“You hardly recognize me, right? The watchers won’t either. I’ve tested it out so many times. I go around in these rags on purpose. They’re so used to them that when I get dressed up, they look right through me, like I’m not even there. Maybe I could leave this jacket with you?”
She stuffed the jacket, rolled into a ball, into her rucksack, along with her unisex sandals, and put the rucksack under the coatrack.
“Marina, why don’t you let me take you to the station?” Ilya suggested.
“No, that wouldn’t be right. Why do them any favors?” She shook her head, and her hair divided neatly into two parts. Marina pushed her splayed fingers through her hair, from her forehead to the back of her head, and tucked it under a barrette. Her bangs fell down to her nose. She blew them upward and shook her head.
Ilya looked at her in surprise: still just a kid, but she already understood a thing or two …
“Only you should take Hera out for a walk first. The first time while I’m still here, okay?”
Again she showed a remarkable perspicacity for her age. What a girl!
Ilya took the leash from the coatrack and gave the command: “Let’s go for a walk!” The dog followed him out with a trusting demeanor.
Marina then turned to Olga.
“The thing is, you know, I’ve never been to Leningrad. One of my friends keeps telling me to come, saying it’s great, with the white nights and all. I know the Leningrad scene a little—those guys came here once to visit. They promised they’d give me a place to crash.”
How did Marina change her appearance in the space of a few minutes, from a gawky adolescent into a slutty-looking runaway who hangs around train stations? Olga wondered. Then she grew alarmed. What if she gets lost in the role? But Marina seemed to read her thoughts.
“Olga, I’m not the one you thought I was at first; or the other one, either. I’m someone else altogether! A third person!” She brayed with laughter. “Or maybe even a fourth…”
Without changing her tone, she gave Olga clear-cut instructions.
“I’ll leave when they come back. You have to walk her twice a day, early in the morning and later in the evening. Early means about noon. I never get up before then. But you’ve got to give her a good run. Laikas aren’t meant to live inside at all, really. The cold is good for them, and they need to be worked hard. There’s a chance I may move away from the city altogether next year. We’ll see…” And she looked at Olga secretively, as though expecting her to ask more questions, which she wouldn’t deign to answer anyway.
But Olga sensed this, and didn’t bother asking. She liked this Marina for her independence, but the effrontery of that independence irked her.
Then the girl left, and they all went to bed—Kostya in the little room next to the kitchen, Hera on the blanket by the front door, and Olga and Ilya in the bed of Karelian birch with the ornate headboard. This birch served Olga faithfully in both her first and her second marriage.
The night was not a quiet one. First Olga got the sniffles, then she started coughing. Toward morning, she woke up. Something strange was happening to her: her face felt heavy, and it had become hard to breathe. She prodded Ilya a long time before he would wake up. Then he opened his eyes and sat bolt upright.
“What happened to you?”
“I don’t know, I’m having some sort of attack. Maybe we should call the emergency service?”
The medics came very quickly; they were there in only twenty minutes.
And they diagnosed Olga’s problem quickly, too. They said it was Quincke’s edema. They gave her an injection, sat with her for twenty minutes to make sure that the shot was working, and, before they left, said that it was most likely an allergic reaction to the dog. They should get rid of it immediately!
Olga waited until seven in the morning before calling Tamara and asking her, in a sniffly voice, to come over right away. In their school days it would have taken Tamara five minutes to run from Sobachaya Square to Olga’s; now the trip from Molodezhnaya metro station took forty minutes. Tamara didn’t deliberate for long, and didn’t ask any questions. If Olga needed her, she needed her, and that was that. She quickly got herself ready, and in an hour she was with Olga.
When she entered the apartment she was greeted by a medium-size dog. Well, not exactly greeted—in the hall sat a dog that didn’t so much as flick an ear upon the arrival of a guest.
Ilya was the one who greeted her. He took Tamara’s raincoat and opened the door to the bedroom, where Olga was. The dog sat by the front door, like a stone carving.
Tamara looked at Olga and gasped.
“What happened?”
“Oh, it’s Quincke’s edema,” Olga said casually. “Listen, Tamara, here’s the situation. This is the Kulakovs’ dog. You don’t know them? No? But you’ve heard of them, of course? You really haven’t? Valentin and Zina Kulakov? No, what does Red Square have to do with it? He’s a philosopher, a Marxist, and he published a magazine. It’s already been more than a year since they were both sent to prison, and their fifteen-year-old girl was left behind alone. Well, she’s sixteen now; but just imagine … Thank goodness she wasn’t thrown into an orphanage. At first they settled her with her aunt, but the girl has quite a temper. She ran away from her aunt after only a week, and started living by herself. We have some friends in common—not close friends, though. Since the girl was going to Leningrad for a week, our friends asked us if we would take care of the dog for a while. We agreed, naturally. Yesterday she showed up—right off the street. With the dog. And it turns out I’m allergic to dog hair. I guess it’s obvious. We could have taken the dog to the dacha, but my mother would never allow it, that’s for sure. Mother is from the country, you know, and a dog who lives indoors makes no sense to her. And outside—we don’t even have a doghouse! It would run away and get lost. And we’re supposed to be taking care of her.”
Tamara didn’t say anything. She wasn’t from the country, and dogs living indoors made perfect sense to her—but she worked in a medical research laboratory, and she observed dogs either in cages, or in an enclosure and a vivarium. They had never kept any pets at home. Tamara’s mother was mortally afraid of dogs, and she didn’t like cats. When her grandmother was alive, she’d had an old cat named Marquise; but after her grandmother died, there were no more pets.
“So, Tamara, if you’d keep her at your place for the time being—her owner will be back before you know it. The dog’s name is Hera.”
“While Mama’s still at the sanatorium, I’ll keep her; but after she comes back, I really can’t, Olga,” Tamara said, surprisingly unequivocal about the matter.
“But for how long? When is your mother getting back?”
“In three days,” Tamara said firmly.
Olga sniffed, and kissed Tamara’s tight little curls.
“You’re so dependable, Tam. You and Galya—there’s no one else like you two. If you can just keep the dog until your mother gets back, we’ll think of something by then.”
“Maybe you could ask Galya? Maybe she’ll take the dog?” Her eyes showed a glimmer of hope.
“As if! It’s not just any old dog; it’s a dissident dog! You might even say a Marxist dog! Take a dog like that into a KGB agent’s den?” Olga laughed in what was almost her normal sonorous voice. “And besides, Galya’s on vacation.”
Transporting the dog was problematic. Hera was determined not to get into Ilya’s car. She sat next to the open door with an imperturbable expression on her face, her translucent yellow eyes staring off into the distance. They were about to give up and take the metro when Tamara had an idea.
“Ilya, get into the car first, then command her to get in.”
“Clever!” Ilya said. He got behind the wheel and, patting the seat next to him, said: “Lie down!”