Dog Days by Jeanette Winterson. Part 2.
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It was my job to train the dog. He took it upon himself to tame me.
I have never settled. I have never said yes to someone else without reservation. I am not sure that I have said yes to life without reservation, as if by reserving something to myself, I would not be mangled, tangled, strangled by the demands of this world and the demands of others. It is not wise to give unreservedly. I am a generous person, kind and seeing, would withhold nothing except what must be with-held. There are gifts, and they are gladly given, but the self is a gift with reservation. Absurd to love a dog so much that there was no reservation.
But I did.
When he was a puppy he went everywhere in a cotton bag. We took him to the cinema one night, and he slept on my knee all the way through the film and I pretended not to notice that my legs were getting wetter and wetter as his bladder emptied while he slept.
We took him to a photographic exhibition – still in his bag – and while we walked from photo to photo he stayed quite still, warm and soft through the bag, like a living secret, but whenever we stopped to admire something in particular, his curious black head popped out, and looked sleepily at the photograph, and sleepily at us, as if to say, You walk and I’ll dream.’
And that’s how it was when he was small, falling over his own feet, tiring and needing to be carried, us walking, walking, him dreaming, dreaming, a black curled-up ball of dreaming, a dream dog.
And then later, bigger, stronger, he did all the walking, me panting to keep up, never could walk him to exhaustion, his long strong body sleeking through the air like a thought that comes back and back, like a boomerang, flung out of sight but coming back and back. Out we went, long walks, long days, and then I was the one doing the dreaming, the rhythm of him releasing my mind.
I dream we will always be together.
I dream we will always be here.
I dream we are in a wood – a dark wood, and midway through it, midway through life. I dream I am travelling. The branches are dark with their own shadows. The crows are flying home. Night is falling. Black air thick with crows’ wings. My black dog. It’s late. Dream me home.
I woke up to the telephone. It’s the dead of night. Where are you?
Do you believe that love is as strong as death? Not stronger, as strong as, the hostile twins fighting it out through the stretch of the universe. Who wins? Death takes the easy victory every time, but love never steps out of the ring. You want to fight? Fight this – you live in my life – not in my memory, not in thoughts – in my life, the cellular me, the renewing DNA, I am a part of all I have met, you are what I met. Apart, yes we are, death can do that. Separate, no, love holds you there. While I am alive, so are you, we go on together because we can’t be any other way.
And I think it’s you, just up ahead, waiting for me.
Always just up ahead now, waiting for me. I’ll be there. You ran faster than I could follow.
I used to send him to stay with a friend in the country. She had a terrible time of it because he didn’t understand that a hen is best left unmurdered.
She walked him long and hard, and he built sinew and muscle and muddied her kitchen floor, and when she took his bed away from the Aga, he dragged it back, and lay looking at her with his big eyes. He knew where he wanted to be.
It was the summer and every night she played him the BBC Proms on the radio and cooked her supper with the back door open and he ran in and out and her cats sat on the corrugated roof of the shed, their fur in ripples like the waves of the roof. And on rainy July-August nights she lit a tinker’s fire with fallen wood and the dog and the cats sat in front of it, like different stars in the same sky. Animal-dark, animal-fire.
She said, ‘He startled three deer, and chased them, amazed by their easy grace and light speed, and he tried to bound as they bounded, one, two, three, leap, one, two, three, leap, but they cleared the hedge and vanished like mist, and he was left, on his hind legs, puzzled, barking. What kind of an animal vanishes?’
She said, ‘We crossed a fox, burning red, early, alone in the field, dew-heavy up to his belly in thick grass. Max gave chase, and the fox turned at bay, and threw all his red power at the black young dog. I wish you had seen him run, spine contracted, head down, blurring his paws to get away, and up the hill he came towards me, and stood panting, tongue out, looking back at whatever it was that had reddened him into flight. What kind of an animal is red?”
She showed him the world – the green world, the blue world, the white world, the river world, where he sprung in, flung in, chasing ducks, and scrambling out as joyful as every river-drop shook from him, racing the narrow muddy path, happy, happy. What kind of an animal is happy?
This one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one …
I’m curled up now, narrow muzzle on my forepaws, drying off, fed, watching you. The whole world, look what we’ve got, the whole world.
Yes is chaos. No is control. Every yes I ever said brought with it a downpour, an avalanche, a heavens opening chaos and doused me in life, water of life, swept off my feet, better swim for it, deep breath.
He loved water. He was a spaniel. I loved the splendid chaos of him. My fearless dog, in chase, in repose, spinning universe of nose and paws.
Call him and he’ll come. Call him.
He ate poison, twice, but it didn’t kill him. He raced across an open road and a white van took him down. We waited all night, waiting waiting, he was so strong, but this time he didn’t come back. I called and I called but he didn’t come back.
Love is not one thing, one kind. Love is not one shape, one name. Love is chaos because it is bigger than any of the boxes it comes in, and as soon as you get it home, it fills the whole house.
He was so tiny the day that we brought him home; he grew, and so did love.
He stole my shoes, my cardigans, my pens, my gardening gloves, my string, my car keys, my heart. In return he gave me the sun.
Running, running, running, running, running.
Go to Part 1