Tough work experience
Charlotte Moore
THE FLAYED DOG by Christ() Saprjanov Chanadon, .£12.99, pp. 115, ISBN 095419733X 111.99 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848
va.sil works as a concrete-spreader, part of a gang of workers imported to build a road 'a thousand kilometres north and east of Moscow. Taiga, swamps and night.' Vasil was a teacher in his native Bulgaria; he's only here to earn the 5,000 roubles needed for an operation to save his child's failing eyesight. The other men are there for the money, too, but the attractions of women and alcohol are insidious. Can Vasil remain aloof? Can he keep his priorities, his beliefs, his very identity intact?
The workers share stories, jokes and dreams. They unite in loathing the foreman; they retain an approximate respect for each other's privacy and small possessions. They also kill dogs; huskies are prized, but any dog will do. The clop are flayed, roasted and eaten. The men stick bottles between the legs of Lida, the resident hooker, and use her naked backside as a scoreboard for their card games. Her small daughter sleeps untended in a corner. For Vasil, this child becomes the touchstone of all that matters. His desire to protect her, to rescue her, grows stronger as his dreams of saving his own child fade.
There's a pet dog in the camp, a Maltese terrier, the only bright spot in the life of its surly owner Meto. It's only a matter of time before the line is crossed and the pet becomes a victim. Sure enough, Meto's hutmate Hesho rapes the dog. 'Why didn't you do it with Lida?' his companions demand as they struggle to restrain Meto from going at him with a chainsaw. 'I can't even feel her any more,' explains flesh°, 'I'm a Gypsy — I've been used to animals since I was a boy, and they're used to me.'
Hesho's excuse fails to impress, and it all ends in a stabbing. The corpse is too big to fit inside the standard-issue coffin. What should they cut off to get him in, the head or the feet? The dead man's erstwhile companions debate the point with passion. Despite all the horrors and indignities, they still respect the idea of a soul.
I admit my heart didn't leap when I was sent The Flayed Dog to review. The discovery that it had won the Bulgarian National Literary Prize didn't make my spirits soar,
either. There was, as Mrs Elton would have said, something direful in the sound. But I read it, if not with pleasure, at least with respect. No detail is superfluous. Characters are swiftly and sparingly delineated; there's no padding, no sentimentality. Christo Saprjanov tests moral behaviour against the onslaught of suffering and physical degradation. It is justly compared with One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. It's not overtly political, but, as Aidan Rankin says in his introduction, it's 'about the survival of the spiritual dimension in a brutal and materialistic world'. A kind of heroism and capacity for self-sacrifice win through; man is, it seems, rather more than a flayed dog.
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