Galina Petrovna’s Three-Legged Dog Story

‘So you admit you’ve got my dog? You scoundrel!’

‘Now, now, Galia, my dear, I am sure Mitya, I mean the Exterminator, is a reasonable man. Maybe we could recompense you for the return of the lady’s dog? We’d be happy to make a donation to any charity you’d care to name, or to cover any personal costs.’ Vasya squeezed a wad of worn bank notes from his pocket and fanned them out for Mitya the Exterminator to see. Enough for some vodka and the dried fish to go with it, Vasya thought.

Mitya stared at the money for two seconds and then glanced into Vasya’s face, his nostrils flaring as if the stench of dog had finally sliced into his olfactory nerves. ‘No, Citizen … Volubchik, I don’t want your money. I enjoy my job – do you understand? Not everyone is motivated by money, even in these days of “freedom” and “democracy”.’

Vasya began to stutter a response, but the Exterminator cut across him.

‘No, Elderly Citizen! These dogs have no place in freedom and democracy. These dogs are strays, and they are unhygienic. And I will deal with them. It is my service. Now go home.’

‘No, please!’ Galia stepped purposefully between Mitya the Exterminator and the van. Mitya thought about shoving the old citizen roughly away, but the thought of having to touch her made his stomach shrivel. He decided that the non-standard issue Taser might be the best weapon for this particular job. Vasya gasped as he saw the Exterminator’s hand reach for his holster, and made a dash, on legs still coming to life, to protect Galia.

Galia saw Vasya launch himself at her at the same moment as Mitya the Exterminator fumbled with a holster. She felt afraid, but didn’t know why. Surely he wasn’t going to shoot her?

A second later a screech as if from Baba Yaga herself ripped through the night. All three protagonists froze, with fear squeezing each and every heart. Only Mitya seemed to know the likely source of the chilling wail, and his head jerked towards the entrance to the flats. In a flash, a tiny old woman with a bristling chin and a brightly coloured headscarf darted out of the stairwell with something gleaming raised above her head. It took Galia a second or two to work out what it was: a sickle.

‘Go to hell you son of a bitch!’ she screeched in a pitch so high it set all the neighbourhood dogs off as she lunged at Mitya the Exterminator with a wicked, slashing motion. Galia and Vasya ducked on instinct, but the old woman hadn’t even seen them. Her terrible eyes tracked the Exterminator alone.

‘No!’ he shouted, backing away, hands outstretched.

‘Murdering bastard, get out of here!’ Again she lunged, and the Exterminator lost his footing slightly, backing away, scrabbling like a chicken about to lose its head.

‘Mother, no! Drop the sickle! It’s me, Mitya! I’ve come for some washing!’

Vasya and Galia stared at each other, dumbfounded for a moment, unable to take in the spectacle of David and Goliath that was unfolding in front of them as the tiny woman chased Mitya the Exterminator around the courtyard, screeching like a banshee with the sickle held high over her head.

A chorus of barking from the back of the van reminded Galia that she’d come here to do more than just gawp at suburban madness. Pulling the van’s battered doors wide, she peered into the murk, her ears ringing. Inside she could make out a patchwork of small cages, each stacked on the other, each housing a miserable dog, each miserable dog just a blur of heaving fur interspersed with white teeth that flashed in the moonlight. Hardly daring to touch the nearest cage, which wobbled about as if on its own accord, she spotted Boroda near the back, small and scared. Galia began to claw out the other cages one by one, placing them on the ground as gently as she could while also withdrawing her hands from the feel of claw and drool as quickly as possible. The stench of the stray dogs caught in her throat and she coughed and gagged as the cages came out.

At last she reached Boroda and heaved out the cage. Glancing over her shoulder to make sure Mitya the Exterminator was still thoroughly occupied with what was apparently his mother; she tugged back the bolt and grabbed the shivering dog.

‘What about these poor wretches, Galia?’ Vasya pointed to the vibrating cages and their contents, strewn about the courtyard floor. ‘What shall we do with these? We can’t just leave them!’

‘Do as you think best, Vasya, I can only care for my dog!’ Galia replied over her shoulder, running for the motorbike with Boroda in her arms. ‘Just do it quickly, for heaven’s sake!’

Vasya looked at the miserable cages and their frenetic contents, and decided quickly. Moving them roughly round so that all the cage doors faced in the same direction, he grabbed the Exterminator’s bag of fat bits from the back of the van, strew them on the ground in a brief trail leading away from him, and then, leaning over the cages from behind, drew back all the bolts and flung the doors as wide as he could. Without waiting to look, he then took to his heels and, with an energy he hadn’t felt since the previous decade, hobbled unevenly across the courtyard to where Galia waited for him on the motorbike.

Galia folded Vasya back in to the sidecar and placed the terrified dog in his lap. She felt like a girl again, a feeling she could almost taste, which rose from the pit of her stomach all the way up: she had outwitted the enemy and might live forever, or just till tomorrow …

As they turned a wide arc to return to town, Vasya glimpsed Mitya the Exterminator falling backwards down the cellar steps into the bowels of the building, the raving old woman following close behind, the moonlight licking the edge of her sickle as it crested above her head. Towards them heaved a pack of stray dogs, howling and yapping and hungry for vengeance. Vasya felt his stomach turn over, and turned his head away. Some things were probably best quickly forgotten.

5 (#ulink_498c25f2-73d6-53d2-90b7-ebb4d06f54a7)

A Visit (#ulink_498c25f2-73d6-53d2-90b7-ebb4d06f54a7)

‘You say you know his mother?’

Galia threw the question over her shoulder.

Vasya Volubchik was finally seated on a stool at her kitchen table, a place he had often yearned to be, but the circumstances this evening were far from how he had envisaged such a visit. His legs ached like he had been kicked by an apoplectic mule, so much so that Galia had had to half carry, half drag him up the stairs to her apartment. The evening’s upsetting events had effectually driven all thoughts of romance, chivalry and honour from his mind. He felt a bit low, a bit stupid, and really rather old.

‘Yes, we were quite friendly, a long time ago. She was a happy little thing, bright as a button. She was always smiling, singing, dancing. She helped out at my school for some years.’ Vasya’s green eyes became filmy, like still ponds in bloom, and Galia turned away again to frown at her hands as she filled the kettle. A small, semi-stifled tut escaped her, despite herself.

‘And that was his mother we saw tonight?’ Galia gave him a sideways glance, one grey eyebrow raised.

‘Yes.’ Vasily’s gaze skimmed the floor, and a slight movement in his papery, transparent eyelids suggested that a little drop of moisture was escaping from each eye. Galia sighed and set the chipped enamel kettle on the stove. Her match lit the gas with a comforting pop and they sat in silence, save for the soft hiss of the burning blue flame and the occasional bumbling drone of a late-night, sleepy mosquito.

‘Vasily Semyonovich, I have to say, she didn’t seem very happy to me tonight. In fact, she seemed—’

‘Yes, she appears to have changed somewhat since I knew her. I believe grief has a lot to do with it.’ Vasya cut her off, his tone a little clipped. Galia looked up sharply: she wanted to know more.

‘Grief?’

‘Oh, it’s not an interesting story, Galia, really it isn’t. Surely you are already familiar with it?’

Galia shook her head. ‘I don’t know the lady at all. She must keep over at the East Side.’

‘It was just a little small-town heart break, you know. Her husband ran off, a long time ago, and her son is a big disappointment, obviously. That’s the long and the short of it.’ Vasya harrumphed for a moment or two and sniffed, folded his lopsided glasses into his shirt pocket and daintily blotted his nose on the back of his index finger. Then, carefully rolling up his trousers to knee height, he pursed his ancient lips and began tending to his shins with Galia’s proffered iodine and cotton wool. Delicate blobs of green appeared on his dry skin, like moss on wintery silver birches. The pain was making him snappy, Galia thought, and the red blood spots on his trousers, now turning to a rusty brown, were also adding to his bad mood. She toyed with the thought of washing them for him, but the realization that he would be sitting in her kitchen for half the night with those shins on show quickly changed her mind. She felt bad for him, but she knew where to draw the line.

‘Have you heard about Goryoun Tigranovich?’ Vasya looked up from his sorry shins to pose the question.

‘What do you mean?’

‘He’s disappeared, apparently. Something to do with some questionable business with oil wells out east, I heard.’

‘Oh nonsense, Vasily Semyonovich! He’s gone on holiday that is all. You shouldn’t believe everything that every gossipy old bird tells you, you know.’

Vasya returned his attention to his shins, and Galia felt guilty for snapping.

‘Who did her husband run off with?’

‘Whose husband?’

‘Mitya the Exterminator’s mother’s, of course.’

‘Oh, that. Not who, what.’

‘What?’

‘Exactly! Apparently, he took their entire potato harvest, a year’s stock of jam, a pig, a quart of home brew and three sacks of onions. She never got over it. It affected her mind.’

‘Yes, I can imagine,’ Galia said quietly. She passed Vasya a cup of black tea with raspberry jam huddled in the bottom of it. The cup bore the legend ‘Stalingrad – Hero City 1945!’ and was one of Galia’s favourites. She then lowered herself on to her stool near the fridge. When the weather was this close, and all clothes felt like warm wet sheets binding her body, she liked to sit with the fridge door open and her shoulders resting on a flannel draped over the ice box. It was usually infinitely refreshing, although this evening the frost hardly seemed to reach her tired, if not fried, nerve endings.

‘Did that have an effect on … on … the Exterminator, Mitya?’

‘I really don’t know, Galia. He was a delight as a toddler, I seem to recall. A cheeky, happy child – quite outgoing really. But ever since school age, well, seven or eight, he’s been very odd. I remember he was always pulling the wings off butterflies and cutting up caterpillars and snipping worms into pieces … and brusque with his fellow learners, terribly taciturn. I thought maybe he’d become a scientist, and I did try to push him in that direction when he was small, but alas, it was not to be.’

‘You taught him then, Vasya?’

‘No, not directly. He was in the school, but not my class, it was just …’ Vasya trailed off and contemplated the floor in silence for some moments, his face grim. Galia sighed and took in the vibrating, hairy moths circling the yellow kitchen lamp up above, and then glanced into the gloom under the table. Boroda was in her box, curled up, but not asleep: still trembling, and with her chocolate silk eyes wide open.