Kostik: The groom´s dog
Author: RICARDO MUÑOZ JOSÉ.
Togliatti, Russia, Summer 1995. The car was coming closer to the city, bringing a youg couple. He was on the steer wheel, she besides, and behind a dog was peacefully sleeping. Happiness was in the air. The hearts in love were beating like one. In every look a message, and in every message a new love promise.
... One curve. Suddenly, one truck was on the road without having the lights on! The driver did not have the time to avoid the colision… The crash was brutal. Afterwards silence… the brocken car body was showing a grimace of fright.
...The wife died immediately. The man, moribund, remained caught in the mess of twisted irons. The dog was ejected out of the car without suffering any damage.
Other vehicles stopped and several people rushed to the accident, joining the neighbors that came to help.
... All together they managed to extract the driver from the metallic body. The dog, mute witness, was observing it all. It was observing without understanding.
The ambulance siren announcing the arrival of help asked for free way. The ambulance was the only bridge to salvation. The sanitary personnel loaded the injured man in a stretcher. The hurt man, in a moment of lightening conscience, managed to look at the dog like telling him "wait for me".
The stridency of the ambulance managed to get away, and finally got silenced in the distance, taken away by the urgency.
After a little while, the body of the only injured person parted from this world to the morgue.
The dog, in silente attitude, was just looking.
The traffic returned to normality. Life was going on.
The deceased were Yuri and Elena, a couple of just married that was passing through Togliatti, returning from their honey moon.
They started seeing him sitting on the road side, in that summer from 1995. The lonely animal presence attracted curiosity, and this curiosity ended in a general simpathy. No one doubted it: he was waiting for the return of the friend that he saw leaving alive. He, from his desperation, was firmly convinced that if Yuri was leaving this place, he would also return here.
His ears were raising on hearing a car, and he was running to meet it. Even in his fast run sometimes he was crossing in front of a car. But the cars were disappearing swallowed by the misty mouth of the distance, and he was staying there, smelling the air, looking restless. His eyes were scanning the road.
There were good people that touched by the drama of the animal, tried to adopt him, and so give him a new home. No attempt had any success, the dog was coming back to the road side, and with his endless patience, was watching out for the much wanted return of Yuri.
To make a bit easier his fate, the neighbours were bringing him food and water.
Because of the moving persistence of the animal without name, the village called him Kostik (short form from „konstantin“ meaning constant).
The winter arrived, and with him the first snow. People, moved by the dog, were bringing him warm water and cartoon boxes where he could find some shelter, since he was living in the snow and with temperatures of till minus 20 degrees. But nothing was making him leave. Season after season, with cold or heat, he was just staying beside the road.
And 2002 came. Suddenly Kostik got sick, he had pain and his heart told him that he would leave this world soon. He walked almost crawling to the nearest forest, where he found the shelter of the wood. There he closed his eyes. He finished his way in a lonely spot, kissing the earth, protected by a bush. Kostik departed being a lonely being, covered by leaves, transported by nature. Kostik went to find his lost friend.
Some kids of the neighborhood found the body. He had a natural death. Perhaps, he went to the forest to die alone, avoiding to depart this world in the place where he insisted in waiting for Yuri, his soul friend.
All was filled with lonelyness. Kostik left that the sadness, reflected in the tears, was anchored for ever in the memory of everyone.
However, someting strange happened then. The dog was dead, but the neighbours were still seing him at night. And that happened not only to one person, but to several. Such a mistery found a place in the superstition? Were people just seing what they wanted to see? Or was it a similar dog what they thought was Kostik?
The Rotary Club suggested that in the same point where Kostik had his long waiting, a statue would be constructed in his honour. They called it " Monument to the Loyalty ". It was constructed by the sculptor Oleg Klyuev, a work in bronze on a pedestal of granite, of 150 cm of height. The cost was of 250.000 rubles, an amount collected by popular donations. Oleg Klyuev, sculpted the head of the animal turned towards the road, looking at the traffic, as if it was waiting for the lost friend.
On the Sunday 1st of June of 2003 the monument was inaugurated. The local authorities, represented by the Rotary Club, journalists and people from the whole district were there. The act was presided by the major Nikolay Rents, who very moved said: „Our city has now symbol. As Copenhagen has his famous mermaid, and Brussels the famous little boy, we in Togliatti have a monument to the dog. To a dog that for his loyalty already is a legend".
With the time, the statue of Kostik became more and more known, being the most visited one of Togliatti. It even became a compulsory stop for the new married couples. Before starting the honey moon trip, the couples rub the nose of the sculpture in order to obtain happiness. The custom has sunk in deeply, and because of the repeated ritual, the snout of the sculpture remains shiny.
It is in that way that the humble Kostik was known in the whole of Russia as the groom´s dog.
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