© Antonina W. Bouis, 2011

© Каро, 2020

Chapter 1

Aooooo-ooow-ooow! O, look at me, I’m dying! The blizzard in the alley is roaring a dirge for me, and I’m howling with it. I’m done for^[1], gone! The bastard in the filthy cap – the cook in the normalized nutrition canteen serving the Central Economic Council^[2] – sloshed boiling water at me and burned my left side. What a creep, and a proletarian to boot! Lord, God almighty, it hurts! The boiling water ate through to the bone. So I howl and howl and howl, but how can howling help?

What did I ever do to him? What? Did he think I’d eat the Economic Council out of its stores if I rummaged in the rubbish? Greedy creature. Take a look at his mug some time: fat, broad cheeks. He’s a brass-faced thief. People, help! The white-hat gave me a taste of boiling water at noon; now it’s dark, around four in the afternoon, going by the onion smell from the Prechistenka fire station. The firemen get buckwheat groats for dinner, as you well know. But that’s way down on my list, like mushrooms. Dogs I know from Prechistenka told me, however, that there’s a place called The Bar on Neglinny Street, where people gobble up the special of the day, mushrooms en sauce piquante^[3], at three roubles seventy-five a portion. To each his own – for me it’s like licking galoshes… Oooow… My side is killing me, and I can see my future career absolutely clearly: tomorrow there will be sores and I’d like to know how I’m supposed to treat them. In the summer you can go down to Sokolniki Park, there’s a particularly good grass there, and besides which, you can stuff yourself with sausage ends and the citizenry litter the place with greasy wrapping paper that’s good to lick. And if not for some old biddy who sings in the moonlight – ‘Celeste Aida’^[4] – in a way that turns your stomach, all would be fine. But now where am I supposed to go? Have you been kicked by boots? Yes. Have you ever got a brick in the ribs? Plenty of times. I’ve suffered it all, I’ve accepted my fate, and if I’m crying now it’s only from the physical pain and the hunger, because my spirit hasn’t dimmed yet. The canine spirit is very tenacious. But my body is broken, battered, people have had their fun with it. The worst part is this: once he’d poured the boiling water on me, it ate through the fur, and now there’s no protection for my left side. I could easily get pneumonia, and if I do, citizens, I will starve to death. When you have pneumonia, you’re supposed to lie under the main stairs inside, and who’s going to run around the bins in search of food except me, a bedridden bachelor dog? If my lung is affected, I’ll be crawling on my belly, weakened, and any guy with a stick can finish me off. And then the street-cleaners with their badges will grab me by my legs and toss me into their cart…

Of all the proletarians, street-cleaners are the vilest scum. Human dregs, the lowest category. You get different kinds of cooks. Take the late Vlas from Prechistenka. How many lives he saved! The most important thing when you’re sick is to get a bite. And there were times, the old hounds say, when Vlas would toss a bone and it would have an ounce of meat on it. May he rest in peace for being a real human being, the personal chef to the Count Tolstoys, and not from the Council of Normalized Nutrition^[5]. What they do in the name of normalized nutrition is beyond a dog’s mind to understand! Those bastards use rotten corned beef to make cabbage soup, and the poor customers know nothing about it. They come, eat, guzzle it down!

This little typist of the ninth rank earns forty-five roubles but, of course, her lover gives her fine cotton stockings. And how much she has to put up with for those fil de Perse^[6] stockings! He doesn’t just take her the usual way, he makes her do it French style. Real bastards, those French, just between you and me. Though they eat well, all washed down with red wine. Yes… So the little typist will come to eat there, she can’t afford to go to The Bar on forty-five roubles! She doesn’t have enough for the movies, and movies are the sole consolation for women. She shudders and winces but eats it. Just think, forty copecks for two courses, while both those courses don’t even cost fifteen, because the manager steals the remaining twenty-five copecks. And is this the kind of food she should be eating? The tip of her right lung has a spot, and she has women’s troubles thanks to that French stuff, they docked her wages at work and fed her putrid meat at the canteen, there she is, there she is! Running into the alley in her lover’s stockings. Her feet are cold, the wind is blowing on her belly because her fur’s like mine, and she wears cold undies, just a lacy appearance of underwear. Tatters for her lover. Let her try putting on flannel pants. He’ll shout: “Why can’t you be sexy? I’m sick and tired of my Matryona, sick of her flannel underpants, my time has come. I’m a chairman now, and everything I embezzle goes to female flesh, chocolates and bottles of Abrau-Durso!^[7] I spent my entire youth hungry, I’m done with that, and there is no afterlife.”

I pity her, I do. But I pity myself even more. That’s not my egoism talking, oh no, but it’s because we truly are in unequal conditions. At least she’s warm at home, but what about me? Where can I go? Beaten, scalded, spat upon, where can I go? Ooooow-ooow!

“Here, boy. Sharik, come on, Sharik! Why are you whining, poor thing? Eh? Did someone hurt you?… Ooof!”

The blizzard wind, that witch, rattled the gates and smacked the young lady on the ear with its broom. It lifted her skirt to her knees, revealing creamy stockings and a narrow strip of poorly laundered lace underwear, stifling her words and sweeping away the dog.

My God, what terrible weather. Ooof. And my stomach aches. That salted meat! When will it all end?

Lowering her head, the young woman launched herself into the attack, breaking through the gates, and she was spun round and round, tossed and then twisted into a snowy funnel, before she vanished.

The dog remained near the alley, suffering the pain of his mutilated side, pressed himself against the cold wall, held his breath and decided that he would never leave this spot again, that he would die right there. Despair overwhelmed him. He felt such bitterness and pain, such loneliness and fear, that tiny canine tears bubbled from his eyes and dried on the spot. His fur on the wounded side was all in shredded, frozen clumps, revealing vicious red burns. How stupid, nasty and cruel were cooks. She called him "Sharik”…^[8] What the hell kind of "Sharik” was he! Sharik was a fluffball, a round, well-fed, dumb, oatmeal-eating son of pedigree parents, and he was a shaggy, bony and scruffy stray, a homeless dog. But thanks for the kind thought.

The door of the brightly lit shop across the road slammed, and a citizen appeared. A citizen, not a comrade, and probably a gentleman. As he came closer, it was clear he was a gentleman. Don’t you think I judge by the overcoat. Nonsense. Lots of proles wear overcoats now too. Of course, not with collars like that, no way, but still you could get confused from a distance. But I judge by the eyes – you can’t mistake them either near or far! Oh, eyes are a significant thing! Like a barometer. You can see everything – who has a vast desert in his heart, who can jab you in the ribs with the toe of his boot for no reason at all, and who is afraid of everything. There’s such pleasure in nipping the last type in the calf. Afraid? So there. If you’re afraid, you deserve it. Grrrrr… arf!

The gentleman crossed the street confidently in the column of blowing snow and moved towards the gate. Yes, yes, I could see everything about him. He wouldn’t put away^[9] that putrid corned beef, and if anyone dared serve him some he would raise such a fuss and write to the papers saying: “They gave me, Filipp Filippovich, rotten meat!”

Here he comes, closer and closer. This one eats well and doesn’t steal. He won’t kick you, but he’s not afraid of anyone, and that’s because he’s never hungry. He is a gentleman who does intellectual labour, with a French pointy beard and a grey moustache, fluffy and dashing, like French knights had, but the blizzard carries his smell and it’s a bad one – hospital and cigar.

What the hell brings him to the Central Economy Co-op^[10]? Now he’s right there… What’s he looking for? Oh-oh… What could he want to buy in that crummy little store, aren’t the fancy stores on Okhotny Ryad^[11] enough? What is it?! Sausage. Mister, if you saw how they made that sausage you wouldn’t go anywhere near the store. Give it to me!

The dog mustered what little strength it had and madly crawled out from beneath the gate onto the pavement. The blizzard thundered like a rifle shot above him, billowing the huge letters on a canvas poster: “is rejuvenation possible?”

Of course it is. The smell rejuvenated me, got me up off my belly, raising fiery waves in my stomach that had been empty for two days, the smell vanquished the hospital, the heavenly fragrance of ground mare with garlic and pepper.

I can smell it, I know he’s got sausage in his right pocket. He’s standing above me. O, master! Look at me. I am dying. We’ve got slaves’ hearts, a miserable fate!

The dog crawled like a snake on its belly, streaming tears. Note the cook’s work. But you’re not going to give me any. Oh, I know rich people very well! Yet, essentially, what do you want it for? What do you want with rotten horsemeat? You won’t get poison like this anywhere except at the Moscow Agricultural Processing Trust^[12], that’s for sure. You had breakfast today, you world luminary, thanks to male sex glands. Oooo-oooh… What is going on in this fair world? I guess it’s too early to die, and despair is a sin. I have to lick his hands, there’s nothing else left to do.

The mysterious gentleman bent over the dog, the gold frames around his eyes glinting, and took a long white package out of his right pocket. Without taking off his brown gloves, he unwrapped the paper, which the storm immediately took away, and broke off a piece of sausage, which was called Cracow Special. And gave the piece to the dog. Oh, what a selfless individual! Oooh – ooh!

“Phweet” the gentleman whistled and added in a stern voice, “Here! Sharik, Sharik!”

Sharik again. I’ve been baptized. Call me whatever you want. In return for your exceptional act.

The dog instantly pulled off the casing, clamped onto the Cracow sausage with a slurp and gulped it down in a trice. And choked on the sausage and snow to the point of tears, because he had almost swallowed the string in his greed. More, I lick your hand more. I kiss your trousers, my benefactor!

“Enough for now…” The gentleman spoke in short bursts, as if giving orders. He leant over Sharik, looked interrogatively into his eyes and unexpectedly ran his gloved hand intimately and gently over Sharik’s belly.

“Ah-ha,” he said portentously, “no collar, that’s lovely, you’re just the one I want. Follow me.” He clicked his fingers.

“Phweet!"

Follow you? To the ends of the earth. You can kick me with your suede shoes and I won’t say a word.

Street lamps glowed all over Prechistenka. His side ached terribly, but Sharik sometimes forgot about it, lost in one thought only – how not to lose in the crowd the miraculous vision in a fur coat, and how to express his love and loyalty. And he expressed it some seven times down the length of Prechistenka to Obukhov Lane. He kissed his shoe; near Myortvy Lane, trying to clear the path, he scared some lady with his wild bark so much that she sank down on an advertising pillar; and once or twice he whined to maintain the man’s pity.

Some bitch of a stray cat, looking like a Siberian, slipped out of a drain pipe, having caught the scent of the sausage despite the blizzard. Sharik almost lost his mind at the prospect that this rich weirdo who picked up wounded dogs in doorways would pick up this thief too, and he would have to share the processed meat. He snarled and bared his teeth at the cat, and the feline hissed like a hole-riddled water hose, and climbed up the pipe to the second floor. Grrrrrrr… arf! Scat! You can’t stock up enough from the processing centre for all the freeloaders hanging around on Prechistenka.

The gentleman appreciated the loyalty and right at the fire station, by the window that emitted the pleasant grumble of a French horn, rewarded the dog with a second piece about an ounce smaller.

Silly man. Luring me. Don’t worry! I’m not going off on my own. I’ll follow you wherever you go.

“Phweet! This way!”

Onto Obukhov? By all means. We know this lane very well.

“Phweet!"

This way? With pleas- oh, no, sorry. There’s a doorman. There’s nothing worse than a doorman. Much more dangerous than a street-cleaner. An absolutely hateful breed. More disgusting than cats. A flayer in gold braid^[13].

“Don’t be afraid. Go.”

“Good evening, Filipp Filippovich.”

“Hello, Fyodor.”

Now there’s a personality for you. My God, what have you found for me, my dog’s destiny! What kind of man is this who can bring dogs off the street past doormen into an apartment building run by a council of comrades? Look at that scoundrel – not a word, not a movement! His eyes look disturbed, but in general he is indifferent under his gold-braided cap. As if this is how things should be. That’s respect, gentlemen, real respect. Well, and I’m with him and behind him. What, touch me? Here’s a bite. I’d love to sink my teeth into your calloused proletarian foot. For all the torment from your brethren. How many times did you poke my face with a broom, eh?

“Come on, come on.”

I got it, don’t worry. Wherever you go, so do I. You just show me the way, and I’ll keep up, despite my miserable side.

Calling down from the stairs: “Were there any letters for me, Fyodor?”

From below, respectfully: “No sir, Filipp Filippovich, there weren’t” – then, in an intimate, low tone, adding – “they’ve moved new tenants into apartment three.”

The important canine benefactor turned abruptly on the step, leant over the banister, and asked in horror, “Really?”

His eyes opened wide and his moustache bristled.

The doorman tilted his head, brought his hand to his mouth and confirmed it. “Yes sir, a total of four of them.”

“My God! I can just imagine the state of the apartment now. And what did they say?”

“Nothing.”

“And Fyodor Pavlovich?”

“He went out for screens and bricks. To make partitions.”

“I’ll be damned!”

“They’ll be moving people into all the apartments, Filipp Filippovich, except yours. There was a meeting; they elected a new council of comrades and sent the old one packing.”

“The goings-on.^[14] Ai-ai-ai… Phweet.”

I’m on my way, hurrying. My side is making itself felt, you see. Allow me to lick your boot.

The doorman’s gold braid vanished below. The marble landing was warm from the pipes, we turned one more time and reached the first floor.