André Alexis - Fifteen Dogs

One day, as Majnoun sat in the yard opposite the house that had been his home, a black poodle — almost Majnoun’s double, save that this one had bright blue eyes — greeted him in the language of his pack.

— Do you mind if I sit with you? Hermes asked.

Pleased to hear the language of his pack, Majnoun said

— I do not mind, but how do you know our language?

— I am well-travelled, said Hermes, I know many languages.

— Even the human ones?

— Yes, said Hermes, I have lived many places.

In English, Majnoun said

— You must be very intelligent.

In English, Hermes answered

— I am, but I don’t like to talk about my virtues.

Majnoun knew then that this was the being he had seen in dreams.

— You are not a dog, he said. I know you. What do you want with me?

— I am here to help.

— Tell me where Nira is, said Majnoun.

— I can take you to her, said Hermes, but you will have to leave this place.

Majnoun looked over at the house he had been contemplating for five years: red brick, tall chimney, pyramid roof, a window with shutters on the third floor, a bay window on the second floor, front porch with its own roof, blue spruce in the front yard, different kinds of bushes that served as a hedge. You might almost have said that he loved its bricks, aluminium and wood, but, of course, they were precious only because Nira had lived within.

— I cannot leave, said Majnoun.

Hermes said

— Then I will keep you company, if you’ll allow it. Is there anything I can do for you?

Majnoun considered the question. There was nothing he wanted, but he was curious about the visitor’s influence.

— Make time stop, he said.

— It is very unpleasant, said Hermes, but as you wish.

And time stood still. A bird that had alighted on the branch of a tree two doors down stopped singing but went on producing the same note it had produced at the moment time stopped. No sound having had time to decay, the noise around them was unbearable, the earth a deafening alarm. A butterfly hovering above the leaves of a flowering shrub seemed stuck in a jelly of air, the light-blue dots on its wings clearly visible above a yellow fringe. Even the smells stood still, so that when Majnoun moved his head ever so slightly, he could smell a vein of scent and then another and another, each scent like a layer in mica.

— That’s enough, said Majnoun

only moments after time had stopped.

— I used to amuse myself doing that, said Hermes. It was a test to see how long I could last. I am like you, Majnoun. I never lasted long. My brother Ares could take it for days, though.

— Your brother must be strong, said Majnoun.

— No, said Hermes. The noise reminds him of war, and he likes it.

At that, Majnoun understood how completely his companion transcended the world. Though he was intimidated, he asked

— What is it like to be a god?

— I am very sorry, said Hermes, but the only language in which I can truly express this is one that mortals cannot learn.

— Do you feel as we do? asked Majnoun.

— No, said Hermes. For me, what you call feeling is of a different order and nature. It is palpable, like steam or smoke.

— How strange, said Majnoun.

For a time, the two sat quietly together, contemplating the houses, the sky, and the world. The people who passed saw Majnoun in one of his usual spots, staring fixedly ahead, as he usually did. They did not see Hermes. The dogs, cats and birds, on the other hand, saw Hermes before they saw Majnoun and all were spooked.

There were a thousand questions Majnoun would have liked to ask. Are dogs greater than humans? Which beings are smartest? Why is there death? What is the purpose of life? Most of these questions were interesting, but their answers were now unimportant to Majnoun. Majnoun wished to know one thing and one thing alone: Nira’s whereabouts. But he was afraid to ask the question or, rather, afraid of its answer. And Hermes — out of respect for Majnoun — did not speak of Nira. He waited, rather, to be asked.

Despite being unable to broach the one subject that mattered to him, Majnoun was more or less at ease in Hermes’s company. They spoke (silently) of a number of things, the god at home in the mind of the dog. And the day passed in what seemed moments.

As the sun set, Majnoun reluctantly left his station. He and Hermes wandered along Roncesvalles, drifting toward High Park. Majnoun sniffed at things on the ground, before Hermes led him to an alley behind a delicatessen. There, they found stale bread and a link of Polish sausage. Majnoun ate as much as he wanted, before wandering west to High Park. He was now well past the age of moving quickly and — in warm weather — he rarely went much farther than the park’s perimeter: the playground, the duck pond, the trees near the streetcar roundabout.

When, at last, he and Hermes sat beneath the boughs of a pine tree, the question he’d avoided forced its way into his thoughts and Majnoun could not hide his anxiety.

— I can see, said Hermes, that you’d like to ask me something.

— Can you tell me what love means? asked Majnoun.

The sun had almost completely set. A crimson line lay just above the trees. The noises of night — subtler but more intriguing than those of day — had come, and the park was lit here and there by street light and moonlight. The shadows deepened.

— Your bodies are so graceful, said Hermes, and your senses are magnificent. I regret that you’ve been changed, Majnoun. If you were as you’d been, a dog like other dogs, the question you asked would not have occurred to you. You would know the answer already.

— The word reminds me of Nira, said Majnoun.

— I understand, said Hermes. So let us make a pact. I’ll answer your question, but, in return, you’ll consider leaving this place.

— I cannot leave without Nira, said Majnoun.

— I ask only that you consider it, said Hermes.

Majnoun agreed, then he sat up straight.

— What you want to know, Majnoun, is not what love means. It means no one thing and never will. What you want to know is what Nira meant when she used the word. This is more difficult, because Nira’s word is like a long journey taken by one woman alone. She read the word in books, heard it in conversations, talked about it with friends and family, Miguel and you. No other being has encountered the word love as Nira has or used it in quite the same ways, but I can take you along Nira’s path.

Which the god of translators did, taking Majnoun, in a handful of heartbeats, through every encounter Nira had had with the word love , allowing Majnoun to feel her emotions and know her thoughts each and every time she had heard, thought about or spoken the word: from the tiniest flicker of recognition to the deepest emotion and all points between. As Majnoun’s understanding of Nira’s ‘love’ deepened, so did his distress. Nira was restored to him as if she were there with them, but she was far from him as well, and it was suddenly unbearable to be without her.

Majnoun could not even keen, so overwhelmed was he by grief. All he could manage was a sigh. He lay down on the rust-coloured pine needles and put his head on the crux made by his paws.

— There’s no need for you to wait any longer, said Hermes. I will take you to her.

At that moment, Majnoun would have done anything to see Nira again. And so, trusting in the god of thieves, he gave up his vigil. And his soul travelled through the evening with Hermes as its guide.

Had there been a hint in Prince’s poetry, a clear hint, that his was a soul on which a god might safely wager? No, not really. There was no clearly compelling reason to be optimistic about a dog that spent its time composing (and remembering) poems in a language unknown to all but a diminishing handful of dogs. In fact, by the time Prince composed his final poems, he was the only being on earth who could have understood them, the language of his pack having vanished almost as suddenly as it had come into being.