Galina Petrovna's Three-Legged Dog Story

by Andrea Bennett

  ‘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.

  ‘I only meant that a grandmother’s love is a strong bond, and … and I’m sure you shouldn’t worry about the little mite.’

  ‘He’s fourteen. I don’t worry about him anymore. He survived his mother, he’ll be OK. But I’ve been away from him for so long. I can’t even remember his face properly now. I can’t remember his voice.’

  Vasya looked at his feet for a long time, minutes even. He wanted to speak, but for once he couldn’t find any suitable words at all.

  ‘You going to eat that?’ another grey neighbour muttered and tapped his dish with an enquiring spoon. Vasya shook his head and the dish disappeared across the floor as if on strings.

  ‘I’m sure you did your best, Shura. And I’m sure his grandmother has done a fine job.’

  Shura snorted, and turned over to begin a game of cards with his neighbour on the other side. Vasya reclaimed the bunk and sat absently observing his cellmate, while small groups of headless bodies began to shuffle restlessly from one side of the room to the other: it was getting close to the time when the evening swap-over occurred. It was not an orderly process. On previous evenings, Vasya had begun to feel a little nervous at this stage in the proceedings, but tonight he was completely oblivious. He stared at his feet, and tried to remember the logical reasons for why he had done bad things. There must have been reasons: at the time, they must have seemed solid, convincing even. But now, looking back, he couldn’t remember any of them. When he looked into the dirty bucket of his own past history, all he could see was the muck floating on top: the results of his actions, all the consequences, both real and imagined, bobbing to the surface like dead rats. He put his head in his hands, and breathed hard through his nose.

  Much later, when he had been asleep sitting up for some time, his neighbour shook him roughly by the shoulder.

  ‘I have to tell you something.’

  ‘What?’ Vasya’s mouth was sticky with sleep.

  ‘I have to tell you something, oldie.’

  ‘Shura, forgive me, but it is late. Maybe we can talk—’

  ‘No, it’s bothering me. I have to tell you. I didn’t tell you the whole truth … about the scars.’

  ‘What do you mean, Shura?’

  ‘About how I got them.’

  ‘So it was the prison wardens after all?’

  ‘No,’ The sudden look in Shura’s eyes made Vasya�
��s heart lurch. There was no doubt: such a concentration of pain, fear, hurt and above all, shame, could not be mistaken. ‘It was my wife.’

  ‘Your wife?’ Vasya was horrified.

  ‘You can’t believe it, can you? I told you: she drinks. And when she drinks, she goes wild. I don’t know, I just drink and sing and steal and fall over. But she turns into an animal. Look!’ Again Shura raised his vest, and this time, close up, Vasya could make out among the lattice of marks something that made him shudder: little arcs of silver scars, a recognizable pattern: human teeth marks.

  ‘Wretched, Shura, but how can this be?’

  He shrugged. ‘I loved her: she was my mate for life. But remember, oldie: people are animals. I learnt it. She bit chunks out of me, threw bottles at me, stubbed her cigarettes on me. She terrified me, and I … took it. And when I couldn’t take it any more, I left. And I left him … to her. I deserve to be here. It was babushka who saved him. Oh yes, I should be dead for what I’ve done. And soon, I expect, I will be.’

  Shura turned away and, pulling the rough brown blanket around him, curled up on the bunk. Vasya felt his emptiness growing inside him from the pit of his stomach right up to his throat and beyond into the ends of his hair and fingernails. He was an empty man: a shell, a nothing, a less than nothing. A useless tear squeezed from his left eye and he rubbed it away with a gnarled hand, open mouthed. He looked upwards with a jerk, desperately wanting to see heaven, but saw only cobwebs, soot and ancient pornographic images scrawled on the walls. There was no comfort, no clean lines, no twinkling stars, no God. He looked down again, and thought hard about himself.

  He still didn’t feel brave. He still didn’t deserve Galina Petrovna. He was beginning to doubt that he ever would. But he wasn’t an animal. Shura was wrong: people did not have to behave like beasts, or carry their guilt with them till death. There were things that could be done. He picked up his pen and paper, and began to write again, this time with a certainty that had been lacking before. He wrote only the truth, with no extraneous words or explanations, and begging only that the reader finish reading before making up their mind. On and on he wrote, until his mind was at peace and he was able to curl up on the bunk next to Shura, spooning him almost, and go to sleep with a clear mind and an empty heart.

  16

  A Minor Triumph

  Zoya felt the ZIL limo approach before she saw or heard it. She had been hovering near the heavy oak doors for a long time observing a small child whom she felt, quite strongly, may have been an Egyptian high priest in a former life. She had been trying to get a good look at the child’s ears to see if her hunch was correct, all the while attempting to formulate a subtle question as to whether the child had ever visited Heliopolis, when a tingle began at the back of her neck and made its spidery way down her spine, all the way to her girdle. The tingle made her sparse, purple hair stand up straight on end, and set her nose quivering.

  ‘Galia,’ she said, loudly but conspiratorially, winking her left eye at her friend who was dozing and dribbling slightly on to the shoulder of her own floral print summer dress.

  ‘Galia!’ This time she added a piercing note, not unlike the gulls that dive-bomb the few remaining wizened fishing boats that ply the deserted waters of the Sea of Azov. Galia started with a cry of ‘Shoo! Dirty creature!’ and all heads turned her way. Zoya motioned her with a frantic, claw-like hand to come over to the door.

  ‘Something is about to happen. I know it!’ Galia looked around her at the dappled white and red dough faces, and stood, straightening her dress and wondering what and how much she had said in her sleep. She had dreamt of Pasha and Boroda, and even Vasya. Poor Vasya, with his own teeth, his cane and his little kitty cat, and his endless offers of friendship and companionship that she had steadfastly ignored. She found a boiled sweet in her skirt pocket, and, popping it into her dry mouth complete with cellophane wrapper, and wondered whether the waiting room was bugged.

  ‘Galia! Move your backside!’ hissed Zoya, prompting a quizzical look from the high-priest-come-small-child at her feet. As Galia reached the window next to the heavy oak doors, the ladies saw a shiny ZIL limousine draw up to the kerb. Zoya chirruped and clapped her hands, swirling dust motes so that they glistened in curls between the heads that nodded in the weak afternoon sun trapped by the ministry’s hallway. Galia drew a sharp breath as Grigory Mikhailovich clambered slowly and gigantically from the back of the car, with the help of a small man wearing a smart dark uniform and a peaked cap. And then, using two sticks, the old bear began the laborious trek up the path to the ministry, swaying rhythmically, scattering pigeons and clouds of spittle with each slow step forward. The clap of each shoe hitting the flagstones seemed to produce in Zoya an answering quiver deep within her chest, and her shaking hands clasped Galia’s moist arm.

  ‘He’s here!’ she whispered.

  ‘I can hardly believe my eyes!’ said Galia.

  ‘You should have more faith!’

  ‘You might be right,’ said Galia with a smile, and hugged her friend.

  They turned to the sea of faces behind them.

  ‘He’s here!’ cried Zoya, triumphantly. ‘Make space for Grigory Mikhailovich! He will need a seat, or possibly two. You child, get up from that chair! There’s no Egyptian sun priest in you, you snotty baggage, I was quite mistaken. Go and play in the corridor, go on!’ The child’s mother looked up briefly from her crossword and tutted as Zoya shooed the reluctant small boy from a chair. His bottom lip started to quiver.

  ‘Put out your hands. Here you go.’ Zoya took a handful of glass beads from her pocket and poured them into his hands.

  ‘There, that’s all you need. You have fun with those. But don’t tell anyone I gave them to you. And don’t eat them.’ The boy looked at the handful of beads, and with slow and precise movements, took one between his fingers, examined it, and then inserted it into his left nostril.

  ‘That’s the way, Sun-Ra, that’s the way!’ Zoya spun him lightly on his heels and pushed him towards the corridor while Galia cleared crumbs and dead flies from the now-vacant seat.

  A long drawn-out sigh from the oak doors heralded the arrival of Grigory Mikhailovich. All heads turned as his massive form paused, silhouetted in the doorway, exuding a subtle yet unmistakably earthy scent of mothballs, buckwheat, vodka and pickles.

  ‘Ah, ladies, ladies, good afternoon. Citizens, all!’ sighed Grigory Mikhailovich and gave a nod that encompassed each and every one of the warm, over-dressed bodies filling up the entrance hall. He sat heavily in the recently vacated seat, spreading his knees wide and disturbing farmers’ wives on either side of him.

  The portly man with the cheeks behind the desk, whose eyes were now almost as red as his predecessor’s, watched Grigory Mikhailovich suspiciously, while trying not to pay him any attention at all.

  ‘We need to see the Deputy Minister Glukhov,’ boomed Grigory Mikhailovich from his seat, directly to the man with the cheeks.

  ‘You must approach the desk and sign in, citizen,’ replied the man in a strangled whisper, without meeting Grigory Mikhailovich’s eyes.

  ‘No, you don’t understand, we need to see the Deputy Minister.’ And Grigory Mikhailovich turned the fingers of his right hand into a strange, twisted shape, the fingers overlapping.

  The clerk was unmoved. ‘I am afraid that is impossible. He is out of the city. He is fishing at his dacha. It is August, citizen: all the ministers, deputy or otherwise, are away.’

  ‘You don’t understand, cursed spawn of Satan. This is Grigory Mikhailovich Semechkin, and we must see the Deputy Minister,’ said Zoya, making for the reception desk with a little jump at the clerk. Galia thought she might be about to bite his nose, so close did her friend manage to come to his face.

  ‘It is not possible, madam. He is out of the city.’

  ‘No, you don’t understand, we must see the Deputy Minister,’ and Grigory Mikhailovich reached inside his shirt with a bear-like paw and drew out some sort o
f pass on an old piece of rough string. The pass caught the sunlight, and the chubby bureaucrat squinted, and read, and then started slightly, his face pallid. A magic button had been pressed by an invisible finger.

  ‘The Deputy Minister Glukhov is at his dacha fishing for all of August, but I will see what I can do. Please be seated, madam.’

  Zoya retreated and Grigory Mikhailovich made himself fully comfortable in the chair, while Galia observed the bureaucrat. A sickly sheen had broken out on his glowing cheeks, and she felt he looked distinctly peaky: unwell, even. She hoped there would be no need to call an ambulance on this occasion, and concluded that bad diet in the young had a lot to answer for. A lack of roughage and an over-reliance on imported processed foods could have a terrible effect on the body as a whole. She nodded to herself quietly and watched as the clerk picked up the heavy plastic phone and made a number of short, stuttering phone calls.

  ‘Approach the desk, please.’ His voice was soft when eventually he addressed them again.

  ‘Young man: I can no more approach that desk than I can recall Laika from her orbit. It is far too late for that. My knees would not allow it. Be a decent sort, and come over our way to impart your news.’ Grigory Mikhailovich did indeed appear to be suffering with his knees.