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

The old man looked her in the eye.

‘You are here to buy our plane tickets. Remember?’

There was a long, long pause as he thought.

‘In 1956 you say?’

Galia was startled, but nodded. ‘Yes, but—’

‘That was an interesting year for us, yes. We had a number of projects going on. I remember it well.’

‘Well, that’s wonderful, Grigory Mikhailovich. They were health projects? My Pasha had… well, he had cancer, so a holiday in the fresh air at the sanatorium was our only hope, really.’

‘Good lady, I don’t remember sending anyone on a “holiday” in 1956. In 1956 I was gathering volunteers for a programme of experiments.’

‘What kind of experiments?’

‘Medical experiments.’

The woman behind the counter raised her head and tutted at the mention of medical experiments. Galia felt the blood in her veins turn thick like gravy, weighing down her limbs. She drew in a breath. ‘So my husband was a volunteer for a medical experiment, Grigory Mikhailovich?’

‘Well, Galina Petrovna, it depends on how you define the word “volunteer”. Our subjects were volunteered on their own behalves, by the State, if you see… they were generally people of… poor character.’

Galia’s eyes rounded. ‘And what about my Pasha?’

‘Well, I don’t remember his case, obviously, but most likely he was a snitch, you know, not one of ours ,’ Grigory Mikhailovich stressed the word with a deep bass note, ‘doing things that… brought him to our notice. I don’t know, I can’t recall. But it must be true.’

He proceeded to pick a piece of old biscuit out of his coat pocket and put it in his mouth. The woman behind the counter handed him a sheaf of pieces of paper and withdrew her hand quickly. Again he signed in a series of boxes with his large, unsteady hand.

‘My husband was no snitch, Grigory Mikhailovich. That is one thing I know.’ Galia’s hands were shaking: in fact, her whole body was shaking, very slightly.

The old man paused, and looked around himself, and up at the high glass and chrome ceiling, and down at the polished tiled floor, where his drooping jowls were reflected back at him. He scratched his head.

‘Well… good lady, I think if I sent him to Kislovodsk, it must have been for a reason. And if Zoya referred him to me—’

‘What did Zoya tell you?’

‘I have no idea, my dear. But it must have been something. A spy, perhaps? That’s how it was, I expect. Although I really don’t recall.’

Grigory Mikhailovich made to pat Galia’s hand, and she jumped backwards, as if burnt. The tickets were placed on the counter, followed swiftly by a ‘position closed’ sign.

‘Here we are,’ Grigory Mikhailovich bellowed brightly. Galia began to open her mouth to speak, but her dry tongue rustled like a mouse in the summer grass. She could only stand and stare, and feel a thrill of anger rush through her to the tips of her fingers. Her hands clenched into tight fists and she thought that she might just punch Grigory Mikhailovich.

‘What’s the matter, Galina Petrovna? There’s no shame on you, my dear. We are all part of progress. And there is no progress without science. You’d be surprised what those boffins can brew up, Galina Petrovna, when they put their throbbing old brains to it. Did you know how many boffins they’ve got under the Kremlin keeping Lenin together? Hundreds, literally! You would be shocked at the—’

‘Grigory Mikhailovich! I am shocked… shocked at your experiments! What gave you the right—’

‘We were the Soviet Union, madam.’ He cut her off. ‘We were never wrong! We worked for the common good! Lenin knows that!’ Grigory Mikhailovich was shouting suddenly. A silver thread of saliva looped from his wide, purple mouth down on to his coat front and touched the red-flag pin.

A shiver trickled down Galia’s back and for the first time, she felt a little afraid of Grigory Mikhailovich.

‘He was a sick man, Grigory Mikhailovich. He needed a holiday. Even Lenin would have recognized that.’

‘We needed bodies! I needed my human mice! We were building Communism! We still are! And they all served very well, our mice. If only my experiments could have continued—’

Galia snatched the tickets and tags from the old man’s hand and fled across the concourse, desperate to get away from his booming voice and mad ideas. Weaving her way through the sun-kissed, dazzling crowds, she worked back through the maze of chairs, shrink-wrapped cases and bulk boxes of imports, back to Zoya, still slumbering on her slippery chair, unaware of the grubby fingers of history clutching at both her scraggy neck and that of her cousin. Galia shook her roughly by the shoulder.

‘Come on, we’re going to the gate. We have to go. I have to get home. I’ve got a dog to feed. And an old man to rescue. We don’t all have to die.’

‘Die?’

‘Well, we do all have to die, but not before our time. And it’s not our time. Come on!’

‘Will there be beer?’ mewed Zoya.

‘On the plane? Of course. And nuts.’

‘And little hand towels?’

‘Of course little hand towels. Grigory Mikhailovich has arranged it all. Come now, we must hurry, my dear. He says goodbye, by the way.’

And Galia shuffled Zoya towards the gate as fast as she could, allowing for the latter’s dazed state and tiny steps.

They left Grigory Mikhailovich in the middle of the concourse, alone, and very confused. He stood on the concourse for ten minutes, twenty minutes, half an hour, trying to remember why he was there, and who he was with, repeating over and over again ‘My mice! Where are my mice! Where are my mice?’ muttering the words under his breath. Eventually, another vague thought crept into his head and the mantra changed. ‘Kolya!’ he rumbled, at first under his breath, and then getting louder, and more insistent, until it became a shout, and then a roar.

‘Kolya! Kolya! We must go… Kolya, where are you? Kolya! Kolya!’

Navy-shirted security guards were called by an unseen hand responding to an unseen eye to deal with the old fella making a noise like the end of the world in a dustbin. A scuffle ensued, and the old man wet himself as he was bodily restrained. The two younger guards laughed as they put his hands behind his back and began to push him forward, out of his puddle, and towards the doors that led to the bowels of the building and the security guards’ office. He begged them in a mewling voice not to take him away, asking if only they wouldn’t take him, they didn’t need to worry, he wouldn’t tell a soul, and he’d never been involved with them anyway. He just wanted to return Lenin to his proper place. The youngest security guard winked, and told granddad not to worry. They would take care of him.

As they passed through the door a loud buzzer shocked the air: the metal detector had been triggered. Zoya’s gun was to do Grigory Mikhailovich no favours today, it seemed.

In the southern morning sunshine, the cloud of dust kicked up by the little car as it bucked along the track gave it the aura of a glittering tumble weed speeding through scrubby, empty fields. Mitya could hardly see the road ahead: partly because one of his eyes still wouldn’t fully open, but mostly because the entire windscreen was coated in a thick layer of summer meadow dust. Every so often Katya, kitted out with a pair of men’s leather driving gloves, a red-and-green checked headscarf and the biggest sunglasses Mitya had ever seen, stopped the car and wiped down the glass with an old and yellowing copy of Pravda . Mitya was not sure he approved. True, windscreen wiper blades were still a highly prized commodity in modern Russia and therefore open to theft, but he wished the girl had removed them herself to ensure they weren’t stolen. Her lack of foresight meant today’s journey was going to be unnecessarily elongated and uncomfortable. But on reflection, Mitya didn’t care. He would forgive her anything.