Dog Symphony

by Sam Munson

  I began to stammer, to wonder if I had dreamed up the quiet, orderly animals that filled the southern night. But Fulvio’s brother shouted: Stop fucking with him. Fulvio grinned, tight and dull — except for his golden incisor. The dogs, where do I start, he sighed. Fuckers, shouted Adriano, you have to say they’re fuckers before you can say anything else, otherwise you won’t convey the truth. Fulvio, peeping through his thick fingers, told me that their arrival had hurt the business. The lull he had blamed on the hour was merely one more vacuity in their empty days, their empty months; Adriano added that at first the dogs hadn’t done them any harm, that people still came to visit their dead parents and siblings, they still bought flowers, and still tended the grass on their graves, but that after two weeks or maybe three, the pedestrian traffic slowed and the only visitors who still showed up came from outside the city, where the dogs had not yet spread. You don’t know that, said Fulvio, my friend in Coronel Pringles said there’d been sightings of at least a few dogs at night there, and people have started putting out meat and water. Worse, said Fulvio, his friend had even seen a shrine go up. That’s when we knew we were in trouble, said Adriano, when we saw the first shrine. I told you — right, Fulvio? It was about two months ago, and business really fell off after that. I asked them why the dogs had done so much damage, if the locals thought the cemetery was unsafe because of them. Adriano said, amid a bitter laugh: Maybe you really are from Uruguay.

  I explained that I was not Uruguayan, that I had come for an academic conference, that this was my first time in the city. So you’re a professor, said Adriano. The academy, said Fulvio, that’s what we should have done, there you don’t have to worry about epidemics, your living is safe. Just look at the Department of Social Praxis. I’d never heard of this department before. It’s in the University, said Fulvio, there isn’t anything like it anywhere, or at least that’s what the ads said. Adriano wanted to know what I specialized in. I explained, and he asked if I’d seen the prison in Patricios, the Cárcel de Caseros. It’s just a wall now, he said, they blew up the main buildings, and some artist did some stupid thing there. Foreign artists always come here and bring their stupid ideas about art, said Adriano. And then there’s Devoto, but that’s boring, everyone knows about that, or maybe you don’t? I did know both prisons, I said, but nothing is more important than local knowledge in observing prisons and the spiritual structures that surround them. You see, said Adriano, there’s a man who knows his limitations. Academic types can be very high-handed here. The lackey was about to speak, but Adriano silenced him. Keep your mouth shut, he said, the professor doesn’t want to hear your theories.

  I told Adriano that I was always interested in theories, whoever might propose them. He sighed and shook his head. They are of no consequence, Professor, Adriano said, they’ll just muddy the waters — you saw it all last night, so you understand, don’t you? I told him I did not understand him. The lackey went back to spraying the lilies and freesias, his spade-like shoulder blades working under his thin-looking skin. I know you just arrived, said Fulvio, but you really don’t know? He took me by the arm (the avuncularity of this impeccable world) and escorted me back into the sunlight. Beyond the iron gate, now open, the green lawns rose and fell. Fulvio pointed out over them and said: You see any dogs there? He was right. No dogs, not one. I asked again where they went. He shook his head. If we knew that, he said, do you think we’d be suffering the way we are? They come out at night, they eat the meat, they drink the water, they come back, and then poof, nothing. A mower hummed. Strong and reverential. I wanted to tell Fulvio he had to be mistaken, but given the total absence of dogs — and I had seen hundreds, perhaps even thousands, fighting their way through that gap in the wall on Warnes — I couldn’t. I suggested, instead, that he hire masons to brick up the hole, or fill it with rocks or wood himself, and he laughed in the same bitter, avian way his brother had. We tried that, he said, we tried that eight or nine times, maybe ten, and every time it was the same. The dogs came out after sundown anyway and when we ran to check the hole, our barricade was gone as if it had never been there in the first place. He blew on his fingertips. A small cloud of pollen leaped off them. Adriano said: It was like a magician came in and waved his wand.

  All this meant that people no longer came to visit their relatives in the cemetery, Fulvio told me. I asked why, and he said I had to be kidding him. Don’t they know in America what’s going on down here? It’s the dead, they come out at night in the form of dogs and visit their relatives. So why would anyone come in here anymore, when your relatives come right to your door? All those people died in the epidemic, Adriano said, and the dogs started showing up almost a year to the day after their burials. It’s not just people who died in the epidemic, said Fulvio, because there was never any illness in Coronel Pringles and there are night dogs there now too. The teenage lackey nodded as his two masters spoke; he was, I guessed, Fulvio’s son, he shared his broad brow and deep, impenetrably black nostrils. I had not heard the news of a recent epidemic afflicting Buenos Aires, but then again, I never paid attention to world affairs. So the epidemic I was prepared to accept, but Fulvio’s theory of the night dogs I regarded as suspect, and I told him so. That’s what everyone who isn’t from around here says, he answered, you just wait till it happens in your city. My friend in Coronel Pringles thought I was full of shit too, and now he’s pissing himself because the dogs have showed up there and he thinks he’s going to go out of business. He runs a funeral parlor, replied Adriano, no way he ever goes out of business.

  I took another step toward the cemetery lawn. If you don’t believe me, said Fulvio, you can go check for yourself. I assured him that I did believe him, but he was already furious. You don’t even know anything about this city, you’ve been here one night and you already think you’re an expert, he shouted. His voice racketed through the marble entrance plaza, through the gates. My initial instinct, to flee, faded. I saw no reason why I should allow this flower salesman to bully me. As an expert on prison architecture, I was, by extension, an expert on the human body (a primordial prison) and the soul (the prisoner or alleged prisoner). I told him to calm down, I hadn’t meant anything by it. It was a strange story, he had to admit. It’s only strange, said Fulvio, if you want it to be strange. People think that because we landed on the moon, stuff like this doesn’t happen anymore. Well, first of all, it was you people who landed on the moon, we never did, and second of all, that’s a logical fallacy. The lackey came up behind Fulvio, eyes wide in fear. Adriano told his brother to calm down. I offered my hand to Fulvio. This gesture surprised me. I did not under ordinary circumstances engage in social theatrics. I’m usually a peaceable man, he said as he shook my hand, but on this issue, I just can’t stay quiet. His palm dry and soft. Crossed by a scar. His skin left a golden smear of pollen on mine.

  5.

  Ahead of me, afloat in the dimness, a stripe of raw-looking flesh. I did not mention the coincidence to the cabbie as he drove along Directorio, and I held my tongue as he reached Avenida San Juan. I was waiting for him to speak. He did not. His silence was absolute. This exerted pressure on me, on my so-called soul, as it would have on the “soul” of any fellow primate. I asked about the dogs, since I could not ask about his carbuncles, i.e., his identity. He remained sunk in his marmoreal silence.

  The buildings, mackerel-gray, salmon-rose, or white, empty white, wavered, ready to take wing. A common effect of insomnia. At doorsteps and lobby entrances, human figures knelt to place meat and pour water into steel bowls; many took the meat from silver freezer bags, while others dumped it out of plastic grocery bags; the water came from hoses, buckets, and pitchers. At a stoplight, I saw one pitcher shaped like a rooster, water leaping from its beak. Neighbors greeted each other as they might during any outdoor chore. The houses without these offerings looked desolate, a desolation increased by a lonely, muted noise filling the cab. A distant murmur, punctuated by occasional bell-like tones. I tho
ught it was an eccentric engine sound, until the driver took his earphones out as we arrived at the social sciences building. It was music. Drums and cymbals overlaid, with shrill flute notes interrupting: the song I had first heard in the airport, the song I’d heard again pouring from the clerk’s radio in the all-night shop on the corner of Emilio Mitre and Hualfin. My driver said it was called “Dog Symphony.” He didn’t know who wrote it, he didn’t know how long it had been popular. It was always popular, he said, I think.

  I was due to meet Ana in a lecture hall on the first floor of the social sciences building on Alvear. From the outside it resembled a small suburban hospital. I knew the layout of the building as well as I knew the layout of the city streets, thanks to the ample conference brochure I’d received. The first floor contained the main lecture rooms; above it, on the second floor, what an Argentine would call the first floor, was the sociology department, above that archaeology, then anthropology, economics, media studies, gender studies, and indigenous studies. History, where Ana served, was found on the eighth floor. Yet of the students themselves I knew nothing. Maps can tell you nothing about student moronism, sadly, other than where you are likely to find it. But as I passed among these hurrying adolescents, I understood how apposite Ana’s remark had been: they were no more than burgherly poltergeists. Heads, lips, scarves, eyes. All these filled the air. Glances slid fluidly and blankly over my face, over the walls and the high, dirty ceiling. They moved with studied, I thought, freneticism, evincing all the might of the young, exuding the pitiable, vermiform energy that characterizes youth, especially student youth. And they like my own students were divided, they too comprised two armies. That I noted at once. Half the students, male and female alike, wore nylon chokers with dog ID tags attached to them. The tags chimed softly as they walked. Tag wearers spoke only to tag wearers; those with naked necks spoke only to those with naked necks. The music the cabdriver had listened to with devotion trilled and buzzed. From headphones buried in student ears the noise leaked out. It poured, as well, from the open door of a men’s restroom, along with an ammoniac stink. The janitor plunging his mop into the mottled zinc bucket had a small radio affixed to his cart.

  In a niche near the door of the lecture room we were scheduled to present in, a marble man in a marble suit with a marble mustache stood watch. Next to him, a fat, bald woman was waiting with two friends, both dark haired. One tall, her face oblong, and one short, her face also oblong. They weren’t wearing tags. All three muttered to each other in quiet, rapid bursts, as if exchanging strings of obscenities. They paid no attention to me. The fat woman was saying that she did not understand why the department got all the funds for renovation, while in indigenous studies they had to starve. Her shorter interlocutor said: You knew it was going to go this way, you had to — that’s why things have come to a head. Her taller interlocutor said that she didn’t even consider the department real scholars. You lack a feeling for class consciousness, said the fat woman. I peered through the doorway into the lecture hall. I saw slumberous students, dust motes wheeling in a shaft of southern sunlight, and the low dais from which I would be delivering my talk. The table on the dais, around which the tiered seating rose up like ship walls, held two places, two notebooks, two pens, two blue folders. But no Ana.

  I contemplated rushing to her office and rushing back. But I knew that if I left the exiguous audience would leave as well. There were no more than a dozen attendees. The fat, bald woman. The two women who had come in with her (they sat near the front, already taking notes; their pens made coleopteran scratching sounds). A boy with a blank, white face and well-greased hair. He belonged to the faction that wore dog ID tags. He was handsome; he looked, in fact, like a beardless Che Guevara. The students sat, silent or (in the case of the fat woman and her friends) whispering to each other. They avoided looking at me and I avoided looking at them. Instead, they looked through the tall windows that let out onto the quadrangle, and I looked as well. A woman passed by, wearing the sky-blue livery of the officers I’d seen at the airport. Then two men. Then another man, alone. The students seemed uneasy. One of them, I did not see who, whispered: I don’t understand, I don’t understand. His voice threatened to swell into a complaint, a howl, so I simply started talking, introducing myself and making excuses for Ana, and then launching into my presentation.

  The two dark-haired women wrote down almost every word I said, at a speed I found incredible and mildly nauseating. I laid out my theories about the construction of the Butyrka. My hands sawed the air, to show the mighty sawing and chopping committed in the name of its architect, the Catherinite Matvey Kazakov. (In his absurd periwig.) Basement beneath basement, stone piled on stone. And all in full view of the city center. The Butyrka, of course, survived into the Soviet era, I said, and came into its own during the Great Terror, another thunderous and in-plain-sight occurrence. Therein — and this was the argument I had been refining — lay the true innovation of the Butyrka. Its endless adaptability, its capacious swallowing technique, identical for prisoners under the tsars and those taken by the commissars. As I made this remark, which had seemed especially moronic to me during my attempts to revise the paper, the two copyists at the front stood up and announced that they had a joint question: how could I, in good conscience, come and lecture them about the theory of prison architecture even as a new prison was being built before our very eyes? They spoke together, pens in hand, one voice alto and one soprano. Before I had even lifted my lethargic tongue from the floor of my mouth, the rest of the students in the audience began to jeer and whistle behind the copyists, or simply groan in anticipation. One called out: Don’t answer, Professor, they always do this. It was the boy who looked like Che.

  The women said nothing further, their mouths hard and eyes slightly glassy. In other words the expression induced by “radical discourse.” I know student concerns. I won’t say I understand them because there is, of course, nothing to understand. Student concerns and miseries amount to nothing, but if you tell a student this he will regard it as a victory, as proof you cannot comprehend his moral greatness. The correct way to defeat students is to hear them out while wearing a grave and serious expression, to let them tire themselves, exhaust themselves and their arsenal, and then simply ignore them. You don’t even need to use the tools of authority. Beatings or tear gas, imprisonment, torture, and execution: all these only add strength to student moronism. I lowered my voice and asked them what their concern was, and the taller woman said that I must have noticed the meat bowls, no? And what did I think those were for? The first bricks in a new, metaphorical prison. The other students were really jeering now, shouting, swearing. The boy who had initially told me not to answer was calling them cunts, useless cunts.

  The women started shouting a slogan: First ethics, then meat, first ethics, then meat. The other students had unplugged their headphones and the Dog Symphony — playing through six or seven tin-voiced speakers — competed with and almost obscured the four words. The boy who had called the slogan-shouters useless cunts stood up and threaded his way down the tiered floor between the desks, jerking his pelvis with Apollonian precision. The other students leaned or twisted their torsos to make room for his passage; his approach to the shouting copyists brought forth various hoarse cries of approval. The two shouters saw him approaching, but they just raised their voices and went on shouting as the whistles and yells from the spectating students grew denser, more harmonized, afloat, aloft. The boy who looked like Che had almost reached the shouters; both were eyeing him now with evident fear on their pale, lightly equine faces (I wondered if they were sisters) even as they raised their voices more and more and started to wave their soft-looking fists in the air (a diamond engagement ring caught the sunlight on one). Under ordinary circumstances I would simply have shouted for someone to go get security, but now, as these porteños displayed their youth, their student youth, I stepped off the dais, I rushed to interpose myself between the shouters
and the boy. He saw me and told me to stay the fuck out of his way, and I saw that though he was much shorter than I am he was also much broader and better built. I ignored him and continued my advance. Stay back, Professor, this doesn’t concern you, he said. The women went on shouting even after I had inserted myself between them and the boy. Get out of my way, he whined, get out of my way. I told him I would call campus security if he didn’t leave, at once. Every student in attendance burst into harsh laughter as I said this. Even the shouters, who interrupted their chanting to laugh.

  The boy shoved me. I did not abandon my position. I’m warning you, Professor, he said, I’m warning you one last time. I shrugged and crossed my arms, like a fool. He struck me with such speed that I never saw the blow coming. White light poured into my right eye. I stumbled over a bolted-down desk and smashed my head into the slick, dark wooden floor. First ethics, then meat, first ethics, then meat: the shouters kept up their chant through the boy’s assault on me. Shut the fuck up, he said. The taller shouter answered: No way, and especially not for you, you dickhead. Her shorter friend went on shouting. Her voice was starting to fray. I’m not going to warn you again, said the boy, you saw what I just did to the professor, so you know I’m serious. This time it was the shorter woman who stopped shouting. To spit in his face. I had regained my feet now but the boy’s blow had stunned me. An edema was already inflating where his fist had landed. The blow the floor struck, however, made my legs tremble, and so I could not reach the boy and the shouters in time, or so it seems to me from the standpoint of “historical memory.” The boy stared at the shouters and they stared back, went on shouting, louder and louder, their larynges vibrating. Violent applause filled the air (from tag wearers only) as the boy struck the shorter woman in the mouth.