A few weeks ago, a dog moved in next door.
I say a dog moved, not “people with a dog”, because I’ve never seen my neighbours. But the dog — that I hear constantly. More importantly, our Perchik-the-black-shorthair-domestic-cat hears the dog. Every time, his ears perk up, eyes widen in alarm, and he stares at the closed front door, behind which comes a piercing bark, more like a squeaky cry, as if the dog next door is being experimented on.
Though we weren’t officially introduced, I’ve met the dog several times. It’s rare to encounter an untrained dog in London, where most canine creatures go through obedience classes stricter than those for Russian PhDs. But even those few meetings with the dog next door in the corridor were enough for me to know: this one would be a problem.
Much like a spoiled brat on a Vegas bender with daddy’s credit card is a problem.
I must say here that before I moved in with Perchik — exactly in this order, it was I who had moved in with him — I thought of myself as a dog person.
Even though my parents never got me one, and dogs repeatedly bit me as a kid, it never put me off wanting to get one.
When I was twelve and riding a bike, a Yorkshire Terrier managed to pierce through my skin and stayed attached to my leg for several seconds as I rotated the pedals in an attempt to get away.
I screamed cries of agony and fear, but its owner, a sixty-year-old plump woman, who was a friend of my babushka, yelled, “What are you doing to my dog, you stupid durak!!” as if I found the whole process enjoyable and was doing it on purpose.
This situation led me to believe in the popular idea that dogs are mirrors of their owners.
Show me a dog that bites a kid and I’ll show you an oversized and underfucked old Russian witch who hates the entire world, including, more than anything, herself.
Living in Hammersmith, I had an upstairs neighbour who embodied every stereotype about German punctuality and precision. Things fell into place when I learned that she was from Frankfurt.
For two years straight, I woke up at exactly 4:30 AM to screaming from the ceiling. The screams were loud enough to rattle the entire building.
When it first happened, I considered calling the police. It was, after all, still dark outside, and a woman was screaming.
But with no objective evidence, I couldn’t build my case. So I decided to do what every good detective does in uncertainty: unpack a box of proverbial doughnuts—in my case, a packet of baby carrots because I was vegan at the time—and wait to see what happened next.
A low male groan shortly followed the screams. And that’s when I realised: the last thing my neighbour needed was a twenty-something Russian from downstairs rushing into her bedroom to save her life. She was fine—more than fine.
Then, after a brief pause, at 4:34, I heard the front door to my neighbour's apartment slam shut. Then the footsteps followed, heavy and fast, male.
At 4:35, I heard a wooshing sound, which I took to be a vacuum cleaner moving across the apartment floor.
At 4:40, the vacuuming stopped.
After a brief pause—which I assumed was a shower—there was a second door slam at exactly 4:45.
Then — silence until the evening, when my neighbour returned from work.
Every day, the same routine: screaming – door – vacuum – pause – door.
At first, it drove me mad. But it’s not like I could knock on her door and say,
“Hi, I’m Serge. Sorry to bother you. Do you mind not fucking at dawn?”
There are certain things which are impossible to have a conversation about with strangers. And even more so with neighbours. Neighbours are strangers you behave like you know and want to ensure you have a good relationship with, which only complicates things. There’s less wiggle room.
So instead, I did what I always do to avoid conflict: I adjusted. I started using my neighbour as an alarm clock.
Some people wake up to BBC weather reports, some to Joe Rogan podcasts, others to Radial (Default) or Daybreak or Arpeggio or even Radar—but I’d wake up to a German woman having an orgasm.
So every day, when it started, I’d get up, make coffee, and, because there wasn’t much else to do, I’d head out for an early run. I never knew air smelled so amazing at dawn. It was so early that foxes were still awake. Of course, this was easier in summer, when the sun was already up. In winter, waking up to pitch darkness made it harder, but I kept at it nevertheless. Anything to avoid the awkwardness of letting my neighbour know I was, albeit unwilling, part of her morning routine. Soon enough, I ran half-marathons, marathons, and ultra-marathons. I lost weight and got in the best shape of my life. My neighbour’s morning ritual turned me into a runner.
Then, one fall morning, something was off. I woke at 4:30, but there was no screaming, vacuuming, or door slamming. I started to get seriously worried.
As I debated whether I should go and check on the woman to make sure she was alright, a different noise came—loud and sharp, like a fire alarm. It took me a few moments to realise it was my intercom.
As I shuffled to the door in a silk bathrobe I brought from Bali, checking the time on the microwave clock — it was a quarter to 5 — I spotted a silhouette of a man standing outside. I opened the door and noticed he had dark circles under his eyes, was wearing a suit, and looked just miserable. The way someone does when they commute to another part of town at four in the morning to have sex before the workday starts every day of the week. I felt sorry for the guy. It seemed like a full-time job.
Still half-asleep, I muttered, “Can. I. Help. You?”
It felt as if I was learning to speak for the first time. It was November. Still pitch black outside. The cold air stung my bare feet.
“Oh,” he said, startled, in a thick German accent, as if expecting someone else. “Forgive me. Wrong door.” He looked puzzled, as if debating his next move.
I gestured right, toward the entrance to the upstairs flat. “Try that one.”
“Thank you,” he said and disappeared up the stairs, wisely avoiding any further questions, such as how I knew where he was headed.
I went back to bed and slept until 9 AM like a baby.
“That bitch,” Masha said as she walked in one day several weeks back, her face as if she had just seen a ghost — and not the fun kind. “Scared the hell out of me. I went out to take the trash, and it just jumped on me, barking like crazy. Can you imagine?”
She was talking about the dog next door.
“Awful,” I replied, suddenly remembering my uncle’s favourite advice for pet owners.
My mother’s brother is one of those people who not only makes a lot of money but also manages to keep most of it—thanks to his genetic thriftiness, which, somehow, passed me by.
If I’ll go in debt to buy products at Whole Foods — because, in the tone of a women’s shampoo ad, I DESERVE IT — my uncle is someone who can easily afford to fly business class and direct but always chooses flights where he has to stand, hold the bars for balance, and the flights always take 18 hours and go through suspicious places with hard to pronounce names.
“That’s just stupid,” he said to me once, as I took a sip from a store-bought water bottle. “They rob you blind, and you allow them. What, they don’t have tap water in London?”
Whenever someone brags to him that they’re getting a pet, his go-to suggestion is:
“Good. The next thing you do is put them to sleep.”
As the future-owner stares back at him in horror, about to ask a reasonable “why?!”— my uncle shrugs and states plainly:
“It’s just fucking easier than taking care of it. Not to mention fucking cheaper.”
I only spoke to my German neighbour when she moved out.
When I walked up to her, she was standing in the communal garden, watching as three Ukrainian men packed her belongings into a van.
I studied her for a moment, trying to see if she looked like the person I imagined she was. (She did.) If she had any suspicions about my knowledge, she didn’t show it.
“So, where are you moving to?” I asked.
I half-expected her to say something like Richmond, or maybe Kent—some place people flee to when they say, “London’s just too much now, I need peace.”
Instead, she beamed and said, “Paris.” You could tell this was the answer she’d been rehearsing most of her life, and now, for the first time, it was true.
“Oh wow,” was all I said. For all I knew, she might have been talking about Mars. Of course, I’ve been to Paris — but moving there? That’s something for people whose passport wasn’t burgundy red and said RUSSIAN FEDERATION.
Otherworldly.
“I’m just happy to leave this shithole,” she said.
“It’s a nice area,” I replied, slightly offended by her remark.
“No, I meant the UK,” she added. “I hate it here.”
“I see,” I said, unsure how to respond. Europeans can be choosers, whereas we, immigrants in exile, take whatever is offered and don’t complain twice.
The movers approached her and said in broken English that they were finished. She looked around the neighbourhood one last time, not nostalgically, but rather like someone checking whether everything was in its proper place. Then, as if remembering something, she turned to me and said, “Do you need a bed by any chance?”
“Uh, no, I’m good,” I said quickly.
“I mean it. I can sell it if you want. It’s cheap. And very good. I got it at—“
“No, really,” I said, “I am fine. Thanks.”
She watched me curiously, as if seeing something she hadn’t noticed before. Then, she turned around and walked away through the main gates.
And just like that, with her back turned towards me, on her way to distant lands full of French people and new opportunities, friends, and lovers, this mysterious and highly punctual woman I’d come to see as an undeniable presence in my existence, vanished from my life forever.
Thanks for reading.
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