But, a few moments later, the little brother got up again and went nonchalantly to the middle of the park. Immediately, Mélodie followed him. The contest we then witnessed was a magnificent performance. First Mélodie charged into Octave, the violent blow knocking him over. She leapt on him, nibbled his neck, his ears and his muzzle, at the same time sending him into a spiral of somersaults. When they’d covered three metres of ground as a spinning golden ball, they stood up and launched into improvising a new kind of folk dance, standing on their back legs, supporting each other, hugging and murmuring to each other in joyful little squeals, ‘This is so good, we’re so happy!’ Then they returned to their wild tumbling as if performing elegant dance steps had never held any attraction for them.
Like this, in a succession of frolicking, somersaulting, whirling and enchanting rhythmic movements, a good ten minutes passed at the end of which they collapsed in complete exhaustion. Fatigue overcame the desire to carry on the festivities. They were utterly spent. All at once the tenseness in their muscles relaxed; the two dogs collapsed. At last they lay outstretched and did not move. The only sound was their deep and rapid breathing. We could see their stomachs rising and falling in a wildly accelerated rhythm, which, little by little, became regular again.
The sun was already going down; sometimes it slipped behind the clouds. Slowly, very slowly, the day gave way to night, longer, more soothing, filled with first dreams, first enchanted memories.
8
ARDENT YOUTH
THAT NIGHT MÉLODIE slept straight through from 7.45pm to 7.10 in the morning. Fatigue had plunged her down into the very depths of the well of sleep. When she woke up, an amazing thing had happened: she was no longer a giddy young girl. From one day to the next she stopped chewing the skirting boards and the chair legs. A whole world, a whole epoch, lay far behind her. In a night she had acquired a degree of maturity. Between the ancient history of childhood and already waning adolescence on the one hand and, on the other, an inexorably rapidly encroaching future, there opened out, as if by a miracle, a time that was immobile, infinitely precarious and fragile, in which ardent youth came fully into its own.
Michèle and Julia-Madoka had gone to bed. I settled myself in the living room, on the sofa. I closed my eyes. My mind’s eye was filled by this one image, that of the two dogs celebrating their keen impatience to live, tasting their inexpressible joy at being together, exalting in their pure pleasure in being alive and spreading their wings to revel in boundless play. I saw in them the expression of ardent youth affirming itself with all its might in the passionate urgency of a present that goes on forever. I was delighting in the happiness of having been witness to theirs. I didn’t want to sleep. I wanted to go on experiencing the intoxicating effect of transgressive youth. I didn’t want to let the beautiful rose, picked in all its freshness, die, or the fire that was blazing go out or the vital energy gathered up in this privileged instant be used up and destroyed. No, what I wanted was for the sweet imprint of this radiant afternoon to become part of me. I wanted to preserve its quivering trace, the wonder and the mystery.
Suddenly, I don’t know why, I thought of the young couple in Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss. And deep in my ears there reverberated the music of the beginning of the second act of this opera that I was at the time discovering in the wake of The Marriage of Figaro. It was an urgent, unstoppable appeal. An outpouring, a deluge, as sudden as it was strange. In listening to this enchanting music I could materialise and prolong the memory of a Mélodie in the full bloom of her youth, for it seemed to me to respond quite perfectly and wonderfully to the image of these two living beings who were non-human but who could still delight in their present happiness before being thrust into the uncertain future of their short lives.
It was getting late, but I wanted to immerse myself in the magic of Strauss’s music. I turned on the DVD player and I watched the whole scene in which Octavian and Sophie meet for the first time over a silver rose. It is passed from one hand to the other and the two characters, whose youthful desire is expressed by a wonderful interplay of two feminine voices, breathe in ‘a drop of Persian attar’ that is contained in it. They remain as if frozen in an emotion at once peaceful and overwhelming that can only be called love.
Diary Extract 2
Fragments that Have Slipped from the Notebook of a Dog’s Companion
The story of Der Rosenkavalier comes to us as a full narrative development of the couple formed by the countess and Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro. Hofmannsthal and Strauss take up the narrative of Figaro just when the little page addresses to the lady he loves the song beginning ‘You who know what love is . . .’ to imagine a different development of the scenario Da Ponte had conceived. In Der Rosenkavalier the love barely hinted at between the countess and Cherubino becomes the centre of the drama lived out by the Marschallin and Octavian. Despite all the differences that separate their work from the Mozart model, Hofmannsthal and Strauss make repeated references to Figaro: the disparity of age between Octavian and the Marschallin, between he who is no longer really an adolescent but not fully an adult and she whose status is that of the ‘woman of thirty’ abandoned by her husband; the succession of disguises of the young nobleman, the Don Juan-like figure of Ochs, who must give up Sophie as Almaviva must give up Suzanne . . . That said, Der Rosenkavalier, in contrast to The Marriage of Figaro, doesn’t celebrate the birth of any kind of happy community. What is honoured is just the union of a fairly dissolute boy whose parents are of the nobility and a girl whose parents are of the bourgeoisie, and victim of an oppressive upbringing. The interest of this work of Strauss’s therefore resides elsewhere.
What strikes me in Der Rosenkavalier is, dare I say it, the philosophical dimension of the work: the meditation of the Marschallin on aging, on time’s destructive work, is a crucial moment. As we see when, towards the end of the first act, the great noblewoman sings:
One would say that today I must feel the fragility of all ephemeral things, right to the bottom of my heart; learn that one must not wish to keep hold of anything, that one’s arms close around emptiness, that everything slips through our fingers, how everything comes loose when one thinks one holds it close, how everything dissipates, like dreams and mist . . . Time is a strange thing. Living day to day, it means nothing to us. But suddenly it is all we feel. It is around us. It is also in us. It streams down our mirrors, it drips from my temples. Between me and you on it flows, noiselessly, like sand in an hourglass.
What I find so marvellous in the context of this melancholy meditation on the passage of time is that, right in the middle of the work, at the very beginning of the second act, Strauss has given us an in-between state—a kind of ‘true youth of the world’ to use the beautiful expression that we find in Rousseau’s Second Discourse—already removed from the time of the Marschallin (which is noble) but not yet subject to that of Sophie (which is bourgeois), in a truly miraculous meeting that brings together, by means of a perfumed silver rose, two young people who desire each other:
SOPHIE: . . . It has a strange perfume. Like roses—like a real rose.
OCTAVIAN: Yes, a drop of Persian attar has been placed in it.
SOPHIE: One might say it was a celestial rose, not like those in our gardens, a rose of holy Paradise. Don’t you think so? (Octavian leans over the rose she is holding out to him, then he rises and his gaze is fixed on Sophie’s mouth.) It is like a heavenly greeting. Already, too strong to be borne. It draws you, as if bonds tightened around your heart. (in a soft voice) Where then could I have experienced such rapture?
OCTAVIAN: (at the same time, as if unaware of Sophie’s presence, in an even softer voice) Where could I have experienced such rapture?
SOPHIE: I must find this blessed place! Even if I were to die on the way! But I shall not die. It is far off yet. Time, eternity, merge together in this sublime moment; I shall not forget it until I die.
OCTAVIAN: (at the same time) I was a child, I did no
t yet know her. Who am I then? How did I come to her? How did she come to me? If I were not a man, I would swoon. What a sublime moment; I shall not forget it until I die.
This is a scene of sublime beauty, one that takes the breath away. And the word sublime is of course spoken by the two characters. Can one remain indifferent to such a profusion of light, to such an outpouring of happiness? Is it possible not to be profoundly moved, body and soul, by such an impression of happy inertia, of slowness ascending? It is a moment of eternity crystallised, a fragment of paradise which we are allowed to glimpse, an angel’s descent to Earth, the implanting and propagation of the ever and always in the fleeting instant. To see and hear Anne Sofie von Otter (Octavian) and Barbara Bonney (Sophie), conducted by Carlos Kleiber, sing and live this extraordinary suspension of time is a disturbing experience, which makes one want to believe in absolute fidelity and in the unchangeableness of feeling.
Listening to the duet of Octavian and Sophie, dazzling in its revelation of a certain truth of youth, I saw again, through the profuse succession of images of my own vanished youth, the exuberant dance of the two dogs, drunk with their freedom and their immense youthful strength, without a hint of anxiety or any thought of the future.
9
TO UNDERSTAND
DAYS PASSED BY harmoniously; night followed peaceful night. Learning prodigiously quickly what not to do to make life not only possible but also pleasant, Mélodie acquired an exemplary sense of good behaviour and a tact that no one could have imagined. She never barked for no reason; she never destroyed things: not books, shoes, furniture, cushions, photo albums, knick-knacks, nothing in fact that constituted the domestic landscape was at risk; she never jumped on to our bed, or on to the yellow sofa in the living room; she never tried to take food that wasn’t meant for her. Silent, discreet, almost retiring, she was there, like a filmy shadow. A sounding box too: her presence made us aware of our own breathing and, when we were moved by something, of the barely perceptible tremors of our hearts.
In the evenings, happy or unhappy about our work day, when my wife and I were waiting until it was time to go to bed, she would invariably place herself between us. When my daughter was enjoying giving me a demonstrative cuddle, she couldn’t bear to be outside the circle of affection, in the intimacy of its embrace; she came up to me, pushed her rival away and lavished me with licks. She wanted to join with us, to be one of us, to be an integral part of the family clan: as soon as the three of us made ourselves comfortable on the sofa she would slide between us quite naturally, most often with her muzzle placed on my lap, to listen to us, to hear us talking about our concerns, our worries and, perhaps more rarely, what amused us. Did she understand what we were saying? I don’t know. That obviously depends on the meaning we give to ‘to understand’. She was really with us. The desire to be as close to us as she could, to be glued to us, was the message she gave us with the whole of her outstretched body and all of her communicative outpouring. What is ‘to understand’ if not the ability to listen for, and to be in unison with, what other people are feeling and thinking?
Mélodie understood us. Our hearts opened to hers; her heart responded to ours. At times I had the impression that she even read what was in them.
10
FIRST SEPARATION
SUMMER ARRIVED. Mélodie had grown up. She had blossomed and her stature was that of a fully grown adult. Her body was far better proportioned than those of men and women trapped by their daily fatigue and victims of the excesses in which they indulge of their own free will and that they try to offset somehow by strategies as costly as they are sophisticated; svelte, muscular and vigorous, her body now resembled an athlete’s, radiating good health.
We planned to go to France to be with friends and family. I felt the desire to immerse myself again in the French language as well as in the web of ties that using it has spun for me. The problem, though, was our friend. To take her with us was inconceivable: the steps you had to go through, which were long and onerous, were a disincentive. Besides, we couldn’t bear the idea of making her travel in the hold, where she would be subject to the noisy vibrations of the aircraft for the twelve-hour flight from Tokyo to Paris. So we decided to entrust her to the A family, whom she knew. She would have fun leading something of the country life, together with her brother, Octave. She would play tag with him. She would run madly through the fields; she would immerse herself gladly on steamy afternoons in the Akikawa River; perhaps, weaving through the thick undergrowth, she would imagine herself in the old dream of her ancestors; she would roll in the dirt just for the pleasure of rolling in the dirt.
Two days before our departure I took it upon myself to take her to Akiruno. First I put all of her things into a big bag. When everything was ready and I’d finally picked up the car keys, she guessed what was happening. She began to moan. Perhaps she felt torn between the desire to go with me and the desire to stay, not to leave her usual environment. In the end she decided to get into the car. Despite herself, clearly, because she didn’t like the car. Throughout the whole journey she rested her head on the armrest between the two front seats; all the while I could feel her tranquil presence, made palpable by her regular breathing.
She was greeted by Octave in a warm and brotherly way. After an explosive few seconds of celebratory hugs the brother and sister took themselves off into an alcove that served as a kennel. It connected with the living room, which had a French door. Through the door I could see them moving around as I sat at the table talking with Mr and Mrs A, a cup of tea in my hand. A sweet fragrance of brown rice mixed with the green tea powder wafted around us.
I stayed chatting for a good hour. We talked especially about the difficult way of life that human society inflicted on the canine species, about all the explicit and implicit prohibitions imposed upon it, and finally about the scandalous irresponsibility towards it of some humans who only act in accordance with their immediate self-interest. For all this time Mélodie fixed me with her gaze, sitting in a pose of remarkable stillness. Now that the joy of meeting up with Octave had passed, was she anxious about what lay in store for her? No doubt she was.
I got up, bowed to Mr and Mrs A and said goodbye to them; I took the wheel and I drove off like a criminal who wants to get away from the scene of the crime as fast as he can. It was really an admission that I was guilty of abandoning her in a house that wasn’t her own. I felt shot through with the piercing looks that she was sure to be casting at my back.
Five weeks later we returned to Tokyo; I was impatient to see her again. I knew that she’d moaned for two or three nights at the beginning of the holiday she’d spent apart from us. Was she well? What expression would she have on her face when she saw me again? Would she want to leave again with me?
Our Accord stops in front of our friends’ house. Without waiting for us to appear, deep, resonant barks can be heard. We open the front gate. Mélodie’s head, and Octave’s, burst from the dark alcove. She climbs the fence, which is much higher than the garden hedge. We hear the strident and painful sound of claws raking the wooden fence. She succeeds, somehow, in getting over it and charges towards me. Propelled by an impulsive run-up, her body planes a metre above the ground. Anyone who didn’t know her would be quite terrified by this frontal assault. As for me, I am delighted to be assailed by this rocket of blonde flesh. My hands grab hold of her front paws; in the region of my elbows I feel a burning sensation, which tears my skin like the stab of a dagger or the violent prick of a large needle.
‘Hello, my friend. How are you? Oh yes, yes, you’re so happy! Aren’t you? You’re just so happy!’ The intense brevity of the greeting showed the length of the absence endured. In a few minutes my shapeless tee shirt, chosen in anticipation of a madly joyful reunion, was covered with muddy paw prints. My trousers, old ones that I only wore when I had work to do that would make my clothes dirty, were pierced in places by the repeated scratches from her protruding dewclaws.
When she’d sa
tisfied her need to be effusive, she stood on her four feet. I crouched down, taking her by the neck. We were now facing each other. She licked my face from top to bottom as if she urgently had to express her feelings, driven by an irresistible need to pour out this overflowing affection. Suddenly I was struck by the sight of a streak of blood on both my forearms.
Melodie Page 3