At eight o’clock the vet called and said that the Golden Retriever was in critical condition.
He wanted to know what was happening. And was happy that everything had gone well.
Toward the end of the conversation, Dad asked how to help her:
“If we can’t just sit quietly, we can blot the blood. The most important thing is not to disturb. Sue knows exactly what to do,” he repeated the vet’s instructions, so we too would hear. “And since everything is going by the book, you will only arrive early in the morning.”
When the house fell asleep, I tiptoed into the garage:
All night she warmed them.
Licked.
Nursed.
She did not even go out to pee.
Their feeble whimpers and her vigorous licks merged into tender sounds of initial attempts at nursing and stifled gulps.
The longer I looked, the more details I observed:
Perfect paws.
Miniature fingernails.
Even genitals.
Champion, who greeted me, would not leave my side.
Like a shadow he followed me.
When I rushed off to brush my teeth, shower and change clothes, he remained at his post.
I greeted the vet, Doctor Yehoram, at the gate.
The others waited for him in the garage.
“She tended to them all night,” I filled him in, “but she hasn’t eaten or drunk in two days.”
“The wonders of nature,” he said and laughed. “Like any healthy dog, she sensed that the whelping was near. So that she wouldn’t have to leave them for the first day or two, even to move her bowels, she stopped eating and drinking. In the meantime they’ll become stronger and their body temperature will stabilize.”
“Young Miss Yovel,” he addressed me: “when everything is in order, nature is usually smarter than all of us.
And where did she dig a hole?” he inquired.
Dad told him about the mud.
“Well, of course,” the vet said and laughed. “She prepared a hole in order to give birth, and later to warm the pups.”
And while speaking, he slid his fingers into a pair of gloves in order to “See what we have here.”
“Three males and four females,” I declared.
“We’re about to see. Remember, you said four males and three females.”
I realized he was pulling my leg, and yet I still left no room for error.
Before taking off his gloves, he squeezed every nipple to make sure there was milk and no blockage. And while doing so he offered Adi and me to be assistants in his clinic.
“Thank you. But no thank you.
We’re busy with our own things now.
When we have time, we’ll think about it,” I promised.
“Strong words,” Mom said, impressed.
“What does Grandpa Danny always say?
‘Charity begins at home’…”
As he tossed out the gloves and was about to leave, she asked if he had any special instructions for us.
“Make sure that she takes care of herself. Although a healthy dog like her already knows that.”
Once he left, Mom called her father.
The excitement swept him into the eye of our elation.
The following day she stayed home to supervise.
The moment Dad returned from work, she went to bring Grandpa over.
Even though she had always followed Grandpa adoringly, Sue growled even at him.
Despite our reprimanding him, Champion maintained a high morale.
Seized the blanket.
And went out to the yard.
Every now and then poked his nose around.
Sniffed.
Sneezed.
And disappeared as quickly as he had appeared.
“What a marvelous sight.
What a marvelous sight.”
Grandpa mumbled like a worn-out soundtrack, and the longer he stood there, the more he shook like a palm frond. For a split second Sue’s gaze sharpened when Dad went to get him a chair. And once again glazed over when she realized that no one was moving any closer to her pups.
“These teensy-weensies have a bigger effect on you than Ido, Ellie and me together.” Glittering rays the likes of which I had never noticed before flickered in Mom’s cheerful laughter.
With a frayed and stained handkerchief Grandpa wiped his forehead, and took the tease in good spirit.
He wrested himself from his chair. And slowly drew himself up to his full height, which back then had already begun to shrink.
When she started preparing dinner, Mom asked us to show Grandpa the room we had renovated for him.
Dad supported his elbow.
Grandpa gripped my hand, and as he dragged his feet we slowly advanced.
“It’s beginning to look like a young lady’s room…” he remarked as we passed by the entrance to my room:
“Oh well…
Once upon a time…”
His voice petered out.
“And where’s Grandpa?”
Mom interrogated us upon our return.
“Until we call him to the table, he’s resting in his room. And you won’t believe it: he even agreed to spend the night,” Dad bragged.
Her eyes narrowed into slits.
“I won’t believe it…?!”
She paused.
And while casually straightening out her perfectly pressed apron, she adamantly insisted that he had agreed first and foremost to spare her the burden of driving into town again, biting off another chunk of the credit.
“And Sue and the pups also have something to do with it: they brought back memories…” she said, subtracting yet another piece.
* * *
That night Grandpa Danny broke in his new room, which, with its double bed, indirect lighting and adjacent bathroom, did not fall short of a luxurious hotel room. The breeze, free of smog and the soot of buses, without honks and screeching tires, imbued him with a sense of calm. He couldn’t remember when he had last slept so peacefully, as he himself admitted wholeheartedly in the morning.
“If you weren’t as stubborn as a mule, you could have already enjoyed several such nights.”
Mom winked at me, and, as always, her face twitched in that same funny way.
Biting his lips he admired the wood-paneled library (whose design Mom had labored over at nights and on Saturdays). And he described how before retiring to his bed he dimmed the light of the floor lamp, which he instantly recognized as a work of Shlagman, the copper artist from Jerusalem (which had turned up at the flea market in Jaffa after a lengthy search, and hurried to match to it a lampshade from fine parchment). The shutters obeyed him, and rose with the touch of the switch. And he sat down to read in the rocking chair. Every so often looked up at the sky, and it seemed to him as if “all the stars were laughing.”
Upon returning from school I found him hunched in the chair in the garage, far enough from the blanket. His chin rested on his thumb, clasped in his index finger.
When he noticed me he rubbed his eyes, jiggled his heavy-framed glasses and found it hard to believe that “before it even began, the school day had already ended.”
“I cannot take my eyes off of Sue, who has not yet eaten even a crumb,” his tone carried compassion and concern, “off her and her magnificent seven.”
And he went on praising Sue, who had transformed overnight from “being as free as a bird” to a mother “in every fiber of her body and soul.” And he dedicated words for Champion as well, who “from time to time calls upon them. As if making sure that everything is in order. And disappears as quickly as he appears.”
Pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose, he drew my attention to the fact that some of the teensy-weensies were bigger than others. Probably they had been the first to emerge. But he was keeping an eye especially “on the tiny lad…”
“Lady,”
I corrected him:
“She was probably the last in t
he whelping,”
I developed the reasoning he outlined.
“Tiny lady, so be it,”
He carried on.
“I’m concerned about her:
I fear that she’s growing weaker and weaker.”
Mom left the suitcase, which she could barely carry, outside the entrance. When the meal was over, she slipped away and arranged everything in its place, as if the books too had been born on the shelves.
We were all exhausted.
Especially Grandpa.
Mom covered him with a blanket.
And we retired to bed early.
“Wake up! Wake up!”
I dreamed that I was being shaken.
“Wake up! Wake up!”
Grandpa wouldn’t let go.
“Get Dad.
Horrible sobs are coming from the yard:
A puppy crying for help…”
Mom, usually a light sleeper, didn’t wake up.
Dad leaped up.
Found a flashlight.
“Stay here and watch Grandpa!”
He ordered and was swallowed by darkness.
He was horrified when he returned:
The tiny lady—he found in the hole.
And brought her back to her mother.
“Sue finally drank.
And ate with gusto,”
Grandpa informed me of the good news the following day.
“With great decorum she went to move her bowels.
Passed water.
And rushed back.”
With twinkling eyes and a voice filled with emotion he told me how every so often she nurses and cleans the puppies, under the watchful gaze of Champion, “who comes and goes,” as if making sure everything is in good shape.
That night, Mom also woke up to heart-stopping shrieks coming from the yard.
Once again, Dad rescued the tiny one from the hole.
“Sue—the symbol of motherhood.
The epitome of devotion.
Who is being so cruel to our little peewee…?”
Grandpa wondered in a hoarse voice.
“The pups—still can’t walk on their own.
So she couldn’t have made it there alone.”
Mom led us a small step forward.
“And twice to the same place.
That’s odd, to say the least…”
Grandpa pondered out loud.
“This is a matter of life and death. A critical issue, which must be handled with the utmost caution. Thus, Champion is going back to sleeping with you!”
Dad ruled.
I lowered my gaze toward Mom, who was zipping up Grandpa’s plaid slippers.
To my astonishment, she nodded.
“He never goes anywhere near them!”
I looked up at Grandpa. And even he, who had seen him “going in and out,” and who always avoided taking a stand whenever there were disagreements, and who stated that he was but a “a guest for the night…” —even he agreed with them…
Suddenly I found myself standing before a fortified front.
The trust I had always placed in them was undermined.
The confidence I always had in their judgment was shattered to bits all at once.
A sense of injustice seeped in.
Simmered.
Seethed.
Anger ignited.
Burst into flames.
Singed.
Seared.
A helplessness fueled it.
Turned it into a flamethrower.
Into molten lava.
The tongues of animosity lashed out.
Ate away at every good piece of me.
I could not look at them.
Especially at Grandpa.
I separated myself from them.
And they—the more distant they became, the smaller they became.
And the smaller they became, the blurrier they became.
Until they merged into one hostile and foreign lump.
“Once bitten, twice shy.
Once bitten, twice shy.”
As far as I was concerned, Grandpa could have kept on mumbling.
I looked straight at Champion:
“Come, my Ron!
We’re going to bed!”
I raised my voice, so they wouldn’t be able not to hear:
“Don’t pay attention to them.
Who do they think they are?!
What on earth are they thinking?!
Who even needs them?!”
Slamming the door with all my might, I then opened it quietly to let him out.
With him at my side, I instantly fell asleep.
But even when fast asleep I heard—or imagined hearing (to me it is one and the same)—the scratching of his fingernails as he made his way to the garage and back.
In the morning, they resumed their routine.
I was unable to look at them.
Especially at him.
Not even when I served him lunch.
Nor at dinner.
In order to avoid crossing their paths, I set my alarm clock. And even before Robert’s crowing I went to do my morning chores.
They were already in the kitchen.
Dad was flustered:
He couldn’t fall asleep at night.
So as not to disturb Mom, he was reading in the kitchen.
From the corner of his eye he saw Sue running outside.
And between her teeth, poor peewee…
Through the window he followed them, until she disappeared in the darkness.
And rushed back…
Alone…
Mom admitted that had he not seen it with her own eyes, she would have never believed it.
Grandpa also turned pale:
“For a mother… to abuse like that…
Her own offspring…
Her own flesh…
Bone of her bones…”
Dad was convinced there had to be a reasonable explanation for it.
“What time is it?” he asked when Robert crowed:
“Ah, six forty-five. It’s a good time to call Doctor Yehoram, before he makes his house calls.”
“He immediately knew who it was,” he shared with dubious satisfaction. “He claims that Sue knows the puppy won’t survive. That already in the womb her siblings were developing at her expense and pushed her to bottom in the whelping.”
Against my will, my gaze crossed with Grandpa’s, which widened when Dad concluded that Sue had given up on her and was abandoning her to her fate.
“You don’t say!
You don’t say!”
Grandpa was dumfounded:
“The wonders of nature indeed…”
Mom, who never spoke about her mother in my presence, seemed lost in thought, when wondering if by chance he recalled the name of the film about the lives of Eskimos they had seen at the time, “with Mom…”
“About…
About…
About the lives…”
Against my will I was drawn in by the wondering gaze.
“About the lives of…
Eskimos…”
He replied without batting an eyelid.
“The Savage Innocents.”
As if extending a long arm into the depths of a hidden past. Rummaging through the entrails of a moldy database. And offhandedly pulled out the required information.
“Do you remember that unforgettable scene:
Boys sending a grandma adrift on an ice float…”
Her passionate voice dulled and faded:
“It’s the same thing…
In a canine guise…”
She concluded in a low voice as if under duress.
“Let’s not confuse the laws of nature here.”
He half-implored-half-cautioned her:
“The lifecycle of the Eskimo grandma had reached its end, unlike our peewee,” he said, his voice softening, “who has yet to begin living hers. She has her whole life ahead of her. La vie devant soi,” he repeated, m
erging languages as he often did when still at his best.
“And instead of fighting for her, what does her mother do?
What does she do?
What does Sue do?
Gives up…
And rushes to bring her end closer…
And how so?!
Why?!
Thus: this is not the same old story, but rather its opposite.
And in our current context, perhaps it would be appropriate to say: opposite pole.”
With a half-smile he cleared his throat and poured forth:
“Let me tell you, my only daughter whom I love—I have been young, and I am fortunate to now be old.”
And he counted off, one by one, that he was fortunate to have had a harmonious marriage to a wife who was also a loving mother. To have raised a fine daughter. To marry her off to a “family man.” To nurture a relationship with a granddaughter who is starting to resemble her in her “budding youth.” To enjoy reading. To be moved by classical music. To be well regarded by his “acquaintances,” who continue to seek his company. To make a honorable living, even as a pensioner. To manage an independent life without being a burden on anyone… And in his old age, to have even been granted the opportunity to follow “the magnificent seven,” whose development provided him with new insights…
“And the day will come when I, too…”
He looked straight at Mom,
“Will close my eyes.”
“Was that all the doctor had to say?”
When the last of the echoes died out, he redirected the conversation to the exact point from which it had been diverted.
“He claims that there is no abuse or cruelty here,” Dad replied. “It’s natural selection. That’s how it works.”
Grandpa—who spent his days and nights reading literature and poetry, philosophy and science, and who often struck me as the character in a novel I had recently read, the “autodidact” who reads all the books in the local library in alphabetical order—spoke about “natural selection and the survival of the fittest, in other words: those endowed with the most developed ability to adapt.” And about “the temporary status of a confirmed theory, in other words: the kind that is, in principle, a candidate for refutation, as we were taught by our master, Sir Karl Popper—a Jew, by the way,” he stressed with more than a pinch of pride. And he praised that approach, “Which is far more humble than that which presumes to discern between what is true and what is false.”
A Dog’s Luck Page 5