Translated material
Five thousand
The story of Denis Dragunsky
Dima Stremokotsky finished his tea, got up from the table, walked past his wife Alice, thanked for dinner and left the kitchen.
- To health! Alice said after him.
She got up and took a thick, soiled notebook from the shelf. Scrolled through it. She chuckled. She put it under her arm and followed her husband. I found him in a room that most families call "large". More intricate people call such a room a “living room”, and simpler people call it a “hall”. But the Stremokotskys were ordinary Muscovites with a higher education, so their two-room apartment had a large room and a bedroom. They have been married for six years. Dima was thirty-four, Alice was exactly thirty. They haven't had children yet.
Dima sat in an armchair and thought whether to turn on the TV, or look at the tablet, or even read a book.
Alice entered and said:
- Five thousand.
He shrugged his shoulders slightly, stood up, and went into the bedroom. Alice followed him. He stood at the open wardrobe and held a wallet in his hands.
“Are you five or a thousand?” - And he added: I don’t even ask why you need five thousand. What a good husband I am! And leaned in to kiss.
Alice stepped back to the door and said:
- I'm not talking about money. Now you got up from the table, pushing your plate and cup away from you. Didn't rinse or even put it in the sink. For the five thousandth time.
- And what?
- Get out from here. F*** off and get out of my life! Alice went to English courses and knew different words and expressions. - A bargain is a bargain.
It was in March, five days after the wedding.
Dima - in the same kitchen - got up from the table, pushing the plate away. Alice said, "Good boys wash their dishes!" Dima grumbled that good girls don't reprimand their husbands. Alice asked: "How many times do you have to wash the dishes to feel like a real man?" "A thousand!" - he said. "Few! she laughed. I'll give you five thousand! But then that's it!" "Agreed! he rejoiced. - Hooray!" And they collapsed on the sofa - after all, the first week of the honeymoon.
“Here,” said Alice, looking into her notebook. “Every year we go on vacation for two weeks, fifteen days off. Three hundred and fifty remain. Of these, fifty weekends, one hundred days, when we eat together three times a day, that is, three hundred times. There are two hundred and fifty days left, when only breakfast and dinner, a total of five hundred. Five hundred plus three hundred is eight hundred. That is, eight hundred times a year you got up from the table, pushing the dishes away. All you have been given...
- To me? Was? Given? Dima was outraged.
“We agreed,” she said. - You agreed. Six years and three months. Today, for the 5,000th time, you didn't rinse your plate or even take it to the sink. You can count! - and she threw him a notebook.
- Nonsense…
- Not nonsense, but a promise. For example, I promised to be faithful to you. I didn't cheat on you.
- Yes please! he exclaimed.
— Change in retaliation for an unwashed plate? No. Collect things. If you want, I'll go myself. But I'll take everything with me. Dishes, furniture, TV, pictures from the walls and even the walls themselves. Do you understand me, I hope? So you better come on.
— Bitch! Dima suddenly yelled, pulled out a large hunting knife from the bottom of the cabinet and threw it at Alice, aiming at her face, at her eye.
She managed to dodge literally a centimeter.
The knife stabbed into the doorpost, driving a thick lock of Alice's hair into it. Alice twitched and hissed in pain as she was pinned to the door by her hair with a knife.
Dima took off his shirt and threw it aside. He was well muscled. He played with his shoulders, approached her, unbuttoning his home trousers:
- They didn’t rinse her plate ... Now I’ll rinse you like that ...
Alice threw off her slipper from her right foot and kicked Dima hard with a sharpened steel thumb claw, slicing into his stomach.
Dima collapsed to the floor, staining the white carpet with blood, trying to hold the intestines crawling out with his hands.
Alice with an effort pulled the knife out of the lintel, blew two of her golden hairs off it, bent over Dima and with a neat poke under the left nipple finished the job.
I thought that I should immediately set fire to everything and run, but still I decided to wash the dishes first.
For the five thousandth time.