Dog Boy (7 page)

She watched with keen interest, yapping at him now and then as he rummaged for something that might do. He picked up a long birch branch and went up to the gap. Black Sister stayed crouched low but wriggled to the side to make room. Her body quivered as she laid her chin flat to the ground to see what would happen. He shoved the branch under and began jabbing wildly here and there. Black Sister jumped over, her head jerking this way and that, and he knew the rat was on the move. Black Sister stopped stone still, and Romochka gave one last jab.

The rat shot out of the pile, Black Sister ducked and snapped. She had it. Romochka crowed and jumped on her, rolling about on the floor. She shook the rat hard and then scampered as fast as she could around him with the rat in her mouth, pretending he was after her. Then they both threw it and caught it, and threw it, pretending it was still alive and had to be got again and again.

The rat was well shaken and bedraggled. He opened its mouth and peered at its long yellow teeth, so unlike a dog’s. How strange to have teeth rising, not descending! He pushed his finger into its cooling mouth to feel how sharp they were, how they gnawed and nibbled. Yes, that explained rats. He would keep these teeth, a memento, and use them for any ratlike needs he might have. Any small grinding of pretty things, anything special.

Black Sister was watching him. She reached a polite paw towards the rat, looking bright eyed at him. He handed it over and she pulled the rat open with great delicacy, then inclined to him. He was delighted. They lay down on their bellies and spread it out. This was, he decided, his favourite food. He chewed through the slippery ribcage to its soft centre, keeping the head in his fist to make sure Black Sister didn’t crunch through it and eat his treasure.

Romochka lay on his back with his head on Black Sister’s flank. He sucked the stripped skull clean; she fumbled with the tail between her creamy paws and mouth. Every time she dropped it, he reached over and handed it back to her to prevent her from moving. He tied the skull into his hair and picked up the smooth birch branch. He rolled it around, feeling each end. One end was slightly narrower than the other. He held the narrower end and swung it lightly in the air above him.

He remembered long afterwards that the day he decided to make himself a club and a treasure collection was also the day he and his difficult sister were happiest.

Mamochka avoided the city. The hunting grounds of shanty village and forest were safer, and even there Romochka could feel her steering him away from throngs of people. They were an urban dog pack surrounded by a great city, yet through spring they lived a life of field, mountain and forest. The days heated up, green seed heads formed and ripened where there had been flowers, and spring slid into summertime. The forest was filled with plenty: inexperienced young birds, late nests, baby hares and the leftovers from picnickers.

All in one week Romochka’s clothes fell apart. They had already become tight and strained but then the old padded coat, discarded in the heat, was ripped up by someone and scattered throughout the ruin. His jumper tore as he pulled it over his head. He split his trousers, and then ripped a whole leg off on some rusty wire on the mountain. He had a close look at everything else. His undergarments were full of holes, frayed and almost translucent in spots. His hats had vanished. His toes poked out of his gaping boots. He frowned at his bare arms. If only the hair would grow.

The next day out on the mountain, he looked for clothes, not food. It was clothes season. By the end of the day he had a pile of remarkably clean and sturdy things. Three boots, each big enough to go on either foot; enough socks for hands and feet; three pairs of trousers, one even a child’s size; a pair of shiny blue tights; some long sleeved garments and, best of all, a thick military coat. He even had some string to tie loose things tight around his skinny waist.

He got changed and tried his new appearance out on the dogs as they entered the lair. They growled, hackled and barked at his strange shape and smell and he was hugely gratified. Then he basked in their avid attention to every detail of his dress.

Through the early summer they drank from puddles and pools where they found them. Sometimes they lay in the lair, panting and thirsty through the long day, waiting for evening so they could head out. Then Romochka found an old red bucket out on the rubbish riverbed. He filled it with fresh water from the tap on the outside church wall and wrestled it down the rubble pile and into the lair. From then on they had fresh water and he was inordinately proud whenever he saw them drink. He changed the water when it began to taste funny, found a new bucket when the old one cracked, and kicked it over and glared at them all when he was annoyed with them.

 

Late summer was hot and easy: plentiful for all the clans and lone strays around the mountain. Romochka got used to being dry again. His sores healed, faded and were forgotten. He forgot too his dependence on his ears in the darkness and was accustomed now to using his eyes in the long daylight. He felt the strong bodies of his brothers and sisters begin to fill out and become adult. He himself had become hard and wiry and very fast. But he was far from being as effective as the dogs.

More than anything, Romochka wanted to succeed in a hunt and bring home a real feed that he caught himself. White Sister had brought home a ham she’d managed to steal from somewhere. Black Sister, sharpest and fastest, had caught and killed a heron. She’d been hunting with Golden Bitch around the ponds in the depths of the forest, but it was Black Sister who carried the bird in proudly. Grey Brother got some kittens, also with Golden Bitch helping. Brown Brother, so big and clumsy, had even managed: he had brought home a french loaf. He got wedged in the entrance of the lair trying to bring it in, and Romochka, giggling, had to show him how to turn his head sideways and enter loaf-first. When Brown Brother laid down the loaf they all hung back, waiting for him to decide that it was for all. All of them except Romochka had made the shift to proficient hunting and were honoured for it.

Nonetheless, Romochka was aware that he was useful. The household refuse end of the mountain was easy to get at but soon picked over. He had a sack, several buckets and plastic bags, and he would hover around the back of the rubbish trucks, darting in for anything edible. This was a hunt that took three—one to sniff for him, one to snarl at people and dogs who were there for the same reason, and he with his hands to find, grab and hold on. But it was dirty hunting, and nothing about it made him feel that he too had grown up with the others.

To raid the cemetery, moving from grave to grave to pick up the small offering of sweets and cookies that were left there, was more difficult. Just after dark the cemetery was overrun with dogs and people all doing the same. Romochka dreamed of leaping up to snap a graceful neck and bringing home something fresh all by himself.

Conscious of Golden Bitch’s occasional glance, Romochka thought he knew what she saw. His brothers and sisters hunted now for all. He alone still needed help. As summer advanced, however, his ability to gather things began to fill him with quiet pride. His hands could do what their paws and teeth could not. His haul these days from the fresh dumps was plenty indeed, and, with his brothers and sisters guarding him, he could ensure that he kept what he found.

With so many of them hunting and with Romochka’s rubbish and sweets collections, they were a good-looking clan, if grease-discoloured. Romochka’s ribs disappeared under a layer of muscle.

Some nights they went up to the ruin or the allotment to sing. They sang to all the clans of the mountain that their summer was joyous, filled with plenty, their bodies strong and sleek and their hopes high. They sang their own strength to the overarching sky and the spangled city. The other clans sang in the distance too. But when Romochka threw back his huge head and joined his shining voice to his family’s chorus, the clans of the forest and mountain fell silent.

 

Something was happening with Mamochka that Romochka couldn’t smell, but everyone else could. They all lingered over her and followed her around the lair, savouring it. Everyone seemed happy and excited. Mamochka enjoyed their attention—up to a point: she drove them off if they got too engrossed in what they could smell on her. Then there came a time when they seemed to smell her as a ritual dance, but there were no snarls or reprimands. Each in turn circled her then left her before she got angry. All except Black Dog would dance for this moment around Mamochka at every meeting, each with the same deference, then fall back and watch as Mamochka and Black Dog played and fought and played again. Then for two days Mamochka and Black Dog mated and did nothing else: joining, locking, panting, parting. They stayed stuck together for long stretches, exhausted, focused only on each other, with day passing into dusk. Even Romochka could smell them now and he tingled with a heady excitement. He felt the pressure of an obscure happiness. He watched in tune with the other dogs, who were lying with him around the edges of the dance. There was no envy. A serious satisfaction hung in the air, and in this he half guessed that they all, himself included, had worked and hunted, for this; and that with Mamochka and Black Dog’s dance their summer was fulfilled.

A silence filled the cooling air. The birds were still and the strange, gold light of autumn slowly took hold across the forests and through the trees of the parks and highrise yards.

Then the golden autumn was over early and suddenly. Three deep frosts burned everything that was delicate, blackening some leaves, freeze-drying others and tinting all with brown. For two days the waste lands smelled of haymaking, or tea: grass and leaves dried by ice, not sun. Aspen leaves had fluttered like flocks of golden birds in tight formation. Now the trees were half bare, raggedly festooned. Romochka, the dogs, the grey crows and smaller birds guzzled the bright rowan berries that had been inedible before the frosts.

The cold came in from the north as never before. The rainless days were cruelly cold. The sky stilled to a solid disc and Romochka felt the air leaving his body and freezing. The city seemed to be stiffening in the too-early winter chill. The birch leaves tinkled faintly as they fell.

Then the snow began early and didn’t stop. Every living thing was caught too soon. Still-green leaves in the undergrowth were coated in white. Snow fell from overweighted branches, and yellow leaves followed to make a discoloured carpet on the white beneath. The waning daylight on the mountain saw people and dogs eddying, noses and eyes turned upwards, northwards. The bulldozers and trucks that puttered ceaselessly through summer on the southern slopes of the mountain disappeared to wherever it was they hibernated. The cigarette smell of the backhoe drivers was a memory.

Romochka’s family paced the lair, uneasy, and yet more the chill deepened. Snow would normally have made the lair cosier as it was sealed in, but this time they could only tell it was warmer inside when they emerged to a world colder each day than the night before. Romochka could barely struggle through the deep snowfall. Nothing was right.

In the gloom of the lair Mamochka stood over her three newborn pups, ignoring their mewling, listening. Romochka could tell she was worried and that she knew something that he did not. Then she blinked slowly, bent her head to the puppies and killed them. One by one, biting once through each of their soft heads. Then she lay down and, one by one, ate them. Bellies first, grinding through tiny cartilaginous bones until there was nothing left, growling even at Romochka if he made a move towards her. Then she slept a long while. Through the night he heard her slow-licking herself. She ignored him and didn’t move to hunt. He slept fitfully, shivering cold even with the four cuddling him, even with all his clothes on.

With the weak dawn, which they heard and smelled rather than saw, Romochka found that they were completely snowed in. He crept to Mamochka’s side, scared. She licked his face, then pinned his big head down with her paw and cleaned his ears. He let her. She growled when he moved towards her dugs, but he waited and begged until she gave in.