Galina Petrovna’s Three-Legged Dog Story. Andrea Bennett
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staircase and over to the reception desk, where a lady in a bobble hat sat knitting a blanket. ‘Please call for an ambulance, Alicia Nikolaevna, there has been an accident.’
‘An accident? Another one? What do you old birds do up there? That’s the third time this summer!’
‘Please just call the ambulance, Alicia Nikolaevna. There is a man in pain, and he needs help.’
‘And it’s always the men, isn’t it? Why is it always the men? What do you do to them up there? Poor old Afanasy Albertovich last month, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, that was most unfortunate, but please – just get on the phone, Alicia Nikolaevna.’
‘I’ve not seen him since, you know! No-one has!’
Galia gave the door keeper a stern look, for several seconds. ‘Alicia Nikolaevna, the phone—’
‘Yes, yes, I’m doing it! I’ve just got to finish this line.’
Galia thumped her hand on the desk with a gravity that surprised both of them. The other woman slowed her knitting, completed a stitch and put it down with an exasperated sigh.
‘Some old people should know their places!’ Alicia Nikolaevna shrilled as she reached for the phone.
Galia strode back up the grand marble staircase with purposeful steps. Just as she reached the top, the big metal doors at the front of the building clattered open and a stampede of small feet slapped their way across the grand hallway in an awful hurry and made straight for the staircase.
‘Stop, no children allowed in here! Get out!’ cried Alicia Nikolaevna, jumping up from her chair and dropping the knitting and the phone to the floor.
The children slowed and glanced at her briefly, but on spying Galia at the top of the stairs surged forward again en-masse.
‘Baba Galia, Baba Galia! It’s terrible! Come quick! Something terrible has happened!’
Galia’s jaw sagged slightly, and she wished she hadn’t wished for more excitement at the Elderly Club.
‘What, children?’
‘He’s taken Boroda!’
‘Who? What are you talking about?’
‘The dog van! The Exterminator! He’s taken Boroda!’
‘We told him she wasn’t wild, but he took her with the others anyway, and put her in the van.’
‘He said she hadn’t got a collar on, so she must be wild. He said it’s the law!’
‘She left her headdress behind, Baba Galia! I found it in the street! Look!’
‘Shut up you idiot, what does that matter? They’re going to gas her!’
‘No, they’re going to shoot her. That’s what he said.’
‘No, he said they would exterminate her by all means necessary.’
Galia looked at the broken leafy headdress, her mouth open. She felt her knees buckle and dropped the metal spoon she’d been clasping for the last five minutes down the concrete steps, the sound reverberating off the marble like a mad church bell. Her kneecaps cracked on the floor where they hit, the goodly layer of flesh not enough to cushion them, and even Alicia Nikolaevna looked up from her desk with a flash of sharp interest on her face.
‘Baba Galia, are you ill? You must get up and run after the van!’ one of the children cried as they tugged at her shoulder.
Galia could not speak. In the deep black night enveloping the building, they heard the faint imprint of a howl as a rattling engine passed by a couple of streets away.
Vasya Volubchik let the old man’s head drop with a soft thunk when he saw Galia, out on the landing, drop to her knees. This was not good. The old man would have to be left to the women. Vasya hobbled over to the door and stood hovering gently, unsure where to begin.
‘Galia my dear, what’s the matter? Are you ill?’
‘No, Dedya Vasya, Boroda has been taken away by the exterminator van! They are going to gas her! She will be eaten by the wild dogs and then gassed!’ Masha, the tallest and boldest, started to cry.
‘My goodness, is this true?’
The children nodded vigorously, all of them now sniffling and dripping like leaky buckets.
‘Galia, there is no time to waste, why are you on your knees? Get up, get up, woman!’ Vasya gripped Galia’s shoulders and looked into her face. He always thought this moment would be full of joy, to touch her and gaze into her eyes. But alas, it stopped him short and made his heart thump in a most unpleasant way. Because for a moment, his Galia was lost: the dependable, stolid woman had disappeared and been replaced by a frightened child dressed up as a haggard old lady with death in her eyes and her mouth wide open.
‘Galia, listen to me: don’t despair. Even if the Exterminator has got Boroda – and we don’t know that for certain – it’s not without hope. We can go after him! And, and even if that fails, I know where he lives, that Mitya the Exterminator. We can find him! Now is no time to sit on the floor. Look – the old ladies are looking at you; they think you’ve lost your reason!’
And indeed, the coven had, as one, ceased to minister to the old man with the broken hip, and were gathered, goggle eyed, at the doorway, watching Galia minutely, while the old man took up groaning again and pleading for a nip of vodka, or a swift death.
‘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