Fifteen Dogs

by André Alexis

  – The tall bitch is dead.

  – What has happened? asked Majnoun.

  – She was attacked by our kind, a pack of them. They are near our den now.

  – How many? asked Majnoun.

  – Many, said Max, but they are not as big as we are.

  – We must defend our home, said Atticus.

  Frick and Frack ran before Majnoun, Max and Atticus on either side of him. Not far from the coppice, the brothers turned around and attacked Majnoun without warning. Max and Atticus joined in at once. The dogs were quick and merciless, and although Majnoun tried to run for shelter they had him. The four bit at Majnoun, sinking teeth into his flanks, his neck, the tendons of his legs, his stomach and genitals. Had it been daylight, the conspirators might have been gratified by the sight of Majnoun’s blood. They might have been even more aroused, so intoxicating was the taste of blood and the adrenaline of murder.

  If it had been day and if they had been a little less excited, they might have made certain Majnoun was dead. As it was, they went at him until he no longer resisted, until his body’s spasms stopped. Then they left him for dead, returning to the coppice to begin a new life that was to be, in effect, an obsession with the old one.

  2

  MAJNOUN AND BENJY

  When Majnoun awakened, he was in a house that smelled of peanut butter and fried liver. He lay in a wicker basket lined with a thick, orange blanket that smelled of something sweet, soapy and human. He tried to move but found he could not. It was too painful and, as well, moving was awkward. His abdomen was shaved and he was bound with white bandages that smelled of oil and pine and something indefinable. His face itched but there was a plastic cone around his head: the narrow end of the cone was cut so that the aperture fit around his neck, the wide end projecting out like a megaphone. Even if he’d wanted to scratch his face, he could not have done so. All four of his legs were shaven and bandaged. He raised his head, the better to see where he was, but he was nowhere: a whitish room with windows that looked out on a sky that was blue and bright.

  During his attack – which he suddenly recalled with a vividness that was painful – he had assumed that the darkness he was falling into would be endless. He had given some thought to death in the time he’d been free and he had assumed that his death had come. This whitish room seemed to be proof he was still alive and, unexpectedly, he was disappointed. What was the point of living on after what he’d been through?

  Wishing to know where he was, Majnoun raised his head higher. He tried to call out, but his voice was low and faint and it was painful to bark. Still, he barked as carefully as he could.

  Behind him there came the thud of steps.

  – He’s awake, a voice spoke.

  And the face of a human male eclipsed the room.

  – How you feeling? the man asked.

  The face of a human female jostled the man’s face out of Majnoun’s field of vision.

  – You’re so lucky! Aren’t you lucky! Who’s the lucky boy, eh? Who’s the lucky boy?

  – I don’t think he’ll be able to get up for quite a while, said the man. I wonder if he’s hungry.

  Hungry was a word Majnoun knew well. Using his own language, he clicked, whined and weakly barked out the words that meant he was indeed hungry.

  – I know you’re in pain, boy. Try not to get excited, the woman said.

  Then, to the man

  – I think he’s too weak to eat.

  – You might be right, said the man, but let’s see.

  The man left the room and returned with a plate of white rice and chopped chicken livers. He put the plate down in front of Majnoun (it smelled divine!), unclasped the plastic cone, and watched as Majnoun gingerly moved closer to the plate and – without sitting up – took in a mouthful of food with a sidewise swipe of his tongue.

  – I guess I was wrong, said the woman. He is hungry.

  – Why don’t you name him?

  – You think we should keep him?

  – Why not? Once he gets better he can keep you company during the day.

  – Okay. Why don’t we call him Lord Jim?

  – You want to name him after the world’s most boring book?

  – If I wanted to do that, I’d call him Golden Bowl.

  Listening to the noise the humans made, Majnoun was reminded of how unpredictably consequential their sounds were. When he’d lived with his family, the humans would make any number of sounds, none of which had anything at all to do with him. Then, from out of the fog of inconsequential noise, something meaningful would come: his name would be called, for instance, and a bowl of food that he had left for later would be taken up or a doorbell would sound, someone would shout, and he, clearly the only one who cared about these sporadic invasions of their territory, would have to bark at the intruder or jump up on it to make certain it was submissive and no threat to any of them.

  As he ate his rice and chicken livers, Majnoun paid attention to the humans, ready to eat faster if they reached down for the plate.

  – What a good eater! said the woman. What a good dog!

  Then, exhausted, Majnoun lay back in the wicker basket. He allowed the man to rub him with foul-smelling goo and refasten the cone. He was asleep by the time they left him alone.

  It was six months before Majnoun could stand up for more than a few minutes at a time. Even then, he could not use the back leg whose tendons had been most damaged. For a long time, he was essentially three-legged. Also, it was humiliating to be unable to shit and piss outside. The humans made it even worse by putting underpants on him. They changed him regularly, but not always as quickly as he would have liked.

  In the months it took him to recover, he had little to do but lie in his bed and think about life: his life, life in general. It pained him to do this, because his thoughts inevitably returned to the night of his betrayal. He had been betrayed by the dog with the crumpled face. He had spoken his mind and heart, struggling to express himself out of a sense of fraternity. In return, the crumpled-face dog had been among those who’d tried to kill him. And yet, it sometimes seemed to Majnoun that the others had been right to attack him. He had drifted so far from his instincts, it was not clear – even to himself – that he deserved to live as a dog.

  For months, the only thing that distracted him from these sometimes painful thoughts were the humans. They fascinated and frustrated him in equal measure. What, if he were called to give an account of humans, would he say about them? Where would he begin? How to define their smells, for instance? Complex: foods and sweat interrupted by unplaceable odours. They generally smelled of unusual things, but the human smell he liked best was when they were mating. It was sharp and true and comforting, so that on some nights, after they’d moved his basket into their bedroom, he slept more peacefully, the smell of their copulating acting as a kind of tranquilizer.

  Then, too, he gradually learned more about their language, moving beyond its rudiments. To begin with, he took in the subtleties of tone. For instance, one would speak to the other in a rising voice and then you could feel the expectation until the one who’d been addressed spoke back. The tone seemed to matter more than the words themselves. And it was always a little odd when they used the rising tone with him, as if waiting for a rejoinder, as if they expected him to understand.

  – Are you hungry, Jim?

  – Want to go outside, Jim?

  – Is Jimmy cold? Are you cold, Lord Jim?

  In fact, Majnoun’s fascination with tone of voice is what led to his first serious contretemps with the woman. He spent most of his time with the woman. She seemed the more interested in his company, moving his basket from the bedroom to a room with a large desk. She’d spend hours at the desk, getting up only to stretch or to speak to him or to bring a cup from the kitchen. One day, she rose from the desk, stretched, wandered to his basket, scratched his head and said

  – Are you hungry, Jim? Would you like a treat?

  Majnoun though
t about it, then said

  – Yes.

  Though the sound yes was difficult for him to produce, he had been practising it for himself, along with the sound no and any number of other significant words. He had also practised nodding, to indicate assent, and shaking his head from left to right to indicate dissent. When the woman asked if he wanted a treat, he was not certain which was more effective: the nod of assent or the spoken ‘yes.’ For a few moments after saying ‘yes,’ he was still not certain, because the woman was immobile, staring at him. Confused by her reaction, Majnoun looked her in the eyes, nodded and then said again

  – Yes.

  The woman began breathing quickly, then fell to the floor. She did not move for several minutes. Unsure what was expected of him – he had never encountered this sudden human immobility – Majnoun lowered his head, licked the fur on his paw and waited to see what would happen. After a while, the woman stirred, mumbling to herself. Then she got up. Perhaps, thought Majnoun, she’s unsure if she understood me right. He looked up at her, nodded and said

  – Treat.

  This time, she cried out and ran from the room in terror. It occurred to Majnoun that what he had taken for straightforward – the rising tone, the appropriate response – was a more complicated transaction than he’d surmised. Certainly, when the man had said the word yes or the word treat, the woman had not run from him. Perhaps, he thought, there was some subtle, accompanying sound that he’d missed: a click of the tongue, a whine, a small growl. He could not recall having heard the man make such sounds. At most, the man put an arm around her shoulder when speaking. Perhaps, then, he ought to have touched her before saying ‘yes’?

  Next time, thought Majnoun, I’ll touch her shoulder if she leans down.

  What followed was so unpleasant, however, that there was to be no ‘next time’ for a very long time indeed. The consequences of his having spoken were clear: the woman was now frightened of him. She would not enter any room he happened to be in. Then the man took Majnoun to a place where he was left overnight. The following day, Majnoun was prodded, poked, given needles, fed food that did not taste proper and kept for observation in a cage beside other dogs who grew aggressive at the smell of him. This was humanity, this unpredictability, this cruel behaviour and bullying. The worst of it was, in his weakened state, he could not open the door to his cage. He had no choice but to attend his fate.

  The whole business provided a good, if unexpected, lesson. He would almost certainly have tried to communicate with cats or squirrels, mice or birds, if he could make out their language. He might have tried to communicate with any species. From that moment on, however, he resolved to hide his knowledge of human language from humans themselves. It was evident that, for whatever reason, humans could not stand to be spoken to by dogs.

  On the third day, the woman returned for him herself.

  Just as Majnoun was settling into sleep, the other dogs having grown tired of threatening him, the door to the room opened and the woman was led in by one of the men who’d held him down so that a man in white could take some of his blood. The man opened the door to his cage and, not without trepidation, Majnoun followed the woman out.

  Once on the street, it occurred to Majnoun that he ought to run for it. The evening was inviting. It was late spring. The sun had not quite set. A reddish strand lay over the buildings in the distance. But, of course, Majnoun was still hampered by his injuries, by the pain he experienced when running. He could not have run for long and he would only have exhausted himself or, worse, got himself lost in territory he did not know. So he climbed into the back seat of the car.

  Rather than go to the driver’s seat, the woman climbed in the back with him.

  – I’m sorry I sent you to that place, she said, but you frightened me. Do you understand?

  Resigned to whatever would come, but firm in his resolve not to speak human words, Majnoun nodded.

  – What are you? she asked. Are you a dog?

  A surprisingly difficult question to answer. He did not feel very much like a dog. He felt adrift between species. But he knew what she meant by the word, so again he nodded.

  – You have to understand, she said, that dogs never speak to people. It’s never happened, as far as I know. I thought you were possessed. That’s why I was frightened. What’s your name?

  This Majnoun would not say, not only because ‘Majnoun,’ the name his master had given him, was difficult for him to pronounce, not only because he would not speak, but also because it seemed to him that he no longer had a true name. He stared at the woman, then shook his head.

  – My name is Nira, she said. Do you mind if I call you Jim?

  An impossible question. Majnoun was unsure what Nira wanted to know. Did he accept the name ‘Jim’? Yes, why not? Did he feel displeasure at the thought that she would use the name ‘Jim’ when referring to him? No, he did not. He stared at her and then, guessing at the appropriate signal, nodded his head.

  – You’re never going to speak to me again, are you? Nira asked.

  Another difficult question. He did not intend to use human words, but as far as he was concerned he was speaking to her. This time, he did not answer. He turned to look out the window at the lamplit park on the other side of the street.

  – Never mind, said Nira. It’s my fault. You don’t have to speak if you don’t want to.

  In all the time they spent together before Majnoun spoke again, Nira never asked him to speak. In fact, she grew to admire his wordlessness. Majnoun rarely barked. He could see no point in using a language he knew Nira did not understand. He communicated all of his needs and most of his thoughts with a nod or a shake of the head. And as they grew closer, Nira needed even less from him. She learned to read his expression, the disposition of his body, the tilt of his head.

  At that moment, however, the two sitting in the back of the Honda Civic, it was not obvious that they would develop anything like ‘understanding’ or ‘friendship.’ Nira was still frightened of Majnoun. Yes, he was obviously hobbled, unable to walk for long without stopping and lying down, and his limitations called forth her pity. It’s why they’d taken him in, after finding him clinging to life in High Park. But the thought that an intelligent being was in their home, that she had let this creature into her bedroom, into the very heart of her private life … the thought was as humiliating as it was frightening. It took her a long time to overcome these feelings. Majnoun never again slept in her bedroom, for instance, and she ever after felt embarrassed whenever she came upon him licking his genitals.

  What helped bind the two was the quality of Majnoun’s silence. It was sophisticated, the kind of silence that invited response. Nira spoke to him, at first, about trivial things: work, home renovations, the minor annoyances of living with her husband, Miguel. Gradually, she began to open up about deeper matters: her thoughts about life and death, her feelings about other humans, her concerns for her own well-being – she had survived a bout of cancer and was, at times, helplessly afraid of its return.

  Though Majnoun was neither smarter nor quicker than she was, Nira gave him credit for a wisdom she supposed must come from his unique vantage on the world. But it did not always occur to her that Majnoun’s vantage also limited his ability to imagine or understand her concerns. For instance, when she complained that her husband was terribly untidy, that he had the disgusting habit of cutting his toenails and biting the clippings, Majnoun looked at her, utterly perplexed. It seemed to him that Miguel was right to groom himself this way. Did she wish to bite Miguel’s clippings herself, he wondered.

  On another occasion, while he lay in his wicker basket, she asked

  – Do you believe in God?

  Majnoun had never heard the word before. He’d tilted his head, as if to ask her to repeat the question. And she did her best to explain the concept behind the word. As Majnoun took it, the word seemed to refer to a ‘master of all masters.’ Did he believe in such a being? The thought had never occurred t
o him, but he supposed such a being was possible. So, when she asked the question again, he nodded to say ‘yes.’ This was not the answer she wanted.

  – How can you believe such a ridiculous thing? she asked. I suppose you believe God is a dog?

  Majnoun believed no such thing. He believed only that the ‘god’ Nira had described was possible, the same way that he believed a bitch perpetually in heat was possible. A ‘master of all masters’ was an idea, but it was one that did not concern him, so he could not understand Nira’s contempt. They had similar misunderstandings when they spoke of ‘government’ (a group of masters deciding how a pack should behave) and ‘religion’ (a group of masters deciding how a pack should behave toward a master of masters). The more Nira spoke of these things, the more difficult it was for Majnoun to believe that any group of masters – especially human ones – could act in concert, whatever the purpose or end. So that both ‘government’ and ‘religion’ began to seem like very bad ideas.

  Perhaps the most frustrating moment – for both of them – came when Nira asked if he had ever loved another dog. As with god, Majnoun had no idea what the word love meant. Nira did her best over several days to give him a sense of the word’s meaning, but Majnoun found her definitions contradictory, frustrating and vague. The word corresponded to no emotion he could recognize, but her ideas were intriguing enough to keep him attentive. For her part, Nira was convinced that any animal as sensitive as Majnoun must have felt love.

  – The feeling you had for your mother, she said, that’s one of the meanings of love.

  But if Majnoun had ever known his mother, it had been too brief an acquaintance to stimulate any specific emotion. Nor were there likelier candidates for Majnoun’s love. His master? His master had been a master, and one was loyal to masters out of habit, fear, or necessity. Certainly, Majnoun had enjoyed his time as a pup. He was grateful for his master. At the thought of him, Majnoun recalled moments of sheer pleasure chasing a ball thrown in a patchy field, inexpressible joy. But where his master was concerned, Majnoun’s emotions were more complex and much darker than ‘love,’ encompassing as they did feelings of resentment and dislike. No, if he had to choose a human word, Majnoun would have chosen loyalty to express what he felt for his master. (For this reason, despite feeling nameless, he’d have preferred Nira call him Majnoun, the name his master had given him.)