Down in the Tube Station at Midnight

A Russian zoologist found that stray Muscovite dogs had adjusted to post-Soviet urban life by commuting from the suburbs on trains. The dogs, who prefer the front- and rearmost cars and occasionally miss their stops when they fall asleep, have also learned to obey traffic lights in spite of their color blindness.

-- "Findings," Harper’s Magazine, June 2009.

The ПЯТЬ ЧЕТЫРЕ ВОСЕМЬ

Baikal lapped up a second Salty Dog and saw by the clock that he had missed the express. He would get the local – the five-forty-eight. When he left the bar the sky still held its gray; it was still raining. He looked carefully up and down the street and saw that the Borzoi bitch had moved on. He worked again at remembering her name – Miss Iska or Miss Kiska or Nistishka – and he was surprised to find that he could not remember it, although he was proud of the reach and retention of his memory and it had only been three-and-a-half dog years ago.

He’d first seen her on Poklonnaya Hill, sniffing demurely around the statue of St. George. She had a curvy brown topcoat that gave way to a white and fuzzy undercoating which seemed to be making its first show of the season. She was unadorned but for a simple collar of simple red nylon – or maybe green – which suggested she’d once belonged somewhere, a girl of the city who’d since been left to roam. As he got to know her better, Baikal came to feel that she was oversensitive and, as a consequence, lonely. She would often speak to him of what she imagined of his life – suburban lawns, a roaming pack of friends that would meet at dusk, bowls of kibble at the back door – and he felt her interest in all this spoke to a preoccupation with her own fallen status. It was not pity he felt for her but compassion. He led her behind the Red Army Memorial and sniffed suggestively at her hind quarters.

This was just dogs being dogs, two individuals seeking comfort in the moment, and she ought to have known that. When he trotted away, he made no effort to discern whether her whines indicated begging or sadness. He was a dog, but he’d never suggested otherwise.

The local was less than half full when he boarded it, and he leapt up to a seat on the river side and shook out his coat. He was no show dog – a typical, if slender, Samoyed, his tail curled nicely over his back, but he kept pride in keeping his coat clean and silvery-white. Other dogs, curled up sleeping or staring out the windows in vain attempts to discern the colors of the traffic lights, brought out in the coach the smells of hunger and wet fur. After his brush with danger, these odors seemed comforting and safe to him.

The train traveled from the imperial parts of the city into the surrounding slums, perhaps the very neighborhood that once had housed the Bozoi. He tried to shake her out of his thoughts, turning to watch the landscape – industrial and sad, full of foundries and radio towers blinking lights of indeterminate hue. “Is this seat taken?” someone said. It was the Borzoi. She was standing there, her head bent up at him with that quizzical and pointed look that called to mind the greyhounds in her family tree. “Do you mind if I sit?

“I guess not.” He remembered her name now – Miss Kiska. He’d been frightened when he first looked down at her, but her timid voice and the whatever-color bow at her neck reassured him. He scuttled over to make room on the seat for her, smelling her damp and musty coat. It wasn’t until she was full settled beside him that he noticed the butt of the pistol in her handbag.

------

(In case it's not clear, the above is kind of a cover version of John Cheever's "The Five-Forty-Eight," a great mid-20th century story of commuting and adultery. My version has Russia and dogs. Cheers!)