I followed the path through the wooded part of campus, the trees that separate the main buildings from the faculty houses. The two floors of my cottage had been divided into apartments, of which mine was the loveliest, I thought, on the ground floor with windows facing into the trees. I had moved in less than a year before, tired of taking the bus each morning from my apartment off campus. I hadn’t known how soon I would be leaving, not just Sofia but teaching altogether, it had become unbearable, the drudgery and routine of it, earlier that spring I had realized I couldn’t face another year. A short set of stairs led to my door, four or five steps, and as I began to climb them I stumbled, catching myself with my hands and then falling onto my side against the concrete, where I lay or half lay for a moment before sitting upright on the bottom step. I swallowed hard against a wave of nausea, of nausea and something else, they were indistinguishable, seven years, I thought, seven years undone, a betrayal of vocation. But I rejected this even as I thought it, it wasn’t my vocation, it was just something I had done, a way I had passed the time; don’t be so pious, something said in me, and something else cringed away. I swallowed again, I couldn’t be sick here, everyone would see it, if I was going to be sick I had to get inside. But though I willed myself to stand I remained where I was, barely upright, my hands buttressed at my sides and my torso leaning forward, swaying a little. I was exaggerating or making excuses, it wasn’t so bad or it was worse. You can’t know tonight, I thought, in the morning you’ll know, and I feared what I would feel, how my actions would look in the light of day, those were the words I used, the light of day, I was thinking in old phrases.
I tried to stand again, lifting myself a few inches before I dropped back down. I heard a sound then and looked up, and saw coming up the path toward me the fat shape of Mama Dog, her tail beating in the dark. She was the only dog allowed on campus; for years she had kept other dogs away, but now she was too old to guard anything, and she spent most of the day sleeping, on the porches of our houses or beside the guards where they sat in the shade. She was always happy to see me, I gave her treats sometimes, but I didn’t have anything for her now, and I told her this, Nyamam nishto, opening my empty hands. She cocked her head, that look of understanding dogs give, or of wanting to understand, their demand for attention. Obicham te, I said to her, I love you, but tonight I don’t have anything, go away, I said, mahai se, and I made a shooing motion with my hand. But she didn’t go, she stood staring at me, the movement of her tail slowing just slightly, and then she inched forward and pressed her snout against my hand, her nose wet in my palm. Still I didn’t respond, but she insisted, jerking her nose up as if to toss my hand to her head, where she wanted to be scratched. I laughed and said Okay, Mama, okay, as I raked my fingers through her fur. She whined happily and came closer, pressing her trunk against my leg and rippling her body in that puppyish movement that communicates joy better than anything we can manage, and I used both hands to scratch along her sides, feeling bits of leaf and pine needles and accumulated grime. You’re filthy, I said, but I love you, and I bent my face down to hers, touching our foreheads together and gripping her in something like a hug. She tolerated this briefly, and then she tilted her snout slightly up and quickly licked my face, her tongue wet across my lips. I pulled back, making a sound of disgust and wiping my lips clean, but then I laughed again.
She pressed against me more insistently, rubbing the top of her head against my jeans. She wanted a treat, and wanted more to be let inside. She had been a house dog once, I had heard, years ago she had belonged to a foreign teacher who left her behind when he went back to the States, she loved to sleep in our houses. But we had been told it wasn’t allowed; she was almost always dirty, and though she was treated for fleas and ticks you could never be sure, she was an outdoor dog now, we shouldn’t encourage her. But there was no one around to admonish me, and so Ela, I said to her, come on, and then I stood, successfully this time, maybe because Mama kept her side pressed against me, as if to prop me up as I kept one hand braced against the brick wall of the house. She whined at the door as I fumbled the key into the lock. Okay, Mama, I said soothingly again, okay. I would take the box of treats from the cabinet above the sink, I would put towels down on the kitchen floor so she would have a soft place to lie down. She was dirty but what was a little dirt, I thought as I turned the latch, I should have let you in a long time ago, I said, I’m sorry. I pushed the door open and she went ahead of me into the house, going just a few feet before she dropped onto the tile of the entranceway, a spot she claimed as if it had long been hers, and gave a quick deep sigh as she laid her head on her paws. She kept her eyes on me as I tossed my keys in the little dish by the door, her tail more subdued but still striking the wall beside her as I put my bag down, waiting for the dizziness to pass. Okay, Mama, I said again, you sleep there, we’ll sleep and in the morning we’ll feel better, though I feared I wouldn’t feel better, in body and spirit both I thought I would likely feel much worse. And then, because the dizziness didn’t pass or maybe because I wanted her warmth next to me, I lowered myself to the floor, I stretched myself out beside her and laid one hand on her flank. We’ll sleep, I said again, and she rolled onto her side, her stomach toward me, and placed one of her paws against my chest. It would leave a mark, I knew, I would have to scrub it out in the morning, but what did it matter, I thought as I closed my eyes, what does it matter, why not let it stay.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Excerpts from this book first appeared, often in very different versions, in The Iowa Review, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, A Public Space, The Sewanee Review, and StoryQuarterly. Special thanks to Brigid Hughes, Cressida Leyshon, Adam Ross, Nicole Rudick, and Lorin Stein.
A residency fellowship from the Lannan Foundation made it possible for me to complete this book. Thanks also to the Next Page Foundation and the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation for residencies in Bulgaria.
Many thanks to Anna Stein, Claire Nozieres, Morgan Oppenheimer, and Lucy Luck for the care they’ve taken with this book.
Thank you to Mitzi Angel for her brilliant, collaborative editing, and to everyone at FSG and Picador (U.S. and U.K.), especially Eric Chinski, Kris Doyle, Anna deVries, and Brian Gittis. Special and endless thanks to Camilla Elworthy.
For reading early versions of this book, in whole or in part, thank you to Jamel Brinkley, Kevin Brockmeier, Lan Samantha Chang, Ilya Kaminsky, Dimiter Kenarov, D. Wystan Owen, and Alan Pierson.
For all things, thank you to Luis Muñoz.
ALSO BY GARTH GREENWELL
What Belongs to You
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Garth Greenwell is the author of What Belongs to You, which won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was long-listed for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for six other awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, it was named a Best Book of 2016 by more than fifty publications in nine countries, and is being translated into a dozen languages. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and A Public Space, and he has written nonfiction for The Guardian, the London Review of Books, and Harper’s Magazine. He lives in Iowa City. You can sign up for email updates here.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
I.
MENTOR
GOSPODAR
DECENT PEOPLE
II. LOVING R.
CLEANNESS
THE FROG KING
A VALEDICTION
III.
HARBOR
THE LITTLE SAINT
AN EVENING OUT
Acknowledgments
Also by Garth Greenwell
A Note About the Author
Copyright
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
120 Broadway, New York 10271
Copyright © 2020 by Garth Greenwell
All rights reserved
> First edition, 2020
E-book ISBN: 978-0-374-71814-5
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