A birthday present
Gleb Karpinsky

© Gleb Karpinsky, 2025

ISBN 978-5-0068-0866-9

Создано в интеллектуальной издательской системе Ridero

The gray sky creeps over me,
The guns are firing, but they don’t want hail.
Again I play hide and seek with fate,
Boldly forward and not a step back.
From the forgotten.

1 Several years ago

The phone was disconnected during the day. Maxim did not immediately understand the reason, he thought it was just a problem with the connection. But then everything became clear. The phone was a corporate phone, and it was turned off intentionally to take Maxim out of the game. He was fired at the most crucial moment, fired meanly on the eve of the deal. Maxim had been working on this deal for almost two years: he worked for a penny on the result, went on business trips, leaving his young wife alone, planted more than one liver in negotiations with people who were not even a match for him. But what was to be done? At that time, he was twenty-five years old. He worked as a sales representative in the Moscow office of an international company, selling transformers for thermal power plants. Transformers were reliable, but very expensive, and often Russian enterprises needed them very much, but experienced difficulties with their purchase. At that time, loans were rare, and leasing sounded like an obscene word. Therefore, all sorts of tricks were used, based on the personal contractual relationship between the seller’s representative and the buyer’s representative. In this case, the kickback was half a million Euros and was cut between the buyer’s representatives and the top of the Russian representative office of the company where Maxim worked. At this time, he was a tempting angel: he had a presentable appearance and a loose tongue, wore an expensive suit, and was able to win over anyone who could make a decision. In general, he was not a bad manager, and if not for the difficult economic situation in the country, he would have risen up the career ladder long ago, having made a couple of excellent deals.

He finally got lucky. Maxim knocked out certification for compliance with Russian analogues, received the go-ahead from the chief engineer, reached out to the right people, collected all the documents and won the fake tender. But at some point, he made the mistake of bringing his useful contacts directly to his boss, behaved boldly and confidently during all these negotiations, and, in doing so, made it clear that he was not a bad guy and should also be shared with him. He never thought that he could be so simply dumped, fired in one day without an explanation. Now it all explained why there was a huge turnover in this company, and the authorities drove around in expensive foreign cars.

«Well, then! War is war! «thought Maxim, and burst into the director’s office.

Maxim was young and hot, unable to control his anger. It seemed to him that he brought the light of justice to this world and it was impossible to retreat. The director was old and cunning. He waited for him with a smile on his face, knowing that Maxim could not do anything, that the contract had already been signed and the prepayment made. The director had some trump cards in his hands, some fabricated evidence that the employee was incompetent, deserved to be fired, and that he should even be grateful to the company for the love and trust that they had shown him over the years. But that wasn’t the case. Then Maxim, emotionally offended by his position, said directly to his eyes that the central office in Zurich would find out about this shady part of the deal, that they had already compiled a competent letter with dirty details in English, ready to go to their destination at any time. Of course, when the insolent faces that glistened from an easy, well-to-do life began to gather around him, the dismissed employee almost escaped. He was too young then to appreciate the real threat they posed. These various scoundrels and other people’s henchmen, looking forward to the greasy pie that he brought them on a platter, were ready to do anything to reason with an upstart who dared to challenge them alone. They openly threatened him with consequences, cursed and shouted, said that he would go straight to prison for blackmail or not leave this room at all, but Maxim did not flinch, insisted on his own. As a result, the parties agreed that he resigns at his own request, and yesterday’s date, that the company after the transfer of cases gives him a work record and has no complaints against him. In exchange for silence and, so to speak, moral compensation, he was given a thousand Euros, although Maxim asked for ten. But he figured it was better to gain a little than lose everything. It was too much for one person to deal with the cunning and experienced thieves, in whose eyes he was just another whipping boy. He had already played his bluff, his emotions, and when he got home in the late afternoon, he was very relieved that everything had more or less ended well for him.

He gave the money he had received in blood and sweat to his young wife, or rather threw it carelessly to her, and she took it as if it were ordinary money that he brought almost every day, and put it in her purse.

«I haven’t been able to reach you all day,» she said, a little hurt.

«You can throw this number in the trash. I got fired, «he snapped, setting three bottles of beer on the table in front of him.

«Again?» She wasn’t surprised at all. – That’s to be expected. You have an obnoxious temper.

Maxim said nothing, already thinking about his new resume for applicants. He didn’t like being idle, and his wife wouldn’t let him relax. Tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, he will have new adventures, a new career, new opportunities. He’ll definitely get lucky, he’ll definitely…

He glanced at his new wife. She was going to go out and put on her makeup in front of the mirror. There was something about her that he didn’t like, maybe a little too much makeup on her face.

«Where are you going?» – What is it? «he asked, uncorking one of the bottles. – I thought we were going to have a nice evening.» – Anyway, I got away with it, and I brought you the money. Not everyone can do that.

«You completely forgot I have lessons, honey. I’ll be late.

It was already getting dark outside the window. Maxim frowned. He opened one of the bottles and took a deep swig. The beer was warm and tasteless. He didn’t like the idea of his wife going out into the night either, but he put up with it because he thought it was all his fault. It is he who earns little and each time convinces her to be patient when a golden shower falls on their heads. But she obviously doesn’t believe in him anymore, so she has to give private Spanish lessons.

«You’re not happy about something?» he suddenly felt a nagging, dreary ache in his heart. «I took a chance, by the way.

It was as if he was offended by her, staring at a certain point. He wanted her to stay, so that they could have a heart-to-heart conversation, as before, about God, about the infinity of the universe, about some interesting and spiritual things. But there was a hurried click of heels behind him, and Maxim caught a whiff of his wife’s light, floral perfume floating around the room. She was obviously late and didn’t seem to notice his condition at all.

«You’re doing great,» she said quickly, already in the doorway. – But a thousand Euros is not money. Olga Kovalchuk’s husband recently bought a treshka in Maryino, and all he does is work as a bartender at Friday’’s on Tverskaya Street. She just called me, says seventy squares, not like we have a shack, invites us to a housewarming party, and I don’t even have a proper dress. After class, I’ll just stop by the mall. Don’t miss.

She didn’t even kiss him good-bye, but she was in a hurry to get out of the apartment, just so as not to see him depressed and empty. She had been married to Maxim for a little less than five years, and each time she expected him to earn his million, but time passed, and there was still no money. She was the only daughter of rich parents, and they had taught her from childhood that she should look for a successful and enterprising husband, just like her father. But he couldn’t be like Dad. Maxim so jumped above his head. The fact that he earned a one-bedroom apartment in Moscow at the age of twenty-two, and also recently gave his wife a brand-new Mazda so that she would not feel inferior among her girlfriends, was already a great achievement. Yes, he admitted that his wife is quite spoiled and capricious, that she has big requests and is often under the illusion that big money is so easy to get. In addition, she was strongly influenced by her mother, who openly disliked Maxim and always considered him not worthy of her daughter. All this was compounded by the fact that the mother-in-law had problems in her personal life, the father of the family, apparently, found a young mistress on the side, and offended by this, she broke down on the family happiness of her daughter. Maxim was like a bone in her throat. It was as if she was jealous, setting her daughter against her son – in-law, and each time she always hit the patient-pointed out his earnings, which recently left much to be desired.

Young people treated her words with tolerance, and if Maxim lost his temper, his wife asked him not to react to his mother’s words with caresses and kisses, explaining this by the difficult situation in the family. But Maxim rightly broke down, even cheeky to his mother-in-law, which brought both to tears and tantrums. In the end, he was even glad when his wife took up tutoring.

She knew Spanish well from childhood. But all this work did not bring much money, and was only an excuse to spend as much free time as possible from each other. They no longer wanted children, although sometimes in their meager sex life there were sluggish attempts to glue together their unraveling union, but pregnancy still did not come, and this further depressed Maxim, reducing his male self-esteem to a minimum. He was already afraid to hammer a nail in the wall to hang the picture, because he was told beforehand that he would hammer it somehow wrong, and it would be better if daddy came and did everything right. Everything was going to divorce, although Maxim refused to believe it. He believed in love, that nothing could destroy their marriage. But they were illusions. That long-standing infatuation with Maxim before marriage, when they were both still virgins, the young girl regarded only as a natural first experience. She had never loved her husband enough to be bound to him for the rest of her life, a love she was not yet familiar with. Her maiden love for the first time broke on everyday life, and the young girl could not do anything about it. Now she was just waiting for the right moment to leave her husband, even though she knew perfectly well that he loved her and it would be very difficult for him to leave. She put everything off until later, hoping in her heart that Maxim would suddenly mysteriously improve and become a real man, behind whom she would feel like behind a stone wall, secure, strong, successful. In the last few days, she suddenly realized that there was no point in waiting any longer, and this evening she decided to talk about the divorce and even about him leaving her an apartment with a car.

«Well, if you believe in yourself so much, then leave me everything you still earn,» she thought, imagining the conversation with her husband. – Besides, everything you earned was for my happiness, so you have to be honest with me.» We will always be friends, and maybe someday, when you are truly the person I want in my life, we will be reunited, and this parting will be remembered with a slight smile on our lips.»

Then she would get angry that some other girl would live next to him and maybe love him, that he might even have children, and all these ideas about that near future, even further distanced her from Maxim. She cried and imagined that it had already happened, that her only Maxim, whom she had made up out of what had happened, was married to someone else and not nursing her children. All of this caused her to feel violent toward him.

When she got home, she felt bad, not because she didn’t buy what she wanted, but because something happened that she didn’t expect, but deep down she always dreamed about it. She hurried to the shower to wash off all the filth of the city, so that her husband wouldn’t see her lips smeared from hot kisses and her hair disheveled.

Maxim was still awake, waiting for her until nightfall, and anxiety and worry were reflected on his face, which was pale with emotion. When he heard the clink of keys and the opening of the door, he started as if he had heard his own death sentence, and he suddenly wanted to pretend to be asleep, so that it would all pass like a bad dream, and wake up refreshed and strong in the morning. For a while, he actually dozed off, but when the young girl came out of the shower, he suddenly felt that something already irreparable had happened. He shrank back into the couch, shaking with anger. And when his wife, smiling coldly and mysteriously, pressed her cool wet body against his, he suddenly realized that she had not been with him an hour ago, that someone else was caressing her, and a burning pain shot through his heart. He even groaned and wept like a child, pulling away from her as if she were a leper, not knowing where to find salvation. Such squeamish and panicked behavior offended her to the core. She had hoped for a constructive conversation, but when she heard his pathetic sobs, she got up, wrapped herself in a white towel, and proudly waved her head, and the drops from her hair fell on his face.

«Yes, Maxim, I cheated on you,» she confessed, seeing that he intuitively guessed this, and she could no longer lie and pretend to be a faithful wife.

«And with whom?» he repeated, barely audible, not recognizing his own voice.

He suddenly wanted to call her some of the worst things he knew about a woman.

«Does it matter?» she replied calmly. «I cheated on you and, in fact, I had my first real orgasm. We’ve been dancing around the Christmas tree for five years now, and I’ve never experienced anything like this. It all happened quickly, and I didn’t even fight back. I just gave myself up to him, you know? And you’re still a child, still a boy. We haven’t been a couple for a long time, we live by inertia. To whom and what do we prove? And my mother says the same thing, that we should have broken up long ago. I kept brushing it off, hoping you’d make it, the whole deal, it was so real, and you’re so good at lying, but… I’m really tired, I want good conditions and a normal guy, I want to be with him like behind a stone wall. Do not think about who will change the wheels on the car, do not ask questions about where to get money for a second education. Well, tell me what are your prospects, what are they? You are always being cheated, cheated, and too kind for this world. Here you need to have sharp teeth.

«Well, yes,» he said sarcastically, eyeing the strange hickeys on her neck. «The kind of teeth that just dragged you to bed.»

– At least such! «What is it?» she asked indignantly. – And don’t you dare discuss my lovers!»

To say that it was painful for him to listen to his wife’s reproaches and her confession of infidelity is an understatement. He was shaking, he wanted to kill himself, he even locked himself in the bathroom with a knife, and the only thing that stopped him was that she didn’t try to stop him. He realized that it was his own fault, that he had to fight and prove to her that he was the best. He even mentally forgave her for her infidelity, and she also began to cry, and they made love. But even in those desperate moments of their last intimacy, she’d rebuked him, resented his timid attempts to caress her.

«Be sure to wear this!» Such a clumsy fellow! I don’t like it. Why are you coming so fast? That’s not how you do things! You’ll never tip me and don’t dream! «she was trying to guide him, as if taught by some joking guru, and this guru was present in their bed, chuckling, making it difficult for Maxim to concentrate.

The deceived husband finally realized that they needed to break up urgently, that a broken cup could not be glued together, otherwise everything would only get worse. He left his wife that night, hastily packing up some meaningless things. He went out into the street, hoping that she would run after him and return the ring that he had hastily stolen from his ring finger and put on the shelf in the hallway. But she didn’t run. He could still hear her calling someone in tears, maybe her mom, maybe her lover, and complaining that her husband loved her less or even didn’t love her anymore.

Then Maxim was lost, as if in a fog. He left his wife everything: his apartment, his Mazda, even his clothes, a gold ring on the shelf, a toothbrush, a shirt, photos, all the memories he had accumulated over this long period. He simply went nowhere, walked as long as he was strong enough, and then, tired, sat down on the parapet, thought for a long time where to go next and what to do, what to live on, and whether it was worth living?

2 Our days-life in the country

A neighbor’s rooster crowed outside the window. Maxim uncorked a bottle of muddy liquid and poured himself to the brim in a sticky, fly-infested, faceted glass. It was hard to recognize him now: unshaven, unkempt, his hair barely touched with gray, his eyes distant and sad, but there was still strength in his hands. The glass in his clenched fingers creaked and snapped as if it were made of ice.

«Carajo, mierda, mierda, mierda, mierda,» he swore in Spanish, licking the blood that trickled down his palm.

He didn’t look the same as before, in a business suit with a hundred-and-fifty-euro silk tie around his neck. His Italian shirt didn’t have gold cufflinks with a jade stone on them. This shirt had long since turned into a rag and was lying on the doorstep to be wiped on. Now Maxim was wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants bought at the local market, all terribly and indecently rumpled, already torn in several places and smeared with mud and manure. He was sitting on a bench in his hut, leaning against the cold adobe, one leg propped up on the countertop, from which hung a black, battered flip-flop with a worn sole. His eyes, tired and narrowed in the glare of the sun, stared distantly at the screen of an old, rattling laptop. Maxim watched the latest YouTube videos in Spanish and, apparently, as he spontaneously uttered an expletive, he was making progress.

The hut he was in was a real adobe one, with a low tiled roof, small windows, and wooden frames. It had a small brick stove with a cracked and very rusty cast-iron stove. Animal furs hung on the walls. They still smelled of lard melted in the heat and dried meat eaten by beetles.

It was the month of July. Outside the window, the southern Kuban sun shone through the wide leaves of grapes. Maxim lived for a long time not in Moscow or even in the countryside. One and a half thousand kilometers to the capital. Even if you want to get here, you can spend a whole day on the train, then an hour on a taxi, and not everyone will dare.

Life had battered him badly, worn him out. After the divorce from his wife, he never married at all, and never found himself.

Maxim had no luck with his work. He kept trying to catch his luck and a couple of times was even close to the goal, but alas… At some point, he realized that working for someone else’s uncle is not his privilege, that you need to think with your own head and not count on anyone. But he could not open his own business: there were no available funds. Everything was spent on renting an apartment and getting food. He made several unsuccessful attempts to improve his personal life. But the image of his wife leaving him prevented him from fully giving himself up to his feelings. He still loved her and suffered. In order not to go crazy with pain, Maxim began to meet girls for short-term relationships, usually finding them on social networks.

At first, he was looking for younger girls who believed in romance and love. He fit in well with this romantic image of a battered, lone wolf, and he easily managed to fool those cute little heads. He took everything from life to the full, without feeling any remorse, besides, he did not deceive anyone and honestly told about himself, about what he wants, and that perhaps in the future they will inevitably part. But these girls, warned by him, still flew at him like moths to the fire, and burned and died in the dreary light of unrequited love. But he, like a predator, was cruel to them, believed that the mental suffering that he brought to his victims by these short meetings was normal, and that it would be better to be the first in these cases than someone else, more stupid and uninteresting.

When he got tired of all this, he lay low for a while, even seriously thinking about getting lost somewhere in Solovki, at the monastery, devoting his sinful life to serving God. But fate soon presented him with a new surprise in the form of several mature women, most of them married, looking for only entertainment and sexual impressions on the side. Such women gave him a lot in terms of experience, but in their company he began to feel just a funny toy, a loser and even unwittingly a gigolo. In the end, male pride played a role in him, and he continued to seek solitude in seclusion, and an abandoned farm in the foothills of the Caucasus turned out to be more useful than ever. Friends and acquaintances twirled at his temple. He was especially misunderstood by these grown women, who got everything out of life so easily and naturally. Some of them, especially far-sighted ones, promised him a good job through their successful husbands in this regard and were ready to rent him an apartment and pay for it, as long as he remained in the capital. There were several such proposals, and Maxim sometimes reveled in vanity, mentally choosing options between Tverskaya and Yuzhny Butovo. But he was no longer so young, not so handsome, that it would last forever. He wanted to make love with the only one, and the thoughts of his ex-wife did not leave him, the longing increased. He was suffering. It seemed to him that their relationship wasn’t over yet, that she, too, might be pining for him and waiting for him to call. But where to call, where to search? His ex-wife had really disappeared. He had always been interested in her subsequent life after the divorce. For a while, at first, he’d been tracking her movements, even offering his condolences when he learned of her dad’s sudden death, but now he couldn’t even call her, ask her old friends about her. Everyone kept some sinister secret, disowned him as if he were an annoying fly, and even the former mother-in-law said this to him for the last time in his futile attempt to find out something:

«Don’t call us again, Maxim. You’ve already done us so much harm. Leave us alone for the sake of the bright memory of Alexander Petrovich. Masha is doing well, she is happy. Finally, she found love. And your pathetic appearance will only cause her unnecessary distress. Go your own way. Forget us.

And he left the capital, reaching the farm on some hitchhiking with a small bag of things. There, in the dark of the night, he handed the money to a stunned salesman and, in doing so, began a difficult, but interesting and full of physical labor, full of new hopes life for himself.

«I don’t need anything else,» he said then, justifying his flight from the capital. «A roof over my head and a piece of land, and not to be disturbed. And I’ll really forget my past. I never had one.

He still got calls from ladies out of habit, but all this chatty, empty talk was draining his energy, and at one point, during the laundry, he accidentally drowned the phone with their contacts.

Life began with a clean slate. Sometimes he still called his elderly parents who lived in the Moscow region, called them to his house, told them about life in the Kuban. All these infrequent, semi-annual phone calls were the only links connecting him to the capital, where he spent his young and rather turbulent years. Now it was as if he himself was retired, on a well-deserved vacation, and, enjoying the virgin nature, wandered around the local foothills, communicated with local residents, and learned about the life of Kuban residents. All his modest savings were running out. It was necessary to look for sources of income here, to somehow survive on earth. Then he threw himself enthusiastically into farming, deciding to plant everything with potatoes, anticipating big harvests, and also got chickens. A lot of effort and time was spent on this. After the rains, the garden was quickly overgrown with sow thistle and ragweed. He had to constantly dig and hoe the rows, sinking knee-deep in the black mud mass. Then the heat came and the ground turned to stone, but that was only half the trouble. Colorado beetles, bears, and moles, no matter how hard he fought them, destroyed his entire crop. Having dug up the pitiful remains at the end of the summer, Maxim realized that he had planted three times as much in the spring as he had collected in the middle of summer.

– Maybe I didn’t guess correctly with the variety or culture? – he decided not to despair and devoted the next season to corn.

Corn, indeed, grew better, reaching out to the sun, itself choking any weed. The following year was more rainy. The juicy cobs were so pleasing to the eye, Maxim was already rubbing his hands together in anticipation of the profit. A neighbor offered good money, but one day the village herd entered the garden, and everything was eaten and ruined.

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