— Wanted to sleep, did you?! And who’s going to iron my shirts for tomorrow?! I don’t see creases on the trousers! Get up now! I don’t care that it’s three in the morning and you have to get up at six! Until you iron everything and polish my shoes until they shine like a mirror, you won’t close your eyes! I’m the master here, and you are obligated to serve me! — her husband shouted, yanking the blanket off his sleeping wife and throwing her from the bed onto the floor because it seemed to him that she had not prepared his wardrobe diligently enough.
Svetlana, who had only just fallen into a heavy, sticky sleep after an exhausting day, hit her hip against the cold laminate floor with a dull thud. A sharp pain in her side instantly knocked away the last remnants of sleep, but her mind was still confused, refusing to accept reality. The bright, unnaturally white light of the chandelier struck her eyes — Igor had turned it on at full power, not caring that it hurt her vision.
Igor loomed over her like a rock. In one hand, he held a white office shirt, shaking it in front of his wife’s face as if it were a dirty rag rather than a garment made of expensive cotton. His face was twisted into a grimace of disgust and rage, and his lips curled as he spat out words.
“You’ve become completely lazy!” he yelled, jabbing his finger at the sleeve. “A crease! Do you see this crease on the cuff?! Or have you gone blind from your laziness? Do you want me to look like a tramp at the meeting? Do you want the whole office laughing at me because my wife’s hands grow from the wrong place?”
Svetlana, squinting against the light and trying to cover her chilled shoulders with her hands, tried to explain, swallowing her words:
“Igor, I did iron it… I finished everything an hour ago, you saw it yourself. I hung it on a hanger. Maybe it just got pressed in the wardrobe…”
But he wasn’t listening. Excuses were only noise to him, another reason to get even angrier. He did not need the truth. He needed a pretext.
“Pressed?!” he roared. “Oh, it got pressed! That means you don’t know how to hang clothes! That means the wardrobe is a mess!”
He spun around sharply and went to the sliding wardrobe. Yanking the doors open, Igor began methodically, with cold fury, pulling out hanger after hanger. Shirts — blue, white, fine-striped — flew onto the floor. After them came trousers, carefully steamed by Svetlana the previous evening. Jeans, jackets — all of it turned into a shapeless heap of rags at his feet.
Svetlana watched in horror. Three hours of her evening labor, when her legs had been buzzing after work and her back had ached, now lay on the floor, mixed with dust.
“What are you doing?” she whispered, getting up from the floor and rubbing her bruised hip.
Igor kicked the pile with his foot, mixing the clean clothes into one heap.
“I won’t make you wash everything again — there’s no time,” he hissed, looking down at her. “But you will iron everything again. Right now. And if I find even one speck of dust or one crooked crease in the morning, I’ll burn you with that iron. Do you understand me?”
He went to the shoe shelf in the hallway, grabbed his favorite pair of leather shoes, and hurled them into the middle of the room, straight onto the pile of clothes. The heavy sole left a dirty mark on the light fabric of one of the shirts.
“And the shoes. I want them shining so brightly I can see my reflection. The polish is in the cabinet. Go!”
Svetlana, swaying from exhaustion, trudged to the corner of the room where the folded ironing board stood. Her hands trembled as she tried to unfold the metal legs. The frame creaked, and the sound seemed deafening in the night silence of the apartment. She felt a lump rising in her throat, but she couldn’t cry. Tears would only make him angrier. He could not stand women’s tears, calling them “manipulation for the weak.”
Igor, meanwhile, demonstratively dusted off his hands, as if he had just touched something dirty, and returned to bed. He fluffed his pillow, lay down, pulled the blanket up to his chin, and turned his back to his wife.
“I’m not asleep,” he threw into the emptiness. “I can hear you working. And God forbid you decide to slack off. In the morning I’ll check every seam.”
Svetlana plugged in the iron. The red indicator lit up like an evil eye in the dim room, which now seemed to her like a torture chamber. She took the first shirt — the very one with the dirty mark from the shoe. She would have to wash the stain by hand, dry it with a hairdryer, and then iron it. She understood that she would not be going back to bed tonight.
The hiss of steam bursting from the sole of the iron became the only sound in the apartment. Svetlana moved the hot metal over the fabric, trying not to think that in three hours she had to get up for work, where reports and smiles would also be demanded from her. Now her world had narrowed to the size of the ironing board and the back of her husband, who was calmly snoring, satisfied with his power and the order he had imposed. He was the master, and she was merely a function that had malfunctioned and was now undergoing a forced reboot.
Six thirty in the morning flashed on the alarm clock like a sentence. For Svetlana, that number did not mean waking up — she had never lain down. The last three hours had turned into a sticky, suffocating nightmare in which only the hiss of the iron, the smell of hot cotton, and the sharp chemical scent of shoe polish existed. Her back had turned to stone, one solid mass of pain, and her eyes felt as if they were filled with sand every time she blinked.
Igor woke exactly with the alarm, fresh and well-rested. He stretched in bed, cracking his joints, and measured his wife with a long, appraising look. Svetlana stood by the window, holding a hanger with his trousers. She did not move, afraid to make any unnecessary motion and provoke another wave of criticism. She was waiting for the verdict.
“Well?” he said, throwing off the blanket and getting up. “I hope you didn’t waste the night staring at the moon.”
He walked past her into the bathroom without even looking at her face, gray from exhaustion, with dark circles under her eyes. Ten minutes later, he came out smelling of shower gel and lotion and went straight to the laid-out clothes. It was a ritual. The morning inspection of a prison guard.
Igor picked up the shoes. The black leather shone, reflecting the morning light from the window. Svetlana had rubbed them with a velvet cloth for almost forty minutes, trying to achieve perfect smoothness. He brought one shoe close to his face, squinting and turning it at different angles.
“There’s a streak here,” he stated dryly, poking his finger at a barely noticeable spot near the heel. “Do you see it? Or have you gone blind again? I asked for a mirror shine, Sveta. A mirror shine. And what is this? Cloudy glass in a train-station toilet?”
Svetlana remained silent. She had no strength to argue. Her tongue felt swollen and clumsy.
“I’ll polish them again tonight,” she replied dully.
“Tonight you’ll do what I tell you to do. And now I’ll go out in what I have, and I’ll be ashamed of my wife,” he said, throwing the shoe onto the floor with disgust before getting dressed.
Then came the shirt. The very one she had washed clean of the shoe mark, dried with a hairdryer, and steamed, fighting every crease. Igor put it on, slowly fastening the buttons from bottom to top. He approached the mirror, adjusted the collar, tugged at the cuffs. Everything fit perfectly. There was nothing to criticize, and this seemed only to provoke him more.
“Is breakfast ready?” he asked, turning to her as he tied his tie.
“Yes, on the table. Oatmeal and coffee, the way you like.”
They went into the kitchen. Igor sat at the table, pulled the plate toward himself, and grimaced with disgust without even tasting it.
“Cold,” he snapped. “When did you cook it? An hour ago? Do you think I enjoy eating this paste?”
“I cooked it ten minutes ago, Igor. It’s hot. Touch the plate…”
“Don’t tell me what to touch!” he barked, slamming his palm on the table so hard that the coffee cup jumped. “If I say it’s cold, then it’s cold! Have you gone completely stupid overnight? Is it so difficult to calculate the time so your husband can eat normal food?”
He grabbed the cup of coffee, took a sip, and immediately grimaced as if he had swallowed poison. Then, looking straight into her eyes with icy calm, he set the cup back down sharply. Too sharply. The dark liquid splashed over the edge, spreading in a brown blot across the snow-white tablecloth and — far worse — splattering onto that very same perfectly ironed shirt.
Svetlana froze. Something inside her dropped.
“Well, there,” Igor drawled venomously, looking at the stain on his stomach. “Admire it. Because of your clumsiness, I spilled coffee on myself. You poured too much. Are you doing this on purpose? Do you want me to be late?”
“You did it yourself…” she began, but he cut her off, jumping up from the chair.
“I did it myself?! So now it’s my fault that your hands are shaking?” He began unbuttoning the shirt, tearing off the garment on which she had spent the last of her strength. “Useless. You’re simply useless. You fussed around all night, and there’s no result.”
He threw the shirt into her face. The fabric, still holding the warmth of his body and the smell of coffee, slapped her cheek.
“Get another one. Now! The blue one. And if it isn’t ironed, you’ll stand here and iron it on me right now!”
Svetlana mechanically, like a broken doll, went into the room. She took out the blue shirt. Silently, she handed it to him. She watched as he dressed, as he checked his watch, as he picked up his car keys. A hum filled her head, drowning out even his grumbling about his “ruined morning.”
“I’ll be back early today,” he threw over his shoulder at the door, without saying goodbye. “And by the time I come home, the apartment had better be in perfect order. I’ll check the baseboards. If I find dust, you’ll lick it off with your tongue.”
The door slammed shut. Svetlana remained standing in the middle of the hallway, clutching the dirty white shirt soaked with coffee. She had to leave for work in twenty minutes. Her legs were giving way, and in her chest, where fear had once lived, a heavy, murky wave of hatred was beginning to rise. Carefully, very slowly, she placed the shirt on the cabinet. Not in the laundry. She simply put it down. Then she went to get dressed, feeling something inside her click and break forever.
The key turned in the lock with a nasty, grinding sound that echoed in Svetlana’s temples. She stood before the door of her own apartment, but she felt like a bomb disposal expert facing a minefield. Her legs were buzzing as if lead had been poured into them instead of blood, and her head was splitting from a dull, throbbing pain that had not left her since morning. The only thing she had dreamed of throughout that endless workday was silence. Darkness. And the chance simply to fall down without undressing, right there in the hallway.
She quietly opened the door, hoping Igor had not returned yet. Usually, he came home after eight. It was now seven fifteen. But her hope died instantly the moment she stepped across the threshold. The sharp, expensive scent of his perfume hit her nose, mixed with the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. The lights were on in the apartment. Everywhere. In the hallway, in the kitchen, in the living room. The chandeliers shone so brightly that Svetlana’s inflamed, sleep-deprived eyes began to water.
Igor came out into the hallway at once, as if he had been lying in wait by the door. He was wearing home trousers and a fresh T-shirt, energetic and lively, with a predatory gleam in his eyes. His appearance contrasted sharply with her exhausted look: hunched shoulders, a gray face, a deadened gaze.
“You’ve shown up,” he said instead of greeting her, crossing his arms over his chest. His voice was even, with that dangerous, artificial softness that usually made Svetlana’s stomach turn cold. “I was already thinking you’d decided to spend the night at the office. Have you seen the time?”
Svetlana glanced at the wall clock.
“Igor, it’s seven twenty. I was delayed only by…”
“Excuses,” he interrupted, wincing as if from toothache. “You always have excuses. Traffic, your boss, the wrong phase of the moon. Meanwhile, the house is in ruins.”
Svetlana leaned her shoulder against the doorframe, feeling the laptop bag pulling down on her arm as if it might tear the joint out.
“What ruins, Igor?” she asked quietly, trying not to raise her voice. “Yesterday I cleaned the apartment until it shone. You checked it yourself. This morning I…”
“Morning was morning!” he barked, instantly changing his tone from insinuating to aggressive. “And now it’s evening! People may come over. Ivanov and his wife promised to stop by to discuss the project. Or do you want them to think I live in a pigsty? Do you want them to see this mess and decide my wife is a slob?”
He made a sweeping gesture, indicating the perfectly clean hallway, where it seemed one could perform surgery.
“Take your shoes off. Quickly. And get a rag. The floor in the living room is sticky. I walked barefoot and almost got glued to it.”
Svetlana slowly, as if in a dream, pulled off her boots. Her feet had swollen during the day and throbbed with hot pain. She wanted water, wanted to go to the bathroom, wanted simply to sit on the little bench and close her eyes for ten seconds. But Igor stood over her, controlling every movement.
“Sticky?” she repeated, hanging up her coat. “I washed it with a special cleaner.”
“Then you rinsed it badly! You spread chemicals everywhere and didn’t wash them off with water! Can you do anything right the first time? Why should I work, earn money, then come home and act as foreman over my own wife?”
He turned and went into the living room. Svetlana trudged after him. The room was in perfect order, disturbed only by his presence. Magazines lay in a neat stack, the cushions on the sofa were fluffed. But Igor walked to the window and ran his finger along the sill. Then he demonstratively brought the finger to his eyes, studying invisible dust.
“There,” he declared triumphantly. “Do you see it? A gray coating. And Ivanov has allergies. Do you want to kill my partner?”
Svetlana silently went to the bathroom. She filled a bucket with water, feeling her fingers tremble as she wrung out the rag. The water was too hot, but she didn’t even dilute it with cold water — the physical pain from the boiling heat drowned out the dull, aching pain inside. She returned to the room, dropped to her knees, and began scrubbing the floor.
Igor settled onto the sofa, crossing one leg over the other. He picked up the remote and turned on the television, setting the volume slightly louder than comfortable.
“More thoroughly, Sveta, more thoroughly,” he commented, not looking at her, staring instead at the screen. “In the corners. Under the sofa. Come on, move. You look like a dying swan. Don’t put on a performance for me. Everyone gets tired. I’m tired too, but I’m not whining.”
She crawled across the laminate, wiping away nonexistent stains. Her knees hurt against the hard floor, her back burned like fire. Every sweep of the rag required effort, as if she were moving underwater. Colored circles floated before her eyes.
When she reached the sofa, Igor lazily lifted his feet, allowing her to wipe underneath him.
“By the way,” he said, looking at her hunched back. “Have you seen yourself in the mirror?”
Svetlana froze with the rag in her hand.
“What?”
“I’m asking, who do you think you look like?” he snorted, disgust creeping into his voice. “Your hair is greasy, hanging like icicles. Bags under your eyes, like some alcoholic. Gray skin. You look ten years older than your age. I’ll be ashamed to show you to Ivanov. He’ll say, ‘Igor, where did you dig up this old hag?’”
Svetlana slowly raised her head. Somewhere deep inside her, beneath layers of exhaustion and fear, something cold and hard began to form.
“I haven’t slept for almost two days, Igor,” she said. Her voice sounded foreign, hoarse and lifeless. “Thanks to you.”
“Again, I’m to blame!” her husband threw up his hands, pretending to be sincerely surprised. “Am I to blame because you don’t know how to manage your time? Am I to blame because you don’t take care of yourself? A woman should bloom, inspire a man! And you? You only make me want to turn away. You know, today I was looking at the secretary at the office… Now she knows how to look fresh. And she has two children, by the way. You have no children, no worries except this one miserable apartment, and you’ve turned into a scarecrow.”
He leaned toward her, his face very close. He smelled of expensive cologne and wine, which he had managed to drink while she was on her way home.
“Finish washing the floor faster. Then go shower. Make yourself presentable. Put on makeup. Wear that black dress. If guests come, you must shine. And if you’re going to sit there with that sour face, you’d better not come out of the kitchen at all. Understood?”
Svetlana lowered her eyes to the wet rag in her hands. Dirty gray water dripped from it onto the clean floor.
“Understood,” she answered quietly.
“What do you mean, ‘understood’?” he asked, savoring the moment.
“I understood everything, Igor.”
She wrung out the rag with such force that her knuckles turned white. She stood up from her knees, no longer feeling the pain. She picked up the bucket. The water inside was calm, dark, and motionless. Just like her thoughts now. There were no more tears, no hurt, no desire to justify herself or beg for mercy. Only a ringing, icy emptiness remained, and the clear understanding of what would happen next.
Igor, satisfied that the “educational conversation” had gone successfully, leaned back against the sofa again and turned up the television. He did not notice how his wife’s gaze had changed. He did not see in it the thing he should have feared most in the world — absolute indifference to consequences.
Svetlana entered the bathroom and firmly closed the door behind her. The sound of the television and her husband’s muttering voice immediately grew muffled, as though she had sunk underwater. Slowly, she turned the latch — the quiet click sounded in the tiled box like a gunshot. She went to the sink, turned on the icy water, and stared at her reflection for a long time. The woman looking back from the mirror was not the one she had known a couple of years ago. Tired, with a lifeless gaze in which the eternal fear of a trapped animal had frozen. Igor was right: she really did look terrible. But he was wrong about the reason. It was not age or laziness. It was life in constant expectation of a blow.
She filled her palms with cold water and splashed it onto her face. Once. Twice. Three times. She washed away not only the exhaustion, but also the sticky feeling of filth from his words, from his contempt, from that enslaving fear that had shackled her will for months. With every drop running down her chin, her head became clearer. Fear disappeared. In its place came calm, crystal-clear indifference.
Svetlana turned off the water. She did not put on makeup. She did not put on that black dress Igor liked so much because it was tight and uncomfortable but “emphasized status.” Instead, she went into the bedroom, trying to step silently. From the back of the wardrobe, she took out an old sports bag she had once used, in a previous life, when she went to the fitness club.
Her movements were clear and efficient. No panic. She threw jeans into the bag, a couple of sweaters, a change of underwear. Her passport. The salary card she had miraculously managed to hide from his total control. Her phone charger. She looked around the room: expensive curtains, perfect order, a wardrobe full of clothes chosen according to his taste. All of it now seemed like scenery for a bad play in which she no longer wanted to perform her role. She needed nothing from here.
After zipping up the bag, Svetlana pulled on her down jacket. In the hallway, she put on her shoes — quickly, ignoring the fact that the boots had not been polished to a shine.
Igor shouted from the living room:
“Did you fall asleep in there? Ivanov will be here in half an hour! Did you cut the appetizers? I asked for a cheese plate and olives!”
Svetlana took the bag in her hand. Its weight felt pleasant, tangible. She took a deep breath and entered the living room.
Igor was sitting in the same position, sprawled arrogantly on the sofa, a king in his little kingdom. He didn’t even turn his head, continuing to flip through channels.
“Are you deaf? I asked about the cheese…”
He broke off when he caught sight of her silhouette out of the corner of his eye. Slowly, he turned his head. His gaze slid over the down jacket, over the bag in her hand, over her face, which no longer held even a trace of her usual submission. Igor’s eyebrows rose, and his mouth twisted into a contemptuous smirk.
“What kind of masquerade is this? Where do you think you’re going at night? Taking out the trash dressed like that?”
“I’m leaving, Igor,” she said. Her voice was quiet but firm, without a single trembling note.
He burst out laughing. Loudly, theatrically, throwing his head back.
“Leaving? You? Planning to go far? To mommy in the village? Or under a bridge? Who needs you except me? Look at yourself! You’re a complete nobody. You won’t survive a single day without my money and this apartment.”
He rose from the sofa, looming over her, instinctively trying to crush her with his height and aggression. Before, she would have shrunk into herself. Now she looked straight at the bridge of his nose without blinking.
“Put the bag down,” he growled, losing patience. “And march to the kitchen. If Ivanov comes and there’s nothing on the table, I will destroy you. You know me.”
“I do,” she nodded. “That’s why I’m leaving. The keys are on the cabinet.”
She turned and walked toward the door. She felt his fury behind her back. The air in the room seemed electrified.
“Stop!” he screamed so loudly the glass in the sideboard rang. “If you walk out that door now, there will be no way back! I’ll change the locks! I’ll throw all your rags into the trash! You’ll crawl back to me on your knees in two days, begging me to let you in, but I won’t even look in your direction! Do you hear me, you worthless thing?!”
Svetlana stopped at the threshold. She placed the set of keys on the lacquered surface of the cabinet. The metal clinked against the wood — the last sound in that apartment.
“I’m not coming back, Igor. From now on, you’ll iron your shirts yourself.”
She opened the door and stepped out onto the stairwell.
“You’ll regret this!” came his voice behind her, breaking into a shriek. “You’ll die under a fence!”
The entrance door swung open, letting her into the cool night silence. The street air struck her face with the freshness of wet asphalt and damp fallen leaves. It tasted good. It was real. Svetlana took a deep breath, filling her lungs with oxygen to the limit, until she felt dizzy.
Somewhere in the distance, the avenue hummed, the lights of the big city flickered. She had no plan. She had a little money, enough for a cheap hostel and food for the first while. She had no home. But for the first time in many years, she had something far more important.
She adjusted the strap of the bag on her shoulder and stepped into the darkness of the courtyard. Her legs no longer buzzed. Her back straightened on its own. She walked away from the glowing windows of the third floor, where the evil shadow of her past was thrashing about, and with every step she felt how, inside her, in the place of the burned-out emptiness, the fragile sprout of a new, free life was beginning to break through. She did not know what tomorrow would bring. But she knew for certain that tomorrow morning would begin not with screaming, but with silence.
And that was happiness.