THE LOYAL DOG

one

He is in his bathroom. He inspects his face in the mirror. He is beginning to believe that the visage does not hide too much information. It is just a horizon that the more forthright think they have crossed when they look at him. However, people usually get things wrong. His eyes have never been the thing that allows insight into his inner workings. When he hits his boiling point, his cheeks blush bright red, but his eyes remain calm in an attempt not to reveal anything. Maybe the cheeks are the mirror of mental states? The mouth definitely is. He cannot hide his crooked smile when he pretends to enjoy somebody’s company, in a situation he finds distressful. And there are plenty of those, everybody would agree. It is a smile that mostly resembles a rictus. Sometimes he gets scared that his face might stay that way, if he goes overboard with faking enjoyment.

Similarly, he cannot hide his doglike smile of delight when a person that excites him makes him laugh. He does not even have to like the person; he finds things that are not too familiar, nor beautiful sometimes, exciting. His lips spread over his canines, glinting in all their glory, when he hears something that excites him.

Anyway, who says dogs don’t smile? That is the only thing they do when they feel good.

And an important and good difference between people and dogs is that you are not likely to ever find a dog with a rictus grimace.

two

It is the beginning of November. He decides to go hunting. Still, he can only walk behind the party because he does not have a hunting license, or a weapon, but he has decided – he will be a part of the hunting story. Who knows, maybe he will be a part of some others after this one, but only if he likes it this time, which he seriously doubted.

He knew that you could notice that someone has already started to get old when, in a game of cards, they call the jack the knave, and when they run out of milk they ask who had used it up, but it was news to him that it could be noticed in the way they prepare for a hunting party. It seemed to him that young hunters definitely pack less painstakingly, but twice as fast, watching his father getting things in order for hours, with the patience of a surgeon and latent anxiousness of a bride mere hours before that walk down the aisle.

As usual, this time of the year the object of their interest is the rabbit; their eyes scan the Kosmaj scenery, the part toward Rogacha, for its ears, and after the extensive meetings on Friday and Saturday, on Sunday, with the first light of dawn, the six of them set out for the hunting grounds. And him, passenger number seven, with them and behind them.

They painstakingly work out their movements, who will approach from where, from here or over there; he finds out that every detail is important to minimize any potential risk, especially if the fog is relentless and thick as it has been for days. Each member of the party seems to be competing with the others in who would be more affectionate to him, who would take better care of him. This morning, he is everyone’s son. They tell him it is vital that he stays a step behind them, outside of the rifles’ range and that though they may be few, they will manage to deploy in a horseshoe to drive the rabbit toward the lower grass. They tell him it is good if the wind blows from the rabbit toward the hunters, otherwise it could easily smell them. And the dogs, they will move in a zig-zag pattern a short distance in front of the hunters, not too far, about ten to twenty meters ahead, and it is their job to flush the rabbit from the underground hovel it digs in the farmland where it resides before surfacing to look for food. So, the role of the dog is to find the rabbit, because a man can easily pass it by without even noticing. When the time comes and the man notices it, he will try to shoot it from a distance that may vary but is never more than thirty metres.

And so, for a while he walks, mulling over the general outline of this and all other hunting stories, presented to him by experienced practitioners, and then his thoughts turn to the dog. What a strange animal – it will attack another animal for a man, briefly play with it as if they were alone there, in nature, as if the whole situation is a wholly natural scene; a dog chasing a rabbit through the grass and driving it toward the open farmland in the almost joyful pace of the always frenzied natural chase and fight for survival, until it suddenly hands it over like a collaborationist to a man who has no business being there, to finish the job and do with the rabbit what he had decided to do that morning, a thing that would keep him happy for the next few hours or until the last morsels of the resulting goulash disappear from the table, leaving behind the saucy gravy to be sopped up with bread crust. Well, the rabbit would have definitely preferred to be killed by the dog’s teeth rather than ending up in the crosshairs of a bozo wearing ludicrous boots, and he thinks that in its last minutes the rabbit blames the hunter less than the dumb dog which not only did not rip its throat out it but, used to being a loyal servant, ratted out on hares and other defenseless beasts of the field. Of course, then he remembered that a rabbit cannot think, but it would have been neat if it could, because it would have surely understood several fundamental laws of the, simultaneously skillful and lame, comical and beautiful creature with a short, glossy, brown coat and moist eyes, walking proudly, but always with a dash of deference, by the man’s legs; always deserving but rarely rewarded loyal dog.

It is cold.

Breath becomes visible the moment it leaves the oral cavity. He is not used to wearing boots like these and his steps are heavier than usual. He walks slowly behind his father. The apple and the tree stomp the grass and almost every step the apple makes fits in the imprint left in the grass a second or two earlier by the tree. A strong scent spreads and invades their nostrils. He almost gets a headache from the amount of oxygen and immediacy the nature courts him with on this icy morning in fields unknown to him.

It did not take long before he dared to think that the whole thing is monotonous. He remembered what it was like when he was small; father would just suddenly appear in the house with the prey wrapped in two bags which would then wait on the table in the backyard to be processed and properly prepared. Hovering between curiosity and fear, he would approach the bags to take a closer look and smell of the thing in them, but he never unwrapped the animal, he was never guided by the truly brash and not that unusual boyish wish to cross that border and look beyond life, to delve into the motionless matter or desecrate what once had the power to react but has it no more. And later, at mealtime, he was known to mope and procrastinate despite all the fine boneless, just pure meat selected specially for him, until he spontaneously began to like meat a few years later, asking for it happily and more often.

He was not sure himself how long they have been on their feet. He could no longer see some of the people that had set off with them. He assumes that they are on the right, behind the underbrush close by, and all the while he has been walking by his father, or more accurately, behind him, half keeping his eye on his steps and reactions, half letting his mind wander. In a surreal flash, he sees his father turn quickly, grab his arm and quietly but curtly whisper into his ear to stand still and look closely ahead, which immediately clears the fog of sleepiness brought on by the rhythmic rise and fall of steps. His father still has his upper arm in a strong grasp as he looks into his eyes and almost commands him. He does not even have the time to take a breath and the rifle is already making its way into his hands and, awash with disbelief, he accepts it like hypnotised, holds it up the way he had only seen others do before, while his father approaches him and adjusts its position, guiding his hands with his own, and softly kicks his feet with the point of his boot to spread them into a more stable position.

“No way… No, no, no way…”

“Shut up and hold it! Trust me.”

“No freaking way, leave me alone…  Leave me alone, I tell you.”

“Trust me! Just keep quiet and open your eyes, look straight ahead, you see it, right?”

“I do”, he hisses back, quiet but agitated. “Absolutely no way, you hear me? I knew you would do something like this! I’ll ruin your shot, and I do not want to do this anyway, I already told you…”

“Yes you do.”

“Jesus…”

He could see that this is one situation he will not be able to get out of easily. A situation he could not avoid even if he jumped off a bridge straight onto his head, because his father was adamant to have his way. It is as if father is the man who knows his next step and with the certainty of a clairvoyant insists on being the tie between him and his own move that is to follow, but from which he is hiding in ignorance or fear, shrinking or trying to alienate himself from, even though it has been predestined to happen.

He stands in position with his finger on the trigger and eye on the rabbit. He feels about to lose consciousness. He has the feeling that his shot will go over the mark, just make noise, waste a bullet, scare the rabbit away… He wonders what would happen if someone in the group notices that it is him because he does not have a licence. His father calms him, telling him not to think about it. He is his, and his father is theirs, and this laughable and by now infuriatingly irritating chain of belonging practically brooks no paranoid thought or heavy breathing of the kind that has started to trouble him, and he feels that if he wants to take another breath he has to pull the trigger; until he does so, his lungs will not be able to fill with air.

Feeling pretty weak and reluctant to have even come here, he shores up all of his remaining concentration to best set his sights.

And then, in a hundredth of a second, he does the most and the least expected thing at the same time, he pulls the trigger and – closes his eyes. He opens them a couple of seconds later and lets go of the rifle that his father swiftly takes and puts aside, turns him toward himself and forcefully grabs his shoulders with both hands, informing him with a grin:

“You got him!”

In the swirl of emotions caused by the news, he first stops and then euphorically starts to clap his father’s back, and soon they are both jumping like a couple of tribal brothers in a trance, intoxicated by the substance the use of force exudes and releases into the brain of a warrior. It was as if Artemis herself kissed him on the mouth and allowed him to take one of her charges because she was in such a good mood on that crazy, autumn, fog-bound day.

It took him a while to wrap his head around the fact that he shot a rabbit. He was not that kind of person (everybody thinks so, right?) but there you go, it happened. His initial disbelief was replaced by enormous pride, and then replaced again by disbelief and later profound guilt because of the bunny. And during the long walk back to the bungalows he attempted to ascertain whether it was mere coincidence or the result of his skill. Finally, he opted for coincidence. He also decided that he felt sorry for the rabbit and that he would not go hunting again, except if he really had to. And that likelihood, he thought, ranked somewhere up there with hunting for survival, which was a fairly remote possibility akin to him as a survivor of a plane crash somewhere in the Andes chewing on a deceased fellow passenger’s leg. But deeper still he felt a frisson of excitement he was a little ashamed of; though he wanted to suppress it, it was present and tickled him all the way back. It was not a thrill of the kill, not at all… He was excited to discover a new self, someone whose head does not fall off his shoulders, someone able to react in a given moment, not mess up, not miss, someone able to invest enough strength into the moment when it is needed to bolster concentration, because the two do not seem able to work alone. And then, in the ocean of emotions following him all the way back to the bungalow, one thought started to crystalize, strongly focused on his body, a thought appearing as new and unknown before; an emotion that swallowed him whole and whispered to the body it was closely connected with: You will rebuild yourself.

Translated by: Mirjana Slavkovski