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

‘You snake!’ hissed Zoya, leaping theatrically away from Galia as if she had indeed rattled her tail and dripped venom. ‘You’re so ungrateful!’

‘Sit down, Zoya! Sit down, and tell me what I have to be grateful for, my dear, and I’ll do my best. But you know, you tell me nothing, so I just have to say it as I see it. And I don’t see him – do you?’

‘He’ll be here,’ Zoya muttered and took a draw on her smelling salts and looked at her watch.

The boy behind the desk had put down the phone and was scribbling something on a piece of lilac-coloured paper.

‘Purple paper – you see?’ nudged Zoya, her eyes shining excitedly. ‘Something will happen now!’

About an hour later, nothing at all had happened: no-one had been seen, and no-one had left. Zoya had resorted to seeing how long she could hold her breath for, watching the second hand go round on her neighbour’s watch and occasionally feeling rather light headed when it got towards a minute. Galia had spent her time watching Zoya, and wondering why her cheeks were going from grey to ashen to ruddy every so often.

Eventually Zoya rose, with a slight wobble, and looked towards the great oak doors.

‘I’m going for a smoke, Galia. Get me in if anything happens.’ And with that she stalked out of the ministry and in to its grounds, where rotting plaster urns full of sand and dog ends beckoned the kippered smokers out of the building to have a puff in the yellow summer air. Zoya took in a lung full, and felt a little better.

In truth, she had to admit that she was becoming concerned. Where was her cousin? Why hadn’t he made the agreed meeting point? It had been his idea to meet at nine, after all. And most pressing of all, why had he taken her Makarov pistol? She had hidden it deep in the depths of the travel bag, but there was no sign of it there this morning. Her fingers gripped the filter of her cigarette tightly: a bear with a gun was always a bad idea.

It was mid-afternoon, and the heat in the corridor hung heavily on the ladies’ shoulders and eyelids. The sun, just visible through the grimy windows, bathed in a sulphurous smog. Ragged-looking birds sat coughing in the branches of the single tree that graced the gardens of the Ministry of the Interior, and the red-eyed young man behind the desk had been replaced by a stout middle-aged man with greased-down hair and no neck, whose eyes were fighting a losing battle with his cheeks. One day the cheeks would win completely, thought Galia, and he would be blind. He would be the amazing eye-less bureaucrat.

‘Do you ever think about death, Galia?’ Zoya had been sitting staring at the floor for at least fifteen minutes, and Galia had feared something like this was coming.

‘Of course I think about death, Zoya. But not every day. And not while I’m at the vegetable patch, or cooking, or playing with—’ her voice caught in her throat, ‘or playing with Boroda, and the children out in the yard.’

‘I bet you think about it at the Elderly Club! It is unavoidable. It is staring you in the face, everywhere you look.’

‘No, that’s not true, Zoya. At the Elderly Club, I see life. Old life, yes, but life all the same. I see people carrying on, doing their best, enjoying medium-difficulty puzzles that do not require too much manual dexterity.’

‘I see a bunch of old prunes who are idling out the last of their days with crosswords for children and collections of ailments as long as that tapeworm Sasha Smirnov had. Ha! Do you remember him? He came running out of the clinic—’

‘You’re just fed up because we’re waiting.’ Galia broke in quickly, anxious to avoid the tapeworm story.

‘Sasha Smirnov. He was a nice man, wasn’t he?’ Zoya’s eyes were far away and damp looking. ‘You would never have guessed he had a tapeworm, would you? He looked so solid, not at all scrawny. Mind you, you used to feed him quite regularly, didn’t you, Galia? He liked your vareniki , I seem to remember.’

‘He did Zoya, he did. But not as much as he liked your séances. He was a regular at your flat for a while, wasn’t he?’ Galia smiled at the memory of seeing Sasha Smirnov, broad and red as a barn door, squeezed behind Zoya’s tiny wooden table, surrounded by bright-eyed, smiling women, all intent on calling up the souls of their dead husbands, fathers and sons. She had never taken part in these events, but had simply stopped by to drop off spare apples, or garlic, or mint, and to observe for a moment. Sasha Smirnov, biting into an apple, his big white teeth belying his advancing years, and his apparent robustness masking the secret of the worm embedded in his intestines. Sasha Smirnov, who had brought Zoya beads and scarves from far-flung markets, and had trotted after her through the streets of Azov, his loyalty noticed by all except Zoya, apparently. Sasha Smirnov, who came running out of the clinic looking like he had seen the devil, and who had moved away shortly afterwards.

‘He was useful to have around the table; I can’t deny it, Galia. He attracted spirits well, and gave comfort to many women.’

‘Did he give you any comfort, Zoya?’ Galia smiled as she asked the question, already knowing what her friend’s answer would be.

‘There was nothing of that sort between us, I assure you. My destiny was my own to fulfil – that’s the way I wanted it. I could never share all my secrets, Galia, with a man.’ Zoya took Galia’s hand in hers and squeezed it slightly. ‘But I missed him when he went. He was… a reassuring presence, if you see what I mean, like the rings on Saturn.’

‘I see, Zoya.’ And Galia thought she saw what her friend meant. Both ladies fell silent for a minute.

‘Do you remember that holiday we took, Zoya, to Chelyabinsk? I was thinking about that the other day. Well, thinking about all my holidays, really. But for some reason that one made me laugh out loud, while I was standing there washing up. Boroda came in to see what was going on – I think she thought I was having a funny turn.’

‘Ha, Chelyabinsk! Yes, I remember. The mud spa that had no running water.’

‘Ugh! And the four-hour visit to the tractor plant…’

‘Oh my! The picnic in the woods when we were eaten alive by insects.’

‘And the visit to the collective farm where they had no vegetables to show us. I was so disappointed.’ Galia laughed.

‘And the planetarium? I loved the planetarium.’ Zoya directed a wistful gaze out of the window, towards the yellow skies.

‘Oh yes, the planetarium. The display got stuck and the narrator had to tell us about Orion six times in a row because he wasn’t allowed to change the script.’ Galia giggled at the memory. ‘I could recite it off by heart for a while: ‘Orion is a prominent constellation located on the celestial equator and visible throughout…’

‘Yes, but I loved it. The planets, Galia, the universe… all around us, in Chelyabinsk. Full of mystery, and possibility, and enormousness…’

‘I suppose so, Zoya.’ Galia did not want to admit that she had thought the stuck planetarium rather a disappointment. ‘It all seems like so long ago now.’ She yawned and stretched. ‘And here we are, in this atmosphere that is making us maudlin, as if the solar system never existed. Government buildings are always depressing. They make you feel like death is round the corner. It’s the way they are designed, I think.’

‘I want to go to the moon, Galia. Will you come with me?’

Galia turned a quizzical smile-frown on her friend, who was still staring out of the window. ‘Of course, Zoya, but we can’t go just yet – we have got to finish this little adventure first.’

Zoya’s head snapped down, and she shook herself slightly, returning her eyes to the scene around her. She sighed. ‘Old people shouldn’t be made to wait in government buildings.’