Timbuktu

by Paul Auster

  Eventually, Beth coaxed him to stand up and walk over to the house with her. He threw up once along the way, but the cold air felt good against his hot body, and once the gunk had been expelled from his system, his pains seemed to lighten considerably. Encouraged, he followed her into the house, then gratefully accepted her offer to lie down on the living room rug. Beth went off to look for her father, and Mr. Bones, already curled up in front of the fireplace, turned his attention to the sounds coming from the grandfather clock in the hall. He heard ten ticks, twenty ticks, and then he closed his eyes. Just before he went under, there was a small disturbance of approaching footsteps, and then a man’s voice said, “Leave him be for now. We’ll see how he is when he wakes up.”

  He slept through the morning and deep into the afternoon, and when he woke up he sensed that the worst of it was behind him. It wasn’t that he was in top form, but at least he was half alive now, and with his temperature down by a couple of degrees, he could move his muscles without feeling that his body was made of bricks. He was well enough to accept a little water, in any case, and when Beth called her father in to judge the dog’s condition for himself, Mr. Bones’s thirst got the better of him, and he kept on drinking until the water was gone. That was a bad miscalculation. He was in no shape to handle such a prodigious amount, and the instant Pat One entered the room, Mr. Bones promptly barfed the contents of his stomach onto the living room rug.

  “I wish to hell people wouldn’t dump their sick dogs on us,” the man said. “All we need is for this one to croak. We’ll have one pretty lawsuit on our hands then, won’t we?”

  “Do you want me to call Dr. Burnside?” Beth asked.

  “Yeah. Tell him I’m on my way over.” He started to leave the room, but halfway to the door he stopped and turned to Beth again. “On second thought, maybe your mother should do it. Things are awfully busy around here today.”

  That was a lucky break for Mr. Bones. In the time it took for them to track down Pat Two and organize the trip, he was able to work out a plan. And without a plan, he never would have been able to do what he did. It made no difference to him whether he was sick or well, whether he was going to live or going to die. They had presented him with the last straw, and over his dead body would he ever allow them to take him to that moron of a vet. That was why he needed a plan. He would only have a few seconds to pull it off, and the whole thing had to be shining in his head before it happened—so he would know exactly what to do and exactly when to do it.

  Pat Two was an older version of Beth. A bit broader in the beam, perhaps, with a red parka instead of a blue one, but she gave off the same air of mannish competence and stolid good humor. Mr. Bones liked both of them better than Pat One, and he felt a little sorry about abusing their trust, especially after they had treated him with such kindness, but this was an all-or-nothing proposition, and there was no time to waste on sentimentality. The woman walked him out to the car on a leash, and just as he knew she would, she opened the passenger door to let him in first, not letting go of the leash until the last possible second. The moment the door slammed shut, Mr. Bones scrambled to the other side of the car and settled into the driver’s seat. That was the essence of the strategy, and the trick was to make sure that the leash didn’t get tangled up on the gearshift or the steering wheel or any other protrusion (which it didn’t) and to be securely in his position by the time she had walked around the front of the car and opened the door on the other side (which he was). That was how he had seen it in his mind, and that was how it happened in the world. Pat Two opened the door on the driver’s side, and Mr. Bones jumped out. He hit the ground running, and before she could grab hold of his tail or step on his leash, he was gone.

  He headed for the woods on the north side of the main house, trying to keep as far away from the road as possible.

  He heard Pat Two calling out for him to come back, and a moment later her voice was joined by those of Beth and Pat One. A little after that, he heard the engine of the car turn over and the sound of wheels skidding on dirt, but he was far into the woods by then, and he knew they would never find him. Darkness came early at that time of year, and in another hour they wouldn’t be able to see.

  He kept going north, trotting along through the frozen underbrush as the dim winter light faded around him. Birds scattered as he approached, soaring up into the high branches of the pines, and squirrels ran off in all directions when they heard him coming. Mr. Bones knew where he was going, and even if he didn’t know exactly how to get there, he was counting on his nose to point him in the right direction. The Joneses backyard was only ten miles away, and he figured he would arrive by tomorrow, the day after that at the latest. Never mind that the Joneses were gone and wouldn’t be returning for another two weeks. Never mind that his food was locked up in the garage and he had no way of getting at it. He was only a dog, and he wasn’t capable of thinking that far ahead. For now, the only thing that mattered was to get where he was going. Once he did, the rest would take care of itself.

  Or so he thought. But the sad truth was that Mr. Bones thought wrong. If he had been at full strength, there’s no doubt that he would have reached his destination, but his body wasn’t up to the demands he was making on it, and all this jumping and running soon took its toll. Ten miles was not a long journey, not when compared to the monumental treks he had undertaken as recently as three and a half months ago, but he was traveling on an empty tank now, and a dog could go only just so far on pure willpower. Remarkably, he managed to cover almost two miles in that weakened state. He went as far as his legs could carry him, and then, between one step and the next, without the slightest premonition of what was about to happen, he sank to the ground and fell asleep.

  For the second time in two nights, he dreamed about Willy, and once again the dream was unlike any of the others that had come before it. This time they were sitting on the beach in La Jolla, California, a place they had visited on their first trip together, before he was fully grown. That meant it was years and years ago, and he was back in the days when everything was new and unfamiliar to him, when everything that happened was happening for the first time. The dream started in the middle of the afternoon. The sun was shining brightly, a small breeze was stirring, and Mr. Bones was lying with his head on Willy’s lap, savoring the feel of his master’s fingertips as they moved back and forth across his skull. Had any of this really happened? He couldn’t remember anymore, but it felt vivid enough to be real, and that was all that concerned him now. Pretty girls in bathing suits, ice cream wrappers and tubes of suntan lotion, red Frisbees wobbling through the air. That’s what he saw when he opened his eyes in the dream, and he could smell the strangeness and the beauty of it, as if a part of him already knew that he was beyond the boundaries of hard fact. It seemed to begin in silence, silence in the sense of no words, with the sound of the waves washing in and out on the shore and the wind flapping the flags and beach umbrellas. Then a pop tune started playing on a radio somewhere, and a woman’s voice was singing Be my baby, be my baby, be my baby now. It was a lovely song, a lovely and stupid song, and Mr. Bones got so caught up in listening to it that he failed to realize that Willy was talking to him. By the time he turned his attention to his master, he had already missed several sentences, perhaps whole paragraphs of vital information, and it took a few moments before he managed to piece together the gist of what Willy was saying.

  “Make amends” was the first thing he heard, followed by “sorry, old boy” and “test.” When those words were succeeded by “ugly business” and “charade,” Mr. Bones was well on his way to catching on. The devil Willy had been a trick, a ruse to tempt him into hardening his heart against his master’s memory. Wrenching as the ordeal had been, it was the only way to test the permanence of the dog’s affections. The prankster had tried to break his spirit, and even though Mr. Bones had been scared half to death, he hadn’t hesitated to forgive Willy when he woke up in the morning, to shrug off his slanders and
false accusations and let bygones be bygones. In this way, without even knowing that he was being judged, he had passed the test. The reward was this dream, this visit to a world of languorous, unending summer and the chance to bask in the warmth of the sun on a cold winter’s night, and yet pleasurable and well-crafted as this dream was, it was no more than a prelude to something far more important.

  “What thing is that?” Mr. Bones heard himself say, and suddenly he was aware of his ability to speak again, to form words as clearly and smoothly as any two-leg yapping in his mother tongue.

  “That, for one thing,” Willy said.

  “What that?” Mr. Bones said, not understanding at all. “What thing?”

  “What you’re doing now.”

  “I’m not doing anything. I’m just lying here with you on the sand.”

  “You’re talking to me, aren’t you?”

  “It feels like talking. It sounds like talking. But that doesn’t mean I’m really doing it.”

  “And what if I told you that you were?”

  “I don’t know. I think I’d get up and do a little dance.”

  “Well, start dancing, Mr. Bones. When the time comes, you don’t have to worry.”

  “What time, Willy? What are you talking about?”

  “When the time comes for you to go to Timbuktu.”

  “You mean dogs are allowed?”

  “Not all dogs. Just some. Each case is handled separately.” “And I’m in?” “You’re in.”

  “Don’t kid me, master. If you’re joking now, I don’t think I could stand it.”

  “Believe me, pooch, you’re in. The decision’s been made.”

  “And when do I get to go?”

  “When the time comes. You have to be patient.”

  “I have to kick the bucket first, don’t I?”

  “That’s the deal. In the meantime, I want you to be a good boy. Go back to Dog Haven and let them take care of you. When the Joneses come to pick you up, remember how lucky you’ve been. You can’t ask for more than Polly and Alice. Those two are as good as it gets, take my word for it. And another thing: don’t fret about that name they gave you. You’ll always be Mr. Bones to me. But if it ever starts getting you down, just put it in its Latin form, and you’ll feel much better. Sparkatus. It has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? Sparkatus the Dog. Behold yon Sparkatus, the noblest tail-wagger in all of Rome.”

  Yes, it did have a nice ring to it, a very nice ring to it, and when Mr. Bones woke up just after dawn, the sound of it was still rattling around in his head. So much had changed while he had been asleep, so many things had happened to him between the closing and opening of his eyes, that at first he didn’t notice the snow that had fallen during the night, nor did he recognize that the tinkling noises caused by the word Sparkatus were in fact the ice-coated branches overhead, slowly creaking in the wind. Reluctant to leave the world of the dream, Mr. Bones only gradually became aware of the intense cold around him, and then, once he began to feel the cold, he became aware of an equally intense heat. Something was burning inside him. The cold was outside, and the heat was inside; his body was covered with snow, and inside his body the fever was back, as fierce and paralyzing as it had been the day before. He took a stab at trying to stand up to shake the snow off his fur, but his legs felt like sponges, and he had to abandon the effort. Maybe later, he told himself, maybe later when the sun came out and the air warmed up a little. Meanwhile, he lay there on the ground and studied the snow. No more than an inch had fallen, but even that was enough to make the world feel like a different place. There was something eerie about the whiteness of snow, he found, something both eerie and beautiful, and as he watched two pairs of sparrows and chickadees pecking away at the ground in search of something to eat, he felt a small ache of sympathy flutter inside him. Yes, even for those useless featherbrains. He couldn’t help it. The snow seemed to have brought them all together, and for once he was able to look at them not as nuisances but as fellow creatures, members of the secret brotherhood. Watching the birds, he remembered what Willy had told him about going back to Dog Haven. That was good advice, and if his body had been up to the task, he would have followed it. But it wasn’t. He was too weak to go that far, and if he couldn’t count on his legs to get him there, then he would have to stay where he was. For want of anything else to do, he ate some snow and tried to remember the dream.

  By and by, he began to hear the sounds of cars and trucks, the rumble of early-morning traffic. The sun was just coming up then, and as the snow melted off the trees and dropped to the ground in front of him, Mr. Bones wondered if the highway was as close as it seemed to be. Sounds could be tricky sometimes, and more than once the air had fooled him into thinking a far-off thing was closer than it was. He didn’t want to waste his energies on futile efforts, but if the road was where he thought it might be, then maybe he had a chance. The traffic was increasing now, and he could detect all manner of vehicles rushing down the wet highway, an unbroken parade of big cars and small cars, trucks and vans, long-distance buses. A person was at the wheel of each one of them, and if just one of those drivers was willing to stop and help him, then perhaps he would be saved. It would mean climbing up the hill in front of him, of course, and then working his way down the other side, but hard as all that was going to be, it had to be done. The road was somewhere, and he had to find it. The only drawback was that it had to be found on the first try. If he took the wrong path, he wouldn’t have the strength to go back up the hill and start again.

  But the road was there, and when Mr. Bones finally saw it after forty minutes of struggling past the thorns and outcrops and bulging roots that had blocked his way, after losing his footing and slipping down a dirt embankment, after drenching his fur in the muddy residues of the snow, the sick and feverish dog understood that salvation was at hand. The road was immense, and the road was dazzling: a six-lane superhighway with cars and trucks speeding past in both directions. With the moisture from the melted snow still clinging to the black surface of the road, the metal guardrails, and the branches of the trees that lined the east and west shoulders, and with the winter sun blazing in the sky and beating down on these millions of drops of water, the highway presented itself to Mr. Bones as a spectacle of pure radiance, a field of overpowering light. It was exactly what he had been hoping for, and he knew now that the idea that had come to him during those forty minutes of punishing effort up and down the hill was the only correct solution to the problem. Trucks and cars could carry him away from this place, but they could also crush his bones and make him stop breathing forever. It was all so clear once you took the long view. He didn’t have to wait for the time to come; the time was upon him now. All he had to do was step into the road, and he would be in Timbuktu. He would be in the land of words and transparent toasters, in the country of bicycle wheels and burning deserts where dogs talked as equals with men. Willy would disapprove at first, but that was only because he would think that Mr. Bones had gotten there by taking his own life. But Mr. Bones wasn’t proposing anything as vulgar as suicide. He was merely going to play a game, the kind of game that any sick and crazy old dog would play. And that’s what he was now, wasn’t it? A sick and crazy old dog.

  It was called dodge-the-car, and it was a venerable, time-honored sport that allowed every old-timer to recapture the glories of his youth. It was fun, it was invigorating, it was a challenge to every dog’s athletic skills. Just run across the road and see if you could avoid being hit. The more times you were able to do it, the greater the champion you were. Sooner or later, of course, the odds were bound to catch up with you, and few dogs had ever played dodge-the-car without losing on their last turn. But that was the beauty of this particular game. The moment you lost, you won.

  And so it happened, on that resplendent winter morning in Virginia, that Mr. Bones, a.k.a. Sparkatus, sidekick of the late poet Willy G. Christmas, set out to prove that he was a champion among dogs. Stepping off the grass onto the e
astbound shoulder of the highway, he waited for a break in the traffic, and then he began to run. Weak as he was, there was still some spring left in his legs, and once he hit his stride, he felt stronger and happier than he had felt in months. He ran toward the noise, toward the light, toward the glare and the roar that were rushing in on him from all directions.

  With any luck, he would be with Willy before the day was out.

  Copyright

  HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY NEW YORK

  Copyright © 1999 by Paul Auster

  Portions of this book originally appeared in Granta.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Auster, Paul, 1947-

  Timbuktu: a novel / Paul Auster. —1st ed.

  ISBN 0-8050-5407-3 (acid-free paper)

  1. Dogs—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3551.U77T56 1999 98-46742

  813’.54—dc21 CIP

  FB2 document info