The young man was simply in a hopeless situation, with no one to turn to. Relatives had turned away, and he had no friends left. So a distant relative, a good-natured but naive man, thought that since the familiar old lady lived alone in a large apartment, why not let her take in a lodger — she would be less lonely, and he would have a safe place to sleep under a roof.
The young man was about twenty-five; he came to the old lady with a small rucksack in which barely fit a couple of shirts, a notebook and an old photograph of his parents. He looked quiet, modest, even shy. When the grandmother saw him something stirred in her heart — she felt pity, as if he were her own.
She immediately brought the young man into the house, hurriedly asked if he had eaten that day, whether he wanted some potatoes with onions, and promised porridge in the morning. She even allowed him to wear the old clothes of her son, who had long since moved away and rarely called. In the evening the old lady made up a bed for him in her son’s room, straightened the pillow, crossed herself and quietly wished him a good night.
She herself went to her bedroom smiling — for the first time in a long while someone had been a guest in the house and had spoken with her. It seemed to her that God had sent this young man to brighten her loneliness a little. The woman lay for a long time in the dark, listening to the floorboards creak somewhere in the next room; insomnia tormented her.
And when she finally began to fall asleep, she suddenly heard a light rustle from the neighboring room. The woman opened her eyes and, through the half-darkness, saw the door of her bedroom slowly open. The young man stood in the doorway.
He was holding something, and in the dim light of the night lamp his face seemed strange, hard, without the hint of softness the old woman had seen during the day. He crept toward her quietly, stepping cautiously as if afraid to wake her. But the woman was not asleep — she watched him, holding her breath, feeling her heart pounding wildly in her chest.
The young man stopped at the head of the bed and stood there a long time, as though struggling with himself — should he do what he had planned or not? The woman began to pray inwardly. “Lord, what does he intend?
What is he holding? Why did I let a stranger in, and if he…”
Through her half-closed lids the woman saw in horror how the young man suddenly did this… 😱😱
The young man slowly raised his hands, holding a pillow. “This will be better for both of us,” he rasped, pressing the pillow against the old woman’s face.
The grandmother flinched, uttered a muffled, desperate scream and began to struggle, pushing him away with her hands. The pillow fell to the floor; the young man recoiled, frightened that she would not die quickly enough. The old woman screamed at the top of her lungs:
“Help!
People! They’re killing me!”
Neighbors rushed in within seconds — the door had not been locked. One burst into the bedroom, another ran to call the police.
The young man stood by the wall, confused and pale, as if he did not understand what had happened. They restrained him and led him out into the yard. Later, when the police arrived, it became clear that the young man was not at all who he claimed to be.
His parents had died many years earlier in mysterious circumstances — he had been the only witness then, and the investigation had never been able to establish what had happened. Since then he had lived under different names, until he devised a new plan: to move in with a trusting old woman and then stage everything as an accident in order to take possession of her apartment.
