The Story Of Alex, Galya And The Third Door

By way of introduction, see ‘Sad Stories Always Make Me Blue‘.

Galya was a typical Russian woman of simple likes and dislikes. What she liked was money. And what she didn’t like were those who had more than she. One might say that, among the anthill apartments of this run-down factory town, the haves were not exactly numerous. All the same, she was jealous.

Alexei was jealous too. His downfall, even before he had fallen down, was that he didn’t understand women. He was nagged incessantly and his insecurity let it happen. Other women told Alexei: ‘Gala’s lucky to have a good, steady man.’ Probably what they meant was, she was lucky to have a man at all, let alone a man to push around. But either way, Alexei just didn’t see it.

Alex had a clean face – that really impressed everyone in District 35, indeed it was everyone’s recollection of him the day he arrived. It was the expression of a man with honest work and a pride in it too. Not so many were lucky enough to work in the profession for which they had studied. And everyone could pinpoint the day his face changed and became overcast, right from the day Galya laid her discontent on the line.

Alexei had a job but it wasn’t enough. While he worked at the drawing board, Galya sold flowers in one of the sunken concrete walkways under the prospekts. These had become the town’s shopping malls, for during most of the year the town was too cold, too snowblown for the canvas of open markets. Among the rusting iron kiosks, variously filled with beer, cigarettes and yellowing Polish lingerie, Galya’s stall was an oasis of blooms. On Women’s Day and national holidays, the display was spectacular. On other days, yes, perhaps a little threadbare. But she padded around in the snowmelt always hoping, before the petals inevitably fell, for a budding young love or an unseasonal wedding. That was her day, though definitely not her dream.

So after work, usually as soon as he got home, she let Alexei have it. ‘Alexei, it isn’t beautiful for a wife to work. Rooshanya’s husband has bought her a real fur. Venera has a new TV. It isn’t beautiful Alexei, if you loved your Gala. I worry so much for my chest, working in the damp subway under Moskovsky Prospekt.’ And in the evenings, when Alexei’s hand reached across for her breast in bed, she would turn her back and feign a pitiful, bronchial kind of cough.

Later, in casual conversation on the padyest, Alexei wouldn’t be drawn about his new job. Except to say that the sun in the Emirates didn’t suit him, which it didn’t, any more than did the shadows that any Russian with money attracts. He smuggled Sony and Hitachi and JVC, but in all honesty he never put a headphone to his own ears, nor had any desire to take a CD from its case. Occasionally he thrust his hand deep into the polystyrene and pulled out one of the shrink-wrapped instruction books, just to glance nostalgically at the wiring diagrams and technical drawings. It reminded him of his job at the truck factory, and the clean sheet of paper with which he would start his day, when his money was clean.

Yet Galya was in her element. Now she spent her mornings sleeping and her afternoons watching TV, in a variety of lazy negligees – all a little too young in style for her figure. In the apartment, there were now carpets on the walls, carpets on top of carpets on the floor. Guests were invited to admire the new ornaments that crammed the shelves: rainbow coloured, blown-glass tropical fish, shiny metal buddhas, reproduction Italian flower vases, Taiwanese onyx clocks and pedestal-mounted busts of famous composers. ‘Such a pity their names are not in Russian’, exclaimed her friends. ‘But yes, Gala, they do look expensive.’

Coming home from work one day, a neighbour noticed a group of men standing at the entrance to the apartments, lighting a fire. Scuffed toecaps shuffled in remnants of old carpet and paint cans to keep the smoke trailing. It wasn’t a fire for warmth, anyone in District 35 knew that. Warmth on Moskovsky Prospekt was only ever indoors, behind the condensation of the taped-up windows. For sure, this fire was set to cover someone’s scent. Everyone knows that a dog cannot smell through a smokescreen, and by now it had become necessary for Alexei to keep a dog.

‘Oh indeed, that’s very serious. Yes, yes, you were quite right to tell me about it.’ Alexei’s face darkened as he stubbed out a cigarette on the head of Bach, then dropped it into a reproduction Japanese teapot. The neighbour let himself out, leaving Alexi to stare blankly out of the window at the truck factory lots. Which is when the idea formed in his mind.

The Kamaz 6350 is an exceptional military vehicle and once Alexei’s pet project. Immensely strong, it can winch its own weight out of any ditch or sandbank. A legacy of Stalin’s focus on rustbelt industries
is that Russian metallurgical skills are second to none. Just before leaving to chase shady deals in the Emirates, Alexi had been working on a high-sided variant of the truck, one with a side-door, and even surprised himself at how little bracing the panels needed. Yes, one panel should be enough.

That weekend, they set to work. Every apartment Russia has at least two steel doors – one to close behind you before putting your key in the next. At the very least, it always reminds you to watch your back. But Alexei’s apartment was at a turn in the padyest, down a little corridor leading off, and it was at the entrance to this that he felt the need for a third door. Someone could easily lie in wait in the dark recess. When half the bolts had been seated in the concrete, he took a vodka break and found Galya pacing the living room.

‘Alexei. All this drilling. It isn’t beautiful. It isn’t good for my head or my nerves. For once, Alexei, for once think of your wife. Think of my stress.’ Alexei muttered something like, ‘you’re not the only one under stress’, but immediately wished he hadn’t. Gala put down her Disney-motif tumbler of white wine as if shellshocked. ‘But Alexei, she reminded him sternly. ‘You’re a man.’

They must have surprised Alexei even before he reached the new door, right by the entrance, for that was where they found him. He’d taken the full swing of an iron bar full in the mouth, now a bloody postbox of a hole, devoid of teeth, most of which he’d swallowed in gulping fear. For the rest, everything about his face that should have been pink was swollen blue or stained red to black, and stayed that way for what seemed like months.

As it happens, Gala has two full-length sable coats, also black and blue, which she rarely wears – if honestly, they are a little too young for her figure – but she still likes to show them off when neighbours come round. Alexei smiles at the visitors’ envy from his chair, though you have to look closely, because now the nerves are dead on one side of his face, and perhaps it is only a half smile anyway and there isn’t meant to be more. Which is not how people remember the young engineer when he first moved in to District 35. Such a clean face.