«She's not used to doing things like a dog. We have to lower her to the ground, let her walk outside, like a person.»
«A big hulk like that?» Orest said, gloomily. «Forget it. We'll train her right, and straight off, in the spirit of our circus traditions. Our little miss aristocrat won't hack it — she'll have to answer mother nature's call.»
But mother nature, in fact, did not call, not on the second day, and not on the third.
All the same, Orest wouldn't budge from his «spirit of circus traditions» edict — he'd meant every word.
On the fourth day, the dog was half-dead.
Alex climbed into the dogs' car. The dogs, locked up in tiered cages, started yapping and yelping, but they quieted down immediately when Orest showed up. A prodigious wheeze issued from Mollie's cage.
«Come on, let's take her outside,» mumbled Orest, meekly. «Maybe it's not too late.»
«Right on time, to a T,» Alex smiled, viciously. «Fine trainer you are!»
Orest opened the cage and pulled the dog's bulk onto its feet. Mollie moaned weakly, but finally rose, swayed and took a few steps.
«Bravo, Mollikins, bravo,» whispered Orest, hauling the dog along by its collar, while Alex pushed the St. Bernard in its behind.
The dog suddenly seemed to trip and lay down in the passageway.
«Let's drag her!» Orest panicked, and in a flash they were pulling the dog to the half open door. Orest managed to jump out, and Alex pushed Mollie onto him. The bulky carcass toppled over and crushed the trainer. Alex burst out laughing, quite out of place. Just because.
«What're you cacklin' about?!» rasped a suffocating Orest. «Help me…»
Alex jumped down.
But the dog stood up on its own. Catching a whiff of real earth, even if it was just gravel soaked through with fuel oil, coal dust and soot, revived Mollie. She stretched her nose towards the embankment, took a few cautious steps on shaking paws, finally she squatted and urinated.
Alex and Orest watched over her, motionless with joy. Once Mollie was done peeing, they high-fived each other, and even embraced.
Mollie, meanwhile, playfully jumped and gamboled her way to some grass by the side of the road, where she spun like a child's top and squatted again — for some serious business this time.
«Whew,» Orest wiped his sweaty brow.
«We've done it this time, eh?» Alex was smiling, sarcastically.
«You watch that smart mouth 'a yours,» he frowned. «I'm still your boss, an' I can hire you an' fire you…»
«Uh-huh. Right here, right now.» She stuck her tongue out at him.
The train, meanwhile, gave a shudder. A wave of motion rolled from its head to its tail, clanging and clattering through every car. And slowly, the whole thing started moving forward.
«Hey!» Alex had turned to look at the signal light: it was green.
«Bah!» Orest carelessly waved it off. «It's nothing. They're just switching it over to another line. Just moving 'em around for another day, day number three here.» He yawned and stretched, joints cracking. «Now we can go grab some shut-eye… Thank God it all worked out!»
«They're prob'ly switching it over to the fifth line.» Alex was yawning, too. «There's nobody on that one.» And she was stretching just as thoroughly.
«Not likely. Probably the sixth… Yesterday the trackman was saying number six is the line going' to Spas-Kukuyevsk.» He thought aminute and added, gloomily, «Our line's going there, too.»
«So, maybe, it's this one, this one leaving? Huh?»
The last car, a huge cup loaded with coal, lumbered lazily by. The two, standing there, followed it with suspicious stares.
«We can still catch up to it and jump on,» said Orest, with a sidelong glance at the dog.
«Sure, nothing to it,» answered Alex, whispering for some reason. They traded conspiratorial looks, but right then Mollie — happy as a clam — buoyantly ran over to them and, leaning her big block of a head to one side, fixed her devoted stare on their worried faces, amicably wagging her fan-like tail.
Orest snorted, screwed up his eyes and looked into the distance.
«For sure they'll start moving it back in a second. Look, what'd I say!»
The train sputtered, an uneven wave rolled over all the cars, but… it didn't stop — on the contrary, it picked up speed and confidence.
«Light's green,» Alex exhaled in desolation.
Orest kept nervously ogling the caboose, already difficult to make out in the distance.
«What're you, trying to hypnotize it?» laughed Alex. «All es we is, plain as day…»
The rails, polished to a sheen, stretched out endlessly before them, tapering off to the horizon, melting into a vague vista.
«Let's go to the dispatcher,» Orest scratched the back of his neck. «Find out what's what.»
«Ri-ight, no money, no papers…»
«Yeah, but look at the dog we've got with us!»
«What a sight we are! Like a couple'a bums…»
They were indeed both dressed like odd-balls: Alex in shorts carelessly cut from some blue-jeans, with one leg barely covering her buttock, the other fringing her knee; and an oversized man's T-shirt, in whose armholes her breasts twinkled in and out of view — she wasn't wearing a bra and her head was shaved to boot; while Orest had arrayed himself in bright pink, with buckskin breeches whose sequins had half-fallen off, and soft-soled ankle boots — his old acrobat's costume. To top it off, by this, their fourth day on the road, they were both pretty ripe.
The dispatcher's station was housed in a glass box, towering over the railroad yard. At the control panel sat a cozy-looking, unbelievably fat old lady. She kept a sort of running commentary going into a microphone, as if she was peering into a pot in her kitchen, murmuring, «Right, and now some onion, a little carrot, and just a pinch of salt, and now, how about a little pepper…» while her voice echoed over the fancifully intricate interlacings of the rails: «318 to number five… 22814 to number eight… 121 to number one…» Meanwhile, she was pressing buttons and flipping switches, and all this with that same hum-drum everydayness, as if cooking over a stove instead of running some mysterious micro-economy of train cars.
The woman didn't immediately notice her visitors, so they were free to gawk, through the enclosure's glass walls, at the sprawling panorama: at elongated trains, moving like tentacles or frozen stiff in immobility; at rails, interlaced and branching out in some weird disordered harmony; at traffic lights and signals and posts, and little human figures, scurrying about.
«Ahh!» the fat old lady screamed suddenly, in a squeaky voice. Mollie was poking her wet snout into the woman's meaty calf. Her incredible girth proved no hindrance; the dispatcher had sprung up onto her chair in the blink of an eye.
«Don't be afraid,» guffawed Orest.
Alex grabbed the dog by the collar.
«She's a good dog.»
The dispatcher, huffing and puffing, descended from her perch. Orest gallantly offered her a hand.
«Thank you,» she said, keeping a wary eye on the St. Bernard. «I've only seen bulls like that on the TV.»
A discord of voices floated out of the microphones: someone was yelling, someone whistling, others cursing. The dispatcher rushed back to the control panel, barked out a «Shush!» — and in the prompt silence, calmly started muttering into the microphone again, with distrustful sidelong glances at the dog and her peculiar visitors.
When she found a moment she uttered a perfunctory «What can I do for you?» — with no special tenderness.
Alex at once flashed an ingratiating smile.
«We're from the circus, we've got these really funny-looking train cars…»