André Alexis: Fifteen Dogs

This was no problem for Bella. She knelt, her front legs tucked under her, and waited for Athena to climb up. This Athena did, but in the early going she would almost immediately fall off again and it hurt to fall from Bella’s back. She learned quickly, though. By the third day, using her claws to steady herself and biting into Bella’s neck to keep in place, Athena was so well balanced it would have been difficult to dislodge her. This made for an especially curious sight when, after a few days, Bella — with her loping and rhythmically arrhythmic gait — felt confident enough to run if she wanted, her withers dipping and rising while Athena, like a furry passenger on a ship’s fo’c’sle, joyfully held on.

Exhilarating as this was for the bitches — and the two were soon as close as litter mates — the arrangement caused trouble for the pack. Athena and Bella brought unwanted attention. One day, as the dogs were scavenging for food along the lakeshore, a group of young human males noticed the way Athena rode on Bella’s back. Amused and immediately scornful, they began to chase after the dogs. Strange in the way that humans are strange, the high spirits of the young males were, to Bella and Athena, indistinguishable from aggression or dislike. The boys took up rocks and began to throw them at the dogs. Bella was not fast and she could not run for long distances at a stretch. After a while, she slowed and one of the rocks hit Athena, who yelped in pain and fell from Bella’s back. Athena’s misfortune and pain provoked even greater amusement in the humans. They gathered more rocks, intent now on causing the dogs as much distress as they could.

Though Bella was by nature even-tempered and difficult to rile, as the young males approached she was at once protective and ready to kill. Using the only guile that occurred to her, counting on taking out the biggest of her attackers first, she went at them snarling and single-minded. And she was on the leader before he or any of the others could react or run away. Launching her two hundred pounds at him, she went instinctively for his throat and, had he not raised his arm at the last moment, she would have bitten through the flesh of his neck. Instead, she bit his right hand straight down to the bone. Blood spurted as he cried out beneath her. The others, though armed with stones, were petrified. They stood still, listening to their friend cry for help. Their fear worked entirely to Bella’s advantage. In an instant, she was off the first human, done with him, running directly at the next one closest to her. He ran off at once, screeching in distress, leaving his friends to their fate.

Atticus and Majnoun, who had been scavenging nearby and had come at the sounds of an affray, snarled at the humans and ran after them, chasing them farther off, ensuring they did not turn back, though, in fact, turning back was the furthest thing from any of their minds. The rout, in other words, was thorough and swift. The six or seven boys, none of them older than fourteen, were traumatized and humiliated. But when the dogs saw that Athena was not badly hurt — she had bled and there was a clump of wet fur above her left eye — Majnoun said

— This is not good. Humans don’t like it when you bite them. We will have to change territory.

— I agree it is not good, said Atticus, but why should we leave? They will be looking for these two. The bitches will have to keep out of sight. The big one is the one who did damage. They will come for her, but they will not come for us.

— I do not agree and I do not disagree, said Majnoun.

But the dogs took precautions. Bella and Athena scavenged in High Park and stayed close to the coppice. They kept away from the lakeshore and Athena did not travel on Bella’s back until evening, when shadow obscured them. During the day, the others went about in small groups, no more than two or three together, drawing as little attention as possible.

These precautions were taken for the sake of humans. It wasn’t that humans were inevitably dangerous, but they were unpredictable. While one might kneel to pat your back or scratch your beard, another who looked exactly like the first would kick you, throw stones, or even do you to death. It was, in general, best to avoid them. Contrary to expectations, however, in the first weeks after their change, the worst confrontations were not with humans but with other dogs. No matter how polite the pack were or how non-committal, some would attack them at once, without so much as a snarl or a baring of teeth.

— They think we’re weak, said Atticus.

But it wasn’t as simple as that. The dogs who attacked were aggressive, but they also seemed afraid. They weren’t frightened of the bigger dogs alone, of Bella or Atticus, Frick or Frack. They were also intimidated by Dougie, Benjy, Bobbie and Athena, none of whom should have been threatening to any reasonably sized creature. The dogs who did not immediately attack them were, at times, immediately submissive, and this was almost as strange. It was, to the smaller dogs, as if they were being mistaken for fierce and towering versions of themselves.

The twelve dogs reacted differently to their altered status. Atticus found the situation intolerable. It was traumatic to know oneself to be a simple dog but to live in a world where other dogs treated you as something other. For Atticus, all the old pleasures — sniffing at an anus, burying one’s nose where a friend’s genitals were, mounting those with lower status — could no longer be had without crippling self-consciousness. In this, he, Majnoun, Prince and Rosie were alike. The four of them were inclined to a thoughtfulness that all save Prince — and to an extent, Majnoun — would have abandoned in order to lose themselves once more in the community of dogs. Prince was the only one who entirely embraced the change in consciousness. It was as if he’d discovered a new way of seeing, an angle that made all that he had known strange and wonderful.

At the other end of the spectrum were Frick, Frack and the mutt, Max. They, too, were troubled by self-consciousness, but they learned to suppress thinking. They used their newfound thoughtfulness, certainly, but they did so while remaining faithful to the old way of being dogs. When challenged by unknown dogs, they defended themselves with lascivious efficiency, ganging up on their attackers, treating them the way they would sheep: biting through their tendons, leaving them to bleed and suffer. When they encountered submissive dogs, their pleasure was just as intense. The three would fuck anything that let them. In a way, then, their new (or different) intelligence was at the service of what they understood to be their essence: the canine. They were worthy of the fear ‘normal’ dogs showed them.

In fact, the dogs that caused Frick, Frack and Max the most trouble were the others in their own pack. Yes, the other nine shared their intelligence and swiftly evolving language. And, yes, the others were the only creatures who understood them. But ‘understanding,’ reeking as it did of thought, was the last thing they wanted. ‘Understanding’ was a reminder that, despite their efforts to live as dogs, they were no longer normal. What they wanted from the others was submission or leadership and, at first, they got neither.

Of the other dogs, Prince was, naturally, the one who annoyed Frick, Frack and Max most. Prince was a mutt of some sort, his fur russet with a white patch on his chest. He was big but his disposition nullified any physical threat. He was never less than accommodating. He could be dominated. The irritant was that Prince had strange ideas. It was he who had divided the day into portions. It was he who asked endless questions about trivial things: about humans, about the sea, about trees, about his favourite smells (bird flesh, grass, hot dogs), about the yellow disk above them in whose light one could be warm. The three had, of course, loathed Prince’s pun on ‘stone’ and ‘bone.’ Nor would Prince stop. Encouraged by the others, his play with language was a constant affront to clarity.