Marina Lewycka - Two Caravans

This is how a hunted animal feels, I thought, gasping for breath, terror rushing in through all your senses, drowning in your own fear. I found a gap in the hedge and squeezed through, the thorns grabbing at my clothes. On the other side was starlight, a long ploughed field. I was breathing wildly, panting, choking. I tried to run, but the furrows were impossible, so I walked for a bit, breathing slow mouthfuls of air, stumbling in the ruts. Then I stopped, crouched, and listened. Silence. No footsteps. No gun. Nothing.

A bit further up I cut back onto the track and ran again, more slowly now. My heart was banging about like a wild bird in a cage. Is it finished? Has he gone? How will you know? Last time, he waited until you thought he’d gone, then he came back .

As I climbed the hill, the sky grew lighter. When I couldn’t run any more I carried on walking. I didn’t stop for a long time. At last I found a hollow where a big tree had been uprooted. I made a bed of dry leaves and pulled some branches over for shelter, so I would be invisible from the track. I lay there, keeping quite still, waiting for my heart to slow down-boom boom-watching the dawn breaking, pink and peachy, with little clouds like angels’ wings.

Andriy is the first to wake, conscious of something warm and heavy on his legs. He thinks at first it is Emanuel who has rolled over onto him in the night. He gives him a gentle shove, and comes up against warm fur covering solid muscle. Holy whiskers!

The creature is huge and hairy, and it snuffles in its sleep. He sits up and rubs his eyes. The dog sits up, too, and gazes at him with what he can only describe as adoration in its soft brown eyes. It is a big, handsome dog, short-haired and mainly black, with some white hairs around its muzzle and belly which give it a mature, distinguished air.

“Woof!” it says, beating its sturdy tail against the side of the Land Rover.

“Hey, Dog!” says Andriy, rubbing its ears. “What are you doing here?”

“Woof!” says Dog.

Emanuel wakes next, to the sound of the tail thumping rhythmically against the side of the Land Rover, and he seems less pleased to see the dog.

“Is OK, Emanuel. Is good dog. No bite.”

“In Chichewa we have a saying. Where the dog pisses, the grass dies .”

“Woof,” says Dog. Andriy can see that despite himself Emanuel is quite taken with the enthusiastic tail-wagging and the tongue hanging out, wet and pink, between the sharp white teeth.

But the most passionate meeting is between Tomasz and Dog-such a foot-nuzzling, face-licking, tail-beating, jumping-up, rolling-on-the-ground frenzy. Finally in a snuffling ecstasy Dog finds Tomasz’s trainers on the bonnet of the Land Rover, and though Tomasz tries to stop him he runs off with one in his jaws and chews it completely to pieces. Well, this is quite a splendid dog, thinks Andriy, for the sooner those trainers disappear the better. And a dog with such a good sense of smell may help you to find a missing person.

I AM DOG I AM HAPPY DOG I RUN I PISS I SNIFF I HAVE MY MEN THEY GO TO› PISS IN THE WOOD MAN PISS HAS GOOD SMELL THIS MAN’S PISS SMELLS OF MOSS AND MEAT AND HERBS THIS IS GOOD I SNIFF THIS MAN’S PISS SMELLS OF SARLIC AND LOVE HORMONES THIS IS ALSO GOOD BUT LOVE HORMONES ARE TOO STRONG I SNIFF THIS MAN’S PISS SMELLS TOO SOUR BUT HIS FEET SMELL GOOD I SNIFF IN THIS WOOD ARE OTHER MAN SMELLS VOMIT MAN-SMOKE WHEELIE OIL I SNIFF NO DOG SMELLS I WILL MAKE MY DOG SMELL HERE I RUN I PISS I AM HAPPY DOG I AM DOG

Yola feels the dog is showing far too much enthusiasm, sticking its nose up her skirt on any excuse, in a way that reminds her of…No. She is a mature and respectable woman, and there are some secrets she is not going to share with any nosy-poky book-readers.

It also shows a great interest in urine. When the women wake up, about an hour after the men, it tries to accompany each of them in turn as she goes to urinate in the woods and has to be driven off. “Where is this dog from?” asks Yola. “It should go to its home.” But nobody seems to know. Then it looks at her with such tender appeal in its eyes that her heart melts instantly, for she is a soft-hearted woman, and she takes Irina’s orange ribbon and ties it under the dog’s chin in a charming bow.

Marta observes that the dog’s paws are scratched and bleeding, as though it has run some distance, and she applies some excellent Polish antiseptic ointment. They even share some of their bread with it, which is all they have for breakfast, but this is unnecessary, as it disappears into the woods and comes back later with a rabbit in its mouth.

After eating, it stretches itself out at Tomasz’s feet, its head resting on its paws and one ear cocked, to listen to their discussion. For now it seems they must engage in endless discussions about where to go, which is completely unnecessary, because Yola has already decided they are going to Dover.

Doubtless they will even find the Ukrainian girl there. She wasn’t such a bad girl after all, but probably she brought this disappearance upon herself by too much indiscriminate smiling. Once these gangster types get an idea into their heads, what can you do? And the flowers were a nice gesture.

As far as Yola is concerned, everything is clear. Andriy, who to his credit has apologised in a gentlemanly way for his outburst last night, got them into this jar of pickles from flirting with the farmer’s wife, and now he must get them out of it, quick quick, before police come.

“When police is involved, one small thing may go on for ever. Everything unnecessarily tied up in paper.” She knows from experience just how bureaucratic a bureaucracy can be. She was married to a bureaucrat once. “Meanwhile poor Mirek is waiting for us in Zdroj. Mirek; Masurian goats; plums ripe in garden. Time to go home.” She wipes a dramatic tear from her eye.

“Who is Mirek?” whines the hippy-hair Tomasz, with a face like a belly ache.

“Mirek is my beloved son.”

“Beloved also of God,” adds Marta, rolling her eyes heavenwards. “One of God’s special ones.”

Why does Marta always keep on about the poor boy’s difficulty, unnecessarily broadcasting it to the whole world? She has already scared off at least two potential husbands with her pious mewlings. Yola gives her a discreet kick.

“And his father? Is his father also waiting?” Tomasz persists.

“His father is gone.” Yola fixes Tomasz with her steely eye. “Why you asking so many questions, Mister Stinking Feet? You got enough problems of your own without sticking your nose into mine.”

Now everybody wants to have their say.

“We go London,” says one Chinese girl. “In London is plenty Chineses. Plenty money work for Chineses. Better than in strawberry.”

“I have an address for a man in England. Wait, please, thank you.” Emanuel starts to shuffle through his papers. Shuffle shuffle. “Outstanding good man. His name is Toby Makenzi, and with his help I hope I will recover my sister’s wherebeing.”

“Emanuel, why you not coming to Poland with us?” says Yola kindly. That boy needs a mother, not a sister, she is thinking. Maybe even a little brother. And Tomasz says, “Emanuel, if you come in Poland I will teach you to sing and play the guitar.”

In Yola’s opinion, Emanuel is already a much better singer than Tomasz.

“I wonder where Vitaly is,” Marta says. Yola noticed Marta earlier looking at Vitaly out of the corner of her eye, in a way that can only mean one thing, and she thinks it ironic, to say the least, that someone so religious should be attracted to someone with such an air of sin about him. But it is often the way.

Then Tomasz starts up again, giving her that doggy eye.

“I will go to Dover with you. From there to Poland. Boat, bus. We go all together. Maybe your boy needs a father? What you say, Yola?”