Andrea Bennett - Galina Petrovna's Three-Legged Dog Story

She shook herself free of the last remnants of the dream and, putting on the bedside light, made sure that her arms and legs were still in roughly working order. Her knees and ankles were stiff and puffy, and bruises had appeared up and down both legs. She needed to feel human, and needed some company. There were reasons why it was stupid to delve too deeply into the past, reason one being that the present was no place for the dead. She crept into the kitchen, made a cup of tea so strong she feared it may be poisonous, and looked at the clock. An acceptable hour to ring? Six-fifty was acceptable in Galia’s book, and she telephoned Zoya, for help and support and some kind of plan.

Zoya: popular lover of culture, queen of local theatre and the arts, spinster, gossip and until very recently, Greco-Roman wrestler. Her thinning hair, spun into a brittle nest on top of her bird-like head, was a different colour every week. Tiny Zoya, hopping from friend to friend, quoting, quothing, groping for truths among all the lies, trying to find out what was making each and every citizen tick, and tock, and stop and go. She was a live-wire at most times of the day and in almost all settings. She had wanted to join the circus as a girl, but was forced to become a seamstress, or something like that, by luck or fate or the State, Galia couldn’t really recall. Zoya: lover of the Zodiac, Pontiacs, Shakespeare and Lenin. She had a comment for every occasion, and an occasion for every hour of every day.

‘Yes,’ rasped a voice climbing out of a living grave. It was early for Zoya. ‘This had better be good.’

Zoya took the news of Vasya’s arrest and Boroda’s removal as Galia expected she might: there was a soft thunk as she fainted against the telephone table followed by a few seconds of rustling as she revived herself with the smelling salts she always kept by her side and some choice, rather long-winded swearwords.

‘How could they do this! Murdering poor… Vasya and Boroda! Call the police!’

‘Zoya, they’re not dead, and it was the police who took him. But Vasya wasn’t even beaten: he’s an old man. They arrested him – they just shoved him a bit, twisted his arm a little: he’s like spaghetti anyway; he won’t be any the worse for wear. But Boroda… he had her by the scruff, Zoya, and he dangled her… I really don’t know whether she’s— and Zoya, I feel so responsible! What can we do? I don’t know where to turn. It’s my fault. The old fool wouldn’t have been involved if it hadn’t been for me. And now he’s arrested and I don’t think he even has a change of socks with him. I haven’t slept – I’m at my wits’ end.’

‘The course of true love never did run smooth, my dear. And what exactly was he doing at your apartment at midnight? You always told me that you didn’t like him. You were very strongly of the opinion that he should leave you alone to your cabbages and turnips. I am, I must admit, thrown, very strongly, by the fact that he was in your boudoir at the dead of night.’

‘It wasn’t like that, Zoya. He helped me get the dog back in the first place, and he got knocked on the shins, so I had to have him in to put some iodine on the wounds. I couldn’t have him walking around with septic shins, could I? What woman would do that?’

‘And now instead he’s arrested, and the dog taken away too. Galia, this isn’t like you. Tragedy hardly ever afflicts your life. You are not a tragic woman. You never cry even, let alone feel passions, shaking you like truths falling from heaven. Unlike my own path… the trouble I’ve seen Galia, and now you add to it! My own dear mother once warned me—’

Galia looked at the clock and sighed. She didn’t have time to listen to one of Zoya’s histories today. She’d heard them all before, and while entertaining on occasion, this was not the occasion.

‘—that the Ides of March itself was not to be denied—’

‘Zinaida Artyomovna, be silent for a second!’

Again rustling, again the clink of the bottle of smelling salts and a long exhalation.

‘I’m sorry, my dear, but this is an emergency, and I need your help. What should I do? How can I free Vasya from the police station? And how can I get my own Boroda back – if it’s not too late. Please help me!’

‘Ah, such trouble! Don’t hurry me, Galia. I am near death’s door: it takes a while for the old fleas to start hopping and the ideas to start popping at this time in the morning. For the best: meet me at the Golden Sickle in an hour. We’ll plan our actions then, once I’ve had a chance to… collect myself,’ said Zoya in a dreamy voice, and rang off.

Fifty-eight minutes later, Galia was sitting on a hard wooden chair at the Golden Sickle. It couldn’t be classed as a cafe, nor a restaurant, nor even a refectory, and it certainly was not a bistro. The food was plain, but usually edible, and that was all that was necessary. This was a place where people went to eat, not to socialise or show off, or relax. Galia sipped her tea and tried not to fiddle with the spoon as the clatter of cutlery against china jarred the air around her. The only voice heard above the metallic din was that of the cashier, barking unlikely numbers at dumbfounded customers as they queued to pay.

Galia’s gaze was drawn to the man at the next table, also drinking tea but with soggy slurping sounds, and reading a local paper: heavy and oily looking, she recognized him as the deputy mayor. As she watched, he stood up slowly, sauntered to the door like a gun-slinger in the old west, and, having stood perfectly still for a number of seconds, let out a huge and juice-filled belch, the echo of which splashed off the walls, reverberating, and soaking the eaters’ ears. The clatter of cutlery faltered momentarily, and then resumed even louder, before the oily man turned back into the room. He made his way back to his seat, adjusting his fly as he did so, and nodding slightly to Galia and a glowering waitress as he passed.

Galia stood to queue for another glass of tea and noticed that the framed posters of favourite Soviet holiday destinations that decked the cafe’s walls had been moved around. Where once there had been a view of Yalta, there was now a vista of the Caucasus; where once the impressive war memorial at Volgograd had hung, there was now the hydro-electric dam at Krasnoyarsk: impressive, maybe, in a different way. Galia wondered absently why the management had decided to reshuffle the fly-blown decorations. Maybe it was the requirement of some by-law.

She hobbled slowly back to her seat and surveyed the crumb-laden table with eyes that ached. In the late Sixties, or maybe the early Seventies, she had taken a holiday to Volgograd. It wasn’t by choice: all the women from her section at work were taken for four days on a tour of Volgograd. It was their annual holiday, and they were grateful. She had stood looking up from the windswept banks of the Volga, tiny in the shadow of the immense Motherland war memorial, and tears had trickled down her cheeks. Motherland, sixty metres high, wielding her sword, hair and gown flowing in wide waves of concrete, had left her speechless. The great dignity, this calling to the people for blood and honour and sacrifice, had moved her. She closed her eyes and remembered the dead, including Pasha. A voice inside her whispered that it might have been better for Pasha to have been blown to smithereens along with his field kitchen and liquid eyes, right there in 1945: it would have saved them both a lot of bother. A strange hiccup, half sob, half giggle escaped her and trailed off into a throaty sigh. Her comrades had nodded in sympathy and stroked her hand. They knew Galia never cried.

The second glass of tea was almost gone before Zoya arrived in a cloud of perfume with strong top notes of shoe polish, that Galia felt sure was handy for both killing flies and removing stains.