Veronika arrived by bus, as always.
She stepped off at the bus stop—stylish and beautiful, unmistakably from the city, wearing a long faux-leather coat and a hand-knitted scarf. A backpack hung over her shoulders, and she carried a shopping bag in one hand. Inside were soy milk, tofu, an avocado, and a packet of gluten-free crispbread.
She set foot on the village road, covered with its first thin layer of ice, and immediately caught the familiar smells.
Woodsmoke from the stove. Manure. Damp, decaying leaves.
The smells of childhood—the very smells she had spent three years deliberately and persistently trying to forget.
The house stood on the riverbank—old, built of logs, with carved window frames her grandfather had once made by hand. Her mother came out onto the porch, wiping her hands on her apron.
“You’re here. Well, come inside. Why are you standing there?”
Her mother’s name was Galina Ivanovna. She was sixty-three years old and had spent her entire life in the village. First she had worked on the farm, then in crop production, and now she was retired.
She had a vegetable garden, chickens, and a goat. Her hands were cracked from years of hard work, but her eyes were still lively and sharp.
They embraced.
Veronika breathed in. Her mother smelled familiar—of smoke, bread, and some indefinable warmth.
“You’re so thin,” her mother said, examining her from arm’s length. “And pale. What do they feed you in that city?”
“Mom, I’m on a plant-based diet.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t eat meat, fish, milk, or eggs. Nothing that comes from animals.”
Galina Ivanovna was silent for a moment. Then she asked:
“So what do you eat?”
“Plants. Vegetables, fruit, grains, legumes. It’s healthy, Mom. It’s ethical. Animals shouldn’t be killed.”
“Right,” her mother said, and went back into the house.
Veronika followed her.
They sat in the kitchen. Veronika arranged her groceries on the table: avocado, tofu, soy milk, and quinoa.
“Look,” she explained. “This is tofu. Soy cheese. It has more protein than meat. And this is avocado—it contains healthy fats. Absolutely no cholesterol.”
Her mother stared at the avocado.
“Looks like a pear. Is it expensive?”
“Well… not really.”
“How much is ‘not really’?”
“Two hundred rubles each.”
Her mother gave a snort.
“Two hundred rubles for a pear? Have you lost your mind?”
“Mom, it isn’t a pear. It’s a superfood.”
“A what?”
“A very healthy product.”
“Right,” her mother said. “Of course.”
Veronika sighed. She pulled a booklet from her backpack titled Ethical Eating: Why We Don’t Eat Animals and placed it on the table.
“Read this. Everything is explained here. About factory farms, antibiotics, and the way cows and chickens suffer…”
Her mother did not pick up the booklet. She looked at her daughter for a long moment, then stood.
“All right. You get settled in. I’ll make dinner.”
“Mom, just make sure there’s no meat.”
“No meat, no meat.”
And she went over to the stove.
Veronika unpacked her things in her old bedroom.
Everything was exactly as it had been before: faded floral wallpaper, a bookshelf filled with worn volumes, and a photograph of her father hanging on the wall.
Her father had died six years earlier. A heart attack. Veronika had been in her second year at university then. She had made it home in time for the funeral, but not in time to say goodbye.
She sat down on the bed.
Her father looked out at her from the photograph, smiling and squinting in the sunlight, with little Veronika sitting on his shoulders.
She remembered his hands—large and warm, smelling of diesel fuel and bread. He had worked as a tractor driver and always brought home a fresh loaf. He would break off the heel and hold it out to her.
A smell drifted in from the kitchen.
Veronika inhaled—and froze.
It was not the smell of soy tofu or avocado.
It was the smell of fried potatoes. Real potatoes, sizzling in a pan, with a crisp golden crust.
And mingled with it was another smell. Rich. Heavy. Painfully familiar.
Pork cracklings.
Lard.
Her mother was frying potatoes in lard.
Veronika went into the kitchen.
She saw the frying pan. Golden slices of potato, browned until crisp. Pieces of pork fat melting into clear grease. Dark, shriveled, crunchy cracklings. And finely chopped onion, which her mother had added at the very end.
Something in Veronika’s stomach tightened treacherously.
“Mom! I asked you not to!”
“What did I do?” her mother asked, turning away from the stove. “It’s potatoes. Potatoes are plants.”
“And the lard?”
“I’m not eating the lard. I only put it in for flavor. I’ll remove the cracklings afterward.”
“Mom, this isn’t funny. Lard is an animal product. The potatoes absorb it. This violates every one of my principles!”
Her mother switched off the stove. She sat down on a stool and folded her hands in her lap.
“Listen, Veronika. I waited three years for you. Three years. This is the first time you’ve come home in all that time. I wanted to feed you properly. Like I used to. Don’t you remember? When you were little, fried potatoes with lard were your favorite.”
Veronika remembered.
She remembered all too well.
Whenever she came home from school, frozen to the bone, her mother would put a plate in front of her. A large one, piled with yellow, crispy potatoes. There would be bread and a salted cucumber.
She would eat quickly and hungrily, burning her mouth, while her mother sat beside her, watching and smiling.
“That was when I was a child,” Veronika said. “I’m an adult now. I have different values.”
“Values,” her mother repeated. “Sit down.”
Veronika sat.
Her mother looked at her for a long time, her expression heavy and serious.
“Have you ever been hungry?”
“Mom…”
“No, answer me. Have you ever gone three days without eating?”
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I said. Have you ever woken up and thought, ‘God, what am I going to feed my children? There’s only a handful of flour. No potatoes. One last piece of lard, and there’ll be nothing left for tomorrow.’ Have you ever woken up like that?”
Veronika said nothing.
“I have,” her mother said. “In the nineties. You were little then, so you don’t remember. Your father lost his job. The farm shut down. They didn’t pay wages for six months at a time. I knitted socks to sell for one ruble a pair. But I still had to feed you. You and Vanya. Your brother. He was still alive then.”
Veronika flinched.
They almost never spoke about her brother.
Vanya had been killed while serving in the army in Chechnya. He had been nineteen.
“I had a goat then,” her mother continued. “The last one. There was almost nothing to feed her, but she still gave milk. Half a liter a day. I gave all of that milk to you children. I drank brewed herbs instead. And do you know what saved us back then?”
Veronika shook her head.
“Lard. In the autumn, your father killed a wild boar. He came across it in the forest and shot it. We butchered it and salted the fat in a barrel. We lived on it all winter. We had one sack of potatoes and that lard. I fried potatoes in it, and we didn’t starve. It is because of that lard that you’re sitting here now, educated, talking about avocados and animal rights.”
Her mother fell silent.
The kitchen was quiet. Only the cooling frying pan hissed softly on the stove.
“You have to understand,” her mother said. “I’m not arguing with you. Maybe you’re right. Maybe it is wrong to eat animals. Maybe your way is better. But in this village, I have seen winters when an animal saved a human life. Not a human saving an animal—the animal saving the human. You talk about ethics. For me, ethics meant not letting my children starve to death. That was my ethics.”
Veronika sat with her head lowered.
“I didn’t know,” she said quietly.
“How could you know? You live in the city. If you run out of food, you go to the store. Here, there’s only one store, and even that is in the district center, forty kilometers away. In winter, the road gets buried in snow, and you sit here as if you’re under siege. You live on whatever you have. The lard that was salted for the winter. The potatoes stored under the floor. That’s our entire selection of superfoods.”
Her mother stood, walked over to the stove, and picked up a plate. She placed some potatoes on it, taking them from the edge of the pan where there was almost no lard, and set it down in front of her daughter.
“Eat. I removed almost all the lard. It’s practically just potatoes. It won’t poison you.”
Veronika stared at the plate.
At the golden pieces. The crisp crust. The translucent onion, sweet from frying.
Then, suddenly, she picked up her fork.
She speared a piece, blew on it, and placed it in her mouth.
It was the taste of childhood.
Exactly the same.
Rich, salty, with a hint of smoke and the flavor of the old cast-iron frying pan.
The taste of home.
The taste of her mother.
And she began to cry.
Silently, she sat there eating potatoes fried in lard while tears ran down her cheeks.
Her mother watched her—and began to cry too.
Silently, she stood beside the stove, wiping her eyes with the corner of her apron.
“Mom,” Veronika said. “Forgive me.”
“For what?”
“For acting as though… because I believed I was right… I was somehow above you. But I’m not above you. I simply forgot. I forgot everything.”
“You didn’t forget,” her mother said. “Your life is just different. That isn’t bad. It’s good, even. Look at you—you’ve grown into such an intelligent, beautiful woman. But remember this: when life becomes too hard, you can always come here. And I’ll feed you. Potatoes fried in lard. Or pies. And all your philosophy can wait. Because when a person is hungry, they aren’t a philosopher. They’re simply hungry.”
Veronika stood, walked over to her mother, and embraced her.
Her mother was as warm as she had been in Veronika’s childhood, still smelling of smoke and bread.
“I’ll fry some tofu for you,” Veronika said through her tears. “Would you like that?”
“Go on, then,” her mother said. “Fry your tofu. Just don’t put any lard in it.”
And they both laughed.
They laughed through their tears, standing in the kitchen of the old house while the first snow swirled beyond the windows and the frying pan of potatoes cooled on the stove.
Veronika woke early the next morning.
She went into the kitchen. Her mother was already busy beside the stove.
“Mom, I’ve been thinking…”
“Well?”
“Maybe we should get a chicken. Just one. But it should be free-range. Ethically raised.”
Her mother turned and looked at her daughter with an amused smile.
“Two hens. And a rooster, so they won’t be lonely.”
“Two hens and a rooster,” Veronika agreed. “But I’m still going to eat tofu.”
“Eat whatever you like,” her mother said. “Who’s stopping you? What matters is that you’re a good person. What you eat isn’t important.”
For breakfast, they ate porridge.
Ordinary millet porridge, cooked in water with pumpkin.
And it was the most delicious porridge Veronika had tasted in three years.
