The Dogs of Winter (25 page)

I dreamed I flew far above the earth. Below passed the village and the brown, squat apartment building where my mother and I had lived. I soared high above the round, golden domes of The City like a firebird. Below I saw dogs and children and
militsiya
and
bomzhi
. I flew low over Garbage Mountain and the great forest.

I saw the dogs — Smoke, Lucky, Rip, Little Mother, Moon, Star, and even Grandmother — running through the meadow, their heads tilted back, watching me.

“Come join me,” I called, “it is beautiful up here,” even though I knew they could not leave the earth.

I swooped across the Ferris wheel park. The dogs ran below, barking and barking. Then, I saw them, each in a Ferris wheel seat. They rose higher. Just as each reached the top of the wheel's great arc, they flew into the air. Wide wings unfurled from their backs as the music from the Ferris wheel
toot tooted
.

I clapped my hands and laughed. “You are such clever dogs.”

I dreamed of Little Mother's tongue washing my hot face. A brilliant light shone behind her. I reached out to
stroke her head. She pushed my hand away and said,
There there, my little puppy.

I dreamed of climbing the tallest tree in all of Russia and fighting giant pigs. I dreamed of Rudy with his gray eyes and Tanya with her bruised and swollen face. I dreamed of seeing the little schoolgirl, Anya, in the great Red Square. She did not recognize me. She said, “Go away, you mangy dog.”

I dreamed of Smoke singing the song of our life together in the cold winter night. I dreamed of sitting in my Babushka Ina's lap as she sang songs to me older than the earth. And I dreamed of my mother, humming this song and that as she rocked me to sleep. Her voice wove in and out with the voices of Smoke and Babushka Ina and the Ferris wheel and the Accordion Man and the cry of the subway trains and the laughter and the cries of all the homeless children, to make the most beautiful music in the world.

I opened my eyes. I smelled something sharp and soapy. I also smelled vomit and pee like it sometimes smelled in the train stations. Was I back in the metro with Rudy and Tanya and Pasha? Had my life with the dogs been all a dream?

I tried to sit up. Someone fluttered over to me. “No, child, no. You must be still.” All in white she was dressed, and from the side of her head lifted wings like the seagulls along the Great River.

I wanted to ask her if she was an angel or perhaps a Sister of Mercy. I ran my tongue over my cracked lips. I needed water. I opened my mouth to speak. The word I managed to croak surprised us both: “Dogs.”

I do not know how long they kept me in the children's ward of the hospital. They said I had lost a great deal of blood when I broke the window that night. “Whoever would imagine so much blood could come from such a little boy,” the nurse said as she clucked and fussed around me. My arm became infected and my fever so high they thought I would die.

As I grew stronger, they assaulted me with questions: “What is your name?” “How old are you?” “Why were you living on the streets?” “Where is your family?”

I answered none of these questions. Instead, I watched and I listened. I was no longer in the orphanage, I knew that. I was in a hospital in The City. If I was still in The City, then I could find the dogs. I had to find the dogs. Little Mother had new puppies. They needed me and I would take care of them.

If I could escape.

I learned the comings and goings of the nurses and doctors. One night, at the time when the doctors had all gone to their homes and the nurses were sleepy, I pulled the needle hooked to the bag beside my bed from my arm and slipped out of bed. My clothes were gone, my boots were gone. My baby tooth was gone. I did not care. I wrapped a blanket around my body and slid open the glass door of my room.

I crouched in the doorway and listened. No sound. I scurried down the hallway and past the big desk where a nurse slept. I flew down the corridor, my bare feet slapping on the cold floor and the blanket flapping around me. There, at the end of the corridor, were two tall doors with bars across them.

I hurled myself against the doors. The doors did not open. Instead, a siren screamed and lights flashed. I covered my ears with my hands against the screeching and squinted against the flashing lights.

Hands grabbed. I kicked and bit. Too many hands. Something stung my arm. Everything fell away.

After that, I was tied to the bed. It did not matter if I had to relieve myself, I was kept tied. They fed me with a spoon like a little baby. At first I refused to eat. I spat the food back in their faces. But then I realized as long as I was in The City, there was hope of getting away. It would not be an easy escape, I told myself. I would have to be as smart as Smoke and as strong as Lucky and as swift as Star. For that, I needed to eat, and so I did. I even pretended to be a good boy. Soon, they untied me. I did not bite, not even once, even though I wanted to.

One day, as the snow fell outside, a tall man in shiny black boots and
militsiya
clothes came into my room.

I dropped to the floor and scurried under my bed. My stomach felt sick.

“Hello, Mowgli,” he said.

The voice. I knew that voice. I plucked at my eyebrows.

“I've brought someone to see you,” he said. “Someone I think you'll be very happy to see.”

The door whispered open. Soft furred boots the color of Lucky's brown and black coat walked into the room. A flowered skirt brushed the tops of the boots.

“Hello, child,” the Woman in the Hat said. I growled and pushed against the wall.

“Oh, child.” She stooped down. Her eyes searched for me under the bed. “Please come out,” she said, holding out her hand. “You know I won't hurt you.”

I growled a little louder and flashed my teeth.

She gasped. The shiny black boots moved next to her.

“Go away,” I ordered.

“Now, boy,” her son said, “we're only trying to help you.”

I felt anger burning up through my legs and stomach. My hand itched for my bone club or my knife.

“Yes, dear,” the Woman in the Hat said, rubbing her hands. “They're going to take you to a better place, a safer place than —”

The burning anger flew up my throat and burst from my mouth. “You!” I screamed. “It's all
your fault
!”

I shot from under the bed and stood before her, my fists clenched.

The Woman in the Hat's eyes widened. Her mouth opened and closed around words she could not say.

I stepped toward her. “My place is with the dogs,” I said in a low growl.

I never saw the Woman in the Hat or her son again.

Two days later, the doctor entered my room.

He listened to my heart and my lungs. He unwrapped the bandages on my arm and studied the long lines of gashes.

He looked at me for a long moment. His eyes were full of questions. He reached out a hand as if to touch me, then stopped. He put the hand in his white coat pocket. He sighed and nodded to the nurse and left the room.

“Well,” the nurse with the winged hat said, bustling around me. “This is fine, then. You'll be off tomorrow.”

Off? But where, I wanted to ask her. It did not matter. Tomorrow, they would take me out of here and I could escape. My body tingled all over. I grinned inside myself. I wriggled my toes.
Get ready,
I told my feet and my legs.

But there was nothing to get ready for. They dressed me in a coat that was not like any coat I had ever seen. It pinned my arms and crisscrossed this way and that so I could not move. They bound my legs and wheeled me in a chair to a van like the ones I had seen children taken away in before.

They strapped me in a seat in the van beside a window.

“Good-bye, child,” the nurse with the winged hat said. Tears ran down her cheeks.

My heart pounded. Sick rose up from my stomach and burned my throat. I swallowed it down. The van pulled into the traffic of The City. I leaned my head against the window and I watched The City — the beggars and the children and the dogs and the Crow Boys and the police and the garbage bins and the grand metro stations and the great golden domes — pass by, and finally, away and away from everything I had ever known.

I dream of dogs. I dream of warm backs pressed against mine beneath a tall pine tree. I dream of flashing teeth, warm, wet tongues, and amber eyes, watching. Always watching.

I dream I run and run and run with the dogs through forests thick with birch trees and giant pigs. I dream we run through winter streets and across frozen rivers. I dream we fly.

A hand touches my arm and shakes me awake. A voice — the same voice that has said this same thing every morning — says, “Wake up, Little Bear.”

I open my eyes to this kind face, these eyes almost, but not quite, the color of amber. She switches on the tape player on my small desk and music fills the tiny room.

“Today is your day,” she says as I sit up and scratch my head.

She leaves and I look around this room I have lived in for five years. It is small and unremarkable. There is no window. There is my narrow bed and a small desk and chair and a closet for my few clothes and two pairs of shoes — more shoes than I have ever had in my life. But the walls — oh the
walls! Covering every inch are paintings and drawings of the dogs. Dogs with wings, dogs riding Ferris wheels, dogs with torn ears, dogs the color of the moon, dogs made of smoke. Eyes watching, always watching.

I hear the other boys on my floor yelling and laughing. I know that behind closed doors, some are crying. When I open my door, I will smell breakfast in the dining hall.

I pull on my shirt. I roll down the sleeves to cover the scars on my right arm. I put one leg in my jeans and glance at the crescent-shaped scar on my other leg before I shove it in. I carry many scars.
She
was the first to understand.

When I first came to The Children's Recovery Home and School on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, I was not a boy. I was Wild Child. That is what they called me.

I hid under my bed. I hit and bit and barked and howled. I threw whatever I could get my hands on, so they took everything but my bed out of my room. I terrified the other children, so they tried feeding me in my room. I used the forks, even the spoons as weapons; once again I ate with my hands. They had to sedate me to give me a bath and shave off my hair.

I cried and rocked myself for days after under my bed. Everything was lost: the mother, the button, the stories, the tooth, and my only family.
I
was lost. I was again a ghost.

I think they had all but given up on me, until
she
came.

One day, the door to my room opened as it did several times during the day. I pressed my back against the wall and watched from under my bed. I growled low as I always did so they would go away.

But the feet that stood in front of my bed were not the usual feet in heavy work shoes or scuffed leather boots. These shoes were made of some kind of black cloth almost like fur. Colored thread swirled across the toes.

I sniffed. This person did not smell like cigarettes or cooked cabbage like the other women who came into my room. This person did not smell like beer and vodka. I took a deep sniff even as I growled and grumbled. This person smelled like the forest and clean smoke and there, just there, the tiny yet distinct smell of dog. My heart quivered.

She dropped to her knees and peered under my bed. I growled louder.

She laughed.

I stopped mid-growl. How long had it been since I had heard laughter?

I plucked anxiously at my hair and my eyebrows, and I rocked myself. I woofed at her to go away.

She did not. Instead, she sat cross-legged on the floor and did the most miraculous, mysterious thing: She began to hum!

I stopped rocking and I stopped growling and I listened. Her humming was beautiful. I closed my eyes and let it touch first my hand and then my face and then my chest.

The humming stopped. I opened my eyes. Her face and her eyes — especially her eyes — smiled at me.

In the softest of voices, she said, “Look at you there, you little bear, in your dark den. Come out, little Mishka.”

Her words, that name, slipped like a key into an unused lock.
Mishka.

It was then that I stopped being the Wild Child and I once again became a boy.

She came every day after that. She said she was a special teacher for very special children. She said I was the most special boy she had ever met. I frowned at her and looked away, but inside I smiled.

She brought a tape player and played music. Sometimes, she sat with her back against the wall and her eyes closed, listening. Sometimes I closed my eyes too, but mostly I watched her.

She talked about herself. She said her name was Anuva and she loved music and art and books and dogs and walking in the woods.

“What do you love, Mishka?” she asked one day. I wanted so badly to tell her that, yes, yes, I too loved those things. But I did not trust my voice so I only looked away.

The next day, she brought not only music, but a pad of white paper and color sticks the Woman in the Hat had called pastels.

Anuva slid the pad and pastels under the bed and said, “Here, draw for me what you love.”

And so I did. I'd finish one drawing, shove it out to her, and start another. I drew and drew in a fever until all the sheets of paper in the thick pad were gone.

She studied each drawing with care and said, “Ah yes, I see,” and “I love that too.” And then, before she left, she carefully taped each and every drawing on my wall.

One day when she handed me the pad and colors, she said, “Draw for me what you hate,” and then the next day, “Draw for me what makes you afraid,” and then, “Draw what makes you sad.” Up on the wall, along with the firebirds and dogs and trees, went a drawing of
him
in his scuffed boots and shiny pants and hard fists; up went a drawing of a red stain behind the door, big, pulsing; up went a drawing of a red coat and a black button; up went a drawing of
militsiya
and Baba Yaga with her fence of bones and skulls.

And with each of the drawings, she said, “I understand,” and “I am sorry.”

She brought me these things — music, drawing — and she brought books. She read out loud to me as I drew and as the music played.

One day she read to me a fairy tale I had never heard before.

“Once upon a time,” she read, “in a certain czardom of the thirtieth realm, beyond the sea-ocean, there lived an old peasant with his wife. They were indeed very poor and had no children.”

I concentrated on drawing a perfect Ferris wheel.

“One day, the old peasant tracked a bear to its den and killed it for its fur and meat.”

I frowned.

“Much to his astonishment,” she continued, “he found a naked little boy in the darkest corner of the cave, a child the bear had stolen and reared as its own.”

I put my pastel down and listened.

“The old peasant took the boy home and called the village priest. He had the child baptized Ivashko Mishka — Ivan Little Bear.” The hair rose on the back of my neck.

She smiled at me.

“He would have been better off with the bear,” I said.

“Ah, but listen,” she said.

She read how the boy grew quickly and became strong. How by the age of twelve he was as tall as any man in the village and stronger than anyone in the whole countryside. The people grew frightened of the boy and drove him from the village.

I tore my drawing into small bits. “They are bad, bad people,” I said. I rocked myself back and forth. “He was better off with the bears,” I moaned.

She moved closer to me. “Listen,” she said softly. “Listen.”

And then she read how he, Mishka, was the only one who succeeded, of
all
those who had tried, to kill the witch Baba Yaga.

She touched my cheek. “You see, Mishka, it was because he had the strength of the bear and the wisdom of man that he was able to defeat the witch.”

She put her hand on mine. I stopped rocking and looked at her straight on for the first time. Her eyes were the color of amber. “It is you, Mishka. It is you.”

One day, after many months, she took me outside. I blinked against the bright spring sun. I closed my eyes and listened to the birds and the wind. I smelled the earth and the sea. We sat in the walled garden of dirt and didn't speak.

After a time, I whispered, “My name is Ivan. Ivan Andreovich.”

She did not ask me how old I was or where I had lived before I was captured or where my mother was. She simply sighed and said, “Thank you, Ivan Andreovich.”

Later, months later, she would ask me, “Ivan, why did you not want to be taken from the dogs? Why did you not want to live among people again?”

I stopped drawing. I gazed at the smiling eyes of Rip and the worried eyes of Little Mother staring back at me from the paper. I said simply, “I felt loved and protected by the dogs. I
belonged
with them.”

Anuva nodded and that was all she asked of me.

Anuva opens my door and says, “Are you ready to go, Ivan? Everyone is waiting.”

I nod even though I am not ready. I pluck nervously at my hair and my eyebrows, something I have not done in a long time.

She crosses the room and gently takes my hand away from my face. “You don't have to worry, brave Mishka, I will be right there with you at the art show.”

I glance at the grainy, black-and-white copy of a photograph of me from an Australian newspaper. The picture was taken not long after I was sent to the shelter in Moscow. The words under the picture of the frightened little boy with haunted eyes say,
Mowgli-like child captured after living on the streets of Russia with wild dogs!

“They just want to see me because they think I'm a freak,” I say now.

Anuva glances at the photograph too. “That was many years ago, Ivan. Time has passed. Now they want to see you because of your art. They want to see this artist who paints dogs with wings and dogs on Ferris wheels, who signs his work Malchik.”

I pull on my coat. Even Anuva, who knows as much about me as any human, does not know why I sign my drawings and paintings Malchik. She does not know who gave me that name. She does not know that, even after all this time,
I dream of the dogs every night. I have been given many names — Ivan, Mishka, Cockroach, Circus Mouse, Runt, Dog Boy, Mowgli, Wild Child, and then Ivan again. But it is that one name, Malchik, which I keep for my very own. It is that name that gave me a place in the world.

With one backward look at my room, I straighten my shoulders and point my shoes forward. I close the door behind me and step, once again, out into The World.