The tax office will get its claws in immediately. Financial monitoring will block it. You’ll spend half a year proving you’re not a criminal. Cash is king. Cash is cash, as they say. Besides, I’ve got an opportunity. A guy is selling land for cottages. He needs cash only, and urgently. He’s giving a huge discount. We’ll buy this land now, and in a month, we’ll resell it to a developer for twice the price.
“What land, Vitalik?” I frowned. “We were talking about an apartment, a new building.”
“The apartment isn’t going anywhere,” he interrupted. “There are plenty of developers, but a chance with land like this comes once in a lifetime. We’ll turn the money over, make a profit, and buy an even better apartment. And we’ll do a designer renovation, not economy class. Do you trust me or not? We’re family.”
Nadya sat next to me and was silent. She stared out the window at the stream of cars.
“Nadya,” I called.
“Do as Vitalik says, Dad,” she said quietly, without turning around. “He understands these things better.”
They gave us the money at the cash desk. Huge stacks of thousand-hryvnia bills. Bricks. Vitalik stuffed them into a large Adidas sports bag, his hands shaking. I had never seen so much money at once. It wasn’t just paper. It was my life, the labor of my parents, my past and future, compressed into bank wrappers.
We drove to their place in Troieshchyna. To that very one-room apartment. Incredibly cramped. You couldn’t turn around in the hallway. It smelled of a cat’s litter box and cheap air freshener.
“Here, old man, this is your corner for now,” Vitalik nodded at a folding chair in the kitchen. “It’s cramped, but we’ll manage. You’ll have to put up with it for a couple of weeks while we get the deal done.”
He took the bag of money into the room. I heard him fiddling with a safe there—a small metal box bolted to the wall inside the wardrobe. The electronic lock beeped. The first night, I didn’t sleep. I lay on the hard chair, listening to the hum of the “Nord” refrigerator and staring at the ceiling, where a yellow stain from a leak was spreading. Behind the thin wall in the room, Nadya and Vitalik were whispering. I couldn’t make out the words, but the tone was tense. Vitalik spoke loudly, insistently, Nadya sobbed.
After a week, “a couple of weeks” turned into “a month or so.” Vitalik was always busy, driving somewhere, talking to someone on the phone. He answered my questions with irritation.
“Stop nagging, old man, things are getting done, the land is being registered, there are some delays with the cadastre, bureaucracy, you know how it is.”
And then hell began. First, the food disappeared. No, they were eating, but the refrigerator suddenly became empty.
“Dad, could you buy some bread and milk,” Nadya would say, avoiding my eyes. “Vitalik has all the money tied up in the business, and my salary is delayed.”
I would go to the ATB supermarket, buy groceries with my pension, and cook for everyone. Vitalik would come home in the evening, eat everything I had cooked, burp, and go play “World of Tanks” on the computer.
Then the nitpicking started.
“Why don’t you turn off the light in the bathroom? The meter is running. Grandpa, you’re snoring, I can’t sleep. Close the kitchen door. You’re taking too long in the toilet, I need to get ready for work.”
I had become a freeloader. An old, useless freeloader in a house that was bought, albeit in plans, with my money.
The worst thing happened two weeks ago. I accidentally came home early. I had gone to the clinic, but the therapist was sick. I quietly opened the door with my key. The apartment was noisy. Vitalik was shouting on the phone, pacing the hallway.
“I’m telling you, it’s a done deal!” he yelled into the phone. “I have the cash. Seven million clean. Left three for expenses. Yeah, a total sucker. Signed everything. I didn’t manage to get a general power of attorney from him, but it’s a matter of time. I’ve already picked out an apartment. I’ll register it in my name, of course. And the old man? Yeah, there’s an option. A nursing home near Zhytomyr. Private, but budget. I’ll dump him there, say it’s a sanatorium. And who counts them there? He’ll last a year or two and croak. He has a weak heart.”
I stood in the hallway, my shoes still on, and felt the floor give way beneath me. The blood drained from my face. My hands turned cold. A nursing home. Dump him. Sucker.
Vitalik turned around and saw me. He didn’t even flinch. Not for a second. He just slowly put the phone in his pocket and smirked. The same smirk I saw today when the garbage bag was flying at me.
“Ah, old man, you’re back? Well, that’s even better. Less explaining to do.”
“Where’s the money, Vitaly?” My voice trembled, but I tried to stand straight.
“The money is working,” he cut me off, “and it’s none of your business anymore. You’ve lived your life, Pavel Petrovich. Let the young people live.”
That evening was a storm. I tried to talk to Nadya. I shouted, I shook her by the shoulders.
“Nadya, do you hear what he’s saying? He wants to put me in a home! He stole our money!”
But Nadya acted strangely. She pulled away, screamed.
“Don’t touch me! You’re crazy! You’re senile! Vitalik is doing everything for us! Leave me alone, Dad, leave me alone!”
She screamed so loudly and unnaturally, as if she were playing a bad role in a cheap soap opera. Her eyes darted around the ceiling, at the corners where the “smart home” sensors that Vitalik had installed everywhere, supposedly for security, were blinking. And only this morning did I understand why she was screaming like that.
Vitalik left at nine in the morning.
“I want him gone by the time I get back,” he threw over his shoulder to Nadya. “Pack his things. Call a taxi to the station. Give him a thousand for a ticket to your aunt’s village. Let him live out his days there…”
Comments are closed.