Late that afternoon, when you thought things had calmed down, you left the compound and walked to the florist, limping a little on your wounded knee. The black dogs in the alley followed behind you, grumbling and mean, their fur matted and tangled, their paws red from the dust in the laneway. Their shadows loped along the outer walls of the neighbouring compounds, sometimes clear and distinct, hunkered in a row, other times amorphous and large, smeared into one.
When you returned, flowers in your hand, you pressed your ear against the door of the bungalow, struggled to hear if she was in there watching TV, maybe snoring softly. You knocked on the door and the hinges whined as it opened. The room was empty, her bed stripped of sheets and the bulb swiped from the overhead socket. In the kitchen, you put the flowers in a glass of water and arranged them on the windowsill.
III.
Now the black dogs are in your dream, flies buzzing around their twitching ears as they lick pools of blood off the restaurant floor. One of them gnaws a femur beneath a table for four. You whistle and they jerk their heads at you. They begin trotting in your direction. You attempt to flee, throwing toasted sandwich buns over your shoulder as you hurtle through the kitchen. Just as they begin to snap at your ankles, just as you feel their cold breath on your flesh, you wake up sweating and hungry. Your throat is dry and sore.
You remember the last time you went out for lunch. Money was in short supply because all your schemes were running aground. You walked to Kalingalinga, crossed the busy street and threaded down the cratered alleys. This was a blue-collar part of town. Carpenters blew blankets of sawdust off fresh bookcases. Machinists ground away at strips of metal, sending sparks arching over the laneways. Young girls called to you from wooden kiosks, their countertops scattered with candy, pop, and cigarettes. It was Saturday, wedding day, and cars rattled through the lanes, horns sounding in chorus and ribbons fluttering in the tailwind. You made eye contact with passersby, holding the connection until they looked away or moved past.
You bought fish and nshima from a clapboard counter and lowered yourself onto a tipsy wooden bench outside, dust billowing round your ankles as you planted your feet and rinsed your hands in the bowl of lukewarm water the waitress brought to your table. She smiled insincerely. Her floral dress trailed around her ankles as she strode off. You dug your fingers into the steaming nshima, balled it up in your palm and popped it in your mouth. Children peered at you from behind the counter. They giggled, ducked away whenever you looked them in the eyes.
You used to take Mercy here on Saturdays, when she was free, because you thought spending a few kwachas on cheap food would buy her loyalty. You were not crazy about nshima, found it bland, the taste of maize dull and typical, but Mercy ate it religiously, usually with a stew of indeterminate vegetables. For her, the fish was an extravagance, and ever since she’d quit, you sometimes made the trip to Kalingalinga in the hopes of luring her from the crowd with dried tilapia. At home, on the windowsill, the flowers had long since crumbled to dust, the water evaporated from the glass.
You considered the empty glass as crowds of people strolled past, cars honking festively, drunken men shouting out of the sunroofs. You began to choke on a piece of fish. It happened slowly at first, a little bone lodged in your throat, a mound of nshima stopped up against it. You coughed and thumped yourself on the chest, but the blockage remained. Your throat closed up around it. You stood up, rasping, knocked the table over, sent your food into the obscurity of the dust, and you extended both hands toward the crowd as it blitzed by.
Most people did not notice you. They herded on, dust swirling around their feet, your breath sharp and short. You felt the veins in your face swell with blood as you stumbled into the crowd, but still somehow you were not a part of it, not able to attract anyone’s attention, to beg for someone’s help.
You began grabbing people. You pawed at their shoulders, trying to turn them to face you as they travelled past. You seized a young man by the hand, but his fingers slipped through your palm. He vanished with the others. Your knees began to weaken and you tried to Heimlich yourself, doubled over in the middle of the laneway, ramming your fists into the space below your ribcage, until finally you collapsed under the feet of the people and, from the ground, watched the waitress’s children avoid your slow-blinking eyes.
You became light-headed. Black spots bloomed in your sight like buttons of mould on the surface of old coffee. No one stepped on you, so that you began wondering if you existed in the first place, and because it seemed like you did not, at least not there, not in that pack of hundreds, you figured that maybe you weren’t really dying, because how could both things happen at the same time?
Then the waitress with the floral dress pulled you from the laneway. She crouched and wrapped her arms around your stomach and pumped your solar plexus. The fish tore free from your throat and sailed from your mouth, landing at the feet of her children as you gasped, head lolling in her arms, lips wet and slack.
The first things you noticed were her kids, their laughing faces, nasty little teeth shining in their wicked mouths. You felt the waitress’s body twitching too, as if she were also laughing, and so you hauled yourself to your feet, stumbled, arms flailing for balance, and you began to shout at them, told them to shut the fuck up and what the fuck was so funny and what was she thinking to just leave you there choking to death in the dust. You thrust out your trembling hand. You demanded your money back.
The sound of your outrage drew attention. Men stopped their passage and folded their arms over their chests, watching you berate the waitress and her children. Behind them gathered a crowd of incensed women, and they hurled condemnations at you. The threat of violence declared itself in the dry, sandy air.
You backed down, trying to shrink away from the angry faces around you. The waitress glared, told you to leave and never return. On the way back, you looked for wildflowers, but the weather was too dry, so you grabbed grass from someone’s lawn instead. At home, you put the blades in the glass on the windowsill, and then you filled the glass with water.
EPILOGUE
This morning the dream has driven you once again from sleep. You butter your toast and set it on the cutting board. Hunger bends your stomach. The sound of the knife scraping across the bread echoes through the kitchen. You wash it, dry it, return it to the drawer. You wipe the counter down and walk around the yard, fruit rotting in the grass. You’ve lost weight since your last visit to Kalingalinga. Your fingernails are soft.
Every second day or so, when you can’t stand it anymore, you buy tomatoes and onions in the laneway outside your compound. You mash them together and eat them with a spoon. But you worry you may somehow choke on this gruel as well, and only a thief will find your corpse, because soon they will know you haven’t paid your electrical bill for months, and they’ll slither up the compound wall, slipping through the deadened wires. They’ll steal the mirrors you stashed in the hallway closet.
The woman selling tomatoes and onions treats you pityingly, the way one considers a beaten criminal. She watches you from the corners of her sagging eyelids. She says very little in English and you’ve forgotten your Nyanja. But the compassion is in her touch, the way her fingers linger just for a second when she picks the coins from your palm. Your nervous system glows with the sensation, and you stroke the spot on your flesh as you wander back to your gate.
This morning the black dogs are tormenting a skinny brown one with short hair and scabs on its snout. They attack it, kicking up clouds of dust as they circle, lunge, snap at its legs and ears. The brown one skitters backward, yelping almost like a human, its neck twisting in all directions.
On the way home, cradled in your arms, it nuzzles against your chest, trembling. You stroke its cheek and press your fingers into its flank. You feel the bones like twigs beneath its fur. The black dogs follow behind you, growling, unwilling to give up their prey. They curl up against your compo
und wall and wait for an opening.
Inside, you bring the dog to the kitchen. You lay blankets on the floor, so the tiles won’t hurt its bruises. You take the two pieces of stale toast and feed them to the animal, caressing its ears as it gulps down the food. It raises a paw as you stand up, wriggles its nose at the smell of the food. You insert more bread into the toaster, butter it when it’s ready, and take your first bite of solid food in what feels like years. You chew carefully. You watch the dog to make sure it’s watching you, ready in case you start choking.
That night, you allow the dog into your bed. You do not dream of the woman on Highway 17, of her constant memorial, of her dead husband or bleeding throat or raw bones scattered around the restaurant floor. The next morning you wake up refreshed. But when you grope around the mattress for your companion, you realize he isn’t with you. Instead, there are only shed hairs and a small pile of sand.
You find him downstairs, outside, curled up against the inner edge of the compound walls. On the other side of the wall, the black dogs are panting heavily, excited by his presence.
You know before you touch him that his wounds were fatal. This is just his body surrounded by sand and dirt, a skeletal tree creaking above him. There’s a breeze against your back. You feel no pain. You dig the grave at the base of the wall, toss dirt over the top as the black dogs thrash and howl in the laneway. Your arms shake with the strain.
In rain season, the tree will flower again. Over the compound wall, you foresee new blooms dangling, fragrant and soft, quiet company for anyone who wants it.
It’s lunch when you finish burying him. In the laneway up ahead, beyond the woman selling vegetables, the black dogs lope away, a pod of dust obscuring them. Vague, almost shapeless, they’re too far off to count.
The wind picks up. It beats against the vegetable kiosk, slaps at your sweaty shirt, flings stinging sheets of dust down the lane and slides a heavy, black cloud over the sun. The woman claps a hand over her floral headscarf, ribbons of it snapping in the air.
The wind dies down. It’s just the two of you knuckling sand out of your nostrils, selecting and bagging vegetables. There’s that brief, almost habitual moment of contact when you hand over the money, except this time she closes her fingers around yours and shakes you slightly, so that you look up into her brown eyes. You open your mouth in silent query and she says: “But tell me. Have you seen my dog?”
Acknowledgements
You don’t hear much about editors. They don’t get the shine afforded to movie directors or record producers. But books are nevertheless affairs of collaboration, and not just between writers and editors, but also marketers, designers, and probably others I’m not aware of. This book is no different.
A Plea for Constant Motion had two editors. Its first was Janice Zawerbny, who brought me into House of Anansi’s fold, helped me weed through a mound of stories to arrive at these ones, and hugely enhanced my understanding of sentences and clarity. Thanks, Janice. I owe you. In Plea’s final stages, Janie Yoon took over, developing the arrangement, zeroing in on stray details, and helping me understand again what it is to clearly relay a concept or image. Thanks, Janie. I owe you, too. Finally, copyeditor Joanna Reid saved me from a slew of lazy habits, like repetitive descriptions and poorly chosen words. Thanks, Joanna. I owe you, as well.
I’ve also benefited from a rich group of readers, writers, and loved ones. Up near the top of the list is Zsuzsi Gartner, who’s probably become pretty accustomed to finding her name in these spaces, but this page wouldn’t be complete without it. She’s been a mentor, facilitator, editor, and friend. Others who have offered helpful insights: Sandro Marcon, Bert Archer, Jessica Murphy, Troy Keller, Larry Frolick, Jules Lewis, Laura Trunkey, Matthew Hooton, Jason Paradiso, Troy Palmer, and my kick-ass agent, Stephanie Sinclair.
Versions of a few of these stories have been published elsewhere. Thanks to filling Station (“An Improved Map of the World”), The Puritan (“Even Still”), Little Fiction and subTerrain (“Dream of a Better Self”), Riddle Fence (“The Black Dogs are Death”), and Electro Pulp Press (“My New Best Friend in Exile”).
Finally, thanks to my folks, Diane and Bert Carlucci; my sister, Nicole Carlucci-Bell; my brother-in-law Bryan Bell-Carlucci; and my niece, Caileigh Carlucci-Bell. Love you all. Thanks to my extended family too. And thanks to Jess, my partner, and Hanky, our dog. Love you both!
Paul Carlucci is the author of The Secret Life of Fission, which won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award. His stories have been widely published, appearing in The Puritan, Little Fiction, The Malahat Review, Descant, Carousel, EVENT, and Riddle Fence, among others. A recovering transient, he now lives in Ottawa after almost ten years of roaming across Canada and abroad.
House of Anansi Press was founded in 1967 with a mandate to publish Canadian-authored books, a mandate that continues to this day even as the list has branched out to include internationally acclaimed thinkers and writers. The press immediately gained attention for significant titles by notable writers such as Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, George Grant, and Northrop Frye. Since then, Anansi’s commitment to finding, publishing and promoting challenging, excellent writing has won it tremendous acclaim and solid staying power. Today Anansi is Canada’s pre-eminent independent press, and home to nationally and internationally bestselling and acclaimed authors such as Gil Adamson, Margaret Atwood, Ken Babstock, Peter Behrens, Rawi Hage, Misha Glenny, Jim Harrison, A. L. Kennedy, Pasha Malla, Lisa Moore, A. F. Moritz, Eric Siblin, Karen Solie, and Ronald Wright. Anansi is also proud to publish the award-winning nonfiction series The CBC Massey Lectures. In 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2011 Anansi was honoured by the Canadian Booksellers Association as “Publisher of the Year.”
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