Her parents stayed in the town where I had grown up, and she visited them several times a month. I got used to the smell of gas. She would say that such a nomadic life could do harm even to a healthy dog, and it was scary to think what could become of me with my neurotic gastritis. A vet told her that when I was nervous, I was likely to have low-acidity gastritis. Well, I couldn’t argue with him.
People are not the only living creatures that can move around on their lower extremities, drink alcohol and use everything that their civilization has achieved. I get up in the morning, because our alarm-clock is ringing. My food is prepared on an electric cooker and is kept in a fridge. When dogs go by train, they do it only in compartment carriages, and a bus ticket for a dog costs the same as a ticket for a human being. Still, people consider themselves superior only because other animals do not talk their human language.
She was constantly giving me medicine, hoping to get rid of the gastritis I had never had.
-4-
I have a dog.
More precisely,
It’s a piece of my heart,
And not just a dog.
I love it
And sympathize with all my soul,
Because there is no dog
That my poor dog can own.
And when I am sad,
Have you any idea of
What a dog means,
When you are sad?
Well, when I am sad,
I hold my dog’s neck and say,
“My dog, let me be your dog –
shall we do it this way?”
She liked this poem very much. When she was sad, she used to hold my neck, whispering about her troubles. Then she would turn a gramophone on; she had many records that were quite rare. The records rustled quietly and low sounds of the music were filling the room. We were sitting on the floor and she was reading me poetry. She had been training her memory and learning extracts from heavy volumes. She smoked, breathing in eagerly, and then breathing the smoke out at my nose. She laughed when I turned away. ‘My dog, let me be your dog – shall we do it this way?’ Her former classmate had copied this poem for her, and she loved it. And I loved her.
-5-
She was injured in a car crash. The chief of her pack told me that everything would be okay, took two big bags that smelled of bandages and shots and left. The Zubenkos came every day, fed and walked me. It was autumn. There was lots of mud outside, and I didn’t want to walk.
They brought her back home in a month. She could walk already and soon I started to walk her out. She had walked me before, but now I helped her to go down the stairs. I carefully went beside her, holding her hand with my teeth, and she didn’t take her hand out of my huge and, as they said, horrifying jaws. We went out of the door and then slowly returned home, resting after each flight of stairs. She was still too weak.
