That Glimpse of Truth

by David Miller

  “Last week she brought back a three-legged, leprous creature from Bari, or thereabouts. It cost a fortune just in petrol. Then there are veterinary expenses.”

  “Not to mention problems with the law. If she sees a dog kept on a short chain she simply steals it. Goes at night with a chain cutter. There’ve been two summonses. We had to put down bail.”

  My wife said to me, “Think if one of ours started doing that kind of thing, Ted!”

  I looked around. “There are no dogs in here,” I observed.

  “Because we’ve insisted that this side of the house be kept dog free.”

  “Ah.”

  “But if we took you round the back, you’d need a gas mask. I’ve set up a firewall of air-fresheners,” Signora Elvira explained with a pained smile.

  I thought about it. “I must say I rather like dogs. They’re always friendly. And hard-wired for obedience.”

  “We all like dogs,” both of them wailed rather louder than was necessary. “Everybody does, but not scores of them, and not dogs with sores and wounded paws and pus in their eyes.”

  As I wondered what to say next my wife shot me a glance to remind me that these were not any old friends, and certainly not my clients. People want a therapist’s advice for their nearest and dearest, but are not eager to find their own assumptions under scrutiny. Fortunately a tureen of smooth asparagus soup was served and we sat at table to eat. A fifth place had been set, I noticed, at the head of the table too, but no attempt had been made to call Emanuela. Perhaps the couple wanted the benefit of my advice before she arrived. Rather deliberately, I changed the subject to pharmaceuticals and Signor Fanna, a jowly expansive man, spoke happily of his work and the rather special situation, as he put it, in Italy where the industry faced the combined problems of a certain level of anarchy, a lot of petty corruption, and of course the Church doing everything possible to hinder the distribution of all products connected with contraception.

  Signora Elvira seemed bored and left half her soup in her bowl.

  “I’ve been given special instructions for how to speak to right-to-life lobbyists,” my wife confirmed cheerfully.

  Then Emanuela walked in and the evening got interesting.

  I had expected a loser, the dog craze covering up a young woman’s fear of starting her own life away from home. Or a polemical young woman playing committed radical to her parents’ bourgeois complacency; a do-gooder, a bore. Instead Emanuela banged open the door and strode in smiling, apologizing for being late. “I never make it anywhere on time,” she laughed. She was wearing a grey wool dress on a shapely, freshly-showered body of medium height, feminine but healthily solid, and if her face was on the plain side, it nevertheless had plenty of character and presence. “No don’t get up,” she protested. “You must be Anita, and you’re the husband.”

  “Ted.”

  “Right, the shrink.”

  Why had the girl been told that?

  We talked for twenty minutes or so without any mention of dogs. The main dishes were brought by the discreet maid who seemed to be from the Philippines or thereabouts and I noticed that Emanuela’s plate did not have meat on it, though she made no attempt to draw attention to her vegetarianism. She was a confident, outgoing young woman happy to discuss the school she worked in and her attitude to her teacher’s role: “I try to give papà a hand,” she laughed, telling the girls to get on the pill and the boys to use condoms.”

  Yet her parents were evidently unhappy with her. The mother in particular frowned constantly. Perhaps Signora Elvira was a devout catholic, I reflected, and didn’t approve of these allusions to sex and contraception. Her husband had become cautious after his daughter’s arrival, as if picking his way through a minefield. I suspected he could have got on with her if the mother were not present. As it was, all his attentions seemed aimed at getting my wife and his to talk together, about recipes and clothes and shopping centres. Perhaps her p.a.’s responsibilities were to include keeping the boss’s invalid wife company while he was away.

  “I hear you are a dog lover,” I said as the tiramisu was placed before us.

  “That’s right,” Emanuela agreed amiably. She concentrated on spooning up the mascarpone.

  There was an expectant silence. I couldn’t decide whether the Fannas wanted me to make some kind of effort to explore the dog thing or not. I was trying to be helpful.

  With a dour smile, Signora Elvira said: “Emanuela’s going up to Holland this weekend, aren’t you, love?”

  The ‘love’ was unexpected, and unexpectedly respectful. Emanuela nodded. “I thought we’d agreed not to talk about dogs anymore, Mamma.”

  “It’s not every weekend one drives to Holland,” Signor Fanna said.

  My wife threw in a few enthusiastic remarks about Amsterdam in the spring and what wonderful people the Dutch were. “So liberal. No problems selling pharmaceuticals there!”

  Emanuela put her spoon down. “Too liberal sometimes.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  She hesitated, shot a glance at her parents. “There are no laws against deviant sexual behaviour in Holland. They let men rape dogs. This usually leads to the animals’ death through internal bleeding.”

  “God!” My wife raised her napkin to her lips.

  Signora Elvira’s face was a mask of severity.

  “Special brothels exist to provide dogs to an international clientele. Like the cafés where you can smoke dope. This weekend there will be a big animal rights demonstration. We’re planning to free as many dogs as we can.” She turned to her father who was looking a little queasy: “Do you mind if I take the SUV, Papà?”

  Some time later, as we were preparing to leave, I said: “I’d love to see your dogs, Emanuela.”

  We were standing in the hallway. Signor Fanna had gone to get some papers he wanted my wife to deal with first thing the following morning. Signora Elvira had cheered up as the evening drew to a close and was evidently enjoying my wife’s company. Perhaps Signor Fanna always introduced his p.a.s and their husbands to his wife to prevent any suspicion that there might be any illicit intimacy developing.

  Emanuela assented readily enough and led the way down the hallway, through a door that crossed a spacious kitchen, then another door that led to a generous extension on the back of the house. At once there was a strong doggy smell, but nothing excessive, or not for those of us who’ve been brought up with dogs. The girl crouched down to greet a fine border collie that came scampering up to her, then stretched an arm to welcome a pretty beagle waggling behind. As she crouched, her wool dress tightened. The collie licked her face which she turned smilingly from side to side under his long wet tongue. Her thighs were strong and her back pleasantly full. The beagle yelped and pawed. Both dogs were beautifully glossy, in the pink of canine health, and the more Emanuela played with them, the more attractive her youth and evident good nature became.

  “What my parents wanted you to pronounce on, though,” she broke off, “was this.”

  Suddenly businesslike, she stood up and led me out through the extension and out of a back door into the garden. Immediately, from a low building at the far side of the lawn, an excited barking began. It was no more than a large garden shed, half hidden behind low bushes. Emanuela took a torch hanging under the eaves and pointed it through the window. Here there were ten or a dozen dogs all falling over each other to thrust their snouts against the window, yapping and snuffling and scratching. I could see at once that these were not such healthy specimens. One had an eye missing. One limped and whimpered.

  “I always find a home for them in the end. It just takes a little time.”

  “That’s very impressive,” I said. “It must be hard work.”

  “There’s a group of us, called Puppy Love.”

  She turned towards me. Because we had been peering in at small the window we were close to each other. It was impossible not to be aware of her body in the fresh dark, her lips faintly illuminated in the torch
light.

  “Maybe you’d like to make a donation. We’re not a registered charity yet, but I can guarantee that every cent would be spent on the dogs’ welfare.”

  We began to walk back to the house.

  “I’ve worked out that each dog I save and re-house costs on average around 400 Euros, just over a quarter of my monthly salary.”

  “Let me think about it.”

  “Of course. Take your time. I ask everybody I meet. Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to do what we do.”

  I felt excited.

  “How would I contact you, if I did decide to give?”

  She mentioned a website. The name was easy to remember. There was a contact box. But before we crossed the threshold back into the house she stopped me. “Tell me something, though. I mean, you being a shrink. Why does it bother my parents so much? Especially Mamma. Why is she so hostile?”

  I took a deep breath. This was tempting; an alliance against her parents would be an easy way to intimacy. I resisted.

  “I suppose they wanted something different for you. As parents tend to do. They no doubt have some more conventional narrative of their daughter, happy in her middle-class marriage with a professional career that they can talk to their friends about.” I hesitated, “Probably what makes it harder is that what you’re doing is obviously generous and good. I mean, if one has to choose between dog rapists and dog rescuers, one plumps for the rescuers. On the other hand we’d all be happier not to think about such disturbing things at all. I suspect you confuse them. They’re not sure how to behave. And of course,” I smiled, “they could probably do without the barking in the garden. And the dogshit no doubt.”

  As I spoke and she watched me, standing a fraction closer than people ordinarily stand to each other, I sensed that very soon we would become lovers and I would be dedicating substantial sums of money to the salvation of Europe’s abused dogs.

  So it was. Emanuela was arrested in Holland. My wife told me that Signor Fanna had cancelled his trip to Germany to go to the Italian Consulate in Rotterdam. Signora Elvira, on the other hand, had kept her, my wife, on the phone for hours, expressing her indignation that her husband had allowed his daughter to get in the way of his work; she was all for leaving the girl to languish in a police cell. That way she’d be forced to wake up and take life seriously.

  I wondered who fed and walked the dogs while Emanuela was away. My wife said she had no idea.

  “Ask.”

  She looked puzzled. “Why?”

  “Just curious. I found the whole set up rather intriguing.”

  “I thought you’d come to the conclusion that she was a nice girl with a good cause and the parents were making too much fuss.”

  “Just curious,” I repeated. “By the way, do you know how Signora Elvira ended up in the wheelchair?”

  My wife had no idea. Signor Fanna had never talked about it.

  “He’s extremely devoted to her,” she said with a hint of bitterness.

  The following week, Emanuela appeared on the regional TV news. She had been released with a caution. Quizzed by an interviewer on her return to Verona, she said. “I just don’t like to think of animals being mistreated. Especially not to satisfy perverts. It’s ugly and I want the world to be beautiful.”

  Watching, I was struck by how at ease she was with the questions and the camera; there was no shrillness, no preaching or proselytizing. As someone who daily spends hours every day in conversation with conflicted and unhappy people, I rarely see this: a young woman entirely at home with herself and her choices. It made her extremely desirable. The closing shots showed Emanuela crouching down to greet her collie and beagle on arriving home. It was a replay of the scene I had witnessed after our dinner, except that now she was wearing jeans and tee shirt. The collie pushed its wet nose into her breasts.

  I would send her 400 euros a month, I wrote in the website contact box, on condition that I be allowed to see the dogs my money was helping. A few days later we met outside her school and she took me to a veterinary surgery where an obese black Labrador was sedated on a drip. He had been found half dead in a ditch.

  The vet, in his late forties, greeted Emanuela with a warm embrace; she ruffled his hair, he tweaked her nose, and I understood at once that they had been lovers and that this was why he was willing to offer her his services for no more than the cost of the drugs. He greeted me and smiled, explaining that it was a daily occurrence in Verona for dogs to be found poisoned, either by dog haters who left spiked meatballs around, or by their owners who were fed up with them. In Italy it is illegal to put a healthy animal down. “So they fake a poisoning and take care to remove the dog’s collar and identification, in case it survives.”

  Emanuela stroked the creature which was stretched out on a surgical table. “Come and say hello, Ted,” she said in a low voice. I went to stand beside her and put a hand on the dog’s matted fur. It twitched and a muscle shifted under the skin. She put her hand next to mine. It was actually quite strange to feel this threatened animal life beneath my fingers; the Labrador’s bulk and odorous canine presence took on an unexpected solemnity - here were fifty kilos of sensitive suffering flesh that could not easily be ignored - and I knew it was the woman beside me who had made me feel this. Her hand invited mine to linger and to get to know the creature. Sitting in the car again we looked at each other and kissed.

  Signora Elvira had fallen off a horse, my wife told me. “Twenty years ago.”

  “Ah.”

  I wondered aloud what her husband did about sex.

  “Trust you,” she grumbled. “It is possible for people to love each other without constant sex, you know.”

  It went unspoken that my wife hadn’t made love for months if not years.

  Emanuela had a more interesting version of events. Her mother, a successful doctor at the time, had been eager to get her daughter into horse-riding; she went around with a rather snobbish Rotary Club crowd. “One holiday, in Umbria, she hired these two horses and at a certain point mine took off. I couldn’t control it. She was quite expert and galloped after me. Then I fell and she had to hit the brakes not to trample me. The horse crashed her into a wall.”

  “So it was your fault.”

  “She never actually said that.”

  Her mother was the one serious worry in Emanuela’s life. “What can I do to make her happy” she moaned “or at least to get her off my back? Why is she constantly asking me when I plan to get real and move out of the house? She’s obsessed.”

  We met once a week and made love in my studio. Often Emanuela brought a dog to show me, ostensibly the one my money was helping. The animals did not always take kindly to our embraces. Sometimes she invited me on a reconnaissance mission: I had to wander into a farmyard in some outlying village to see if it was true that a German Shepherd was being kept up to its knees in slime. On another occasion I was asked to drive a bull terrier to its new owner in Genova while she went to deal with an emergency in Trieste. As I drove, sacrificing a whole Sunday in the process and wondering how I would explain to my wife about the doggy smell in the car, I realized that this must be how all her relationships went. Men fell in love with her enthusiasm around dogs, her warmth, affection and contagious sense of purpose. It was impossible not to want to be touched and loved by this generous animal woman. Then they grew offended that the dogs always came first and the relationship cooled and died; after which ex-lovers might become occasional helpers, taking the dogs out for walks when she was away on a mission, perhaps getting a kiss or two as a reward, or maybe more. Emanuela was not a stingy girl. She had a finely developed sense of give and take.

  As far as I was concerned, though, it was rather convenient that the dogs came first. After three children I had no interest in serious commitments with a young woman. And watching Emanuela I was beginning to understand her motivation and her gift: again and again she made you feel the individuality and irrefutable physical presence of each animal. However sick or cri
ppled or aggressive or stinking they might be, these creatures couldn’t be wished away; they really were there, living and suffering and snuffling at your crotch. Emanuela’s response to their vitality brought out the animal in her too; she radiated life. I never minded when a promised session on my studio sofa was cancelled for a trip to some dog refuge with a carload of cheap feed. She liked my big Audi because it carried more than her old Vectra. And she was appreciative of my patience. “I’ll make it up to you, darling,” she whispered. This could go on forever, I thought.

  But there was one animal Emanuela couldn’t get rid of. She’d had a Doberman for a year and more and despaired of finding a home for it. Paralysed in one hind leg, abandoned by its owner when no longer able to run along a fence barking madly at every passerby, this ex guard dog was frustrated and irritable, snapping at the other dogs in the shed and making sure that there was a constant din in the garden, which of course gave Signora Elvira every excuse for insisting that the situation was unsustainable. On two occasions this grumpy creature had made the journey to generous adoptive families in distant country estates, but each time, after a week or so, these good people had asked to be relieved of the animal. So the Doberman - Kenny he was called - was brought back, not without expense and effort, and the strife began again. He nipped the other dogs’ heels and necks, they yelped and barked. The paralysis also seemed to have affected his bladder. He peed in the shed. The stink was getting worse.

  “You take him,” Emanuela eventually said.

  Yes, this is how she gets rid of her men, I thought, with an impossible test of love.

  “Let me mull it over,” I told her and I noticed that when we made love that afternoon she was particularly generous with her caresses. Sex was never easier or more affectionately physical than with Emanuela. She made you feel how fortunate you were to be alive and in possession of all your senses. In my mid fifties, I had clearly lucked out.

  On the other hand, Kenny was one hell of an ugly dog.

  “Signora Elvira phoned me today,” my wife said. My wife had been in a better mood since she had started working again, so much so that I had begun to think that what with the affair I was enjoying and this new pleasantness at home, perhaps after all there would be no need to make major changes.