Dog Boy (19 page)

Out at the mountain, women sat around the fires roasting the plucked birds on sticks, stirring big pots of soup made from the stripped carcasses. No dogs were eaten this winter.

Everyone loved Puppy. They let him do what he liked, even sometimes pinch food from them. Romochka too, was disarmed by him. Puppy was smart, cheeky and good-spirited. He would play at the slightest sign of playfulness, and he was fun.

Romochka refused to allow Puppy out of the lair, even in late winter when his brother’s litter sisters were well grown and had begun play-foraging out into closed paths with a minder. Whenever Puppy tried, Romochka beat him viciously; if ever one of the litter sisters tried to take Puppy with her, Romochka snarled at the two of them until they slunk back inside.

Romochka didn’t really think about why, but he knew that with no hair and no tail, Puppy would stand out. His sense of the danger Puppy would represent to all of them if he were noticed was acute, and Mamochka backed him up. Puppy was only allowed out into the roofless building—never to the street, except to pee. Either Romochka or Mamochka had to stay near the lair to keep Puppy inside during the daytime.

In his confinement, Puppy had an insatiable need for novelty. Romochka began a new kind of hunting. The lair filled with colourful balls, animals, blocks, bells, a drum, a plastic sword and shield, even a toy pedal car. Romochka spent hours tinkering and playing with the toys he collected for Puppy, while Puppy scampered around him in delight. But when Puppy too settled and squatted to play, deeply engrossed, Romochka stroked him lovingly, with real pride. They built things together. They drove the car, Romochka pushing Puppy (with Puppy’s eyes sliding this way and that like a scared but obedient dog). The little boy raced around in joyous relief when it was over.

Romochka began to prey on little kids. He and Black Sister held up prams and strollers to get the toys. Black Sister, finally chosen for a special hunt, refused to allow any other dog to accompany them and trotted beside him with proud intensity. She was efficient and effective; she only had to get in close and lift her lip over her long white teeth, gurgling and chortling through her muscly jaws, and any mother would snatch her child from the pram and scream gratifyingly. Romochka would be into the pram, rummaging and snatching at any fallen toys, then they would be off, quick as rats. Black Sister barely showed how much she enjoyed it, but he knew she did.

This was a daylight hunt, and risky. As the thaw began, Puppy needed new clothes too. He took many of them off and lost them, especially now, in early spring, but he needed clothes to protect his skin from the nips of the dogs. Romochka was worried, too, by the feel of Puppy’s body. He could tell, sleeping with that little ribcage in his arms, that Puppy was thinner than he had been before. He wanted good clothes for Puppy, not miscellaneous damp rags collected on the mountain.

Romochka began stalking little boys to find out what they did, where they went, where they lived, what they wore. Stealing clothes was hard. You either got a spare boy with them (and Romochka really didn’t want Mamochka getting fond of another boy) or the clothes were safely hung up in shops or houses. Romochka and the dogs were at a disadvantage in shops—Romochka was suspected from the moment anyone saw him, and the dogs were liable to be kicked or shot at. He decided to try houses.

He thought he should be able to get into apartment buildings. He had seen bomzhi stand at the street doors in winter pressing buttons on the keypad until they got lucky and someone buzzed them in. He chose an older building at random and set White Sister to watch.

He pressed lots of buttons but nothing happened. Then a drunk appeared at the corner, almost a bomzh but cleaner, and Romochka pulled back warily. He didn’t run; he wasn’t particularly afraid of drunks. The man swayed at the door, cursing and pressing buttons, eventually smiling broadly when he managed to get his apartment code. The door buzzed and Romochka slipped in behind him, leaving White Sister outside. The door clanged shut. He held back in the gloom by the doorway as the drunken man stumbled to the lift and jabbed the buttons.

Once the man was gone, Romochka padded across the cracked concrete to the blue-tiled stairwell. He loped silently up to the second floor. This building reminded him of another from long ago, although it seemed smaller. The door from the stairwell to the communal corridor was ajar. The dimly lit hallway smelled of old cooked food, alcohol, sweat, soapy skin and stale smoke. His heart beat fast. Grown-ups might like dogs but in his experience they hated kids.

He slunk up the dark corridor, checking each of the padded apartment doors. His heart was thumping now. A deep-voiced dog barked a warning somewhere ahead and he jumped, so edgy he nearly bolted back down the stairs. All the apartment doors were locked. He came to the door behind which the dog was now going berserk. He stuck his nose to the crack between door and jamb, and snuffed loudly then growled. The big dog’s panic scared him—it had no idea what he was. He was deep in closed paths here, with no easy escape. He stood up and soft-footed back towards the stairs and up to the next floor, leaving the terrified animal behind. There was no sign that people were home, so far. Only the dog, crying now in fear and loneliness below.

He lost his nerve when he heard the lift clanking and winding. He scuttled noisily down the stairs to the street door, remembering at the last minute that to get out he had to press the big button. He could reach it easily, and then he was outside under the grey sky. He yipped, and White Sister came bounding from behind a rank of dumpsters.

Stairwells and communal corridors were not going to get him what he was after. He would have to look carefully, if he wanted to get into apartments, and find a way in from the outside.

 

Some older five-storey buildings had external drainpipes that ran near windows. Once he had found a few he looked for the apartments that still had the old-style double-glassed windows: inner and outer casements set either side of a wide sill. They were always closed but they sometimes had small rectangular ventilation windows set into the bigger frames, and these were often open. Eventually he narrowed his choices down to three third-floor apartments that each had a drainpipe he was sure he could climb.

For a week, he watched them from the street. One he ruled out because he couldn’t be sure there was no one home in the daytime. The second was too exposed on the outside; someone was sure to see him climb the pipe. The last one had kids that he glimpsed at the window in the evenings, and seemed empty during the day. He spent another week building up his courage.

 

White Sister whined at the base of the drainpipe as he worked his skinny frame through the little window. Once he was wedged on the wide sill between the two large panes, he looked down at her, flicking his muzzle, and feeling his ears dip reassuringly at her. She continued to pace and whine, to his annoyance. She thought she could make him come down.

He crouched low. He was visible from the street, and if anyone was in the apartment they only had to part the lace curtain to find him sandwiched in their window. He had probably already made quite a bit of noise getting through the outer window. The inner ventilation window was closed and latched. He had begun to work at the cracked frame of the inner casement when it suddenly gave, opening inwards. He waited a little, then jumped quietly down through the curtains and into the room.

He was in a tidy bedroom with yellow walls and a high white ceiling. A little bed with rails was near the window, and a very large bed took up most of the room. Behind him the heating pipes were draped in pretty clothes too small even for Puppy. A picture on the wall showed a forest not unlike his home, with autumn birches in the foreground and a river much cleaner and bluer than any he’d ever seen running between green banks. He felt a wave of nostalgia for the time when such a place would have been all he needed for a good hunt. A time before the need for toys and puppy clothes.

The big bed was covered by a beautiful pink, green and mauve patterned quilt and matching pillows. He snuffed the air. The room smelled of washing powder, perfume, burnt cloth and, faintly, of wee. He was worried: the apartment must be bigger than he thought, for this room was only a bedroom, nothing more.

He moved soundlessly on all fours to the door, listening. There was no ticking or subtle shifting of body weight, no muffled rustle of someone waiting. The apartment was empty. He reached up and softly turned the handle, then dropped down low and eased the door open. The apartment was huge: there were three open doors off the corridor, inside doors, not the heavy padded ones of discrete apartments. The corridor was filled with furniture and ornaments. He was a little spooked but pleased to see children’s clothes hung on heating pipes under the window at the far end of the long room and toys scattered here and there. He could smell a dog too. He wondered what the dog would think when she came home. He was in closed paths here, but would a tame dog know what to think?

He was crouching, still looking around and considering the crisscross of smells when a small white dog sprinted, snarling and gulping, out of the next room along. He screamed as the dog leapt. At the last minute he averted his face and the dog was on his head, sinking her teeth into his mane of matted hair and shaking him hard. He wriggled and threshed with arms and legs to fight her off. She latched onto one of his arms and he yelped and yabbered. He rolled into the children’s room, yowling in fear, trying to wrestle the bristling little animal off him. His arm was bleeding. Then she launched again at his crotch, but this time he was ready for her and caught her by the throat. She was quite hard to hold as she snarled and snapped and writhed. He held on tight, pinning her with his knees as well.

Between his hands and legs he could feel her shaking terror. She didn’t know what he was either. He tried to tell her that in crossing her closed paths he was strong enough to do as he wished; and that she should be offering him stiff deference. He held her down with his body weight and sniffed her over. She smelled all wrong: like soap, perfume, people. He tried to let her smell him, but she wasn’t listening, or didn’t know, and began to fight harder.

No wonder Mamochka avoided these crazy dogs. This little bitch didn’t have the sense to know that he was dangerous and that she was small and risked everything if she fought him. He was suddenly furious with her and shook her hard. He buried his fingers deeper in her throat and sank his teeth into her rattling neck. Why didn’t she see that he was a much bigger dog than she? But she threshed and slavered and wriggled and was altogether too much a ball of muscle for him to throttle her easily. He stopped biting her and spat out her soapy hair. Then he felt her starting to waver. Her fighting fear was giving way to despair. He could feel it. His rage drained out of him too. He felt sad, now that they weren’t biting each other. He stood up on hind legs, yanking her with two hands off the ground. She went limp.

Just then he caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror on the wall and forgot about the dog altogether. He put her down slowly, staring open-mouthed. She slunk away and lay down a little way away from him, growling miserably, with her eyes low and her ears flattened.

He saw a very big dirty boy dressed in rags with a huge head of wild black ropes and tendrils, hair unlike any creature he had ever seen. He looked into his own eyes. Black, frowning. He wasn’t what he thought he was. His teeth were flat and tiny like Puppy’s. His new tooth, which he had hoped would become long and pointed, was indeed sharp, serrated, but very much a human tooth. The hairlessness of his body was a shock. He raised an arm. His callused paw and scarred forearm were stringy, bald, filthy, long. Wrong.

He certainly wasn’t a dog, but he didn’t look like a boy either. He suddenly felt annoyed with the little dog. She didn’t know what he was and didn’t like him either way, but she preferred him to be a boy, that was certain.

It was unbearably hot in the apartment. Watching himself all the while, he stripped down to his underneath layers of clothes.

‘Good doggie, good dog,’ he said in a soothing human boy’s voice, watching his own mouth move in the mirror. His voice came out like dry leaves on bark, first; then cracked and unmusical. The little dog growled unhappily. ‘Good doggie, good dog,’ he repeated in a low voice, watching her in the mirror. She licked her nose and averted her eyes. He turned, squatted down and called her over, clicking his fingers and using a human voice, insistent until she couldn’t disobey. She slunk towards him, her eyes low and her tail curled tightly under her. He patted her gently and she licked his hands. Her tail didn’t lift but wagged rapidly between her legs.

‘Brave little doggie,’ he murmured. ‘You fought the monster, even though he was as big as a Stranger and you were small. Brave little doggie.’ He felt his words changing everything, not just between him and the dog, but between him and the place. He sensed his limbs: long and smooth, a boy’s legs and arms. His ears, he knew, were flat to the sides of his head, not pointed and hairy. No dog would see his ears dip or prick—they were fine shells hidden under his hair.