So it was with the walking. Wolf would follow behind him in mocking obedience, gradually pulling them into a kind of fuzzy art photograph of a stroll. But whenever they actually stopped—for the dog to urinate, or more often for the Professor to retie his shoe—just as he leaned down Wolf would start moving forward, albeit imperceptibly, and the dignified doctor would find himself hopping in the street, lurching and turning in a valse galatz, the leash wrapped around his leg and his ever-loosening shoe flopping on the pavement like an extinct appendage. Once the Professor had regained his footing and untangled them, Wolf would drop behind his heel in what appeared to be perfect compliance (strangers often complimented the animal’s street manners), but in fact the dog was drawing him back to a point of nullity, somehow behind time itself, abandoning their painfully won coordination.
The Professor knew the shortcut of soothing reassurance had failed, yet he lacked the conviction in his own reflexes to pop the chain and impose a mild penance. Indeed, his fear that he might do more harm the animal seemed able to calibrate precisely. (The gentle, sabotaging selfishness of the defenseless.) For all his submissive indifference, Wolf seemed to place an extraordinary, even profound, faith in his master’s increment of fear.
On occasion, usually late in the day, Wolf ’s sore nose would flare up, and the Professor would gaze down his nostrils with a small light. But he could find neither discharge nor irritation, only a long, glaucous tube ending in an opaque sheen of brain mass, unwrinkled like the advanced mammal he was posing as. The Professor noticed that it was only during this particular type of examination that Wolf ’s tail moved, if only the bushy tip, like a feather duster wafted by a particularly senile servant.
“Oh, Wolf, what did they do to you?” the Professor thought, a cry in his heart, and then he rephrased it out loud. “Or rather, what did they make you do? Was it those stupid aristocrats, or the crazed Bolsheviks?”
They settled into this routine over a period of weeks, the Professor now certain that he was saddled sadistically, perhaps forever, with the animal’s misgivings and disconnectedness. Meanwhile, the dog remained perpetually in wait, anticipating the next follow-up examination of his nose or paw, punctuated with bouts of what certainly appeared to be shame, for what else would cause the otherwise gray-white scar tissue to so promiscuously redden?
As a result, a fatal misunderstanding developed. While the Professor was adapting himself to Wolf ’s reserved nature, the dog wanted nothing more than to be inspected, preferably at the exact site of the wound, and as the Professor’s diagnostic attention dwindled, the symptoms of shame worsened. After the vilest supplications, accompanied by compulsive yawning, sighing, coughing, obsessive leg crossing, nose-boring, nail-biting, and flatulence, Wolf ’s manner became sharp. He hammered his scarred nose into the Professor’s groin, apparently threatening to spit up. He shoved his snout under his master’s writing hand, flipping the pen halfway across the room. And he dragged his crippled paw across the doctor’s thigh, leaving welts even through the heavy tweed. Wolf felt that his large, dark friend was abandoning him, and for his part, the Professor could not decide which horrified him most: his patient’s smothering affection or his invasive enmity.
Then, during a stroll, when his attention was focused on a particularly exotic sculpture in a shop window, he felt an uncharacteristically purposeful tug on the leash, and turning, found to his horror a blind beggar selling matchbooks on the sidewalk, with Wolf urinating on the stumps of the poor fellow’s amputated legs. Then and only then, at the height of his fury, did he pop the chain. He heard the click, a ghostly note. Wolf concluded his business, taking his good time, then, after turning slowly and halfheartedly, bit the Professor through his shoe, though without breaking the skin.
He spent long periods gazing into the animal’s eyes, now black as his own, which as the day expired seemed to give off a transient luminescence, a stored electricity generated from within. Yet by evening, when he turned on the paraffin desk lamp, the corneas went completely opaque, as if they were only reflecting external light. As the Professor’s eyes became accustomed to the darkness, Wolf ’s eyes emitted an eerie shine, and when he placed a shaving mirror next to the dog’s skull, he saw that his own had taken on the same cast, though not of the same deep quality. When he turned off the lamp and they sat in pitch-blackness, he faced the problem of reporting from a zone in which they were both blind. The Professor lit a candle nearby, adjusted the temples of his reading glasses to sharpen the magnification, and circled the dog slowly. From a certain angle his spectacles reflected the candlelight into Wolf ’s pupils, which suddenly lit up in a fantastic concatenation, brighter and more diaphanous than any star, and for a moment he thought he could make out a trace of the optic nerve through a web of blood vessels on the inner surface of the eye. Both were bathed for a moment in a spectacular fluorescent orange haze, and little mice of ejaculatory feeling ran along the base of the Professor’s spine, as the animal seemed to be seeing through him.
In the evening they would often sit on the divan together in a kind of mutual matrimonial inertia, the Professor smoking one cigar after another, Wolf pawing at his free hand while snapping at the smoke rings, deprived of the symptoms of hauling which had once brought them into such gripping interaction. Wolf must have finally felt that he had been written off, like an old unbalanced wife. And some evenings the Professor felt vaguely insulted that this refugee had assimilated so rapidly to his new surroundings, appearing to forget both his lost status as top dog as well as that of prisoner, though it was clear by his newly aggressive behavior that he was also telling the Professor that this new life of bourgeois ease and reflection had little intrinsic charm or value, and could never compare to the unique high culture from which he had been forced to flee.
But throughout these mood swings Wolf maintained for most of the day his old apathy, unassailably entrenched in his indifference to territory. He seemed happiest among strangers in the stairwell, where hierarchy was clearly marked by the steps. Finally, the Professor realized that painful as the consequences might be, something in him preferred the dog’s play for attention to his diffidence. Wolf ’s quieter and more contemplative moods seemed an affront. His patient’s sufferings had ceased prematurely, and the Professor preferred hypochondria to an impoverished ego. If nothing could be done for his nose, then something for his state of mind! The dog had come to him a megalomaniac, and now was entirely incapacitated and dependent upon others, unable even to feed himself or complete a defecation. Wolf had lost interest in his own history, or indeed what might become of him. His was a world which was perfectly adequate without lovers and loved ones, without hope and without fear.
“My dearest Friend,” the Professor wrote Felix:
There is a gap in our letters which is uncanny. Then came your letter today on the fundamentals of the soul, which with its meticulous refutations of my fantasies, typical of a doctor dilettante, I found so refreshing. If I may summarize your lengthy advice in professional language, it would be as follows:
1) Pay attention to the principles of loyalty, not to whatever system they are embedded in.
2) Never use the phrases “before,” “during,” or “after” to explain anything.
3) Hysteria is both a dead language and a new language.
4) Temperament has replaced metaphysics as the basis of philosophy.
Why is it, incidentally, that you never complain of your own health problems, with which I feel, in secret, such biological sympathy? I have noted for some time that you bear your suffering better and with more dignity than I. I have all sorts of doubts about my constitution and often cannot remember what I have found out about it that is new, since everything about it seems to be new. It is as if I am thrown out of the train at every station along the line, and every town is named “If I Can Stand It.” Well enough of that.
My question today is, Why do I admire your utter stoicism, even wish it for myself, yet am suspicious of it in Wolf?
He no longer attempts to capture my favor by anything but the crudest attempts. I believe he is withdrawing from me as his unpleasure disappears from some imagined slight. He still has that conspicuous tic around the eyes, and occasionally he forces his lips into a snout—for sucking? Biting? All day long I try to be kind and witty, original and superior, congenial and conciliating, yet he maintains only a pitiable reserve as a reproach to my efforts, as if all of my insights are equally brilliant, and equally besides the point. A slow piece of work, indeed! Do you remember, in true suffering, his pace was wonderful! I even find myself hoping for a relapse, so I might eradicate every vestige of his precious illness. I dream he becomes miserable again so as to facilitate work, for at present he makes me feel that I have turned into a carcinoma to which nothing will adhere. I am entertaining the thought of applying “pitiless pressure” in the hope of breaking the impasse, of sketching out, as it were, an episode of finality.
Hoarse and breathless, I await your advice.
Your admiring and faithful Friend.
The next day, between dusks of snow flurries and noons of the sharpest brightest sun, the Professor and Wolf were sitting on a bench in the Augarten. The dog seemed uncharacteristically energetic, and the Professor unsnapped his leash to let him roam.
The dog was wearing his new signet collar, a gift from Semper Vero made from medallions awarded in competitions Wolf would not even have been allowed to watch, much less participate in. The Roman coins used as solder gave off a ginger glow, the pride of the Chetvorah, taking even its most worthless cousin into company.
Wolf ambled three-legged down the gravel path, every few steps holding up his damaged paw like a talisman. His was a determined yet relaxed pace, without checking back. He had never ventured farther from his master’s side. The Professor watched him approvingly all the way down the path, until he noticed at the end of the alleé, through the ornate gate, a huge new flag flapping with thundercracks against the facade of the Justizpalast. The government had apparently changed, and he had been so preoccupied with Wolf he hadn’t even noticed it. A military band had struck up. Music without words always made him nervous.
The dog continued down the path, worrying sparrows, who in turn were worrying horse apples, until at last he reached the street, where, persecuted by fate and abandoned by medicine, the beshitted Wolf leapt gracefully into the open rear of a passing van and disappeared.
That evening Father’s belated telegram arrived:
Intervene STOP But remember STOP The lion springs only once!
MR. MOOKS AND THE TYRANT, VOO
(Iulus)
I spoke my own dead, rich language until I was three, when I abruptly forgot it and cried out in my sleep. Mother, surrounded by her bed curtains and hillocks of damask, could not hear. At dawn she would arrive for a brief moment, the cold-nosed Chetvorah beating their famous nail tango about the bed, and with a half-erotic, half-maternal muzzle, she would bring me into that dazed state where all the cells and little cilia are growing a millionth of an inch, putting a bit of her saliva in my nostrils to awaken me to the sweetness of the world, while leaving the devil unexorcised. But when, past midnight, I continued to yowl, Father came with a candle, put the flat of his cool hand upon my wet brow, carrying on imaginary conversations with innkeepers, coachmen, and ferrymen as counter-apparitions. However, my bed sweats remained severe. I was aware that I had a scent not unlike that of a dairy. And for the next seven years I did not sleep, a continuous vertiginous lucidity, both congenital and painful. The problem with not sleeping, of course, is all that time you have to spend with yourself. Everything in life is a preparation for a sleep which will not come, for life is only bearable with the discontinuity it provides. Sleep is the secret of life, and uninterrupted sleeplessness forced from me the inability to forget. Aged prematurely by this dark-circled nothingness, the negative alertness of those nuits blanches, future interrogations by even the most determined and devious institutions were mere child’s play. Indeed, I often went to sleep during them.
In my bedchamber, in the only closet, deep as the room was wide, the tyrant Voo held sway—an enormous well-formed stool, fanned with a bandolier of cartridges, strange drooping epaulets upon his shoulders, and on his helmet an insignia resembling a bolt of broken lightening. He carried a paraffin lamp and a riding crop. My father ignored him, yet acknowledged his presence by telling me not to show fear. The closet door was warped and would not close properly.
The Voo’s tactics were not those of surprise or concealment; indeed, at times he did not seem to know where he was. His drill was routine. Father would read me a final story, kiss me, plump the pillows up, and extinguish the gas jet. Shortly after his leave-taking, the closet door would slowly open and the Voo would emerge with his lamp, turn toward me with perfunctory acknowledgment, then move silently out of the room and down the hall, and I was left waiting, frozen with terror, until he returned from whatever business he was conducting. He generally hurried back in without looking up, returned at once to the closet, and slammed the door.
Needless to say, it took me a very long time to get to even half-asleep, a state which, like half-drunkenness, I came to loathe. Eventually, I learned how to rest without losing consciousness. I occupied myself by singing merrily through the night: ribald folk songs, my own transcriptions of symphonic works, American pop tunes, Christmas carols, and Astingi funeral marches. No song was too sentimental for me.
As my art developed, my parents moved further and further to their respective ends of the house, and the servants made certain my windows were locked even in the most desultory of summers. In my maturity, I still hum these tunes softly, and make do with catnaps. But most of what passes for my childhood could only be called insomnia. My childhood was something I did not share, nor could have had I wanted to.
At breakfast, I would invariably relate the experience of the Voo in all its terrible redundancy, and while at first, if Mother was present, she expressed sympathy, finally she said, “Look here, I am sorry for you. But why must you tell me all this? It is exactly the same each night, and you are well enough in the morning. Don’t you see, dear, there’s nothing to be done about it.” It was the goddess in her talking, her utter boredom with any twice-told tale.
My father did not often have to endure my narration, as he was out on his three-hour morning constitutional, bursting in by the end of the cereal, his glowing face as cold to the touch as steel. But when Mother paraphrased my dream for him—and it seemed to me both more trivial and terrifying when she did so—he would stroke his beard, put his boots upon an andiron, and say, “Well, there’s more to fishing than fishing,” or some such phrase, leaving the matter there, floating in the air like smoke from a sour pipe. His only therapeutic suggestion was to bring in the veterinarian, Vogel, to teach me the anatomy of the horse, as if its tendons and arteries would relieve my mind of the apparition, but which only confirmed my growing disinterest in that walnut-brained species.
After the veterinarian was dismissed, and I continued to relate the alltoo-predictable previous evening’s event throughout the years, Mother finally declared that she was washing her hands of the matter—and I must confess I did not blame her, for owing to her upbringing, she could not quite distinguish between fear and boredom, dream and nightmare. In Father’s considered view, the Voo ought to be accepted simply as another kind of pet, who did not exist to amuse us, or assuage our loneliness, or show off our good taste, but to remind us of the existence of strong opposites, and how by dealing with such otherness with gallantry, we might accumulate value from good habits. And I took his point. What good was it having only superior animals around?
But when I asked him for a watchdog he hedged. While he acknowledged that my unusual “wakefulness” might be useful in housebreaking, he preferred his method, which was to split the litter between his own and Mother’s beds, roust them out early, thanking them profusely for not fouling their coverlets—and indeed, they were usually housebrok
en in less than a week. But he found it hard to trust me with a Chetvorah, a “real pup,” as he put it, for he feared I might communicate my fear to it—and in any case, to teach a Chetvorah to be a guard dog was a waste of his abilities—something on the order of teaching a ballerina kung fu. The pups, they loved him more. They always loved him more. And in this too, they were blameless. The last thing a young pup needs is a child with a Voo.
One day (or perhaps one night, it was increasingly all the same to me), something mysterious happened, a first-order experience, such as losing my first language. The Voo had come and gone with his benign regularity. He seemed rather more withdrawn, as if he were preoccupied, but there was, nonetheless, no peace to be had. I diligently fought my way into a final imitation of slumber, a battle on the heights of the abyss, and the next morning I “awoke” late, groggy and unfulfilled, aware of some heat about my feet. I looked up thinking that the Voo had finally gone deadly, only to see a pair of bright eyes staring back at me and a tail like a fan wiping the air behind them. It was a new companion: Mr. Mooks.
In Partial Disgrace Page 17