! You’ll ruin it! The shoes! Are you out of your mind?!”
He looked at her, expecting remorse, tears—anything that would fit his worldview. But Sveta wasn’t looking at him. Her gaze was aimed somewhere through him, into emptiness. She seemed not to hear his yelling. He had ceased to exist to her as a person, becoming a noisy piece of furniture blocking the way. Calmly, with a kind of detached grace, she skirted the dirty puddle, careful not to brush it with her slipper, and headed silently to the bedroom.
That calm enraged him much more than the act itself. He rushed after her, his feet sliding on the slick potatoes. Mud smeared from his shoes across the clean hallway floor, leaving ugly streaks.
“Where do you think you’re going?! I’m talking to you! You’re going to clean this up! Do you hear me?! Grab a rag right now and wipe it all up! Now!”
He grabbed her shoulder at the bedroom doorway. Beneath his fingers her body was hard and lifeless, like a mannequin’s. She turned her head slowly. In her eyes he saw nothing. No anger, no hurt, no fear. There was an absolute, ringing emptiness. She looked at his hand on her shoulder with such cold, disgusted puzzlement that he jerked his fingers back as if burned by ice.
Without a word, she walked into the bedroom. He stood in the doorway, not daring to step over the threshold, watching what she did. She didn’t flail around the room, didn’t start flinging things. She went to their shared bed—the very one they had chosen together two years ago—and calmly took his pillow. The one on the right. Then, with no effort at all, she pulled off the heavy quilted duvet. His duvet.
Arms full, she turned and came back toward him. He had to back into the hall to avoid bumping into her. She passed him by, emanating an aura of such icy composure that a chill ran down his spine. She went back to the entryway, to the epicenter of destruction.
He followed, spellbound.
She stopped beside the filthy heap. She gave a short swing and tossed his pillow onto the floor. It landed with a dull, soft thud a hair’s breadth from the potato sludge. Then she spread the duvet and, as one covers something unwanted, threw it over the top, onto the pillow. It made a makeshift, shabby bed right in the middle of the mess. His bed.
Pavel stared, and slowly, with a creak, the monstrosity of what was happening began to sink in. This wasn’t a tantrum. This was an execution.
Sveta straightened, brushed her hands as if dusting off something invisible, and finally looked him directly in the eye. Her voice was even and quiet, but each word drove into his mind like a nail.
“And you can live with them now.” She paused, letting the phrase soak in. Then she swept her gaze over the heap of rot on the floor and his new sleeping place. “Eat this slop yourselves.”
With that she turned away. She didn’t slam the door, didn’t make a single sob. She simply walked to the kitchen. Pavel stood like a statue, stunned. He heard the kitchen faucet handle creak sharply. And the sound of running water—steady and monotonous—became the only sound in the dead quiet of the apartment. She was washing the dirt from her hands. And he remained standing in the entryway, beside his blanket tossed into the filth, and the bucket of rotten potatoes. Alone. At the very center of his own personal, self-made hell…