Wolves Eat Dogs Read Online Free

around his father, an army officer who was perfectly willing to humiliate adults, let alone a boy. When Arkady came home to their apartment, he would know whether the general was in just by the stillness in the air. The very foyer seemed to hold its breath. So Arkady had little personal experience to draw on. His father had never taken him for outings. Sometimes Sergeant Belov, his father’s aide, would go with Arkady to the park. Winters were the best, when the sergeant, tramping and puffing like a horse, pulled Arkady on a sled through the snow. Otherwise, Arkady walked with his mother, and she tended to walk ahead, a slim woman with a dark braid of hair, lost in her own world.
    Zhenya always insisted on going to Gorky Park. As soon as they’d bought tickets and entered the grounds, Arkady got out of the way while Zhenya made a slow perambulation of the plaza fountain to scan the crowd. Fluffs of poplar seed floated on the water and collected around the stalls. Crows patrolled in search of sandwich crusts. Gorky Park was officially a park of culture, with an emphasis on outdoor performances of classical music and promenades among the trees. Over time, the bandshell had been claimed by rock bands and the promenades covered by amusement rides. As ever, Zhenya returned from the fountain dejected.
    “Let’s go shoot something,” Arkady said. That generally cheered boys up.
    Five rubles bought five shots with an air rifle at a row of Coke cans. Arkady remembered when the targets had been American bombers dangling on strings, something worth blazing away at. From there they went into a fun house, where they followed a dark walkway between weary moans and swaying bats. Next came a real space shuttle that had truly orbited the earth and was tricked out with chairs that lurched from side to side to simulate a bumpy descent.
    Arkady asked, “What do you think, Captain? Should we return to earth?”
    Zhenya got out of his chair and marched off without a glance.
    It was a little like accompanying a sleepwalker. Arkady was along but invisible, and Zhenya moved as if on a track. They stopped, as they had on every other trip, to watch bungee jumping. The jumpers were teenagers, taking turns soaring off the platform, flapping, screaming with fear, only to be snapped back the moment before they hit the ground. The girls were dramatic, the way their hair rippled on the way down and snapped as the plunge was arrested. Arkady couldn’t help but think of Ivanov and the difference between the fun of near death and the real thing, the profound difference between giggling as you bounced to your feet, and staying embedded in the pavement. For his part, Zhenya didn’t appear to care whether the jumpers died or survived. He always stood in the same spot and glanced cagily around. Then he took off for the roller coaster.
    He took the same rides in the same order: a roller coaster, a giant swing and a ride in a pontoon boat around a little man-made lake. He and Arkady sat back and pedaled, the same as every time, while white swans and black swans cruised by in turn. Although it was Sunday, the park maintained an uncrowded lassitude. Rollerbladers slid by with long, easy strides. The Beatles drifted from loudspeakers: “Yesterday.” Zhenya looked hot in his cap and jacket, but Arkady knew better than to suggest the boy remove them.
    The sight of silver birches by the water made Arkady ask, “Have you ever been here in the winter?”
    Zhenya might as well have been deaf.
    “Do you ice-skate?” Arkady asked.
    Zhenya looked straight ahead.
    “Ice skating here in the wintertime is beautiful,” Arkady said. “Maybe we should do that.”
    Zhenya didn’t blink.
    Arkady said, “I’m sorry that I’m not better at this. I was never good at jokes. I just can’t remember them. In Soviet times, when things were hopeless, we had great jokes.”
    Since the children’s shelter fed Zhenya good nutritious food, Arkady plied him with candy bars and