Dog Boy (6 page)

In spring, summer and autumn a heady invisible stream, a potent current of chemical rot, flowed from the mountain into every crevice before it dissipated in the air around the apartment blocks, leaving a faint, almost sweet ester that persisted even underground in the metro station beyond. The forest produced its masses of flowers, its nestlings, its fruits, nuts, berries and mushrooms; the land went from muddy, to green, to richly grassed, to gold, filled with hares, moles and innumerable creatures, all as if the mountain had no effect. Dogs and people who lived here, if anything, welcomed the beacon of the mountain. It was their permanent compass.

 

The next time the dogs headed out, they went straight to the meeting place and then further. Mamochka took Romochka and, to his chagrin, Brown Brother, who was the clumsiest. Black Dog took White Sister, Golden Bitch took Grey Brother and Black Sister, and they all split up to hunt in the wide world. Mamochka, Romochka and Brown Brother filed across the waste lands, then picked their way as best they could across the rubbish river into the heady atmosphere of the mountain, with its grind and rumble of machinery and its stench. Once they crossed to the mountain itself, they had to watch for dogs and people, and perform the open paths rituals for each dog they met.

For the first time in months, Romochka came close to people. Men and women scoured the mountain, heads down, moving rubbish around with sticks and handmade hoes. Small children searched too, or rode on the backs of their parents. They paid him no attention. Mamochka led him and Brown Brother in wide circles to avoid them and he guessed that around people there were closed paths too. He could tell that Mamochka thought they were dangerous, and he remembered that they were strangers and that he should never talk to them. Both his mothers now had told him the same thing.

Mamochka skirted the mountain and headed for the birch forest and the shanty village on the far slope. Romochka’s step danced with the excitement of it all. Brown Brother’s tail was up and plumy in the breeze, and every now and then he barked just for the sake of it. Mamochka was purposeful and silent, and they followed, scampering and play fighting now and then.

Up ahead four ragged men were yelling, while beating something at their feet with their hoes and sticks. It roared and gasped, heaved and flailed. Romochka thought it must be some large beast they were going to eat, or that had perhaps attacked them. But then they all suddenly turned and walked away and he saw that it was another just like them lying groaning in the rubbish. As he passed by he could smell something that reminded him of Uncle. His step quickened. Mamochka ignored them.

A lot of dogs lurked around the shanty village. Some were tied with rope, to stay and guard the shack of their owner. Others were friendly with people but not pets exactly: stray dogs who had discovered the kind-hearted, dogs who hungered for reciprocal warmth and affection. These dogs kept their freedom. The people they loved were generous to them, flattered by the dog’s affections, but neither owned the other. Their paths could diverge as inexplicably as they had joined. The dogs skulking at the fringes were scared strays, sick dogs, crippled dogs, hovering in close for any chance of scraps. Others were like Mamochka and Brown Brother: feral clan dogs. These all knew each other and knew who was from a strong or a weak clan, and whether they should stand with deference or ritual aggression. The pet dogs and the clan dogs were the only semi-permanent residents. The others came and went.

The village and the forest immediately behind it was all open trails. No clan could close it: it was too desirable as a food source and too unsafe. Uniformed men charged in now and then, demolished everything, arrested or robbed the people and killed the dogs; then, in a day or two, the village would be rebuilt.

That first time, Mamochka didn’t let them stay long. They circled the village and saw many dogs and people. Romochka saw a blind dog, a three-legged dog, four or five miserable dogs tied up with rope. Mamochka made it clear that some dogs they met were to be feared and some were not but he didn’t yet know why and neither did Brown Brother.

No dogs were friends. All people were dangerous.

The foray gave Romochka a lot to think about. He lay in the lair with the others and saw the unfriendliness of outside dogs over and over again. He saw the four men beating the other man. He heard again the screams and fragments of other lives that came from the huts.

‘Alyosha! Get me the meat grinder from Kyril’s!’ ‘Oujas, Valodya! Go wash in the pond!’ ‘I’ll skin you alive, I will.’ ‘
Bla-ack Raa-ven, La la laa li la…you tell my…la la li laa…
’

His mind ran through all the images of mothers and small children going about their business, so profoundly separated from him. There were no older children in the village.

Mamochka took all the young dogs in turn to the village to learn about dogs and men. Because Romochka had to go with Mamochka, he went every time. It was a good place to find rats, although once they had one they would have to fight for it. With her help they usually kept their rat, but they had to learn when to defer. Romochka was shocked the first time he saw Mamochka, confronted by a big black dog, drop the rat and veer away stiffly with her hackles raised. After that he learned how to recognise the individual members of the forest clan. They were a much larger established clan with a lair somewhere in the forest. Mamochka never crossed their closed paths. Her hackles rose whenever she saw or smelled one and he learned slowly to recognise this and to step carefully himself. In time the hairs at the back of his own neck rose with hers and he developed an awareness of territory that was almost unconscious.

By the end of the first week of forays Romochka was dismayed at what a poor dog he made. He was completely dependent on the four siblings, again, to know right from wrong, and Mamochka didn’t let him hunt with anyone except herself, so little did she trust him to take care of himself. If he chafed at the rules and got silly or playful, or tried to tempt the others into a game, she bit him.

Worst of all, he was next to useless. His heart burned as he lay awake in the den thinking about it. He could see in his mind’s eye the four, noses to the ground, knowing things he couldn’t see or smell. He saw them curious, delighted, intrigued, doubtful, frightened, worried, elated; saw them slow down, deviate, turn back or speed up, stop and listen in reaction to what their nose could pick up. He saw them hunt, tracking something until they flushed it out, and he could see on their bodies the moment they crossed a boundary into closed paths to do it. He could recognise the apprehension of a hunt in someone else’s territory. Yet he could smell nothing. He had tried by himself to trail Brown Brother across the allotment. He thought he had it. He turned round to see Brown Brother proficiently trailing him.

How would he ever hunt properly without a nose? He felt his nose and his small teeth in deep dissatisfaction. He rubbed his palms over his hairless arms and felt his callused hands and long broken fingernails.

 

From the first meeting place there were trails through the waste lands and marshes to the mountain, the cemetery, the forest and the city, open trails that were the same every time, that skirted other clans’ closed paths. On the mountain, at the edge of the cemetery, and in the forest there were other meeting places. The trail home or outwards always took these in and everyone (except Romochka) could read whether the region had been safe and fruitful.

He learned mountain, cemetery’s edge and forest but not the city. He didn’t even know that a trail led there, back to where he had come from so long ago. He learned to skirt the apartment blocks and the abandoned construction sites and warehouses that lay between them and the city, abutting the highway at the far side of the cemetery. The blue-tiled apartment blocks, with their vast fields, playgrounds, and gangs, were open paths to all dogs. No clans lived there, although many pet dogs did. But he learned over time that the mysterious closed paths around people were unpredictable, and that the gangs were one of the greatest foes.

He learned that the warehouses nearest the allotment and the heated tunnels that passed under them were inhabited by older children, and he learned to stay out of their way. They were loving to dogs but brutal to children and adults outside their own clan. Their haunts and meeting points were scattered with the plastic bags they held on their noses. When he first began to notice the warehouse gang, Romochka picked up a plastic bag. It had a clot of grey in the bottom and a faint, oddly pleasant chemical smell. For a while he picked up these discarded bags, held them to his face the way he had seen and sniffed for the unique smell of these big children, but he stopped when he found his nose was useless for a while each time he did it.

 

The small clan in the abandoned church held a territory precariously. Humans were no threat. The church was too broken and cold to give shelter to the homeless and had long ago been replaced by a new church on firmer ground, the dome and spire of which gleamed above the treetops some distance from the side of the mountain. But they weren’t safe from other dogs. They were weaker and fewer than some of the other clans, and were also at times attacked by clanless dogs, especially when foraging alone. Clan dogs circled each other, displayed their teeth but rarely fought. No dog could afford to be injured in a fight, and no small clan could afford to lose a dog.

They were extremely cautious, and the trail leaving the church was indirect. Romochka learned to leave the lair through the allotment. From immediately outside the ruin, he could see down the lane and all between them and the mountain, but he learned to turn, cross the allotment first, close the path afresh at the last meeting post, then head for the mountain from between the construction sites. The trail to the mountain was a clearly marked single track through the weeds at the edge of the cemetery. He learned to trot along this path in single file, watching for everything that moved or made a sound. He knew from watching his family that they smelled and listened for opportunity and for danger, and he tried with his eyes and ears to do the same. He ran slightly hunched, swinging his head from this side to that.

All people were dangerous, without exception. They were like demons at the fringe of everything important in his world, but they were also familiar. Out on the mountain or among the birches, a stranger stood out as much to him as to anyone else. He got to know regular visitors by sight: the truck drivers who wound their way up the mountain to dump refuse; and the two backhoe drivers who both smoked the same brand of cigarette.

The people of the mountain and village were his too, in a way. The one-legged man who clinked and slopped as he hobbled; the old woman who shouted
Ivan! Iva-aan!
Sights, sounds and smells. The smell of flowers that hung about the skinny woman with the broken mouth, and around her long-haired daughter. Romochka knew them all without even looking. The loners and the parents, the lovers and the children. He skirted them and forgot them.

The troubles of late winter were long gone, but a subtle tension still entered the lair with Black Sister and lifted as she left. The tumult her anger had brought into the lair settled, but no one forgot it. With Romochka present, she was almost never playful. They all learned to temper their play, and their affection towards Romochka, when she was with them, especially in the lair.

Romochka might enter the lair with Grey Brother to find White Sister, Brown Brother and Black Sister playing without reserve, the air thick with the smell of simple happiness. At the sight and smell of him Black Sister would drop away and go to lie alone on the bed, leaving Romochka to take her place in the game. Later she would savage him for an imagined incursion into her sleeping space. Increasingly Black Sister’s personal space even when she slept on the nest was hummed out, mapped for any who rubbed against her.

But Romochka found that if he shared a bone with Black Sister and growled at all others, then his difficult sister was transformed. Where there had been snarls and painful savaging in the dark, there were licks. She made room for him next to her with elaborate gestures, then fought off all others, half playfully but at least half in earnest. As summer approached and Romochka went out of his way to give her the exclusive moments she craved, Black Sister’s jealousy abated.

Black Sister’s feelings were constant or predictable; Romochka was changeable. Sometimes he pushed one of the other dogs into the invisible electric zone that surrounded her. He could start savage fights, especially between her and White Sister. They faced off at each other fiercely, as Romochka stirred up trouble between them.

One day Romochka and Black Sister routed a rat in the late spring flowers in the courtyard. It shot into the ruin, across the floor and then through a gap and into the lair below. Black Sister sprinted for the entrance and scrambled down into the empty lair with Romochka following, yelling in excitement. Black Sister sniffed out the trail, but it was clear that the rat had gone to cover under a pile of crates, slats and other timbers that were too heavy for Romochka to move. Black Sister crouched down, tail wagging, eyes shining in the gloom, snuffing away at the gap under the wood pile. She turned to him with a look of such hope and expectation that he was stirred. She trusted him to help her get that rat, she really did! An urgent pride flooded him. He would, no matter what.