A Dog's Life

by Peter Mayle

  It was time to reconsider my tactics. If the episode with the butcher was anything to go by, there was a certain prejudice in the village shops toward dogs. Remarkable, when you think of the instant havoc that children can cause, and I’ve never known them to be threatened with offensive weapons, but there you are. One rule for some, and one rule for others. And then it struck me as I watched a man and a mongrel leaving the bakery without being assaulted. Maybe it wasn’t all dogs that brought out the warlike spirit; maybe it was just unaccompanied dogs. I went up the street to the épicerie and waited outside to put Plan B into action.

  Like many great ideas, it was simple. I would attach myself temporarily to a customer entering the premises. Once inside, we would part company to attend to our respective errands, and I would leave, fully laden, while my personal shopper distracted the proprietor. It seemed to be foolproof.

  There were some encouraging smells coming from inside the épicerie—not quite the range and red-blooded richness of the butcher’s shop, but more than enough to set the imagination humming—and it was with a sharp sense of anticipation that I scanned the street for a likely accomplice.

  I had never seen so many people before, and I think my lifelong interest in human behavior started on that late afternoon so long ago. All shapes, all ages, all sizes, jostling along together without any of the curiosity about one another that a group of dogs would display. No sniffing, no circling, no ceremonial leg lifting—very little of what I’d call social contact, apart from the occasional nod of the head or the clutching of hands. I’m used to it now, of course, but I remember thinking how strange it was, this lack of interest. Something to do with urban overcrowding, I shouldn’t wonder. It must dull the senses.

  I was so taken up with watching the passing parade that I jumped when I felt a woman’s hand pat me on the head. Looking up, I saw an empty shopping basket and a smiling face, and then she’d gone, through the doorway and into the fragrant gloom of the épicerie. Seize the moment, I said to myself, and like a shadow I was there behind her, giving my best impersonation of an accompanied dog on official business.

  It was a proper épicerie, of the traditional kind. So many of them these days stock nothing more than cans and boxes and mysterious lumps wrapped in plastic, but here was real food, most of it naked—slabs of cheese, mountain sausage, cured hams, and a long row of cooked dishes. The French don’t stint themselves, as you know, and there was everything from crépinettes of stuffed chicken to terrines that made my eyes water.

  My companion stopped in front of the vegetables, which have never held any interest for me, and I slipped up the narrow aisle, disregarding the brief temptation of the biscuit section as I approached the back of the shop. This was where the treasures were displayed, and I was very taken by the homemade lasagne. But there was not a moment to be lost in contemplation. After my previous experience chez the butcher, I wasn’t about to dawdle, and I was at full stretch on the hind legs, front paws on the counter and jaws about to close on a kilo of the best smoked ham, when all hell broke loose down below.

  If you were feeling generous, you might have described the source of the problem as another dog—a spindly little object, knee-high to a rat, with an absurd, tightly curled tail that looked like a worm in torment and a piercing falsetto yap fit to wake the dead. For a moment, I thought he’d caught his personals in the ham slicer, but it was merely his miserable travesty of a bark. Hungry as I was, it was impossible to deal with the ham when he started to take flying bites out of my ankle, and it was while I was trying to shake him off that a mountain on legs, wearing a sour expression and an apron, appeared from the back to join in. I vaguely remember a rolling pin, too. All in all, it seemed unwise to linger.

  So much for the welcome I received from the village shopkeepers, and all I can say is that you shouldn’t trust those postcards of jolly natives simpering into the camera. The two I met that day would have given Genghis Khan nightmares. (They say he used to eat dogs, you know, when he ran short. I suppose we’ve made some progress since then.)

  I returned to my previous refuge under the café table and reflected. One rejection and two attempts on my life in return for a small loaf of bread and a handful of sugar lumps. The afternoon had not been an outstanding triumph, and now the shadows were lengthening, evening was drawing nigh, and I was still no closer to bed and board than I had been when the day started. Tomorrow would bring new joys and opportunities, I felt sure, but in the meantime there was the problem of where to spend the night. To stay under the table or to seek shelter in the great unknown, that was the question.

  It was answered by the café owner, armed with the ever-present broom that all villagers seemed to keep by their sides, presumably in case of invasion. He had come out to sweep the droppings of the day from under the tables and out into the street—for the general enjoyment of the public, I imagine. As he worked his way toward me, our eyes met. The broom was raised to the attack position. I would like to have contributed a small mark of appreciation for the warmth of his greeting, but there was no time for even a swift raising of the leg. Yet again, I left in haste, to seek peace in the countryside.

  I was well clear of the village, musing on my latest taste of the milk of human kindness, when my nose was caught by a definite ripeness in the air. It was coming from the end of a narrow track, where a large bin had been overturned, its contents scattered on the grass. I came closer, nostrils twitching, and found that the problem of dinner had been solved. I studied the menu.

  It never ceases to amaze me what people throw away. Bones, crusts, giblets, perfectly serviceable sardines—all these and more were set like jewels among the empty cans and paper and plastic. Pushing aside a discarded shoe, I was about to dust off the first course—a morsel of chicken skin en gelée, if memory serves—when I heard a growl. In fact, it was more like a snarl—unwelcoming rather than cheerful, anyway. I looked up to see the front half of a dog poking out of the bin, lips drawn back, teeth bared, hackles on red alert, the very picture of Fido defending hearth and home.

  The problem of dinner had been solved.

  I like to think that I’m not without courage, particularly when the opposition is quite clearly old, infirm, and considerably smaller than me, all of which he was. And so I tried to ignore him while I finished off the chicken and moved on to some rather good cheese rind. But, as I’m sure you’ve found, it’s not easy to enjoy your food when there’s a constant and very tiresome whining going on a short distance from your ear. I’ve heard the same said about dinner parties that include investment bankers. You will know better than I, but apparently they have a compulsion to drone on. So it was with our friend in the bin.

  However, apart from that small irritation, I did quite well for myself, thus sufficiently restored to consider the question of sleeping arrangements in a more hopeful light.

  After a few minutes of exploration, a distinct pattern emerged. Leading off the village road, every few hundred yards on either side, were small tracks, each with a house at the end. And every track seemed to have its own bin, similar to the one my peevish dining companion had occupied. Applying the laws of logic, I deduced that all of these bins would contain an edible selection of one kind or another—nothing to make the ears stand up, perhaps, but enough to keep body and soul together, unguarded and easily available. Sniffing confirmed my theory, and I remember feeling quite gratified that brain and nose were working as one for the greater good of the stomach.

  With tomorrow’s breakfast taken care of, I turned my attentions to the night’s lodging, and here I began to run into some unexpected obstacles. I must have visited half a dozen houses, with a view to curling up for a few peaceful hours in an outbuilding, but wherever I went, I was met by a volley of threats, cries of alarm, and sounds of general disapproval—not, in this case, from people, but from my own kind. Every establishment had at least two resident dogs, and from the fuss they were making, you’d have thought I was trying to steal the family silv
er.

  Fortunately, most of them were attached, by chain or rope, to some immovable object. This hampered their murderous instincts, and I was able to put them in their place by marking their territory, leg raised just out of range of their slavering jaws. That is considered an insult, you know, on a par with making disparaging remarks about somebody’s poor taste in curtains, and I must say it drove them to a frenzy. One of them—a big, mangy piece of work with outsize teeth—threw himself against his chain so violently in his enthusiasm to get at me that he must have ruptured his vocal cords. His bark suddenly became a squeak, and he looked distinctly embarrassed. Served him right.

  But these fleeting amusements weren’t getting me any closer to a good night’s rest. It had been a long, eventful, and instructive day, and I was tired enough not to be too particular about where I lay my head. As long as it was well away from brooms and jaws, it would do. I tried one last house, set off another hysterical symphony of howls and barking, and dug in for the night among the bushes at the edge of the forest.

  The romantic notion of the forest, as I expect you know, is one of tranquil glades and leafy nooks, Mother Nature’s haven of calm, a place for quiet repose. You should try living there, as I did over the next few weeks. My abiding memory of the forest is the noise. The screech of birds and their hideous dawn chorus first thing in the morning, hunters and their guns during the day, the endless rustling and slithering of nocturnal creatures, owls holding forth all through the night—the whole arrangement is my idea of bedlam. One tosses and turns, longing for unbroken slumber.

  It reached the stage where I started to make regular visits to the village to get some relief from the din. As long as I maintained a prudent distance from the butcher and my other sparring partner in the épicerie, I had the run of the place and was left to loiter in peace. In fact, one or two of the less barbaric villagers began to recognize me and proffer the hand of friendship. But, as before, the hand was withdrawn as soon as I tried to convert it into something more permanent.

  And then, when the vagabond’s life was becoming less enjoyable by the day (and even less enjoyable by night), fate intervened. It was a milestone, or a turning point, or maybe even both. Anyway, I’ll tell you what happened and you can judge for yourself.

  I was on my way to the village after a night in the forest when the entire owl population seemed to have chosen my little corner as the place to have an argument. Or it might have been the mating season, although I’m not too sound on owls and their habits, so I couldn’t say for sure. Whatever the reason, it was a shrill and sleepless night, and I was feeling very much the worse for wear as I walked along the road. Listless and wan, you might say, with hardly any of my customary bounce and esprit.

  I heard a car behind me and hopped into the ditch to let it pass. But it stopped.

  Out steps the lady driver, and I could tell at once she was a kindred spirit by one very simple act. Instead of peering at me from a great height, she crouched down so that our faces were more or less on the same level. It may seem like a small thing to you, but to a dog it indicates a great deal—sympathy, a desire to communicate on an equal basis, and, let’s not forget, plain good manners. Look at it this way: If you were constantly being addressed by someone squinting down his nose at you from four feet above your head, you wouldn’t care for it. A lack of common courtesy, you’d think, and you’d be quite right. So you can understand why I responded to madame’s overtures with vigorous motions of the tail and body, small cries of rapture, and a friendly paw on her knee.

  We stayed like this for several minutes, communing by the side of the ditch, and then she seemed to reach a decision. She opened the door of the car. My ears drooped and my spirits fell, because previous experience had led me to recognize this as the prelude to a hasty farewell, with the car going off into the sunset and yours truly left to carry on as before, the solitary wanderer.

  My ears drooped and my spirits fell.

  But not this time. I was invited to get in, which I did, making myself as unobtrusive as possible on the floor. Imagine my surprise, not to mention the sudden rush of hope rekindled, when I was encouraged to sit on the seat next to my new best friend.

  We all have our ways of showing enthusiasm and excitement. Humans caper about and slap one another on the back when they feel it’s called for; I prefer to chew something—not in an aggressive manner, you understand, but just to demonstrate approval of the current situation. And so I got to work on a convenient seat belt as we drove away from the village, back along the road, and turned up a track between two fields of vines.

  It led to a house not unlike some of the others that I had visited during the past weeks, even down to the familiar sound of other dogs baying for my blood. There were two of them, and they weren’t tied up, either, as I saw from the safety of the passenger seat. It took some coaxing from madame to get me out of the car and introduce me to the welcoming committee, but to my relief they were both bitches—a shaggy old biddy with a distant resemblance to a hunting dog and a black Labrador with a limp. They seemed harmless enough, and once the formalities were completed, they pottered off to collapse in the garden.

  By this time, I was allowing myself to feel that there might be more on the program of events than just a visit. Madame had a thoughtful look in her eye as she picked fragments of masticated seat belt from my whiskers and took me indoors, murmuring something about the other member of the household. Let it not be a cat, I remember thinking to myself, or a homicidal case wearing boots and carrying a gun. Funny how these thoughts flash through the mind during decisive moments in one’s life.

  It turned out to be the other half of the management—unarmed and barefoot, which was a good start, and looking slightly bemused. We exchanged pleasantries, but I could sense that he didn’t entirely share madame’s feelings, because they went off into a corner for a tête-à-tête, leaving me to take a look at my surroundings.

  I’m no great judge of property from any point of view but my own, but it appeared to be quite adequate for my requirements—garden front and back, the untamed wilderness a comfortable distance behind the house, rugs on the floor, and the scent of the two bitches wherever one went. It was obvious that they didn’t sleep rough. All in all, it would do me very well. And as there were two dogs in residence already, what difference would a third make?

  I went across to where the management conference was taking place and cocked an ear. There appeared to be two issues under discussion, with madame firmly on my side and the other half caught somewhere between pro and con. Were three dogs too many? And if not, how and where would I fit in? There was a halfhearted argument put forward that my previous owner should be found, but madame knocked that one smartly on the head, letting fly in anguished style about ill-treatment, undernourishment, and lack of bedtime privileges. Then she moved on to more personal comments about my acne, protruding bones, and overall state of disrepair, ending with a plea on my behalf for intensive care and attention. It was music to my ears, and I moved over to lean against her leg as a gesture of solidarity.

  She won in the end, bless her—wives usually do, I’ve noticed—and it was agreed that I would stay for a trial period. Well, I knew what that meant. If I kept my nose clean, deferred politely to the two bitches, and watched my step with the other half, I was in.

  I remember as though it were yesterday rolling on the grass after my first decent meal for weeks, the management watching from the doorway, the sun on my belly and all well with the world. What a moment.

  Night Maneuvers, and a Confrontation with Hygiene

  The rest of that day confirmed my first impressions, and it looked very much as though I had fallen on my feet. In the afternoon, we took a stroll along the path behind the house, and I began to change my views about the forest. It had certain merits if used for purely recreational purposes—an excellent selection of trees, small and terrified creatures scuttling off as one pounced on them, bosky and intriguing sounds in the undergrowt
h. I even came across the mature corpse of a pigeon, which I rolled in for several minutes, paying special attention to those hard-to-reach areas at the back of the neck and behind the ears. All in all, an amusing place to visit, the forest. I wouldn’t want to live there, of course. And now I didn’t have to.

  We returned to the house, and there was more food. I wasn’t used to such abundance, and after eating, it was all I could do to stagger under the table for a siesta, using the well-upholstered Labrador as a pillow. By the time I woke up, darkness had fallen. Still drowsy, I gradually became aware of whispered discussions between the management—complimenting themselves, I hoped, on the good fortune that had led me to their door.

  In fact, the cocked ear then picked up a different and rather ominous message. My sleeping arrangements were under review, and there seemed to be a quite unnecessary concern about allowing me to remain in the house. I think the lingering scent of well-rotted pigeon around my neck and shoulders may have come into it, and there was some mention from the other half about leaving me free to return to my previous address if I wanted to. I thought I’d made it clear that I was quite content and not to be disturbed under the table, but people can be remarkably insensitive at times, and I was hustled into the night and taken to an outbuilding by the side of the house.

  I admit that it was an improvement over what I’d been used to—thick blanket, bowl of water, bedtime biscuit, pats of affection, and expressions of goodwill—but it wasn’t indoors. And indoors was where I wanted to be, head resting on a stout Labrador, sleeping the sleep of one of the family.

  But tonight, for some reason, wasn’t the night, and as the lights went out, I was left staring at the stars through the open door of my modest chamber. I mused, as one does at moments like this, on the bewildering turns life can take—up one minute, down the next, so near and yet so far, the rich tapestry of personal experience, and so forth. What would Proust have done in similar circumstances? I wondered. Bawl for mother, I suppose, but then he wouldn’t have been in an outbuilding in the first place. He was always indoors, as I remember.