Galina Petrovna's Three-Legged Dog Story

by Andrea Bennett

  ‘Well done!’ said Zoya, ‘crosswords help no-one. Whatever the problem, crosswords are not the answer. Like ironing: ironing is never the answer. Or golf.’

  ‘Stroke,’ thought Galia, but said nothing, keeping her eyes on her folded hands in her lap. A door opened in the middle-distance of corridor number one, to the left, and a man in a grey suit emerged. Tension in the waiting area mounted to fever pitch: jaws flopped open, eyelids twitched, the crowd held its breath: and then it dissipated, as the man shuffled slowly away in the opposite direction, leaving them with nothing but the echo of his steps.

  Some time later, but no-one could really be sure when, as time does funny things in ministries and seems to slow down or stop altogether at some points (especially during lunch hour, which is often two or three hours, and not at lunchtime), the young man took a phone call, and looked in Zoya’s direction. He talked very softly, so that they could not make out the words, but only occasional S and T noises, and the odd smirk.

  ‘He’s talking about us!’ Zoya whispered, excited yet fretful, like a toddler at a fairground who needs a wee. ‘You’ll see. We’ll be next. But where is Grigory Mikhailovich? He must be here for the meeting. We can’t possibly do it without him.’

  ‘Zoya, I think we can. After all, he’s not really contributed much so far, has he?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, we got off the train without him, we found our beds without him, we had our breakfast, or rather didn’t have our breakfast, without him, and we got here without him. I don’t really see what your cousin’s contribution to our mission is, Zoya.’

  ‘Well, that’s gratitude, isn’t it?’

  ‘To be honest, I have found him … quite disappointing.’

  Galia knew that these words would annoy Zoya, but she couldn’t help it: they were true.

  ‘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 disappoi
nted.’ 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.’

  Galia nodded in agreement.

  ‘I am sure if we had access to the figures we’d find out that the death rate for over Seventies rises exponentially after an eight-hour wait on a hard wooden chair in a draughty brown corridor waiting for the third secretary’s underling to turn up,’ Zoya went on. ‘And my arse is numb, totally numb!’

  The ladies had been waiting a long, long time. The Third Secretary Internal Affairs: Southern (Non Caucasus) was clearly having a very busy day. Now new people fought their way in through the heavy oak doors every so often, mopping their necks and foreheads with damp handkerchiefs as they waited self-consciously at the desk. Their time of arrival had no bearing on when they were actually seen. The anxiety in the waiting area rose to breaking point each time a bureaucrat emerged slowly into the corridor and clicked their way with deliberation, and sometimes a detour or two, towards the waiting area. The bureaucrats would bark out a reference number, and that would be it. Some people arrived and were seen within an hour. Some were sent straight back out again. But by late afternoon, no-one seemed to have waited as long as Galia and Zoya. The crimson-faced farmer had been seen by two. She did not, however, return. Maybe she was still in the building somewhere, being interviewed or filling in papers with scratchy pens, in the right order and the right colour, which made sense to no-one except the functionaries themselves. Galia shut her eyes and her head began to nod. Pictures passed before her closed eyes of piles of paper, pens that didn’t work, clocks on the wall and magical numbers, snarling policemen and whimpering dogs. The whole system was a mystery, and the man with the insider knowledge to unlock its secrets, the esteemed Grigory Mikhailovich, had steadfastly refused to put in an appearance. A small tear trickled from the corner of Galia’s right eye, and she gave herself up to a little sleep. Sleep was what she needed, a drop of restorative shut-eye, and a chance to forget about Moscow and dream about her garden and Boroda.

  * * *

  Across town, the man himself, the bear with wolf’s eyes, was having a good day. The glossy black ZIL limousine had oiled round the corner at the allotted time and he himself had, by the filmy skin of his gold-capped teeth, made it to the corner of the road to meet it. Good days were seldom in this clapped out excrescence of what had been his life. He savoured the juice of it and cherished the feeling of mild success, at least of nothing having gone painfully wrong, in the depths of his cavernous, badly sprung chest. The odd good day kept him going when otherwise the only appointment on the horizon was with death, or worse, with one of Kolya’s totally indigestible stews and clever-dick conversation.

  Grigory Mikhailovich held Kolya in his heart along with the memory of his grandmother, Grigory’s cousin Elizaveta, and did his best to educate the boy on his long-dead relative’s behalf. But the boy’s cooking was really beyond his worst imaginings. Worse than anything the NKVD had ever dreamt up. Worse than the worst years of the 1970s and 80s when rice was looked upon as a luxury and the value of a food was measured by its fat content alone. The fattiness of those years clung to Grigory Mikhailovich’s arteries like a warm, thick overcoat, but still he survived, dumbfounding his doctors and former colleagues alike. One by one, his former underlings had succumbed to strokes, heart attacks, freak accidents, brain tumours, piles as big as plums and warts with their own, hidden agendas. And Grigory Mikhailovich had outlived them all, to his own chagrin, to become an old man, cared for by a young relative who had little conversation and no interest in anything other than the study of electronics, imported arty films and girls.

  So, the ZIL had come early, and Kolya’s re-re-fried pasta had stayed locked in the fridge. The rest of the day had proceeded with great ease, and all had gone to plan, as far as Grigory Mikhailovich could recall. His early morning trip to the banya had been very welcome, and he felt utterly refreshed, if very hungry, after having sweated, sploshed and napped there for a few hours. But at the back of his mind, he had a nagging suspicion that he had forgotten to do something – like turn off the kettle, or put the cat out, but not exactly that. Maybe Kolya would be able to remind him later. Lunch at his club had been fulsome, and the drive around Moscow’s boulevards afterwards had been slow enough for him to digest fairly well by the time he reached home.

  Once back at the apartment, Grigory Mikhailovich had determined to make his own tea, since there was no-one home to do it for him. Waiting by the stove, he noticed a note on the table, in his own hand. He reached out for it slowly, struggling to recall what it might say. As he read the brief words scrawled on it, he remembered, fully and vividly, the night before, the plan, and the reason that the two ladies, Zoya and the other, quiet one, were staying at his flat. He turned the gas off, heaved himself back in to the hall, and picked up his briefcase. He entered the combination, and checked inside: everything was in order, including the pistol he’d pinched from Zoya’s travel bag, for some reason he couldn’t now recall.

  He took the crusted plastic phone from its box in the hallway and plugged it in to the jack. The line buzzed, and he pressed in the numbers with a certainty that rarely visited him.

  ‘Come for me, now. I have business.’ He threw the receiver back down and made for the door, his blue eyes gleaming. The game was on.

  15

  Deep in the SIZO

  Immersed in the yellow light dripping from the over-ripe bulb above his head, Vasya turned the pages of the book, slowly and with some care. Its ancient leaves crinkled softly, here and there stuck together with dubious substances, and in other places so well-thumbed that they were almost translucent, like dead butterfly wings between his shaking fingers. The pictures on the pages were grainy and dark; old-style reproductions that reminded Vasya, on a certain level, of the school books he’d formerly worked with, which gave the people depicted in them an alien, or perhaps corpse-like, air. Vasya had never really minded poor pictures before: the badly stuffed faces were neither here nor there, and he hadn’t dwelt on it. But now, in this cell full of murmuring shadows and physiognomies that were only half visible, or only half there, he wanted bright colour and clean lines, and innocent smiles that reeked of minty freshness and apples. The cell felt like a living reproduction of the book’s pictures: Vasya craved the comfort of bright lines to reassure him that the outside that he remembered was, indeed, real. How long had he been in this stinking room.

  ‘Good, isn’t it?’

  Shura leant in closely over Vasya’s shoulder, his sweet, rotten breath fanning the old man’s cheek and leaving it filmed with a nutty moistness. Va
sya turned his head to nod and smile in his jovial way and found his nose almost touching that of his neighbour and bunk-mate. He looked into a pair of pale eyes. Shura, a young man technically, looked like he had lived his life chained up in the yard, or down in the bins at the station, or in the process of falling off the platform at the trunk line station. His skin was pale marble over his chest, but from the neck up and over his hands it was flapping and ravaged: flesh hung off his features in sagging red dollops, soaked in vodka, smashed by fights. His flat nose was almost as wide as his forehead and spread into the remains of high cheekbones. Shura smiled.

  ‘This book is amazing, young man. I haven’t seen one like this for many, many years. In all my time as a teacher, we never had books quite like this. Where did you get it, my friend?’

  ‘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.