Without mother

Alexey Anatolyevich Karelin — "WITHOUT MOTHER" (A Son's Confession)

PART ONE
De mortuis nil nisi bonum et verum
Chilon of Sparta

On the eve of your death, I had a remarkable dream. I am walking down a ruined Broadway, and among the debris, I see an Orthodox church that has miraculously survived. It looks more like a small chapel. Huge arched windows with shattered glass; its snow-white walls gleaming in the sun. Behind the ornate wrought-iron grilles stands a monk. Clad in a time-faded black robe, bareheaded, he watches intently over the scene. I approach him, the shards crunching under my feet, and ask if everything is alright. The monk smiles a radiant smile and says: “There is no power that could destroy an Orthodox church. The main thing is, do not worry! With God’s help! Everything is fine!”
And then, I am jolted awake by a phone call.
A neighbor called my wife’s phone and said that you were unwell—that you were lying unconscious in the common hallway. The taxi arrived quickly, within a minute. My beloved and I raced toward you; I feverishly dialed my daughter’s number—your granddaughter—so she would come too, while that dream of the ruined overseas street and the monk’s voice kept spinning and spinning in my head. "Everything will be fine." Hope is the last thing to die.
Thirty minutes later, I was calling your granddaughter. Fighting back tears, I told Annushka that Grandma was gone. That you were dead.
How could this be, Mama? You came from a family of long-livers! My grandmother, your mother, missed her hundredth birthday by only three years. And you always used to say: "I won't leave that easily, don't you hope for it!"
To be honest, Mama, you had many sayings. One of them I remembered firmly for the rest of my life: "I will raise you in the spirit of Communism!"
In the last two months, you changed abruptly. You started calling me "Alyoshenka." Even if it was only in text messages, how I had waited my whole life to hear that from you! Especially back then, when you carried the hostile surname of that monster who secretly tormented me at night. I was seven. He was your husband. You slept in the next room, and I could only moan, hoping you would hear.
And when, on one of those terrifying nights, I finally reached you with my cries, and you walked in, catching that drunken predator red-handed—you went on living with him for two more gruesome years as if nothing had happened. Two more years of pain and humiliation. Much later, making excuses, you said you needed a Moscow residency permit, that you had to establish yourself. Mama! But not at such a price!
Not at that price, Mama. And how was I, already nearly a grandfather myself, supposed to accept your belated: "Forgive me, I was young and didn't understand much"? I remember how, as a small child, I would run up to you—such a shapely beauty—tugging at the snow-white sleeve of your blouse, shouting impatiently: "Mama! Mama!". But you would grab me roughly by the scruff of my neck and, tickling my face with your crisply ironed pioneer tie, you would growl into my very ear: "Remember! I am not your mother here. Here, I am Elena Mikhailovna to you!"
Mama! In the entire school, I was the only one who called you that. Everyone else—from the principal and teachers to the janitors and local hoodlums—called you nothing but "Lenka."
But you didn't notice any of it. You worked your heart out! And how! I only saw you at school. Well, at home too, of course, but always surrounded by other people's children who couldn't get enough of you during school hours. That was your "pioneer elite." And you adored them. Secretly, I dreamed of becoming one of those activists, so that you would idolize me just as you did your beloved Posysayeva. That last name is burned into my memory forever. Decades later, I ran into her at a bowling alley while taking your granddaughter to play. Seeing the "legendary leader," I struggled in vain to remember her first name. Did she remember you? Did she remember how you fought to get her vouchers for the out-of-reach, heavenly "Artek"?
But I, Mother, remembered for life how you decided to send me to "Orlyonok" when I was in the fourth grade. In the hierarchy of Soviet pioneer concentration camps, it firmly held the second spot in terms of prestige. You prepared me thoroughly. At nearly thirty years old, for some reason, you decided that your child should not stand out from the new-age Pavlik Morozovs in that menagerie—at least not in his grades. My school diary was riddled with failing marks and mediocre "Cs" that mocked your plan, so you took a fatal approach to my academic performance: you decided to rewrite the entire diary for nearly the whole school year.
We worked on this at night for two long weeks of sleep deprivation and yawning in class, because during the day, you had, as expected, entirely different concerns. I sincerely believed I was rewriting not just a record of my knowledge, but life itself, yet I didn't understand why I felt so uneasy about it. My first-ever official document was forged in record time for an average student, and certified with fictitious signatures, it looked even better than the real thing.
If only I had known where you were sending me! I never told you about it, but now—forgive me, Mother—it’s all pouring out. It was a gathering of ambitious young criminals invested with power, trained by Communist professionals on a level that was, if not higher, then certainly equal to the Hitler Youth.
With my "grandmother’s upbringing," I was identified and labeled an outcast almost immediately. I had endured beatings before, especially in primary school. Today, years later, when people at the beach or the gym admire my physique—specifically my "eight-pack," those rock-hard abs—it wouldn't occur to them even in a nightmare what price I paid for this "masculine asset."
I was beaten often and with relish. They would hold my arms and practice punches to my solar plexus; I began to accept these "pioneer executions" as a matter of course. Mostly, they beat me because of you—because of what you did to those kids at school, expelling them from the Pioneers and summoning their parents. I grew used to it. But in "Orlyonok," I swallowed bitter pills for my own sake.
For failing to keep time with the drumbeat. For drawing biting caricatures. For making my best friend the adult sound engineer in the radio booth—his name is gone, but I remember the bold tracks he blasted through the atmosphere of collective brainwashing: the first seeds of Soviet rock.
But there, on the front line of my conscience, I didn’t turn into a weakling. With the stubbornness of a kamikaze pilot, I stood my ground for my quiet principles of humanity. Evil, Mother, always screams—but Goodness endures. Goodness cannot have "fists." Anything can have fists, but not Goodness.
I returned from that camp different—grown up. I realized that in this world, I was needed by no one. And I wanted so badly to create my own family, with a kind mother and a sea of children whom I would love and cover in kisses. Later, at sixteen, I wrote perhaps the shortest school essay ever on the topic "What do you want to be?": "I want to be a real husband, to love, to be loved, and to have at least three children." The Russian teacher slapped a "D" on it, literally crossing out the masterpiece.
But that’s a different story. Or maybe not. Remember how the chemistry teacher hinted at a "favor for a favor," saying, "Lena, your son is looking at a 'C' this quarter"? And you proudly replied, "Give it to him! The country needs laborers!" before sweeping off to your Pioneer room.


You were always swift and proud in everything, Mother. It’s just that within our little family, that pride never seemed to extend to me—except for that time with the iron bed. Remember how you woke me up in the middle of the night from my old folding cot we’d brought from Kurgan and ordered me to help you haul that antique deadweight from the junkyard?
Mother, it was terrifying. A fine drizzle was falling. You, clutching the steel crossbars, pushed forward like a tank. And I, eight years old, wept from the unbearable weight and the pain, as that forged monster kept bruising my knees. You just kept shouting stubbornly into the void: “Endure it! Keep moving! We have no one to help us!”
But was that really true, Mother? You were so magnificently beautiful, so—as they say nowadays—sexually attractive, that you could have beckoned any man with a single finger, and he would have done anything for you. He would have bought you a million such beds. Just as it eventually happened with the Chief Marshal of Artillery himself—the Minister of Defense of the USSR, Hero of Socialist Labor, Member of the Central Committee, and so on and so forth. In short, a "simple" Soviet military leader.
This unbelievable story, fairy-tale-like even by Soviet standards where people spent twenty years in line for an apartment, was whispered from mouth to mouth, people pointing at you enviously as you passed. And no wonder! Because you, Mother, had performed a true miracle.


Without a Moscow residency permit and with only one school year under your belt, you—a young Soviet-style Marilyn Monroe—managed to organize the student research work so brilliantly that your school became famous across the country overnight. Commander-in-Chief Tolubko himself, attending the opening of the Fourth Artillery Breakthrough Corps exhibition, was captivated by the charming blonde in a daring miniskirt. Upon learning through a brief but intimate conversation that this "Helen of Troy" had a young son and was forced to drift between rented rooms, he ordered that this extraordinary activist be granted her own apartment immediately. The order was executed within twenty-four hours. And that, Mother, was truly legendary!
What drove the military leader mad—your enchanting green eyes under coal-black brows, or the red pioneer tie draped over your striking curves? Whatever it was, it materialized your first and only two-room apartment on the ground floor of a newly built fourteen-story building. And you, driven by your conscience, spent the rest of your life working to "earn" that gift.
Yes, Mother, you worked like Geppetto, and I was your Pinocchio with an onion for a meal. Having secured free school lunches for me as a single mother, you washed your hands of the matter once and for all. Not once did you bother—even though your Pioneer room was just around the corner from the cafeteria—to come and see what your child was actually eating. And I was eating "the cream of the crop," in a literal sense. I ate the scraps left behind by the other children whose parents gave them 45 kopecks for lunch—a "feast" of leftover hearty soup, mashed potatoes with fried meat, and the remains of crispy puff pastry.
As a rule, all that remained for me from that "feast" was some thin, watery liquid and a single spoonful of mashed potatoes smeared across the plate, stained with a murky brown sauce. Oh, Mother, how I waited for you to show up one day, see it all, and give that fat, thieving cook hell! But you never came. You had no time—you were working off the debt for our apartment.
And I stayed silent. I felt desperately sorry for you. My whole life, I considered you not only the most beautiful woman in the world, but also the most miserable. I watched you sailing at full speed on the wings of total irresponsibility for my life, and my heart ached for you. I kept waiting for you to come to your senses. I waited my entire life, Mother, but it never happened.
Perhaps that’s why, until the very end, I avoided having tea or dinner with you. I physically couldn't eat at the same table; it felt alien to me. Just like those sudden, cat-like displays of affection right before your death. It didn't suit you at all. It irritated me. Especially that "play-acting" at Orthodoxy, which finally broke your already fragile health.
Yet back then, in my Pioneer childhood, you had one spectacular dish: Siberian-style clay pots. Extremely rarely, but without fail—only in the summer, during my brief breaks between camps when you had to take me home for three or four days—I would wake up to the smell of a scorching oven and the sting of apple cider vinegar vapors.
Back then, I would leap out of bed and rush to the kitchen, still unwashed, unable to tear my eyes away from the cooking process. But the happiness never lasted long. Soon, your new "friend" would arrive, and you would send me out to play or to the back room. Even from there, I could hear your infectious laughter and the meticulous "masterclass" you gave your married guest to prove you were a pro in the kitchen:
"Nikolai! Hello! Come in. Sit here for now and don't get in the way. I’m at the most crucial stage. With meat, the key is not to over-marinate it in vinegar. See how much we have?"
I knew you were gesturing toward the three-liter ceramic pot, out of which a sixteen-kilogram kettlebell protruded—the same one, by the way, that I had hauled home from the junkyard.
"It’s been sitting for twenty-four hours. Now, the main thing is not to overdo it," you repeated. Removing the weight, you made your guest dip his index finger into the brownish mass of tender veal, heavily garnished with onion rings and spices. "Almost like a shashlik, just less apple cider vinegar and more spices."
And then you would greedily suck his finger.
"Mmm... fresh! It was running around yesterday. Alright, that's enough! It's ready! Come on, Nikolai, put on that apron and help me out, since you can never get a hand from my little 'Pioneer helper'!"
That was a lie, Mother! I always wanted to help you, just not in front of those lecherous observers.
"Hold the pot and stand right here... Now, where are my milk mushrooms? Real Siberian ones! You can’t buy these here for love or money. Here, try one..."
You would slowly unwrap the gauze from the jar. Then, with a glass screech like someone washing windows, you’d haul the stalks of pale-green dill out of the narrow neck, finally extracting my grandmother’s treasure—sent for her favorite grandson: a giant, slippery, grey-green mushroom cap. After taking a bite yourself, you’d offer a taste to your guest. I would be nearly choking on my own saliva while your lover, grimacing at first, would bite into the rubbery flesh of the mushroom. Chewing cautiously, he’d suddenly realize it was delicious; the unique sweet-and-sour flavor would conquer him, and he’d beg for more.


"No. That’s enough," you stopped him, "or you’ll lose your appetite. Now, we’ll have fifteen clay pots in total. That means we’ll do it in three batches."
And you slapped your hips and rubbed your damp palms together with delight.
"Look, Nikolai, first we use a goose quill to coat the inside of the pot with sunflower oil. Unrefined, mind you—it has to have that scent! There… done. And then, we carefully line the bottom with the marinated veal, strictly in a cross-pattern. Don't forget the onion rings, and we’ll cover it all with a blackcurrant leaf as a buffer. You’re doing great, Nikolai! Do you have anything left in the pot?"
Forgetting for a second that you had already switched to the informal "you," you peered greedily at the bottom, where two or three slices sat orphanned in their own juice.
"Perfect! Pour what’s left into a glass. We’ll need that later. How’s the stove?"
You would pull on my winter mitten and open the door of the weather-beaten electric oven. A blast of heat filled the entire kitchen, but you didn't seem to notice; you practically stuck your head right inside. Flushed, red-faced, and satisfied that everything was going according to your simple feminine plan, you straightened up and looked at the effect you'd created.
"Just a bit longer and we can 'plant' the first batch. Now, Nikolai, get the blue pot from the fridge. That’s where the potatoes are. Good man. Take off the lid and come closer."
The pale-yellow potatoes, already sliced into rounds just like the onions, waited their turn in ice-cold water. You carefully separated the clinging slices and layered them three deep over the currant leaf, making sure to hide black peppercorns in between.
"Now, let's slice the tomatoes…"
You had bought those fist-sized, dark-burgundy tomatoes at the market along with the veal. Fleshy and divided into three or four segments, they looked more like fairy-tale monsters from Michurin’s gardens. You sliced them directly over the pots, filling the space with "bloody" juice and pulp. Next came the milk mushrooms, then another layer of potatoes, topped off with a bay leaf in every pot.
At that exact moment, the latest lover would realize something was missing. The lids. They were nowhere to be found.
"Alyona, didn't you forget something? Or are you cooking them uncovered?"—it was the first time I heard the guest's voice.
You only gave a mysterious smirk; in your mind, this was your finest hour.
"Nikolai, clear the table, put everything on the windowsill. We’re rolling out the dough!"
And at that point, I couldn't hold back—I appeared in the kitchen. There was an awkward introduction, with that silent excuse in the air: don't worry, he’ll be gone in three days… And there was Nikolai, wearing a floral calico kerchief, his nose and chin dusted with flour, looking like a friendly gnome as he meticulously kneaded and rolled out the flatbreads.
God! How I longed to take his place at that moment, Mother!


Finally, when everything was ready, you carefully sealed the pots with dough, pinching the edges slightly. You brushed the tight white dough with orange yolk and, as a final touch before plunging them into the oven, pierced a narrow slit with a knife for the savory steam to escape. Soon, that aroma would fill the entire house, wafting far beyond the kitchen and making it impossible for the neighbors to peacefully finish their dry sandwiches.
A recent joke on a comedy show hit close to home: they call Vovka's mother "The Vatican" because every weekend, a "new Pope" steps out onto the balcony for a smoke. Things weren't quite that bad with us, but life certainly tossed you from one man to another. It was especially painful when I’d come home from school and couldn't open the door with my own key. I could hear your moans and sighs from inside, followed a minute later by curses directed at me, claiming I was ruining your personal life.
I would stand there stubbornly, ringing the bell. Until, instead of you, a hairy male hand would slide through the crack in the door with a paper ruble, and a strange bass voice would rumble: "Here! Go to the movies!" And so, hiding my satchel in the fire cabinet, I’d head to the birch grove. That evening, I’d return those hundred kopecks to you—after all, that was ten kilograms of potatoes. The same potatoes I spent my youth hauling from the store two blocks away. That was when the veins in my legs gave out, Mama, and my growth stalled.
You always told everyone—and later, me—that you were an "honest woman" and couldn't ask your "friends" for anything. Fine! Agreed. But couldn't you have asked that master skier, who traveled fifty kilometers on roller skis just to see you, to bring those five or ten kilograms I had to haul like a Volga boatman with my small child's hands? Or suggested to your high-rolling lover from the gas company, who drove around in a brand-new Lada, to bring us a sack of potatoes or onions?


Proud Mother from some celestial land, you invented these beautiful rules for yourself, but their flip side was my constant malnutrition.
Yes, Mother, no matter how you look at it, my life in this new place was not coming together. I longed for my beloved Grandma Dusya and our life in Kurgan. Everything here felt hostile, and even moving into the new apartment brought me more distress than joy. Before the housewarming, you, I, and my perpetually drunk stepfather rented a small wooden house. There was no running water or indoor plumbing; the "facilities" were outside, and at night, if nature called, we had to use a metal bucket. Once, half-asleep, I mixed up the buckets. By morning, it turned out the drinking water was ruined... And yet, in that apple orchard, I felt somewhat more at peace. I could spend hours wandering through the overgrown, withering leaves, flipping over stones and frost-covered boards just to find drowsy beetles or fat earthworms. In November, when the first snow fell, I entertained myself by blazing intricate trails through the virgin white. Afterward, I’d sit for a long time by the red-hot Russian stove, listening to the birch logs popping behind the carved cast-iron door.
When the first spring thaw forced us to leave that boyish paradise for the empty concrete vaults of the two-room apartment, I was horrified to find cockroaches swarming under the kitchen sink. Unlike beetles, I could never stand them. I remember back in Kurgan, a single cockroach appeared in the kitchen; Grandma and I staked it out almost all night until we finally caught it. After that, my usually gentle grandmother, having lost her temper that evening, lectured me that cockroaches were filth, and the only thing worse was bedbugs.
I knew the word "bug," but only from the forest—those green, sluggish stinkers you shouldn't touch unless you want your hands to smell forever. But back in Kurgan, I only vaguely sensed that your mother meant something else entirely. My suspicions were confirmed a month after moving into the apartment gifted by the Commander-in-Chief. All night, I was bitten by what you called "little mosquitoes," Mother, but the next morning we found clusters of black dots along the crevices near the ceiling. You solved the problem swiftly and drastically. A neighbor, the mother of that strange one-eyed boy who never played with anyone, came over and brought a contraption resembling a huge bicycle pump. Wrapped up like a Chechen rebel, you sprayed everything with a foul-smelling poison, and the bedbugs vanished forever. You told me to call the neighbor Nadezhda Egorovna, which is how I realized the one-eyed boy’s mother was also a teacher.


And so I grew up like a cornered animal, with no place at home and no place at school. I hated my class. I despised the learning process, but most of all, I despised my classmates. Every one of them was "somebody’s" son or daughter. You shoved me into a class, Mother, alongside the scions of the Party’s second secretary, a general, and several colonels.
I learned about these nuances of the school menagerie by chance, overhearing a conversation by my teacher, Maria Fyodorovna. That painted witch tormented me constantly—sometimes tying my dangling feet together with shoelaces under the desk, other times mocking my lack of diligence and marking fat "Fs" in my diary from the very first week. She seemed like an old woman to me, desperately trying to look young.
One day after school, while wandering the halls waiting for you, I overheard her through the cracked door of the staff room.
"...You don't understand," she was saying, "the effort it took to assemble this class! I chose the most 'connected,' influential parents. And tell me, for mercy's sake, why do I need the son of our head Pioneer leader? She’s a pauper! There’s nothing to be gained from her. And the boy can barely read or write. If it were up to me, I’d transfer him to the 'B' section with the working-class rabble. My kids are elite, the pick of the crop!.."
Maria Fyodorovna was talking about your son, Mother. From that second on, I hated my teacher and my classmates alike. I purposely started reading worse and acting out during those tedious lessons. The class didn't take long to react. The boys decided to jump me. In the cloakroom, they threw my own coat over my head and swarmed me, beating me thoroughly.
I managed to break free and ran home as I was—without a coat, hat, or satchel—through the November frost. At the entrance to our building, I ran into Uncle Petya. I was choking on tears of resentment. In a fair fight, Mother, I could have held my own. But like that? In a mob, with a coat over my head?


Yes, Mother, you never knew this story, so listen: Uncle Petya didn't take me to his place; he walked me into our apartment. He helped me take off my grey school jacket with its chipped Little Octoberist star, then my shirt. He washed me and inspected me closely. Mother, there wasn't a spot on my body that wasn't bruised, though you never even noticed... By some miracle, my face was untouched; I had managed to curl up and cover it with my hands. Feonych knew exactly where the first-aid kit was—he had bought it himself.
I remember how seriously he treated my injuries:
"Don't be afraid, brother, this won't sting—it's just iodine. And the hematomas will fade. Calm down and tell me what happened. But let’s agree right now: this stays between you and me. No one else. Not even your mother. Deal?"
"D-d-deal," I agreed, still hiccupping and swallowing tears.
Feonych didn't expect my "beginning" to be the moment you snapped, refused to forgive my father's infidelity, and fled to Moscow. He learned so much from me then: about living with Grandma Dusya, about coming to Moscow to be with you, and how everyone—everyone—seemed to hate me here.
"You're wrong about that, brother! Take me, for instance—I love you! Do you know how great you are? How about you call me 'thou'? Is it a deal?"
"Deal."
"Now, remember this. Never let anyone get away with anything. If they hit you—hit back. If there are many of them, meet them one by one—and hit back. And remember, it's better not to do it in front of everyone. Pick a quiet corner and let him have it! Hit him with everything you've got!"
"What if they beat me again?"
"It doesn't matter! What matters is that you decided to stand up for yourself. Don't worry about the bruises or the scrapes. That's the only way they’ll start to respect you. They won't love you, but they will respect you. Until you deal with every single bully face-to-face, they will keep humiliating you. And tell no one."
"Not even Mom?"
"Lenka least of all. I know her through and through. Now, calm down and listen... Let me show you a few moves. This punch is called a hook..."
A bit tipsy, Uncle Petya went up to his wife and son, but I, Mother, returned to the school cloakroom. My "violated" coat lay on the floor. Some joker had used chalk to write the acronym "BAM" across it. With a heavy heart, I picked up the ruined garment—a gift from my grandmother, who had surely gone hungry to save up for it—and tried to rub off the chalk.
"Well, twerp! Hadn't had enough? Back for seconds?"
Without turning, I recognized Gubanov—a fat oaf of a classmate. My fists clenched instinctively. I spun around and, with a hysterical shriek, lunged at the unsuspecting brute, the son of our school nurse. I locked my arms around his curly head and sank my teeth into his fleshy nose. Terrified, Gubanov let out a roar, raining a hail of punches onto my back and head. But I felt no pain, Mother; I only felt a sudden, massive relief. Finally satisfied by the sweetness of the bite, I unclenched my jaws and let go. The first of my tormentors ran toward the second floor, screaming for his mother.
I should have fled, but instead, I calmly wiped my blood-stained mouth and took my time changing my shoes. That evening, I expected the belt from you, but Gubanov was too cowardly to complain. From then on, he stayed far away from me.
Despite the late hour, I couldn't sleep. Your booming laughter echoed from the kitchen—you were there with a friend. I had gone to bed early as a precaution to hide my bruises. And even though I kept calling you "Elena Mikhailovna" in my head, I loved you, Mother. I loved you, it seemed, more than anyone else in the world.
Sometimes, waking up in the middle of the night, I was seized by a strange fear, Mom—a fear that you had died. I would creep into your room and stand there for a long time, straining to hear your steady breathing. Finally, convinced that everything was alright, I’d make the sign of the cross over your blonde, roller-set head peeking out from under the blanket. I’d sigh, just like Grandma used to, offer a silent midnight prayer—a terrifying secret I could never share with anyone—and slip back to my bed.
That momentous evening, sleep wouldn't come. And it wasn’t because my bruised and battered body was aching. That was the night I finally stood my ground. Second on my "hit list" was Koshkin, though I could hardly call it a victory, Mom. Koshkin did Sambo. Right in front of the kids in the after-school program, I performed a dizzying flip—the result of his well-executed throw. I hit the ground hard, but I’ll never forget that surreal feeling: the earth suddenly tearing away from your feet, and for a split second, you're just hovering in the air. The school gym teacher saved me then. Stahl Konstantinovich helped me up, looked me dead in the eye, and uttered: "Remember this, Karelin—hitting the ground doesn't hurt. It's falling that hurts."
And I did fall, Mom—hard. It happened the next day, when the vice-principal’s son, a hulking boy a head taller than me, called you a whore. I didn't know exactly what the word meant, but from the look on Vekshin’s face, I knew it was beyond an insult.
I didn't let him finish his jeer. I grabbed my pencil case and hurled it at the beefy over-grown bully. But the case didn't stop him; it only made him see red. The odds were stacked against me. I bolted across the hallway into the restroom, and just as Vekshin was about to grab me, I spun around and slammed the heavy door right in his face. It was a calculated move. The thick door frame caught him square in the left temple. When I swung the door open again, your insulter was on the floor. I didn't waste a second. I snatched a heavy, ribbed soap dish from the sink and, using it like a brass knuckle, began raining down frantic blows. Covered in blood, Vekshin howled in pain, shoved me off, and cowardly retreated to his mother’s office.


You found me in the school cafeteria. Grabbing me by the collar, you dragged me away from the table, flipping over my bowl of unfinished soup in the process. You hauled me in front of everyone toward the Pioneer room. Once inside, you locked the door, snatched a heavy volume of Lenin’s Collected Works, and began to beat me. With every blow, you shouted: "Don't you dare hit other children! Don't you dare touch the vice-principal’s son! I’ll beat this nonsense out of you! I’ll raise you in the true spirit of Communism!"
Somehow, I squirmed free, lunged for the window, and jumped. Luckily, the room was on the ground floor. I smashed my knees against the frozen asphalt, gasping for air—more from the crushing sense of betrayal than from the physical pain—and ran blindly into the void.
Only after I’ve calmed down did I notice the blood on the back of my head. My hair was matted and sticky. My head began to spin, and I vomited. The rest is a blur. I assume kind strangers carried me home and sent word to you. An hour later, you came rushing in. At first, for some reason, you started kissing my hands. Then, knocking over pots and dropping cups in the kitchen, you scrambled for a wet towel, stumbling over shoes and slamming into every doorframe as you hurried back to me.
Once I recovered from the concussion, I settled the score with the rest of my bullies. Sometimes I took a beating, sometimes I gave one, but it was always one-on-one. For an entire school year, I fought until they gave me the nickname "Gorilla." It stuck until graduation, but I achieved my goal: they feared me, and they finally left me alone.
Years later, looking at the countless photos flooding your social media profile, I wonder: what is all this? Why did you never hug me or kiss me the way you’ve done a thousand times with children who are total strangers to you? A brief, stiff embrace after a long absence—and even that was rare. Why, Mom? Answer me.
Maybe that’s why I’ve always hugged and kissed my daughter so tenderly? Because I felt that monstrous void you left behind? Your life is your life, I’m not disputing that. But why were you so different with me than you were with your students? Why, year after year, did you repeat the same endless folly: pouring your heart and soul into those who, once graduated, forgot you forever? And if they didn't forget, they left you alone with your grievances—the very ones you’d then pour out to me. I would listen to stories of another betrayal by your students and think: "But what about me?"
Many would call this elementary selfishness, saying a son always wants more. But, Mom! There is a minimum set of things a mother must provide for her child: shelter, food, and most importantly—endless maternal love. That is the defining factor, not the bland soup in my school bowl. A mother’s love is the very magic that makes life worth living.
But that’s all just sentiment. In the prose of our daily grind, I dreamed of growing up as fast as I could. If only to pay off your debts. That cursed sum of 780 rubles hung over me like a Sword of Damocles throughout my entire childhood. How badly I wanted to lighten your burden, even just a little. I truly believed that the empty refrigerator and your constant absence were fueled by a sincere desire to end those debts once and for all. I was always entirely on your side, and I hoped for the same in return. At least in the smallest things. At least in rare moments of affection—the kind a stray dog expects from the person who once showed it a glimmer of kindness.
I remember one difficult conversation in the kitchen. You had invited two of your well-off friends—also teachers, but married to officers. Nothing foreshadowed a fight; you were gossiping, laughing, and talking shop. Until you decided to take a pair of new Yugoslavian boots out of the box—bought from a black-market dealer for two hundred rubles. All hell broke loose!
"Lena! Why on earth? Two hundred rubles! Are you out of your mind? Your salary is seventy! Your son looks like a beggar, you’re drowning in debt! These boots aren’t even practical for winter! And look at that heel—it’s a stiletto!..."
At first, you burst into tears. But then, after crying it out, you wiped your eyes and kicked your colleagues out. You never spoke to them outside of school again. To me, already half-asleep, you vented your indignation about how envious people were, how they couldn't stand your independence or the fact that you dressed exactly as you pleased—even if it cost your last penny. "Are you really a beggar?" you’d ask. "You have everything: the uniform, the shoes, and a brand-new hat!"
Yes, Mom, everything I had was new. Or rather, "mostly new," since I spent my entire childhood wearing hand-me-downs. My prize possession was a winter jacket from East Germany with faux fur lining. It didn't fit, but I managed to tailor it myself. After that, you proudly showed off my handiwork to guests, boasting about what a "handyman" your son was.
I was a handyman by God’s grace—whether I was fixing the toilet tank with whatever was under my sink, or sacrificing a brand-new construction set to build a shock absorber for a junk refrigerator that was ten years older than you. Once again, you were proud, telling everyone how talented I was. Imagine that—a fourth-grader fixing it all by himself! The fact that the fridge weighed twice as much as I did, or that I tore the ligaments in my left shoulder while lifting it, remained off-camera. That shoulder has been doomed to ache for the rest of my life. Mom, did you ever stop to wonder why I fixed that freezing dinosaur? I was just starving. I dreamed that one day, food would actually appear inside that cold box. Dreams, idle dreams...
To you, I was always a "Kremlin Dreamer." Even when I published my first short piece in the local pioneer newspaper, The Bugle Calls, and earned my first pocket money—one ruble and twenty kopecks. A fortune for an eleven-year-old underfed kid.
Though the word "underfed" probably doesn't apply to me in the literal sense—you breastfed me until I was three, Mom. You used to recount that with such tenderness at every opportunity. And your breasts were truly beautiful. I remember vividly the first time I saw them at an age of conscious awareness.
Do you remember, Mom? No? Then let me remind you. After a year and a half of separation, you returned to Kurgan for a few days on business. It was a sweltering July in the Trans-Urals. My second cousin, a boy my age, was visiting Grandma and me. You were washing up in the bathroom and asked me to bring you a towel. I stepped into the thick steam and, for the first time after seeing only the frail, withered body of my seventy-year-old grandmother, I saw your magnificent form. Your figure was truly stunning—especially back then, in your twenty-fives.
After handing you the towel, I walked out in a state of high excitement and immediately, with childish bluntness, started bragging behind the door: "Yurka! You should see my mom’s breasts! They're like this!"—I traced the shapes in the air—"Nobody has ones like that! Not even Lyubka..."
I never got to finish. Half-naked, you burst through the door, raining down a barrage of curses and lashing me with the wet towel. You didn't even stop to ask who this Lyubka was. You should have. Maybe then I would have told you everything. When they fell trees, chips fly. I felt like one of those chips—a tiny, unfinished toy boat, drifting aimlessly downstream.
Grandma and I were desperately short on money. Despite having four living adult children, she received no help from any of them. A meager pension of three rubles and twenty kopecks—that was our entire fortune. And yet, there was rent to pay, simple clothes to buy for me... and what about Grandma? So, your mother took in borders—exclusively young, single girls who had come to Kurgan to find work. They stayed until they found husbands. Shy ones, loud ones, cheerful ones—a revolving door of human destinies.
Among them all, Lyubka stood out. She was truly beautiful! Tall, statuesque, and curvaceous, she loved to fuss over me and pull me onto her lap. It was innocent enough. Grandma just smiled at these "puppy-love" displays, often saying, "Girl, it’s high time you had children of your own..." Lyubka would just joke back: "I’m waiting for this prince to grow up, then I’ll marry him!"
Lyubka worked as a cook at the hospital across the street. She often treated us to simple delicacies and loved feeding me from her own hands. Grandma forbade it, but I loved licking her slender fingers, which Lyubka would intentionally coat in sweet condensed milk. One spring, after she had lived with us for over six months, Grandma went to visit her late husband’s sister, leaving me in Lyubka’s care on her day off.
"Baba Dusya, can I give Alyosha a bath?"
"If you really want to bother! Well, if you fill the tub, just let him splash around for an hour. Just keep an eye on him and keep the water warm..."
And with that, Grandma left. I was beyond happy—I was going to spend the day with the spirited beauty I was secretly in love with.
Lyubka clearly sensed it. She especially enjoyed how, in the heat of our games, her hand would "accidentally" brush against my trousers as she’d whisper conspiratorially: "Oh! Looks like your little rooster has woken up!" I didn't understand what those words meant; I simply soaked up the affection like a sponge—the kind of tenderness I was so desperately starved for.
Grandma had left. The tub was full, and I, armed with my favorite toy soldiers, happily sank into the warm water. But before I could launch into an imaginary battle, Lyubka walked in. She was wearing my favorite flannel robe, the one I loved to grab and tangle myself in. This time, however, it was hanging wide open. When she crouched down beside the tub, I forgot everything else in the world, unable to take my eyes off her half-exposed breasts. Lyubka smiled tenderly, dipped her hand into the water, and playfully splashed my face. I squealed and returned fire, kicking my legs until a fountain of spray soaked her instantly.
"Oh, you...! You've drenched me!" Lyubka rose to her full, giant-like height and shrugged off the wet robe. There was nothing beneath it.
It was the first time I consciously beheld a woman’s body. I was particularly struck by the hair on her pubic mound, which reminded me of some furry creature from a fairy tale.
"Look what I have!" Lyubka leaned over, picked up two infantrymen from the sink, and tucked them into her curly hair. "See how they’re hiding? In an ambush!"
I couldn't look away. My heart was pounding like the drumroll of my own toy drummers.
"Bang!" Lyubka cried out, and with a flick of her hips, she dropped the infantrymen into the water. "Now, your turn!"


I obediently tried to station the "drowned" soldiers on Lyubka’s mound, but I couldn't get it right.
"Silley, not like that!" Lyubka took my hand in hers and guided it. The soldier slipped away. I squeezed my eyes shut and clenched my fist tight, while she, straddling the edge of the tub, gripped my arm near the elbow and began to guide my small fist deeper and deeper inside her. I felt a tight, tubular pressure, heard a primal groan, and nearly choked on my own fear. But she wouldn't stop. Flushed with heat, she pulled my hand out, knelt before me again, and pressed my face hard against her breasts—which no longer seemed beautiful to me. Struggling to get free, I bit or pinched her nipple hard and burst into tears.
"You little brat!" Lyubka cried out and began to tickle me. At first I fought back, but the tickling won—I began to laugh hysterically, gasping for air. Then Lyubka pulled the plug, climbed into the tub, and laying me on top of her with my back to her chest, began to stroke and caress me. I resisted at first, but slowly I quieted down. These strange sensations completely overturned my childhood understanding of pleasure. My entire being trembled; it felt as though I were inside the belly of a giant whale.
Those, Mom, were my first conscious impressions of sex, at age five. And you had a chance to hear about it then—not now, when it matters to no one but my own scarred memory. Still, I thank you and bow to you for the fact that until I was three, I grew up healthy, a breast-fed child.
Why until three? Because almost immediately after, you sent me to daycare. I understand—it was necessary, everyone did it. But why did disaster have to strike me? Why did the swinging arc of a swing-set have to split specifically my three-year-old forehead? My first memories in color: I am being carried, and from my head, garnet-red blood drips and drips onto the white coat of a screaming nursery teacher. The monochrome weekdays of my childhood, decorated in red.


Oh, Mom, do you remember? Back then, they gave me five stitches and a "lifetime warranty" on headaches and motion sickness. Looking back at how my life started, I just want to hit reset and begin again. It’s no way to start a journey, carrying such a heavy load of injuries. And yet, throughout my childhood, "bitch-life" handed me three more split skulls, each requiring stitches and ending with a diagnosis of concussion.
Am I getting this right? Come on, Mom, let's count them together.
Do you remember my first summer break? You were so exhausted from a year of dealing with your rowdy first-grader son that you sent me away to a Pioneer camp for the entire three months of your teaching vacation. I split my head open on the very first day. I was running with the other boys, playing "war," and slammed full-tilt into a jagged piece of rebar left sticking out by some negligent construction workers. As I fell, the back of my head found its twin—another piece of metal debris.
The ambulance took me away, and I was hospitalized. For seven long days and nights, I lay in the pediatric ward—just a fifteen-minute walk from where you were. Everyone there pitied me, feeding the "little orphan" whatever they could spare. I especially remember a massive, kind-hearted Georgian man. He seemed like a giant to me, and every lunchtime he would share juicy pears with me. Oh, Mom! I’ve never tasted pears like those again. And I never waited for you as desperately as I did then.
A week later, you came rushing in—frantic, confused, ready to kill everyone and demand to know why you hadn't been notified. It’s a strange thing, Mom, but you hadn't even bothered to give the camp counselors a contact number. Not even Nadezhda Egorovna’s phone!
I earned my fourth scar saving birds. At nine years old, I broke the crossbow of a neighbor’s kid—a wild little sadist who was three grades ahead of me and two heads taller. Without a second thought, the bully caught up to me and smashed my head with what was left of his weapon: the stock with the nail that held the bow together. The nail sank in right near the crown of my head but, fortunately, didn't pierce the skull.
I remember my friends' faces clearly, pressed against the window of my small room. Through the glass, they watched me bleed out in silence, locked away, wanting to see no one. You, as usual, weren't there. In the end, our flimsy front door was kicked in by the paramedics.
This is just one of a thousand episodes flashing through my mind right now. You can't remember it all, and perhaps you shouldn't. Mom! We did have happy moments—yes, darling, we did. But much later. As if having a change of heart, you began to make up for lost time only in the few months before you passed away.
But back then, I was enduring my fateful sixth year of living without Grandma—without her wise silence, her nurturing love, her knitted socks, and the simple soup warmed by her tenderness. I spent the entire previous year in the ski club. Your new lover, that Master of Sports, gave you a pair of "semi-plastics"—a remarkable hybrid of wood and plastic. And you, in turn, handed that marvel down to me. The lover was caught off guard, but there was nothing he could do, though he made every excuse to avoid giving me a single masterclass. Not that I really wanted one—we had a great coach, the school gym teacher. I was short on vitamins, but my autumn training paid off, and I was steadily closing in on my goal: a second-degree adult sports rank.


I earned my fourth scar saving birds. At nine years old, I broke the crossbow of a neighbor’s kid—a wild little sadist who was three grades ahead of me and two heads taller. Without a second thought, the bully caught up to me and smashed my head with what was left of his weapon: the stock with the nail that held the bow together. The nail sank in right near the crown of my head but, fortunately, didn't pierce the skull.
I remember my friends' faces clearly, pressed against the window of my small room. Through the glass, they watched me bleed out in silence, locked away, wanting to see no one. You, as usual, weren't there. In the end, our flimsy front door was kicked in by the paramedics.
This is just one of a thousand episodes flashing through my mind right now. You can't remember it all, and perhaps you shouldn't. Mom! We did have happy moments—yes, darling, we did. But much later. As if having a change of heart, you began to make up for lost time only in the few months before you passed away.
But back then, I was enduring my fateful sixth year of living without Grandma—without her wise silence, her nurturing love, her knitted socks, and the simple soup warmed by her tenderness. I spent the entire previous year in the ski club. Your new lover, that Master of Sports, gave you a pair of "semi-plastics"—a remarkable hybrid of wood and plastic. And you, in turn, handed that marvel down to me. The lover was caught off guard, but there was nothing he could do, though he made every excuse to avoid giving me a single masterclass. Not that I really wanted one—we had a great coach, the school gym teacher. I was short on vitamins, but my autumn training paid off, and I was steadily closing in on my goal: a second-degree adult sports rank.


The moment of truth arrived on February 28th. Despite a bitter frost of minus twenty-two degrees and the biting humidity of the Moscow region, the race went on. My equipment was top-notch, but my track suit failed me. It was the same fleece-lined suit my father had given me two years prior. I had long since outgrown it, stretching like a green onion sprout reaching out of a mayonnaise jar on a winter windowsill. Unfortunately, no one told me to wear thermal underwear—not that I had any anyway. Eight kilometers in, I realized: I would either finish as a frostbitten eunuch or I had to save my manhood. I pulled off the track and simply watched the "properly packaged" kids zip past me. All I could do was try to warm myself with my grandmother’s knitted mitten. I missed the qualifying standard by three seconds. That’s a lot.
You were waiting for me at the finish line. Rosy-cheeked and flushed from hopping around to stay warm, you gave me a perfunctory word of praise and started scanning the crowd for your Igor Bedin—the adults had started their 25-kilometer race alongside the youths. Your lover finished among the leaders, a favorite of the race. He fell theatrically into the snow, covered in frost, wearing a super-cool, skin-tight Adidas suit that showcased his magnificent physique. To me, he looked like a total freak.
After catching his breath, he condescendingly accepted a warm blanket from you—which, as it turned out, you’d been warming under your fur coat—along with hot tea and even a foil-wrapped chicken leg. The athlete bolted it down, crunching through the bones. Then, I was "honored" with the task of carrying his priceless Fischer skis back to our house. Of course, I didn't carry them. Instead, for the first time in my life, I snapped at you. Feeling the sharp sting of my frozen privates, clutching my single mitten, I stepped up to the giant and, leaning forward, rammed my head into his crotch. I hit him so hard he went down. Immediately after that, he took off for Zvenigorod, leaving behind his ski wax and a pack of condoms at our house.


As it happened, I never put on skis again. That summer, I was sent to stay with Grandma, and she, with the best of intentions—wanting the boy to "put some meat on his bones" with country cooking—passed me along to relatives in the countryside.
That was the summer I fell in love with macram;, weaving those ballpoint pens out of used medical IV tubes that were so popular in my childhood, wrapping the ink refills in intricate patterns. I even got the local kids hooked on it. You only knew the broad strokes of what happened in that remote village; during your lifetime, I never shared the shocking details. Now, Mom, I can finally tell you the truth.
I close my eyes and see you sitting in Purgatory, waiting for your turn. You're clutching a ticket that expired long ago. You wait and wait for your son to finish his scribbling, while on the black electronic display above, instead of red numbers, the bloody letters of my confession begin to glow. You grow anxious, pacing toward the administrator, but Apostle Peter, with a stoic face, explains that your son is one in a million. He tells you that if the children of every soul here wrote such revelations, the work of the Gatekeepers of Paradise would be undeniably easier. You get angry, pull yourself together, and return to your "electric chair," waiting in terror for more words from the one who loves you so much he is trying to save your immortal soul.
Forgive me, Mom, but whether you like it or not, I won't let you go until I’ve told you everything. If only because you are alive as long as you are remembered.
The country summer greeted me with simple, sometimes exotic fare—like a rich stew made from cow hooves. It’s no surprise; back in the Soviet days, only Moscow lived high on the hog. But all around me was a sea of fresh cow's milk, bread with a golden crust straight from a traditional Russian oven, and berries... berries... berries... raspberries, wild strawberries, stone brambles, and blueberries.
As it happened, I never put on skis again. That summer, I was sent to stay with Grandma, and she, with the best of intentions—wanting the boy to "put some meat on his bones" with country cooking—passed me along to relatives in the countryside.
That was the summer I fell in love with macram;, weaving those ballpoint pens out of used medical IV tubes that were so popular in my childhood, wrapping the ink refills in intricate patterns. I even got the local kids hooked on it. You only knew the broad strokes of what happened in that remote village; during your lifetime, I never shared the shocking details. Now, Mom, I can finally tell you the truth.
I close my eyes and see you sitting in Purgatory, waiting for your turn. You're clutching a ticket that expired long ago. You wait and wait for your son to finish his scribbling, while on the black electronic display above, instead of red numbers, the bloody letters of my confession begin to glow. You grow anxious, pacing toward the administrator, but Apostle Peter, with a stoic face, explains that your son is one in a million. He tells you that if the children of every soul here wrote such revelations, the work of the Gatekeepers of Paradise would be undeniably easier. You get angry, pull yourself together, and return to your "electric chair," waiting in terror for more words from the one who loves you so much he is trying to save your immortal soul.
Forgive me, Mom, but whether you like it or not, I won't let you go until I’ve told you everything. If only because you are alive as long as you are remembered.
The country summer greeted me with simple, sometimes exotic fare—like a rich stew made from cow hooves. It’s no surprise; back in the Soviet days, only Moscow lived high on the hog. But all around me was a sea of fresh cow's milk, bread with a golden crust straight from a traditional Russian oven, and berries... berries... berries... raspberries, wild strawberries, stone brambles, and blueberries.
I rode motorcycles with that same Yurka I had once bragged to about your beauty. My rear end felt every pothole and bump from the back seat of his bike. At night, I raided neighbors' gardens with the village boys, stealing cucumbers and startling sleepy chickens. I chased runaway foxes, tried to talk to girls, and soaked in the vastness of the Trans-Ural steppes and the density of those ancient forests where, I was absolutely certain, wood spirits lived and Baba Yaga herself kept house.
On one of those adventurous days, in a nearby grove, I split my kneecap open with a freshly sharpened axe. It’s a miracle I didn’t hit an artery and bleed out right then and there.
I knew axes well. I was six; you were over two thousand kilometers away. A truckload of New Year’s pines was brought into our yard. They needed to be trimmed for sale quickly, but they were short on tools. The workers started scrounging through the apartments. We had an axe; it stood by the door behind the shoe rack. I used to play with it often, even though it was heavy. Grandma lent it out on the condition that we’d get at least the scrawniest pine tree in return. "For my grandson, maybe?" she pleaded with a massive laborer in frost-covered felt boots. To seal the deal, she slipped him a ruble.
A ruble! A fortune! Mom, I had been begging Grandma for a long time to use that money to buy me a "real" armored car toy. Now I realize that spending a third of a pension on a toy is madness, but back then… how do you explain to a child that he is an orphan while his parents are still alive? That he is needed by no one in the whole world except his soft-hearted grandmother? The worker pocketed the ruble like a thief. I remembered his look. Later in my life, I would see that arrogant squint all too often, but then, I still had the naivety to believe in a Christmas miracle.
"Grandma! Grandma! Let me help unload the trees too!" I begged, and to my surprise, Grandma let me go.
I ran among the fragrant, freshly cut pines, helping however I could: bringing twine to some, carrying away lopped-off branches for others, or running home to fetch a glass of water for a thirsty worker. I watched as strangers hauled away my "Christmas trees" one by one. The pockets of those frost-bitten men bulged before my eyes, but I kept waiting. I waited for that sullen drunk, who was so skillfully wielding our axe, to finally pick out a tree for us. Do I even need to tell you, Mom, that I never got that pine?
Soon, every tree was gone, and the workers began climbing back into the empty truck bed. My "promiser" climbed in too. I ran up and grabbed hold of his felt boot:
"Mister! Mister! What about a tree for me and Grandma?"
The grim worker just brushed me off, shaking me away like a nagging conscience:
"Hold your horses, I've got no time for you now. Here, take your axe. We’re supposed to come back soon anyway."
I was left standing alone amidst a pile of stripped, frost-covered pine boughs. I myself, like a little pine, had become soaked in the scent of resin. A lump formed in my throat. Somewhere on a neighboring street lived my father, who hadn't brought me so much as a crust of bread—not even a kopeck—too afraid to show his face where his five-year-old son lived. Somewhere on another planet called Moscow, you were spinning in your own world... my parents had entirely different plans, and I didn't fit into any of them. But I didn't cry, Mom! An hour later, your mother came out to get me, and we salvaged a few pine branches from the pile of snow-covered debris. Ever since then, I’ve hated New Year’s.
After that fateful day in the village, I didn't pick up an axe again until I was in the army. Though, Mom, Providence always watched over me. When it realized I couldn't be held back and was bound to crash, it softened the blows as best it could, standing in for the parents who had abandoned me. That’s exactly what happened this time.
By a stroke of luck, right before heading out to cut wood for a bow, I had carefully watched an episode of the TV show Health with Yulia Belyanchikova. That broadcast, which saved my life, was entirely dedicated to axe wounds and the essential steps to take if such a tragedy occurred. Mom, I still wonder to this day: did I split my leg open because I watched that show, or did Belyanchikova’s broadcast save my thirteen-year-old life?
It’s hard to write about this while rushing along on the high-speed train of memory. Sitting comfortably in a plush seat, thinking of the past—of a childhood that carved my character out of the tinsel of daily reality. It feels like I’m taking a deep breath and diving headfirst into a place from which it’s hard to emerge the same man—the man who spent years trying to forget the nightmare of his early life. A life, for the most part, lived without you.
The axe struck exactly across the kneecap. Still hoping for a miracle, I yanked up my right trouser leg, which had been sliced with surgical precision, and exposed the maw of the gaping wound. The blood hadn't started to flow yet.


I knew I had about five seconds, tops. From then on, I followed the "video instructions" to the letter: I ripped off my T-shirt, twisted it, and tied a double knot as tight as I could above the gash, cinching the femoral artery. Then, limping, I dashed toward the village. By a stroke of luck, Yurka’s mother—your friend—was at home.
"Aunt Shura! Don’t panic, I’ve split my leg open!" Shura gasped, dropping a basin of freshly picked raspberries. I kept going, my voice cracking into a shout: "Get the IV tubing from the left drawer, I need to tie off the leg!"
There were about five meters of the stuff in that dresser—practically the entire inventory of the local clinic. An improvised tourniquet was found. But first, the temporary bandage had to come off. With trembling hands, Aunt Shura cut it away using sheep shears. Blood erupted like a fountain, flooding the floor and mixing with the crushed berries.
Coldly, I counted: "One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi..." On the fourth second, I tightened the tourniquet. I remembered Belyanchikova’s warning: the knot had to be easy to loosen to prevent gangrene, and it had to be released every twenty minutes until the stitches were in.
It took forever to find a ride. Finally, they found an available tractor. They tossed me into a trailer filled with old rags and headed for the city. The local paramedic tagged along, ruining the "scenic drive" with his heavy stench of booze. He knew nothing about axe wounds—and even if he once did, he’d long since drowned that knowledge in vodka. The trailer rattled, bucking out of the ruts, sending white-hot pain through my knee. The paramedic stank worse than a hog, while Aunt Shura kept wailing: "What on earth am I going to tell Dusya!"
I won’t tell you, Mom, about how they finally got me to the hospital two hours later, or how they stitched my knee without anesthesia. I’ll only say this: I’ll never forget the sensation of them flushing the meniscus. A bizarre feeling—unbearably painful and ticklish at the same time.


They didn't keep me in the hospital. They didn't return me to Grandma. They didn't call for you. In that same tractor, I rattled back to the site of my seventy-day torture, where I spent the pivotal months of my budding life confined to a hard sofa.
I never asked you about this, Mom. But why didn't you come? I understand—poor phone lines, the habit of dumping me for the summer... but where was your woman’s intuition? Your maternal instinct? When I hear those sappy stories about a mother waking up in the middle of the night because her heart felt her child was in danger, I realize with bitterness, Mom, that it’s not about you. About your mother—yes.
Because she felt that I was suffering. She rushed off into the middle of nowhere, to a place from which no one else would have bothered to save me. Decades passed before I could piece together the puzzle of that time when you drastically altered the fates of four people: mine, my father’s, your own, and Grandma’s.
At the loud birthday party for your brother—who had married a "good match" with a downtown apartment out of pure desperation—you noticed your husband had vanished. You looked for him. And you found him in the neighbor's apartment, screwing your sister-in-law's friend, where they had supposedly gone to "wash the dishes." Your rage matched the scene. But in your noble indignation, you didn't run into the unknown; you ran toward a cozy spot you’d been mulling over in your plans, savoring it like a piece of candy.
A plane ticket—and by evening, you were in the arms of another. A man you’d picked up three months prior at the "Yolochka" sanatorium near Moscow, where you’d been sent on a Komsomol assignment. You’d ensnared a mere boy from the staff. The details didn't matter. You were flying "to Moscow"! Even though that village was a good hundred kilometers from the city, the phrase itself sounded grand. That local boy worked as a laborer and possessed two undeniable virtues: a mustache like Boyarsky’s and the ability to play the guitar. That was enough.
But Mom! When you snapped and rushed toward your "Moscow dream," didn't you realize almost immediately what was hidden beneath that shiny wrapper? A chronic alcoholic from a family of local dregs! Carried by your hatred for my father, you couldn't bring yourself to turn back and return to your son. Instead, you stubbornly began building a new life with a creature compared to whom my womanizing father looked like an angel. Think about it: a shop manager at a secret defense plant, a tall Siberian communist—versus this pretty-faced pervert living in filth and ignorance in his drunken mother’s shack.
You rolled up your sleeves and tried to polish something that only the grave could fix. And a year and a half later, you dragged me, your six-year-old son, into that rat trap. It was winter, snowy and freezing. I lay alone in a foul-smelling room reeking of booze, charcoal fumes, and sour cabbage. I lay on filthy, never-washed sheets that were simply burned once they became unusable. I prayed—the way only a grandmother’s grandson can pray, having absorbed faith as the only means of escaping horror and pain.
And Grandma came. In her eighties, she heard my cry from two thousand kilometers away and snatched me out of that nightmare. That is a true mother’s heart! She delivered an ultimatum: she would only return me if you moved out of that hovel and lived on your own.
Meanwhile, my father was busy showing his "independence." During that non-childish summer, as I lay on that hard sofa with a mangled leg, I often remembered the first time he showed up at Grandma’s, a year after your flight.


My father could never get past the fact that I was my mother’s son. Thanks to you, Mom, he treated me like a persistent headache. You couldn't forgive his infidelity, and he couldn't forgive you for catching him red-handed.
We met a few times after your flight, but soon Karelin Senior grew cold toward me. To him, I wasn't just a son; I was the offspring of the woman who had walked out on him.
A year later, you complied with Grandma’s ultimatum: you moved closer to Moscow, to Odintsovo, and began living separately from that wretch of yours. The old woman gave in and sent me back to you. Although I visited Grandma maybe three times during my school years, I saw my father for a grand total of about seven hours—and only then because of your brother. Stubborn Uncle Valya would track down my father’s new addresses through the information bureau (since he changed them like pairs of gloves) and, under the slogan "Surprise!", would haul me to his doorstep uninvited.
Uncle, oh Uncle… why did he do it? I still don't understand, Mom. Just as I don't understand your instructions to "see Karelin and shake something out of him." My father didn't love me. I felt it in his every look. Lies and distrust—that’s what pushed me away from him forever. Our interactions were reduced to hollow formalities. I felt a crushing shame for myself, for you, and for this stocky man, shaped like a freshly dug potato, who happened to be my father.
My father repaid me in kind, clearly harboring the same conflicted feelings toward me. I couldn't shake that feeling of revulsion even after our meetings ended and my uncle took me back to another life—a life without a father.

In the army, I reevaluated a lot. There were times I wanted to see my father so desperately that I’d start writing him letters, only to tear them up every single time. By the way, I never told you the whole truth about one incident in the tank regiment.
One day, a cadet approached me: "Sergeant, is Anatoly Leontievich Karelin a relative of yours?" It turned out this boy was the son of my home-grown Don Juan’s mistress. The man who fathered me had seen him off to the army, not me. Despite everything, I was genuinely glad for the coincidence and asked him to send my regards in his next letter home. I waited a hundred days. Finally, on New Year’s Eve, a message arrived: "Happy New Year! Dad."
The telegram was handed to me just before evening roll call. I stood there before my squad with that slip of paper—a comedy and a tragedy all at once. They asked, "What’s wrong, Sergeant?" I replied, "I just received the telegram I’ve been waiting for my entire life." That same night, I sat down and wrote it all out to him: how Grandma and I lived alone; how hazy my memories of him were; how meager his support had been... basically, every thought about what he had done for me—or rather, what he had failed to do.
You know what I’m thinking now, Mom? Why is it that, despite our rare meetings, I knew the faces of all his wives? For some reason, he felt it necessary to introduce me to every new flame. Now, years later, I finally understand why. The logic was pathetically simple: if he was forced into a parental meeting with a child born to the woman who betrayed him, then let that boy see—and later report back to you—that his ex-husband was doing great and was perfectly happy.
In reality, even to me as a child, something else was visible: the pain and restlessness of a man who had locked himself in a gilded cage with yet another phantom of his dreams. After receiving a divorce from you by mail—a toxic practice common in the Soviet Union—my father went and got married again with reckless abandon.
They came to see me one summer day. I remember the balcony door was open; the shouts of kids and the sounds of passing cars drifted in from the yard. Grandma let them in but retreated to the kitchen, leaving me alone with my parent and his companion.
"Hello, Lesha. I bought you some toy soldiers," my father said, his nervousness palpable.
I was thrilled with the soldiers. At that age, I spent all my days lining up columns of my legionnaires.
An agonizing silence followed. Two people sat beside me on creaky chairs: my father, watching my game intently, and a blonde woman who bore a striking, almost confusing resemblance to you. She sat turned away, legs crossed, and I couldn't take my eyes off her bright orange shoes with their massive cork platforms. Finally, my father let out a heavy sigh and asked if I wanted to go to the amusement park with them. Grandma and I could never afford the park; I desperately wanted to go, but for some reason, I told them I wouldn't go anywhere.
They didn't try to persuade me. I remember vividly how, as she stood up, that cork platform stumbled and crushed my formations. The soldiers scattered across the room. My father tried to help me pick them up, but I swept away everything that had managed to survive the wreck myself.
Five years later, we met again. My father’s wife had grown hideously fat, and nothing about her—not even remotely—reminded me of you anymore.


Actually, after all these years, I’ve realized one thing: my father loved only you his entire life, Mom. He tried to outrun that feeling, suppressed it in every way, and that crushed but undying love took on perverted forms. He hunted for women who looked like your shell. But a fake is a fake. When a man looks for qualities in a woman that aren't naturally hers, he dooms the union to self-destruction. Sooner or later, the unnatural blonde stops dyeing her hair and turns back into a natural brunette, returning to her true self. She stops dieting because her husband simply stops noticing her, and in return, she stops caring how she looks. This is how the collapse begins. Who knows what else can sprout from an initial lie? It builds up until the woman—who cheated both her husband and herself just to build a family—finally leaves. And five years later, her ex-husband goes back on the prowl for yet another clone of the woman who already exists, but with whom he has no peace, and never will.
Pain, especially physical pain, if it doesn't turn you into a cornered animal, gives you the strength to fight back with the only weapon you have: thoughts and hope. You grind down the past so that it can never repeat itself in your fate. And so you lie there, a bloodied adolescent on a hard sofa in a stranger's house, treated like an "orphan guest," and you sacredly believe that someday you will claw your way out of the shit your parents brewed. They conceived and gave birth to you either by accident or out of sheer stupidity, deciding to play "grown-ups," and then, having grown tired of the toy, tucked you away in a corner and forgot about you—like a useless appendix of their conscience.


My God! It feels so good to be able to tell you anything I want, and you listen without interrupting or running off to your room. What a blessing it is to finally convey everything to my beloved mother, even if it’s after her death.
Grandma used to tell me back when we lived alone that if your grandfather Leonty were still alive, he would never have let your parents split up. I’m not so sure now, Mom. I only saw Grandpa once, when I was three and they took me to a village in Altai to show my father’s parents their grandson. I remember him—lean and wiry, standing with his back to me, stripped to the waist, skillfully swinging an axe. His muscles rippled, even though he was eighty-four. He didn't look like an old man with a cane, despite the shrapnel lodged near his heart. If not for that wound, he might be alive today—though he managed to conceive my father in the victorious year of '45.
Mom, it still hurts that I don't have a single photograph of him. And I can't bring myself to swallow my pride and ask my father for one. It’s not right for a child, even one now gray-haired, to go chasing after the man who fathered him. That’s why I didn't even tell your first husband about your death directly. I called his fourth wife three months after you passed, didn't introduce myself, simply asked her to pass on the news that you were gone, and hung up.
Why? For what? I know plenty of families where half-siblings are close and truly love each other. I know my father has three daughters from various marriages. But I have neither the strength nor the desire to hunt down these "fellow children of misfortune." If you snip a kitten’s whiskers, they might grow back; but for an adult cat, never.
In my fantasies, used as a shield against a grim reality, I would lie on that hard sofa and imagine Aunt Shura calling Grandma. Grandma would wire you and call my father. The next morning, Dad would arrive, and a day later, you’d fly in. You’d both be worried sick about my injury; Dad would take me to his place for a while, and you’d shower me with rare medicines brought from the capital... Because in that godforsaken corner of the world, Mom, there was nothing to put on my axe wound but my own urine. There wasn't even a kopeck’s worth of Vishnevsky ointment!
I survived back then. The wound closed after a month and a half, followed by the grueling rehabilitation of the knee joint: first circling the dining table, then moving through the house. By September 1st, I returned to Moscow, older and walking with a slight limp. My dreams of professional sports were dead.
Did I regret not becoming a great athlete, Mom? I can say with absolute certainty: no. That tragic accident plunged me into a different passion—the burning desire to become a real writer. When you found out, you just gave me a humorous smile and remarked that it was time I grew up, and that it would be better if I became a military officer. You had cherished that dream for a long time; when I was ten, you tried to enroll me in the Suvorov Military School, but something didn't work out, though I lived out of a suitcase for two full weeks.
Actually, I always loved military training. Discipline attracted me with its flawless pursuit of a goal. I always strove for composure and rigor. While appearing pensive and distracted on the outside, with every passing year I retreated deeper into myself. Finding no basic support from you, Mom, I became more and more isolated in my drive toward a global goal. Lacking external resources, I searched for roundabout ways to a place where I believed I would be forever out of reach for all my abusers.
As a child, I had to solve global problems that few adults could handle. I endured humiliation, insults, and the exploitation of my innocence by perverts looking to prey on a defenseless child—a blonde, blue-eyed boy with dimples who looked like a doll. By the time I wasn't even eight, I had already experienced filthy harassment within my own family, or rather, in the places where this outcast was sent to stay while his parents were alive and well. Left entirely alone with a terrifying reality—a son without a mother while you were healthy and present—by the age of thirteen, I had grown into an "autonomous street kid," realizing only one thing: there was no one in the whole world to help me except myself.

You know, Mom, even forty years later, my former classmates can't leave it alone; they keep chewing over my life and the fact that I successfully finished three universities. I don't give a damn about their opinions. Not much has changed in them since the days they bullied me as a whole class.
What worries me more is something else. My daughter. That "favorite granddaughter" of yours who wailed so loudly at your funeral. Who would have thought those were crocodile tears! After you died, I learned a lot of interesting things about you and about what you did—and didn't do—in your virtual reality, running away from the responsibility of redeeming the sins of your youth.
Lately, you had been paying for your granddaughter’s tuition. Fine! There’s nothing wrong with that in itself—quite the opposite. My grandmother, Evdokia Stepanovna, also looked after me as best she could while you were wagging your foxy tail in the Moscow suburbs. But Mom, everything in your life was ass-backwards! Judge for yourself: when my daughter was born, you deigned to see her for the first time only six months later, remembering you had a granddaughter only after my hideous divorce. Why did another fifteen years have to pass before you finally decided to invest in her?
You loosened your purse strings exactly when I—after ten years of financial triumph, having spent everything on other people’s pain—found myself at the very bottom of a debt pit. And you, savoring every moment, began paying me back "in pennies" the millions I had invested in your apartment. I don’t want to compare myself to my child, but Mom! I lived with Grandma on a measly pension, while your granddaughter has "ocean liners" in storage—a high-end Stalin-era apartment in Moscow inherited from stingy relatives who were practically praying for my death. They tormented me!
And the result with your granddaughter is plain to see. Your body hadn't even grown cold before I took all your gold jewelry and handed it to Annushka as a keepsake. Before nine days had even passed since the funeral, I let her take whatever she wanted of yours. Including the computer gifts I had prepared for your 70th birthday—a milestone you missed by only six days.
It pains me to tell you this, Mom, but most of what I handed over to my daughter, she sold off for a pittance without even letting me know. Including your only mink coat—the one thing you took such pride in as a teacher and bequeathed to your granddaughter. I didn't even learn about that will from you, but from strangers, even though we lived in the same house... Or did we?
Perhaps we didn't live together after all, but merely existed in parallel universes. Me, forced to put up with your unprecedented busyness (which looked more like a desperate attempt to fill the void of your loneliness), and you, comfortably scavenging on my deep-seated complexes. We were like some elderly married couple, weren't we? As terrifying as it is, I think that’s exactly how you saw us. You were oblivious to the encroaching tragedy, acknowledging no one but yourself. You grew accustomed to your son caring for you for decades; you delighted in his boundless imagination as he transformed your 32 square meters of clutter into an oasis of love—simply because you once managed to carry him to term and give birth.
These were the endless dividends of motherhood, backed by nothing but constant reproaches and reminders that you were a "wonderful mother." And should you step outside those 32 meters, within a 25-kilometer radius, every student and parent would swear that you were the best of the best... and tell me how "lucky" I was to have you, Mom!
Your ace in the hole was your decision to pay for your granddaughter's university tuition. Remembering my failing health and my inability to keep paying that endless tribute, you worked yourself to the bone—as if trying to atone for the childhood you stole from me. You clawed at your work like a Sisyphus driven mad by grief. My arguments that the girl had another, far wealthier grandmother with vacant luxury apartments meant nothing to you.
Watching your efforts, I couldn't help but remember how, at twenty-three, I cleared all your debts and sent you to the South for a vacation. I paid for the trip in full and gave you five hundred dollars in cash, carefully telling you: "Mom, if you need more, just let me know." Those were the "Wild Nineties." Imagine my bewilderment when, ten days into your trip, I received a telegram asking for another hundred dollars. I sent it. But five days later, another "petition" arrived.
That’s when I lost it and booked a long-distance call. My shock turned to pure outrage when I heard your cheerful chirping: it turned out you were using my money to feed nearly half the sanatorium—all those "poor souls and large families" who couldn't afford full board! I screamed into the receiver, nearly ripping the cord out of the wall, telling you that I was a humble massage therapist, not some mobster in a crimson jacket. I reminded you that I hadn’t seen the South since I was thirteen (not counting the desert sands my tank once plowed through) and that I had sent you there to recover, not to squander my hard-earned money from an endless marathon of human bodies.
You hung up on me. You returned three days early—broken and ill—complaining that you had nearly died on that trip. I stepped over it and moved on. After all, I had set up my massage practice right there in your apartment.
You could hardly stomach the fact that your son, who had brilliantly gotten into the Journalism Department at Moscow State University, suddenly pulled a U-turn. After a year as a senior Pioneer leader, I enrolled in the Pedagogical Institute to become a military instructor. For years, you cherished the dream of me being a teacher, but the Soviet Union collapsed. Instead of picking up a pointer, I remodeled my room into a massage parlor. Your rage knew no bounds—not even when I built a separate entrance and completely redesigned the apartment.
Of course, I could have settled matters then and there, started saving for my own place or renting a room. But since I paid all your bills and you, out of habit, only came home to sleep, the issue faded away. All that remained was the sting of your new derogatory nickname for the hallway. With a flick of your tongue, you dubbed the small area where patients waited their turn as the "pussy-room" (predbabnik).
At some point, I completely forgot my dream of becoming a writer and immersed myself in making money. Starting at a dollar per session, I soon passed the ten-dollar mark, and five years later, an hour of my "passionate massaging" cost twenty bucks. My innate stubbornness and habit of enduring helped. That’s likely why, in my final year of college, I achieved the rank of Master of Sports of the USSR. I ran a marathon in under two hours and nineteen minutes, finally earning that coveted badge and another useless certificate for someone with congenital thrombophlebitis. But I was happy as a schoolboy; I had finally struck a balance between myself and that "skiing plowman" of yours, albeit in a different sport.
Grandma was still alive. You were young. I wasn't married yet. Those were the golden years of my searching and my hardships. But the creative "thaw" didn't last long—soon I got hitched, cutting off the ends of your hope in one fell swoop. What did you dream of, Mom? What were you striving for in those wild nineties?
You were always a person of the system. A cog and a wheel. It just so happened that the first half of your life passed under the banner of atheism, while the second was spent under the tolling bells of kowtowing to gods unearthed from oblivion. Specifically gods, Mom—forgive me, but to your dying day, you remained a pagan. Despite your fanatical devotion to spreading "priestcraft," you pushed it into the same young minds that a quarter-century earlier you had stuffed with the "bright light" of communism and the terrors of World War II.
What does a person leave behind? Real estate? Works? Memory? As long as we think of our loved ones, they live within us, just as we will eventually move into the souls of our children. But on this front, Mom, I’m struggling. Especially after I found out that had you lived just one month longer, your modest little apartment would have passed into the possession of someone... other than me.
How painful, foul, and unbearable it all is. Has this "Bulgakovian" nightmare, the housing question that crippled generations of Soviet people, truly left its mark on me as well? Heaven forbid! But to deny your grown child a roof over his head after your death—how is that possible? A child who claimed nothing during your lifetime, who asked you point-blank what was going on and received an answer that turned out to be a lie. I didn't realize, Mom, that I had so much to tell you. I will continue until I have said everything you refused to hear while you were alive, running away and slamming your door shut.
I should note that even before your death, I wasn't exactly eager to live near you, preferring to rent a place as far away as possible. And after you untimely left this world, I completely abandoned the idea of moving into your privatized apartment. Of all the inherited space, I use only the kitchen—where I am still forced to earn a meager pittance through massage. A pittance that allows me to remain independent of all the corrupt filth of modern Russian hack literature that has occupied the airwaves. It has crushed the truly Russian heart and soul—those things that lack financial backing and are doomed to extinction, much like the power-exposing classics ranging from Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fables to the "Lunar" literature of Nikolai Nosov, who is now tacitly forbidden from being quoted.
And all of this is your new World, Mom! A world of gingerbread-priest and bureaucratic lawlessness. "What’s the price of opium for the masses now, Mom?" For the two of us, the price proved to be far too high on both sides of life's Rubicon.
(end of part one)




Alexei Anatolyevich Karelin
"MOTHERLESS"
A Son's Confession
PART TWO
08/04/18 — 14/04/18
If the goal is the salvation of the soul, then the end justifies the means.
— Ignatius of Loyola




It’s turning out to be a remarkable story! I originally intended this as a sort of opus—a letter to the afterworld. I wanted to convey to you, Mom, everything I left unsaid, everything you never asked, and everything you feared like the plague. But having said "A," one must say "B"... no matter how hard it is to reach that final "Z"—the letter you always threw in my face during our early arguments to shut me down, calling it the last letter of the alphabet.
You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs, nor can you knead dough without getting dirty up to your elbows. Well, the omelet I’ve whipped up is quite something, and the pastry isn't bad either—bon app;tit! Of course, I realize that for many in your circle, my "cooking" will be revolting to the point of a gag reflex.
While I was tracing out my childhood grievances for you—Yesin died. He was a significant figure in my life—a legendary man who took me in and believed in my literary gift. The price, however, was extortionate even there, though everything is relative when compared to that other literary creep named Belyankin. Do you think I didn't tell Sergei Nikolaevich about my childhood misadventures? Unlike you, he listened intently. He listened in a private setting, having invited me to his home under the pretext of editing my graduation novel.
In fact, the "editing" consisted of me coming to the lair of the former rector of the Literary Institute every day for two months, dropping everything. Like a cabin boy on a ship, I scrubbed a stove caked in ten years of grease, mopped and vacuumed the floors, sorted through books, and gratified a lustful old man with my half-naked presence while he used his red ink to dismantle and ruin the structure of my narrative. Does any of this ring a bell, Mom?
On the second day, my visit ended with Yesin clamping onto my nipples like a tick, twisting them through my shirt while staring into my eyes with a searching, saccharine smirk. I merely stretched my clenched lips into a dimpled smile, digging the nail of my left thumb into my index finger until it bled. I managed to break free relatively unscathed that time. That same day, I rushed to my literary guardian angel, Zoya Mikhailovna, the dean of the correspondence department, and poured out everything I thought about that pervert.
The wise keeper of unseemly secrets responded in a matter-of-fact, restrained voice: "Alyosha! It will end with him holding you back for a second year. Do you really need that? Endure it and keep his impulses in check. He’s always been like this—playing both sides. But overall, he’s a good man. Just remember how he took care of his sick wife."
And it was true: for nearly three years, Yesin had personally cared for his dying spouse until the very end. In that same apartment where I was now scrubbing and cleaning, he had touchingly fulfilled his duty like a nurse, all while heading the Literary Institute, conducting seminars, and racing through a new novel.
Perhaps that’s why his behavior went unpunished. Or perhaps it was because the old man was more than twice my age, had no children of his own, and I was so desperate for paternal love—even though I was already a father to a twelve-year-old girl myself.
But even here, my illusions shattered. Naivety isn't the worst trait; only simplicity is worse. Since the moment of your flight, Mom, I’ve never been a simpleton, yet I always expected a miracle from life, granting those who humiliated me one last chance. If I had just punched them in the face, I never would have become a writer.
I ended up at the Literary Institute after my second wife left me. She left me for some lustful auto mechanic, a man I never met, but because of whom my fate pulled a 180-degree turn. True, she returned soon enough—begging me to forget everything, kneeling and dramatically wringing her hands. I refused. Then, the mother of my child soundly thrashed you, Mom; if I hadn't stepped in, she might have killed you. Do you remember how she beat you? Do you remember how, three years after the divorce, she called and begged for your forgiveness?
You, of course, forgave her. You started accepting Christmas cards through your granddaughter, and later, all sorts of junk like perfumes and soap sets. You kept it all a secret from me, joining forces with my "ex" in some sinister conspiracy to save me from myself. I only found out about this after you died. You lovingly kept those cards in your archive. That same archive where my 350 soldier’s envelopes should have been—the ones you so vividly and demonstratively tore into tiny pieces.
Yesin took me in on the spot, even though the school year had been underway for a month. He put me right into his seminar. At first, I felt as if I were behind the stone wall of a real literary kitchen, where a true writer would finally be forged out of me. Disillusionment came quickly. But with the stubbornness of a mortally wounded beast, bleeding out and licking my torn wounds—the result of another "discussion" of my new work—I kept going to that gathering. A gathering of "connected" offspring and creators who boasted of their literary superiority while spitting bile. It felt as if that very bile had been used to paint, in several layers, all the walls of Herzen’s ancestral nest, where titans like Sholokhov and Rozhdestvensky once taught.
Oh, God! How am I to hold back and not descend into insults, skillfully navigating between the heart-splinters that have been festering for decades? How am I to convey the horror of being an orphan with a living mother for my entire life? It is so difficult, Mom, to bring home one simple truth: free cheese is only found in a mousetrap. Everything in this life must be paid for, and that includes a desecrated childhood.
Have I slipped back into these ruminations again? What else can I do if my formative years caught up with me in my forties, embodied by a monster of post-Soviet literature—the incredibly talented, in his own local goals, the unforgettable Sergei Nikolaevich Yesin. May the Lord rest his soul... and may someone in hell eternally twist his "private parts."
As I write this, I wonder: are all those even slightly connected to literature just mentally ill perverts, drunks, and addicts, eager to "pander to the vain opinion of the world"? Libertines standing behind a shield of genius, upon which is engraved in the blood of their victims: "Quae sunt Caesaris Caesari et quae sunt Dei Deo" (Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's). Oh, Apostle Matthew, if only you knew where that saying would lead!
And how casually we talk about it! "What? Tchaikovsky was a pervert? Really! But so what? Now I finally realize why his music is so deep and soul-stirring!" Indeed, Mom, what do we care about Pyotr Ilyich’s personal dramas with his footman? After all, the notes go straight to the soul...
And what about Fyodor Mikhailovich and his thirteen-year-old niece? Did it happen, or was it just the slander of Russian psychoanalysis against the master of the word? Over a century of studying his immortal work, how much has been erased from his biography, how many skeletons licked clean and buried? Must all great art grow from the fertile soil of depravity? How many ruined human souls must be tossed into this hellish furnace so that—perhaps, Mom, just perhaps—an immortal masterpiece for all ages might emerge?
Had I not split my knee open back then, maybe I’d be working as a military surgeon near Arkhangelsk, stitching people up and reveling in the orderly, garrison life. Who knows... But no, great literature beckoned me with its depths, its storms, and the unconquered lands of poems and novels yet unknown to the world. I dreamed of being a pioneer, a standard-bearer for the glory of Pushkin and Mayakovsky.
Hearing this, Mom, you only laughed. You measured me with a pitiful look and sighed: "What a dreamer you are, Lesha! First, at least learn to write without mistakes."
There are many ways to crush a dream, Mom. You preached faith for the last twenty years of your life, but that faith was never directed at your own child. Later, at the Literary Institute, I learned that innate literacy is by no means a guarantee of success—often quite the opposite. But back then, this complex ruined my life. A beautiful story with grammatical errors is like a ballet performed in bast shoes. I needed your support so badly! I wanted you to believe in me blindly and to listen to what I tried to convey through the vacuum of the helpless silence of my empty stomach. I wanted just one person in this world, reeking of some stranger’s cologne, to give me a chance to survive this hell of "ugly duckling" loneliness—a mentor who could discern the stature of a beautiful swan within me.

How was I to know, Mom, that on this Moscow planet—where you tore me from the warm embrace of my grandmother—there is nothing that doesn't come with a price? When an established writer, a man with a flawless biography, medals, and thousands of copies of his novels, finds you—how could I have known? How could I know that this youth-obsessed writer in a cool leather jacket, with his smooth, effeminate face, was a common predator, unerringly picking his next victim from the crowd?
I tried so many times to talk to you, to tell you what was happening during those four years of sexual slavery. It was fueled by my naive dream of conquering the Everest of literature without any safety gear or basic equipment. It was as if the naked child of a savage decided to climb the jagged cliffs of a sheer wall hanging over the bottomless pit of Dante's Hell.
Is that too cerebral? Then I’ll put it simply. All my formative years, from boy to young man, passed under the shadow of daily telephone reports—detailing my day, my thoughts, my desires. 1,160 phone calls. 23 rubles and 20 kopecks of my meager earnings as a junior correspondent, broken down into two-kopeck coins for phone booths in a cold or sweltering, indifferent city. Three hundred and twenty visits to the beast's lair to fulfill the sexual fantasies of a passive old man.
I sacrificed everything just to learn from him what I should have learned from you, Mom—from your skills as a young educator boasting about the cutting-edge Soviet pedagogical training you received. How could you fail to see that something was terribly wrong with me?
It was another woman who did it—the mother of my companion in misery, the boy who had dragged me into this madness in the first place. When I finally realized the utter depravity of the situation, I invited her to our home while you were away, Mom. But before speaking of such horrific things, I showed Liliya Timofeyevna a letter her son had written to me. It was a ghastly letter; in the unformed handwriting of a child, Kirill Markelov had traced ordinary words that formed monstrous sentences. It was blatant blackmail, orchestrated by the vile mind of a predator. Kirill was merely the instrument, but a lethal one.
Exactly a week before that, I had tried to have an honest talk with him. It wasn't a dialogue, but a desperate monologue where I pleaded with my fellow sufferer to break ties with Belyankin and go to the KGB. At seventeen, I already understood that only State Security could crush a creature so deeply embedded in the Soviet system. After all, Evgeny Belyankin was a decorated veteran, a Communist, a naval biographer, and the head of a military journalism department.
Against this monster stood a seventeen-year-old boy with no evidence and no documents, guided only by an indignant heart and a belief in the loyalty of a friend. But my friend supported the other side, Mom. He chose evil. The very next day, he handed me a typewritten sheet where, in his round, careful hand, he detailed the hell that awaited you and me if I dared to go to the authorities.
I wasn't afraid. Moreover, I realized then that Providence was watching over me. Just hours before receiving that foul message, I had—for some unknown reason—folded an identical blank sheet of paper into quarters and tucked it into the breast pocket of my school shirt. When we went to his place after school and he handed me the letter, I read it without a word, folded it exactly the same way, and hid it in that very same pocket.

"No!" Markelov shouted. "You have to give it back to me!"
"Fine," I said calmly. "In that case, I’ll burn it."
I rushed to the kitchen, grabbed a box of matches, and headed for the bathroom. My friend, who stood a full head taller than me, followed closely at my heels. Keeping as cool as possible, I pulled the blank sheet from my pocket, struck a match, and once the paper was consumed by flames, I dropped it into the toilet and flushed. My nearsighted friend fell for it completely.
After a week of agonizing reflection, I realized I needed a rock-solid ally. I placed my bet on the mother of the friend who had betrayed me. Liliya Timofeyevna was a legend: a brilliant pediatrician, a stunning beauty, and incredibly sharp. She loved her son fiercely, and one could talk to her for hours. She hailed from Saratov, and according to her vivid stories, she had performed in school theater alongside a young Oleg Tabakov. It was into her hands that I placed my fate and the fate of her son.
Liliya Timofeyevna did not interrupt. She listened intently, only asking leading questions, still half-disbelieving but murmuring to herself: "Yes, yes, I suspected it for a long time, but I pushed those thoughts away... My God! I understand everything now! Finally, the pieces of the puzzle fit together!" Encouraged by this, I shared more and more details—about my split leg and how Mom and Kirill had met me at Kazansky Station. I told her how Kirill had dragged me into the vestibule of the train to Odintsovo, away from prying eyes, and spent the entire hour-long ride talking inspiredly about an "incredible man" he had met on the train to Sevastopol.
At first, this ageless man had introduced himself as a swimming coach, then as a journalist, and only at the very end of the trip did he admit he was a writer. Throughout the summer, they had met to swim, sunbathe, and go to the movies. Evgeny Osipovich had made a wonderful impression on Kirill’s grandmother and even on his mother when she visited.
"Yes, indeed! Belyankin impressed me favorably! Well-read, cultured... to think, who could have known..." Markelova sighed as she continued to listen.
Kirill had announced to me then that he absolutely had to introduce me to his new friend as soon as possible.

The devil didn’t arrive empty-handed. In his woven basket, given to you for the occasion, was everything needed for your favorite clay-pot stews—even a jar of salted milk mushrooms. That evening, you were beaming. The dinner was a success, and a cheap drama unfolded in our kitchen: you engaged in simple flirtation, while the monster bashfully answered your questions. I think that was the moment I finally became an adult.
I said nothing to him. I had given my word to Liliya Timofeyevna, and I know how to keep a promise. While you saw him to the door, his words still rang in my ears—about how he, a "disciple of Paustovsky," had become a true writer. The old fox insisted that the great master adored him.
I listened to him and remembered other "revelations"—the ones whispered behind the door of his room in that luxurious Stalinist apartment after he had spewed his foul slime into me. While I wiped myself clean, dreaming of a shower, that pampered creature would preach to me about how he had been "handed over" to Konstantin Paustovsky and how a handsome young Lieutenant Zhenya had won the heart of the great Russian classic. Supposedly, Belyankin owed the title of his first novel, The Overhanging Rock, to the master himself.
Could he have made it all up? Of course. But the question of why he needed that legend remains open to this day. Regardless, I have no intention of digging into it. Spare me!
I kept my word to Liliya Timofeyevna. Decades later, I know I was right. Without a mother's support or faith in her own child, could it have been any other way?
But I couldn't let Belyankin go unpunished. I knew he would resurface. It was the end of tenth grade, and I was finally tasting freedom—no more calls, no more sex with that moral freak for his pathetic handouts of banned Freud clippings or "Giftedness Theory" scraps. My daily torture was sitting at the same desk with a boy who chose canine loyalty to a predator over our friendship.
As for you, Mom, we saw each other less and less. You’d been promoted to a methodologist in Golitsyno, at the former Yusupov estate. We had no home phone, so we communicated through notes. One day, I read: "Evgeny Osipovich called me at work today! He asked you to come over!"
Rage consumed me. I hurled a chair at the wall, then pounded the reinforced concrete with my fist until I was bloody, leaving blots of my "bloody tears" on the wallpaper. I was plotting something dark. My mind swirled with scenarios of revenge. That evening, I dialed the cursed number. The conversation was brief.
"Lesha, is that you? Good of you to call. Tomorrow Kirya is bringing a talented boy over. Come and help!"
"Who is he?" I asked, barely containing my fury.
"A teacher's son, looks like a little Gypsy! This is important for your career. Graduation is coming, and I'll keep my word—I'll have a drink with the right people, and you'll get into the Lvov Political Academy. You'll make your mother proud!"
After a sleepless night, the time came to go. It pained me to look at that curly-haired seventh-grader. It felt as if Kirill and I were leading him to the slaughter. On the train, they fooled around, while I kept my hand in my pocket, gripping a heavy steel blank engraved: "Elektrostal. Pioneer Smelt 05/03/1978."
Evgeny Osipovich met us in a threadbare bathrobe. Without preamble, he announced that we, like the ancient Greeks, would exchange "creative energy." When the two half-naked creatures pounced on the third, I saw their erect members, and I began to strike.
The corner of my steel ingot, sharp as a wolf's fang, tore through skin. I swung wildly: into the cheekbone of the traitor friend, into the chest and groin of the beast Belyankin, and then into the hated Mayak tape recorder.
"You bastards! I hate you!"
Pulling on my shirt, I bolted into the street barefoot, still clutching my makeshift brass knuckles. I vaguely remember the station, the train, home... The tension was so great that I collapsed onto the bed and fell into a bloody delirium. In the morning, Mom, as you left for work, you only remarked casually: "It would be nice if you undressed before going to sleep."

I went to school as if to my execution. In the classroom, I saw Kirill; a gauze pad was plastered to his cheekbone. He was busily lying to our teacher, claiming a drunk in Moscow had attacked him with a screwdriver. Seeing me, he just smirked: "What a fool you are, Lyokha! You're finished now—you won't get in anywhere."
Instead of answering, I walked right up to him and, for the first time in my life, grabbed the freak by the balls. Looking into his arrogant face, I hissed: "Stay the hell away from me, you pervert!"
Our friendship was over. As you remember, Mom, I failed miserably when applying to the Lvov Academy—the shadow of that unpunished deviant followed me everywhere. Then came my application for the Soviet forces in Afghanistan, a failed parachute jump, surgery, and a three-year medical deferment. I had to forge documents just to get into that hell, all so I could later enter Moscow State University on veteran's benefits. I was desperate for the war, just to escape the rot of the home front.
Years passed. I never showed you that blackmail note, Mom, though I kept it in my gun safe like a sacred relic. But one day I realized: it is impossible to live forever in a state of revenge. My three-year-old daughter somehow kept bringing my thoughts back to my fallen friend. I went up to the Markelovs' apartment while Kirill was packing for his move to Crimea. I simply handed him the tattered, folded letter and said: "I forgive you."



What a wonderful ending to the story, Mom! Right in your style: "Love your enemies..." To me, it’s total nonsense. Two years ago, I found Kirill Markelov on Facebook. A different country, rainbow flags on every fence. Do you remember the tale of the boy and the Dragon? About how hard it is, after slaying the beast, not to become the monster yourself?
I had hoped my childhood friend had defeated his inner Dragon. But scrolling through his posts, seeing him party with young boys, I realized: Belyankin is long dead, but the Dragon is alive and well. He’s teaching at a college in Sevastopol, while the wise tortoise, Liliya Timofeyevna, vigilantly guards the sword so that someone like me could never hurt her son. That is a true example of motherhood.
Unlike you. Just a week before you died, you secretly summoned your granddaughter to sign over this modest apartment to her—the very place where I spent my whole life enduring your reckless ways. "Love your grandchildren—they will avenge you against your children." You wanted to make my daughter a wealthy bride with a mountain of real estate, while leaving me homeless the moment you were buried. Knowing my ex, I have no doubt that’s exactly what would have happened.


Why, Mom? Why did you do it? You were just two weeks short of leaving me with nothing. Perhaps that is the ultimate justice of your God?
But I don't want you to think this confession is merely a trash bin for my bitterness and old wounds. My life wasn't defined by evil alone.
I am grateful to my grandmother, your mother: she poured her soul into me and programmed me for goodness. May she rest in peace! I am grateful to my uncle, who fiercely protected me until the bottle claimed him. I am grateful to the surgeon who skillfully mended my forehead after the swing set accident, and to the Georgian man who fed me sweet, succulent pears.
I remember the legendary Uncle Petya—Feonych—who taught me how to survive and stand my ground, and his wife, Nadezhda Egorovna, for her shelter and care. I remember our shop teacher, Oleg Alexandrovich, who gave me the basics of painting, and our military instructor, Kronid Mikhailovich—a front-line veteran I will never forget.
My eternal gratitude goes to Sergeant Filimonov, who died a hero's death, pushing me aside to take the phosphorus heat of a flare meant for me. Thank you to my political officer, who literally snatched me from the claws of the military inquisition. Thank you to the female medic who risked her career to prescribe me a placebo, allowing me to return to duty after PTSD. And thank you to the train conductor near Brest who kept me inside the carriage while a radioactive Chernobyl rain fell on those outside—I kept my hair and my life because of her.
Thank you to my late friend Tolya Kopchenov, and to that unknown woman who stopped me at a bookstall just as I was about to buy a book on "Black Magic." You are all my guardian angels.

I am grateful to my daughter: she gave me the joy of being a father and the chance to show her she has someone who loves her unconditionally and would give his last breath for her.
I am grateful to my stepson, who became a true son to me. A courageous man who, despite everything, took my surname and allowed me the happiness of being a father twice over. I am grateful to Vera Vasilyevna, my sister in Christ, with whom I was baptized in that fateful year of 1986. I am grateful to Zoya Mikhailovna, my dean at the Literary Institute, for the joy of friendship and for making me feel truly needed.
Thank you to my Russian language teachers, Tatyana Evgenyevna and Nadezhda Mikhailovna—for the brilliant world of Russian letters. Thank you to my friend, a combat officer and a Cossack who survived every imaginable conflict and became an elder brother to me.
And finally, I am grateful to my beloved wife. She accepts with humor the fact that she is my fifth legal spouse. By the age of forty-five, I had four times lost everything—from a five-room apartment in central Moscow to a country house and a plot of land in the United Kingdom. But my "Lyubimka" believes in me; she shields me from the world's evil, accepting me exactly as I am.
Mom, all those people did for me what you could have done—had you spent a little more time on your son and a little less on your stifling complexes and imagined truths. All my life, I needed a mother who would throw herself onto the firing line to save her child, not one who leaves behind the aftertaste of death in a draft of a deed designed to strip me of my right to exist within the dwarf-world of your vanity's square footage.
On the eve of your death, I had a remarkable dream. I was walking down a ruined Broadway, and amidst the rubble stood a pristine Orthodox church. Behind the wrought-iron grates of the windows stood a monk in a faded black robe. I asked him if everything was alright. He smiled radiantly: "There is no power on earth that can destroy an Orthodox temple. Do not worry. With God’s help, all is well."
He recognized me. I hope your God exists and allows you to read what I’ve been writing for nine long months of this new life without you—though I wonder if you were ever truly connected to my beating heart after the umbilical cord was cut.
I hope these lines are read by single mothers and the children they have scarred. For the former, let this be a reminder that a mother’s ultimate legacy is the death mask of her child’s confession. For the latter, let it bolster their courage to survive the inhuman trials cast upon their heads—miseries from which I narrowly escaped while keeping my humanity intact.
As for my confession... let it be your cleansing plan for all eternity, until the Judgment Day when He shall come in His glory.
2017–2018. Moscow. Zemledelchesky Lane.