Timbuktu

by Paul Auster

  By the time Dick’s Volvo pulled into the driveway, Polly had already fed the children their dinner—hamburgers, baked potatoes, and frozen peas, some of which found its way into Mr. Bones’s mouth—and the four of them were out in the yard again, watering the garden as the late afternoon turned into early evening and the sky filled with the first mottled touches of darkness. Mr. Bones had overheard Polly tell Alice that the flight from New Orleans was due in at Dulles at four forty-five, and if the plane wasn’t delayed and the traffic wasn’t too heavy, her father should be home by seven o’clock. Give or take a few minutes, that’s just when Dick Jones arrived. He had been gone for three days, and when the children heard the sound of his approaching car, they both ran screaming from the yard and vanished around the side of the house. Polly made no move to run after them. She calmly went on watering her plants and flowers, and Mr. Bones stuck by her, unwilling to let her out of his sight. He knew that all hope was gone now, but if anybody could save him from the thing that was about to happen, she was the one.

  A few moments later, the man of the house walked into the yard with Tiger in one arm and Alice tugging on the other, and because he was wearing his pilot’s uniform (dark blue pants; light blue shirt garnished with epaulets and insignias), Mr. Bones mistook him for a cop. It was an automatic association, and with a lifetime of dread built into that response, he couldn’t help recoiling as Dick approached, even though he could see with his own eyes that the man was laughing and seemed genuinely happy to be with his children again. Before Mr. Bones could sort through this jumble of doubts and conflicting impressions, he was swept up into the drama of the moment, and from then on everything seemed to happen at once. Alice had started talking to her father about the dog the instant he stepped out of the car, and she was still at it when he entered the yard and greeted his wife (a perfunctory kiss on the cheek), and the more she badgered him and raved on about the wonderful creature they had found, the more excited her little brother became. Yelling “Sparky” at the top of his lungs, Tiger slithered out of his father’s grasp, ran over to Mr. Bones, and threw his arms around his neck. Not to be outdone by her pipsqueak brother, Alice came over and got into the act as well, making a great, histrionic show of affection for the dog as she attacked him with repeated hugs and melodramatic kisses, and with the two kids suddenly mauling him like that and covering his ears with their hands and chests and faces, he missed three quarters of what the adults were saying. About the only thing he heard with any clarity was Dick’s initial statement. “So this is the famous dog, huh? Looks like one sorry mutt to me.”

  After that, it was anyone’s guess as to what really happened. He saw Polly twist the nozzle of the hose, which cut off the flow of water, and then she said something to Dick. Most of it was inaudible, but from the few words and phrases that Mr. Bones managed to catch, he understood that she was pleading his case: “wandered into the yard this afternoon,” “intelligent,” “the kids think…” and then, after Dick said something back to her, “I don’t have the foggiest idea. Maybe he ran away from the circus.” It sounded fairly encouraging, but just as he succeeded in getting his left ear free of Tiger’s grip to take in a little more, Polly tossed the hose onto the ground and wandered off with Dick in the direction of the house. They stopped a few feet in front of the back door and went on talking there. Mr. Bones was certain that momentous things were being decided now, but even though their lips were moving, he could no longer hear a word they said.

  He could see that Dick was watching him, however, gesturing toward him every now and then with a vague sweep of the hand as he continued his discussion with Polly, and Mr. Bones, who was growing a little bored with the raucous love-in that Tiger and Alice had started, wondered if it might not be such a bad idea to take the initiative and do something to help himself. Instead of standing around while his future hung in the balance, why not try to impress Dick with some canine derring-do, some spiffy dog thing that would turn the tide in his favor? It was true that Mr. Bones was exhausted, and it was true that his stomach still hurt and his legs felt diabolically weak, but he didn’t let those things stop him from bounding off and racing to the other end of the yard. Shrieking with surprise, Tiger and Alice went running after him, and just as they were about to catch him, he bounded away from them again, abruptly charging back in the direction he had come from. Again they went after him, and again he waited until they almost had him in their hands before jumping away. He hadn’t sprinted like that in aeons, but even though he knew that he was pushing himself too hard and would eventually have to pay for his exertions, he kept on going, proud to be torturing himself on behalf of such a noble cause. After three or four dashes across the lawn, he stopped in the middle of the yard and played duck-and-feint with them—the dog version of tag—and even though he could barely breathe anymore, he refused to quit before the children gave up and flopped to the ground in front of him.

  Meanwhile, the sun was beginning to go down. The sky was streaked with bands of pinkish clouds, and the air had turned cooler. Now that the romp-a-thon had ended, it appeared that Dick and Polly were ready to announce their verdict. As Mr. Bones lay panting on the grass with the two children, he saw the grown-ups turn from the house and begin walking back to the yard, and while it was never clear to him whether his manic burst of high spirits had any effect on the outcome, he took heart from the satisfied little smile that was creasing the edges of Polly’s mouth. “Daddy says that Sparky can stay,” she said, and as Alice jumped up from the ground and hugged her father and Polly bent down and gathered the half-sleeping Tiger into her arms, a new chapter in Mr. Bones’s life began.

  Before they could break out the champagne, however,

  Dick butted in with a few additional points—the fine print, so to speak. It’s not that he didn’t want everyone to be happy, he said, but for the time being it had to be understood that they were only keeping the dog on a “trial basis,” and unless certain conditions were met—and here he gave Alice a long, hard look—the deal was off. First: under no circumstances was the dog to be allowed in the house. Second: he would have to be taken to the vet for a full checkup. If he wasn’t found to be in reasonably good health, he would have to go. Third: at the earliest possible convenience, an appointment would have to be made with a professional groomer. The dog needed a haircut, a shampoo, and a manicure, as well as a thorough going-over for ticks, lice, and fleas. Fourth: he would have to be fixed. And fifth: Alice would be responsible for feeding him and changing his water bowl—with no increase in her allowance for services rendered.

  Mr. Bones had no idea what the word fixed meant, but he understood everything else, and all in all it didn’t sound too bad, except maybe for the first point about not being allowed in the house, since he failed to grasp how a dog could become part of a family’s household if he didn’t have the right to enter that family’s house. Alice must have been wondering the same thing, for as soon as her father came to the last item on his list, she chimed in with a question. “What happens when winter comes?” she asked. “We’re not going to leave him out here in the cold, are we, Daddy?”

  “Of course not,” Dick said. “We’ll put him in the garage, and if it’s still too cold in there, we’ll let him stay in the cellar. I just don’t want him getting his hair all over the furniture, that’s all. But we’ll make it real nice for him out here, don’t worry. We’ll give him a first-class doghouse, and I’ll set up a run for him by stringing a wire between those two trees over there. He’ll have plenty of space to frisk about in, and once he gets used to it, he’ll be happy as a clam. Don’t feel sorry for him, Alice. He’s not a person, he’s a dog, and dogs don’t ask questions. They make do with what they get.” With that decisive remark, Dick put his hand on Mr. Bones’s head and gave it a firm, manly squeeze, as if to prove he wasn’t such an ornery customer after all. “Ain’t that right, sport?” he said. “You’re not going to complain, are you? You know what you’ve lucked into here, and the last thi
ng you want is to rock the boat.”

  He was a can-do guy, this Dick, and even though the next day was Sunday—which meant that both the groomer and the vet were closed—he got up early, drove off to the lumberyard in Polly’s van, and then spent the entire morning and afternoon putting together a pre-fab doghouse (deluxe model, assembly instructions included) and rigging up a run in the backyard. He clearly belonged to that class of men who felt happier lugging around ladders and hammering nails into boards than making small talk with his wife and children. Dick was a man of action, a soldier in the war against idleness, and as Mr. Bones watched him working away in his khaki shorts and saw the sweat glistening on his forehead, he couldn’t help but read this activity as a good sign. It meant that all that “trial basis” talk from yesterday had been no more than a bluff. Dick had shelled out over two hundred dollars for this new equipment and hardware. He had toiled in the heat for the better part of a day, and he wasn’t about to let his work or money go to waste. His toes were in the water now, and as far as Mr. Bones could tell, it was either sink or swim from this point on.

  The next morning, they all flew off in different directions. A bus stopped in front of the house at quarter to eight and took Alice to school. Forty minutes after that, Dick left for the airport in his pilot’s uniform, and then, shortly before nine, Polly strapped Tiger into his child-restraint seat in the van and drove him to his morning play group. Mr. Bones could scarcely believe what was happening. Was this what life was going to be like around here?, he wondered. Were they simply going to abandon him in the morning and expect him to fend for himself all day? It felt like an obscene joke. He was a dog built for companionship, for the give-and-take of life with others, and he needed to be touched and spoken to, to be part of a world that included more than just himself. Had he walked to the ends of the earth and found this blessed haven only to be spat on by the people who had taken him in? They had turned him into a prisoner. They had chained him to this infernal bouncing wire, this metallic torture device with its incessant squeaks and echoing hums, and every time he moved, the noises moved with him—as if to remind him that he was no longer free, that he had sold his birthright for a mess of porridge and an ugly, ready-made house.

  Just when it looked as if he might go ahead and do some rash, vindictive thing—like digging up the flowers in the garden, for instance, or gnawing off the bark of the young cherry tree—Polly came back, unexpectedly pulling into the driveway with her van, and the world changed color again. Not only did she come out to the yard and release him from his bondage, and not only did she let him follow her into the house and go upstairs to her bedroom, but as she changed her clothes and brushed her hair and put on her makeup, she informed him that there were going to be two sets of rules for him to remember: Dick’s rules and her rules. When Dick was around, Mr. Bones would be confined to the outdoors, but when Dick was gone, she was in charge, and that meant that dogs were allowed in the house. “It’s not that he doesn’t mean well,” Polly said, “but that man can be a squarehead sometimes, and once he’s got his brain fixed on something, you’re just wasting your breath if you try to talk him out of it. That’s life with the Joneses, Sparky, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. All I ask is that you keep this little arrangement under your hat. It’s our secret, and not even the kids can know what we’re up to. You hear me, old dog? This is strictly between you and me.”

  But that wasn’t all. As if this declaration of solidarity and affection hadn’t been enough, later that same morning Mr. Bones got to ride in a car for the first time in nearly two years. Not scrunched up on the floor in back, where he had usually been put in the past, but right up front in the copilot’s seat, riding shotgun with the window open and the sweet Virginia air rushing in on his face. It was a sublime vindication to be tooling down the road like that, with the magnificent Polly at the wheel of the Plymouth Voyager and the motion of the van rumbling inside his muscles and his nose twitching crazily at each passing smell. When it finally hit him that this van was going to be a part of his new routine, he was awed by the prospect that loomed before him. Life with Willy had been good, but maybe this was even better. For the sad truth was that poets didn’t drive, and even when they traveled on foot, they didn’t always know where they were going.

  The visit to the groomer’s was something of an ordeal, but he bore up to the multiple assaults of soaps and shears as best he could, not wanting to complain after all the kindness that had been bestowed on him. When they finished with him an hour and a half later, he emerged as an altogether different dog. Gone were the shaggy clumps of fur dangling from his hocks, the messy protrusions jutting from his withers, the hair hanging in his eyes. He was no longer a bum, no longer an embarrassment. He had been dandified, turned into a bourgeois dog-about-town, and if the novelty of the transformation made him want to gloat and preen a little bit, who could blame him for exulting in his good fortune? “Wow,” Polly said when they finally took him out to her. “They sure gave you the once-over, didn’t they? Next thing you know, Spark Plug, you’ll be winning prizes at the dog shows.”

  Twenty-four hours later, they went to see the vet. Mr. Bones was glad for the chance to ride in the car again, but he’d crossed paths with those men in the white coats before, and he knew enough about their needles and thermometers and rubber gloves to dread what was coming. Mrs. Gurevitch had always been the one to schedule his appointments in the past, but after she died, Mr. Bones had been spared the agony of further dealings with the medical profession. Willy had been either too broke or too forgetful to bother anymore, and since the dog was still alive after four years of not going to the doctor, he failed to see what good a checkup was going to do him now. If you were sick enough to die, a doctor wasn’t going to save you. And if you weren’t sick, why let them torture you with their pricking and poking only to be told that your health was okay?

  It would have been a horror if Polly hadn’t stayed with him during the examination, holding him in her arms and soothing him with her soft, lovely voice. Even with her help, he trembled and shook throughout the entire visit, and three times he jumped off the table and ran for the door. The doctor’s name was Burnside, Walter A. Burnside, and it made no difference that the quack seemed to like him. Mr. Bones had seen him looking at Polly, and he had smelled the arousal on the young doctor’s skin. She was the one he was after, and liking her dog was only a ruse, a way to get on her good side and impress her with his understanding and skill. It didn’t matter that he called Mr. Bones a wise dog and patted him on the head and laughed at his attempts to escape. He did it so he could get closer to Polly, maybe even brush up against her body, and Polly, who was so absorbed in taking care of the dog, didn’t even notice what the scoundrel was up to.

  “Not bad,” the doctor said at last. “Considering what he’s been through.”

  “He’s a tough old trouper,” Polly said, giving Mr. Bones a kiss between the eyes. “But his stomach is shot. I hate to think about some of the things that must have gone in there.”

  “He’ll be all right once you get him on a regular diet. And don’t forget to give him the worm pills. In a week or two, you’ll probably start to see a big improvement.”

  Polly thanked the doctor, and when she and Burnside shook hands on her way out, Mr. Bones couldn’t help noticing that Señor Smooth held on longer than he should have. When he answered Polly’s polite good-bye by saying “The pleasure’s been all mine,” the dog had a sudden urge to jump up and bite him on the leg. Polly turned to leave. Just as she was opening the door, the doctor added: “Talk to June at the front desk. She’ll schedule you in for the other matter.”

  “It wasn’t my idea,” Polly said. “But that’s the way my husband wants it.”

  “He’s right,” Burnside said. “It simplifies things, and in the long run it’ll make Sparky a whole lot happier.”

  Dick returned home on Thursday night, which meant that Friday morning was much duller than the previous
mornings had been. No more stealthy, luxurious hours spent in the house. No more sitting in the bathroom and watching Polly take her bath. No more scrambled eggs. No more sugary milk from the children’s cereal bowls. Ordinarily, losses of that magnitude would have pained him, but on that particular Friday morning they produced no more than a stab of wistful regret. Mr. Bones had hope now, and he knew that once Dick left on Sunday afternoon, the door would open for him again. There was solace in this thought, and even though it was drizzling that day and the air had turned cool with the first traces of autumn, he settled into his doghouse with the rubber bone that Polly had bought for him at the groomer’s and nibbled away at it as the family ate breakfast inside. He heard the bus come and go, he heard the van drive off, and then, in the interval before Polly returned, Dick sauntered out into the yard to say hello. Not even that could ruffle his contentment. The pilot seemed to be in a chipper mood that morning, and when he complimented Mr. Bones on his fine haircut and asked him how he was getting along, the dog’s generosity won out over his suspicions, and he responded with a discreet, gentlemanly lick of the hand. It wasn’t that he was against Dick, he decided. It was just that he pitied him for not knowing how to enjoy life. The world was filled with such wonders, and it was a sad state of affairs when a man spent his time worrying about the wrong things.