Читать книгу The Fifth Woman - Nona Caspers - Страница 12

THE DOG

Every day during the summer, at about three o’clock, a shadow shaped like a dog appeared on my writing table. It was a small dog; I could see the head, the two pointed ears, the fluffy tail. The dog sat across from me at the far end of the table and then slowly approached until it disappeared at six o’clock.

I couldn’t locate where the dog came from; it seemed disconnected from the dark rooming house across the alley, from anything in all the inhabitants’ bleak dusty windows. I know this lack of source makes the dog unreal, but the dog was as true and constant as anything else in my apartment. I waited for the dog to arrive, and when it did I would sit working on my thesis with the dog for company. But some days, the dog felt like a bad omen, a nomadic wraith, and on those days I felt as if my apartment had somehow detached from the center of things, and were floating somewhere to the left of anything that mattered. I suppose I could’ve experienced those days as freedom, but I didn’t.

Other things appeared in that apartment over the alley. Once, returning from work, I found a piece of paper near an open window with a handwritten verse on it:

The merrier we be

The sunnier we see

and blinded by the light

becomes a melody

The writer had scratched out melody and written tragedy.

Another time, when cleaning, I found a multicolored rubber ball under the couch; a week later a child’s sock, though there were no children in the building or in the rooming house next door. In fact, I don’t remember seeing a single child the three years I lived there. The sock was lime green with a picture of a horse face over the toe; if you put your hand inside, the horse’s face bloomed into three dimensions and stared at you under droopy lashes. Another time, nearer the end of my stay, the sudden smell of lilacs hit me as I walked through the door, again with no apparent source.

Some days, the dog appeared to be sitting up, alert; other days the dog’s head hung low; still other days the dog seemed to be sleeping, its head resting on its small paws.

One day the dog appeared with only one ear. I didn’t notice the missing ear immediately—it was only when I looked up a third time, during the middle of a long and arduous thought, that I saw the one ear clearly sticking up and the other ear gone. The next day half of its tail was missing, leaving a fluffy stump. The next day it seemed to be missing a paw.

That night, in my bed, I began to imagine the dog outside my apartment, roaming the streets and scavenging, sleeping in doorways or maybe in alleys. I lay awake worrying about the dog, but of course there was nothing I could do, and I knew the dog wasn’t real, and that there were real dogs out there getting hurt and I should worry about them. Nonetheless, I worried about my shadow dog.

I woke in the morning late, took a shower, and read another book. At one o’clock I sat at my table and tried to write, but I couldn’t concentrate. I began instead to think about the dog. I had read an article about dogfighting in the City, about gambling rings and people who stole dogs off the street and out of cars to use for these fights. I imagined a basement with concrete floors and oil stains and a walled arena surrounded with chairs, the men in T-shirts smoking and drinking whiskey. And I imagined my little shadow dog in a cage in the corner, sitting quietly, shaking.

That’s where I had to stop; it was too sad.

I had imagined the dog in the worst situation, but I could just as easily have imagined it roaming through the park, sniffing eucalyptus leaves, sleeping under the trees and stars.

At three o’clock, the dog appeared with one ear, half a fluffy tail, all four paws intact, and a shorter snout. But it looked content, its head tilted slightly to one side. I was happy to see it. I said hello, and then I went back to work. Now the apartment was brighter; there was a glow in my small room as there always was when the dog appeared. Every time I looked up the little dog was there, in its own way steadfast. Just as the air began to thicken and prepare for dusk, the dog vanished, and I wondered what shape it would be in the next day, what it would be missing, or if it would appear at all.

What kind of suffering are we off to? What kind of joy?