Egon is seven years old. He is one of the largest and most powerful German police dogs ever bred in the kennels of Berlin. Even when he was very young, he cost as much as a high-powered automobile. He has been owned since he was a yearling by Benjamin Ficklin Finney, Jr., sometime student in residence at the University of Virginia and, later, a captain in the United States Marines in France where, I need hardly add, he was popularly known as Finney la Guerre.
Benjamin Ficklin Finney, Sr., stays the year round in Sewanee, Tenn., where he is the Regent of the University of the South. Benjamin Ficklin Finney, Jr., having inherited (from his mother) the famous Penelo Plantation at Tarboro, N.C., stays nowhere at all very long and, to put it in a nutshell, does nothing at all.
When last heard from, Massa Ben, as the old planter is sometimes called, was on his way into the depths of Indo-China, with a rifle over his shoulder and a commission from the Chicago Field Museum to come out with the pelt of some animal that most stay-at-homes would think of as not really being worth all that trouble.
You may possibly have read of Massa Ben in the tabloids, for he has been variously reported, at one time or another, as engaged to Betty Compson, Marilyn Miller, Ruth Goldbeck, Constance Talmadge and, in fact, practically everyone, with the possible exception of Mrs. Leslie Carter. But, for the most part, Finney is as inconspicuous as the husband of some famous star. He is known all over the world just as that nice-looking young man who owns Egon. Egon, in turn, has an excessively high opinion of the value of his master to society, tempered, to be sure, by his occasional suspicion that Massa Ben is not quite bright and will probably get drowned in the Mediterranean if Egon is not there to keep an eye on him.
Indeed, Egon’s single social gaucherie derives from his arrant assumption that he is the only good swimmer in the world. This made him more than a little trying when I first met him in Antibes. That was before the days of the congestion caused by the comparatively recent notion that all the best people naturally spend the summer in that still somewhat surprised portion of the Riviera. In those days, the silence of the Antibes nights was broken only by the sweet music of the nightingales and the cries of the wounded borne faintly on the wind from the Casino at Juan les Pins; the silence of the mornings only by the sound of Tennessee’s own Grace Moore firmly practicing the scales in her pink villa at the Cap.
The Honorable Montague Norman, Governor of the Bank of England, would gather his peignoir about him, proceed majestically down the leafy footway from the hotel, pause on the rocks for a bit of sun and then cleave the turquoise depths with his venerable person. He might get out quite a distance when Egon would hurry forward, wearing his Drat-the-man-he’s-in-again expression. Failing utterly to conceal his deep enjoyment of this further load of responsibility thrown upon him by the incompetence of the human race, he would run out on the spring-board, throw up his head in a clamor of scolding and then leap into the sea, heading like a destroyer toward the unsuspecting financier. A little later, a coastful of lazy human molluscs would chuckle at the spectacle of the Honorable Montague Norman being helplessly delivered on shore.
I have heard people, with dry bathing-suits, loudly wonder why swimmers thus lent themselves to Egon’s palpable exhibitionism. They were foolish, it seems, to let themselves be rescued. I myself used to say that, until the day came when I had grown so dear to him that he just could not bear the thought of my drowning out there in the Mediterranean. It is quite useless to resist. You know the trick the life guards are taught when they must deal with the witless and hampering struggles of a drowning person. The life guard must haul back with his free hand, sock the little struggler on the jaw and then, undisturbed, tow his unconscious form to shore. It is an old trick along the beaches of the world, and Egon learned it early. Of course he does not knock you unconscious. He merely strokes your bare skin with his paws until you shriek with agony, and, in crises, he bites you. You yourself would soon abandon the notion of resistance if you could see this fiend in canine form, only slightly smaller than Man o’ War, bearing down on you with the resolution of the Twentieth Century Limited and wearing, when you try playfully to evade him, an expression of wordless rage that fairly chills the blood. “Oh, well,” you say, “if that’s the way you feel about it,” and you put a consenting hand on his still angry hackles. At that gesture of surrender, he circles like a wherry and heads for shore, the very throb of his engine suggesting that he could take on a few dozen more if need be.
Of course, he himself is no mean swimmer. When urged, he makes a pretty forty-foot dive from the high rocks, first devoting some time to a preliminary barking, which is part genuine misgivings, part excitement and part sheer showmanship, because it would be so foolish to dive until enough people were looking that way. But in the end he does dive, clean and straight and proud as Lucifer.
And he rides a surf board. He cannot mount one unaided, but I have seen Scott Fitzgerald help his floundering efforts to get on. Then Fitzgerald would slip off into the water and Egon would ride alone, balancing expertly and terribly pleased with himself. Indeed, he can thus circle the bay indefinitely, provided only that Ben Finney is in the motor boat in plain sight. Otherwise, after a minute, you can fairly see Egon’s eyes cloud with a worry as to where that fool Finney of his is. Fallen into the water, perhaps, and probably going down for the last time. It is too much. Egon will turn around, scan the sea, lose his balance in consequence and pitch crestfallen and furious into the water. By the time he comes up for air, the motor boat is half way to Cannes.
There was a time when serious thought was given to the notion of starring Egon in the movies, in order that, in the course of time, he might succeed the ageing Rin Tin Tin as John Barrymore succeeded Forbes-Robertson. Indeed, once when he was spending the winter in Florida a few years ago, he wandered impromptu into a picture that the late Barbara La Marr was making there and came close to running away with her triumph. It was quite evident that (in the pattern of the favorite Hollywood bedtime story) he could easily step from movie extra to star overnight. If nothing came of this project, I suspect it was because the roving Finney would not stay in one country long enough to let Egon have a career.
Probably it is just as well, for Hollywood compels its dog stars to perform only the most routine heroics, and a really interesting scenario—something that Egon could have got his teeth into, as I believe the actors phrase it—would never have been suffered to reach the production stage.
Finney will probably come out of Indo-China and head straight for Antibes before the summer is half gone. It is planned that Egon should meet him there. It was first suggested that I act as escort on his return to the Riviera, but I declined, though not for fear of his getting lost while in my charge. You do not even have to tether Egon, for, if only you will give him his leash to take charge of, he regards it as a point of honor to pretend he is tied up. It is, however, comparatively easy to steal him if you happen to know his one weakness. He will get into any automobile.
But once that has been accomplished, the thief’s troubles are only beginning. For it just is not possible to own Egon inconspicuously. More than once a taxi driver in discharging a fare has noticed with surprise and pleasure that a large and obviously valuable police dog has stepped quietly in through the still open door and settled himself on the seat as though affably waiting to be driven somewhere. You can easily imagine the sequence of thoughts which then visits that driver. Probably his first impulse is to turn down his flag and ask what address. His second, perhaps, is to howl with fear. His third is to drive quietly home and present the creature to his wife and kiddies. It is then that misgivings come, for you cannot take Egon even as far as the nearest lamp post without drawing a crowd. And when, as has happened several times, his mysterious disappearance is broadcast over the radio, he is instantly and even thankfully returned, with some implausible story about having been found astroll in Long Island City.
Nor, if I declined him as a traveling companion for this summer, w
as it because he is any nuisance to have around. Indeed, he can be a positive convenience. For instance, you could meet anyone you wish to on the boat by taking Egon for one turn around the promenade deck. He has been Massa Ben’s entire social credentials for some years past and he has done even more for him than that. Once when Finney lost his passport and had to get across three pesky little frontiers without one, he and Egon would merely descend from the train on the wrong side while the other passengers were docilely filing through the inspection line. Each time when sundry officials noticed this evasion and bustled importantly forward to investigate it, Finney would just whisper some magical word in Egon’s ear and Egon would leap murderously forward, in the manner and with the general effect of the Hound of the Baskervilles. Each time the officials seemingly thought it best to drop the whole matter.
It was, therefore, no fear of his being a nuisance that bade me forswear the considerable pleasure and social importance to be derived from crossing the Atlantic with Egon. I merely wished to avoid the personal grief which, sooner or later, is the inevitable portion of his every interim boss. When he is in New York, for instance, he hangs around with William Zelcer, who owns the White Horse Tavern. They are great friends, and every morning Zelcer goes to the trouble of driving the full circuit of Central Park so that, by loping behind, Egon can get his exercise. Then Egon returns the compliment by waiting gloomily in the carriage-starter’s shack outside the New York Athletic Club while Zelcer is inside getting his exercise. He sleeps on the floor at the foot of Zelcer’s bed at the Hotel Hawthorne and sometimes, when he is very crafty, on the bed itself, although it is no easy task for him to hoist his vast and guilty bulk onto the counterpane without being noticed. He keeps trying, however, and, as I have said, he is good enough to look after things in the coat-room at the Tavern.
But if Finney should walk in from Indo-China tomorrow, Egon would not only cut Zelcer dead on the street, but if there were the contretemps of a meeting at some party, he would growl ominously and show his fangs in order to make it a matter of record (to Zelcer, to Finney and to whomever it might concern) just where his affections are centred, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health—world without end.
| 1928 |
HIS LIFE AS A DOG
REBECCA MEAD
To look at Spencer Beglarian, an actor who lives in Los Angeles, you would not guess that he has been typecast as a dog. Beglarian isn’t especially canine in appearance—he is slight and neat, with dark hair and gray eyes, and does not bound or slobber as a matter of course. Beglarian, though, is on his way to being the acting world’s go-to “dog” guy, in the same way that, say, Jack Black is Hollywood’s go-to smart-and-funny fat guy. He has appeared as a dog three times recently: first in a Los Angeles production of Stray Dog Story, a play by Robert Chesley, in which he had the part of Buddy, a dog who has been turned into a gay man but retains a canine heart and mind; as Sparky the Dog-Man, in an episode of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch; and now, in his most substantial dog role so far, in Dog Days, a short film that will be screened in New York next week, as part of the Independent Feature Project’s Buzz Cuts series. The film, directed by Ellie Lee, and based on a short story by Judy Budnitz, is an unsettling family drama set in a grim, post-nuclear American town, and Beglarian plays a man who has taken on the persona of a stray dog named Prince. He hangs around outside a family’s home on his hands and knees, wearing a dog suit, hoping for scraps of food and affection. In the process, he serves as a mirror of the family members’ humanity or inhumanity. The role is a demanding one: like a real dog, Beglarian has to communicate without speaking, although, unlike a real dog, he doesn’t have a tail to wag.
When he is asked how he goes about inhabiting the character of a dog, Beglarian’s nose starts to twitch. “I don’t think I have become more doglike physically after playing these roles,” he said recently, sitting poolside at a Los Angeles hotel—the kind of place where dogs are not allowed. “But philosophically I have. I look at every dog now, and I connect with dogs as I never did before.” Although he has become known as someone who gives good dog, Beglarian says that he has never played the same dog twice. He hasn’t even played the same breed twice. “In Stray Dog, I imagined I was a Jack Russell terrier—very high-energy,” he said. (In the play, he goes to a gay-pride march and starts howling with joy.) “Whereas Dog Days was more like a Labrador—older, slower, but just as constant and intense in his affection. Then Sparky was one of those Australian sheepdogs.”
Beglarian does not own a dog, so in order to prepare for his roles he does field work. To get ready to play Buddy, he did some surveillance at a local Starbucks that is popular with dog walkers. “You really can communicate with dogs if you take time to focus and look in their eyes,” he said. For Dog Days, his acting coach was a dog that belonged to one of the film’s financial backers. “That dog was rather old, but quite loving,” he said. During filming, Beglarian intentionally ate less, so as to be more convincing as a starving dog-man. And he drew upon the discomfort he felt while wearing a furry dog suit in hot weather to convey the misery of being a post-apocalyptic stray.
Beglarian, who is forty, and who teaches and writes in addition to acting, has come away from his dog studies with more than a killer whimper and a convincing way of cocking his head. There are, he says, life lessons to be learned from the canine world. “I think you can learn patience from dogs,” he said. “How to stay with something with persistence, but not in a ferocious, manic way.”
In exploring canine nature, he drew upon an early formative experience. “While I was at Yale drama school, I was very depressed for a time,” he explained. “One day, I was in New York, in this really small, split-level apartment that belonged to a friend who was trying to make it as an actress. She had a black Lab, and the Lab had a toy. I remember throwing this toy down the stairs. I kept throwing it and throwing it, and there was as much joy on the part of the dog the last time he returned it as there had been the first time. There would have been more joy eternally. It struck me that there’s something Zen about that—doing something that might seem menial, but if you have joy in it you are happy. This is a kind of wisdom that dogs have.”
| 2001 |
YOUR FACE ON THE DOG’S NECK
It is early afternoon.
You sit on the grass
with your rough face on the dog’s neck.
Right now
you are both as still as a snapshot.
That infectious dog ought to let a fly bother her,
ought to run out in an immense field,
chasing rabbits and skunks,
mauling the cats, licking insects off her rump,
and stop using you up.
My darling, why do you lean on her so?
I would touch you—
that pulse brooding under your madras shirt,
each shoulder the most well-built house,
the arms, thin birches that do not escape the breeze,
the white teeth that have known me,
that wait at the bottom of the brook,
and the tongue, my little fish! …
But you are stopped in time.
So I will speak of your eyes,
although they are closed.
Tell me, where is each stubborn-colored iris?
Where are the quick pupils that make
the floor tilt under me?
I see only the lids, as tough as riding boots.
Why have your eyes gone into their own room?
Good night they are saying
from their little leathery doors.
Or shall I sing of eyes
that have been ruined with mercy and lust,
and once with your own death,
when you lay bubbling like a caught fish,
sucking on the manufactured oxygen?
Or shall I sing of eyes
that are resting so near the hair
of that hateful animal?
&
nbsp; Love twists me, a Spanish flute plays in my blood,
and yet I can see only
your little sleep, an empty place.
But when your eyes open
against the wool stink of her thick hair,
against the faint sickening neck of that dog,
whom I envy like a thief,
what will I ask?
Will I speak up, saying
there is a hurried song, a certain seizure
from which I gasp?
Or will your eyes lie in wait,
little field mice nestling on their paws?
Perhaps they will say nothing,
perhaps they will be dark and leaden,
having played their own game
somewhere else,
somewhere far off.
Oh, I have learned them, and know that
when they open and glance at me
I will turn like a little dancer,
and then, quite simply,
and all by myself,
I will fall,
bound to some mother/father,
bound to your sight,
bound for nowhere
and everywhere.
Or perhaps, my darling,
because it is early afternoon,
I will forget that my voice is full of good people,
forget how my legs could sprawl on the terrace,
The Big New Yorker Book of Dogs Page 25