The dog’s eyes expressed momentary hesitation, but she stood up, sprang lightly into the front seat, and lay down, extending her paws out in front of her. Then she sighed, just like a human. The dog clearly didn’t have enough room, but the look on her face showed only dignified submission.
Tamara sat in the backseat, and they drove off.
In the evening Tamara called Olga to say that the dog had run away. She had broken loose from Tamara’s grasp, leash and all, and taken off.
Tamara had searched long and hard through the neighboring courtyards, asking all the dog owners whether they had seen the laika, to no avail. The next day they posted flyers around the neighborhood, and near the Molodezhnaya metro station. Then they waited. No one responded to their announcement.
In the meantime, Ilya had met with the director of the foundation and asked whether they could help a girl whose parents were in the camps. The director promised to look into it.
Three days later, early in the morning, Marina rang the doorbell.
Olga immediately told her about the missing dog. Marina sat down on the floor in the hall and put her face in her hands. Only when she took her hands away did Olga notice that her whole face was covered in red spots.
“Good God, what’s wrong with you? Is it an allergy?” Olga said.
“No. I need a bath. I shouldn’t have bothered going there. It’s caused nothing but trouble.” Marina sniffled, and rushed into the bathroom without taking off her raincoat.
She ran the water a long time, until Kostya woke up. He had to brush his teeth and get ready for school. Olga knocked on the bathroom door; it opened right away. Skinny as a fish skeleton, her body covered with red marks, scratches, and bruises, Marina stood there in front of Olga in her wet bra and underwear. All her clothes were floating in the bathtub, and the surface of the water was full of small, dark red globs. Heavens above, they were bedbugs!
Olga told Kostya to wash in the kitchen. She hurriedly fed him breakfast and sent him off to school. She found a nightgown for Marina to put on.
“Let’s have some coffee.”
Ilya was on a trip. If he had been home, they probably wouldn’t have been able to spend this time together. They were like sisters: Olga the elder one, and Marina, confused and nearly eaten alive by bedbugs, the younger one.
“The first night was just an orgy of drunkenness. My friend was there, too—what a pig! He begged and begged for me to come, and then, in the middle of the night, he went off with some girl and left me alone with these complete strangers. In the morning I went out with them to walk around town in the cold and rain. We were drinking vodka in little dives and bars, and then we bought some kind of pastries to eat and just wandered around all day. No one invited me to stay overnight. My friend had disappeared altogether. I called him at home, and they told me they hadn’t seen him for a whole week. What could I do? I went to the train station, but they were completely out of tickets. I called another girl, a friend of a friend, and she invited me to hang out with her. I waited in the station for three hours before she showed up. She looked like an awful person, but I went with her anyway.
“She took me to Saigon, some sort of café, like our Molodezhnaya. I liked it there, and I got to know another bunch of people. We went to Peterhof, outside the city, and wandered around there for two days. I ran out of money. Everyone sort of left one by one, until there were just two guys and me left. They took me to the university dormitories, which were empty, since it’s summer break, except for some sketchy types, petty thugs and all that. Well, we ended up crashing there, sharing a room. I’m going to skip the next part, since I don’t want to traumatize you. Right up until it happened, I didn’t realize what was going on; but I didn’t scream. Why should I scream? It was my own fault. I should have known I was just asking for trouble. And I got it. Well, I tried to struggle a bit, but those guys were hefty, they pinned me down. Then I just collapsed, like I was dead. To be honest, I was drunk. That night I woke up feeling like I had been scalded with boiling water. And it was light outside—those goddamn white nights and all that. It was so disorienting. And I love the nighttime. But there, it’s like there’s no real day or night, like some weird twilight, twenty-four/seven. And my whole body was burning, like it was on fire. And then my eyes almost popped out of my head—the walls were covered with polka dots, and the dots were moving toward me! I look down—and I’m covered in bedbugs! I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. It was a swarm of them, a whole army! There was no place to wash, just one small sink in the WC at the end of the hall. Somehow I managed to get ready to go. I noticed that one of the guys had left, and the other was still passed out in the room. I went through his pockets and took all the money he had on him. I thought it would be enough for a ticket; and even for two. Surprised? Yeah. Well, that’s how it happened. Just like that. Which one of them screwed me, I wondered, this one or the other? Then I thought—both of them, most likely. I didn’t remember. Anyway, what’s the difference? So I split. Straight to the commuter train, then to the train station. There were no tickets, but I bribed the conductor, and she let me stay in her own little compartment in the front of the wagon. I slept the whole way. I kept scratching like a pig, though, I’ve got to admit. I only realized just now that the bedbugs had hidden in the lining of my raincoat, and crawled out on the sly to bite me. Don’t worry, though. I drowned all of them, poured scalding water over them. Olga, what’s wrong? Why are you crying? Don’t, please, or I’ll start crying, too. And now Hera’s gone!”
Her tears streamed down her cheeks to her little chin. Olga and Marina grabbed hold of each other and cried in each other’s arms. Their tears were as heady and salty as blood.
“Never mind, never mind, everything will turn out all right,” Olga whispered. “We’ll find Hera. Your parents will be released. Everything will be fine…”
Marina, who had quieted down a bit, began howling again.
“Fine? What could be fine about it? Those idiots will come back, and everything will start all over again. They’re crazy, they belong in the loony bin, not in prison! The only good thing about my life is that they’re not in it. I was ten years old the first time I ran away from home. I couldn’t have told you why back then. But now I know why. They don’t need me! I only get in their way. All the other kids had normal lives, but all I had were endless meetings and conversations in the kitchen. Marx, Lenin, Lenin, Marx! I hate them. I don’t know how I’m going to survive now. But when they get out of prison, it will be the end…”
The coffee had long since grown cold.
“Warm it up, okay?” Marina said.
“I’ll put on a fresh pot.”
“Are you nuts? Just warm up this one. Have you got any cigarettes?”
Olga didn’t smoke. Even after all her years together with Ilya, she had never taken up smoking. She looked around to see whether Ilya had left any behind. They drank the old, warmed-up coffee, then put on another pot. Olga wanted to keep Marina at home with her, but she couldn’t. Her mother was going to spend the night at home, since she had scheduled some medical tests at the Writers’ Union polyclinic that morning.
“I’ll go home with you,” Olga said. They got on the number 15 trolleybus and took it to Tsvetnoy Boulevard, where the Kulakov family lived on the first floor of a three-story building in the courtyard of the former Trubnaya Square.
The misfortunes didn’t end there that day. When they arrived at Marina’s, they found there was no electricity in the building. It was plunged in darkness, and there was a powerful stench. The wooden floor was full of puddles. When they entered the building, the door slammed shut with a bang.