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

‘Here. It stays here.’ Shura reached out for the book and took it from Vasya’s hand. ‘I can use it to buy stuff. See?’

Vasya thought he saw: Shura could use guardianship of the book to barter for things. Shura’s eyes were still on his own: this he had recognized as a slightly disconcerting habit of his neighbour: the eyes locked on to a human target, and shone, and didn’t let go. He was there, minutes after a conversation had ended, still watching, still waiting, unblinking, slightly twinkly, too intimate, too close, like he was trying to see in to Vasya’s mind and sniff what he found there.

‘Tonight is Friday,’ said Shura.

‘Yes – is it already? My goodness! Friday!’

‘We like Fridays.’

‘Yes, well, I do. I usually go to the Elderly Club on a Monday and a Friday. On Mondays we have the Lotto and talks from formal speakers, who often concentrate on vegetable matters or environmental issues, and then on Fridays we do fun things like watch films or read poetry or have a tea dance.’

Shura stared at him with probing, knowing eyes and gently stroked his hand.

‘Of course, I find the dancing a bit difficult, but I do my best. You know, there aren’t that many men of my age still available to take a lady’s hand for a Friday afternoon tea dance.’ Vasya was aware that he was babbling, but could not stop, the gaze from Shura’s eyes spurring him on, despite his efforts to concentrate on the head of his walking stick and not to look. ‘Perhaps when you get out, Shura, you’d like to pop along. Although of course, you are nowhere near elderly. But maybe you could be an honorary elderly person for an occasion. I’m sure,’ here Vasya stumbled slightly, knowing he was talking nonsense, ‘I’m sure you would enjoy it. And the tea is really very good. Biscuits too, sometimes even cake.’ Vasya stopped, and cleared his throat a little. He wondered if Shura would think he was being sarcastic. He hadn’t meant to be. He just couldn’t stop his mouth from talking when he was nervous. And Shura’s eyes were making him nervous. He briefly speculated on why the prisoners liked Fridays, but then thought better of it.

‘Elderly Club. You think I’d like it, really?’

Vasya nodded in a sheepish, half-hearted way. Shura wouldn’t like Elderly Club.

‘Maybe you’re right. I don’t know though: clubs were never really my thing. I like my own entertainment. I was thrown out of the Pioneers. I was no good.

‘Really?’

‘Really. I killed cats.’

Vasya jumped visibly, but tried to control his disgust.

‘Oh, well, that’s not good, Shura, but it’s never too late. No, really. There are plenty at Elderly Club who have, well, perhaps not succeeded in life quite in the way they planned. But still, they are alive, and now want to enjoy themselves a little, as long as their health holds out and they can make it up the stairs.’

‘These lads,’ Shura waved a drooping hand towards the men ranged silently around them, limp and smelly, like dirty rags, ‘these lads aren’t going to make Elderly Club. They aren’t going to make elderly, full stop. I’m not going to make elderly.’

‘Well, you never know, Shura. If they get to prison camp and work hard and don’t drink or take drugs or fight, maybe all will be well. There is no reason to think that life is over just because—’

Vasya stopped short. His neighbour had pulled off his vest and was languidly displaying an array of silver-red scars that chopped through the smooth pallor of his stomach, abdomen and lower back.

‘I got these already in life, old man. You like? I don’t like… I remember how I got these. How many times do you think I’m going to survive that? What kind of club do you think I’m going to with marks like these? The hell club, that’s where I’m going to.’

Vasya swallowed, and his eyes filled with tears.

‘And who knows what’s going on, on the inside,’ Shura chuckled and stroked a raw red hand over his belly, a shudder running through him, along the bed and, much to his disquiet, into Vasya.

‘But surely… the prison wardens don’t beat the convicts any more?’ whispered Vasya.

‘Ha, this has nothing to do with the wardens. It’s not the wardens you have to look out for.’

And Shura winked and laughed long and low, till his shiny blue eyes watered and Vasya thought he might faint, so strong was the stench of tooth and death. Shura noticed his pallor.

‘Don’t worry, old man. You won’t be going there – there’ll be no prison camp for you. You’ll be safe here with us, with the boys. We’ll look after you. We like you. You’ll stay here.’ Shura’s arm snaked around Vasya’s shoulder, squeezing painfully in a gesture meant to be comforting, but which somehow just didn’t hit the spot, a bit like the chicory coffee the school canteen had served up, but much, much worse. Vasya tried not to look into the blue light of Shura’s gaze, and tried not to think about school coffee.

A metallic clank and the shuffling of dozens of ill-shod feet heralded the opening of the cell door to allow the evening meal to be served. The warders shouted hoarsely to the prisoners to stand away from the door and to keep their hands and everything else to themselves. Stale air flowed in from the corridor and carried with it the distinctive smell of buckwheat porridge and meat stew. The shadows on the walls stretched and shrank as the lights swayed with the air currents, and added a note of sea-sickness to Vasya’s already burgeoning nausea. His stomach had never been his strongest asset, he readily acknowledged, but this was odd. This food was exactly what had kept him on track every day for almost forty years as a teacher, but now, in this cell, the smell seemed to represent loss and death and made his stomach draw tight as he sucked in his lips to keep from gagging.

‘Here!’ Shura disengaged his arm and shoved a metal dish containing the evening’s meal towards him.

‘Thank you, Shura, but I’m not really hungry tonight.’

‘You have to eat,’ Shura’s eyes rolled down over Vasya’s puny chest and legs, ‘you have to eat, oldie.’

‘You’re right, I will try. But tonight, food just doesn’t seem the right thing. My head is full of memories, and maybe, well, yes, definitely, regrets. I am not hungry. I have done bad things, Shura.’

‘You don’t say. What kind of things?’

Vasya immediately regretted his statement.

‘Just… things. Nothing really bad, obviously, I don’t want you to think that I’m—’

‘Like me?’

‘That’s not what I meant. But no, I’m not much of a criminal. I just…’ Vasya’s voice trailed away, and he attempted to take a chew on a lump of gristle from the grey stew rolling gently around his dish.

‘I’m a family man, you know,’ said Shura unexpectedly.

‘Really? Well, I didn’t have you down as that, Shura. Tell me more.’

‘Not much to tell, oldie. The wife is a mad bitch: she drinks. She drinks, and she does not stop.’

Vasya nodded and chewed more fiercely, until his jaw ached.

‘I have a son, but I don’t see him. They won’t let me near him. He lives with his babushka . And he doesn’t even write. It’s like I was never there, but I remember. I used to bath him.’

Vasya attempted to swallow the gristle, and coughed hard as it stuck in the back of his throat.

‘Come on, oldie, don’t croak during dinner, it’ll cause a fuss.’

Vasya took a gulp of stale water from his mug and freed the lump. He laid the dish on the floor, now all the more convinced the evening’s concoction was not for him.

‘That’s very sad, Shura. I feel your loss. But I’m sure she takes good care of him.’

‘Oh you are, are you?’ Shura’s super-personal gaze bore into Vasya.