André Alexis - Fifteen Dogs

For a number of reasons, Hermes and Apollo had tried to keep their wager secret. The other gods being gods, this was not possible. For one thing,p the strangeness of the dogs was immediately obvious to all who cared about such things. The why of their strangeness was unknown, but the who was clear. Hermes spent most of his time on earth and Apollo was fascinated by earthly things. So the brothers were pestered as to their motives. After a while, they grew tired of denying they’d had anything to do with the dogs and admitted that they had wagered on the deaths of the fifteen. In so doing, they sowed a kind of frenzy among the gods, all of whom immediately made wagers of their own.

When Zeus discovered what his sons had done, he sent for them.

— How could you have been so cruel? he asked.

— Why cruel? asked Apollo. Mortals suffer. What have we done to make their suffering worse?

— He’s right, Father, said Hermes. Wipe them out if you don’t want them to suffer.

— They suffer within their own bounds, said Zeus. These poor dogs don’t have the same capacities as humans. They weren’t made to bear doubt or to know that their deaths will come. With their senses and instincts, they’ll suffer twice as much as humans do.

— You’re not suggesting humans are brutes, are you? asked Apollo.

Hermes laughed.

— The only thing certain about humans is their brutishness, he said.

— You two are worse than humans, said Zeus.

— There’s no need to insult us, said Apollo.

— Be grateful I’m not going to punish you. The damage has been done. But I don’t want you interfering with these creatures anymore. You’ve done enough. Leave them whatever peace they can find.

From that moment, all the gods knew Zeus’s will and, for the most part, abided by his edict. They did not interfere with the dogs. Interference, when it came, came from an unexpected quarter: Zeus himself. Taking pity on his favourite, Atticus, the father of the gods intervened in the life of the dogs.

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Contrary to Benjy’s impressions, Atticus was thoughtful, sensitive and, to an extent, altruistic. He was a committed leader, capable of — or prone to — instinctive decisions. More: he could put aside thought in the service of forceful action. But in quiet moments his sensitivity sometimes led him to reconsider his own behaviour. In other words, Atticus had a conscience, and it was this that led him to what some would call faith.

Not long after the night in the veterinary clinic, Atticus came to believe that the canine was dying in him, that this was a tragedy, that the loss of the old ways would prove disastrous. This naturally led him to consider what it was that made him a dog. Was it his senses? Perhaps. But then he still had his senses. Was it something physical? Yes, it was in the way he felt as he ran, as he drank water, as he dug the ground with his claws. But his physical self, too, was unchanged. In fact, as he catalogued the things that made him a dog, Atticus changed his mind. The canine was not dying in him or in the eleven with him. Rather, it was being obscured by the new thinking, the new perspectives, the new words. These needed to be pushed aside, like curtains before a necessary vantage.

In the early days, Atticus had had his vivid memories of the previous life to guide him. In those days, memories of the previous life were a lure to them all. Some were, naturally, more devoted to the life that had been. It had been easy to discover who was willing to fight alongside him for a return to old ways: no strange language, no twisting thoughts, the senses alive. Once the pack had rid itself of threats to this ideal — once they had killed or chased off Majnoun, Athena, Bella, Prince and Bobbie — Atticus was satisfied that they could live as dogs ought to live. In the aftermath of the cleansing, the pack followed Atticus’s precepts:

1. No strange talk. This above all because, to his dying day, Atticus disliked what he remembered of the dog who disappeared:

In the sunny world, with its small

things moving too fast,

I shy away from light

and in the attic cuss the dark.

2. A strong leader (that is, Atticus himself)

3. A good den

4. The weak in their proper place

Of the killings, only one troubled Atticus’s conscience: the killing of the Duck Toller, Bobbie. He, the twins and Max had been so filled with fervour for the old life that they had behaved in a way that was not in keeping with the canine. They had killed the Duck Toller in a frenzy of which he was, in retrospect, ashamed. Worse: the death of the smaller dog was a signal that he — that they — had overlooked something important: the sanctity of the echelon. This became clear when the two smaller dogs fled.

On the morning that Benjy and Dougie went missing, Atticus had a presentiment of the problems the pack would face. With a kind of symmetry, Atticus and Benjy — the top and the bottom dog — came to the same thought from different ends of the spectrum: the weak were, after all, of more than passing importance. Something was ‘off’ without the two on the lower rung. There was now an emptiness at the bottom, so to speak. They were, unexpectedly, in need of weakness. Atticus was the biggest and strongest of the dogs that remained. Frick and Frack, together, might have had a chance against him, but the brothers would suffer if they challenged him, and all of them knew it. On the other hand, it would have been unthinkable to use either Frick or Frack as low dog. The brothers were unnaturally close and neither would have accepted a diminished position. That left Rosie and Max.

If they had truly become dogs again, Rosie would have been the obvious candidate. She was not necessarily the weakest of them, but she was female. And this was, to the males, a mark against her. But Rosie had become important to Atticus, the smell of her something he wanted for himself alone. His own feelings confused and humiliated him. Rosie was not in heat. It wasn’t that he wanted to fuck her. It was something unnameable and unfamiliar, a perversion for which the dogs had no name.

(Though Atticus had a developed sense of transgression, he did not have a notion of ‘sin.’ If he had, he might have accepted that his feelings for Rosie were — by his own thinking — sinful. They were transgressions against the canine. And yet, how comforting. At times, he and Rosie sat together by Wendigo Pond, away from the others, and used the forbidden language. Had they been caught, Atticus would have insisted they were innocent, that his conversations with Rosie were not, as they had been with Majnoun, deeply reasoned. She was something like a confidante or a lieutenant. Nothing more. So he might have said, but in his heart Atticus knew that his feelings were not innocent. They were sexual and they were unclear.)

So Max became low dog.

Except that Max was not co-operative. The dog felt he deserved status, having helped the pack rid itself of undesirables. Atticus understood Max’s unhappiness, but the pack had changed and Max would have to change with it or suffer the consequences.

Except that Max made them all suffer the consequences. He would not allow himself to be mounted. He had to be attacked, threatened, bitten. Frick and Frack would work in tandem, one holding Max by the neck while the other mounted him. Atticus had an easier time of it. He was pack leader, and Max, though resentful, accepted that it was Atticus’s right to mount him whenever he liked. The real problem was Rosie. The German shepherd was just strong enough to impose her will, but Max fought her because he could not stand to be mounted by one he was convinced he could overcome.

Because it sometimes took too long for Rosie to mount Max, Atticus would growl and threaten, nipping at Max’s ears to get the dog to submit. This was not the way true dogs did things, though, and they all knew it. Max had every right to contest his status. Why should Atticus intervene? In the end, the disappearance of the smaller dogs was a disaster for all of them. Their mornings began warily and their evenings ended on the same wary note.