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

No-one breathed a word.

‘He felt guilty, because the man who I’d been calling father, was actually nothing to do with me. The man who was actually my father, was the one who gave us Sharik.’

‘Oh Vasya!’ said Galia, with a low, sad note to her voice.

‘But why now, Mitya?’ Zoya was fascinated.

‘I had had my suspicions for a long time. I knew I couldn’t be related to that drunken bum that I called father. Mother was… well… reticent about it. But then, this week, that filthy Kulakov…’

Katya put her hand on his arm, and he took a moment to breathe.

‘The reason for our fight at the Smile Bar!, was that he told me my daddy was in the SIZO. And then he told me his name. And tried to blackmail me. I punched him, of course.’

‘And took a licking yourself,’ observed Zoya.

Galia was watching Mitya, open-mouthed. His story was almost too weird – to think that he loved dogs! But deep inside her, she felt that maybe it was true. Sometimes when you were really hurt, you shut off part of yourself and put all your energies into something else, be it marrows or chess, or direct self-destruction, or something somewhere in-between.

‘To my shame, I worked out my anger on those most innocent and blameless of creatures: domestic dogs, abandoned dogs… I could not bear the presence of animals. Not even butterflies. I came to believe that I had a calling to rid the community of canine vermin, and I fear that it contributed to my mother’s… madness. But enough, really, I have to speak to Volubchik. I have to start making amends, and he is here, because of me.’

‘No, Mitya! No! It’s not you that needs to speak to him: it’s me!’ Baba Plovkina spat the words out, and her eyes glistened with challenge.

‘No, Baba Plovkina! What’s the use? I have the paper, comrades, that will get him freed,’ Galia broke in, feeling confused, flustered, not at all sure what to think about Vasya Volubchik, but still all the same, having the VIPP in her hand, and wanting to make the most of it.

‘But I have to see him – we have so much to discuss!’ said Mitya, again jumping to his feet.

‘Let him see Volubchik, please, Kommandant!’ Katya took Mitya’s hand and stood to face the Kommandant. ‘You don’t know what he’s been through. It means such a lot.’

‘Look, guys, can I make a suggestion?’ The Kommandant attempted to take charge. ‘You all seem to be here to talk to this fella Volubchik. I guess he’s quite a guy? So I tell you what, why don’t we get him in here, and then maybe he can tell his side of the story – straighten things out a bit? I think we need him in here, don’t you?’

All the heads nodded slowly, agreeing finally that what the party was missing was Volubchik himself. The Kommandant nodded to Julia, and she called through to the corridor. Seconds later, there appeared in the doorway a rather tall, very old man, grey-stubbled and creased, with a prison warden at each shoulder. Vasya Volubchik stopped in the doorway, and looked around the room, his mouth open. The sweetness of impending freedom, and future, and the nectar of happiness bled from his bones. As he took in the faces, it was replaced by the cold porridge feeling that the past had, indeed, finally caught up with him.

‘Saints preserve us!’ whispered Vasya, and he took a shaky step into the room.

‘So!’ Kommandant Krapivin surveyed the room with a piercing glance, and then settled his attention on Vasya, now seated in the middle of the room on the only piece of sitting furniture left: a tall, narrow, brushed steel bar stool.

‘Prisoner Volubchik? Well, it’s good to meet you, Volubchik. Can you believe all these fine people are here, waiting to rescue you? I’m not really sure what they think they’re rescuing you from.’

‘No, well—’ began Vasya.

‘No really – as you know yourself, this SIZO is actually not bad at all. In fact, this place is really much nicer than many cheap hotels, don’t you agree?’

‘Well…’ Vasya began uncertainly. ‘Kommandant, it certainly has a lot of character.’

Vasya caught Galia’s eye and tried to smile a reassuring smile, but his lips trembled, and Galia’s eyes slid away from his to study her own knees peeping out from beneath her blue floral skirt. Vasya clasped his hands together to keep them still and tried to avoid further eye contact with anyone.

‘Yeah! It has a lot of character. You haven’t really been here long enough to get to know it properly. If you gave it a few months, you’d really settle in.’

‘I don’t doubt it, sir.’ The words ‘a few months’ sank like lead into Vasya’s belly, draining the blood from the rest of his body. He felt he might fall sideways off the stool and into the beanbag. He pressed his hands together more firmly.

‘So, Vasily Semyonovich Volubchik, is there something that you want to tell us?’

Vasya hesitated and began to shake his head, before plucking up the courage to look around the room again, not quite able to believe that Galia, Mitya, Baba Plovkina, Zoya, and a girl whom he didn’t know were all there, waiting for him. He shivered slightly, and blew on his clasped fingers.

‘Erm, well…’ he remembered the promises to himself that he had written down while in the cell, cleared his throat, and started again. ‘It is quite a surprise, but of course lovely, to see you all here. I had almost given up hope of ever seeing you again. I know it sounds a little melodramatic, and I know it hasn’t really been that long, but… but well, I am a coward, as you all, I think, know, and these days have been a terrible trial for me.’

Vasya paused, and coughed softly, waiting for any acknowledgement, or denial, of his statement. A heavy silence dropped into the room, reminiscent of a snowy Sunday. He looked towards the window, and was stabbed in the eye by the sun reflecting off a prisoner’s spade down in the vegetable garden.

‘Ah! My eyes!’

‘Come on now, Volubchik, you’re hardly the man in the iron mask! You’re embarrassing me here!’ Kommandant Krapivin laughed, although he looked a little concerned.

‘I am sorry, Kommandant, but I think I can truly say that my experience here has been dark.’

‘You ain’t seen nothing yet!’ muttered Zoya to herself.

‘Yes, it has been terrifying. But it also gave me some time for reflection, and contemplation, if you will. I reflected long and hard, and decided now was probably the time, if I ever got the opportunity, of course, of ceasing cowardship, and putting things right. And, dear friends, I come here this morning and find you are all here, giving me that opportunity. Please bear with me, but if I may, I must.’

Vasya stood slowly and swayed a little in the warm morning breeze. Again, he looked slowly around the room, studying the faces of his friends and acquaintances.

‘Zhenya Plovkina, to you I owe an apology from the heart. I have treated you abominably, and for a long time. You have withstood it as well as could be expected. I know you are not the woman you once were.’

Baba Plovkina squirmed on her beanbag and coughed into her mashed handkerchief.

‘When we were young, our hearts ran wild, and so did we. I remember corn fields and tree-houses, and love among the buttercups and daisies when the tractors ran out of diesel. You were but a child, Zhenya, working on the collective farm, and I was little more, just starting out at the school. You were the joy of my heart, and the treasure that I thought I could never lose. But lose you I did. No, that’s not true! I didn’t lose you. I left you behind, like a forgotten handkerchief on a trolleybus: I know. I betrayed my own heart, Zhenya, and I betrayed you.’