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

‘Katya, don’t ever go into Andrei’s room.’ He stared with eyes like marbles, the intensity startling Katya so that she backed away unconsciously, one small foot hiding behind the other as she wobbled slightly on her platforms.

‘Yeah, it’s OK. I know he’s a bit, well, you know, dodgy, we were just talking in the corridor—’ she shrugged.

‘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.

‘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.