describing the sad case of an unparraleled canine devotion

It was not a week ago that I drove down this highway again, traffic lights shutting off the vehemence of perpetual locomotion down all the six lanes, I fixed my eyes steadily on the curbside to the right. There was nothing to look at save the sight of few pedestrians shuffling on. Hardly a thing can take root in a lifeless asphalt. But for me this place was sown invisibly with the richest seeds, which over time have grown with the steadiness of persistence deep into the unyielding soil, and now bring forth gentle islet of flowers, which do not wilt in rain or wintry sleet but glow brighter reminding of their sad story of unremitting devotion. No pedestrian can trample them, no car will run them over, for that which exists in the shadows of the past is inviolate.

This happened not long after the perestroika, had left the whole generation of people, that lived through the Great war but found it even more strenuous to carry on in Yeltzin’s mire, by the wayside. For them those were (and still are!) testing times to live through, when the attention to the prosaic details of life consumed the inordinate amount of time and will. For once the content of a fridge mattered so much more than the conduct of all other domestic matters. With food prices going up every week (there were years when they inflated hundred-fold), lifelong savings of many came to be worth than valueless just when one needed them most. The pain of hunger was a real threat. ¹

Out of the many flats in multistoried beehives strewn without rhyme or reason in a working-class district of Moscow we shall enter in our mind’s eye into one that houses an elderly couple. Having unselfishly devoted the better part of their life to work on a factory and reaching their retirement they looked with trusting eyes into the future nursing a simple hope of preserving their sweet world of two for as long as ordained from on high. I say their world of two, but their quiet dog also formed the part of this world. He entered the family as a puppy, which not yet weaned from its mother’s milk was bent on its way tottering unsteadily on its rudimentary paws in his innocence and inexperience oblivious of the fact that he was crossing the six-lane highway, like a plush bear plucked from a child’s book and thrown in this world of unbelief and fear. Not a few drivers had already braked and swerved their cars to avoid the unpleasantness of collision with such a creature. But that was all they cared. And one can be sure that the puppy would not have made his crossing, had the old lady not happened to be around. She had not had the power of indifference and one look into the poor puppy’s precocious eyes, sincere and curious, had convinced her of the next step: the foundling will be a proud new member of her household and the dearest apple of everyone s eye.

One usually thinks of describing their household at this stage: furniture and appliances are those of a bare necessity (the dwelling would seem to cluttered otherwise) , everything is tidy and exquisitely simple with the exception of a number of rusty stains covering the ceiling of the kitchenette ². Other details would hardly matter - where happiness lingers there is hardly any place for ugliness or imperfection.

Variety of moments pervaded their life. The puppy grew day by day and his features developed affinities with a collie dog: nose thrusting and eager, tongue lolling emphatically with the meaning of expression.

"There are few friends that stand by one’s side with greater devotion, listen to everything and give nothing away”

Evening hours were ones of recreation. Soap operas were so outlandish a spectacle at the time that they riveted many a viewer to the cityscapes and interiors one never yet dreamed of seeing. The glass box was like an extra window of the flat opening on the distant world. Its personages were close friends a viewer goes to see every weekday for an hour, give advice and share thoughts with. The experience was even more real than run-down streets and arteries of the city stretching beyond the confines of the neighborhood steeped after dark in murky colors of uncertainty and neglect.

One even wishes now to see such continuity, humble but not imperfect, frozen in time with every tomorrow a perfect extension of today. Alas, all that survived of it into the former years was the dog.

For long five years in biting chill and baking heat he made his steady refuge by a roadside lamppost engulfed and ignored by the drone of the traffic on the six lane highway. Winter or summer, he never strayed from the place. With ears set close to the head and trusting expression of expectancy he stared blankly on the road and into the past life that alone had a sense. Perhaps he returned to such memories gliding over the scenery of his inner vision:

The year was 1993. Autumn came, and berries turned scarlet on a rowan tree growing outside his late master’s and mistress’s window. There was still that peculiar tepidity in the sun that filtered inside and made all things look snug. But bleaker days came in and were compounded by the October convulsion in the affairs of state. For a week tanks and guns argued with violence. Central heating was left neglected in many parts of the city, even in hospitals, let alone flats. When pneumonia was diagnosed in the master, its course run rapidly. The venom of the decease rendered the man unconscious in his last days before he had gone to live in glorious courts above prized apart from his loving wife.

Woe of such magnitude is not expressible unless felt, and from now on the old lady had only the recollections of days bygone and sweet nudging of the familiar muzzle onto her laps to console her. She did not suffer too long with the anguish of bereavement that took its toll as the dissipation of memory and abstraction from the regular order of existence had set in. Her life was snatched in a car accident as she crossed over to a market on the other side of the monstrous highway, the dog on her heels. Few details are known, but accounts are all concordant in that the driver shot the red lights and did not think it proper to wait the police. ³ Ambulance came in and cleared the collapsed lifeless form off the road. Nobody gave any thought to the animal that remained for years thereafter by the road’s edge to watch the spot, a living landmark on the indifferent features of the highway steadier than a writhe of flowers, which no human hand was there to lay.

Did the dog react quietly in the first minutes on that fatal crossing? It is not unlikely, the intensity of the traffic was considerable and odds are he would have been run over. Something in his mind clicked and made him the prisoner of the moment, as he retreated safe distance out of the vehicles’ way and took no account of the succession of days. People accustomed themselves quickly to the sight of the impassive poor animal by the traffic lights with its undeviating eyes wistfully set on the road. Most reacted with indifference, some, it is hoped, took pity on him and saw that he did not want in food. In one instance an attempt was made to adopt that nameless sufferer, he evaded by darting onto the highway and no further risks were taken.

As years went by everyone could see that his coat, creamy-white at first, had overgrown with globules of dirt, then turned brown and in time succumbed to patches of baldness, hung loose and grew feebler. But as the ravages of time ⁴ prevailed, the harrowing look in the eyes did not flag, and the spring of faithful determination remained just as strong. Finally, the day came when the creature was seen no longer.

It is to fanciful, but how one wishes to know what force shackled him to his post of duty in dire winters when snow lies two feet deep in the forests and fields encircling the city? Is it conceivable that the dog saw things beyond the reach of human eye, just as dogs react to sounds one does not suspect? If so, do ghosts remain where they expire from their body as it is sometimes alluded to in various broadcasts on “ghost-hunting”? One prefers to have it answered in negative, for how very painful was this for the forsaken dog to stare point-blank into the living shadows of his shattered world mixed up with frenzied streams of passing cars.

Nobody keeps the vigil of fond remembrance by the Shosse Enthusiastov highway now, and before the events cease to linger in memory I thought it a duty to record this sad story of the dog that for most of his life sustained himself on raw faith of such naive purity.

"Like the wondering dove he found no repose on earth around

May he to Thy happy courts repair and enjoy it ever there"