“You’re not going anywhere anyway,” the unemployed husband smirked. But in the end, he was the one who flew out of the apartment.
“Natasha, did you buy crab?” Anton’s voice came from the living room, sounding so leisurely and demanding, as if he were asking about stock prices on the Tokyo exchange rather than dinner paid for out of my pocket.
I silently placed a package of frozen capelin on the countertop.
“What crab, Antosha?” I asked, wiping my hands on a towel. “Yesterday we paid the utility bills, and the prices for housing and communal services have gone up again. Today I bought basic groceries for the week. Kamchatka crab does not fit into that budget at all.”
My forty-eight-year-old husband appeared in the kitchen doorway. He was wearing a burgundy silk robe with golden embroidered dragons — my careless investment in his “home comfort,” bought with my New Year’s bonus.
“I asked you!” Anton clasped his hands dramatically, adjusting the collar that was slipping down. “My nervous system is exhausted after yesterday’s stress at the employment office. There are nothing but idiots sitting there! I need easily digestible protein and iodine for brain function! You’re a chef at a respectable place — can’t you arrange proper nutrition for your own husband?”
“Protein and iodine are perfectly absorbed from capelin,” I replied calmly, picking up the knife and cutting board. “Besides, inexpensive seafood often contains even more trace elements. The Japanese invented surimi from white fish back in the twelfth century precisely in order to get maximum benefit at minimum cost. So embrace samurai austerity.”
I rolled the pieces of fish in flour and tossed them into the hot frying pan. A golden crust — the result of the Maillard reaction, the chemical interaction of amino acids and sugars under heat. It’s amazing how the simple laws of chemistry work flawlessly and honestly, unlike the laws of human conscience.
Anton snorted loudly, showing with his entire appearance his deep disappointment in the institution of marriage, and retreated back to the television — to suffer. I watched him go and felt something inside me crystallizing with ruthless inevitability.
Five years. For five long years, my husband had been in a “creative search.” Before that, he had worked as a security guard at a warehouse for elite bathroom fixtures, but he quit because “there was a draft around his legs.” Then he briefly worked as a driver for some businessman, but they didn’t get along — the employer had the nerve to demand that he arrive on time, while Anton considered punctuality a sign of slave mentality. Since then, he had been searching for himself, all while eating through my salary and demanding delicacies to support his fading spirit.
The front door slammed. Noyabrina Vasilyevna, my mother-in-law, appeared on the threshold. She had her own key, which she categorically refused to return, justifying it with her sacred maternal duty to check that her “boy” was not starving.
“In the Soviet Union, a wife took care of her husband!” she announced instead of a greeting, theatrically lowering her old-fashioned handbag onto a kitchen stool. “I worked as a secretary at the Palace of Pioneers, and our director, Ivan Ilyich, always wore starched collars. His wife secured the home front for him, blew every speck of dust off him. But you, Natalia, have completely worn Antosha out with your nitpicking. A man is like a crystal vase — he requires gentle handling!”
I put down the spatula, washed my hands, and leaned against the sink, crossing my arms over my chest.
“Noyabrina Vasilyevna,” my voice sounded even, like the hum of a good refrigerator, “Ivan Ilyich most likely brought home a salary instead of lying on the sofa for five years waiting for the rank of general. Your son last worked in 2021. In that time, he has worn through two pairs of pants and mastered every level of ‘Tanks’ on my computer. What kind of crystal vase is he? More like a cast-iron basin.”
My mother-in-law flung up her hands in outrage, caught the open saltshaker with her wide sleeve, and sent it flying onto the tile with a dry crash. White crystals scattered in every direction.
“This… this is temporary! He’s simply too talented for rough work!” she squeaked, frantically trying to sweep the salt into her palm and only smearing it across the floor.
Like a burst balloon, she suddenly lost all her party-official grandeur and hurriedly retreated into the hallway.
The next day, I was supposed to work a double shift. A banquet for sixty people was expected at the restaurant, and I mentally prepared myself for fourteen hours on my feet. But in the morning, a pipe burst in the main hall. The water was shut off, the banquet was canceled, and I, exhausted by the morning commotion, returned home by lunchtime.
I quietly opened the door with my key. From the living room came Anton’s animated, satisfied voice. He was talking on the phone with his buddy.
“Where is she going to go, Denchik?” my husband declared, selflessly crunching on the pistachios I had bought over the weekend to decorate custom cakes. “Women after forty need married status like they need air. Otherwise they’re ashamed in front of their girlfriends.”
I froze in the hallway. My coat remained hanging over my arm.
“I pour it into her ears properly,” Anton continued, pleased, taking a sip of something from a glass that looked like beer. “I tell her I’m depressed, that they don’t offer me a decent job. And I’m not going back to driving a wheel for pennies — I didn’t find myself in a garbage dump. Let her work her tail off. She’s a cook, after all; serving people is in her blood. Tomorrow I’ll tell her I need a massage chair for my back for a hundred grand. She’ll buy it like a good girl! I’ll lie around and rest, and she’s not going anywhere.”
Nothing clenched in my chest. There were no tears, no darkness before my eyes, no desire to start a scandal and smash dishes. Only absolute, icy clarity. I realized that all these years I had not been carrying a man lost in life, not a husband broken by circumstances, but a calculating parasite who had cynically devoured my time, my money, and my life.
I went into the bedroom. I took down two huge checkered bags from the mezzanine — those very legendary bags with which shuttle traders used to travel in the nineties. I opened Anton’s wardrobe.
No hysterics. I acted clearly and methodically. Sweaters, trousers, his collection of T-shirts, socks. I threw it all into the bags without even trying to fold anything neatly. Then I went to my desk, took a sheet of paper and a pen.
“Sports channel subscription — 1,500. Pistachios and craft beer weekly — 8,000. Silk robe with dragons — 12,000. Payment for your mobile phone — 1,000. Total: 22,500 rubles of pure loss for this month alone.”
I went out into the hallway, dragging the tightly packed bags behind me. The rustling of the thick plastic finally caught the attention of the “master of life.”
Anton came out of the living room. His face froze in an expression of mild bewilderment, which quickly shifted into his usual condescension.
“Natash, why are you home so early? And why did you take out that junk? Are you going to the dacha or something? Listen, who’s going to cook dinner? I’m already hungry.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Anton,” I straightened up and looked him directly in the eyes. “You are going on a walking journey. In search of yourself and your dignity.”
“What?” He smirked, taking it for some womanly whim. “Are your hormones acting up again? Come on, end this circus. I’m tired today; I looked through three top-manager vacancies. I’m stressed.”
“I heard your conversation with Denchik.”
The smirk slowly slid off his face like cheap ice cream beginning to melt. He blinked rapidly.
“So what?” Anton tried to switch on his old leisurely arrogance, but his voice treacherously cracked. “Men talk, they exaggerate. You’re not going anywhere anyway! Who needs you at forty-one with your endless work schedule at the stove?”
“I do,” I handed him the sheet with the calculations. “The one person I definitely don’t need myself to be is a free servant. This is the bill for your last month. You don’t have to pay it. Consider it my final charitable donation to the fund for protecting endangered infantilized men.”
“You have no right!” he shrieked, staring at the bags in horror. “This is jointly acquired property! I’ll file for division of the apartment! You’ll end up on the street!”
“The apartment was gifted to me by my grandmother three years before our marriage,” I took the keys from my pocket and opened the front door wide. “Article 36 of the Family Code of the Russian Federation. Property received by one spouse as a gift is that spouse’s personal property and is not subject to division. Out. Right now.”
Anton turned pale. His reinforced-concrete confidence was melting before my eyes. In one minute, he transformed from self-satisfied into a frightened, flabby little man in a ridiculous robe.
“Natasha… what are you doing? I was joking! Natash, really! I don’t even have money for the metro!” He tried to grab onto the doorframe, looking into my eyes with pitiful hope.
“Walking is extremely beneficial for blood circulation. It produces endorphins and lowers cortisol levels,” I carefully but firmly put the heavy bags out onto the stairwell. His worn-out sneakers flew after them.
He stood in the entryway. The burgundy silk of his robe fluttered absurdly in the draft. Without my money, without the cozy sofa, without hot dinners, and without the slightest right to return.
“You can keep the robe. Wear it when you go to your mother and she starts telling fairy tales about crystal vases,” I said, taking hold of the door handle.
“Natasha, I’m not going anywhere!” he shouted, taking a step forward.
“You will,” I smiled. For the first time in a long while, absolutely sincerely and calmly. “You’re not getting out of this anyway.”
I slammed the door right in front of his nose and turned the key in the lock twice. The apartment was silent. It smelled of cleanliness, freedom, and a little of freshly fried capelin.
It was the best smell of my life.