‘Had there been mention of Lenin, when he said that Pasha was a spy.’
‘What do you mean, mention of Lenin? We were booking tickets at an airport, in the 1990s, not sorting cabbages on the collective farm in 1930.’
‘Yes, I know, but sometimes mention of Lenin sets him off, on a bit of a flight of fancy. I have seen it before. Was there talk of Lenin?’ An odd sincerity in Zoya’s eyes made Galia pause, and think back over the conversation in the ticket hall.
‘Ah, well, yes. Oh … yes. The woman behind the desk: she was a bit disparaging about Lenin, actually. I didn’t really pay it any attention, and neither did Grigory Mikhailovich, I thought—’
‘Oh, Galia, it doesn’t need to be much. But it can have a terrible effect.’
‘But he was so clear, Zoya. He said you must have referred Pasha to him … because he was a spy. He said he did medical experiments on him! Pasha was no spy, Zoya. He was weak, yes; difficult, in fact quarrelsome sometimes. Annoying a lot of the time, mildly dishonest, not very clean, lazy in the garden … but he wasn’t political.’
‘Yes, Galia, I know. Do you really think I’d report your husband as a spy and then never mention it, for forty years? I am not a bad person, Galia.’ Zoya gave her friend an unwavering look. It pierced Galia’s defences, and had her looking down at her own hands and fumbling in her pocket for a boiled sweet.
‘Well, Zoya, that’s as maybe, but you didn’t mention arranging the trip to Kislovodsk. You didn’t mention that for forty years.’ Galia found the last of her reserve of barley sugars and sucked on it for all she was worth.
‘That’s different. I told him Pasha needed a holiday.’
‘Really? Is that all?’
The aeroplane buzzed high above the fields and trees, the factories and farms, following the River Don southward. Zoya looked away through the window.
‘Yes. I may have expressed some doubts as to the qualities of Pasha’s character, at some point. But that was all. It was just in conversation, nothing more. I made no … report. My cousin was looking for people to try out new facilities at the sanatorium at Kislovodsk, and I told him Pasha needed a holiday and said some words to the effect that he was a difficult sod, I believe.’
‘Grigory Mikhailovich told me that Pasha was part of an experiment, Zoya. He was there as a guinea pig. Did you know that?’
‘You’re not hearing what I am saying, Galia,’ replied Zoya with a squeak, blinking rapidly. ‘Grigory Mikhailovich is deluded. There were no medical experiments. Galia, my dear, I knew you were struggling with Pasha at home.’ Zoya stopped for breath, wheezed slightly and thumped herself on the chest twice. ‘Remember, Galia: there was no love lost between you two then. I thought a few weeks up in the clear mountain air, with the natural spring waters and plain food, might do him some good. And I thought the break would do you good too.’
‘But why, Zoya? And why not tell me?’ Galia lifted an eyebrow.
‘Oh Galia, he didn’t deserve you! Ever!’ Zoya grabbed Galia’s hands and looked into her eyes.
‘He was my husband!’
‘Yes and he was weak and mean and paltry and … you know that wasn’t all.’ Zoya ended her sentence with a small sigh, and dropped her friend’s hands. She reached for her smelling salts and inhaled deeply, shuddering slightly.
‘What do you mean?’ Galia may have regularly thought these things about her husband, but she was not entirely prepared to hear them from somebody else, and especially not her friend.
‘Wait … I can’t breathe.’ Zoya’s eyes rolled back in her head and her tongue protruded slightly.
‘Stop that at once,’ said Galia firmly. ‘You’re play acting. Breathe, and speak.’
‘Oh … you’re so harsh! Just wait,’ Zoya finished off her beer with a gulp and hiccuped slightly back in to the can. The fleshy man in the row opposite tutted loudly and quickly put his head back in his copy of Pravda when Galia caught his eye. ‘He was … an odd fish … Oh, you know. You must know!’
‘Know what?’ Galia was flummoxed.
‘Don’t be dumb. You know what I mean.’ Zoya folded her arms and looked out of the window again, her cheeks now restored to pale lilac by her smelling salts and the beer.
‘I don’t know what you mean. What must I know?’
‘Oh, Galia … come on! That … he was one of them.’ Zoya hunched over in a conspiratorial manner and hissed the words quickly.
‘One of them?’
‘Yes.’
‘A spy? But I told you just now—’
‘No! Not one of them, one of them!’
‘One of who?’ Galia was confused.
‘Keep your voice down! You know … one of them!’ Zoya looked about her in a way that unnerved Galia, but gave her no further clue as to what she was talking about.
‘No, I don’t know! Would you please explain yourself?’
Zoya rolled her eyes and began to look about for the stewardess for more beer.
‘Spit it out, Zoya.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ the bird’s-nest head leant towards Galia. ‘A gay!’
Galia’s jaw dropped. It seemed to her that time had stood still on the vibrating jet as she gazed into her friend’s face, which had now turned an odd shade of ox blood.
‘Have you gone mad?’ Each word was very carefully enunciated by Galia’s lips.
‘You must have known.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘Well, I just said it.’
‘You’re not serious.’
‘You mean you didn’t know?’
‘How dare you!’ Galia had the awful feeling she might slap her friend.
‘You must have known?’ Zoya’s look was all concern.
‘But it’s preposterous!’ Galia slapped her own forehead instead, and Zoya quivered.
‘How can you not have known?’
‘But he was married to me!’
‘That means nothing, Galia … you know that. People get married for all sorts of reasons: to get a flat, or get their dinner cooked, or just because it’s a thing they think they should do. I’m sure he liked you … at some point, and thought it was a good thing to do.’
‘Well that’s big of you to say so, Zoya!’ Galia turned her head away and stared down the gangway at the backs of the rows of grey heads and the shafts of sunlight that picked out the dandruff on all of them.
A long silence ensued.
‘Galia, it’s not as if you were desperately in love with him, was it? You couldn’t stand him after a while, that’s what I seem to remember. There was always trouble and silence at your flat. It wasn’t a … a happy home.’
‘For what it’s worth, that’s not strictly true, Zoya. I think I loved him at the start. Well, I’m not sure … but I definitely needed him. He was there for me and, yes, well … maybe we needed each other. Sometimes.’
‘Exactly! He needed a wife to cook and clean, and you needed a man to do whatever it is men do. Although in view of the fact that he—’
‘Enough, Zoya! How dare you! This is just gossip! You think you knew him better than me?’ Galia’s chest heaved with indignation.
‘You asked for the truth, so here it is. It is my truth. I thought you needed a break, and I thought it might do him some good. I knew that Grigory Mikhailovich could book people in to the sanatorium, so I used my connections.’
‘He wasn’t gay, Zoya.’
‘Well, you choose to believe what you like, Galia. It doesn’t really matter now. I wanted to help … but it seems that I actually may have made things worse.’
‘Ha!’
‘But I am sorry, Galia, if what I’ve said has upset you.’ Zoya reached out a shaky, wizened hand and clasped Galia’s arm.
Galia looked away from her friend and out of the small, oval windows across the gangway into the deep blue sky. She could see the ghost of last night’s moon still hanging there.
‘I thought you were a seamstress, Zoya. Through all these years of be
ing friends, you told me you were a seamstress. Were you a seamstress, Zoya?’
‘Partly.’
‘And what was the other part?’
‘To know things, Galia. To keep my eyes and ears open, and to know things.’
‘Oh, Zoya!’
‘It was the right thing to do at the time.’
‘Keeping tabs on everyone.’
‘Helping to build Communism. And it was nothing compared to what my cousin used to do.’
‘Ha! And I thought he was just a harmless old man.’
‘He is – now. Just a bit confused.’
‘Confused? That’s one way of putting it.’ Galia shifted in her seat and began to twist the air-conditioning nozzle, trying to coax the tiny stream of cold air to reach her over-heating body. ‘Well, how do you like your Communism now, comrade Zoya?’
‘It was a good theory, Galia, but the execution was lacking somewhat. And the beer is better under capitalism.’ Zoya’s eyes strayed again towards the broad and sweating air hostess, who was bearing down on them with a little silver trolley that refused to run in a straight line and clipped each passenger’s toes in turn.
‘You’re unbearable,’ Galia muttered, and signalled to the stewardess for a beer. She poured the golden liquid into a soft paper cup and took two large mouthfuls. The bubbles bit at her tongue and sent froth up into her nose. She sneezed loudly, eyes watering, and tutted.
‘Galia, think about it. Everyone was doing it. Snitching on their friends, keeping tabs on their neighbours, using their connections—’
‘I wasn’t doing it, Zoya.’ Galia’s voice was flat. ‘And Pasha wasn’t doing it either.’
Zoya carried on, seemingly not hearing the words. ‘It was just … part of the times. It was almost expected, I think. It did no harm. And it was interesting!’ Zoya added quietly, the hint of a smile playing across her thin lips.
‘Interesting? But don’t you see how meddling and gossiping makes things worse, Zoya? Interfering and making your mind up about people with absolutely no foundation or proof?’
‘Proof? Well …’ Zoya muttered the words to herself, and was thankful that Galia did not hear. In a louder voice, she added, ‘I thought the Kislovodsk trip would do you both good, my dear. I didn’t realize his cancer was so advanced. I only wanted what was best for you.’
‘But you sent him there because you thought he was gay! You didn’t think to speak to me about it?’
‘You would have been upset, Galia.’
‘Well, yes, Zoya, well spotted! You just thought you knew best, but you didn’t.’
Galia took another gulp of her beer. On her empty stomach, it was going straight to her head. The aeroplane whined as it banked right, tipping one wing into the air as fields and farms came into view ground-ward on the opposite side. The motion made Galia feel a little nauseous, and the nausea made her feel very tired.
‘What nonsense! One minute he’s a spy, the next he’s gay! You and your cousin – you think you know about these things. You don’t know anything. You’re both just confused old baggages.’ Galia’s tongue felt thick in her mouth and the words spilled out on top of themselves.
‘Sometimes the past is better left buried, my dear.’ Zoya patted her hand.
‘Baggages with brains like cabbages, ha!’
‘We have a busy morning ahead of us, my dear. Maybe you should get some sleep?’
‘With your connections and your ministries and your limos. But it was me: I did the deal with Roman Sergeevich. And I know the truth – about Pasha, about me, and about you now, Zoya,’ Galia tapped Zoya’s chest with her broad, brown fingers.
‘Yes, my dear. You know the truth. And you need to be on top form, now, too.’
‘Oh I know, I know. I can’t leave it to you. You’ll be making up stories about Boroda next. You’ll be going to the SIZO asking them to take her in too!’
‘Now, Galia, you’re being silly. I don’t think beer agrees with you.’ Zoya was becoming indignant, but trying not to become impatient. She would have loved another beer, but felt it would be imprudent to ask.
‘Did you know she was a deviant? Oh yes, better run and tell Grigory Mikhailovich. My dog needs to go to the sanatorium too.’
‘I’m not going to discuss it further.’
Galia crumpled her beer can with one brown hand and shoved it in the pocket of the seat in front of her.
‘Think of the living: the here and now. Think of Boroda, and Vasya: they need you, Galia. So get some sleep.’
‘I don’t feel like sleeping, Zoya. I’m too angry.’
Thirty seconds after those words were muttered, Zoya heard Galia begin to snore quietly, her head nodding to her shoulder, hands loose at her sides. Thirty seconds after that, Zoya too was sound asleep, dreaming of ballet, and old friends, and policemen, and secrets.
23
Vasya’s Pussy
Vasya Volubchik eyed his porridge with caution. He had had a difficult night. It wasn’t so much the constant bad air making his clothes damp and sticky, or the droning noise of his fellow prisoners as they shuffled backwards and forwards, occasionally swearing and cursing, or crying out in pain or anger. It wasn’t even his neighbour Shura, whose curiously attentive stare infiltrated most of the two men’s shared waking moments and seemed to slither into his very soul. It was the blurred line between day and night, the twilight of existence here that really got to him. His reality, the brightness that had been Vasya Volubchik’s life with its club meetings, kitty cat, veggie patch and well-pressed trousers, seemed to have been completely extinguished. Sometimes, at moments of horror, he wondered if he had made it up: maybe he was mad, and perhaps it had never happened at all. Maybe he had been here for too many years, a petty criminal and hoodlum, who had simply dreamt up another life outside this cell, and was destined always to remain within these dank walls, always eating thin porridge and listening to the ramblings of his fellow prisoners, hearing their bellies rumble and their farts pumping out in to the shared air like fumes from rotting cadavers in a morgue.
Still Vasya eyed his porridge. His spoon hovered in mid-air, and then rested on his knee again. The waking days he could cope with, even given the twilight and stench. But at night things really got to him. The empty night, when he could not sleep, and tossed and turned on his narrow bed, aware of all those around him, above him and below him. And worse, the stinking dreams his mind presented before him when he did finally drop off.
The previous night he had dreamt he was lying in his bed at home. It was so real and familiar; it was comforting like an old quilt, or a favourite meal. Everything was as it should be: the sounds were right, the smells were right. He could hear his neighbour, Petr Grigorievich, singing along to Shalyapin in a rich baritone and occasionally arguing with his wife in that good-natured way that some old couples manage. The smell of apple blossom and fresh rain made his nostrils flair, as a warm breeze wafted in through the balcony window. He knew, deep in his heart, that the fridge in the kitchen contained a bowl of cherries waiting for him, picked the previous day by his own hand. He felt the cool clean cotton of his favourite navy spotted pillow case beneath his face, and scraped his stubble across it gently. Best of all, little black-and-white Vasik was curled up on his special cushion in the corner of the room, fast asleep. He took it all in, and then looked again at Vasik, calling the cat over to him.
‘Vasik, Vasichka! Come here, tiddles!’
The cat did not move. In fact, not a feline molecule appeared to be moving. Vasya raised his head off the pillow, leaving a slight wet smudge where his sleep dribble had escaped, and placed his feet thankfully into his ancient, soft leather slippers.
‘Vasik! You funny little cat! Come here and give your papa some cuddles!’
He approached little Vasik, but the cat hadn’t heard. The cat was a black-and-white pool of silky stillness.
‘Vasik! What a lazy pussy!’
And the old man leant down to give the cat a tickle. At that m
oment, the cat’s head lifted and turned towards him, clicking as it did so. The old man withdrew his hand as if he had been bitten.
‘No! No, pussy, no!’
Where Vasik’s eyes should have been, there squirmed twin balls of worms. Vasik opened his mouth, but in place of a meow, the cat spewed out pint after pint of porridge. The thick liquid spread out in a grey puddle until the entire floor was covered, and Vasya’s ancient slippers became cold and slimy beneath his toes.
‘Get out!’ shouted the old man, backing away in fear. But now the zombified cat began to scream, scream like a soul in torment, arching its back and making a noise that surely could be heard in both heaven and in hell. Vasya went to kick it and found that his legs were tied, bound at the ankle. He struggled for a moment, reached out his arms in a desperate attempt to steady himself, and then fell like a tree in the forest, landing face-down in the porridgy cat vomit, the shock of the movement jolting right through his body, but the sticky sick covering his nose and mouth, making it hard for him to breathe.
‘Help me, pussy!’ he cried thickly. ‘Help me, pussy!’
At that moment, Vasya awoke as if breaking the surface of the sea, to find an intent, personal stare being directed at him from not more than twenty centimetres away. Shura was so close he could feel his heartbeat thudding through the bedclothes. Behind him, he could see the bunk was surrounded by curious on-lookers.
‘You calling me Pussy, oldie?’ Shura murmured the words, and Vasya was unsure what was going on. ‘You want my help?’
‘Er, no, Shura, I was dreaming. About my pussy.’
Shura eyed him doubtfully, a smile playing around his greasy lips.
‘Your pussy?’
‘Yes, my pussycat, Vasik. I’m sorry if I disturbed you.’
‘Your cat? You were screeching and writhing like that while you were dreaming about a cat?’ Shura laughed, and the other prisoners standing around the bed did the same, all looking down at Vasya, their mouths open, salivating, laughing at him. Vasya was mightily relieved to be a source of mirth rather than offence … or anything else.
‘He’s black and white, with a little red collar. Oh yes, I always make sure he’s got a collar on. He’s a very good cat, generally. But in my dream, he was being very odd indeed. He appeared to have eaten a surfeit of prison porridge, and was feeling unwell. Oh yes, it was quite a dream, and not one that I would like to repeat in a hurry. Oh my, I do wonder how he’s getting on without me.’ Vasya was conscious that he was rambling, but felt safer as long as he was talking.
Galina Petrovna's Three-Legged Dog Story Page 24