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

‘Which carriage?’ Zoya shrieked, checking the tickets with one beady eye and the end of her nose with the other.

‘Fourteen.’

‘Fourteen?!’

‘It’s at the other end,’ Galia added unnecessarily, hesitantly, trying to remain calm and keep walking as Zoya dropped to her sparrow-like knees on top of the bag.

‘Oh my God—’

‘Not now!’ Galia surprised herself with her harsh tone. ‘There’s no time for that now, Zoya: get up, my dear!’ She grabbed the bottle of smelling salts that hung from Zoya’s neck and thrust it under her nose with some force. ‘We’ll rest once we’re on the train. We can walk down the carriages. Come on!’

The acne-ridden Guard was blowing his whistle to wake hell’s sleepers as Galia heaved first the travel bag and then Zinaida Artyomovna in through the door of the first carriage and fell on top with a grunt as the train slowly pulled away.

‘Are you trying to kill me, Galina Petrovna?’ Zoya was petulant, flustered, and a little bit flattened.

‘I’m sorry, Zoya, it was the only way. No harm done though, my dear?’

Zoya sat up and agreed, slightly sniffily, that nothing was broken. She patted her brittle spun hair back in to place on top of her head, and looked down the first of the fourteen carriages.

‘You go first, Galia, you’re bigger than me.’

Their progress through the smarter carriages was slow: their assorted fellow travellers were almost all standing in the aisle to wave goodbye to loved ones, or simply get a bit of air, and the ladies and their bag were an unwelcome side-show. Bumping, bruising, apologising, and stumbling, they made their way down the impossibly long train, all faces a blur now, all blurs vaguely threatening, their ears clogged with the sounds of track and wheels, and their own apologies for being in the way. Fourteen carriages later, they arrived at hard, bare bunks, cursing the bottles of tea and hard-boiled eggs, their carrying arms several inches longer than they had been at the start of the morning. The ladies looked around them: the carriage was completely open, with bunks at every available height in every direction. However, it was clean, and so far there were no obvious drunks present. They thought it would do.

They found their niche and the travel bag was stowed, with no little relief and a lot of huffing and puffing, under the bottom bunk. Next, their tickets were checked by a loudly welcoming carriage stewardess with an expansive red grin, bright blonde hair and the biggest, blackest eyelashes they had ever seen, who promised them fresh tea within the half hour. They took a seat next to each other on the bottom bunk and exhaled deeply. Soon the stewardess would be round with the tea and fresh white bed linen, and all would be a little righter with the world. Now they could just relax a little, recoup their strength and plan. The ladies’ dissatisfaction with the morning gradually melted away and was replaced with a warm flowering sense of triumph and wellbeing: they had made the train, and they were on their way. In twenty-four hours, or so, they would be arriving in Moscow.

‘Toss a coin for the top bunk?’ asked Zoya, winking.

Galia hesitated, and then committed herself to tails. She lost the toss, as she knew she would, and placed her folded coat on the top bunk to show that it was taken. She couldn’t help a slight tut at the thought of having to get up the tiny metal ladder. She knew there was a knack to it, but the knack was not hers. She vividly remembered once getting stuck half-way down when on the train returning from a holiday on the Black Sea. Her cheeks burnt as she remembered how a construction worker from Azerbaijan had had to take her on his shoulders to rescue her, as one foot had slipped ever further down the ladder rung as the other foot had remained firmly planted on the bunk. It had been many years ago, and the construction worker had been a fine, muscular fellow with a ready smile, high cheekbones, coal-black hair and nut-brown skin. She shook herself, and fixed her gaze on the occupants of the bunks opposite.

Formal hellos were exchanged with their nearest half-dozen fellow travellers. Within several more minutes the travel bag was heaved out from under the bottom bunk and, as is traditional in all countries on all continents, the ladies began to tuck in to their picnic with their home town still clear on the horizon. The food was offered around to their neighbours, and the business of finding out who was who and what was going on began in earnest. The little old lady in the corner was visiting family, the middle-aged man directly across from them was an engineer visiting a university, and the pair of Chinese men across the aisle could not explain the purpose of their journey but smiled a lot and shared boiled eggs cooked in tea that were very delicious and quite beautiful to look at. There were two further neighbours, a young couple, who were occupying the very topmost, most uncomfortable bunks, and they did not say why they were travelling, and preferred not to talk at all. The young woman rolled her eyes and simpered, and the young man made gestures about Zoya’s hair. Galia decided they were too young to be interesting, but old enough to have better manners.

The steaming tea, accompanied by sugar lumps wrapped in paper bearing the State railway insignia of a winged hammer and sickle, was duly delivered a little later by the grinning stewardess. The whole carriage relaxed a little, slid off its shoes and stuffed its pinkies into its favourite travel slippers. Galia was enjoying talking to the engineer across the bunk, nibbling sugar lumps between her white front teeth and chiding softly as he told her unlikely tales of bear hunting in the Urals and prospecting for gold in the distant wastes of Yakutia. Zoya, meanwhile, had read a number of fortunes to what seemed like half the carriage, exclaiming hoarsely about possible Lotto winnings, tall dark strangers, the dangers of deep water and the likelihood of Spartak Moscow winning the league. Now she was hunched between the table and the carriage side, yanking the travel bag out from under the bottom bunk. Stealthily, she unloaded from it an enormous blue plastic sewing bag. She began fiddling frantically with threads and sequins and velvet. Galia frowned slightly: the old minx had snuck that one in without her noticing.

The conversation with the engineer lulled, and he excused himself to find a place to smoke where the stewardess would not find him and beat him over the head with her long, black lashes. Galia smiled warmly at him, and then turned her attention, a little less warmly, to her friend.

‘What are you sewing, Zinaida?’ asked Galia after a few moments.

‘The eyes,’ answered Zoya in a mysterious croak.

‘What eyes, my dear?’

‘The eyes of a thousand-eyed sea serpent,’ replied Zoya loudly, with a tut and a hint of exasperation, as if Galia was being obtuse. A dozen ears pricked up around the carriage.

‘Oh,’ said Galia, and wished she hadn’t asked.

Three hours later, when a discussion of mythology, religion, politics and serpentry between almost the entire back half of the carriage had been brought to a relatively peaceful conclusion, and the crowd had dissipated, Galia took a boiled egg from the travel bag, smashed its shell on the edge of the table, and leant in to Zoya’s right shoulder.

‘I keep thinking about Pasha’s visit to Kislovodsk, Zoya, since you mentioned it yesterday. I had no idea you arranged that for him. I thought it was the doctors. He was sick, after all. Tell me more. Why were you – and your cousin – involved with my Pasha? And why didn’t you say anything?’

‘No-one was involved with your Pasha, Galia. You’ve got entirely the wrong end of the stick.’

‘So why did you need Grigory Mikhailovich to send him to Kislovodsk, then? He’s not a doctor, is he?’