A Dog’s Luck
Page 11
And in between—she has no spare time. She has no energy. And she certainly has no patience for me.”
“In my presence, kindly don’t talk about me in the third person.” More than imploring Dad, she warned him.
“For an incorrigible fixer there’s no greater challenge than being confronted with helplessness and powerlessness,” Dad explained in a low tone.
Next time, I promise to make every effort to be more available,” Mom promised him.
“Anything but that!” he cried out.
“Anything but more effort,” he suppressed his voice, “not for anyone. Not even for me!”
“All I meant to say was that I can’t help but admire the way Champion treats Grandpa,” she said, returning to the point she had made earlier.
“What can I say,” Grandpa said with half a smile, “he, too, has fallen under my spell.”
I leaped up at the rattle of the phone.
“That Madam is a real character,” I repeated after Yochi and Abraham, who kept interrupting each other: “In a tropical climate black fur isn’t optimal. And that means you can’t let them run outside when it’s very hot. But time will be at your disposal, and it’s no problem. So we’re saving two for you: the one with the orange ribbon, and the one with the green one.”
Dad nodded in consent.
“Okay: so we’ll wait for you this Friday, to come and pick up the two,” I set the appointment with them.
When I returned to the table, Grandpa’s eyelids were closed again.
We nearly carried him to bed in our arms.
Despite the late hour, I had to break the news to Adi. As if I wasn’t the one who had called, she spoke a mile a minute: that very evening she happened to talk about the pups. It was a complete fluke her older brother stopped by, Idan, who, as I already knew, had recently returned from trekking all the jungles in South America, and for now was living with a roommate on Shenkin Street, in Tel Aviv. But he had already rented an apartment and was soon going to live on his own. I didn’t understand what was going on with her: why did she think I would be interested in knowing where he lived and what a great job he had snagged because people considered him such a computer whiz?
“Wait,” she kept going enthusiastically:
“That’s not even the half of it!
Guess where he’ll be working from?
You won’t believe it…
From home!
And even a cell phone—they already gave him.
And the moment he heard about peewee…
You have no idea how psyched he became…”
I was choked with excitement.
But I played it cool.
“Like, hello, Ellie.
It’s me, Adi.
Don’t even dream about trying to fool me:
No one, no one’s better than Idan.
We hit the jackpot!”
“Come on already,” I heard him urging her, “tell her: top dog handler.”
“I’m at your place in two minutes tops.”
He informed me, having had enough of the Chinese whispers.
I explained Grandpa’s situation to him and managed to hold off until the following day.
When I went to close Grandpa’s door, Champion slipped out.
Even with him by me, I tossed and turned in bed until I fell asleep.
* * *
“Your dog is cranky as hell today,”
Idan greeted us the following day.
When the gate screeched against its hinge, Champion jumped on me.
And didn’t stop barking.
He passed Adi.
Jumped on Idan.
And kept barking.
Sue greeted us with a restrained welcome.
As if going through the motions, she barked at Idan when Champion burst into the house.
Before I managed to enter the garage, he started barking again. I opened the door to Grandpa’s room to let him in. And I rushed to join Adi and Idan, who gathered Sue and the pups. Shutting the doors to the kitchen and yard, he played with peewee and with Sue, while the others leaped at him.
Every now and then one of the pups burst into barks in a tenor that broke into a strident soprano.
To his call, he would kneel.
Look straight up.
And bark with a dexterity that wouldn’t put any dog to shame.
Had it not been for Adi, I wouldn’t have noticed Champion from a distance, barking in a hoarse baritone at us and the puppies.
He scratched the floor.
And almost knocked me over when he rose and sank his teeth into my sleeve.
“What is it?”
I petted him:
“Jealous?
Come on!”
The barks were replaced by moans that were no less firm.
“What do you want:
Food?
Water?
No problem.”
Idan noticed this out of the corner of his eye:
“He’s calling you. Can’t you tell?”
I followed him.
“You want out?
Go out!”
I opened the door.
He crossed the threshold.
And did not stop barking while shaking his head oddly, spraying foam in every direction.
“Rony, go to Grandpa!”
He swung his tail from side to side.
And the barks chased and swallowed each other.
“Heel!”
He shook himself and obeyed.
We advanced together:
“Go in!
Come on already:
Go in!”
I urged him.
He remained standing like a beggar at the door.
I peeked in.
Rays of light passed through the slits between the shutters.
Gradually my eyes adjusted to the dimness.
And I noticed each item by itself:
The empty rocking chair.
The book on the seat.
The disheveled bed.
The dark window in the bathroom.
Champion raced from the door to the entrance.
And back again.
Dread crept up my spine.
As if possessed, I turned on the light:
Everything was exactly as it had been.
Only Grandpa…
Wasn’t…
“What’s going on?”
Idan startled me with a tap on the back:
“He’s barking like crazy.”
My head was empty:
“My grandfather’s gone.
Like, vanished…”
I blurted out, petrified.
“Did you check upstairs?”
“There’s no reason to!” I screamed, also to be heard above Champion’s decibels.
“So it’s not for nothing that he’s so irritated today, your dog:
If your grandpa can barely move, we’re off the hook.
Trust him: Champion will find him for you, for sure.”
With his tail fluttering in the wind, Champion stormed the sidewalk.
He paused from time to time.
Sniffed a curbstone.
And charged forth.
Adi and I could barely keep up.
“You’re in pretty poor shape, slowpokes,” Idan goaded us.
Sweat trickled down.
Idan’s shirt could have been wrung out.
Adi also held her stomach when Champion stopped to sniff the behind of yet another of his kind.
“We’ll end up finding some dog in heat,” he joked.
Adi laughed.
I was not in the least amused.
Champion charged forth.
And covered a good distance.
Suddenly, he halted.
Waited alert on the curb.
Crossed the road at “heel.”
And with high-pitched pants that became shorter and shorter, he continued to advance.
At the bus stop he paused again.
&nbs
p; With unsteady feet and a foaming mouth he sniffed.
Wheezed.
And rolling his eyes, he plopped onto the sidewalk.
And did not get up.
“What’s up with you?!
You think that if your grandpa goes missing it means that everything’s gone to ruin.
Even Champion.
Don’t worry:
It’s just an epileptic fit,” Idan diagnosed.
Panting, I told him about the “episode.”
After making sure he wasn’t on meds, he dismissed it in one fell swoop:
“A mild case.
What you would call a ‘minor seizure.’”
I let Champion be.
And slowly slowly his normal breathing was restored.
“Then why isn’t he getting up?”
I didn’t understand.
“Maybe he’s just wiped out, or he’s out of leads,” he said and laughed.
Meanwhile he fumbled for a pen.
And asked for Grandpa’s phone number.
“What? You caught amnesia from him?!”
He waved the cell phone.
I was so frightened, my mind was hollow:
My memory was erased.
As if someone had pressed delete.
It took me a moment.
And yet, it came to me.
“Here, it’s ringing.”
He pressed the cell phone against my ear:
“You talk into this part.”
He showed me.
“Ggg…rand…pa?”
Champion also pricked up his ear:
“…Where are you?!”
Tears choked my throat.
“What do you mean where am I?!
After all, you knew where to call!
The question is: where are you?
You were supposed to return a long time ago.
Why didn’t you call immediately?”
“What do you mean where am I?!
What did you ask?!
Who did you ask it from?!”
“What do you mean?!” he wondered:
“In the note I wrote you.”
“Note…?!
There was no note!”
I raised my voice.
“What do you mean?!
There most certainly was!” he stood his ground: “On top of the book, on the seat of the rocking chair—the first place you visit upon your return.”
“You don’t say?!”
He marveled at Champion’s exploits:
“All the way to the station, huh…!
Unbelievable.”
“So you missed the bus,” I repeated after him so Adi and Idan would also hear. “And while you were pacing the pavement, a jeep pulled up beside you, driven by a pleasant-mannered woman, Mrs. Topaz—Shula, as Adi’s mother asked that you address her. And Shula, who happened to be on her way to town, asked that you grant her the pleasure of driving you home.”
He would not end the conversation before ensuring I kept this from Mom, and before I gave him my word that he would be the one to call her, and not me.
At home, they went straight to the garage.
And I—to Grandpa’s room.
Champion followed me like a shadow.
When I bent down to scrape a crusted pulp of paper off the floor, he backed away.
And curled up in the corner.
“In our house we’d use the old Arabic saying to describe this: ‘ili fat – mat.’ Meaning, ‘what’s passed, is dead,’” Idan said and laughed. He and Adi were now standing beside me, and with peewee cradled in his arms, he played with Sue who had pranced in after him.
“Good thing Champion understood the note he chewed…”
He looked me straight in the eye:
“And Andie—is it settled?”
He returned to the matter for which he had come.
Adi, who was worried he would name her Titi or Caca after the lake, guessed that it was from the Andes Mountains.
“Get a load of my sister: as smart as she is young, ha!” he melted with joy.
Chapter 4
“We’ve had a dog’s luck today…”
It was Dad who called. And he, who is always brief on the phone (even with Shlomo Zehavi), especially in the middle of a workday, insisted on hearing every detail about my conversation with Grandpa. And he grilled me about whether he had insinuated in any way, shape or form—directly or indirectly—that his departure was related to anything at all.
Shortly after, Mom stormed into the house.
“This time everything ended well. But it was your duty to inform me straight away. It’s too heavy a responsibility for a child your age… you’re not… heaven forbid, an orphan… We’ll continue this conversation on the way,” she blurted, and went to pack Grandpa’s medicine and vitamins.
When she opened the car door for him, Champion leaped in.
I, too, was surprised by the invitation to sit in the front seat:
“It’s time that for once we had an uninterrupted conversation.”
Cold wind blew in through the half-open window, and Mom turned on the heat.
“A car is like a little house. Right?”
She smiled as if letting me in on a secret.
At the traffic light she wrung her hands:
“My father, I believe I know pretty well,” she began, and as if she had been present during the conversation, she recounted it, including the note.
“If so, let’s ask ourselves: why, in your opinion, did he choose to return home today of all days. Not yesterday, or the day before, or any other day?” she asked, tapping out her words with her wedding ring against the steering wheel.
“Since he stopped following the pups he doesn’t have anything to do at our place,” I replied. And in the same breath I added that lately, she hasn’t been into them either. She won’t even answer the phone.
“If that’s the case, the question must be asked: why did he choose to leave today, of all days?”
Since I didn’t reply, she hinted:
“Perhaps something preceded his departure?”
Due to the way Dad grilled me earlier, I raised the possibility that maybe it had something to do with the conversation from the previous night.
“And how?”
“Maybe he felt kind of bad that Dad didn’t agree with you about Sue and Champion.”
At the mention of his name, he licked my neck.
And went back to his lookout post.
“You’re almost there.
Warmer.”
As if we were playing ‘hot or cold,’ she guided me by accelerating the rhythm of her taps. And admitted that lately she had become concerned that Champion—with his healthy instincts—had noticed a decline in Grandpa’s condition.
Champion didn’t deprive her, either.
And remained sitting between her erect neck and the backrest of my seat.
I told her how he acts when Grandpa is confused.
She removed one hand from the steering wheel and straightened out her skirt:
“Mountains out of molehills…
Mountains out of molehills…”
She repeated like a broken record.
When she sees “molehills,” she explained, it is a sure sign that somewhere, “mountains” are lurking—even if no one but her has noticed them yet.
“In the future don’t hide such things from me!” she ordered with a harsh softness.
“You’re not exactly forthcoming with me either…”
Her eyes gaped wide.
“You barely…
Barely…
Even…
Even…
Tell me…
That your head hurts.”
I found a way to blur the traces of my eavesdropping.
Rubbing her forehead as if beckoning a decision, she mumbled:
“There’s a Jewish saying that goes: ‘One generation shall pass word on to the next.’
Whereas in our case: one generation
shall pass on muteness to the next…”
And for the third time she asked me to tell her:
“What’s the connection between the conversation and the timing?”
And she continued to straighten out her skirt, shrouding herself in silence.
At the traffic light, she stopped.
Her eyes fixed on the road opening ahead, but her gaze turned inward.
She patted her thigh as if reaching a decision:
“Ellienka,” she began with a hesitant voice, “today I want to talk to you about something we’ve never discussed.”
She paused.
“This is quite a difficult conversation.
It isn’t easy for me to talk about it.
And I’m asking you in advance to forgive me if this saddens you: we never spoke about my mother. All you know from me is that ‘what happened, happened’ before you were born.
I never told you, for instance, that when what happened to us happened, I stopped believing in vows.
And I haven’t made a single vow since, except for one…
I also never told you, for example, that when what happened to us happened, I lost the joy of life.
More precisely: even when I was happy, my heart was not light.
I was not really happy.
Not completely.
Not like before.
At some point, and I’m not sure when, I stopped believing that I would ever feel happiness again.
That was the situation.
And I got accustomed to it.
All this was true until you, Ellienka, came into the world.
You reconnected me to happiness.
No less.