Tomorrow

by Damian Dibben

  The effect is instantaneous and astonishing.

  I am composed, fearless, diamond-clear. I have the strength and breadth of armies. Dread, anxiety, disquiet, all gone. I have such lucidity and calmness, such certainty, I can barely recall, or believe, the ages of worry I’ve endured. There used to be, even a minute ago, a misshapen mess in my mind. Now all things are possible. It is a truth I will find my master. The odours seeping over the lip of the hill—echinacea and foxglove—are heady, as if canteens of royal perfume have been poured into the soil.

  ‘This way,’ I tell Sporco, as certain as an emperor, at once finding the precisely correct path to the top of the ravine, fleet-footed. We crest the gorge, coming on to a road and the sun is there to greet us. There’s a straw-gold mist over an infinity of hills and fields, rolling jigsaws of greens, ochres and purples. I can smell every inch of it. I could place each tree, shrub and flower. I know where the rivers and streams streak the land. I can smell where the forest beasts are and all the creatures of the underground dominions. Soon my sense of smell has gone beyond the local, beyond this single region of valleys, and I can discern distant towns, churches, hilltop bell towers. And soon, if I follow the snaking man-made arteries that scour the country, the moving clog of carriages and carts, I can detect a city beyond the horizon. More—I can scent the coast beyond it, the salt spray of the shore and colossus of water after. And I can, if I try, discern the realms on the far side of those seas, even as north as the ice lands. I can sense the very curve of the earth.

  But something else has arrested me, something infinitesimally small, tiny, tiny, a particular and precise fuse of scent: midnight in a tall forest, stiff parchment paper, a whisper of pine sap.

  My master.

  He’s real and true as a thick gold coin.

  He’s not close, days away, but I know his exact position on the atom-map in my brain. He’s west of us, north-west, on a road, drawing close to the city I noted, a swollen metropolis with its honeycomb of streets that stink even from here. Brussels: he is there.

  ‘We have far to go before nightfall my friend, so not a moment to lose.’ Chest out, back straight, tail up, I set off. ‘Quickly now.’

  ‘What if he comes after us?’ Sporco asks, catching up, ears a-quiver. ‘Should we worry?’

  ‘We should not. We should never worry. We keep our wits about us, that is all.’ On the matter of Vilder, I have iron conviction: he will not stop us. The jyhr has transformed me into a being of pure confidence, of unpolluted reason. Vehicles begin to roll past with frequency. ‘We must find our way on to one of those,’ I say, nodding at a brace of sleek coaches that must be city-bound. ‘The right opportunity will come.’

  ‘Adventures, huh?’ Sporco hurries by my side, tail puffed up with purpose. ‘Us two, side by side. Voyagers. The pack.’

  The pack? I’m so jubilant, I could almost agree with him. ‘Look, there is a chance there.’

  Ahead, in a copse, a carriage has halted, half off the road, tilted slightly into the gulley. The driver is on his knees, covered in muck, wrenching at the front axle. A woman stands over him, finely dressed, but agitated. The carriage door is wide open, but it would be impossible to sneak inside without them noticing. Close by, children are playing around a little lake. Children are the purest of dog lovers. ‘We will make friends with them. They shall be our way on board.’ We slip through the trees to find three girls, angels in cotton dresses and blue sashes, teasing and fussing over their little brother. Sporco bounds forward, tail whirling.

  ‘Friends, friends, are we friends?’ he barks.

  The middle sister—ten or eleven—pounces on him, to the delight of her siblings, whilst the little boy waddles towards me and catches his palm on my head. In his other hand I notice he clutches—as if his life depends on it—a miniature ivory cage containing a single live cricket of startling emerald green.

  ‘Bonjour, chien,’ he says.

  I let out a bark, seeming to greet him, but really to draw the attention of his mother. She must see us together, a happy family. But she doesn’t look round, so I perform a series of clownish rolls—it is extraordinary the vitality I possess and I understand why my master loved to dance—until the girls shriek with laughter and at last their mother turns and squints through the trees.

  ‘Ce qui se passé la?’

  As she approaches, the siblings huddle together, conduct a hurried debate, dust the grass from their clothes, straighten their sashes and cajole Sporco and I into position. For my part, I present myself splendidly, my court stance, lengthening my body, turning my jaw and raising my ears into an elegant tilt. The bolder, middle sister duly presents us. ‘Nous avons trouvé ces chiens, Maman. They’re lost. Can we keep them? We love them.’

  Her mother lets out an impatient torrent of words. ‘Absolument pas. We have enough problems as it is. And they’ll belong to someone. They’ll have a home.’ She claps her hands. ‘To the carriage. Cet instant.’

  ‘Follow, quickly.’ I nudge Sporco on. ‘Make a show of how you want to go with them.’ When we get to the carriage, we find the wheel has been fixed and the driver installed on his perch. I sit, looking up at the open door, trying to smile, as I used to. Sporco copies me, setting the children off again.

  ‘They have no home, Maman,’ one of them says. ‘They want to come with us.’

  ‘They’re all alone. Can’t we keep them?’ adds another.

  ‘Non, non, non. Enough of this nonsense. Inside now!’

  ‘Tu es un cruel tyran,’ the middle sister declares, tearing off her sash and pummelling it into the ground.

  A whinny of horses echoes through the trees and a vehicle gains quickly. Vilder’s carriage. Sporco has seen it too and at once we dive under the family’s wagon into darkness. But I am calm, not fearful. I can still smell the land and my master arriving at the city amidst battalions of soldiers. Five pairs of silk-slippered feet collect together, all facing the approaching coach. Everyone falls silent as a shadow falls across them and stops.

  ‘I don’t like this man, Maman. He frightens me,’ says one of the girls.

  Vilder is alone, having driven himself, and fortunately, from what I can see of him, he has a more undesirable aspect than ever. He’s thrown on a tatty overcoat, is unshaven, unwashed and certainly drunk, dosed up or both. A dirty, blood-soaked bandage round his foot completes the picture. Though the mother offers him a little bow, she’s hesitant.

  ‘I am looking for two dogs,’ he drawls, his breath pure brandy. ‘Have you seen them?’ A pause. The little shoes gather closer. The tendons in the mother’s hand tense and she fidgets with her fingers.

  ‘Non. We have not,’ she answers. ‘Désolé.’ Silence. The middle sister edges back, gently lifting her sole, a sign for us to keep still. There comes the sound of galloping horses and a pair of mounted soldiers in red uniforms approach from behind very fast.

  ‘Coming by!’ one of them shouts to show they wish to overtake, but Vilder throws out his arms.

  ‘Stop!’

  They’re travelling at such speed, they can’t halt in time, but tear past before looping back. They’re worn out, caked in dirt, but have an urgent look about them that mark them out as staff officers, the men that carry messages between the various factions of an army.

  ‘What is it?’ the first one asks, catching his breath.

  ‘Did you pass any dogs on the road?’ The officers share a look and would laugh if they weren’t so aggravated. ‘One dark, this high, the other half its size.’

  ‘No,’ the officer replies, taking up his rein.

  ‘Wait,’ says Vilder. ‘You’re English? Your uniform is British, is it not?’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘Is there some matter? Where are you headed in such a hurry?’

  ‘Perhaps you’ve heard of Napoleon?’ the officer comments drolly, about to gallop off, when t
he mother speaks.

  ‘So there is to be a battle is there?’ There’s an anxiety in her tone that catches the attention of the officer.

  He bows his head, softening. ‘Inevitably, madam. You make for Brussels?’ The mother nods. ‘You’ll be safe there, God willing. To Charleroi we go. The Prussians are already on their way, to bolster our forces. Waste no time, but hurry. Good day.’ He flicks his reins and this time they tear off, vanishing from sight.

  For a moment Vilder stares at the cloud of dust they left behind. ‘Charleroi,’ he says to himself, before turning to the mother. ‘I am sorry to have disturbed you.’ He sets off in the same direction as the soldiers and sunlight falls back on the road. Only when he is gone completely, do four faces appear before us, grinning. We burrow out, Sporco and I, and stand to attention before the mother. She studies us, then the open road that Vilder and the soldiers took, and back to us again. She inspects our fur, fingering through it in search of ticks, examines our teeth and pulls down our eyelids. The three sisters wait for judgement. Then Sporco does something that didn’t occur to me: gently with his teeth he picks up the girl’s blue sash, shakes the dirt from it and presents it to the mother. She takes it from him and, for the first time, her mouth twitches with a smile. ‘Let them come.’

  We’re all together in the compartment: three girls, one boy, their mother, a cricket and a pair of stray dogs. Soon the road widens and we pick up speed, heading north-east. Sporco is thrilled by our change in fortune. The dresses of the girls and their mother merge into an opalescent quicksand in which he drowns again and again, each time resurfacing in a different place, oversized brows raised in triumph like theatre curtains. Hours pass, games are played, fights erupt, silence is demanded, a sister is pinched, another one cries, threats are made, peace brokered and silence again. On the cycle goes throughout the day. And during it all, I sit, contented. Still I can smell everything, the vales and forests, the city ahead—and my master. He’s just a fragment of a fragment of a fragment, but he is there, a beacon to which I am travelling.

  * * *

  ‘Stop!’ I bark, waking from a nightmare: a giant thurible swinging over the blood fields of Breitenfeld, clouds of sickly camphor and gum Arabic sinking on to the dead, the squeal of the fawn at Saint-Germain, flesh eaten off to the spine, crimson slicking the marble floor, the fascinated eyes of the infant king. ‘Stop!’

  Everyone is dosing except the mother. She stares down at me, the angular line of her jaw catching the last of the afternoon light. She’s not one of those humans who seem to be able to see through my eyes into the chasms of my past, into the labyrinthine museum of my life, wings of which even I have forgotten. She sees just a dog, another living thing to fret about. I snap my head away and look from the window.

  The carriage lanterns have been lit and the sun is setting, a hoary disc melting into the horizon, hills growing dark, cornfields consumed in sepia twilight. I’m no longer euphoric. The magic of this morning, the all-knowing certainty, the dazzling second-sight, are gone. I shiver with sadness, spores of melancholy gather like mould in dim corners inside me. Foreboding, unnameable anxieties congregate, like dark-clad people clustering around a coffin at an evening funeral. Unease and disquiet. The landscape, the dusk valleys of soft summer, seems a sham.

  ‘Everything well?’ Sporco unearths himself from his cocoon, his ears doing a little curtsy.

  ‘Sssh, back to sleep now.’ He does as he’s told. Where are you? Master! Where? I say in my head and I realize I can’t smell him any more. The atom-map is all but gone. I search for it, but can barely discern the land before us. In its place: dirty cotton, unwashed travellers, burnt oil and tar smoke from the carriage lanterns. I paste my snout to the glass, inhaling deep breaths. No trace. On we go: endless rocking and prisms of light through the window shiver into shapes, diminishing and growing.

  In the dead of night I hear a faraway beating and look out. At first I can’t make out anything, but adjusting to the dark I notice a faint band of dark green snaking across the slopes north of us, a shimmering slither so long I can’t see where it begins or ends, tens of thousands of soldiers on the move—to the doomy, incessant incantation of boot-steps and drums.

  Night passes, day comes around, and by degrees my head begins to ache. I feel nauseous and hot and cold beneath my fur. I’ve never felt this way, yet it is familiar. Stay with the plan, I tell myself. It is more crucial than ever that I find him. The map in my head is gone, but I remember where things lie. He is in Brussels. We are travelling there now. I will find him and he will bow down, beg my pardon and explain everything. I say these things over and over, but they are hollow affirmations.

  * * *

  ‘We’re arriving, Maman, we’re home!’ one of the sisters bleats on our second afternoon in the carriage, making the others rush for the window and Sporco bark idiotically, squeezing between them and whipping his tail against my face. It’s almost sundown again. The turnpike is hectic with traffic and finally we’re approaching a hum of light, a walled city rising from the plains like a put-out fire. Still the hot and cold mist sips through me and I realize—of course—my state is the same as Vilder’s must be, or any man or woman who’s addicted to drink or easing potions. And also, like such a person, I wish I had more of my master’s potion, even as it has turned against me and tricked me, giving me fantastical vision, only to take it away again.

  At the gatehouse a guard stops us, and the mother fishes around and produces papers, but he just glances through the glass—women, children, dogs—and waves us through. We plough on, juddering on cobbles, the intense evening heat drawing out the filthy smells of the town, making the mother bat her fan at double speed. Throngs of soldiers choke up the streets, the same colour uniform as the officers that passed us: the blood red of the British. They’re buzzy, fuelled-up and ready for war. Unable to get through, the mother loses patience. ‘Ça suffit,’ she calls to the driver. ‘We’ll go on foot from here.’ She hurries everyone out of the cab. The sun is setting, but the cobbles are still warm. The driver clambers on to the roof, unfastens the luggage and passes it down piece by piece. Everyone takes a case and the mother hurries them through the crowd.

  I say, ‘I shall not follow. You go, though.’ Sporco’s tail, which had been smiling back and forth, freezes. ‘I am settled on the matter. No arguments. You have a fine home with that family. You could wish for no better. Catch them up. We must say goodbye. Really.’

  He looks over his shoulder at the white dresses hurrying away. ‘Can’t we—just—’ He sits, stands, sits again. ‘But—the pack?’

  ‘They are your pack. Not I. Go now, before you lose them.’ The look he gives might once have broken my heart—the puppy abandoned on the pontoon—now it’s just another slab of misery on top. ‘I must stay with the army. To find my master.’ The middle sister is looking round, panicked, craning to see between soldiers’ backs.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ resolves Sporco.

  ‘No!’ The crowds, the noise, the evening shadows bending over the buildings, the never-ending trill of pipes and skitter of battle drums are all unendurable. ‘Goodbye, my friend.’

  As his ears wilt a voice sings from the crowd: ‘Chiens, chiens!’ The middle sister dashes back to us. ‘Not that way, we live over there, silly. Venez, venez.’ She cajoles Sporco with friendly nudges, but he shakes her away. When she hovers still, he shows his teeth and growls until she backs away, crushed. Sporco holds out his shoulders against the shame, knowing he’s spoiled a measure of her innocence forever—and all for me. He’s given me no choice but to keep him with me, for I’ll only let him go, if there’s a real home for him. I’m aggravated by everything: by losing my master’s scent, by fears that I imagined it in the first place, by the noise in the street, the multitude of soldiers and the feral look about them. Even the fact that we’re at the height of summer and faded daylight is still stubbornly hanging on drives me m
ad. I want this day over. And I want my master.

  ‘Come then, but do as I tell you,’ I say to Sporco, no power left in me to fight.

  We turn into the Grand Place, which is full to choking point. Young peacocks in high-collared coats, silky slips of ladies, old dames in bonnets, aristocrats, card-players, mountebanks, delivery boys—and soldiers, soldiers, soldiers. Acres of uniforms, of bottle-swigging, dirty-tunic swagger. I dig my nose to the ground and prowl back and forth in search of my master, careless of who I bump into. After three rounds, I pause for breath and see, through the window of a dressmaker’s shop, a lady being fitted into a gown, admiring herself in a wall glass as an assistant praises her. What pointless rituals. Gowns, showing off, hems stitched, lace smoothed, for what? For her later to be struck down by disease? For her skin to blotch, darken and rip into pustules. To die and be nailed into a box and slotted into the dirt? What idiots humans are.

  ‘Sporco? Sporco?!’ I’ve lost him. Damn him. No, he’s stopped on a corner to look at something. Four terriers dressed in human clothes parade on their hind legs, as a crookback in a top hat ringmasters them with flicks of his whip. There are three males in toy waistcoats and cravats, and a lady dog in cloak and bonnet.