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.
‘Poor dog, poor lapochka!’ muttered Galia, and rubbed the inside of her knees with each fist. She would be as stiff as a cadaver tomorrow. The clock in the bedroom struck midnight, and Galia longed for her pillow.
‘Galia, you must get that dog a collar.’ She was surprised by the sudden certainty in Vasya’s voice. He had finished with his shins, and now seemed determined to get his point across.
‘It’s not in the contract, Vasya,’ said Galia. ‘She’s my dog, but she’s not really my dog, if you see what I mean. We found each other. She chooses to live with me, so it doesn’t seem right to make her wear a collar. We choose to share our lives. We don’t need to display ownership. It’s not like …’ she hesitated slightly, ‘it’s not like we’re married, or bound in any way.’
‘Galia, yes, I accept that you are not married to your dog.’
Galia blushed and smiled slightly.
‘But you can’t go through tonight’s fiasco ever again, and neither can the dog. It’s monstrous. You must get Boroda a collar. You must take responsibility for her. It’s what civilized society insists, and there can be no argument.’
Galia wanted to argue, in fact she felt it was her duty to argue, and it was on the tip of her tongue to argue, but the battling words died in her throat and instead she took a slow sip of her tea. The day had been a trial for her, it was true. Difficult, for some reason, even before she had left the flat, even while she was cooking with all those irritating memories circling her for no reason. And then during the endless Elderly Club meeting she had felt uneasy, and not a little agitated. And after that the evening had become farcical, dangerous and threatening by turn, in a whirl of motorcycle wheels, dog’s teeth and mad old ladies with sickles in their hands.
In the end, it came down to this: she had stood on a point of principle, assuming that her fellow members of society would respect that principle, and she had come unstuck. Maybe it was time to give in, just a little, to make life safer. Maybe it was time to just get a collar and be done with it. It wouldn’t really hurt, would it?
‘But what if she bites me when I try to put it on? Or leaves home in disgust?’ asked Galia, with a teasing smile that showed a glimpse of her straight white teeth, and the gold ones that crowded round them.
‘She won’t bite you, and she won’t leave home. That dog has more sense than you give her credit for, Galia. She is your willing accomplice, and will respect your decision. You’re just being stubborn.’
Galia sighed. ‘Yes, Vasya, I admit it: maybe you’re right, on this occasion. There has been some stubbornness in this situation. I will get her a collar in the morning. But only if I find the time between the vegetable patch and the market.’
‘And a lead?’
‘A lead? Why would I want a lead?’ laughed Galia, the sound throaty and warm and quite unexpected to Vasya. ‘You go too far, Vasily Semyonovich!’
‘Why indeed? Of course, you won’t be taking her for walks or tying her up. She organises her own entertainment, I understand that. Oh well, maybe we can look at the issue of the lead next week, or next month. Towards autumn, perhaps?’ Now it was Vasya’s turn to trail off slightly as Galia fixed him with her steady blue gaze, and stopped laughing.
‘Well, all’s well that ends well, as they say!’ Vasya smiled and jerked his tea glass towards the light-fittings and moths in a toast. Galia leant away from the ice box and was about to stand to join in the toast when a sharp rap at the front door stopped her in mid-flow, hand raised, mouth open, eyes round.
‘Who’s that?’ she whispered. Boroda whined softly and stood up stiffly under the table, her claws stuttering slightly on the lino floor.
Vasya carefully propelled himself round on his stool with his long, spindly legs and peered out of the kitchen window into the warm, dark courtyard below. Once his eyes had adjusted to the depth of the gloom, he saw, lurking like a playground bully between the peeling swings and the weather-beaten chess tables, the unmistakable outline of a police car.
‘Galina Petrovna, I smell trouble,’ whispered Vasily, and pointed to the car with a nobbled finger.
There was another sharp rap at the door. This time the sound was harder, as if a baton, rather than a fist, was making contact.
‘Better let them in, my dear.’
‘I’ll let them in, in just a second. Boroda, get in the bedroom – in!’ Galia shooed the dog through the hall and into the bedroom, before gently sliding her inside the wardrobe, and behind a box of old photographs. She pushed the bedroom door to, and made her way stiffly across the hall. As she reached the threshold, the door vibrated in front of her eyes as more blows echoed through the quiet building. She took a deep breath, and slid back the bolts.
In the dim orange light of the hallway, she could make out two figures: one short and stocky, a dishevelled and obviously drunken policeman, and the other taller, younger, also dishevelled and smelling of sweat and dog crap. It