Dog Boy (20 page)

The little dog squinted and rolled over, baring her throat, tail twirling. Then she followed him with eyes big and body miserable as he went through the apartment. The living room and the bedrooms were separated, and it was full of pretty things. He straightened his shoulders. He was a boy, not a dog, going through an apartment full of boyish things. He could enjoy this.

It was full of kids’ stuff in every room. The room in which he had fought the dog had two beds and toys, not just scattered all over the floor, but in boxes, on shelves, even on the beds. A boys’ room. Two boys lived here. There were two beds, two large fluffy toy bears, two distinct smells in the clothes, two of everything. Romochka climbed into the first bed and snuggled into the cream linen, tucking it around himself in movements that were somehow easy. The quilt had a picture of a stripy orange cat stitched onto it, with big teeth and yellow eyes.

‘A
tiger
,’ he said out loud, delighted with his own memories. He closed his eyes. ‘Good night,’ he said, experimentally, and the little dog whined. ‘If you don’t shut up and go to sleep, I’ll fuckin skin ya!’ he said to her, giggling.

He noticed that his hands had made blackish finger marks rather like a picture of claws on the cream sheets and pillow. He leapt up and hopped into the second bed. This one had a many-coloured blanket covering the quilt. But Romochka found he couldn’t stay still, and he soon wriggled out from under the bedding and began pulling all the toys out of the boxes and the clothes out of the wardrobe.

Two boys, brothers, one bigger, one smaller. Romochka and Puppy. He stopped. Puppy’s name wasn’t a word. ‘Schenok,’ he said out loud, standing in the middle of the room. His joyous feelings cooled. He didn’t like the sound of his own voice, all of a sudden. He had better get some stuff for Puppy. He sniffed through the clothes and toys, wondering what Puppy would like most. There was no way he would be able to carry all this stuff, so he would have to choose.

He rummaged through all the drawers and cupboards, filled his bag, emptied it again, and filled it again with other things. He became bewildered and overwrought with the huge array and the choices he had to make and now he was sick of the smell of their clothes. Without thinking, he peed on the door and the side of the beds, and then did a poo in the corner by the wardrobe. The poo and wee smelled all wrong in here too, so he threw some of the clothes over them. Then he remembered with a jolt that people would not like it, and he tried to wipe the wee up and clean the corner, but ended up smearing the poo up the wall and spreading drips of wee on everything.

He got hungry and went looking for food. The kitchen was tiny and very pretty. He loved it. He had never seen anything like it and ran his fingers over everything. It was covered in pictures of flowers, many of them in colours he had never seen on flowers. It had a white gas stove and oven, and, above the stove bench, white tiles decorated with small blue flowers that reminded him of the blooms that had just opened in the sodden snow of the vacant allotment. There were white lace curtains on the windows, and a plastic tablecloth printed with large mauve flowers and light brown leaves. The soft lino floor was a yellow field with pink flowers and lilac leaves. Everything was very clean.

The kitchen was so well stocked with food that he almost abandoned the idea of collecting clothes and toys for Puppy and hunted instead. He pulled everything out of the refrigerator and took a bite out of whatever was edible. He emptied the pantry cupboard onto the floor and crammed biscuits into his mouth. He felt for his pockets, realised he had taken them off, and crammed even more into his mouth. He wondered whether he should perhaps burn the mess he had made, but he could find no matches or firelighter, so, full bellied, he went back to the room that now smelled slightly better and sat down on the pile of clothes and toys and bedding.

The little white dog crept in close to him and stared at him. She looked away whenever he looked at her. Finally, worried about getting drowsy, he stuffed some trousers, jumpers, coats and hats into the bag. A pair of boots. He looked in bewilderment at the toys and couldn’t choose.

Just then the little dog shot out of the room. He followed her, nervous. She was at the door, ears pricked, tail up, body stiff—listening to something way down below. Then she started barking, desperately. She knew help was at hand.

Romochka raced back to the bedroom, grabbed the half-full bag, toyless still, and raced back to the front door. In the entrance he saw one last toy, a red and yellow plastic bone that squeaked as he grabbed it. He shoved it in and ran for the door, slipping on the cold blood from his fight with the little dog. She was in a frenzy now, all focused on the door. He pushed her aside and wrestled with the handle. It was locked. He could hear steps on the stairs. The little dog sang out the whole story with such urgency that even people would be able to hear it.

He shrieked in panic, scrabbled his fingers briefly at the door, and then raced for the parents’ bedroom and the window. He jumped up through the open casement onto the sill, but he couldn’t squeeze his bag of stuff through the little window. He thought of abandoning it and pulled himself up. He tried to get his feet, shanks, knees out, but what he had managed to do when calm he now found impossible.

The little dog was yabbering, practically howling. He heard the door to the apartment being unlocked, opened. He was too late. He jumped back to the sill, picked up his bag and crouched in the room. There was no hiding place. He was whimpering now with each breath. He turned towards the door, and, with his bag over his shoulder, he ran.

There were three people, holding their noses and exclaiming in horror. Romochka roared and ran straight at them, dodging sharply through their startled lunges, through their exclamations—‘Phuuuuu!! Oujas! What
is
it!?’ ‘Catch him!’ ‘Bomzh thief!’ ‘What a smell!’ ‘What
was
that?’—and then he sprinted, with them behind, down the strange corridor to where he thought the stairs had to be. He was faster, even hunched over with the bag on his back. He rattled down the last flight of stairs with tumult behind him and ran as fast as he could for the street door. Someone opened the metal door from the outside just at that moment, and he was through.

White Sister appeared out of nowhere and snarled into the faces of the startled men and women who were filling the doorway behind him with angry uproar.

He ran all the way home to try to keep from freezing in his thin shirt and long underwear.

He played at home with Puppy for a few days, feeling diminished. Gradually his ears sharpened to points, his teeth lengthened, his chest lost its flat human plane and he headed out again to hunt the forest and mountain. And, inevitably, the city.

Once his sense of himself was sufficiently doglike again, he gave way to his desire to hunt toys, telling himself it was Puppy who needed them. But he gave up houses. The mirror had made him miserable, and he couldn’t forget the little white dog.

Romochka and White Sister were making their way warily through the slush in a strange alley. One side was filled with rubble and had the occasional familiar nest of cardboard, broken crates and old blankets. The other had a thin puddled pathway through a slurry of plastic bottles, paper, nappies, broken glass and onion skins. The hairs prickled on the back of Romochka’s neck just as White Sister stiffened. They were being stalked from the laneways leading into this alley. They were being stalked but not stealthily. And at that moment the alley behind them filled with people, whooping and yelling.

‘Dogboy! Dogboy! Don’t let him get away!’

Romochka and White Sister turned and sprinted along the clearer side of the alley, their footfall loud and spattering, covering each other with black oily mud as they ran. They were in an unfamiliar part of the city where Romochka had been seeking a degree of anonymity for his hunt, and he didn’t know the way out. They were running in ankle-deep sludge now, half-clambering through large piles of rubbish by two overturned dumpsters—a bad sign. The cries behind them had the high excitement of a hunt reaching a climax, and Romochka wasn’t surprised when the alley turned and ended suddenly in a brick wall, still piled with black snow.

He and White Sister spun to fight. But as the gang rounded the corner, quieter now, he knew it was hopeless. They were a very large pack, all nearly grown. Big short-hair boys. He crouched and swung his club low, legs apart, waiting. White Sister bared her teeth and snarled in rumbling swells, snapping and slavering to show all she had. But he knew that they were just two dogs, and it would not be enough.

 

He woke up to the sound of White Sister snarling and yelping in pain. He kept his eyes closed, listening. She sounded angry and submissive at the same time. He could hear that she was afraid. He could hear laughter, swelling and bubbling in response to her cries. He could feel someone hovering near him, leaning in. His head hurt. His hands and feet were free but no part of his body was touching the floor, he realised. He was hanging, naked, by a bunch of hair drawn from his brow and crown. He couldn’t touch the ground, but the person in front of him must be standing on it. Cold water was running down his face, and he could feel from the breeze that his face was completely uncovered.

He waited, made a guess from the sound of smiling breath, and kicked the person in front of him in the face as hard as he could, opening his eyes and snarling at the same time. His body swung as he snapped his foot out and the kick was far weaker than he had hoped; hard enough only to startle and enrage. The youth jumped back, clutching his face and yelling. The others turned and laughed.

He was in a large darkened warehouse space, filled with pipes and pillars. The gang were lying around at rest, or gathered around White Sister. Her head was pressed to the floor, pinned with a large nail driven through her folded ear. He just had time to glimpse her scrabbling in desperation as they goaded her, before the one he had kicked smacked his head with something and darkness fell.

 

He was thirsty and hungry. His scalp ached. There were fewer in the room now but still quite a pack. They had become bored with White Sister. She was trembling in the middle of the floor, trying feebly to stop her exhausted limbs sliding out from under her. He could smell food, hot food. They were eating out of paper bags. Stardogs and Subway. He made a noise and they turned. A dark spiky-haired youth in a leather jacket came up to him, grabbed his foot and swung his body. He swayed dizzily from side to side, scrabbling to stop himself with hands and feet. The others laughed, choking on their food. They looked at him with bright eyes and he knew this was not good. The boys were not bomzhi. They were all short-hair boys. They had house clothes, jeans and warm jackets; he could smell that someone washed their clothes and bodies.

He felt terribly afraid now. House boys hated bomzh boys so this was going to be a clan thing, not just a lack of appreciation. He glanced around surreptitiously as the boy swung him against the wall again. This was their lair, but they lived elsewhere, in houses, apartments, flats, with their mothers and uncles. They seemed unreal to him, somehow. He tried to picture them as sons of the women he had robbed. In the apartment with the little dog. He found he couldn’t imagine it.

The lair was furnished with some broken-down sofas, a ramshackle improvised fireplace with a warm fire blazing in it and a table. The boys played with noisy flashing toys Romochka didn’t recognise. Most of them had knives. Their eyes slid sideways, always, to see what other boys thought of them. Following their glances, Romochka realised there were also two girls or very young women in the lair. One was asleep on one of the sofas, her long bare arms glowing orange in the firelight. The other was staring at him with a bored expression from the back of the room, where she was leaning against the shoulder of a very tall boy.

‘Dare ya to fuck it!’ one boy said suddenly, pushing the skinny boy next to him.

‘Fuck it yasself!’ the skinny one said, shoving back.

‘Fuck IT, fuck IT, fuck IT, fuck IT!’ the other boys started chanting, giggling. They scrambled to their feet and formed a semicircle, clapping their hands in tune with their chant and miming hip thrusts. The skinny boy grinned and lashed out at them with his fists.

‘I’d rather fuck the dog,’ he said and they all fell about laughing, and began pulling him towards White Sister.

‘Fuck yourself,’ Romochka croaked, and they all turned and stared at him in sudden silence.

The boys surrounded him, poking him with sticks.

‘Say it again, again, again!’ they chanted.

These boys wanted him to speak, so he spoke. They wanted him to cry, so he cried, fat tears running down his cheeks and chest. They wanted his fear, so he gave it to them.

He wet himself for them. He held his penis for them. He sang for them. He begged, pleaded, drummed his heels on the wallboards. He fought them each in turn, dangling and swinging like a marionette in a puny helpless dance of fists and feet. He kept them entertained and away from White Sister, all the while thinking
Mamochka, Mamochka, mother, mother, come for me, come for me now. Come quickly and bring all the teeth we have.
He eyed a long naked knife one of the boys had left lying under the far table. How impossibly far away that wonderful lone tooth was.