school stays
up and running.
So I use money from the dead
to help the living.
Since nobody else is going to.
In short, the Chechen is not guilty.
Still, can you explain to me,
an almost sane person,
why that simple woman,
who is not part of any scheme,
testified in court
that the Chechen
killed the Russian officer
Volodya with a knife?
I know why.
You can yell at me.
You can laugh. But I know.
- It was jealousy.
- What?
Jealousy,
She didn't hear the boy,
she lives across the street.
She didn't see anything either
because it was night time.
At best, she saw some shadows,
though I doubt it.
She didn't see anything.
She was convinced that it was the boy
and no one else,
because she wanted
and was prepared to see
the worst in him.
Why?
Jealousy.
Terrible,
senseless, female jealousy.
Look at these photos.
She showed them in court.
To prove that she knew the victim.
Here's a photo of them at a party.
Her, the deceased, and his wife.
Now here's one...
...of her, him, and someone's arm.
It's his wife's arm.
Why did she need to go
and crop the photo
so it only shows her
and the deceased?
Cutting out the wife.
This is a photo of her dream.
What happens next is very simple:
A single woman,
childless, who dreams of finally
having her own family.
She likes the man from across the street,
but he's married.
She writes him in Chechnya,
tells him his wife's cheating.
- Can I see?
- Sure, here.
And that she's sorry,
but she couldn't keep quiet.
True or not,
she did write him the letter.
It was jealousy.
She engineered his divorce.
That was it!
No more obstacles.
Just her and him, like the photo.
All she had to do was
wait for his return.
The return of her beloved.
And he arrives, but not alone.
He's with a nasty, filthy
savage monkey
who can hardly speak Russian.
Remember, she said she asked him
what his plans were?
And he just replied
that he planned to live with the kid
and take care of him.
That was it. All her hopes, ruined.
But she kept it up.
Remember, she said she invited him over.
With the boy. For her birthday.
She made dinner, bought sweets,
and a book.
Later she discovered
that some money was missing
from next to where
that poor boy was sitting.
And she tried to convince him
to return it.
Eventually she admitted in court
that she had put it somewhere else
and forgot.
But, at the time, she mentions
the money
in front of a combat vet
who'd been wounded.
She must have known
what could happen.
And did happen, of course.
The man hears that the kid
he considers his son is a thief.
And he loses control of himself.
He smacks the boy, but she's silent.
And when his nose bleeds
she leaps to his defense
and says the boy's innocent.
Or rather, he's guilty,
but shouldn't be hit.
Because children are weaker,
you shouldn't hurt them.
God!
She didn't lie.
She wanted to believe
the murderer was the boy
and no one else.
Jealousy.
Senseless, cruel,
blind, instinctive
female jealousy.
That's it.
Right there.
She found the money later,
she said so herself.
I live with my son.
He's twenty now, but back then, in"91
he was six.
In 1990 my wife left me.
She ran off with a guy from the States.
The hell with her...
The kid was upset, of course,
but I explained that mom just went
on a long trip, and that
he'd see her again.
My mom looked after him.
I had started driving a cab,
working like a dog.
Didn't really think about my family.
Women are no problem for a cabbie.
One day...
...I started talking to this woman.
Not a beauty
We went out a couple of times,
and she came to live with us.
I didn't need much from her:
Meals, laundry, take the kid to school.
She seemed to like him just fine.
Kolya. Little Nikolai.
For the life of me, I can't remember
how it started.
She began to tell me things
about my boy...
...that he was lazy,
that he misbehaved.
I call him over and ask:
"Is it true?"
He looks at me, smiling,