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© Madina Fedosova, 2026
ISBN 978-5-0069-6068-8
Created with Ridero smart publishing system
Author’s Preface
This book was born from smells.
I didn’t realize it at first. At first, I thought it was born from images: Italian courtyards, narrow alleyways, shutters banging in the wind, the sea somewhere far away, but you can still feel it. Then I thought – from sounds: the hum of Vespas, neighbors calling to each other, the splash of water pouring into basins, the creak of lines under the weight of wet sheets.
But no. It all started with smells.
The smell of fresh laundry, mixed with the smell of morning coffee. The smell of detergent with a hint of lemon and something else elusive, something Italian you can’t buy in a store – you can only absorb it from the air. The smell of other people’s lives settling into the fabric: perfume, sweat, tears, wine, tobacco, baby’s milk, hospital bleach, sea salt.
I was sitting in a small café by the window, drinking coffee and watching the courtyard across the way. There was a laundry there. Not a modern one with shiny machines and plastic chairs, but an old one, with a faded sign that the grandmothers of today’s old women probably remembered.
And there was a woman.
She was hanging laundry. Not young, in a dark dress, with gray hair pulled back in a tight bun. Her movements were slow but precise. She would take a sheet, shake it out with one motion – and it would soar over the courtyard like a sail, find its place on the line, lie flat, without a single wrinkle. Then a shirt. Then baby leggings. Then lace underwear, which she hung with the same calm dignity with which a nun tells her rosary beads.
I watched her and couldn’t look away.
How many lives had passed through those hands? How many times had she seen the same thing: stains people bring, hoping that water and soap will work a miracle? How many secrets does this woman hold? What does she think about when she’s alone in the courtyard in the evening, among the day’s dried laundry, drinking her coffee, looking at the darkening sky?
I didn’t know her name. I called her Lucia.
Months passed before I decided to write this book. I thought about her, about her laundry, about the people who cross her threshold. I imagined their faces, names, destinies. I asked myself: why do they come? What are they looking for in this little workshop of cleanliness? And one day I understood.
They don’t come to have their clothes washed.
They come to have their souls washed.
Because there is dirt you can’t see. The dirt of grievances carried for years. The dirt of guilt that eats away from the inside. The dirt of shame that no detergent can wash away. And there are women like Lucia, who know how to look at this dirt without turning away. Who take it in their hands, rinse it in clean water, dry it in the sun, and give it back – clean.
Not because they are saints. But because they know: dirt is just dirt. And cleanliness is a choice.
There is not a single invented feeling in this book. All the stories you will read could have happened in reality. I didn’t write them based on real people, but I wrote them based on truth. Because dirt and cleanliness, shame and forgiveness, love and loss, hope and despair – these are things inside every one of us. In Rome, in Moscow, in any city in the world. We all carry stains. We all dream of becoming clean.
Come in.
It smells like truth here.
Madina Fedosova
Prologue
Rome. The Trastevere district.
A narrow street, where houses are so close together you could shake your neighbor’s hand without leaving your window. Cobblestones, worn smooth by millions of feet. Shutters, faded to the color of burnt ochre. Cats on windowsills. Geraniums in pots. And smells – always some kind of smell: sometimes fresh bread from the bakery on the corner, sometimes fried fish, sometimes just the smell of morning.
In the middle of this street, in the very heart of Trastevere, there are three stone steps leading down.
The steps are old, worn hollow in the middle, as if hundreds of people have walked down them so often they’ve worn away the stone. Above the steps, a faded sign. The letters are almost worn away, but the locals know: it says «Lavanderia.» Laundry.
The door is glass, cloudy with age, with a crack in the left corner. Steam is always visible behind it.
If you go down the steps and enter, the first thing that hits your nose is a mix of detergent, fabric softener, and coffee. Coffee is made here constantly, in a small pot on the gas stove in the corner. The second thing you’ll notice is the silence. Not an empty silence, but a full one. In it, the hum of old washing machines sounds like the breathing of a living creature.
Along the walls are shelves. On them, stacks of laundry, labeled by day of the week. Monday: Signora Rosa’s sheets. Tuesday: the Moretti family’s shirts. Wednesday: towels from the hotel around the corner. Thursday: children’s clothes. Friday: everything else.
Behind the shelves is a door leading to an inner courtyard. There, under stretched lines, laundry dries. White sheets billow in the wind like the sails of ships ready to set sail for the sky. A woman walks among them.
Her name is Lucia.
She is 62 years old. She has gray hair pulled back in a tight bun, and hands that know their work: work-worn, with prominent veins, but surprisingly gentle when she touches fabric. She wears a dark dress and a white apron, which she changes every day, although the apron is always clean.
Lucia opens the laundry at six in the morning. She has done this for forty years. For forty years she has taken in other people’s laundry. For forty years she has looked at the stains people bring.
She doesn’t ask where the stains come from. She doesn’t give advice unless asked. She just washes. And sometimes she speaks.
And when she speaks, people remember it for the rest of their lives.
Because Lucia doesn’t see fabric. She sees what’s behind it.
A wine stain isn’t just a stain. It’s an argument that’s lasted twenty years. A lipstick mark on a collar isn’t just a mark. It’s the end of a love, or its beginning. Baby drool on a pillowcase isn’t just drool. It’s a mother’s sleepless night, a mother who can’t remember the last time she slept herself.
Lucia washes it all.
And returns it clean.
In this city where everyone knows each other, Signora Lucia’s laundry is a special place. People come here not only for clean laundry. They come here when things get so dirty inside they can’t clean themselves anymore.
Today is Monday morning.
Lucia lights the gas under the coffee pot. The coffee boils, rising with a cap of foam. She takes it off the heat, pours it into a small cup, takes the first sip. Outside the window, Rome awakens. Somewhere in the distance, the honk of a bus. Somewhere close by, the voice of a neighbor woman already arguing with the fishmonger.
Lucia looks at the door.
Soon the first ones will come.
She doesn’t know who it will be today. Doesn’t know what pain they’ll bring. Doesn’t know what her eyes will see.
But she is ready.
Coffee finished. Cup rinsed. Hands wiped on the apron.
The laundry is open.
Come in.
It smells like hope here.
PART ONE
MORNING
Chapter 1
Sheets with Lipstick
She came in at seven-thirty in the morning.
Lucia knew it by the sound. In forty years of working in the laundry, she had learned to hear people before they even opened the door. Footsteps in the street, a pause before the steps, breathing as they came down. Everyone arrives in their own way. The confident ones tap their heels fast and loud. The guilty ones freeze in front of the door, and Lucia has time to pour coffee while they make up their minds. The confused ones push the door the wrong way, pull, then push again.
This one pushed hard. Too hard. The handle on the old door always sticks if you yank it; you have to press it down a little and push with your shoulder. The locals know, they’ve gotten used to it over the decades. Tourists struggle, curse, sometimes leave without ever getting in. This one wasn’t a tourist, dressed simply, without Roman polish. But not a local either. Locals at seven-thirty in the morning are either still asleep or already sitting in their kitchens with their first cup of coffee, looking out the windows at the awakening alley, listening to the neighbor woman upstairs starting to argue with her husband, hearing a Vespa start up somewhere in the distance. Locals don’t drag themselves to the laundry looking like their house is on fire.
Lucia didn’t turn around. She stood at the far counter, sorting through last week’s receipts. The papers smelled of printing ink and dust, mixed with the perpetual scent of detergent. The coffee maker hissed, releasing steam. Outside the window, through the cloudy glass, the morning sun was breaking through, drawing golden stripes on the stone floor.
«Signora.»
The voice was young, but constricted. As if someone were squeezing her throat from the inside. Tears were somewhere nearby, close, but holding inside for now, not spilling out.
Lucia turned around slowly. Not because she didn’t want to see. She had simply learned over forty years: rushing at such moments only frightens people. They arrive broken, any sudden movement could finish them off.
The girl stood at the threshold, clutching a bag as if it were the only thing keeping her on the ground. About twenty-five, maybe a little older. Short blonde hair, disheveled, uncombed after sleep, sticking out in different directions like a child who had just jumped out from under the pillow and run. Eyes red, swollen, but dry. A strange dryness, the kind that comes after hours of tears, when the body’s water has simply run out.
Dressed simply: worn jeans, a gray t-shirt with a faded print, a light jacket hanging open, although the morning was still cool. Old sneakers, worn down on one side. It was obvious she had run out in whatever she was wearing, without thinking, without choosing.
In her hands – a large plastic bag. Transparent, the kind sold at the market for ten cents. Through the slightly foggy plastic, the contents were visible: white fabric, folded carelessly, in a heap.
«Signora, I need to get this washed.»
Her voice wavered on the last word, as if the word itself – washed – was wrong, not what she wanted to say. But no other words came.
Lucia nodded towards the counter. Wide, wooden, darkened by time and water. Over the decades, whole hollows had been worn into it where thousands of people had placed their laundry, their bags, their hopes.
«Put it here.»
The girl approached. Three steps, but she took them like a hundred. Her legs wouldn’t obey. She put the bag on the counter. Her hands trembled with a fine, nasty tremor that couldn’t be stopped, no matter how hard you tried. She unzipped it, took out the contents.
Sheets.
Double-bed size, good cotton, expensive. You could see it immediately: in the density of the fabric, the even seams, the lace trim bordering the edges. White, dazzlingly white, even after sleep. On one – in the middle, where a pillow or a sleeper’s head usually lies – a bright stain.
Lipstick.
Red. Not orange, not pink, not coral. Red. Bright as a fire engine, as a traffic signal, as blood. A clear imprint of a woman’s lips, slightly smeared on one edge, as if the head had been turned in sleep or in haste, jumping up and running away in the morning.
Lucia looked at the stain. For a long time. Then shifted her gaze to the girl.
She stood, gripping the edge of the counter. Her knuckles were white, transparent. Nails cut short, without manicure, chewed in places down to the quick.
«These are my sheets,» the girl said.
Her voice was completely gone. She had to cough, clear her throat, but the sound still came out hoarse, alien.
«Ours. Mine and his. We got married six months ago.»
Lucia was silent. Silence was her main tool. Words can wound, deceive, confuse. Silence gives a person space. Space to pour out everything that has accumulated.
«I bought them a month before the wedding. I chose them myself. Went to that shop on Via del Corso, you know? The one with the Portuguese linen. The most expensive fabric they had. I saved from my paycheck for three months. I wanted everything to be beautiful. To remember for my whole life. Silly, right?»
She fell silent, as if expecting an answer. Lucia didn’t answer.
«Last night he came home late. Said work. They had a rush, quarterly reports, all that. I didn’t ask. I never ask. A wife should trust, right? Mama always said: trust is the foundation of marriage. I trusted.»
Her lips pressed into a thin line, turning white like her knuckles.
«In the morning he left early. I was still asleep, half-heard him kissing my cheek, whispering something. Left coffee on the nightstand, as always. Thoughtful. Perfect. And when I got up to make the bed, I saw this.»
She jabbed her finger at the stain. Her finger trembled so hard she didn’t hit the stain on the first try.
«I want to burn them.»
Lucia shifted her gaze from the sheet to the girl. A long, heavy look that usually made people squirm.
«Then why did you bring them here?»
The girl blinked. Bewildered, like a child given a problem she doesn’t understand.
«What?»
«If you want to burn them, burn them. Everyone has matches. Why bring them to me?»
The girl opened her mouth, closed it. Then exhaled as if all the air had left her at once.
«I don’t know.»
Lucia nodded. She had heard this answer thousands of times. Thousands of people had stood at this counter, clutching dirty laundry, not knowing why they were here. They only knew one thing: they couldn’t stay alone with this. Couldn’t sit in an empty apartment, looking at those stains, those things, those reminders, and not go crazy.
«Sit down,» Lucia said, nodding towards the chair by the wall.
The chair was old, wooden, with a worn-down seat. Thousands of people had sat in it. Waited. Cried. Been silent. Sometimes fallen asleep from exhaustion, and Lucia would cover them with an old blanket she kept for such occasions.
The girl sat down. Lucia took the sheets, unfolded them completely. The stain was bigger than it had seemed through the bag. About ten centimeters in diameter, with a clear lip outline in the center and smudges at the edges, as if someone had tried to wipe the lipstick off, only smearing it further.
Lucia brought the fabric to her nose, sniffed it.
«French,» she said. «Expensive lipstick. Long-lasting. Won’t come out easily.»
The girl hiccupped a sob. The sound escaped unexpectedly, as if it wasn’t her who made it.
«I know.»
Lucia set the sheets aside. Went to the stove, where a coffee pot was simmering on low heat. The coffee was boiling for the third time that morning, rising with a cap of golden foam which Lucia deftly knocked down. She poured the dark, thick liquid into a clean ceramic cup. The cup was old, with fine cracks in the glaze, but Lucia loved these – they didn’t burn your hands, they gave off heat slowly, like living things.
Set it in front of the girl.
«Drink.»
«I don’t want to.»
«Drink. You’ll stop shaking.»
The girl obediently took the cup. Her hands were indeed shaking; coffee sloshed over the rim, dripped onto the counter, onto her jeans. She took a sip, burned herself, but didn’t feel it. Then another. The coffee was strong, bitter, the kind they make in the south – sugar on the side, everyone adds their own.
Lucia sat down opposite her. Not behind the counter where she took laundry and money, but on another similar old chair kept by the wall for those rare visitors she needed to talk to at length. She rarely did this. Only when she saw someone truly on the edge. When there was dirt inside them that water couldn’t wash away.
Outside the glass door of the laundry, the usual morning life of the alley had begun. A Vespa went by, loud, crackling, its exhaust pipe sputtering. A woman passed with heavy bags, judging by how she leaned to the side. Somewhere a child cried – either waking up or falling down. The upstairs neighbor opened her shutters with a loud creak that Lucia had heard every morning for forty years and no longer noticed.
«What’s your name?» Lucia asked.
«Valentina.»
Her voice sounded a little steadier now. The coffee was starting to work.
«How old are you, Valentina?»
«Twenty-six.»
«Do you work?»
«I’m a doctor. Pediatrician. At the children’s hospital on Gianicolo, you know? Where the old park is.»
Lucia raised an eyebrow slightly. A doctor. Used to saving, curing, solving problems. And here was a case where her science was powerless. Here there were no pills, no tests, no diagnosis. Only a red stain on a white sheet.
«Is he your first?»
Valentina looked up. Her eyes were red, swollen, but now a little more focused.
«What?»
«Your first man? Or have there been others?»
Valentina shook her head. Her hair flew from side to side.
«He’s my first. I married late. Studying, then residency, then work at the hospital. No time to date, go out, choose. I thought I’d found the one. The real one. Forever.»
«Do you love him?»
Silence hung in the air, thick as the morning fog over the Tiber. Valentina stared into her cup, at the dark surface of the coffee where tiny bubbles of foam floated.
«I don’t know,» she said finally. Her voice was quiet, almost a whisper. «I thought I did. But now… I don’t know. I don’t understand who he is. I don’t understand who I am. I don’t know what to do with this sheet.»
Lucia nodded. She stood up.
Went to the counter, took the sheets. Unfolded them, looked at the stain one last time, as if memorizing it. Then she opened the lid of the big washing machine – the one against the far wall, the oldest, but the most reliable. Loaded the laundry. Poured detergent from a large unlabeled cardboard box. Added stain remover, which she used only for difficult cases, a little more than usual. Closed the heavy lid. Turned it on.
The machine hummed low, bassy, then water began to rush, flowing through the hoses, filling the drum. After a minute, a dull thumping sound came from inside – the laundry had begun its journey.
Lucia returned to the chair.
«Now it’s an hour and a half,» she said. «Will you sit, or will you leave?»
Valentina looked at the machine as if it were a living being. As if it were a doctor who would now begin to heal.
«I’ll sit.»
They sat in silence. In the laundry, you could only hear the hum of the machines, the hiss of steam from the old iron Lucia had forgotten to turn off, distant voices from the street. Somewhere children were already playing ball – dull thuds against a wall. Somewhere market women were arguing – their voices rising and falling like seagulls over the sea. Life went on as usual. The sheets with red lipstick swirled in soapy water, washing, surrendering their dirt to the detergent.
After half an hour, Valentina spoke herself.
Her voice was steadier, but a different note had appeared in it – bitter, adult, the note that comes after the loss of illusions.
«My mother left my father when I was five. I don’t remember that time well, but I remember one thing vividly: she found another woman’s earring in his pocket. An ordinary earring, cheap, costume jewelry. She just packed her things, took me, and left. In one night. Without conversation, without explanations, without trying to understand.»
She took a sip of coffee, now cold, but didn’t notice.
«I grew up without him. He came on Sundays, took me to the park, bought ice cream, but it wasn’t the same. He was a stranger who became slightly less strange once a week. I always thought: how could she? Over some stupid earring that could have gotten into his pocket in a thousand ways? Maybe someone put it there at work, maybe he found it himself, maybe something else? Maybe it was a mistake? Maybe she should have talked, figured it out, not broken up the family?»
She fell silent. In the laundry, you could hear the machine humming, water dripping somewhere from a poorly closed tap.
«And now I look at this sheet and I understand. It wasn’t about the earring. It was about the fact that after that earring, you can’t sleep on the same sheet anymore. You understand? You look at it and you only see that. Every night. Every morning. It eats into you more than into the fabric. You don’t see the person next to you anymore. You only see the stain.»
Lucia was silent. Valentina continued talking, and the words poured out of her in a stream that could no longer be stopped.
«I want to kill him. I want to find that woman and tear her hair out. I want to kill myself for being such a fool, so naive, so blind. I want this morning never to have happened. I want to have slept until noon and for him to have come back and for everything to be like before. I want these sheets to burn, not to exist, I want never to have bought them. I want…»
«Enough,» said Lucia.
Her voice was quiet, but it cut through the stream of words like a knife through a ripe tomato.
Valentina fell silent. Stared at Lucia with wide eyes.
«You can want many things,» Lucia said. «The water will still flow. The machine will still wash. The sun will rise and set. And you’ll sit here wanting. And then what?»
Valentina looked at her. Waited for an answer. Lucia was in no hurry.
«Wanting isn’t doing. Wanting is hiding from what’s already happened. You’re sitting here, wishing it hadn’t. But it already has. And it’s not going anywhere.»
Valentina was silent.
«What should I do?» she asked finally. Her voice was quiet, almost childlike.
Lucia stood up, went to the machine. Looked at the timer. Twenty minutes left.
«You’ll pick up the sheets,» she said. «They’ll be clean. No stain.»
«So what?» Valentina also stood, came closer. «I’ll go home, make the bed, go to sleep, and then what? I’ll know. I’ll always know. Every night, closing my eyes, I’ll see that red lipstick on the white fabric. Even if it’s not there.»
Lucia turned to her. Stood so close that Valentina could smell the detergent mixed with coffee and something else elusive, old, homely, safe.
«Do you think I only wash away stains?»
Valentina froze.
«Do you think, in forty years, people have only come to me with dirty laundry?»
Lucia stepped back, gestured around the laundry.
«Look around. Everyone who walked through that door brought not just clothes. They brought themselves. Their pain. Their shame. Their dirt that can’t be seen with the eyes. I washed sheets after the dead. I washed murderers’ shirts. I washed the dresses of women beaten by their husbands. I washed the children’s clothes of children who are no more.»
She paused.
«A stain on a sheet isn’t infidelity. A stain on a sheet is just pigment. Infidelity is what’s in your head. What you imagined or embellished yourself. You didn’t come here to wash a sheet. You came here to wash yourself.»
Valentina stood, gripping the edge of the counter as she had when she first came in. But now her fingers weren’t trembling.
«I’ll wash the sheet. It will be clean. White. Like snow on the mountains you can see from Rome on a clear day. You’ll take it back. And then you have two choices.»
She paused. The machine hummed louder, going into the spin cycle.
«First: you’ll see that lipstick on it every night for the rest of your life. You’ll sleep with a ghost you created yourself. You’ll hate him, yourself, that woman you don’t even know. And the sheet will be clean, but you won’t be.»
Valentina swallowed.
«Second: you stop looking at the sheet and you look at him.»
«At him?» Valentina almost screamed, but her voice cracked into a wheeze. «Are you suggesting I forgive him? After this?»
«I’m not suggesting anything,» Lucia’s voice remained calm, steady, like water in an old fountain. «I’m saying: you don’t know what happened. You only know the stain.»