To me vengeance, I will repay
“…every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Leo Tolstoy
Chapter 1
Everything got mixed up in Milutin’s house when his wife and children found out that the head of the family had disinherited them. And nothing at the beginning of the Sunday feast foretold how the festive dinner would end for them. It was customary for the whole family to gather at the dinner table once a week, on Sundays, to celebrate the end of the week. And to express their admiration for the generosity of the head of the family, Sergei Ivanovich, who honored them all with his attention on that day.
Milutin, a stout and completely bald man with an ocular beard and buttery eyes, liked to sit at the head of the table and listen to the praise he received from
his housemates. A man of hard fate, who had made his fortune in the antiques trade in the wild 90s, he could rightfully be proud that he was now among the richest collectors in the capital, having avoided many troubles on his winding path to success and big money.
At first today was no different from previous Sundays. Except that during dinner there was a verbal skirmish between his daughters, Marfa and Aglaia, who found no better subject than to discuss in the presence of their father alive who of them, after his death, would get his collection of pictures. At last the squealing cries of his daughters made Milutin lose his temper and he got up from the table and ordered them to stop:
– Sergei, in the end, they have a right to know what and how much they will get after you die. We all walk under God, it’s time to think about the children. Or do you want your collection to go into the hands after your death?
His wife’s words had a most unexpected effect on the collector. He laughed so hard that his monstrous laughter silenced his daughters, who were in a frenzy. Everyone stared at him in bewilderment, but he laughed and laughed and gave everyone present the creeps. He was leaning on the edge of the table with both hands, and arching his back like an enraged beast, standing on its hind legs, its
teeth baring through the protruding hair of its dishevelled red beard. It was the way animals behave when cornered. His laughter was drowned out in a cough through which he managed only to wheeze the word “Choke.
He coughed as if he had come to his senses, collapsed on a chair without strength, and repeated quietly:
– Choke on it!
– What did you say, I don’t understand you?’ forgetting to take the smile off his face, his wife anxiously stared at him, ‘What does this ‘choke’ mean?
– And that means,’ at last Milutin’s voice returned to him, ‘you all get nothing from me. None of you three will get a ruble of my money, or a scrap of canvas from my collection. I have bequeathed all my property to him, Van’ka-Kain,’ he shook his head in the direction of his adopted son, ‘and to your hateful Pronyakin all my pictures, including the gallery building. How’s that for a turn, eh? And he laughed again.
– Mama, he’s crazy!” cried Aglaia, and Marfa threw a plate at her father in a rage, but missed, and the plate crashed to the floor with a deafening rattle.
– You’re not yourself,” the wife grinned happily, and licked her teeth like a toad before eating a fat fly. The doctors will help you, we’ll hospitalize you immediately. I’m going to call a doctor I know at the regional psychiatric hospital and he’ll come and get you. You obviously have a nervous disorder, possibly temporary insanity. Girls, help me tie up your father before the doctor arrives, before he runs away from us and does something bad.
Both daughters jumped up as if on cue and rushed to their father, but his son Ivan, who had been sitting silently at the table the whole time, staring at his plate, came to Milutin’s rescue. The skinny boy stood in the sisters’ way, holding the table knife out in front of him like a sword, holding it with both hands.
– I won’t let you go,” he shouted and started waving his knife in different directions. Run, Daddy, I’ll hold them off.
– Oh, you ungrateful brat, you want to go to jail?’ shouted Milutin’s wife, turning her whole body in his direction, ‘I’ll send you to a juvenile facility as soon as we get rid of your father.
Those few seconds were enough for Miliutin to run out of the room, barricading the door behind him:
– Run along, Ivan,’ he shouted to his son from behind the door, ‘Run to
Pronyakin, he will tell you where to find me.
***
Milutin pulled on his felt boots with cropped cuffs, stomped his feet, checking how comfortably the foot settled on the sole. He stepped out onto the porch of the country house and breathed in the clean air, filled with the scent of the pine forest. It was the only place he felt completely safe now. The perimeter of the whole plot was surrounded by a three-meter deep fence, gates and gate locked from the inside. Only he had the keys. The second set was with his son, who was due to arrive.
