Petya

He was old for his kind - nearly 14. He wasn't too big; about a foot tall and not more than 8-9 kgs. One couldn't make out his breed. He was a mutt but there was definitely a lot of terrier blood in his veins. His once lustrous coat had become dull, disheveled, dry and coarse. My landlady, whose dog Petya was, no longer groomed him. She felt old, tired, and frightened herself. 

My landlady, like most elders in that society, wasn't yet accustomed to being poor. She was past 65. Nurses like her, in other countries, retired with reasonable comfort by that age. But she hadn't. Her entire monthly pension would buy little beyond basic groceries and some everyday necessities. Her government's treasury couldn't keep up with the soaring inflation. So she had to work as a temporary staff-member at a nearby hospital, in addition to collecting littered beer bottles in the park and housekeeping in school #18. She wasn't as concerned with earning money to buy warm boots or meat as she was with saving it to be assured of a decent grave and a coffin. 

Petya had no system in his body that wasn't malfunctioning. His eyes -- tired, listless and gooey -- could be seen only when you flicked his fringe away. You could hear his breathing -- short and coarse -- even when he was 10 feet away. He wouldn't eat much. In fact he couldn't chew at all. We would use a little of our precious milk to soak all the table scraps we fed him. I was aware of the bad breath and bad odor he reeked of and even if I got used to it, my friends couldn't. Still, he slept on my bed for the entire year that I was a boarder. He couldn't jump onto my bed and would wait patiently to be lifted up. When I walked him he needed to rest every now and then. I always took with me pages of old newspapers (paper napkins, tissues, and toilet-paper rolls were rationed) to help with his 'poop'. He would get so constipated sometimes that his hind legs would give in before his bowels did.

The day had come when I was going to take Petya to the polyclinic. I was to be the one to put him to sleep. My landlady had first spoken to me about that a month or so before. She could no longer afford to hire daily help for her 95-year old mother who lived in another republic. This particular arrangement had only been temporary anyway; in fact, only ever since my landlady's brother with his family chose to become part of the emigration statistics. The mother had been living with her son and his family up until then. So now my landlady had to leave town to take decisions about where and how her mother was going to spend the rest of her life and make those necessary preparations. I was also planning to move closer to school. I needed a place from where I could merely walk back and forth to class. Public transportation was getting worse. It was that damned government treasury again. 

All this meant that there would be no one to look after Petya, at least, not for the next couple of months. I didn't think there were any animal shelters in that country. It was a socialist society in name only. In reality, certain signs of social responsibilities such as an animal shelter were not visible.
We had searched in vain for something 'kind' to put him to sleep. But such things, like everything else in that country, were either in dire shortage or had simply disappeared from retail shelves. Neither scenario helped common folks acquire goods easily. Even my vet student status proved futile. My school's clinic and surgery had, for over a year, received patients only if their owners could bring their own medical supplies (which they would buy for exorbitant prices from speculanti). The doctors in the lady's hospital just wouldn't spare the meager amounts they were zealously guarding. "Regulations," they said. Plus, an overdose for a dog would mean robbing a fraction from a human patient's needs. 

Petya and I left home very early in the cold of that April morning in '92 for the tramway wouldn't be crowded at that time. He was, as usual, happy as he could physically be when he went out for a walk -- which wasn't much of a show any way. But to me, it seemed like there was more intent and depth in his eyes that day. I was probably just reading too much. We found a place to sit in the tram. I could see that he was enjoying his ride. I didn't know if he should eat but for want of something to do I fed him my keks. We were going to the City Polyclinic for Small Animals, where I volunteered in my limited spare time. The traumatologist there had said that she would try to find something from her supplies. When we got off the tram I walked him very slowly, giving him ample time to sniff every bush that interested him and to mark every lamppost we passed.

At the clinic, the traumatologist, whom I simply called Jhenya, and who always had her hands full, was giving discharge instructions rapidly to a client who had brought in a cat. "Come on in," she waved when she saw us, "kotik here is just about to leave." As promised, in a few minutes she walked the client to the door and as she passed us, she gently touched Petya (who responded by wagging his tail vigorously), and cooed something to him. I couldn't hear what; neither could I see for my eyes were moist at that time. I was aware of the next client following Jhenya into the room already. Before attending to him, Jhenya passed me some ampules of sodium citrate. I was startled. "Can this be used to put dogs to sleep?" I asked hesitatingly. At the same time my mind was racing at an astonishing speed to remember some relevant pharmacophysiology facts. Jhenya looked at me with eyes fraught with experience well beyond her age and explained, "Zaichka, this is going to be more difficult than you think. It can't be intramuscular or intravenous. You have to find the heart. Or a lung. Go between the ribs at a 45 degree angle. Yes, it will be painful for him, but for only a few minutes. We don't have anything peaceful for him. You understand, nothing is like before in this country." Yes, I knew that. So I nodded mutely. But I hadn't expected such a procedure for Petya. When my Monnie back home was put to sleep, she never knew it. She just lay down to sleep, probably a little puzzled. And never woke up. What have I gotten into here?

I don't know when Petya lost his trust in me -- when I poked about inexperiencedly between his ribs, when I punctured his lung, or when the citrate began to work inside him by binding calcium ions. I watched in horror as he twitched, grunted, almost inaudibly, and spasmed towards his death. When the convulsive seizures started, I could bear no more. I started to sob loudly, unashamedly, angrily. Angrily. Anger - a highly prevalent emotional state, those days, in those communities. Anger. My anger that day was with my own self, with Jhenya, and with the country as a whole for all our collective feelings of helplessness. 

How soon was it that Petya stopped breathing? I don't know, though it seemed like a long time to me. Gentle arms wrapped around me and led me to a chair and held me there until the last tear had been shed. When my sobs had died, I gulped down the glass of weak, sugarless tea that was passed to me. Wiping my mouth with the back of my sleeve, I got up. I've got to be strong. I was studying to be a vet. In a country where even the people did not expect to be treated humanely.

With that swift change of mood that had already become a part of my abilities, I put the glass down and turned to the limp, warm body of Petya. I picked him up easily from the table that was used for both, examinations and surgeries, and gathered him within his bed cloth. With each of my hands I was grabbing hold of two of his limbs and two corners of the bed-cloth. His head hung limply pulled by gravity. Why didn't I just carry him in my arms like I usually did? I don't know. Probably I wanted only air between him and me -- not contact. I walked out of the traumatologist's, along the hallway, across the lounge, and out of the doorway of the clinic. Groups of waiting clients along the way glanced at us with varied degrees of interest. Hardly noticing them and with deliberate strides, I walked past the back of the building towards a big black bin. Upon reaching it, I had to hold Petya in the crook of one arm and against my chest so that the other hand was free to open the lid of the bin. 

Then, without hesitating, I dropped him into the bin. I heard a dull thud when his carcass hit another. An observer would not have noticed my slight delay in closing the lid. My last view of Petya ensured that he was separated from all the other 'hygienically disposable waste' by a piece of worn bed-cloth.
I went back to Jhenya's room. She was now attending to a patient with what looked to me like a nasty open grade III fracture of the metatarsal. An HBC case no doubt. Without taking her eyes off the frightened German Shepherd Jhenya asked me if I was coming in the following Saturday. "Yes," I said, beginning to scrub my hands at the sink, more out of practice than out of anything else. I thought, maybe a little dramatically, that I could never wash the blood off my hands. I left the room vaguely aware of the delicate fragrance, the stylish Italian leather boots and jacket the young, pretty but distressed Shepherd owner was sporting. But it is the bulging leather purse that she was holding with her delicate diamonds studded fingers that remains etched in my mind today. 

Once out in the chestnut tree lined street I made up my mind not to go back to my apartment just then. The day had been structured originally for running errands, washing clothes, and catching up with school stuff but I was no longer in a mood for life's mundane chores. Neither was I willing to meet with friends. So I hopped onto tramways, transferred between trolley buses and even rode the metro to the other side of river Dneipr. I went to those parts of that green city where the tourists gathered—the Pecherskaya Lavra in the city center; the breathtaking St. Sophia Cathedral; the Golden Gate that was built to defend the city; the ornate St. Andrew's church atop a hill. Those sections of the city often provided an escape from reality for me. "Here are some of the holiest of holy Russian ground," I had heard someone say once. There I could truly marvel at the fact that I happened to be living in the oldest city in the USSR, the "Jerusalem of Russia," the capital of the Wheat Basket of Europe. And as I walked the restored cobbled street of Andreevski Spusk toward the Podol section of Kiev where artists were selling their wares, I almost forgot Petya. 

As darkness approached I decided to try my luck at the Opera House. I knew that 'La Traviata' was playing there. But as I had expected the show was sold out. Curiously, I was not dejected. It felt good to know that even in those troubled times Kievlyanins were keen on the finer things of life.
Then I walked all the way to the Khreshatik, the main boulevard of Kiev. The city's bustling main square on the Khreshatik with colorful lights and sparkling fountains would stay lively long after the rest of the city retired quietly for the night. Cold, tired, and hungry I stopped at a café across the square, next to the gigantic statue of Lenin. Once inside the café, I joined the line of people waiting to be served. When my turn at the counter came I bought a cup of coffee and 2 pirozhkis. I managed to find an empty table by the tall glass window facing the square. It was colder by the window but my coffee would keep me warm. Two Colombian students at a nearby table were talking animatedly in Spanish. Their voices, and their language, rose above the general buzz in the café. I tried not to listen. I turned my attention to the people outside. Several couples were walking arm in arm, or just hanging about, engrossed in each other. A group of lively people were arranging themselves in front of the professional cameraman's tripod. Their color photograph with the fountains in the background would be mailed to them in a week's time. A boisterous group of Indian guys walked past the café. I recognized some of them. They were first year students in mechanical engineering or something. I had been introduced to them in the last Indian Students' Association meeting. I couldn't help but smile when I saw two tall blonde women among them. 

In spite of the pleasantness outside thoughts about the day could not be pushed back any longer. I remembered Petya. I remembered the feel of his coat perfectly as though he was rubbing against my legs at that moment. I could recognize his distinct doggy smell even above the strong aroma of my coffee. A shaft of pain – maybe it was guilt – pierced through me. But I knew that there was nothing that I could've done differently. It occurred to me then that my landlady and I were like the kulaks that I had heard about. Or were we? The kulaks under Stalin's rule, while trying to resist the process of collectivization, killed most of their own farm animals. It was said that about half the country's livestock had been sacrificed. Powerless, the kulaks, had attempted a way out at all costs. "Just like my landlady and I had chosen," my young, baffled mind thought. But there the similarity between them and us ended. Unlike the kulaks, we had no noble cause, only a pitiable reason. So was it really meaningful to compare and contrast? The kulaks' animals, by their sheer numbers, made it to historical narratives. Our Petya never would. The kulaks loss was meant to be remembered. Our loss, so entwined with our shame, would be better buried, best forgotten. The kulaks had hoped to make a statement. We would prefer to be silent. Overwhelmed by my own exaggerated thought processes I tried to focus more on the kulak story. It had also been said that the enormity of the farm animal catastrophe was lost when around five million peasants subsequently died from starvation. They had attempted a form of passive resistance by refusing to harvest their grain. They had hoped that Stalin would not let them starve. Apparently, they had underestimated Stalin's ruthlessness.

Thus, I sat there brooding, trying in vain to make some sense out of my extraordinary yet equally inconspicuous day, to put things in both historical and cosmic perspective, to draw some meaning out of my presence there that day when someone tapped lightly on my shoulder. Ah yes, it was time for the café to be closed. I had to leave. 

That night I didn't go home until very, very late. Still, my landlady was waiting for me. "Was he peaceful?" she asked in a shaky voice. "Yes," I replied, hanging my heavy coat and refusing to look her in the eye.

Glossary:
speculanti: speculators, hoarders.
Keks: muffin-like baked goodie.
Kotik: kitten; endearing a cat; kitten-like.
Zaï chka: term of endearment (literally, bunny).
HBC: hit-by-car; part of veterinary jargon.
Pecherskaya Lavra: the Monastery of the Caves
Andreevski Spusk: Andreyev steep (or hill)
Pirozhki: small pies
Kulaks: rich peasants

By Malathi Raghavan, 2000
First published by Sulekha.com