Antonio Moresco - Distant Light

I got there, arriving at a small open space below a derelict chapel, driving slowly because what was left of the road was uneven and worn away by rain and snow. I stopped, looked around, with the engine still running. A moment later a pack of angry dogs appeared from somewhere in the village, barking furiously, launching themselves against the car. Up on their hind legs, they beat furiously against the doors. I could hear the thudding noise of their claws against the bodywork and the windows, I saw their disfigured heads all around, barking madly, their fangs covered with drool and their tongues. It was impossible to open the door with that pack of dogs besieging it and that furious mass of muscle pressing in from every side. I couldn’t get out. I put the car in gear and started moving slowly forward, making my way through all those frantic dogs that continued to jump up, even onto the hood with their noses against the windshield, even onto the roof, as though one of them was trying to attack me from above, at the risk of ending up beneath my wheels as I edged forward slowly among that mass of gnashing heads and claws. Meanwhile the only inhabitant of that abandoned and derelict village was perhaps somewhere I couldn’t see, behind an archway or at a window, watching his ferocious hounds attacking and chasing off this other man who had ventured onto his territory.

The path dropped down a little. I continued on, whirling my walking stick every so often over my head and shoulders to fend off horseflies and other insects that came to buzz around the only living person wandering through their world. The stick is slightly crooked, made of cherry wood I think: I found it one day propped against a tree. Someone must have worked it, who knows when, stripping all its bark with a knife, except for a section at the top, at the handle.

Without warning, after a shady bend in the path where there were several puddles that hadn’t completely dried up, I saw a large dark dog in front of me, sitting in the middle of the path, still, motionless, waiting for me.

I stopped at once.

The dog gazed at me in silence, still blocking the way. It must have heard my footsteps a long way off and stayed there like that, waiting for me.

I too gazed at it in silence, without moving, without breathing, all the more so because I realized this great beast was one of those breeds of dog they train for fighting, a Rottweiler.

I couldn’t continue on as the dog was blocking my path, still watching me in silence. I couldn’t chase it away with my stick as I didn’t know how it might react to such a violent gesture.

So I turned round and began to go back the way I’d come. Without speeding up too much, so as not to give the idea I was running away and thus arousing its fury. But without moving too slowly either, since I was far from home, alone, at the mercy of that dog.

I took the first few steps without turning round. I couldn’t hear anything behind me. Perhaps the dog had stayed there, motionless, sitting in the middle of the path where it had blocked my way, and was watching me as I walked off, with its black eyes in the middle of its great fierce head.

But after a while, as I was turning a bend thinking I had left it behind, I began to hear a light regular sound behind me.

I turned my head slightly.

The dog was following.

It was walking slowly, in perfect silence. I heard its heavy breathing behind me.

I carried on walking, increasing my pace but without seeming to do so. The dog was still behind me, I could hear it from its breathing, I could see it when I turned my head. My house was at least half an hour away, and I continued walking with that large fighting dog following me in silence, in that enormous green solitude that stretched as far as the eye could see.

“Who knows why it was there in the middle of the path, waiting for me?” I asked myself. “Who knows why it’s now following me? Who knows why it doesn’t make some small sound, why it doesn’t bark, and just follows me in perfect silence with that heavy relentless step? What can be going on in that great, fierce, inscrutable head?”

All the more since I knew how these dogs behaved. I had read about them in the past, in newspapers, in reports about attacks on men, women and children who had been killed or disfigured by their bites. They don’t bark, they give no sign of agitation, it’s impossible to know what they’re thinking. Then, with no warning, they jump at you and sink their teeth into your hands, arms, throat, face, they chew your flesh, your bones. They don’t stop until they’ve torn you to pieces, or somebody else comes along to beat them off, shooting them in the head.

But here there was nobody.

I walked on in silence, with that great fierce dog behind me. I turned round slightly every so often. The dog was always there, at the same distance. It continued to follow me with its relentless step, swaying slightly.

At one point, on a tight bend, turning back rather longer, I could get a better look. Not just its enormous silent head but also its massive muscular body, its whole figure, from the side.

Its legs were crooked, very crooked. Something more than crooked, I thought …

I caught my breath.

“It’s had all four legs smashed!” I suddenly realized. “Perhaps it has come from one of the inhabited villages lower down, from someone who keeps their dogs wild so that nobody dares approach their house. Someone must have smashed its legs with a shovel, perhaps after it had attacked a man, a woman, a child. It must have dragged itself up here where there’s nobody, on its broken legs, so that it couldn’t be found.”

Now that I had turned my head a little longer, I thought that I could actually see, on one of its hind legs, a jagged bone protruding a little from the skin when it bent its leg to take a step. Nothing jutted from the other three, though, as if the bones had now healed enough to somehow support it.

I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know whether to carry on or to stop and stroke the great head of that injured animal. But its absolute silence frightened me. No complaint, no whimper, not the slightest sound came from the body of that tortured animal. Only that deep, rasping breath as it continued to follow me on its shattered bones. I had no idea what would happen if I held my hand out toward its head, toward its drooling mouth and teeth. What it was thinking. Perhaps, in its mute anger, its hatred, it might have thought I wanted to approach it to hurt it, and it might have sunk its teeth into me out of despair, out of distress.

And so I carried on walking for more than half an hour with that large maimed dog behind me, in that immense vegetal solitude. When I came across some sudden upward slopes or, immediately after, some steep descent, I thought the dog wouldn’t be able to follow me, that its body would be too heavy for its legs to cope with such gradients. But it didn’t give up, it was always there, without complaint, without a sound, always at the same distance, relentless as a machine.

“But how does it manage to walk for so long on those shattered bones?” I asked. “How is it possible that no sound comes from its body racked by such tremendous pain?”

At certain moments I lost the sound of its steps behind me. “It can’t manage it!” I said to myself. “It must have stopped!” And yet, a few seconds later, passing round another bend, once again I could see its limping body, still there behind me, its eyes continuing to watch me silently in its great drooling head.

At a certain point, all of a sudden, I felt something pressing against my legs from behind. It was the head of the dog that had caught up with me on a downward slope and was nudging me with its wet nose.

I speeded up without giving the idea that I was doing so, so as not to trigger his suppressed anger, gradually tightening the muscles throughout my body and not just my legs, a short distance away from the mighty muscle fibers of that other body, its shoulders, its neck, its great legs that bound and held its shattered bones, preventing them from protruding.