11.

Her cutlets had turned out dry, but Maksim didn’t criticize them; he choked them down obediently. That was the price of making peace. And the conversation kept flowing, empty and polite—first an update on the number of trees felled by the hurricane and people crushed beneath them, then weekend plans, then vacation fantasies, and so on, as they danced around the washout that had opened up in their kitchen last night, around the black bottomless chasm.

The way Marina carefully led him in that dance, steering him away from the edge, made Maksim think about that black hole all the time. Ulyana was still in her room, but he didn’t want to ask about her, didn’t want to summon her into the kitchen. Let today pretend it wasn’t today, but the day before yesterday, before she came into their lives.

But then all the cutlets had been chewed, Marina had taken his empty plates and begun loading the dishwasher carefully, without clattering—and then, without turning to face Maksim, she said:

“Can you believe it? They’re demanding a bribe from Ulyana at the hospital.”

He said nothing, while Marina kept putting the plates away: carefully, large ones separate from small ones, mugs in the top rack, forks and knives in their special little basket. And though the whisky had already taken Maksim in its arms, was gently rocking and lulling him, through the sweet drowsiness rolling over him he first saw one little piece of metal Marina meant to use to screw together the evening’s conversation, then another, and then a third.

“I can believe it,” he snorted. “That’s more or less what I’d expect.”

It was all beginning to screw together into a comprehensible construction: the whisky, the cutlets, the empty chatter, all those preliminaries. The dramaturgy of the evening Marina had written was starting to show through. The edges of the pit crumbled like the trap of an antlion. Maksim pushed his glass away.

“How much are they asking?”

His first feeling was triumph. Triumph at having been right—yesterday, and in general. They lure you in, grind you up, cripple you, then agree to treat you only for money—the same money they used to entice you. You had to admire the elegance. Almost nothing went to waste—just the severed arms and legs in the garbage. There was the final word in yesterday’s argument. Life itself had put it there.

“A million. And she’s got only twenty-six thousand left.”

Maksim understood immediately that they weren’t asking Ulyana for the money, but him and Marina. Of course, at first he felt the pinch—a purely reflexive spasm of cowardice—but as soon as he registered it, he overcame it. He felt sorry for people weaker than himself, and often did something about it. It was a lot of money, but it wasn’t the last of theirs. He breathed in, breathed out, unclenched his fist.

“For what? The operation?” he asked. “Rehabilitation?”

He could still feel sorry for her, for Ulyana. Could forgive her. And precisely because the state was trying to crush her, take everything from her, he needed to reach out and pull her from under the steamroller. He remembered how he’d almost managed to love her yesterday, before the argument over the TV. And to hell with the million. A million. Ten thousand euros, a little more. He could give it to her and ask for nothing in return—it would be petty and unworthy to ask for something back. We had to be different from them in some way, after all.

“It’s not for treatment. They won’t register the marriage unless she pays a bribe.”

“What?”

“They’re refusing to register the marriage.”

That puzzled him. Why on earth would a marriage cost a million? It was a strange, non-market price. You could ask that much for a life, but for a wedding?

Marina finally turned to face him, her expression distant. Maksim frowned, but didn’t ask her to explain. She was waiting for him to figure it out himself.

“He’s really bad. He could die,” she went on anyway. “Though she actually has the right to register the marriage the same day they apply. There’s a law like that for participants in the SMO…”

“Sorry, what?” It hit Maksim like a blow. “SMO? ‘Es-em-oh’? That’s what we’re calling it now too, is it?”

“Don’t nitpick, Maksim. That’s the legal wording… What do you want me to call them? Participants in military operations?”

“That’s not legal wording, Marina. It’s propaganda wording. We’ve talked about this, don’t you remember? More than once.”

“I remember,” she rolled her eyes. “Yes, I remember. That they’re forcing us to call it an ‘SMO’ because they program our consciousness through language… Let us discuss it only in terms they’ve established… Make us accept it… Label us… Divide us into ours and theirs… Test us for loyalty. Because if we agree to call a war an ‘SMO,’ then it’s as though we accept it as normal. Right? Have I got it all right? Maksim, can you let me finish?”

“I’ll let you finish if you call a war a war.”

“Fine. Participants in the war.”

“Thank you,” Maksim clicked his tongue.

“Anyway… Yesterday they turned her down, claiming they were too busy, and today they’re already demanding a bribe. They’re just extortionists!” Marina gave him an searching look.

And then it clicked. It all came together and hit him. When he was a child, his parents had taken him to the Obraztsov Puppet Theater. At one point the light fell awkwardly, and all the strings on the marionettes gleamed.

Maksim picked at a little hole in the tablecloth, trying to hold himself back, trying not to plunge into yesterday’s argument again. He failed.

“Oh!” he drawled. “So she came here to get married, did she?”

“What’s wrong with that? She’s pregnant, Maksim! Yes, she came here. What else is she supposed to do?”

“I see.”

He picked up his glass and took a sip. The ice chimed softly against the glass. His hand was shaking, Maksim realized.

“So this is all about the death benefits?”

“Maksim…”

“You staged all this very nicely, Marina.”

“That’s not true! I’ve been honest with you, Maksim! You know I hate manipulation…”

“Fine. Fine, it doesn’t matter.”

“No, let’s talk about it. I could have gone and withdrawn it myself, from my own account. But I decided that wouldn’t be fair… It wouldn’t be right. We should make decisions like that together…”

“Exactly!” he shouted. “Exactly! Decisions like that! You’re dragging me into this! She dragged you in, and now you’re dragging me in!”

“Maksim. I’m not saying we should just give it to her… We’d only lend it to her… And she’d pay it all back as soon as she could…” Marina stumbled over her words.

“That makes no difference! That’s not the point! Give it to her for this, then take it back from her? From her death benefits?!”

He jumped to his feet.

“I don’t want to! I won’t have any part in this, do you hear me?! Stop staring! I’ve spent my whole, whole life barely managing—with you knowing how hard it’s been—building things, organizing things so I wouldn’t get mixed up in this filth! And now you’re suggesting what?! That I pay a bribe so your little darling can collect death benefits for her fiancé?! No, Marina! No! Not from our account, not from yours! No, no, and no! I refuse to take part in this! Is that clear? This conversation is over!”

“She’s pregnant! Pregnant, Maksim! She needs that money! How’s she going to raise a child?!”

“Pregnant?! Are you sure she’s even pregnant?”

“Maksim…”

“What?! I wouldn’t be surprised by anything at this point!”

“Stop, I’m begging you. Let’s at least close the door…”

But it was too late. Ulyana stood in the doorway. Her face was white. Her arms were folded across her chest.

“You want me to show you the ultrasound or something?” she said. “Huh, Uncle Maksim?”

“I don’t need to see your ultrasound! What’s an ultrasound got to do with anything?!”

For a second, Maksim was scalded by shame, then immediately by the angry satisfaction that at least this abscess would finally burst.

“What’s got what to do with anything?” Ulyana said tonelessly.

“Listen, Ulyanochka… I didn’t want to tell you all this… Maybe Marina’s really right and you’re just a victim of circumstance…”

“Go on, then. Say it. Might as well.”

She stepped into the kitchen and came face-to-face with Maksim, who was the same height as she was. Bony, pale, eyes like coals, jaw muscles working. Maksim recoiled from her as if from a magnet with the same pole.

“You can’t not understand what that money is.”

“And what is it?”

“It’s money for killing people. For killing Ukrainians. You want to take that money for yourself.”

“Maksim, please! There you go climbing onto the armored car again…”

“I’m not climbing onto anything, Marina!”

“It’s a war, Maksim! There are two sides fighting! They’re all shooting at each other! It’s not as simple as you make it sound… They’re shooting at us too… They’re all victims there…”

“Us? Who’s ‘us’?”

“Us,” Ulyana replied. “Our people.”

“Wait a second. Us? Here we are, at home. They’re not shooting at us. Because we’re not shooting at them. Because we don’t want to kill anyone. But that money is specifically for killing! I said that then, and I’m saying it now! And she wants to appropriate it! It’s an inheritance, you understand?!”

“So what?” Ulyana said coldly.

“What do you mean, ‘so what’?” Maksim was taken aback.

“So what if it’s an inheritance? I’ll have his son. So it’s an inheritance, yes.”

“That kind of inheritance?!”

“It is what it is.”

“What the hell are you talking about?! Do you even understand what you’re saying?! That’s it, get lost! Leave us alone! Go to the bank, I don’t know, take out a loan and use that money to pay for whatever you want! That’s your business, don’t drag us into it!”

“Who the hell’s going to give me a loan… Are you kidding me?”

“I don’t know! I don’t want to know! It has nothing to do with me and it shouldn’t have anything to do with me!”

“If you don’t want to give us the money, you could’ve just said so,” Ulyana smiled.

Maksim took a step back toward her, almost pressing himself against her. He was trembling, his voice breaking into a rasp with rage.

“You’re living in our house, in my house, and you say that to me?! You came here for the death benefits! You rushed here to bury him, your Sasha! For money, for cash, for the dough! For six million, or however much it is, that he got for shooting people! For a reward! So you can get your share too! Don’t you make yourself sick?! I don’t even know which of you is worse anymore—him or you!”

“Maksim! Why are you making it personal… Maksim!”

Marina started crying, but her tears only made Maksim even more furious—they wanted to dissolve him in those tears, inject guilt into him so something inside him would soften; and cornered as he was, he felt strong enough to hit her. He wanted to.

“And you’re asking me, in my own house, to pay for it! This is what he didn’t get for the people he didn’t manage to kill—you want to take it from the state, and you want us to help you do it, is that right?”

Marina’s tears didn’t change anything, didn’t help. He wanted Ulyana to start crying too. Maybe then he’d feel a little better. Then he’d stop hating her. Then at least his throat would unclench.

They were yelling so loudly in the kitchen that I didn’t even have to make much effort to eavesdrop. I put up with it and put up with it—and then I couldn’t take it anymore. Same old story, basically.

And there he was, standing in front of her, spitting saliva at her as he shouted, while Ulyana had her answer ready—a good, solid, heavy answer, like a knuckle-duster. For now, she just kept the hand holding it in her pocket and waited: would he stop, or not, as Aunt Marina had asked him to?

And now everything he flung in her face fell short. There was nothing new in it. It was even good to hear it all, better from Uncle Maksim than from herself. He was sweating from all his effort, while Ulyana saved her anger. A dark joy was rising in her from the depths. If he’d backed down, she would have too. But he didn’t want to, so neither did she. And now, when Uncle Maksim had spilled all those insides of his out to her, she didn’t even wince. She told him exactly what she thought.

“Sasha didn’t go there for that. I told you, you didn’t listen. Because you’re the one talking about money, Uncle Maksim. Sasha went there because his mother told him to. Because it had to be done. Duty—you ever heard of it? The country needs it. What, you think he didn’t understand anything could happen over there? He understood. And he wasn’t scared shitless. Unlike your Kirill.”

And right away, whatever he’d puffed himself up to say, he swallowed it back down. And Ulyana, who’d felt powerless all day, felt that familiar, welcome weight in the knuckle-duster in her pocket—the very thing she’d been missing. The thing without which she’d been adrift.

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. When he got his draft notice, what did he do? He fucked off. To his Georgia. You think I don’t know?”

“What business is that of yours… And what difference does it make?!” he puffed.

“It’s directly my business, that’s what. You’re lecturing me about what’s right and wrong… Well, is it right that my Sasha is lying there without his legs, with no one knowing if he’ll pull through—and even if he does, he’ll be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life! While your Kirill is out partying, dancing in his clubs, hanging out, getting drunk all night… Picking up chicks. Is that fair?”

“What nonsense…”

“And he was drafted, unlike Sasha! Maybe Sasha went in your Kirya’s place…”

“Ulyanochka…” Aunt Marina took her arm with a slippery sort of grip, but Ulyana shook her off.

“What’s wrong with that?” Uncle Maksim came to his senses. “Kirill made his choice! He chose not to take part in this war, in this slaughter! And now we’re supposed to feel guilty because of it, too? And by the way, all the draft notices from that year were canceled ages ago…”

But he was already rattling, cracking, wavering. And then Ulyana pulled her little heavy knuckle-duster out of her pocket and hit him with everything at once:

“You know what? Let’s find out whether they canceled them or not. I’ll go file a report against him. Say he’s evading the draft. And against you for hiding him. Let them take him too. Let him go serve. That’ll be fair. And you can all go fuck yourselves.”

She looked at his stunned, fucked-up face, savored it for a second, turned around, and left.

“Ulyana! Ulyanochka, where are you going?”

First she went to her room, grabbed her document bag and charger, then went outside.

“Ulyasha, come back! It’s raining!”

Who gives a fuck if it’s raining.

She was soaked in a minute, and it didn’t matter: the rain didn’t make her feel wet or cold, and the storm wind only pushed her forward; she was all sail. Strength pulsed inside her, along with a clear sense of what to do. She darted into a coffee shop, pulled up a stool, opened the AI thing, ChatGPT.

She pressed the slippery little letters into the rain-wet screen.

“How do I correctly write a report to the FSB?”

We know how to get you to answer for this. Thanks, Uncle Maksim, for showing your hand, for giving me the idea. You’re scared shitless—and rightly so: you’ve got blood on your hands.

The chat didn’t take long—less than a second.

“A statement to the Federal Security Service of Russia may be written in free form, but it is best to use an official style and a clear structure. You can submit your appeal:

• Through the online reception office on the official website of the Federal Security Service of Russia

• By mail

• In person

• Through the FSB territorial office in your place of residence.

A statement is usually formatted as follows:

To the Directorate of the Federal Security Service of Russia for the ________ Region. Full name, address, phone number, email.

STATEMENT

I, full name, hereby report the following:

(briefly and factually describe the circumstances: what happened, who was involved, and what evidence or testimony is available)

I request that you:

• Investigate the facts presented

• Take measures in accordance with the laws of the Russian Federation

• Notify me of the results of the investigation

Attached to this statement are…

Date, signature”

After that, the AI advised her to write without unnecessary emotion, sticking strictly to the facts. If there were screenshots, attach screenshots; if documents, then documents.

Ulyana read it once, twice, three times.

Power: that was what she felt. Her arms and legs filled with power, with lead. No wind could move her from the spot anymore. She had been nobody, and everyone had treated her like shit, but now she was becoming somebody. Now she could hide behind the state, behind the stone giant—and not just hide behind it, but climb onto its shoulder and whisper in its ear: grind this one to dust, squash him under your heel like a cockroach, leave nothing but a wet stain. And this one. And this one. And the giant would listen to her now, grind them up, crush them.

Her phone rang: “Marina Aunt Moscow.” Ulyana declined the call.

All her life Ulyana had felt like shit, a speck of fluff, a nobody—because she didn’t know this secret. The secret of how to become somebody. Power was lying there on the ground; all she had to do was bend down and pick it up. She could twist Uncle Maksim around her little finger, and Kirill, and absolutely anyone else. A wicked playfulness took hold of Ulyana. Omnipotence.

Messages started pouring in: “Ulyasha, come over, let’s talk, ple-e-ease.”

Yeah, fuck off.

She opened her notes and started drafting a text.

“I wish to report that Kirill Maksimovich Savvin, having received a summons from the military enlistment office in September 2022 to perform military service in Ukraine as part of the special military operation, evaded mobilization and fled to Georgia. After spending several months in Georgia, K. M. Savvin returned to Moscow, where he currently resides at his parents’ home. His parents are Maksim Savvin and Marina Savvina, and their address is: 37 Leninsky Prospekt, Apt. 380, Moscow.”

When she got to Aunt Marina, she slowed down. She didn’t want to drag Aunt Marina into it; she wasn’t angry enough at her. But it also seemed strange to write the statement without her, as if Uncle Maksim had been sheltering him while Aunt Marina stood off to the side. Why feel sorry for her, Ulyana thought for a second. The cops would find it all out anyway, whether she wrote it or not. She wondered what the sentence was for hiding people who’d dodged military service. She wanted to ask the chat that, but felt embarrassed. Then she thought about what she’d tell her mother—that she’d filed a report against her cousin? Her mother definitely wouldn’t approve. Like Aunt Marina, she put family first and the truth somewhere around tenth. But she didn’t have to tell her mother, if it came to that.

Those were bad thoughts; they made Ulyana grow weak again, turned her to mush. To help herself finish the report, she remembered how Uncle Maksim had yelled at her, called Sasha a murderer, and, worst of all, doubted that she was pregnant. If you think I’m such a bitch anyway, Uncle Maksim, then that’s exactly the kind of bitch I’ll be to you. Here. Eat it.

She googled the FSB website and opened the page for submitting reports. She copied the text from her notes, clicked the box to paste it in. It was an astonishing moment, the kind Ulyana had never experienced before. She froze and listened to herself. Quicksilver flowed inside her, heavy. Everything inside her trembled with delight. And she was terrified of herself. This was power. That was what it was.

She held her finger over the “send” button.

Oh, wow.

Then she came up with something else, too.

His ears were ringing as if someone had just fired a gun in there.

When Ulyana slammed the door, Marina seemed to have been unplugged. She sank into a chair, her eyes dull, her arms limp. She barely nudged the salt shaker across the table. It was as if Maksim wasn’t even in the kitchen.

“Well? What?!” He stood over her. “What was I wrong about?!”

“Maksim, are you an idiot?” Marina asked quietly.

“Excuse me?!”

“Why did you make that scene? What are you, some kind of hysteric?”

“A scene?..”

“Why do you keep asking me that? Why do you keep asking me that?! Why did you say all that to her?!” She looked at him with hatred.

“I just can’t believe my ears,” Maksim replied after a pause. “So now I’m the one to blame?”

“Why are you throwing around accusations like that?”

“Marina! What accusations? I’m calling things what they are!”

“You called him a murderer! How do you know whether he killed anyone or not?”

“But he was ready to kill, wasn’t he? Was he?”

“You don’t know him. You don’t know what he’s capable of over there. Why? Why?! It’s a war, Maksim.”

“Just don’t start repeating all that nonsense here, okay? We know who started this war and who could stop it any day. You’re not going to start saying, like all those people, that both sides are always to blame for a war, are you?!”

“By the way,” Marina said softly, “by the way, if Zelensky cared about his people as much as we care about ours, he could just leave. Evacuate to some cushy safe place, and it would all be over right away.”

“What the hell are you talking about?!”

“Well, isn’t that true? We know all about our guy by now: yes, he’s a tyrant, yes, a bloodsucker; there can be no two opinions about that. But we’ve known all about him for a long time. A crocodile can’t go into reverse. And may he be damned for starting this. But what about theirs… Zelensky. What about him? Does he really not care about his own people? His own people? What kind of patriotism is that?”

“Stop spouting this crap right now, I’m begging you. Do you even understand what you’re saying?!”

“Just two macho men measuring their dicks while people on both sides of the border are dying. People who could be alive, just living their lives. That’s what I understand, Maksim.”

Maksim sat down beside her. She still didn’t want to see him. They had skidded down loose sand into a pit; they were falling, falling so fast their guts were in their throats, and there was no kitchen around them anymore, no apartment, only darkness.

“Marina. Are you serious?” Maksim asked his wife, his tongue barely working, as if he’d had a stroke.

He suddenly felt he could divorce her.

“You really hurt her, Maksim,” Marina replied. “She’ll go and file a report.”

“She won’t write anything, Marin! Nothing! It’s all empty posturing! Some womanly blackmail! A fake hysterical fit! It’s a bluff!”

“Who are you kidding, Maksim?” Marina shook her head. “Who are you trying to expose here?”

“You know…” he said quietly. “You’ve become someone else. After that exhibition about Mariupol and… those damn planters… You changed then. Before, you’d never have defended her. And now… You know why? Because you’ve got one foot in it yourself already. You’re not defending her, Marin. It was right there in Mariupol—I noticed it back then.”

At last Marina turned her eyes toward him—swollen, weeping, webbed with red veins. Her lips trembled. She drew a shuddering breath and began to wail like a country woman:

“Do you even understand what kind of world we live in, Maksim?!.. You don’t understand anything!.. Anything!”

She jumped up, grabbed her phone, and started calling someone. She paced the hall, biting her lip, sending messages—Ulyana, obviously. Then she saw Maksim watching her from the kitchen and shut herself in a room.

She wouldn’t dare file a report. Against her own relatives? Against her own family? And over what—just because he’d told her the truth? She knew everything about herself perfectly well; she hadn’t even tried to deny it. Well, the inheritance. An inheritance was an inheritance, whatever it was. Had he hurt the poor thing? He’d better stop even thinking about it. Ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous, for God’s sake.

The way she’d talked about Kirill. And the idiot had thought he’d gotten along with her, charmed her, become her friend. “Your little Kirill.” What a bitch.

She wouldn’t do anything to him. It wasn’t 1937, after all. And Sobyanin really had said the 2022 summonses had been canceled for everyone who hadn’t been called up then. There’d been a news story somewhere, definitely; otherwise they’d never have let Kirill come back.

Maksim called Kirill—only to listen to it ring for nothing. Every ring scraped at his eardrum, pressed harder on the quivering scrap inside his chest. He called again—same thing. He texted him, “When will you be home?” and sat there like an idiot with the WhatsApp chat open, waiting for him to deign to read it. Then he remembered WhatsApp was for old people and Kirill was mostly on Telegram, so he messaged him there. Two check marks appeared—it had been delivered, but Kirill had no intention of reading it. What the hell are you so busy with that you can’t read a message?

He shouldn’t have given in to his whining, shouldn’t have let him come back from Georgia. He could’ve spent more time there, toughened up, gone farther, to Europe or somewhere, or even Thailand. No, he had to come back here, to Moscow. Clubs, girls… Those friends of his. And a career? What kind of career are you going to make here, you dreamer? Only the oprichniki can make a good career here. It was obvious nothing worthwhile would happen here in his generation’s lifetime, that everything was broken, that while the tsar was still alive nobody would even try to fix anything. But no, damn it.

He called him again. Three missed calls—he should’ve figured out by now his father had something serious to tell him. What, was he actually fucking someone over there?! Even if he was!

Maksim poured himself some whiskey; his hand shook and he overpoured. He tried to knock an ice cube out of its mold and dropped it on the floor. He bent down to pick it up, but the little cube slipped away and finally skittered under the kitchen cabinets, where he couldn’t reach it. It lay there, tugging at him, pissing him off. Like a splinter a surgeon had missed and failed to dig out.

He set about looking for proof that Sobyanin really had canceled all the unnecessary summonses. He dug up an October piece in Kommersant and reread it. Yes, they’d all been withdrawn on October 17, 2022. The mobilization centers in Moscow’s museums had been closed. At the same time, Moscow Region governor Andrey Vorobyov had announced that the mobilization plan had been fulfilled. There. Of course. Withdrawn. Let her blackmail him all she wanted. He took a sip and, for some reason he couldn’t fathom, kept searching. And stumbled across some little article in Meduza saying that Putin had announced mobilization and only he had the right to end it, but he hadn’t ended it, so formally it was still going on—and in some regions, not just formally.

He took another gulp and called Kirill. The area around the splinter was getting inflamed.

Then the doorbell rang. Insistently, brazenly. Maksim went to answer, but Marina got there first. She looked through the peephole, fixed her hair, and pushed her husband away from the door. “Go away.”

Ulyana came in, soaked through. No hello, no nothing; she looked straight through them both, only sniffed, splashed her wet feet into the living room, sat down in Maksim’s deep armchair, and turned on the TV. She picked a channel: Rossiya.

That freak show was on again, with evil clowns mugging and the host cracking his whip. Maksim walked past, but the noise reached the kitchen, too.

“And I think—and this is my opinion—that there is absolutely nothing wrong with calling them khokhly. Who do we call that? We don’t call all Ukrainians that. We call the ones who jumped around on the Maidan, who chanted ‘Hang the Muscovites!’ The ones who killed children in Donbas for eight years! That’s who. Sorry, but those aren’t Ukrainians. Those are the real khokhly! And we’re supposed to be polite to them? No, of course not! And we shouldn’t feel any pity for them!”

Maksim couldn’t listen to that and pretend he couldn’t hear it, either. He didn’t want to get involved; he’d just planned to finish his whiskey and go to his room, but he couldn’t. He went back to the living room and took a breath.

“Ulyana. Let’s discuss this calmly, please.”

She didn’t react.

“I agree,” the host replied. “As you all know, I’m often there myself, on the other side of the line; I’ve seen all kinds of things. They kill our boys, our young men. With cars, with drones, in cold blood.”

“Please turn it down, and let’s talk like adults,” Maksim said evenly.

Ulyana turned to look at him, calm as could be—and ignored him.

“Our guys put it simply: there’s the enemy over there,” the host continued. “They’re not people, they’re the enemy. It’s simple over there. If we don’t get them, they’ll get us. That’s all there is to it. And the rest, you know, as my father says, is all from the devil.”

“Ulyana?”

At last she heard him. She picked up the remote, pressed down on a button, and the white volume bar began to climb.

“Exactly! Exactly!” the expert shouted. “This is an existential struggle! They built… Not even them—it was the West that built it there… Along with the biolabs…”

“Ulyana!”

But she turned it up even louder! Now the TV crackled with distortion. Marina rushed in, stared at them, and shrank back.

“Our president put it very precisely when he called their so-called Ukraine what it is! An artificial construct! Anti-Russia!”

“Ulyana!!!”

“WE’RE THE ONES—WE’RE DEFENDING OURSELVES! AND WE HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO DO IT! BECAUSE WHOEVER COMES AT US WITH A SWORD WILL DIE BY THE SWORD!” the television bellowed at full volume, and the crystal in the cabinet rang in response.

“Ulyasha… Please! The neighbors…” Marina stammered, but only Maksim could hear her; the TV drowned everything out for Ulyana.

Maksim took a step toward Ulyana to stand up for his wife, but she grabbed his arm, while Ulyana—without even rising from the armchair, looking up at him from below—stared not merely defiantly but furiously, with such genuine hatred that he understood everything in that instant: she could absolutely do it, she could easily report them, and there was a chance she already had. And one more thing: Maksim would never be able to prove anything to anyone, because she was the fiancée of a soldier wounded in the special military operation, while he was the father of a draft dodger who also sold books by foreign agents in his bookshop.

“DO YOU KNOW WHAT THEY CALL US? OUR BOYS? ORCS! NO! WE’RE THE PEOPLE, AND THEY’RE NOT HUMAN! AND THAT MEANS EVERYTHING WE DO OVER THERE IS JUSTIFIED!”

His stomach seized up. The television swam before his eyes. He needed to throw all this up. She wouldn’t bend anymore. Maksim bent.

“Bitch!” he shouted, and broke away—barely managed to get out of there.

He wanted to go to Marina, but she pushed him away. She clung to her phone, calling her little sister to complain about her precious girl. But she wouldn’t pick up. Maybe she was out in the garden, maybe watching a show, maybe she’d already gone to bed.

Nothing’s going to happen, Maksim told himself. Let nothing happen.

Aunt Marina couldn’t take it for long, either. They all had delicate little ears. She stood there for a while, then left. Ulyana didn’t even look at her; there was nothing to look for there. And only when she realized she’d finally taken over their damn living room did listening to the TV become boring.

She sat for another couple of minutes, then went to her room. She left the talk show blaring at full volume, just to see what would happen. It kept shrieking for another twenty minutes, while they sat in their rooms like mice, afraid to come out. Bull’s-eye. A sniper’s shot.

Then they crept out, the parquet floor barely creaking, and carefully switched it off. But Ulyana didn’t object anymore: everything about them was clear enough as it was.

But she couldn’t fall asleep—she was feverish from her own self. She opened her notes and started composing again. And while she was writing, Kirill came back from his night out. The doorbell rang, and someone went to let him in.

Then a little scene played out in the hallway. Ulyana pressed her ear to the door and listened. At first they tried not to make noise, maybe embarrassed about her, but then they forgot about embarrassment and everything else in the world.

“Kirill! You don’t want to answer your calls?”

That was Uncle Maksim.

“Dad… What? My phone died…”

“It didn’t die! Everything’s getting delivered! Do you think I’m a complete idiot? You just can’t be bothered to read…”

“Well, I was busy. Come on, relax.”

“Me—relax? I should relax?! Have you lost your mind, talking to your father like that?”

“Dad, come on… It’s summer! Everyone’s out partying…”

“Everyone’s out partying… Everyone’s everyone, and you’re you, Kirill! Can’t you use your head?”

“Dad, what’s with the accusations, seriously?”

“Because how long can you keep roaming around?! I don’t understand! How long? Can you? Keep? Roaming?! Look at the time! Neither your mother nor I are asleep; we have to wait for you to get back from your night out!”

“Then go to sleep! Who’s making you stay up? How old am I, anyway? Why are you on my case?!”

And then—smack! Little Kirill let out a yelp.

“Dad, what the…?” he mumbled, hurt and stunned.

“Nothing! Stop acting like a little shit, Kirill! Grow up already! Grow up!”