by Will Wiles
I began my walk back, following the course of the canal. Underfoot was a patchwork of materials: heaving herringbone brick, swatches of cobble, listing, gritty concrete, bare packed earth. The fabric of the city had transformed as I walked along the unchanging canal, and I had not noticed. My eyes had been lowered, looking for debris to serve as ballast, and I had missed the change in skyline.
Nothing moved except me and the traces of brown dust kicked up by my feet. The sun was at its peak. On the other side of the canal were three short cranes, their delicate arms raised as if to shield their eyes from the yellow light. The building ahead, six storeys of evacuated factory, had brick walls braced by a crude concrete frame, like ribs on a Halloween skeleton. I saw that it extended to the canal’s edge – there was no way around on the water side without returning to the steps and walking back along the towpath. The other route, the one I decided to take, was to turn away from the canal and walk deeper into this industrial zone. There was a passage or road parallel to the canal just a short distance away; my only concern was that I would lose sight of the canal for a long period, or be forced to move even further away from it and become disoriented as a prelude to getting properly lost. But the sun was bright and the silence of the zone seemed to be some protection – surely assailants would pick a place where there were people to assail. There was no one here.
The passage parallel to the canal was in fact wide enough to be a city street, but the word ‘street’ seemed wrong, implying a life or a sense of purpose that this dejected thoroughfare lacked. This was just a long space between buildings. A railway ran down its middle, set into the cobbles like a tramline. The metal tracks were silted with dirt, and had clearly not seen a train in decades. The broad utilitarian walls of the buildings were enlivened by messages just under their roof line, square capital letters the height of a man in flaking white paint. In Britain, these would have been the names of the company or its owners – here, I thought, they might be socialist slogans, stripped of meaning by the evaporation of workers and production. Rubbish of all descriptions was piled against the walls on either side – unidentifiable orange-scaled chunks of machinery, smashed wooden palettes, heaps of box files and green-lined paper liquescing under many rains. An office swivel chair, its fabric and padding ripped off by someone or something, stood in my path like a Dalek rape victim. Less than an hour ago I had been struggling to think of suitable places to dispose of the cat. And now, having ditched the bag, I had discovered this wasteland had been here all along, a corpse-throw away from Oskar’s flat. Acres of land in which a dead cat would feel right at home.
‘More than enough room to sling a cat,’ I said to myself. And I laughed, loudly, an act that felt curiously deviant in its lack of inhibition, like leaving the door to the lavatory open when the house is empty.
Ahead, something large moved. I froze. A man in a plastic raincoat was rising out of one of the piles of rubbish – no, it was a large sheet of translucent plastic wrapping picked up by a breath of wind and folding over lazily. The breeze that propelled it reached me, and the moisture on my brow chilled.
At the end of the passage was another wide open area, mostly covered in aged concrete, broken as if dropped from a great height onto an uneven surface. Triassic weeds indulged themselves in the sun. On both sides were low metal sheds, ends towards me like empty wine racks, pitched roofs a sharp sawtooth line against the bright blue of the sky. Rust metastasised through the frames of these sheds so completely they seemed to hiss with decay. I thought of asbestos, toxins on the fly, and my throat tickled nervously. But my chest was filled with relief – in front of me, beyond this open space, was a brick row studded haphazardly with windows and strafed with black drainpipes. It was the back of a terrace of houses, the resumption of a cityscape that was at least a little familiar. Beyond that line, I thought, it would be a straightforward matter to find the street that led back to Oskar’s building.
I stopped. The concrete had buckled like an ice floe being compacted by its own gathering mass. I stood atop a great sheet that had tilted through subsidence to form a geometric ridge. From this relative high point, I had an uninterrupted view of the terrain ahead.
It was alive with stray dogs. Perhaps there were fewer than a dozen of them, but they roamed in broad, speedy arabesques through the steroidal weeds, infesting the whole space. Their leanness, their nervy energy, and their rough hair told me in a glance that none of them had known an owner. But I was also drawing on another instinct. Some unknowably old circuit in my brain had made its calculation, and these animals clearly crawled with threat. A straight line across to where the houses met the canal bank would take me directly through their territory.
For a handful of seconds I stood on the ridge looking down at the dogs. I then realised that my clear view of them gave them a clear view of me and retreated down the concrete slope. Backtracking further, back to the canal, was a possibility; but perhaps the dogs infested the landscape I had just crossed, and I had simply been oblivious to them. The thought of being pinned in that industrial alley, with dogs to the front and rear, was scarcely very appealing. Retreating would also mean returning to the canalside spot where I had disposed of the cat, and possibly confronting it again in its black shroud. That would be to revisit a place I had told myself there was no need to see ever again. Ahead of me, though, was comparatively open country.
I started to walk towards the open line of sheds between me and the canal bank. It didn’t seem to be possible to walk along the bank itself, but I could skirt the edge of the open space and hope that the dogs either did not notice me or at least did not take an interest in me. My pace, I hoped, resembled neither predator nor prey, while still covering the ground as fast as was seemly. The concrete underfoot was stained brown by rusty water dripping off the sheds; it flaked with age. Grit crackled under the soles of my shoes. Worried that I was making too much noise, I slowed down, and looked up. The roofs of the sheds had reduced to something notional, like the skeleton of a leaf striving to fill the same area with a fraction of the substance. My breathing seemed to involve more effort than usual. What I didn’t want to do was to look towards the dogs – it was as if the strafe of my gaze would alert them, that eye contact was the thing that they locked on to. But there was surely no animal in history that evaded predators by not looking at them. So was that it, then, had I already cast myself in the role of prey? Couldn’t I just be a passer-by, passing through? I tried to emulate a casual glance in the direction of the dogs.
They had seen me. They were watching. Their lazy circling prowl had been broken and the six to eight dogs I could see were all turned in my direction watching back. But I realised I was craning my neck to see them, they were already a little behind me – I was past the bulk of the pack. The ground was uneven underfoot, with sheets of oxidising corrugated iron and broken glass scattered over the heaving cobbles, and I had to look away to make sure I didn’t stumble – stumbling, I was sure, would be bad. How would they signal an attack – by barking? All I could hear was my own rough breathing.
A flicker in my peripheral vision. I looked back. The dogs were moving. Three or four of them were trotting parallel to my path, heads all turned in my direction. Stumbling clearly didn’t worry them. Their relaxed lope seemed insolent, a mockery of my mounting fear. I let my speed increase again, an acid taste in my dry mouth. They matched my new pace, and I saw that they were in fact not walking parallel to me, but instead closing the gap between us. There was no retreating now; I cursed myself for not returning to the canal when I had the chance, for letting a sentiment trump millions of years of instinct.
My escape route was clearly in view. Ahead, the line of houses was broken by a narrow alley, and through that alley was an enticing gleam, the sun bouncing off the bodywork of passing cars. It was an awesomely inviting and promising prospect, yet a great gulf seemed to separate me from it. The problem, my problem, was now not so much one of distance as it was a question of time and geom
etry. The dogs, four of them, black and brown, were describing an arc towards me. They were within ten feet, closer perhaps, a leash-length away, and if I stopped dead now, they could be upon me in half a second. At our present speeds, their route would intersect with mine at some point in the imminent future. My concern was that they would reach the alley before me, cutting off my exit. I continued to slowly accelerate, still walking, but moving faster and faster. They matched me. The alley was only thirty feet away, but the equation did not look promising. My gait was increasingly absurd, my legs stiff, each stride jarring, but I was still on the slower side of the line that separates walking from running. The line vexed me. If I threw my body past it, broke into a run, I knew that I could cover the remaining stretch in negligible time; but my muscles and limbs would be speaking a different language, the language of flight, a broadcast that easily transcended species boundaries in its meaning. The dogs would know the message, for sure: unambiguous fear, something I was certain already trailed from me like lines of signal flags. What cues were they picking up from me? Were there traces of dead cat in my olfactory spectrum? Did that aura of death make me more or less tempting as a target?
The leading dog, an exotic alloy of breeds with wiry dark-brown hair, a blunt snout, round eyes and a tramp’s stubble, was a pace and a half ahead of me. It turned and looked over its shoulder, and we made eye contact. The expression on its face was inquisitive, even sympathetic. Then it changed, its eyes narrowed, and it bared its teeth, bright white little sharp points against filthy hair. Its maw was wet.
I ran. The dogs did not hesitate to join me. My run was a hot, panicked, flailing thing, theirs a practised, bounding movement at the lower end of their possible speed. I was in the alley, hopping over the rubbish bags that were strewn across its floor, hoping that it would be too narrow for the pack to flank me, but the lead dog was at my side, eyes on fire, its mouth open and shining tongue out like a tropical flower’s putrid, sticky lure. It had me, we both knew, the same vectors playing in our minds, and it lunged, head on one side like a mobster holding his weapon level with the horizon, and I felt the impact, a cleft blow, in my shin. Heavy jaws clamped on the muscled flesh at the top of my ankle, with a machine-like force. Gripping and ripping were implicit in the moment, they were in the flying air, and such was my surprise at the dog making contact that I almost stopped to see what had happened (Don’t stop!). I threw myself forward in a renewed effort and felt the weight of the dog holding my leg back, and then that weight broke away and my leg was free but something yielded and tore as we parted. All this time I kept waiting for the pain to start in my leg, for the feel of the hot blood on my shin, pushed by my racing heart through a ragged hole and out onto the filthy asphalt, but none of that happened, and when the bitten leg hit the ground again, it felt fine, whole, unhurt. I twisted my head to see the stray break its step and fall back, fall into retreat in a majestic, grudging half-circle that reversed its direction while making it look as if its target hadn’t shifted. The rest of the pack had broken off their pursuit, turned back. I was on the street now, with traffic and passers-by in sight. They had missed their chance. Only a few feet separated a realm where it was possible for a man to be attacked by a pack of stray dogs from a world of human activity where it was unthinkable – in daylight, at least. Or did I exude a particular vulnerability, something that made me a target or a threat, whereas someone else, a native of this city, could have walked through that space without any trouble?
The dark hunched forms of the dogs moved together down the alley, shapes blending into one bowed thing, boundaries obliterated by the bright blue sky in its tall frame of walls.
The run caught up with me. My thighs twitched and buzzed, my lungs and throat burned. I was quivering, muscles ticking with the flood and withdrawal of adrenalin, sweat soaked under my arms and between my shoulder blades and trickled past the small of my back. Dark patches spread on my shirt. I felt shame – it is somehow shameful to exhibit the signs of effort and exertion, we are supposed to make everything look so effortless. Leaning against a lamp post, I fought with my breathing until it was back under control. A couple of pedestrians looked at me through narrowed eyes – I was not dressed for jogging. My trouser leg was torn at the cuff around my left ankle, where the dog had got a bite on me. A ribbon of cloth trailed along the ground. I bent down, gripped this strip, and tore it sharply off. The fragment of blue fabric felt damp in my hand, either from the dog’s spittle or my own sweat. I threw it back into the alley.
Nearby, the street bridged the canal, intersecting with a road that followed the water. I took this cross road. The canal, and the tall, narrow houses that looked down on it, gave the street a Dutch feel, and it was planted with trees, providing some welcome shade. It seemed a world away from the industrial trench I had dropped the cat into, but it was the same body of water. The distance of the memory of throwing that black bag, of watching it swirl into the water, shocked me; it already seemed so remote an act, maybe I could extract myself from this situation after all. In the meantime, my head thumped with dehydration and my legs had not regained their steadiness. I needed water.
Tramlines ran over the next bridge – this one returned to Oskar’s building. On the corner was a small supermarket, an aberrant wedge of white glass and light in the monotonous grey stone and stucco, spangled with fluorescent paper stars bearing felt-tipped prices. I wanted water, and the fridge in the flat was empty.
Behind the store’s sliding doors, an air conditioner was blasting, drying my sweat and chilling me. The fluorescent lights were on, sizzling like the radio trace of the Big Bang. I picked up a wire basket and filled it – bottled water, cheese, tomatoes, a salami sausage, a suspicious loaf of dark, dense bread. Two bottles of wine – I hesitated, put one back on the shelf, and then returned it to my basket. The supermarket had a provisional, temporary feel – laminate-covered fibreboard shelves bracketed to utilitarian frames, hand-written signs – but it groaned with food. I took spaghetti and a jar of what looked like pasta sauce. My purchases filled two carrier bags. Again, I felt that plastic tug on my fingers. I thought of the cat, quiet and cool on the canal bed, sediment settling in the black folds of its shroud.
It was a short walk from the canal to Oskar’s flat – it felt even shorter now, the second time I went that way. This slender slice of the city now seemed to be in a slightly higher resolution than the rest. Little details on the street were fixing in my memory – a painted shop sign, a balcony frothing with climbing and hanging plants. A place of blocks and routes was showing signs of becoming a place of memories. How long was it before a place became familiar? I wondered how much longer I would be staying here, how familiar the city would become. Certainly, it could never feel like home. The cleaner knew about the stain, and knew about the cat – did she have the means or authority to call Oskar and tell him? Had she done so already? What would Oskar do? Call, or return? I felt certain that he would want a face-to-face confrontation, precisely because that was what I wanted desperately to avoid. But now there was no cat, and shortly there would be no stain.
With both hands full of shopping, I pushed through the front door of Oskar’s building with my shoulder, head down, and almost collided with the cleaner. The tiled floor of the hallway shone with water, and she was prodding this mirrored surface with a mop. She saw me, her face a mask of obstinate displeasure. I smiled, a helpless automatic reflex, and my muscles tightened to dash past her and up the stairs, but I realised that my shoes were filthy after my excursion – not wanting to further worsen relations by leaving a trail of muddy footprints across the wet floor, I wiped my feet on the mat, conscious of my ragged trouser-leg.
‘——!’ she addressed me, making it clear she was confronting me with something. ‘——!’
‘Look,’ I said, in what I hoped was a bridge-building tone, still moonwalking on the mat, ‘you know I only speak English. I saw you found the cat...I had nothing to do with...I have, er, laid it to rest, and I�
��ll explain everything to Oskar, so if you wait...’
It was senseless – not only could she not understand me, she wasn’t even listening. Instead, she was looking at the bags I was carrying, and her expression and the note of her harangue had shifted from contempt to horror. Unsure as to what had caught her attention, I raised one of the bags. There did not appear to be anything unusual about it, apart from the fact that it was anonymous white plastic, lacking in the proud display of branding that it might have worn in the UK. But the combined curves of the bread and the sausage, pressing outwards against the pale skin – did she think that the cat was in there? The act of raising the bag only increased her agitation.
‘It’s shopping!’ I said, too quickly, my voice a squeak. ‘Look!’
I set one bag down on the floor – bottles chinked – and reached into the other, disrupting the cat-like formation and pulling out the sausage. ‘Look! Look!’
She recoiled, the expression on her face beyond description. In a lurching moment of self-awareness, I realised that, far from being reassuring, brandishing this sausage was making me look like some kind of sex fiend.
‘It’s just shopping,’ I mumbled, shoving the sausage back into the bag. The cleaner had recovered from her shock and resumed what displayed all the signs of being an accusatory tirade. I picked up the second bag and scurried towards the stairs, her angry words ringing off the clean tiles behind me.
Back in Oskar’s flat, I secured the door with the guard chain. Enough interruptions. My patience with this city, this building, this flat, was wearing thin. I left the shopping in the kitchen and fetched the plastic box of cleaning supplies from the utility room. Oskar’s note was still where I had left it, anchored by the ingot of beeswax.