‘No! No, Galina Petrovna, nothing of that sort. Please, just wait a moment. Perhaps I can explain.’
‘Oh, I wish you would!’ Kommandant Krapivin leapt from his chair and hopped around the desk to sit on the front edge, the better to hear Mitya’s words.
‘My father … my father—’
Mitya was interrupted by an extended groan from his mother as she crossed herself twice.
‘My father—’
Again the old woman groaned and crossed herself.
‘Is that strictly necessary, Baba?’ Kommandant Krapivin gave her a stern look.
The old woman put her hands in her lap and clamped her toothless jaws shut.
‘My father was a chronic alcoholic.’
‘Well, that goes for half the country, Mitya,’ said the Kommandant breezily.
‘I accept that, yes, but that doesn’t make it right. That is how we end up with people like Petya Kulakov and my neighbour, Andrei the Svoloch.’
‘Is that really his name?’
‘No, Kommandant.’
‘Kommandant, please be quiet. We need to hear from Mitya.’ Galia turned to the Exterminator. ‘Go on, Mitya. We’re listening.’
‘Thank you, Galina Petrovna.’ Mitya looked down at his fingers, still swollen and sore, and took a breath. ‘Well … it’s like this. My father beat both me and my mother often. Many things made him angry. If we made any noise, or the dinner was not on the table at the right time, or we attempted to hide his home brew, we were in for it.’
‘We got it!’ The old woman nodded her head, and started to weep silent tears that got caught up in the wrinkles around her eyes.
‘My only consolation, my only joy, at this young age, was my dog, Sharik.’
An almost visible shockwave travelled around the room, bringing tears to Galia’s eyes and wobbling the hairs on the top of Zoya’s head.
‘But, Mitya, I don’t understand. You … you hate dogs. To you they are vermin, to be exterminated: that’s what you said? You wanted to kill my Boroda – you probably have done …’ Galia broke off, unable to continue.
Mitya bit his lip, and caught Katya’s eye. She was serene, swaying in her chair slightly, slowly twirling her hair around one narrow finger and smiling slightly to him.
‘We lived in a little wooden house: a hovel, really. We hadn’t qualified for modern housing, mostly because of my father’s drinking. One day, he came home late, and in a terrible temper. He was already drunk, but demanded more when he got home. He had drunk us dry; there was nothing in the cupboard, so Mother sent me round the corner to one of the neighbours to beg some spirit. I had to try many doors: we were well-known already, and most wouldn’t give us the time of day. Eventually, I managed to borrow half a bottle, and Sharik and I made our way back.’
‘What’s this got to do with Vasya?’ croaked Zoya.
‘Sshh, you old goat!’ whispered Galia in return.
‘Go on. Here, would you like a piece of fruit, perhaps?’
‘No fruit, Kommandant. On returning to the house, we heard a commotion in the yard: my father had my mother by the throat, and was attempting to strangle her. Old Sharik couldn’t bear it, and leapt on my father, snatching at his neck with his teeth, and barking like a mad thing. I can still hear it now.’
‘Brave dog!’ said Galia. ‘Like my Boroda! Brave and loyal.’
‘Brave, yes, Galina Petrovna, but also old. He did his best, but Father was too strong for him. They wrestled in the yard, on and on. But Father was possessed by the devil. Sharik became exhausted, but Father wanted total victory. He couldn’t abide disobedience. He staggered across the yard, the dog’s scruff in his hand …’
‘And?’
‘And, I have to tell you, that he threw my Sharik down the well. We heard the splash when he hit the bottom. We heard him swimming for dear life, around and around in that awful pit. And later … howling, for hours, treading water. Father wouldn’t let us near: he made us sit on the bench in the kitchen, made Mother cook his dinner, and all the while we could hear our beloved Sharik calling to us. Father sat in the yard all night, listening to him suffer, making sure we couldn’t save him. It took him all night to drown.’
A silence thick as felt fell across the room.
‘And the next day, he was gone. I … I went to school, and hated everybody. I couldn’t bear to look at anyone. I couldn’t bear to think. Mother never drank water again, and me – I made sure I would never be close to anyone again: not animals, and not humans.’
A large tear rolled down Kommandant Krapivin’s face, and he drew an unsteady breath.
‘That is very sad, very sad indeed. You know what I felt, then, when you held my dog over the railings?’ Galia leant forward and looked into Mitya’s eyes.
‘But I still don’t see how this connects with Vasya Volubchik?’ broke in Zoya, from her corner. ‘Your daddy was a bad one; that seems clear. He killed your dog, which was unforgivable, but that doesn’t explain—’
‘No, well, let me enlighten you, if you don’t already know, Comrade Krasovskaya. The thing is … the thing is that I remembered who gave us Sharik in the first place. All this week I’ve been remembering things. Something sparked the memories off: maybe it was … maybe it was love,’ he turned to Katya, ‘or maybe it was rescuing those puppies in the park, the way they cried … or maybe just concussion … I don’t know. But I remembered what happened to Sharik, and the reason I’d started hating animals. It was tucked away, in the back of my mind, in a place I didn’t know was there. I remembered Sharik, and how he’d been my best friend. How I’d laid beside him at night, his warm fur keeping me cosy even in wintertime. How he’d always walked to kindergarten with me, and then waited for me at the gate. And I realized that I’d dealt with my loss by closing my heart and turning what I’d loved so much into something to hate.’
‘That’s a terrible thing, Mitya,’ said Galia, kindly.
‘And when I was lying in a pool of my own blood and vomit outside the Smile Bar!, after a disagreement with Kulakov, I had a vision. It was very vague – just scraps of memory, like jigsaw pieces, but on one piece there was Sharik, full of life and playing with a new red ball, and on another piece, there was a kindly man with a big smile who held my hand while we patted the dog and played. And that man … I realized that man was Vasily Volubchik.’
‘Hell and damnation!’ Baba Plovkina cried out and then got back to grinding her gums and mashing her handkerchief in her lap.
‘And he gave us that dog, I think, because he felt guilty.’
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 ver
min, 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.
26
The End of the Beginning
‘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.’
‘Oh my, Vasya, you bad boy! Did you leave her? Why? Tell us more! It’s good to talk, really.’ Kommandant Krapivin could not contain himself.
‘I was young and confused, Kommandant. I was already engaged to the lady who went on to become my wife, and I was not strong enough to make the right decision. I let fate carry me along, and I pretended that there had been nothing between us, didn’t I, Zhenya?’
Baba Plovkina said nothing, but ground her jaws lightly and looked towards the window with a glare that threatened to puncture the air as it wavered in the heat.
‘Zhenya came to me, a few weeks before my wedding, and told me some news … she told me that … she told me she was expecting a baby. I was thrilled, but also petrified, and … I couldn’t cope. I couldn’t call off my own wedding, I couldn’t bear to upset my fiancée, and to be honest, I could not face the scandal. So instead, I sent her away, but decided to support her in secret. It was our secret. I visited her often, both before the baby came, and afterwards. I gave him little gifts, that sunny little boy. But then … I watched her marry that sorry excuse for a man, and Zhenya, I saw how he mistreated you over the years. I knew things weren’t right, and I knew the boy was suffering, but I turned a blind eye. I pretended to myself that there was nothing I could do.’ Vasya paused and, after a short struggle, produced a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and blew his nose into it, long and loud. The sound echoed off the window frames.
‘Oh, stop!’ Baba Plovkina suddenly exploded like a firecracker off the beanbag and stood at her full, tiny height in the middle of the room. ‘Stop, stop, stop! I can’t bear it!’
‘I’m sorry, Zhenya!’ Vasya thrust his handkerchief back into his pocket and fell to his knees before the tiny old lady, burying his face in the hem of her floral skirt. Zoya sucked in her breath loudly as Galia bit her lip and lo
oked away.
‘Get up, you old fool! Why do you think I’m here?’
Vasya slowly raised his head, his grey eyes looking non-plussed, and gave a vague shrug.
‘Erm …’
‘It’s not just you who has a confession to make.’
‘What, more?’ whispered Galia incredulously, and blotted her forehead with her handkerchief.
‘There’s always more, Galia. These peasants …’ and Zoya shook her head towards Baba Plovkina.
‘Vasya, you old fool, you old … treasure. I … I …’
‘Go on, Mother, say your piece,’ encouraged Mitya with surprising gentleness.
‘Vasya, I …’ and with those words, Baba Plovkina also dropped to her knees. Vasya took her brittle, red hands in his and looked into her cherry-pip eyes.
‘Vasya, my pigeon, understand,’ her voice was soft, whispered, ‘I lied to you. It wasn’t true, you see. I told you that you were Mitya’s father, maybe, because I really wanted it to be true. But it wasn’t. It was that old scumbag who I married, for my sins. But once I had lied to you that night, I couldn’t stop. I wanted you to visit. I wanted it to be you.’
Vasya dropped her hands as his face first faded into white, then shot through with purple, then became tinged with green. His breath came in short, understated rasps, his mouth working with a twitching motion, but no sound coming out. Galia feared that this time a stroke, or even worse, was totally unavoidable. She pushed herself to her feet to fetch water, but found Julia the secretary already several steps in front of her, clinking glasses and fruit bowls, while Kommandant Krapivin drooped by his desk open-mouthed, eyes glistening.
Vasya closed his mouth slowly and his eyes, shiny and wide as those of a small child, looked into the depths of Baba Plovkina’s shrivelled irises.
‘All those years?’
‘All those years. Yes.’ Baba Plovkina looked away and shrugged her shoulders. ‘I came to say sorry today. I heard you’d been arrested, and that my so-called son was involved, so I thought … in case you die in here, you know … I should put things right.’
Galina Petrovna's Three-Legged Dog Story Page 27