Galina Petrovna’s Three-Legged Dog Story

‘But it’s too late, Vasya, she’s gone. She’s in the van already.’

‘We can chase him down! Listen. My bike is just outside. I’ve been tuning it all day. It’s running like a dream and ready for anything. We can do it, Galia!’

And with the help of the children gathered around him, together they levered Galia upright, dusted her down and jostled her down the steps, through the clattering metal doors and out into the darkened street. At the kerb, Vasya’s ancient but gleaming Ural motorbike and sidecar waited, a vision of polished chrome and blood-red paintwork.

‘Get in, woman, get in!’

Galia held the ends of her headscarf close to her chin and eyed the gleaming motorbike and its deep, narrow sidecar. She knew she would never fit. Her brows drew together, and then she spoke.

‘You get in, Vasya.’

She caught Vasya’s eye, and held it. ‘I’ll drive. It’s the only way.’ Vasya looked from bike to woman to sidecar and back to woman, and then at his shoes. She was right.

‘OK, but follow my instructions.’

‘But of course, Vasily Semyonovich.’

‘Listen!’ cried Masha. They froze, Vasya with one foot the size of a tennis racket in the sidecar, Galia with skirt hitched above her knee, the rosy flesh oozing delicately over the top of her pop sock. The wind carried vague hints of sound, a scrap of a rasping engine, a hint of muffled furry fury which could have been the noise of a dozen wild dogs, maybe in a van, maybe in a tin can buried underground. Maybe in hell.

‘That way!’ shrieked Masha, flinging her right arm wildly into the air. ‘Go! Save the dogs!’

Vasya folded his stiff legs in front of him in the sidecar as Galia hitched up her floral skirt still higher and, with an ease that Vasya couldn’t help noticing, straddled the bike. A sandaled foot kick-started the faithful engine and then, headscarf and frizzy hair streaming in the wind, she increased the revs and took off after Mitya the Exterminator’s van.

Across the bridge and the blackened oily river, past the factory, out to the flats on the new side of town they sped. Galia hadn’t ridden a motorbike for at least thirty years, but after the first couple of minutes and a rather hair-raising bend or two, she discovered that it was, indeed, just like riding a bike. Vasya kept a beady eye on both her gear changing and her speed, while also trying to make out the lights of Mitya the Exterminator’s van in front of them, and the exact texture of the pink flesh that was oozing at him oh-so-beautifully from the top of Galia’s pop sock.

Vasya was aware at this moment that he was a truly modern man, in every sense: not only had he allowed the woman to drive, but he could multi-task, even in a dangerous and unusual situation like this. He congratulated himself, briefly, before the discomfort of being thrown violently forward and his nose coming into close contact with his knees concentrated his mind on other matters, such as the blood spots on his trousers.

Every so often they pulled over to ask teenagers snogging on benches or sniffing glue to tell them which way the Exterminator had gone. Everyone knew his van. When they reached the newest new flats, they glimpsed the van’s red lights for the first time, meandering through the suburbs, looking for dogs to make disappear. Their eyes met for a moment, and then they surged onward. Hearing nothing over the roar of the engine and seeing nothing apart from those twin red lights, they gradually reeled them in, getting closer, starting to make out the back of the van through the thickening dark.

‘Look out!’ Vasya shrieked and Galia squeezed the brakes as hard as she could, as a shoddy-looking ambulance careering in the opposite direction zig-zagged towards them across the middle of the road, siren blaring. The bike skidded crazily and came to a stop just short of the ambulance, side on. Galia panted as the grim faces of the paramedics, sucking on roll-ups on the front seat, grazed past her nose. They were near enough to touch: no, near enough to kiss, and she could smell the interior of the vehicle. Formaldehyde and aspic. ‘Kiss of death,’ muttered Galia with a shudder as she re-started the engine, nodded to Vasya whose face was now the colour and texture of lumpy sour milk, and roared away.

There was no sign of the van. Galia revved the engine and sped along the nameless, characterless streets, past huge blocks of flats with dark windows like empty eye sockets. She had no idea where they were. A cold sweat replaced the hot sweat and she felt the blood drain from her face: there was no sign of them. The long, straight road was thoroughly empty. Seconds ticked by and she felt tears begin to sting the backs of her eyelids. She’d lost them.

She was about to pull over when Vasya grabbed her arm with shaking fingers and pointed to a turning to the right. Galia tutted, and muttered to herself, but followed his instruction.

‘You old idiot, why would they have gone in there? That’s just …’ She trailed off, and pulled the bike up behind a stack of street bins. The van had pulled in to a courtyard between tower blocks that seemed to have become derelict without ever having been finished. She could see vague movements in the mottled darkness.

‘Vasya, how did you know they had come in here, do you have special powers?’ Galia hissed. She wasn’t any more superstitious than most Russian women, but the old man’s insight had intrigued her.

‘Ha, you women, you’re all the same. If a man knows something you don’t, he must be psychic.’

Galia snorted quietly and attempted to dismount the bike with something like dignity, but found it a lot harder than jumping on had been. Vasya disengaged his legs from under his chin and felt the blood returning painfully to his feet. He couldn’t attempt to get out just yet; he knew he’d fall flat on his nose if he did.

Galia began to creep around the bins and into the courtyard to observe the van from a safe distance.

‘Galia, wait for me! Don’t attempt anything on your own!’ Vasya swung his feet to the ground and levered himself into a vertical position, but wasn’t able to walk.

‘Keep your voice down, you old fool!’ chided Galia, still unhappy at being laughed at.

‘I know his mother.’

‘What do you mean, you know his mother?’

‘I know his mother. The Exterminator’s mother. And when he started coming out this way, I guessed.’

‘What did you guess?’ Galia was becoming exasperated.

‘I guessed what Mitya the Exterminator wanted. After a busy night killing dogs, what would any good exterminator want? He’d want to go to his mother’s apartment for some washing and some kasha. It’s what any man would want, surely?’

Galia was just about to respond with some choice words when the rear doors of the van were flung open and a cacophony of howling smashed the night air to flea-bitten pieces. Vasya reached the spot where Galia stood, grimacing at the noise filling the courtyard.

‘What are we going to do now, Galia?’ asked Vasya with a hopeful half-smile.

‘We’re going to get my dog back,’ Galia retorted, and marched, as well as her still-bent and swollen knees would allow her, across the broken ground towards the back of the van. Vasya sighed, words of reply flapping uselessly on his tongue like carp on a dry river bed, and hobbled after her.

‘You have stolen my dog!’

‘Wha—?’ Mitya the Exterminator had been singing under his breath ‘yorr awn, personal dzhezuz’ while removing dog excrement from his boot and his ear with a special knife he kept for that purpose. The dogs were still in cages in the back of the van and he had been mulling over how to ensure that the perpetrator of said excrement never forgot his vengeance in what was to be left of its short life. The sudden appearance beside him of a solid-looking old woman with bent knees and laddered pop socks, shouting throatily and shaking her fists, was both unwelcome and unsettling.

‘You have stolen my dog!’

Mitya sensed that she was angry, and possibly crazy: why else would she be worried about a dog?

‘Who are you, mad woman?’ he asked, his face twisting under eyes that popped with either fear or hatred, Galia was unsure which.

‘You have stolen my dog!’ Galia tried again, finally straightening her legs, although somewhat tentatively. The noise of the dogs in the back of the van filled her head with the sounds of nightmares. Among the howling, barking and growling, she could make out the sound of Boroda, crying softly.

‘Citizen, let me explain,’ said Mitya the Exterminator softly, ‘all the dogs I take have no owner. It follows, therefore, that your dog is not with me.’ Mitya put his excrement knife back in his bum-bag and turned his back on the old woman with funny knees. He hoped she would now disappear as quickly as she had appeared. She gave him the creeps. And he had unfinished business to attend to.

‘You have stolen my dog! She’s grey and has three legs and a small, pointy beard, and she is in the back of your van! I can hear her. Boroda! Boroda! I’m here, darling! Don’t worry; we’ll get you out, lapochka!’

Mitya smiled slightly to himself. The three-legged dog had been a very easy catch, once he’d got out of the bin.

‘Citizen Old Woman, I only take stray dogs, diseased dogs. Dogs that should not be. I never take a dog with a collar. And your dog must have a collar, if it is genuinely your dog. So it cannot be in my van.’

‘No. You don’t understand—’

‘Has your dog got a collar, Elderly Citizen?’

‘No.’

There was a pause in the barking and growling, a silence filled only by the sound of Vasya panting as he made his way across the courtyard. He finally reached them and leant against the side of the van to catch his breath. Mitya the Exterminator turned to Galia and smirked.

‘No collar? Then Citizen Old Woman, you have no dog. You need to familiarise yourself with the legislation, perhaps. End of discussion.’ Mitya turned away to deal with the dogs.

‘No, she is my dog. She lives with me. Boroda! Boroda!’

‘No, Citizen, it is a stray. As set out in Presidential Decree No. 32 of 1994, Section 14, paragraph 3.2 – go home and read it.’