by Ian Mcewan
She was certain these ownerless dogs would be famished. Out here, two miles or more from St Maurice, even a hunting dog would have a hard time of it. These were guard dogs, bred for aggression, not survival. Or pets that had outgrown their charm, or were costing too much to feed. June stepped back again. She was afraid, reasonably afraid, not of dogs, but of the unnatural size of these particular dogs in this remote place. And of their colour? No, not that. The second larger dog saw her and came forward to stand by its mate. They remained still for a quarter of a minute, then they began to walk towards her. If they had broken into a run, she would have been helpless before them. But she needed to watch them all the time, she had to see them coming. She risked a glance behind her; the snapshot of the sunlit path was vividly empty of Bernard.
He was more than three hundred yards away. He had stopped to re-tie his lace and had become engrossed by the progress, inches from the tip of his shoe, of a caravan of two dozen brown furry caterpillars, each with its mandibles clamped to the rear of the one in front. He had called to June, wanting her to come back and look, but by then she had already rounded the first bend. Bernard’s scientific curiosity was aroused. The procession along the path looked purposeful. He wanted to know exactly where it was going, and what would happen when it arrived. He was on his knees with his box camera. Nothing much showed through the viewfinder. He took a notebook from his rucksack and began to make a sketch.
The dogs were less than fifty yards away, and coming at a fast walk. When they got to her they would be waist high, perhaps bigger. Their tails were down and their mouths were open. June could see their pink tongues. Nothing else in this hard landscape was pink apart from her tender sunburnt legs, exposed below her baggy shorts. For comfort she tried to force a memory of an ancient Lakeland terrier belonging to an aunt, of how it ambled across the rectory hallway, toenails clipping the polished oak boards, to greet each new visitor, neither friendly nor hostile, but dutifully inquisitive. There was a certain irreducible respect owed by dogs to humans, bred over generations, founded upon the unquestionable facts of human intelligence and dog stupidity. And on dogs’ celebrated loyalty, their dependency, their abject desire to be mastered. But out here the rules were exposed as mere convention, a flimsy social contract. Here, no institutions asserted human ascendancy. There was only the path which belonged to any creature that could walk it.
The dogs kept to their mutinous advance. June was walking backwards. She dared not run. She shouted Bernard’s name once, twice, three times. Her voice sounded thin in the sunny air. It caused the dogs to come faster, almost at a trot. She must not show her fear. But they would smell it on her. She must not feel her fear then. Her hands shook as she scrabbled on the path for rocks. She found three. She held one in her right hand, and kept the others wedged between her left hand and her side. She was retreating sideways, keeping her left shoulder towards the dogs. Where the path dipped, she stumbled and fell. In her anxiety to be on her feet again, she almost bounced off the ground.
She still had the rocks. Her forearm was cut. Would the smell of the wound excite them? She wanted to suck the blood away, but to do that she would have to let the rocks fall. There were still more than a hundred yards to the bend in the path. The dogs were twenty yards away and closing. She drifted apart from her body when she stopped at last and turned to face them; this detached self was prepared to watch with indifference, worse, acceptance, a young woman eaten alive. She noted with contempt the whimper on each outbreath, and how a muscular spasm was causing the left leg to tremble so much it could no longer bear weight.
She leaned back against a small oak that overhung the path. She felt her rucksack between her and the tree. Without dropping her stones, she eased it off her shoulders and held it before her. At fifteen feet the dogs stopped. She realised she had been clinging to the one last hope that her fear was no more than silliness. She realised it the moment the hope dissolved in the smooth rumble of the larger dog’s growl. The smaller one was flattened against the ground, front legs tensed, ready to spring. Its mate circled slowly to the left, keeping its distance, until it was only possible to hold them both in her field of vision by letting her eyes flicker between them. In this way she saw them as a juddering accumulation of disjointed details: the alien black gums, slack black lips rimmed by salt, a thread of saliva breaking, the fissures on a tongue that ran to smoothness along its curling edge, a yellow-red eye, and eye-ball muck spiking the fur, open sores on a fore leg, and trapped in the V of an open mouth, deep in the hinge of the jaw, a little foam to which her gaze kept returning. The dogs had brought with them their own cloud of flies. Some of them now defected to her.
Bernard did not derive pleasure from sketching, nor did his drawings resemble what he saw. They represented what he knew, or wanted to know. They were diagrams, or maps, on to which he would later transcribe missing names. If he could identify the caterpillar, it would be easy to find out from reference books what it was up to if he failed to discover for himself today. He had depicted a caterpillar as a scaled-up oblong. Close examination had shown that they were not brown, but striped in subtle shades of orange and black. He had shown only one set of stripes on his diagram, drawn in careful proportion to the length, with pencilled arrows indicating colours. He had counted the members of the caravan – not so easy when each individual merged into the fur of the next. He recorded twenty-eight. He drew a head-on view of the leader’s face, showing the relative size and disposition of the jaws and compound eye. As he had knelt down, his cheek grazing the path, to stare up close at the head of the leading caterpillar, at a hinged face of inscrutable parts, he had thought how we shared the planet with creatures as weird and as alien to us as any that could be imagined from outer space. But we give them names, and stop seeing them, or their size prevents us from looking. He reminded himself to pass this thought on to June, who even now would be walking back up the path to find him, possibly a little cross.
She was addressing the dogs, in English, then in French. She spoke forcefully to hold down the sickness. In the confident tone of a dog owner she commanded the larger dog which stood with its front legs set apart, still growling.
‘Ça suffit!’
It did not hear. It did not blink. On her right its companion eased forwards on its belly. If they had barked she would have felt better. The silences that interrupted the growls suggested calculation. The animals had a plan. From the jaws of the larger dog a drop of saliva fell on to the path. Several flies were on it in an instant.
June whispered, ‘Please go away. Please. Oh God!’ The expletive brought her to the conventional thought of her last and best chance. She tried to find the space within her for the presence of God and thought she discerned the faintest of outlines, a significant emptiness she had never noticed before, at the back of her skull. It seemed to lift and flow upwards and outwards, streaming suddenly into an oval penumbra many feet high, an envelope of rippling energy, or, as she tried to explain it later, of ‘coloured invisible light’ that surrounded her and contained her. If this was God, it was also, incontestably, herself. Could it help her? Would this Presence be moved by a sudden, self-interested conversion? An appeal, a whimpering prayer to something that was so clearly, so luminously, an extension of her own being, seemed irrelevant. Even in this moment of extremity she knew she had discovered something extraordinary, and she was determined to survive and investigate it.
Still holding the rock, she slipped her right hand into her rucksack. She pulled out the remains of the saucisson they had been eating the day before, and tossed it to the ground. The smaller dog was there first, but ceded to its mate immediately. The sausage and its greaseproof paper were down in less than thirty seconds. The dog turned to her, drooling. A triangular shred of paper was trapped between two teeth. The bitch nosed the ground where the sausage had been. June returned her hand to the rucksack. She felt something hard between the bundles of folded clothes. She drew out a penknife with a bakelite handle. The l
arger dog took two quick steps towards her. It was ten feet away. She transferred the rock to her left hand, put the bakelite in her mouth and opened out the knife. She could not hold it and the rock in one hand. There was a choice to be made. The knife with its three-inch blade was a last resort. She could only use it when the dogs were on her. She balanced it on top of the rucksack, handle pointing towards her. She took the rock in her right hand again and pushed back against the tree. Her terrified grip had warmed the rock through. She drew back her hand. Now that she was about to attack, her left leg was shaking more.
The rock hit the ground hard and sent a spray of smaller stones across the path. She missed the larger dog by a foot. It flinched when the stones rose into its face, but it held its ground and lowered its nose to the place of impact, still hoping for food. When it looked at her again it twisted its head to one side and snarled, a nasty breath-and-mucus sound. It was as she had feared. She had raised the stakes. Another rock was in her hand. The bitch flattened its ears and slipped forwards. Her throw was wild, hopeless. The rock spun out of her hand too soon. It fell feebly to one side and her unweighted arm thrashed the air.
The big dog was down, ready for the spring, waiting for one moment’s inattention. The muscles in its haunches quivered. A back paw scrabbled for better purchase. She had seconds left and her hand was round her third rock. It went over the dog’s back and hit the path. The sound caused the dog to half turn and in that instant, in that extra second, June moved. She had nothing to lose. In a delirium of abandonment she attacked. She had passed through fear to fury that her happiness, the hopes of the past months, and now the revelation of this extraordinary light were about to be destroyed by a pair of abandoned dogs. She took the knife in her right hand and held the rucksack like a shield and rushed the dogs, shrieking a terrible aaaaaaa!
The bitch leapt back. But the big one went for her. It sprang up. She leaned forwards to meet the impact as the animal sank its jaws into the rucksack. It was on its hindlegs and she was supporting it with one arm. She was buckling under the weight. The dog’s face was inches above hers. She thrust upwards with the knife, three quick jabs to its belly and sides. It surprised her, how easily the blade went in. A good little knife. On the first stroke the dog’s yellow-red eyes widened. On the second and third, before it had let the rucksack go, it made high-pitched piteous yips, a small dog’s noise. Encouraged by the sound and screaming again, June lunged upwards a fourth time. But the animal’s weight was in retreat and she missed. The swing of her arm threw her off balance. She sprawled forwards, face down on the path.
The knife had left her hand. The back of her neck was exposed. She hunched her shoulders in a prolonged, trembling shrug, she drew in her arms and legs and covered her face in her hands. It can come now, was her only thought. It can come.
But it did not. When she dared lift her head, she saw the dogs a hundred yards away and still running, back the way they had come. Then they rounded the corner and were gone.
Bernard found her a quarter of an hour later sitting on the path. When he helped her to her feet she said tersely she had been frightened by two dogs and she wanted to turn back. He did not see the bloodied knife and June forgot to pick it up. He started to tell her how foolish it would be to miss the beautiful descent to Navacelles, and that he could deal with the dogs himself. But June was already walking away. She was not one to force sudden decisions like this. When he picked up her rucksack he saw a curving row of punctures in the canvas and a streak of foam, but he was too intent on catching up with June. When he did, she shook her head. She had nothing more to say.
Bernard pulled on her arm to make her stop. ‘Let’s discuss it at least. This is a radical change of plan, you know.’ He could see she was upset and he was trying to keep his irritation under control. She pulled free and walked on. There was something mechanical in her step. Bernard caught up with her again, puffing from the weight of two bags.
‘Something’s happened.’
Her silence was assent.
‘For God’s sake tell me what it is.’
‘I can’t.’ She was still walking on.
Bernard shouted, ‘June! This is outrageous.’
‘Don’t ask me to talk. Help me to get to St Maurice, Bernard. Please.’
She did not wait for a reply. She was not going to argue. He had never known her like this. He suddenly decided to do as she asked. They walked back to the top of the gorge and crossed the pasture in the gathering violence of the heat, towards the tower of the village château.
At the Hôtel des Tilleuls June mounted the steps to the terrace and sat in the broken shade of the lime trees, gripping with both hands the edge of a painted tin table, as though hanging from a cliff. Bernard sat across from her and was drawing breath to ask his first question when she raised her hands, palms outwards, and shook her head. They ordered citrons pressés. While they waited, Bernard told her about the caterpillar train in some detail, and remembered his observation about the alien nature of other species. June sometimes nodded, though not always at the right moments.
Madame Auriac, the owner, brought their drinks. She was a busy, maternal lady whom they had christened Mrs Tiggywinkle the night before. She had lost her husband in 1940 when the Germans crossed the border from Belgium. When she had heard that the couple were English and on honeymoon, she had moved them to a room with a bathroom, at no extra cost. She carried on a tray the glasses of lemon juice, a glass pitcher of water with its Ricard sign and a saucer of honey in place of sugar which was still rationed. She sensed that something was not right with June because she set down her glass with care. Then, an instant before Bernard did, she saw June’s right hand and, mistaking the blood there, she took it in her own and exclaimed, ‘That’s a bad cut, you poor wee thing. You come inside with me and I’ll take care of that for you.’
June was docile. Mme Auriac held her hand as she stood. She was about to allow herself to be led away into the hotel when her face twitched and she let out a strange high note, like a cry of surprise. Bernard was on his feet, appalled, thinking he was about to witness a birth, a miscarriage, some spectacular feminine disaster. Mme Auriac was steadier and caught the young Englishwoman and eased her back into her chair. June was overcome by a series of arid, stuttering sobs which broke finally into wet, childlike crying.
When she was able to speak again, June told her story. She sat close to Mme Auriac who had called for cognac. Bernard held June’s hand across the table, but she would not take comfort from him at first. She had not forgiven him his absence at a critical time, and the description of his ridiculous caterpillars had kept her resentment alive. But when she came to the climax of her tale and saw Bernard’s expression of astonishment and pride, she interlocked her fingers with his and returned his loving squeeze.
Mme Auriac told the waiter to fetch the Maire, even if he had started his afternoon sleep. Bernard embraced June and congratulated her on her daring. The cognac was warming her stomach. For the first time she realised that her experience was complete; it was at worst a vivid memory. It was a story, one which she came out of well. In her relief she remembered her love for dear Bernard, so that by the time the Maire came up the steps to the terrace, unshaven and groggy from his interrupted nap, he came upon a happy, celebratory scene, a little idyll, with Mme Auriac smiling on. Naturally enough he was irritable in his demand to know what had been so urgent as to drag him out of his bed into the early afternoon sunlight.
Mme Auriac appeared to have some power over the Maire. When he had shaken hands with the English couple, he was told to sit himself down. He grumpily acquiesced in a cognac. He cheered up when Madame had the waiter bring a pot of coffee to the table. Real coffee was still a scarce commodity. This was from the finest dark Arabian bean. The Maire raised his glass a third time. Vous êtes Anglais? Ah, his son who was now studying engineering in Clermont-Ferrand fought alongside the British Expeditionary Force, and always said ...
‘Hector, that’s f
or later,’ Madame Auriac said. ‘Here there is a grave situation,’ and to save June the effort of repetition, she told the story on her behalf, with only minor embellishments. However, when Mme Auriac had June wrestling with the dog prior to stabbing it, she felt she had to intervene. The villagers waved this interruption down as irrelevant modesty. At the end Mme Auriac showed off June’s rucksack. The Maire whistled through his teeth and gave his verdict. ‘Ç’est grave.’ Two wild hungry dogs, possibly rabid, one of them irritable from its wounds, were certainly a public menace. As soon as he had finished this drink he would round up some locals and send them down the gorge to track the animals and shoot them. He would also phone down to Navacelles to see what could be done from that end.
The Maire appeared to be about to stand. Then he reached for his empty glass and settled back in his chair.
‘We had this once before,’ he said. ‘Last winter. Remember?’
‘I didn’t hear about it,’ Mme Auriac said.
‘It was one dog last time. But, same thing, same reason.’
‘Reason?’ Bernard asked.
‘You mean you didn’t know? Ah, ç’est une histoire.’ He pushed his glass towards Mme Auriac who called out to the bar. The waiter came and murmured in Mme Auriac’s ear. At a gesture from her he drew up a chair for himself. Suddenly Mme Auriac’s daughter Monique who worked in the kitchen appeared with a tray. They lifted the glasses and cups so that she could spread out a white table cloth and set down two bottles of vin de pays, glasses, a basket of bread, a bowl of olives and a handful of cutlery. Out in the vineyards, beyond the shady terrasse, the cicadas intensified their hot dry sound. Now time, afternoon time, which in the Midi is as elemental as air and light, expanded and rolled billowingly outwards across the rest of the day, and upwards to the vaults of the cobalt sky, freeing everyone in its delicious sprawl from their obligations.