Part I. Shadows in the Hallway
The smell of rosin and cheap tobacco had eaten into the upholstery of the armchairs, soaked into the heavy curtains, and even seemed to have seeped into the spines of the old books on the shelves. Zoya, sitting in her corner and grading term papers, grimaced. That smell had become the background of her life over the past two years, ever since Boris had moved his tools and his inflated ego into her three-room apartment in a Stalin-era building.
Boris was sitting in the kitchen, noisily slurping tea. The sound — wet, smacking, gurgling — grated on Zoya’s nerves no less than a dentist’s drill. He considered himself master of the situation, a man who had “taken charge” of a lonely intellectual woman.
“Listen, Z,” his rough, smoke-roughened voice came from the kitchen. He never called her by her full name, reducing it to a single letter, as if saving his energy for something more important. “Lerka’s having problems at the dorm.”
Zoya put down her red pen. A bad premonition stirred inside her. Lera was his daughter from his first marriage, a nineteen-year-old girl whom Zoya had seen exactly twice. Both meetings had ended with requests for money.
“And?” she asked without raising her voice, stepping into the hallway.
Boris sat with his legs spread wide, wearing a stained sleeveless undershirt that showed off his hairy forearms. He was digging a fork into a can of food, ignoring the dinner she had cooked.
“What do you mean, and? She’s moving in with us. Temporarily. Until she finishes her studies,” he said as casually as if he were announcing he had bought a new screwdriver. “We’ll clear out your room, that office with all the books. Put a sofa in there. Take the books into the hallway, or the basement.”
Zoya froze. The parquet beneath her feet suddenly felt icy.
“Your daughter from your first marriage is going to live with us?” the wife asked her husband, carefully weighing every word so her voice would not break. “And did you ask me?”
Boris smirked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. His gaze held a condescending contempt he did not even bother to hide.
“What’s there to ask you? Are we a family or what? The apartment’s big, three rooms. We live like bourgeois people. And the girl’s wandering around other people’s corners. Her mother, the bitch, is with some new lover and has no time for Lerka. So the matter is settled. On Saturday we’ll move her things in. My mother will come, Galka will show up too, they’ll help rearrange everything.”
He did not even look at her. He was looking at his phone, scrolling through the news. To him, Zoya was simply a function, a convenient attachment to square meters in the city center.
“Boris, this is my apartment. And my office. I work there,” Zoya tried to appeal to his logic, though she knew it was useless.
“Oh, don’t start, teacher,” he waved her off like an annoying fly. “You can scribble over notebooks in the kitchen. That’s it, I’m going to bed. I’ve got a complicated job tomorrow, wiring in a sauna.”
He walked past her, bumping her shoulder, and did not even apologize. Zoya remained standing in the hallway, staring at the bedroom door as it closed. There were no tears inside her. Something black, hot, and very heavy was beginning to grow there.
Part II. The Parade of Hypocrisy
Saturday came too quickly.
The morning began not with coffee, but with an insistent ring at the door. On the threshold stood Tamara Pavlovna, a heavyset woman whose face always seemed to express dissatisfaction with the structure of the universe, and Galina, Boris’s sister — thin, twitchy, with darting little eyes.
“Well, receive the brigade!” her mother-in-law barked, barging into the hallway and almost knocking Zoya over with her bags. “Borenka, son, where are you? We brought pies, cabbage ones, just the way you like. Otherwise this one of yours probably feeds you nothing but little salads.”
Zoya stood against the wall with her arms crossed. No “hello,” no “may we come in.” The occupation had begun.
Galina immediately walked through the apartment as if she owned it, without taking off her shoes. Dirty prints from her boots marked the pale parquet.
“Oh, and here’s the little room for Lerochka!” she exclaimed, flinging open the door to Zoya’s office. “A bit dark, of course. These dusty curtains have to go. We’ll hang some cheerful tulle.”
“Books are dust collectors,” Tamara Pavlovna declared with authority, peering over her daughter’s shoulder. “Borya, bring the boxes! All this old junk goes to the trash. Lera needs space for a computer, for cosmetics. She’s a young girl, she needs room.”
Boris, glowing in the presence of his relatives, came out of the bathroom with a towel around his neck.
“We’ll clear everything out now, Mom. Zoyka, why are you standing there? Put the kettle on. Guests have arrived.”
Zoya looked at them and saw not people, but a swarm of locusts. In their minds, they had already divided up her territory, arranged their furniture, driven her spirit out of these walls.
“I did not give permission for Valeria to move in,” Zoya said loudly.
Silence hung in the room. Tamara Pavlovna slowly turned around, her small eyes narrowing.
“What did you say?” she asked in a syrupy tone that sent a chill down the spine. “You didn’t give permission? My dear, have you confused something? Your husband’s daughter is in trouble, and you’re striking a pose? Selfish woman. I always said it, Borya, she’s no match for you. Dry. Mean.”
“Come on, Mom,” Boris walked over to his mother and put an arm around her shoulders. “She’ll grumble and calm down. Where’s she going to go? A woman is like a cat — she’ll hiss a little, then jump onto your lap.”
“In this house,” Galina said through her teeth, running her finger along the spine of a rare edition of Karamzin, “there’s too much junk. We’re doing you a favor, Zoya. We’ll put things in order. Lerochka is a tidy girl, she’ll help you with the housework. And you, as a good stepmother, should accept her.”
They laughed. The laughter was sticky, dirty. They discussed rearranging the furniture in her office as if Zoya were no longer there. As if she were a ghost.
“Throw out this oak desk, it takes up half the room,” Boris commanded. “I’ll build Lerka a modern white one from chipboard.”
Zoya looked at her writing desk. Her grandfather, a professor, had once worked at it. That desk had survived wars and revolutions. And now some electrician with unfinished vocational training was going to replace it with sawdust.
“NO!” The word burst out on its own.
“What do you mean, ‘no’?” Boris frowned, his face beginning to flush with ugly blood. “Don’t you put on a show in front of my mother. I said she’ll live here, so she’ll live here. I’m the man here, I decide. Did I replace your wiring? I did. Did I install new sockets? I did. You owe me for that repair for the rest of your life. Labor was invested! So shut your mouth and go to the kitchen. Cut the pies.”
Part III. Short Circuit
Zoya went to the kitchen. But not for a pie knife. She stood by the window, looking out at the gray courtyard, and felt the dams inside her collapsing. All her life she had been taught to be polite. To be understanding. “A bad peace is better than a good quarrel.” “Give in, you’re the wiser one.”
She had endured his rudeness. Endured his socks in the corners. Endured the smell of booze on Fridays. She had endured it because she was afraid of loneliness? No. Out of habit. Out of inertia. But now the inertia had ended. They had come for her essence. For her history. For her refuge.
From the room came the sound of furniture being moved. The scraping of legs across the parquet cut her alive.
“Careful, there’ll be a scratch here! Who cares, we’ll cover it with a rug!” Tamara Pavlovna commanded.
Zoya saw Boris’s screwdriver on the table. Yellow, with a rubberized handle. He had left it there when fixing a switch he himself had broken a week earlier.
Something clicked in her head. Clearly, sharply, finally. Like a blown fuse. Fear disappeared. Upbringing disappeared, refinement disappeared, the professor’s daughter disappeared. Only a female creature remained whose den was being torn apart by jackals.
She took the screwdriver. The weight of the tool pulled pleasantly at her hand. She returned to the hallway.
“Put it back,” she said. Her voice sounded low, hoarse, unfamiliar.
Boris and Galina were just trying to move the heavy oak desk.
“Oh, she’s appeared,” Boris snorted. “Come help, why are you standing there? Damn thing’s heavy.”
“GET OUT,” Zoya said.
“What?” Tamara Pavlovna stepped forward, hands on hips. “Is that how you speak to your mother-in-law, you rude woman? Borya, look at her! Hysterical!”
Boris straightened up, wiping sweat from his forehead.
“Listen, Z, don’t lose your bearings. Lera’s coming with her things any minute, and you’re staging a circus here. March to the kitchen, I said! Or do I have to use force?”
He took a step toward her, raising his hand for a slap — just to scare her, to put fear into her. He had done this before, and she had always shrunk back, retreated.
But this time Zoya did not retreat.
Part IV. The Empress’s Rebellion
“Force?” Zoya repeated, and suddenly burst out laughing.
The laughter was terrifying. Loud, barking, insane. She laughed with her head thrown back, and at that sound Galina backed away toward the wall.
“Force?!” Zoya shrieked, abruptly cutting off the laughter. Her face twisted with such savage fury that Boris froze. “You worthless creature with a roll of electrical tape for brains — you’re going to give orders in MY house?”
She lunged forward not like a victim, but like a fury.
“You decided you’re the master here? Because you screwed in a lightbulb?” She hurled the screwdriver with all her strength. The tool flew a centimeter from Boris’s ear and sank with a dull thud into the drywall partition he had so proudly built a month earlier.
“Are you crazy?!” Boris yelled, turning pale.
“I’m crazy?!” Zoya grabbed a stack of books that Galina had already managed to dump on the floor and threw them straight at her husband’s sister. A heavy volume by Klyuchevsky struck Galina in the chest. She squealed and sank down.
“Out! GET OUT OF HERE!” Zoya rushed around the room, grabbing Boris’s things — his jacket, his tool bag, some wires — and throwing them through the open front door onto the stairwell landing.
“Mom, she’s rabid!” Galina shrieked.
“Call a psychiatric ambulance!” Tamara Pavlovna wailed, pressing herself against the doorframe.
Zoya flew over to Boris’s beloved “masterpiece” — the open electrical panel in the hallway, the one he was so proud of.
“The wiring? Your wiring?!” she screamed, spitting with rage. “I couldn’t care less about your wiring!”
She grabbed a pair of wire cutters lying on the cabinet and, with frenzied determination, unafraid of electric shock — fortunately, the panel had been de-energized for the work — began hacking through the wires.
“Stop! What are you doing?!” Boris rushed toward her, but ran into such a look that his feet seemed glued to the floor. In the eyes of his wife, the eternally quiet “little mouse,” hellfire was burning.
“I’ll cut out every centimeter of your presence here!” Zoya shrieked, waving the cutters in front of his face. “I’ll burn this parquet if even one trace of you remains on it! You leech! You latched on! Thought you’d found a fool? Thought you’d bring your brood in here?”
She grabbed the pie his mother had brought and smashed it straight into Boris’s face. Cabbage filling and greasy dough plastered his eyes.
“Eat it! Eat your handouts!”
“Zoya, calm down!” Boris pleaded, spitting. For the first time in his life, he was frightened. He had not expected resistance. He had expected tears, pleading, quiet resentment. But not this hurricane. “We’ll leave, just don’t go crazy!”
“You won’t leave! You’ll fly out! Like a bullet!” She grabbed a mop and began smacking her mother-in-law and sister-in-law on the legs with it. “Out! I don’t want even the smell of you in here! Parasites!”
Tamara Pavlovna, forgetting her age and sciatica, bolted toward the exit with astonishing agility. Galina followed. Boris, tripping over the scattered books, backed away.
“You’ll regret this, bitch! You’ll die alone!” he shouted from the stairs, trying to preserve the scraps of his dignity, though he looked pathetic with cabbage on his ears.
Zoya slammed the door so hard that plaster crumbled down. The lock clicked. Then the second. Then she put the chain on.
Silence. A ringing silence settled over the apartment, broken only by her heavy, hoarse breathing.
But it was not over yet.
Part V. An Electric Chair for the Ego
An hour later, the doorbell rang. Persistently, but not aggressively.
Zoya was no longer shaking. Rage had burned everything out, leaving a cold, crystalline clarity of mind. She fixed her hair, shook off her robe, and looked through the peephole.
A girl stood there. Young, with bright green hair and a nose piercing. Beside her was a huge suitcase. Valeria.
Zoya opened the door.
Behind Valeria loomed Boris. He had already washed, changed clothes, and now stood there with the air of a victor. He thought Zoya had blown off steam. He thought the presence of his daughter would force her to open the door, and he would return to his lawful position.
“Well, you opened it, didn’t you?” he muttered. “Lerka’s here. Come on, let her in. And also… apologize to my mother.”
Zoya looked at Valeria. The girl was chewing gum and looking at her father with undisguised disgust.
“Hello, Zoya Sergeyevna,” Valeria said unexpectedly politely, in an adult voice. “I brought my things. Like we agreed.”
Boris blinked.
“What do you mean… like you agreed? Z, what’s this? You know each other?”
Zoya smiled. The smile came out predatory, but calm.
“Come in, Lera,” she stepped aside, letting the girl pass.
Lera rolled her suitcase into the hallway. Boris stepped after her, but Zoya blocked his way with her arm.
“And where do you think you’re going?” she asked.
“What do you mean, where? Home!” Boris began to boil, but remembering the recent mop, kept his distance. “We’re family.”
“Lera will live here,” Zoya said in an icy tone. “She and I discussed it back on Tuesday. On VKontakte. She wrote to me that you were demanding she move in with me so you could rent out her share in your first wife’s apartment and take the money for yourself. Am I right, Lera?”
The girl turned around and spat the gum into her hand.
“Yep. Dad, did you seriously think I’d fall for that? Mom told me everything. You wanted to pocket the rent money. And you told me Zoya had ‘paradise conditions.’ Anyway, Zoya Sergeyevna offered a better option. I live here, help her with the archives, and she pays me more than the ‘pocket money’ you promised. And the main condition is that you won’t be here.”
Boris stood with his mouth open. His world — his simple, understandable scheme where he was king and women were fools — was crumbling before his eyes.
“You… you conspired?” he rasped. “Against me? My own daughter?”
“What kind of daughter am I to you?” Lera snorted. “You paid child support three times in ten years. And even then only when the bailiffs cornered you. Get lost, Dad. Go to Grandma Toma. She baked pies.”
“But… I did repairs here!” Boris howled. “My tools! My work!”
“Your tools are on the first floor, by the garbage chute,” Zoya informed him. “Unless the homeless have already taken them. As for your ‘repairs’…”
She took a folded sheet of paper from her pocket.
“I made a calculation. Damaged walls — three square meters. Replacement of the wiring, which will have to be redone after your ‘craftsmanship’ — fifty thousand. Plus moral damages. I’m filing for divorce on Monday. And now — leave. Or I’ll call the police and say a drunken electrician is forcing his way into an apartment with two women living alone.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” he whispered.
“Me?” Zoya laughed that same terrifying laugh, the one that made everything inside Boris clench. “I teach about Empress Catherine, darling. I know a thousand ways to execute a favorite. Get the hell out!”
She slammed the door in his face.
Boris remained standing on the stairwell landing. Alone. Without housing — his mother lived in a one-room apartment on the other side of the city with his sister and alcoholic brother-in-law, and there was no space there. Without his tools, his breadwinners. Without a wife. And betrayed by his own daughter, whom he had wanted to use as a source of income.
He struck the door with his fist, but in response he heard only shared female laughter behind it — Zoya’s and Lera’s. They were laughing at him.
Boris slowly trudged down the stairs, feeling fear wrap its sticky tentacles around his heart. He could not believe that this “gray mouse” had turned out to be a dragon. And the most terrifying thing was that he understood: he himself had awakened that dragon when he decided not to ask permission.
