Charles Newman - In Partial Disgrace

“Yes,” Father sighed. “Their only fault. They weep constantly.”

“But why on earth? They appear to be kept perfectly. What a life, I should say!”

“The golden age of the animals was just beginning when there were no carts to pull, my friend. The horse, like the nomad peoples, has suffered terribly at man’s hands. What we have put them through! War was a positive relief. It’s amazing they can stand still even for a moment. Evasion was the only weapon they had, and they were always put in the service of the most reactionary class. The dog, by comparison, got off easy, like the West. Which is why for the dog all Asia remains an enemy. The dog remains dumbfounded that the horse, with his history, can maintain his spirit. The horse evades, the dog denies. This is their armory. And the horse weeps, not for Achilles, but because of what we have done to him .”

The Professor himself now seemed about to burst into tears.

“The horse is now only an icon,” Father went on softly, “standing for the remains of what you call our ‘ancient brain.’ But the dog, you see, stands for what was forever lost. All creation and all behavior can be divided among them.”

“Which is why we chose them to accompany us?” the Professor interrupted.

“Oh, surely you do not believe that canard about our civilizing these poor animals! That we used them to extend our senses, haul our baggage, and brilliantly inspire their trust and devotion? No, sir! They came to us quite willingly, out of the wind and rain, as nations go to any murderer if he is able to restore order for a moment. As for the doggie, did we meet as predators? Hardly, my friend. No, we are scavengers. We met across a rotting corpse which neither of us could kill. We are fellow swarmers, social animals, higher maggots, carcass chasers, keeping up with the migrating herds with the energetic inefficiency of our gait. It’s the scraps our friendship lives off; leftovers, marrowbones, and braincases are what make us loyal. They followed us because our merdes ensured their survival. And now we walk behind them and retrieve their feces with our own hands. I have yet to meet a woman for whom I’d do that.”

“Oh, Councilor,” the Professor wheezed as he bent double, “I never thought I would laugh again,” but Father continued utterly deadpan.

“The horsie, now that’s a different story. He knew we and our golden garbage were their only chance for survival, and indeed, that we had perfected their strategies, for no one runs away any better than man. They came to us because as mammals, they recognized both our promiscuity and the horrible length of time it takes to raise the young. Drama, don’t you see? Also, they liked the way we moved en masse . Entertainment! So they became our dependents, and like anyone who throws himself on your mercy, you will eventually let him down. Do you realize, Doktor, that by the doghaus ’s own figures, eighty-five per cent of dogs are resold or given back in their first year? And do you know how many times a horse will change hands in his lifetime, or at what age they are sent to the slaughterhouse for dog food? No, the horse tolerates man because he knows there will always be a greater fool among them who will initially lavish him with love; and the dog tolerates horses because he knows that eventually he will eat them, though not the other way around. They come to us because it is we who decides who eats whom. My Lord, don’t you see? They were the only beings in the world we didn’t hate or fear, the only thing we didn’t immediately feel like killing. And while our vast sentimentality shortens our own lives, it prolongs theirs. Not exactly a Faustian bargain on their part, eh?”

“And which of them do we most resemble?” the Professor queried, now trying to get in the spirit of things.

“Ah, men are more like the horse than anything else. But they sing the lay of the dog.”

“And what might that be?” the Professor sighed like a little boy.

“It goes like this: ‘More life, please. Some mercy, too. Then more life.’”

“Your habit of explaining humans by animal neurosis makes me quite nervous, as you must know by now, Councilor.”

“Think of it this way, Professor: take horses and dogs, take men and women. Origins, values, ends: all different. Think of men and women as horses and dogs who happen to fornicate with one another. Not entirely incompatible or improbable, and looking quite swell when racing together at full stride through a green field. But basically about as much alike as horses and dogs. Now, there I will desist.”

The Professor gave him a sudden, inexplicable, and silent hug. “Wolf is history, my friend,” Felix said evenly. “Believe me, we can do better.”

Their friendship had taken on the solidarity of those you grow up with, when there are no secrets. Tiring of alluding to the other by their professions, but unable to move to a first-name basis, they took the nicknames my mother gave them — Scipio and Berganza — from an early Spanish play about two dogs who are always fighting, taking each other by the throat and flinging the other about, but nevertheless inseparable. Wandering astray through the countryside, they occupied themselves chiefly in playing pranks on their unfortunate fellows, chained to a post or locked in their kennels, “always hunting, but unstained with gore.”

They used these affectionate nicknames only when making the most serious of points, clinching an argument, or utterly destroying the other’s most cherished beliefs, though it must be said that Father on his own territory got the better of these, a victory he would one day pay for. The Professor, to his credit, was never afraid of being helpless or at a loss for words in my father’s presence; nor was my father fearful of challenging everything he said, even down to his reading of the weather. It was refreshing for Father to be in the presence of a personality which could not be easily intimidated. They could never let on to their families how much difficulty they were in, and were delighted to find in each other a use for the paternal melancholy they used to batter every convention. They never returned from their training sessions in the fields without boyish catches in the throat, indicating that you consider your best friend insane, but refuse on principle to call the fact to the world’s attention. You could see it glistening on their faces, whether the dogs did well or not, the sense that underneath everything, they had behaved perfectly.

Whenever the Professor arrived, as soon as the requisite papers had been destroyed, he and Father would move off in the victoria with the best trotters and dogs. Occasionally I would stay with Mother; however, on most occasions, I was invited to accompany them on their “rambles,” a word my father abhorred as it implied a chatty English excursion in a fine rain to an unremarkable prospect, a kind of contrived masochism which could only be palliated by a formal dinner beneath a tent with servants in the evening. The Professor would remove his hat, allowing the sun to color his face while he complained of long hours, the unbelievable stupidity of his patients, and the general ingratitude of the world. Everyone needs one friend with whom he can be totally sarcastic and bitter, and Father was aware that his was always in some kind of severe physical discomfort.

“I am not what I was,” he would conclude, and Father would pop the reins, jerking back his confrere’s large pale head in rather too obvious a therapy, for my father’s belief was that no one saw anything clearly — that you were not even in this world — unless your heart’s systole was over 160. Thus he would alternate jupes, jogs, harsh trots, and thundering canters until the Professor acknowledged that he could feel bubbles of energy rising from his pelvis to his ailing heart, better than any digitalis at making the brain pink again.