Galina Petrovna's Three-Legged Dog Story Page 11

  ‘Promise me? Don’t ever go in there. He’s bad, really bad.’

  Katya met his gaze and saw honesty there.

  ‘Yes, OK, I promise. If you let me help you rescue the puppies.’

  ‘But Katya, I—’ Mitya’s voice became a whisper. He really needed to cough but couldn’t let rip. He took a breath in and began to choke on his own phlegm.

  ‘Oh my! Here you go!’

  She reached up and thumped him hard on the back with her tiny fist. Mitya staggered slightly and stopped coughing. His eyes were watering and a film of sweat had broken out on his pale skin. Without his bum-bag, he had nothing to wipe them with except his fists. He felt stupid.

  ‘Oh look, take this, puppy.’ Katya retrieved a printed cotton handkerchief from her handbag and reached up to wipe the tears from Mitya’s eyes. ‘Do you have asthma?’

  ‘No! Look, get off will you?’ Mitya batted her hand away and straightened his belt and hair with hands that were not entirely steady.

  ‘So, is it a deal, Mitya? I can hear those puppies now. I think they need our help.’

  ‘Very well Katya, you can help me, er, rescue the puppies.’

  ‘Oh, that’s great. Thank you.’ And she reached up on tip-toe and kissed him on the cheek. ‘I wonder what happened to their mother? Maybe a car accident or something?’

  ‘Katya, I—’

  ‘No, I know, there’s no point speculating. We just have to get on and get to it and do what we can. Have you got a torch, Mitya?’

  Mitya hesitated.

  ‘Yes, I’ve got a torch, and a sack.’

  ‘You won’t need a sack. That’s not the right equipment for puppies. Maybe a box, if you’ve got one, with a jumper in it – just something to keep them warm.’

  He thought for a moment. ‘I have a body-warmer in the van.’

  ‘Yes, yes that’s great. Get it and we can wrap them up in that until we get them to the rescue centre.’

  ‘Rescue centre?’ Mitya’s brain flipped over as he realized the enormity of what they were doing: these dogs would have to be taken somewhere, alive. He shut his eyes as he tried to remember where there might be an animal rescue centre in Azov.

  ‘You must know where the local rescue centre is? We can’t just take them home, can we? Cousin Marina won’t like them, that’s for sure.’

  ‘No, Katya, you’re right. Just a moment,’ Mitya walked stiffly to his van and, after a moment’s hesitation, pulled out his black polyester body-warmer, and a town guide that he kept in the glove compartment. He clicked his torch on and slowly shone its yellow beam down the columns of information, the words forming on the pages like tiny spiders emerging from the shadows. ‘Here it is: we must take them to the sanctuary on Rosa Luxembourg Embankment. Apparently they deal with … puppies and things like that. I think I know the place. It is frequented by elderly female citizens and fierce children.’

  Katya giggled.

  ‘Children aren’t really fierce, Mitya: they’re just less afraid than we are. Mostly. Right, let’s go get those puppies.’ She clapped him on the back and set off with a jangle. Mitya watched her for a moment, spat on the soft dust of the path, and then followed her. Together they disappeared into Children’s Play Park No. 4, one small and humming, almost skipping along, and the other walking slowly with dragging steps into the darkness, rather like a man to the gallows.

  10

  Guests

  ‘Moscow!’

  The stewardess heaved down the gangway like a fresh blonde tidal wave, sweeping away the last straggling items of bed linen and returning them to the huge pile already filling her own private compartment. Some of the passengers gave her boiled sweets or coppers of change as a tip. Zoya eyed her suspiciously from her perch on the end of the bunk.

  ‘She has the fifth house, Leo, rather strongly. She needs to watch her step … it’ll end in no good: it is the Pleasure House.’

  ‘I didn’t know you disapproved of pleasure, Zoya?’ asked Galia softly.

  ‘It’s not that: it’s just her, with what goes with her. She needs to watch out.’

  Galia shrugged, Zoya’s mysticism lost on her. The travellers had spent a weary morning quietly witnessing folds of biscuit-coloured countryside speared by the occasional grey town, as they read improving books, or argued with their neighbour. All were now creased, parched and famished. Galia rummaged in the travel bag again but could find nothing more to eat or drink. Zoya watched her with piercing black eyes.

  ‘Moscow!’

  ‘As if we didn’t know we were arriving in Moscow. Does she think we’re stupid?’ Zoya complained in a low voice.

  She had not slept well. Her bunk had been full of glass beads and no matter how many she removed from the mattress or the folds of her skin, there was always one more to be found. It made her resent the stewardess, for no particular reason, but with a vengeance that glowed in her eyes and made her rather pernickety this Thursday lunchtime. She picked a final few splinters of serpent’s eye from her bird’s-nest hair, and leant over the table, resting her forehead against the cool glass of the window. ‘I hate trains,’ she muttered to no-one in particular.

  Galia, on the other hand, was feeling pretty chipper. She had slept quite well, all things considered, and had had a productive morning. The world atlas had, on reflection, been a good choice. While it wasn’t quite as useful as a map of Moscow might have been, she had refreshed her knowledge on a wide variety of subjects, including mining, wheat production, the political map and the relative populations of the various world powers. She felt knowledgeable, and a little less like a small woman from a small town. She was a citizen of the Soviet Union. Well, a citizen of the Former Soviet Union, at least. Nothing could daunt her, and there was more to life than vegetables and neighbours. There was wheat production, for a start.

  The train had been slowing softly since the dog-eared outskirts of Moscow, and its progress now was almost imperceptible. There were no clicks and no clacks, and not even any detectable swaying: just the gentlest of leaning motions, subtly forward, in tiny increments of movement. They were inching their way, for miles on end, through far-flung deserted stations where only ghosts flitted, and empty plots where once they had been building Communism, but now only rats scuttled across broken tarmac. Galia felt her stomach turn and, momentarily losing her new found confidence, wondered what they were doing going to Moscow, and whether her poor dog and Vasily Semyonovich were still breathing. And then, quite suddenly, without a single glimpse of the Kremlin or St Basil’s, there was a jolt and the blonde stewardess thrust the carriage door open.

  ‘Moscow!’ she bellowed triumphantly, flinging her arm into the air like a ringmaster at the circus. Galia half expected a fanfare to follow, but all she got was a bark of ‘This way!’ from Zoya as she scurried down the aisle and on to the platform, before Galia had even got to her feet. Scooping up the travel bag and both their coats, Galia said her farewells and made her way out into the sticky Moscow afternoon.

  She stood a moment on the platform and took in a big breath of the grand capital’s air. It grazed the back of her throat and made her cough slightly. She turned to ask her friend which direction they should take, and saw Zoya racing across the platform in the opposite direction to what she perceived to be a glowing exit sign high in the concourse wall. Zoya was cutting across the human flood flowing down into the exits, like a rat swimming in a sewer, heading for higher ground, little legs pumping, eyes glinting.

  ‘Wait! Zoya! Wait!’ Galia hurried after her, the bag bumping painfully on her knees. ‘Wait!’ Zoya was disappearing under a ‘no entry’ sign on a side-door. Galia plunged through the crowds and reached the door, which had already swung shut. Feeling guilty and looking over her shoulder, ready to be harangued by an army of imagined station guards, she shoved hard and slipped through the door. She passed through a dark little cleaners’ room and through another door covered all over with dirty hand prints and foot prints and then – in a flash – she was
out in the open, following Zoya up the railway tracks. The full force of the Moscow smog hit Galia’s senses now: her throat tickled and her eyes felt bloated, as if the lids no longer fitted over them: every time she blinked she took a microscopic layer off her eyeballs. The sky was a heavy yellow, hung with a dog blanket of humidity and the sharp rasping stink of a million throbbing car engines. Her skin felt damp and sticky.

  ‘Zoya, wait! Why are we walking up the track? Wouldn’t it be safer to get a taxi? What if a train comes?’

  ‘Safer? Ha! You don’t know Moscow, do you, Galia? That station concourse is a death trap. Bursting at the gills with murderers, rapists, spies, terrorists. Christ, how little you know! Much better to walk up here and cut across, through the alley and then up to the Garden Ring Road.’ Zoya gasped for breath. ‘It’s not far from there. This is the way we always used to come. I’ve done it many times. Don’t worry, the trains don’t come up here. And if they do, we’ll hear them.’

  Galia struggled with the bag and their two coats as her friend hopped over the concrete sleepers in front of her. Tall buildings backed on to the railway line on both sides, their blank eyes empty and silent. Zoya was babbling about visiting the theatre while they were in Moscow.

  ‘I have a friend, you know, who works at the Bolshoi – she may be able to get us tickets. That would be a treat, wouldn’t it, Galia? And it would be a shame to come all this way without taking in some culture, wouldn’t it?’

  Galia struggled with the bag and nodded at her friend, deciding against telling her that ballet at the Bolshoi was the last thing on her mind at the moment.

  ‘Of course, there is also the Maly Theatre, across the road, you know?’

  Galia didn’t know, but she nodded.

  ‘The Maly has more plays, you know, but a bit of Chekhov never goes amiss, does it?’

  Galia made no response apart from to tut quite sharply as her shin brushed past a bedraggled stinging nettle.

  ‘Galia, I do think you could muster up a little more enthusiasm for culture, you know. I mean, I know we’re here to save the dog and your boyfriend and all that, but without culture, our lives are meaningless anyway, I think you’ll agree.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ murmured Galia, stopping for a breather and stretching out her aching back. The sky was clearing slightly and the sun’s rays began to pierce through the smog. As she stood surveying the sky with her hands pressed into the small of her back, Galia felt a faint vibration begin in the rails under her feet. It gradually travelled up her legs towards her chest.

  ‘Zoya!’ Her friend was up ahead of her, scampering over the tracks, talking about The Seagull and completely oblivious to the world around her. The tracks began to vibrate more strongly and Galia felt a whistling hum in her ears. She heaved the travel bag up on to her shoulder and looked down the tracks over it. The Urals Express was lumbering towards them, hissing dirt and steam, not fifty metres away.

  ‘Zoya! Oh my God!’ Galia jumped sideways and scrabbled up the embankment, dropping the coats as she went. Zoya finally stopped and looked over her shoulder, and then, squawking like a startled chicken, began to run up the tracks, hopping from rail to rail.

  ‘My God, Zoya, get off the tracks! Get off the tracks!’ Galia waved to her friend with frantic movements. Still Zoya hopped along, seemingly attempting to outrun the Urals Express in an escapade that was only going to end in a rather grim, messy failure.

  Galia hitched up her skirt and sprinted, as best she could, alongside the track until she reached her confused friend. She grabbed her shoulders and heaved, with all her might, to the side. They landed in a large patch of stinging nettles just as the engine clattered past them, blind and enormous, pulverising their coats into the rails and throwing a continent’s worth of dust and rubbish into their hair and faces. The noise drowned out, but only just, the prayers and curses emitting from Zoya’s troubled beak.

  ‘What the hell were you doing?’ asked Galia. ‘Trying to outrun the Urals Express? Have you gone mad?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was confused. It would have been OK. Why are you sitting on me? Get off!’

  ‘You should be thanking me,’ muttered Galia as Zoya drew out the smelling salts.

  ‘What about our coats?’

  ‘Well, I can’t even see them, Zoya. I think they’ve gone with the train.’

  ‘Yes. I think you’re right.’

  ‘Well, we’ll just have to hope it doesn’t rain.’

  ‘Yes, Galia.’

  ‘At least we’re OK, aren’t we?’

  ‘Yes. We’re OK. I have learnt a lesson from this, Galia,’ said Zoya solemnly.

  ‘What’s that, Zoya?’

  ‘Don’t let your friend carry your coat, and always keep some knickers in your pocket!’ Zoya grinned, taking her spare knickers (shiny, crimson) from her pocket and mopping her forehead with them. Galia sighed, and took her by the arm. ‘Come on. Which way now?’

  The ladies climbed the embankment and trickled softly behind a range of large, brooding buildings that Galia found rather threatening, but Zoya seemed barely to notice. There was evidence of human habitation in the rubbish-strewn yards backing on to the tracks, but no people. They climbed through some low bushes, and came out in an alleyway, which turned into a road, that led them up towards, and then under, the roaring Garden Ring, the capital’s inner ring road. Once inside this barrier, they were within spitting distance of Moscow’s glowing core. Zoya could almost smell the culture, and her teeth chattered faintly. The back roads meandered quietly, and the walk became almost pleasant. They passed open windows in ancient buildings from where the sounds of piano and oboe dappled the pavement like sunlight, where black cats cast shadows over complacent mice and sophisticated Muscovites discussed poetry and science in loud, forthright voices while stirring sugar into their tea.

  After ten more minutes they came to a tree-spattered boulevard with a green pool cutting a fresh, dark line along the middle of it. It was idyllic, save for the twin lanes of cars and trucks wrestling with each other on either side. Above the smog of the traffic, Galia could make out a pulsating cloud of starlings wheeling over the busy Moscow streets.

  ‘Here we are, Galia. This is it. That is Grigory Mikhailovich’s building over there.’

  Zoya waved a vague hand in the direction of a hulking block that seemed to scowl into the sky on the other side of the boulevard. The windows were blank, and reflected no light.

  ‘Let’s hope he’s in,’ Galia said quietly.

  After some trial and error with the building numbers, courtyard numbers, door numbers, corridor numbers, Zoya’s patchy memory and the various bobble-hatted guardians of the building, the ladies eventually struck on the right door. A long silence was followed by more silence, which was followed by some not inconsiderable sighing from Galina Petrovna.

  ‘Don’t sigh so!’ chided Zoya. ‘He’s in, I tell you. It just takes him a while—’

  At that moment a bolt was drawn back, laboriously and with much clanking, and the door, very slowly, sank inwards.

  ‘State your business!’ commanded a thick voice, a voice of phlegm. Galia peered in at the door, but could see nothing.

  ‘Grigory Mikhailovich! Cousin! It is I, Zinaida Artyomovna, and my friend, Galina Petrovna, as arranged!’

  There was a brief pause, filled only by the sound of breathing, slow and even and wet. Then there was a sudden explosive inhalation, like a brick being thrown into a millpond.

  ‘Oh! Ah! Yes! Ladies, ladies, I was beginning to wonder whether you would ever arrive. I have been waiting a long time, it seems.’

  ‘Apologies, Grigory Mikhailovich. There was a bear on the line,’ said Zoya drily, and in an unnecessary tone, Galia thought. She looked again into the blackened doorway, and made out a pair of eyes so startlingly blue they reminded her of those of a husky, or a mad man. She was enveloped in a bright, hard glance that made her feel rather self-conscious. She coughed and looked at her sandals, and was released again.
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br />   ‘Do come in, Galina Petrovna, it is a pleasure to meet you, at last,’ rumbled Grigory Mikhailovich. Moving towards him through the doorway, Galia was conscious of a variety of tide-marks of what could have been gravy on the front of the old man’s threadbare shirt, and what appeared to be fish bones sticking out of his beard, which pressed sharply into her forehead when he kissed her, and left tiny indentations that she could feel with her fingertips. Zoya bustled in after her, reaching up on scrawny shanks to kiss her cousin noisily on both cheeks, twice.

  The front door groaned shut, and Grigory Mihkailovich led the way. His apartment was dark and cool as a cemetery in October. The block had evidently been put up during the 1950s – the Soviet boom years – and reflected as much: high ceilings with moulded roses and real crystal chandeliers; caramel-coloured parquet that gulped down the clack of footsteps; respectable oak doors that swung languidly into each lofty room, and windows stretching to the ceiling with five inch double-glazing. The solid pedigree of the building was evident, but, on closer inspection, all was decay with Grigory Mikhailovich. The chandeliers were dust-encrusted; there were dunes of flies collected between the panes of the windows, and the dull parquet swallowed light as well as sound.

  The old man led them, with slow, halting steps, from the grand hall towards the main reception room. As they moved, they passed numerous doors, all half-open, and behind each one, Galia could vaguely make out either a tumult of shadowy, moth-eaten chaos, or plain echoing emptiness.

  ‘Come in to the den, and we will plan our campaign.’

  Galia had been hoping for a glass of hot tea, at the least, but dared not ask. She tried to catch Zoya’s eye, but her friend was making directly for the huge table in the middle of the room, covered with maps, paperweights, directories, empty cups, broken radios, ashtrays and choc-ice wrappers.

  The hot day collapsed into a sultry evening and, as a multitude of flies and moths circled the yellow bulbs of the chandelier above their heads, so they began to plan the next day’s events. Grigory Mikhailov scrawled out long notes to himself with a squeaky pencil about which connections, at which ministries, they would need to prevail upon. There was a long discourse on whether there would be different approaches for dog and human? Different, of course, in the end: the dog was wild, the man wasn’t wild, he was just desperate, and old. The dog wasn’t as old, but was a Class 3 Invalid, so perhaps there was merit in approaching that section too? The Ministry of the Interior, the Justice Ministry, the Minister for Old People, the Minister for Stray Dogs … no, there was no Minister for Stray Dogs, strike that. Make a connection to find out the right minister whose portfolio would include Stray Dogs, who were Class 3 Invalids. It went on for hours, backwards and forwards, misunderstandings, anecdotes, everyone forgetting their train of thought all at the same time and looking at each other blankly, wondering who would take control. Each time someone recovered, after several seconds or sometimes minutes. Oh, so they did actually steal the dog back from the Exterminator? And the dog did actually bite Officer Kulakov, and several times? And who was the mad woman with the sickle? Was it a state-provided sickle, did Galina Petrovna think? Had the paperwork handed to her included a Form No. 372c signed by the required parties? Galia opened the travel bag and brought out all the documentation, much of it now studded with glass serpents’ eyes and Urals dust. ‘Oh dear, that will never do,’ rumbled Grigory Mikhailovich. Galia pursed her lips, and Zoya pretended not to have heard.