Galina Petrovna’s Three-Legged Dog Story. Andrea Bennett
and their wits about them. Girls were for when the fight was over. Or nearly over, as Mitya’s fight would never be over, fully. He knew that if he ever got in the position of being in physical contact with a girl, he would make sure that she knew where she was in his order of priorities before any actual physical contact ensued: somewhere near the bottom, way down the line after work, eating, sleeping, beer, going to the toilet, Depeche Mode and ice hockey. Oh yes, he’d show her. She’d realize how lucky she was, to be in physical contact with Mitya. One day. When he had the time. When he met the right one.
Mitya’s boot brush was still poised in his hand, one plastic-leather boot shiny, the other slightly dull. He collected his thoughts, pushed the girls firmly to the back of his mind, in fact out of it completely, and polished the dull boot with a frenetic stroke that turned his hand to a blur and made his neatly combed hair vibrate like a warm blancmange on a washing machine. When he had finished, the boot gleamed and small beads of sweat stood out on Mitya’s forehead. He folded a piece of tissue twice and blotted away the small drops. His arm ached slightly, and his heart was beating faster.
With satisfactory boots in place, he collected his wallet, keys and comb, and indulged in a last look around the room. Everything was in its place under the glare of the bright single bulb. He was out of here, and it was going to be a long night. He felt big, and enjoyed the noise his confident footsteps made stomping on the floor. He was a man on a mission, a man with a plan. He was important. The only cloud on the horizon, so to speak, was his bladder, which was now painfully full.
In the hall, Andrei the Svoloch with his hateful dyed hair and cheap cologne was leaning against his doorway, smoking a cigarette with one hand and rubbing the thigh of what appeared to be a schoolgirl with the other.
‘Hey Mitya, off for another night on duty? You’re so fucking dull, mate! Why don’t you join us for a drink? Come on – have a look at what we’ve got on the table? Maybe you want some?’ Andrei slid his hand right between the schoolgirl’s legs and she squeaked.
Mitya winced, but despite himself, he glanced into his neighbour’s blood-red room. It was a scene of hell. There were women everywhere: draped over the divan, curling over the TV, straddling the gerbil cage.
‘I’m going to work, just as soon as I’ve had a piss,’ he muttered, and stomped down the corridor. Turning on a sudden impulse at the toilet door, he bit out the words, ‘You need to clean this toilet, Andrei. It’s your turn. I did it the last four times. I’m not doing it again!’
Andrei the Svoloch laughed, displaying two rows of stumpy yellow teeth, and pushed the schoolgirl back inside the red room, closing the door behind him with a hollow thud. Mitya pushed hard on the toilet door, and his nose connected with the back of his hand. It was locked, again.
‘Son of a bitch.’
His swollen bladder would not be denied. The strain of keeping the pee in was bringing a film of sweat to his smooth upper lip. He had been periodically waiting to use the filthy toilet for over half an hour but every time he gave up and went back to his room, the cursed toilet occupant would come lurching out and be replaced by another incontinent before Mitya could get back down the corridor. So now he had to wait, and risked leaning on the wall next to the violent alcoholic’s door, his slim legs tightly bound together, hands clenching and unclenching. He hammered on the door again.
‘Come out of there you stinking old tramp! I’m going to call the skoraya – you’ll go to the dry tank!’ Mitya really, badly, needed to pee.
The door opened slightly, and in the festering half-light a peachy soft face looked out at him, hesitantly. After a moment the door opened wider on its squealing hinges and out stepped, not the stinking old alcoholic with vomit down his chin, but an angel come to earth. Mitya gasped and felt a small pool of saliva collect in the corner of his mouth and then trickle gently on to his chin. He had never seen a girl so beautiful and so perfect. Blonde hair framed a delicate face with apple cheeks, a small freckled nose and eyes that seemed to stroke a place deep within his stomach. And here she was, in the stinking bog, with a twist of yellow toilet paper stuck to her perfect, peach-coloured plastic slipper.
‘I’m sorry,’ she lisped, looking up at him through gluey black lashes.
‘No! Ah …’ Mitya wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘I’m sorry, er, small female. Let me!’ and he held the wobbling door open for her as she slid through the gap between it and his underarm. ‘I didn’t know … I thought you were the old man – from up the corridor. He spends … hours in the … smallest room.’
‘Jesus, I’m surprised he’s still alive,’ joked the perfect angel with a wink.
Mitya felt something twang deep within him, like a ligament in his very soul stretching and snapping, never to be repaired. She turned slowly and swayed, tiny and ethereal, up the hallway towards the end room, and then hesitated, looking back at him from the doorway.
‘Who are you, beautiful?’ Mitya blurted, without meaning to make a sound, without knowing his mouth had opened, without giving his tongue permission to form any words at all.
‘Katya,’ she said, as if it was obvious, and she vanished behind the farthest door. The click of the latch struck Mitya like a punch in the face, and he gasped.
He took a long, slow piss and was struck by the thought that she, the angel, had been seated where his golden stream of warm pee was flying and foaming, just a few moments before. He shuddered and then, despite himself, leant down towards the toilet and could just make out a trace of her scent among the other odours rising from the dark bowl, the floor and the bin. Her scent, the musky scent of an angel, was subtle but powerful. Another hand rattling the door handle pulled him from his reverie. He pushed his way out of the cubicle, past the wobbly old man who roared something indecipherable but crushingly depressing at him, and made his way down the stairs and out to his van.
‘That my life should come to this,’ he thought, and aimed a ferocious kick at a passing tabby cat. He missed it by a wide margin and lost his balance for a moment, grabbing hold of the hedge to save himself and trying to ignore the muffled laughter bubbling from a bench behind it: a bench laden with small children and elderly hags, of course. ‘Females, children: nothing but trouble. I’ve got my work,’ he muttered to himself, and brushed the leaves from his shirt, ready to march off. As he did so, a butterfly bobbed up from the depths of the hedge and collided with his nose, making him flail slightly. Again muffled laughter scuffed his ears.
‘What are you doing, sitting there, cluttering the place up? Haven’t you got work to do?’ he spluttered hoarsely over the hedge.
The babushkas looked at the small children and the small children looked at the babushkas, and then they all began giggling again, tears streaming down their cheeks.
‘There, there, Mitya, on your way,’ croaked a sun-kissed face pitted with tiny, shining eyes.
‘Idiots. Geriatrics and idiots. You’re no better than rats, laughing rats,’ scolded Mitya, but not loud enough for his audience to hear. He turned on his heel towards the setting sun, and his shiny van that glinted in its rosy rays. The night was young.
The Azov House of Culture Elderly Club
Galia smiled with quiet satisfaction as she finished making her way along the corridor, dishing out the steaming vareniki to her aged and tremulous neighbours. Xenia, hunched in the midst of a gallery of grainy pictures of her son, had been very happy to take the food. Galia had greeted the son as was expected, crossing herself in front of the little shrine devised in his memory and housed behind the television in Xenia’s sitting room. Twenty years had passed, but the son’s keys and school bag still lay on the cabinet in the hall, where he had last thrown them that day in July 1974 before heading off for the river, and adventures.
Next was poor Denis,