“Have a seat,” he pointed to the chair opposite the desk. “It’s going to be a long conversation.”
Viktor didn’t sit. He stood by the window, arms crossed, looking at his son-in-law the way he used to look at junior officers who tried to lie to him. This gaze made people sweat and stutter, but Arkady withstood it without visible discomfort.
“Suit yourself,” Arkady shrugged. “Stand if it’s more comfortable. Although at your age, I’d save my legs.”
“What is happening to my daughter?” Viktor didn’t ask; he demanded an answer.
Arkady sighed with the air of a man forced to explain obvious things to a slow-witted interlocutor. He pulled open a desk drawer, took out a folder, and placed it in front of him.
“I hoped it wouldn’t come to this,” he said. “Hoped you would accept the situation as is, without unnecessary questions. But since you insist, here you go.”
He opened the folder and turned it so Viktor could see the contents. Medical reports on official letterheads, prescriptions, photographs.
“Your daughter is sick,” Arkady said with carefully rehearsed sadness in his voice. “Schizoaffective disorder, triggered by substance abuse. To put it simply, she got hooked on drugs three months after our wedding. First cocaine, then something more serious. I tried to stop her, but it was too late. Psychosis, hallucinations, fits of aggression began.”
He took a photo from the folder and handed it to Viktor. Anya was in the picture, but she was hard to recognize. Disheveled hair, wild eyes, a mouth distorted by a scream. She was standing in the corner of some room, clutching a knife to her chest.
“This was eight months ago,” Arkady said. “She tried to stab me. Said I was poisoning her food. That I wanted to kill her. Classic paranoid delusion.”
Viktor took the photograph and examined it closely. His trained surgeon’s eye noticed details an ordinary person would miss. Dilated pupils, unnatural pallor of the skin, body posture characteristic of a person struggling with loss of coordination. It didn’t look like cocaine psychosis. It looked like poisoning.
“I showed her to the best specialists,” Arkady continued. “A clinic in Switzerland. Professors from Germany. They all say the same thing: irreversible changes in the psyche. She will never be the same.”
He pulled a few more documents from the folder—medical reports with stamps and signatures.
“I could have put her in a closed psychiatric clinic.” Arkady’s voice became softer, more soulful. “I had every right. But I love your daughter, Viktor Sergeyevich, despite everything. That’s why I keep her at home, provide care, pay for treatment. It costs me enormous money and nerves. But I’m not complaining.”
Viktor put the photograph back on the desk.
“Why was she lying on the floor by the door?” he asked in a steady voice.
“She lay there herself.” Arkady spread his hands. “It’s part of her disorder. Sometimes she refuses to get up from the floor for hours. Sometimes she strips naked and runs around the house. Sometimes she screams that she was abducted by aliens. Doctors call it catatonic episodes. And what you saw… that I wiped my feet on her…”
Arkady paused for a second, and Viktor saw irritation flash in his eyes. But it immediately vanished, replaced by an expression of patient compassion.
“I didn’t even notice she was lying there,” he said. “Can you imagine how terrible that is? My own wife lies on the floor, and I’m so used to it that I walked past without looking. That’s what it’s come to. That’s what I live in every day.”
He shook his head, portraying fatigue and despair so convincingly that an unprepared person would have certainly believed him.
“Listen, Viktor Sergeyevich…” Arkady leaned forward, and his voice became almost confidential. “I understand it’s hard for you to accept. She’s your daughter. You remember her differently: healthy, happy. But reality is what it is. Anya is sick. Seriously, possibly incurably sick. And I am doing everything in my power to alleviate her suffering.”
Viktor remained silent, pondering what he had heard. In thirty years as a surgeon, he had learned to listen not only to words but to the pauses between them. Learned to notice how a person breathes when telling the truth, and how—when lying. Arkady was lying. Viktor was as sure of it as he was of his own name. But certainty alone was not enough. He needed proof.
“She said I died,” he said. “That you showed her an obituary.”
Arkady sighed again, this time with a note of condescension.
“And you believe her? A woman who yesterday claimed the neighbor’s cat speaks German to her?” He shook his head. “Viktor Sergeyevich, I understand paternal feelings, but let’s be realistic. Anya cannot distinguish reality from her hallucinations. She could have seen an obituary in a magazine for some stranger and decided it was you. Or made up the whole story entirely.”
He leaned back in the chair and looked at Viktor with a different expression—evaluating and calculating.
“Let’s be frank,” he said. “I know what you think of me. I saw it in your eyes when you walked in. You think I’m a monster who mocks your daughter. But the truth is, I am the only person who takes care of her.”
He stood up and walked to the bar in the corner of the study, poured himself whiskey into a heavy crystal glass.
“Where were you for the last year and a half?” he asked without turning around. “She stopped answering your calls, and you simply accepted it. Didn’t come, didn’t check. Do you know why? Because it was convenient for you to think she was happy. Convenient not to know the truth.”
Viktor felt those words hit the mark. Because it was the truth. He had truly convinced himself that his daughter’s silence meant busyness, not trouble. Convinced himself that a rich husband would take care of her better than he ever could.
“And I was here,” Arkady continued, turning to him with the glass in his hand. “Every day. Every night. When she screamed from nightmares. When she didn’t recognize me and called me by strangers’ names. When she tried to throw herself out the window. I held her hands and persuaded her to live. Me, not you.”
He took a sip of whiskey and narrowed his eyes.
“So before judging me, look at yourself. What kind of father were you if she didn’t call you for help when it all started? Maybe because she knew you didn’t care?”
Viktor clenched his fists so hard his nails dug into his palms. He wanted to cross the room and punch this smug scoundrel. Wanted to grab him by the throat and shake him until the truth came out. But he held himself back because he understood: this was exactly what Arkady wanted. One punch—and the police called. Assault charges. A restraining order barring him from his daughter by court decision. This man was smart. Dangerously smart.
“You know…” Arkady continued, and a new intonation appeared in his voice, almost friendly. “Anya told me a lot about her childhood. About you. About your wife. Lidia.”
At the mention of his wife’s name, Viktor flinched, and Arkady noticed it. A barely perceptible smile touched his lips.
“She told me how her mom was afraid of you. How she tiptoed around the house so as not to disturb the ‘great surgeon.’ How she cried in the bathroom at night so no one would hear. How she asked to visit her sister for a week, and you said ‘no’ because her place was beside her husband.”
Viktor stood motionless, and every word fell on him like a stone.
“Anya said her mother didn’t die of a heart attack.” Arkady’s voice became quiet and insinuating. “She died from living with you. Just one morning she didn’t want to wake up. Her body gave out because her soul gave up earlier.”
“Shut up…” Viktor heard his own voice as if from the outside.
“The truth is unpleasant, isn’t it?” Arkady stepped closer, and something dark and amused danced in his eyes. “You recognize me, don’t you, Viktor Sergeyevich? You recognize me because we are alike. I just do the same thing you did, only openly. Without pretense, without the masks of an intelligent doctor. Anya chose me because I seemed familiar to her. Because you taught her that a man must control, and a woman must obey.”
He stopped two steps away from Viktor and looked him straight in the eye.
“So if you want to know who is to blame for your daughter lying on the mat by the door, look in the mirror. You started this.”
“I just continued it.”
Viktor struck. He didn’t plan it, didn’t have time to think. His fist shot forward on its own and slammed into Arkady’s jaw. He flew back, hit his back against the desk, and knocked over the whiskey glass. Amber liquid spilled over the documents.
The study door burst open, and two guards flew in. They grabbed Viktor by the arms, twisted them behind his back. He didn’t resist. Stood and watched Arkady get up, rubbing his jaw.
“Well there,” he said, and satisfaction sounded in his voice. “That was predictable. Aggression, inability to control emotions. Now it’s clear who Anya takes after.”
He signaled the guards, and they released Viktor but remained standing behind his back.
“I could call the police,” Arkady continued, sitting on the edge of the desk. “Assault in my own home. That’s a criminal case. But I won’t, because I understand your feelings. You’re a father, you’re upset. I forgive you.”
He leaned forward, and his voice became hard…
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