Dog Boy (16 page)

 

It was evening, and he was cold. He cuddled White Sister close and stared out through the leaves at the weak glimmer of coloured lights.

They were lost. He couldn’t think of any way to find out from people how to catch the metro home. What was the human word for his home? He couldn’t think of one that anybody would know.

He trotted cautiously to the streetside with White Sister. Other than a cleanish drunk on the tramstop being shaken by two very bulky militzioner, and a street kid cleaning windscreens at the traffic lights, he could see no one homely. He could see no bomzhi and no dogs. It was terrible to be in a city with only one dog and to have no idea where the bomzhi would be. When he found them, he had a fair idea they would be strange bomzhi, not the mountain and forest clan. Bomzhi knew he was not one of them, as did street kids and skinhead gangs. Dogs knew he was not one of them as well, so here all he could hope to do would be to hover near bomzhi in the hope of becoming a little less visible, and more like a bomzh or a street kid to all the other clans: the militzia, the various clans of house boys, the beggarmasters and that indiscriminate mass of people, men and women and children, who lived in houses, carried zipped bags of various sizes and colours, and cleaned their clothes.

He would have given way again to despair, but White Sister’s tail was up and plumy and her step jaunty. She looked at him repeatedly, waiting for him to lead the way, urging him to hunt. She was hungry. The burden of responsibility pushed him on. He crossed the road at the lights and, alert for any sign of militzia, began to look for a place where people gathered, eddied and ate. He needed a bag desperately if they were to beg for scraps, but this place was so poor in rubbish that he couldn’t find one.

Finally he found a familiar blue dumpster in a lane. He climbed on top of it and managed to wrestle its heavy metal lid open. To his delight, it had plastic bags and mixed rubbish, including old bread, cabbage leaves and chicken bones. He threw as much out to White Sister as he could and stuffed two plastic bags into his pockets, along with the bread, some bones and cabbage leaves for himself. It was a while since he had had cabbage and he started to cheer up.

He nearly dropped the lid on himself when White Sister growled. He scrambled out, losing half a loaf of bread and pinning his hands between the lid and the rim. The two militzioner from the tramstop were at the head of the lane watching him. They were both equally heavy but one was shorter than the other. They were too substantial for him to consider running at them and dodging around or jumping. White Sister’s teeth were bared, her hackles up, but her eyes were sliding to him. She was so far out of her paths that she didn’t know what to do. For a second Romochka stared at the two men. They stood still too, but he sensed from their alert poses that when they moved it would be towards him, and for more than a casual hassle.

‘Eh, you! Papers!’

Romochka didn’t know the lane or where it led, but he turned and ran, his coat swinging. For some reason the militzioner shouted after him but didn’t bother to give chase. He and White Sister pressed themselves into the evening shadows along the walls and made their way to the end of the lane, out into a maze of old shops and ornamented five-storey buildings.

They wandered on. His deepening impression of the city was its bareness; how hard life was going to be until they made it home. There was nothing to be found here. No rubbish gathered in these lanes, no piles of miscellaneous junk filled odd corners. There were no fields with old mattresses and other havens. The grass was all clipped short and no small creatures could find a space to live. Even the fringe of grass between pavements and buildings, that little mouse-run at the edge of everything, was not there. The ravens mewling and complaining in the parks looked well fed, but he couldn’t work out how they got by—or how to catch them. It was a city of many different types of dumpsters but to his dismay most were locked. Here, too, it was as if bomzhi didn’t exist and so far he had seen no single dog that wasn’t clearly a pet.

The shadows darkened and the city’s glimmer intensified to brilliant lights. Scared, fast-moving bomzhi began to appear here and there. Romochka saw a round hole open in the pavement, and a man in a properly filthy overcoat with bottles clinking in his pockets scrambled quickly and surreptitiously out. He swung his big head this way and that in the twilight, then pushed the metal lid to his hole back into place and walked quickly away. This frightened Romochka as much as it informed him. He didn’t dare go down there; he might be trapped with them. He noted, too, the speed at which bomzhi moved on the street. They knew that they were not safe here.

It was a frighteningly barren and uncomfortable place. There was nowhere to stop and think. He was overwrought. He decided that he had to find a safe lair and worry about food and water tomorrow.

They broke into a fenced-off demolition site to get away from the unending tramp of feet and the proximity of fast-moving cars. The site was calm, the engines of the huge earthmovers silent for the night. They clambered over a pile of rubble nearly as high as a building. The summer air was heavy with dust and, as they settled against a lone corner wall in the rubble, Romochka realised how thirsty he was. White Sister panted.

The sounds and smells of the city were muted, but they slept only fitfully, waking at the early dawn. A clear sky arched above the city. It was going to be hot.

Romochka rubbed his gritty face and looked around. The site was piled high with a rubble of multicoloured bricks—some with pale blue paint and plaster on one side; some yellow; some wallpapered. The corner that had sheltered them rose like a broken tooth to one side, its chipped plaster shattered and torn at the top, but somehow both homely and strange up close.

The chains at the mesh gate clanked. Time to go. They climbed over the rubble to the far side, wriggled under the fence into an unfamiliar lane and away. They trotted aimlessly looking for anything that might feed them or give them water. They tried every dumpster and were chased away from the few that Romochka could open. It was a long time now since the cabbage, bread and chicken bones. White Sister’s belly looked pinched high up against her spine. As they made their way down a small lane, following the smell of water, a faint music filled the air. Romochka was too thirsty and hungry, and too scared to think about music, but he did lift his head, jangled by the sweet sounds.

He stopped and reeled: he recognised these buildings: they were the flat cupolas and domes he had seen depicted on station walls, now made real and as round as peaches. Worst of all, in the middle distance, peeping through gaps between buildings, a vast brown water glittered in the afternoon sun. He began to pant, clutching dizzily onto White Sister. There could be no doubt. He shut his eyes to try to lessen the horror.

They were on the other side of the great river.

He could sense that they were a long way downriver from home. They had turned the Roma way between the rising and setting sun but had gone much, much further than the Roma. They would somehow have to find a way across the river, then head upstream until he found the little bit of river he knew from the outer boundary of his city hunting territory, then head between the setting sun and the rising sun until he picked up the Roma trail, then home. And before that, they had to get food.

He sat down under a tree and rocked back and forth, whimpering. That escalator was so long, so deep underground! Could the train really have gone under the river? He’d never thought of the river as having a bottom. He tipped himself over at that and curled up tight around his empty stomach, but White Sister wouldn’t let him be. She licked his face and hands, burrowed under him, nudging and cajoling. She stared at him intently, optimistically. He was the leader. She also knew they had to hunt and couldn’t hunt separately in this place of unknown trails and boundaries.

By midmorning they found themselves above a wide, still canal that ran the same direction as the river. They dodged a sudden noisy horde on the footpath and stared down at the water. A steep paved escarpment dropped without a lip into the dark waters, and there was no way he could see to climb down and get a drink without falling in. White Sister whined as he hunted around for something to carry water in and something to lower it down, but this city, maddeningly filled now with the smell of water, hot bread, cooking meat and hot oil, was empty of anything one needed. They made their way along the promenade at the edge of the canal, looking through the wrought iron balustrade for any chance to get at the water. White Sister, ahead of him under the shadow of a high footbridge, suddenly ducked and scrambled. There was a shriek and a sharp crack: she had caught a water rat. Romochka’s spirits lifted.

After the rat he felt a little better. He let White Sister lick the blood from his face and fingers while passers-by exclaimed and walked wide around him in flurry and disturbance. He ignored them. He was in no danger from these clip-clopping women and their pungent, soapy men. House people like this would hate to touch him, would never think to jump him, hold him down or beat him. He could see that this place was not a haunt for gangs, skinheads or bomzh children, so that left only militzia as the principal predator.

He was still terribly thirsty. White Sister panted and gulped, panted and gulped. The river was out of sight but very near, drawing this canal in. He could feel its presence like a huge animal hiding, ever moving. Its current wove sinuously through the air here and tugged at the sunrise end of the canal waters.

Sure enough, the canal opened up ahead, joining the great river. The balustrade ended suddenly, and here there were steps down to a wide concrete platform at the water’s edge. He drank deep and splashed his face and arms in the water. The ripples settled and the dark water stilled. The reflected evening colours formed again into straight lines and the orange windows of the shaken buildings were almost perfectly aligned again.

More food, shelter, and a way across this river. He shook the water with his hands again, breaking the city into tiny scattered fragments of pink, orange, grey nothingness. He hated this city.

The river, at least, was smelly and reassuring.

 

It was evening again, and again he could smell food everywhere and hear music. The eyes of each passer-by gleamed momentarily on him, then studiously lifted, and he knew that in such a place there could be no invisibility. Sad music, men’s and women’s voices, floated from one building; another pumped a heartbeat and electric sizzle. He kept moving from street to street, White Sister trotting miserably at his heels. The city lights were every colour, and the high domes shone in the night sky, and everything was dreamily beautiful.

Romochka watched White Sister as they trotted. Her behaviour was bothering him. At first he couldn’t work out who she was speaking to, who she was eyeing with that friendship glance and tail, that pleading, that little dip of her ears. Then he realised it was people. Any people. White Sister was so hungry now that she was begging, turning from him, breaking all the rules and behaving like a stray.

He was overcome with rage and disappointment. When she gazed at the next passer-by, inviting, he growled and kicked her savagely. She cringed, guilty, then slunk for a while at his heels, head and tail low, glancing at his knees now and then. But she couldn’t help herself. She was starving and people had always been good to her.

The next time Romochka growled but did nothing. He felt very cool towards her; and wretched with an inner dismay. It was his job to find good hunting grounds and a safe lair and he couldn’t do it.

Tears ran down his face. He had never felt more unhappy in his life. There was nothing to do but trot on. He dared not stop but had nowhere to go.

They were halfway across the bridge. The summer river moistened the air. He breathed deeply, and White Sister snuffed between the poles of the balustrade. The traffic roared too close, but still he felt better than he had since boarding the train. He stopped in the middle of the bridge and looked at the water far below where it swirled and settled. Could they trust this rich smell of water and putrefaction to pull them back in the direction of home? Then he noticed that White Sister was head up, snuffing another way, the way home, straight home. He felt suddenly peaceful. All would be well.

 

It all happened so fast that Romochka thought he must be in some terrible dream. They entered a courtyard that Romochka thought would be a shortcut, found no exit and, as they turned to leave, the world whirled into movement. The tramp and scuff of boots and yelling and shouting. It was so sudden and terrible that Romochka didn’t know where to look. For a moment he stood, whipping his head back and forth, unable to comprehend that he was surrounded by a wall of uniformed muscle.

He made a dash for it, and the ground thumped him hard in the back of the head. He was brutally rolled over, his face pressed into the asphalt, his wrists wrenched and cuffed. Someone put a boot to his head while someone else tied his feet together. White Sister was snarling over the back of his head, and someone yelled, ‘Shoot the dog!’ as she was booted hard, and lifted off his body completely. He could see with one eye half obscured by his hair as she regained her footing and turned to lunge, then someone very big stepped over him towards her, impossibly fast, and cracked her hard over the head with a truncheon. White Sister crumpled and Romochka screamed. She was moving feebly on the asphalt, struggling to raise her head, as he was lifted into the air. The men were shouting over him and he was thrown into the militzia van.