Alasdair Gray - Every Short Story by Alasdair Gray 1951-2012

Nan got up, embraced him and put her tear-dirty cheek against his. She laughed and said, “You’re very conventional.”

“There’s no substitute for legality,” said Gordon, rubbing his brow against hers.

“There’s no substitute for impulse,” Nan whispered.

“We’ll try and combine the two,” said Gordon. The pressure of her body started to excite him, so he stood apart from her and started making a bed on the sofa.

“If you’re willing, tomorrow I’ll get a licence.” He had just settled comfortably on the sofa when Nan came to the bedroom door and said, “Gordon, promise you won’t ask me about him.”

“About who?”

“You can’t have forgotten him.”

“The dog? Yes, I had forgotten the dog. All right, I won’t ask … You’re sure nothing serious has happened to Clare?”

“Ask her when you see her next!” Nan cried, and slammed the bedroom door.

Next day Gordon bought a marriage licence and an engagement ring and arranged the wedding for a fortnight later. The next two weeks were among the happiest in his life. During the day he worked as an engineering draughtsman. When he came home from work Nan had a good meal ready for him and the apartment clean and tidy. After the meal they would go walking or visit a film show or friends, and later on they would make rather clumsy love, for Gordon was inexperienced and got his most genuine pleasure by keeping the love-making inside definite limits. He wasn’t worried much by memories of the white dog. He prided himself on being thoroughly rational, and thought it irrational to feel curious about mysteries. He always refused to discuss things like dreams, ghosts, flying-saucers and religion. “It doesn’t matter if these things are true or not,” he said. “They are irrelevant to the rules that we have to live by. Mysteries only happen when people try to understand something irrelevant.” Somebody once pointed out to him that the creation of life was a mystery. “I know,” he said, “and it’s irrelevant. Why should I worry about how life occurred? If I know how it is just now I know enough.” This attitude allowed him to dismiss his memories of the white dog as irrelevant, especially when he learned that Clare seemed to have come to no harm. She had broken with Gibson and now went about a lot with Kenneth.

One day Nan said, “Isn’t tomorrow the day before the wedding?”

“Yes. What about it?”

“A man and woman aren’t supposed to see each other the night before their wedding.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“And I thought you were conventional.”

“I know what’s legal. I don’t much care about conventions.”

“Well, women care more about conventions than they do about laws.”

“Does that mean you want me to spend tomorrow night in a hotel?”

“It’s the proper thing, Gordon.”

“You weren’t so proper on the night I brought you here.” Nan said quietly, “It’s not fair to remind me of that night.”

“I’m sorry,” said Gordon. “No, it’s not fair. I’ll go to a hotel.”

Next evening he booked a room in a hotel and then, since it was only ten o’clock, went to a coffee bar where he might see some friends. Inside Clare and Kenneth sat at a table with a lean young man Gordon did not know. Clare smiled and beckoned. She had lost her former self-conscious grace and looked adult and attractive. As Gordon approached Kenneth stood, gripped Gordon’s hand and shook it with unnecessary enthusiasm saying, “Gordon! Gordon! You must meet Mr. McIver. (Clare and I are just leaving.) Mr. McIver, this is the man I told you about, the only man in Scotland who can help you. Goodnight! Goodnight! Clare and I mustn’t intrude on your conversation. You have a lot to discuss.” He rushed out, pulling Clare after him and chuckling.

Gordon and the stranger looked at each other with embarrassment.

“Won’t you sit down?” said Mr. McIver in a polite North American voice. Gordon sat down and said, “Are you from the States, Mr. McIver?”

“No, from Canada. I’m visiting Europe on a scholarship. I’m collecting material for my thesis upon the white dog. Your friend tells me you are an authority on the subject.” Gordon said abruptly, “What has Kenneth told you about the dog?”

“Nothing. But he said you could tell me a great deal.”

“He was joking.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

Gordon stood up to go, sat down again, hesitated and said, “What is this white dog?”

McIver answered in the tone of someone starting a lecture: “Well known references to the white dog occur in Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’, in Chaucer’s unfinished ‘Cook’s Tale’, in the picaresque novels of the Basque poet Jose Mompou, and in your Scottish Border Ballads. Nonetheless, the white dog is the most neglected of European archetypes, and for that reason perhaps, one of the most significant. I can only account for this neglect by assuming a subconscious resistance in the minds of previous students of folk-lore, a resistance springing from the fact that the white dog is the west-European equivalent of the Oedipus myth.”

“That’s all just words,” said Gordon. “What does the dog do ?”

“Well, he’s usually associated with sexually frigid women. Sometimes it is suggested they are frigid because they have been dedicated to the love of the dog from birth …”

“Dedicated by who?”

“In certain romance legends by the priest at the baptismal font, with or without the consent of the girl’s parents. More often the frigidity is the result of the girl’s choice. A girl meets an old woman in a lonely place who gives her various gifts, withholding one on which the girl’s heart is set. The price of the gift is that she consents to marry the old woman’s son. If she accepts the gift (it is usually an object of no value) she becomes frigid until the white dog claims her. The old woman is the dog’s mother. In these versions of the legend the dog is regarded as a malignant spirit.”

“How can he be other than malignant?”

“In Sicily the dog is thought of as a benefactor of frigid or sterile women. If the dog can be induced to sleep with such a woman and she submits to him she will become capable of normal fruitful intercourse with a man. There is always a condition attached to this. The dog must always be, to a certain extent, the husband of the woman. Even if she marries a human man, the dog can claim her whenever he wants.”

“Oh God,” said Gordon.

“There’s nothing horrible about it,” said McIver. “In one of Jose Mompou’s novels the hero encounters a brigand chieftain whose wife is also married to the dog. The dog and the chieftain are friends, the dog accepts the status of pet in the household, sleeping by the fire, licking the plates clean et cetera, even though he is the ghostly husband of several girls in the district. By his patronage of the house in this ostensibly servile capacity, he brings the brigand luck. His presence is not at all resented, even though he sometimes sleeps with the brigand’s daughters. To have been loved by the dog makes a woman more attractive to normal men, you see, and the dog is never jealous. When one of his women marries he only sleeps with her often enough to assert his claim on her.”

“How often is that?”

“Once a year. He sleeps with her on the night before the wedding and on each anniversary of that night. Say, how are you feeling? You look terrible.”

Gorden went into the street too full of horror and doubt to think clearly.

“To be compared with a dog ! To be measured against a dog ! Oh no, God, Nan wouldn’t do that! Nan isn’t so wicked!”

He found he was gibbering these words and running as fast as possible home. He stopped, looked at his watch, forced himself to walk slowly. He arrived home about midnight, went through the close to the back court and looked up at the bedroom window. The light was out. He tiptoed upstaris and paused at the front door. The door looked so much as usual that he felt nothing wrong could be behind it; he could still return to the hotel, but while he considered this his hand was stealthily putting the key in the lock. He went softly into the living room, hesitated outside the bedroom door, then opened it quickly. He heard a gasp and Nan shriek, “Gordon!”