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

‘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.