Faithful Ruslan (8 page)

The Shabby Man spoke again: “Where are you headed for, Sergeant? Going to the city or back to your village?”

“Home,” Ruslan’s master answered reflectively. “What’s good about the city? And I need a rest.”

“That’s understandable. But what about work? I’ll bet you’ve forgotten how to hold a pitchfork.”

“Don’t need to. I’ve learned another sort of pitchfork—one with a magazine and seventy-two rounds. Remember, I’ve been in the service twice as long as you’ve spent in prison, so I’m due for a pension—the same as they pay a transpolar airman who’s flown a million kilometers.”

“That’s fine, but money isn’t a cure-all. If I were you, I’d have waited till now and given myself some nice little wound. Helps a lot, you know; then they give you a disability pension as well.”

Master gave him a hard stare.

“I thought we’d agreed not to go on talking like that. You sit here and drink with me, yet you still give me all that crap. It’s called ‘lack of proper respect.’ ”

“What—me? Not show you proper respect?” laughed the Shabby Man. “After all these years spent learning it? Don’t get riled—you’ll sort yourself out soon enough. You’re young; life’s still in front of you.”

So saying, he did something that might have cost him his life: he leaned across the table and patted Ruslan’s master on
the shoulder. Ruslan sprang to his feet and lunged headlong at the Shabby Man, moving almost soundlessly except for the scraping of his claws across the floor.

Swinging around in a flash, Master stopped Ruslan just in time with a punch of his clenched fist. Though aimed at his jaw, the blow struck Ruslan on the nose and almost sent him rolling away with a howl of pain; but he stood his ground in silence, lest the Enemy see how much it hurt him, and instead only growled at the Shabby Man, whom he could hardly see for tears.

“My God,” said Master in amazement, “so it’s you, is it, you brute? Scrounging food in restaurants already?”

Still growling, Ruslan rubbed his nose on Master’s knee and felt a little better, but when Master stroked him the pain went altogether.

“Does he always act like that?” asked the Shabby Man, who had not even had time to be frightened.

“Like what? Is he always so touchy, d’you mean? Yes, he and I stand up for each other. Don’t we, Ruslan? That was how we used to go for anybody if they tried any funny business.” Everyone in the restaurant was looking at Ruslan, as though expecting him to do some trick, or perhaps because he was still handsome enough for people simply to admire him, as they had in the past when his master had been so proud of him. Unfortunately, the barmaid was not so pleased with him:

“Citizen,” she announced to Master from a dim, smoke-filled corner of the restaurant, “you should take your dog somewhere else. This isn’t the camp, you know. It’s a restaurant. He’s supposed to wear a muzzle in public places.”

“What for?” Master smiled at her. “He’s never worn one in his life and he’s managed O.K. without it. You can have him yourself, if you like.… Why shrug your shoulders?
He’ll earn his feed—he won’t let the public health inspector through the door!”

“The inspector doesn’t worry me. But I’ve given you an official warning. If that dog bites anyone, you’ll have to pay a fine. Plus the cost of antirabies shots.”

“Hear that, Ruslan? Take note. You’re running around without a license.”

Ruslan twitched his ears slightly, creased his forehead into a look of suffering and shifted from paw to paw. If people were expecting a trick, they were virtually seeing one now, so eloquent and clear was the message that Ruslan was able to express: that he found it strange for people to be talking such nonsense about him, that he was embarrassed by this stupid woman who was being nasty to his master on his, Ruslan’s, account and that he wanted to get out of here as quickly as possible but was waiting until his master was ready.

Leaning back in his chair, Master gave a belch of repletion and took out his cigarette case. He could feel hostile looks directed at him and was slightly unsure of himself; on such occasions the lighting of a cigarette turned into a complete ritual: he spent a long time selecting a cigarette, tapped it on the lid with its engraved picture, blew into it with a whistling sound and then, scrunching the cardboard mouthpiece, rolled it around his mouth in a spiral. Biting the mouthpiece greedily with his small, even teeth, he squinted down at the tip as he lit it, drew in a lungful of smoke and then blew out a smoke ring while he held the cigarette between the extended fingers of his outstretched hand.

“He’s a problem, you see,” he said to the Shabby Man, nodding toward Ruslan. “Nobody would take him even if you paid them. And now these fine dogs are just running around on the loose.”

“Yes, say what you like, it’s a pity,” the Shabby Man replied. “When we were behind the wire we used to wish all those beasts dead, yet now I feel sorry for them. It would be better if they’d all been put down, instead of leaving them like this.”

“That’s just the trouble. Everyone’s full of pity, I notice, but as for shooting the dogs—no thank you, someone else can do that.”

“I suppose
someone
was ordered to do it?”

“So what if they were? The man who gave the order has already put his epaulets in mothballs and by now he’s trying on his civilian suit. Why should I dirty my hands? Not me, if I can help it. But you can see what pity does, can’t you? The end result’s the worst of all.”

As Ruslan understood, his master was still feeling upset at that stupid woman, and he pushed his nose into Master’s hand, resting on his knee, The hand was raised reluctantly and placed on Ruslan’s forehead. Although neither very fond of a show of affection nor accustomed to receiving it, he still appreciated this gesture on the rare occasions when it was made. This time, however, Ruslan did not like the feel of Master’s hand. It was limp, indecisive and for some reason it was trembling; worse still, it stank of the filth in the decanter.

“Don’t worry, Ruslan old boy, you’ll find your feet,” said Master. “And when the call comes, you can go back to the Service. Haven’t forgotten about the Service, have you? Still dream about it at night? Ah, yellow eyes! Shut your eyes, they’re terrible to look at.”

Slowly the hand slid across Ruslan’s closed eyes, and as it passed over his jaw it was suddenly closed in a harsh grip. Forced together with a loud snap, Ruslan’s teeth pinched his lips, and the pain caused tears to spurt up beneath his
eyelids. Worse than the pain, though, was the feeling of resentment. One of the masters’ more unpleasant habits was to make a sudden grab with the hand; if they were doing it to a dog, they would snatch at the muzzle—if to a man, they went for his face. When they said it in words, the gesture meant, “Talk to me like that and I’ll bash you into pulp.” The action itself, though, was much quicker; neither dog nor man ever had time to step back or dodge. And it was a long time before they recovered. One day his master had done it to a prisoner who had been arguing with him and would not step back into line. Afterward the prisoner simply stood there as though stunned, with a pale, sweating face. His glasses had fallen from his nose. The man was very fond of his glasses, because he would frequently breathe on them and wipe them with a cloth; now he did not even bend down, although Master reminded him, “Pick up your specs!” and kicked them toward him with the toe of his boot. So
this
was what that prisoner had felt on his face when he had stumbled back into the ranks like a blind man, and then screamed and started running across the field—the same prisoner whom the unfortunate Rex had failed to catch!

“Don’t squeeze him like that,” said the Shabby Man. “That devil will bite you if you don’t look out—and I wouldn’t blame him!”

“Shows how much you know about him,” Master grinned, “Ruslan and I have been welded together by the Service, haven’t we, Ruslan?”

Freeing himself from the detested grip, with a painful turn of the head and a sullen glare from under his high forehead, Ruslan slowly looked around at the other people sitting in the restaurant and raised unblinking eyes to his
master. There was still some uneaten food on the table, but from youth Ruslan had been strictly taught not to beg, and he did not even look at the food. His glum stare, in fact, was not asking for anything, but only a fool or a blind man could have failed to read what it was saying: “You’re being unkind, Master. That was a bad joke. And in front of strangers, too.”

The Shabby Man suddenly frowned, grabbed a slice of bread from the table and put it on the floor. Ruslan neither noticed it nor looked down.

“Aha, so you thought he’d take it!” Master smirked in great satisfaction. “Of course, he’s been dreaming all his life of eating a piece of bread from your hands.”

“O.K., you’re the boss. Give it to him yourself.”

The other customers in the restaurant were no doubt expecting to see Ruslan perform a simple but always successful trick. Our hearts are invariably touched when our four-footed friend displays the rudiments of reason and does violence to his own nature by refusing food from a stranger and then immediately grabbing it, drooling with hunger, from the hand of his master. This time, however, the trick turned out to be even more entertaining than anyone expected: the bread did not leave the Master’s hand, and Ruslan merely looked at it and backed away—carefully, so as not to overturn the slice of bread by mistake.

“Aha!” the Shabby Man was triumphant. “That shows that you mean nothing to him now, don’t you see?”

“What’s the matter with you, Ruslan? Fussy?” Master asked. A pink flush spread slowly over his face. “Suppose you found enough to eat somewhere else. Don’t waste much time, do you? All right then”—he put the slice of bread on the floor—“pick it up. D’you hear me?”

“Stop throwing food around, Citizen.” The barmaid intervened again. “As if I didn’t have enough to do, without having to clear up after your dogs!”

“Why? He’ll take it, Just you watch.”

Still grinning, though his cheekbones were turning pale, Master picked up the bread and jauntily waved his fork in the air. He dug the fork into a pot on the table and began thickly spreading mustard on the slice of bread.

“Don’t do it,” the Shabby Man begged him.

A man standing in line at the counter also spoke up:

“Don’t play the fool, Sergeant.”

“Impossible,” Master explained. “It’s impossible for him to disobey my order. Don’t worry, he knows he’s committed an offense by not obeying the first time. So he’s got to take the consequences. This dog’s loyal to the Service; he’ll show you right now just how loyal he is.… Afraid I’ve used up all your mustard, ma’am!” Master grinned cheerfully at the barmaid.

He broke the slice of bread into two and put the halves together with the mustard inside.

“Feed, Ruslan, feed. Take it, I say!”

A man in a leather coat, sitting with his back to Master, turned around, the whites of his squinting eyes ablaze:

“Have you gone crazy, by any chance?”

“I’ll give you ‘crazy’ in a moment,” said Master. “Mind your own damn business!”

The leather-clad man did not, however, turn away. The woman sitting with him, who was wearing a gray headscarf and feeding a child with a spoon, put down the spoon and covered the child’s eyes with her palm.

“Keep out of it, Tolya,” she begged. “You know better than to get mixed up with them. We won’t look.”

But she did look, frowning and biting her lip. The whole restaurant was now watching and muttering:

“Don’t be cruel to the dog, soldier!”

“Monsters—they learned that sort of thing in the prison camps.…”

“He’s drunk, can’t you see?”

“Why doesn’t somebody take the dog away? …”

“Take the dog away? He’d tear you to pieces if you tried to …”

Held in his master’s hand, the piece of bread swayed in front of Ruslan.

“Come on, take it! You know you’ve got to take it!”

What did Ruslan know about that smell? He knew what a guard dog should know, because it was the very stuff that was used to teach them their first lesson. One morning, when he was still little more than a puppy, Ruslan had been taken out into the exercise yard before being fed and his master had left him, saying, “You can run around a bit, Ruslan.” Immediately the strangest thing happened. As though materializing from the ground, a Stranger appeared, wearing a padded jacket under gray overalls. Something was hidden in his long sleeve, and he showed it to Ruslan, holding it right under his nose. It smelled so delicious that his mouth watered. Ah, but nothing was quite so simple as it seemed! His clothes gave off the strange smell of those huts in which, as the dog already knew, “bad people” lived, a smell that had already caused him to utter an automatic “Grr-r-r-r!” But the sun was delightfully warm, his mind was still blunted by morning lassitude and by a comfortable certainty that everything in life was for the best. And so poor is our abundant world that every living creature values food and will fight for it, even when still blind and sucking at his mother’s nipples. The man
presumably valued the food, too, since he did not throw it on the ground but offered it on the palm of his hand, with a smile, like a priceless gift. With an answering smile of the eye and a wag of the tail, Ruslan took the piece of food in his teeth. While held in the teeth it tasted even more delicious; the savory scent tickled his palate and made such a gorgeous pricking sensation on the tongue that it was impossible not to bite into it. So the dog chewed, still wagging his tail and with still-dry eyes thanking the Stranger, who had started to walk unobtrusively away. Next moment Ruslan thought his mouth was on fire, as if someone had thrust a lump of burning tow into it that simply would not go away, that no amount of painful retching and coughing could remove, that was burning his innards and making him see a pall of smoke in front of his eyes. He heard the man laughing as he ran away and felt a furious surge of resentment. Hatred overcame the pain and drove him to pursuit; the man seemed in no hurry to escape, but held out his long, thick sleeve for Ruslan to sink his teeth into.… Finally the unsuspecting Master returned; at last there was someone to whom he could complain, who would understand everything and take pity on him, who let him drink his fill and fed him with special delicacies. Would it all be forgotten? It probably would have been forgotten if those nasty prisoners had not constantly thought up new tricks to play, each one more cunning than the last. But none of their dirty tricks was as shocking as the first one, which had caused Ruslan to make his first little step toward the truth—namely, that absolutely anything that did not come from Master’s hand was filthy, poisoned, tainted and sinful, even if it smelled delicious.