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

‘You surprise me!’ He aimed for tough, but his voice came out a thin rasp with a high note of sob at the tail-end. He breathed deeply to contain the sob as it threatened to break his bruised ribs, and gradually he calmed the churning that was tying his insides into sticky knots. Gingerly, he began to push himself up into a seated position with his back propped against the wall, and he breathed in deeply again, feeling his diaphragm relax as he did so. He leant his elbows on his knees, bracing against the waves of nausea that washed up his throat as he gained a vertical position, and gradually the pieces of the evening collected in his mind like leaves in the corner of an autumnal courtyard. He noticed the rip down the right leg of his snow-washed jeans, and the mass of thickening reddish-purple bruises blooming on his forearms. He relived the feeling of his knuckles connecting with Kulakov’s pudgy, slimy face.

Katya clanked a green metal bucket down between Mitya’s shaking legs and brushed his sticky hair across his forehead, her warm fingers licking the damp from his skin. She put the tip of her index finger to her lips and sucked it gently. ‘You’re in a bad way. I think I should call an ambulance.’ She lowered her hips to the floor and squatted, warm and low, looking across at him, taking in his bruises and pallor. Mitya turned his head away, unable to look at her directly, squeezing his hands between his knees in an effort to stop them shaking.

‘Don’t do that. I don’t need a doctor. I just need to sleep.’

‘Well, I don’t know. What if you croak in the night, eh? I couldn’t live with myself. You might choke on your own vomit or something. It happens.’

Mitya opened both fat eyes a fraction to look at his angel, just momentarily, with an attempt at cool. He didn’t know it, but it was just like the look a dog, recently kicked, gives anyone without boots on. She paid no attention: she was digging in her bag for a cigarette and talking in her lisping, slightly accented voice.

‘OK, look, here’s the deal, puppy. I’ll stay with you for an hour or so, until you’re a better colour, and you completely stop puking. You know, like living flesh kind of colour. You’re still really pale. And I don’t think I can leave you like that.’ She found a soft pack of Pall Mall in her bag and extracted one. ‘I don’t think you should smoke, even if you want to. Really, I know men like to smoke and be macho and all that but I don’t think it will make you feel better. Do you have any iodine?’

‘No.’ Mitya could only manage the one word, and this time his voice emerged clotted and thick. His brain roved slowly behind his eyelids, trying to make out what she was doing, and eventually he slid another glance along the floor in her direction, letting his eyes creep slowly from her naked brown ankles to her knees and then towards her belly and breasts, barely covered by her very small skirt and T-shirt.

‘What happened in there, puppy? Did you forget to pay your bill or something?’

Mitya’s eyes snapped back down to the shiny mustard lino, unusually trailed with his own saliva, and he clasped his hands across his knees again.

‘It’s not… you wouldn’t understand.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Katya blew smoke over her shoulder towards the open window. ‘You sure I wouldn’t understand?’

‘It was nothing to do with a bill. No-one understands.’

‘Aw shucks, Mitya, no-one understands. You bet, baby. Especially if you don’t tell them about it.’

Katya tutted, stubbed out her cigarette and reached into the pressed card wardrobe, eventually pulling out a brown blanket emblazoned with huge posies of garish red roses. She snuggled herself into it for a moment, turning her head to breathe in its scent, and then unwound it from her shoulders and placed it carefully across Mitya’s back.

‘There, that’ll keep you warm. I think you’re in shock, you know. I remember something about that from school. You should lower your head and raise your legs.’

‘I’m not raising my legs.’ His tone was decisive.

She shrugged. ‘OK, it’s up to you. It would make you feel better. But keep the blanket on for a while. It’s something to do with blood pressure, or something.’

‘You’re not a nurse then, Katya?’

‘No, I told you: I’m studying to be a teacher – kindergarten. But I’ve done lots of things. Anyway, if you’ve got no iodine, we’re a bit stuck. Probably tea is what you need. Tea is a great healer, isn’t it? Or is that time? Maybe both?’

Mitya didn’t reply. His head was pulsating and the noise coming through the wall from Andrei the Svoloch ’s room was interfering with his ability to think or feel. It was taking over his mind, in ripples, and drowning out Katya’s words, although he was trying to listen, and wanted to hear. His eyelids closed as the beats thudded from the wall through his chest and into his brain, dragging him under with their awful currents, making him sleep like he would never wake up.

‘You said, when I found you… you know, on the pavement… you said something about finding your daddy?’ Katya looked at Mitya from under her lashes, and saw him start as her words reached him.

He jerked wide awake again, the blood draining from his face and his ears tingling, burning hot. A frown pulled his mouth and eyebrows into a deep, grim X as his eyes fastened on the edge of the bucket, driving rivets into it. Katya looked around his orange box room for some tea, and cups, and sugar.

‘No tea. No questions. Just leave me!’ Mitya pulled the blanket tight across his shoulders and laid his head on one of the garish red roses.

‘Don’t shout at me, puppy. I just saved your life, don’t forget. And you need some tea. But I didn’t mean to pry. We don’t have to talk if you don’t want to.’

She started to hum, a comforting sound just audible above the noise from next door. The brief rush of adrenaline faded as quickly as it had come, and Mitya found he was too weak to argue. He realized after breathing in, with a sharp pain, and breathing out, with a dull ache, that he didn’t want her to go anywhere. He eased himself away from the bucket again and leant back against the vibrating wall. He was aware this time of Andrei the Svoloch ’s voice in the room on the other side, braying among the pounding disco beats, bleating like a cloven-hoofed Benny Andersson. Garish visions surged into his head and he could almost feel himself being pulled into the nightmare next door by invisible hands sprouting through the orange wall and gripping him with childish fingers under the rough brown blanket. He struggled to keep his eyes open and avoid the dream, but it was getting dark around him, and the arms were small, but wiry and very strong. His breath choked in his throat as he tried to open his eyes, to shout out, but found himself paralysed.

‘Hey, you really like Depeche Mode, I guess?’

Again, Katya’s words brought him back from the brink, and again he was ready for a fight. His jaw clenched as his eyes swivelled and focused on her, ready to fend off sarcasm, irony and disapproval. Mitya was wholly unprepared for what he saw: she was leaning over his tape collection, sincere, enthusiastic, long hair hanging in golden ropes around her perfect, sunny face. She looked up and smiled.

Mitya realized, with a dull thump of the heart, that he was deeply in love, and his life was over.

‘Like is not the word… Katya,’ he began in a low voice. ‘Like is not in my vocabulary. I don’t like things. Liking is—’

‘I love them too. I went to see them play in Moscow a couple of years ago. It was fantastic. The best day of my life.’

Mitya shut his eyes and imagined the best day of Katya’s life. He liked it. He loved it. He could feel it in his bones and see it before him just like he had been there. It was a sunny day in the bright capital, spent with friends and candy-floss and flags and Depeche Mode and hot dogs and clean jeans and new socks and order and fresh air and neatness and love. In short, it was a day full of laughter and certainty. But it wasn’t his. It had never been his, and could never be his. His best day had involved dog extermination. He was sure it had.