Dog Years

by Mark Doty

  When my grandfather died—he of the carefully kept up insurance payments, to foot the bill for a good-sized funeral—I was two. My sister, who’s ten years older, tells me what I don’t myself remember: how there was a big Irish wake in the house, and everyone brought something, and sat and ate and drank around the open casket late into the night. Our cousin Buddy, who was in the military, brought a huge box of doughnuts, and Sally and I spent the whole night drinking coffee spiked with whiskey, and helping ourselves to one doughnut after another. Coffee, whiskey, sugar, an open coffin—perfect beginnings for an elegiac poet, no?

  Paul and I have gone to see my favorite opera, The Magic Flute, a fairy tale, a children’s pageant that can say the most serious of things because it claims no stake in the real; we are not expected to believe. In this production, there’s a particularly compelling staging of the scene where, as part of their initiation into the mysteries, Tamino and Pamina must pass through the dangerous elements: fire and water. What will protect them?

  Pamina rests her hand on her lover’s arm, and Tamino lifts his little flute and begins to play, while around them rise the tongues of flame, element that burns and cleanses. Together, they walk through the flames—played by dancers under glowing light, they look surprisingly convincing, flickering and forking out—unharmed.

  And then, again, she rests her hand on his proffered sleeve, he lifts his instrument, and plays his whistling tune—such a delicate, almost childlike little song, to carry us through such struggle!—and together they pass through the waves, those same dancers now lit blue, performing as the unbreathable element that both drowns and washes clean.

  It makes me take Paul’s hand, in the dark. Isn’t it strange how the piping little air—in the midst of the great constructions of sound Mozart pours out so effortlessly—how that tune’s the bravest, finest thing?

  Thus, in the face of all dangers, in what may seem a godless region, we move forward through the agencies of love and art.

  What if the kingdom of heaven is the realm of paradox? Attachment and detachment, they flip back and forth like lenses the optometrist shows you: this one, or this one, which is better, which is more clear? You are abandoned by the world and at once wholly loved by it. You are the little baby in arms of time, and time will carry you away. You’re given memory, buoyancy, humor, humility, and friendship, as well as forgetfulness, heaviness, lament, self-pity, and isolation. You’re the crown of creation, and fodder for every little mite and laboring insect that carries the earth’s own children back into the dirt. Everything and nothing. This is it, what surrounds you, the daily life to which you are much of the time asleep—this is it, and this was it the whole time.

  Entr’acte

  Drugs for Arden

  Elevil: for those bouts of anxiety after September 11, prescribed by a doctor straight out of Central Casting for a Chelsea vet: designer muscle, sleek, blond hair, and a soul generally untouched by struggle, or perhaps mortally afraid of it; I probably diminish him, but that’s how he comes across. The pill seems to work; Arden’s calmer for a couple of weeks, and then has a perfectly awful, intractable anxiety attack, at which point I throw the Elevil away, and Arden promptly seems much better.

  The same doctor prescribes raw foods, a diet prepared by an industrious soul here in the neighborhood and sold in the doctor’s office frozen, in plastic tubes like sausage, a mixture of beef and barley, lamb and oats, chicken and wheat. The idea is to replicate the diet of dogs in the wild, back someplace before domestication, on the theory that their bellies have not further evolved since then, and that the enzymes and particular merits of the food are destroyed by the cooking and canning that create the usual product.

  It seems mostly reasonable, except for maybe the evolutionary part, and Arden thinks it all right, or tolerable anyway, and a small fortune is thus consigned to bags of the stuff, a daily regime of which certainly costs more than the contribution one is asked to make per day to feed a child through one of those charities that promise to nourish the hungry in Africa or Latin America. It is only a matter of weeks, though, before Arden refuses to have any more to do with raw foods, walking disdainfully away from the bowl.

  Rejection of Chinese herbs, recommended by the acupuncturist who makes house calls, is much more swift. I’m an expert in making pills into palatable little packages, rolled in bits of ham, disguised in balls of cheese or peanut butter, hidden in balls of dog food like Swedish meatballs—though, in truth, even when I think I’ve succeeded in slipping something by, it’s not all that unusual to find, hours or days later, some discarded pill discreetly stashed in a corner someplace. But there is no hesitation about the green, fragrant Chinese herbs; they’re immediately, unequivocally spit out, and no amount of persuasion or coercion avails.

  Acupuncture, a recommended cure for those troubled hips, and a treatment from which I myself have benefited, is better tolerated. Arden sits patiently with the needles in place, though every now and then he insists on moving, and the little stainless steel needles tumble onto the carpet. Is he better? Hard to tell. But he clearly dislikes the acupuncturist a bit more with each visit, until that throaty growl begins to make me nervous, and I figure I’d best listen to the patient’s wishes.

  Chapter Fifteen

  After our long, scorching taxi ride over the hills, it would make sense to take a nap—but once we’ve opened the double wooden doors that lead out onto the terrace of our room, it’s impossible to even think of it. We look out over rooftops and gardens; San Miguel de Allende, a hill town in the high desert north of Mexico City, is stacked, terraced, red-tiled, painted every shade of rose, brick, and ocher, with jolts of electric blue thrown in. Down the hill’s long decline, a valley opens out, tiny distant trees and spires and lake in a smoky expanse, like the background in some Renaissance painting. The world smells like burning mesquite, diesel fuel, very old wood, sage, geraniums, and dust. In the street below us, buses and cars thread their way between groups of people, children and dogs and adults strolling, vendors with dolls, a man with a tall stack of straw hats on his head, a table laid out with helados and frutas and golden, round empanadas. We’ll sleep later.

  Once out the heavy, carved doors of the hotel (every place seems to have these, tall, armored with ancient hinges and locks), we discover that the narrow roadway has filled with a parade. It’s Three Kings Day, the Mexican feast of the Epiphany. A succession of trucks grind their way up the street; on the flatbed of each, a glorious display of children and animals, all costumed to represent moments in the early life of Christ.

  Though, in fact, it’s the Virgin Mary who’s the center of attention. Here she is, with Joseph, bent over the rough cradle, receiving the attentions of the kings; now she and Joseph are fleeing into the desert, perched on an amazingly cooperative donkey. Now they are camped at an oasis, surrounded by boy angels and baby goats. In each scene, the Virgin’s portrayed by a girl wrapped in blue, attending to her role with gravity. The angels look around, and even wave back at us when we wave to them, and one of the Josephs wobbles noticeably as the truck lurches a little on a pothole. But each Mary is radiantly fixed, her attention focused on the doll in the manger or in her arms.

  San Miguel’s a complex place. A thriving expatriate community, Americans and Europeans who’ve settled here, along with wealthy weekenders from Mexico City, have brought coffee bars, Internet cafés, ATMs, a very good restaurant that inscribes its name on every slice of its delicious chocolate cake. There’s a venerable art school, and an unfinished Siqueiros mural in an old convent turned Centro de Bellas Artes. Various residents are involved, this week, in a festival honoring the work of Virginia Woolf.

  In the next parade, the three kings ride through town on horseback, tossing pineapple candy to everybody along the street, followed by a delirious cast of celebrating characters: Bugs Bunny and the Devil, Barney the Dinosaur, Uncle Sam and Minnie Mouse. Bells from I don’t know how many churches mark seemingly random hours of the day. People
wander into mass and prayers and first communions, into the temples of the images: Virgins whose faces are lit by tenderness, or transfixed by grief, boy saints who seem the incarnation of devotion, fiercely suffering Christs revealing their blazing wounds. The two thieves writhe in the air on crosses of their own. Each church is a box full of such carved and costumed emblems of the possibilities of human feeling. People wander out again to circle the jardin, or laugh at clowns, or sit in the benches under the clipped laurels. The garden’s so densely planted and ordered that it seems larger than it actually is, a dreamy public space made for both social life and private reflection, for festival and for respite. Ancient women, cowboys, the ubiquitous beloved children, the man who sells newspapers meticulously folding his stock.

  Exactly the opposite of an American suburb, where few people are visible, everyone held apart in their privacy. There commingling happens by driving—either because we’re all on the road together in our separate vehicles or because we’ve driven someplace, mall or restaurant or church, where we can actually see each other. Here, people seem to be in the streets a great deal of the time, seeing their friends and acquaintances and everyone else as well, selling things and shopping, hanging out, consuming, enjoying, taking pleasure.

  Paul and I are entranced by this fabric of urbanity so unlike our own. In New York, of course, there’s a continuous, vital presence of people on the streets, but nothing like this sense of coherence and connectedness. Our city’s essential characteristic, in fact, is difference, disparate humanity thrown together in the simultaneous adventure and near-disaster of the everyday. But once much of the world must have been like San Miguel, a place where so much is known and held in common; it feels like walking into a tapestry, that tightly woven, and every corner quick with life.

  I’m walking down a steep side street when a woman comes up the opposite direction, leading three beautiful burros loaded with firewood. The animals are short, wide-bellied, on their backs are woven serapes, and on top of those, canvas sacks filled with neatly stacked sticks, a cargo of firewood. It’s like a movie of Mexico, such a perfect image out of another age. And then I look a little farther down the street, and see on the corner the boom, the dolly that hoists a beetling black camera. It is a movie.

  But the next day, we’re walking near the Parque Juarez, a tropical garden where dogs lope through the heat to drink from stone fountains placed at each intersection of the diverging paths, and along comes a fellow with three less photogenic burros—a little scrawnier and a bit less doe-eyed—and there’s not a camera in sight. The town’s specifically itself and an image for consumption, both a replica and an original at once.

  The next day, there’s a dog. We’ve been noticing the dogs of San Miguel all along, not just the solitary drinkers in the park but the ones who wander the streets at all hours, day and night, often with a purposeful attitude, an evident sense of destination. Some wear collars, some do not; some look well fed, others obviously lean. They dart in and out of traffic with abandon; we think it’s a wonder they’re still on earth. Most seem quite pleasant in their demeanor, if not overly concerned with us; they accept a pat or a friendly greeting, and then either head on their way or remain placidly in place, enjoying the warmth of sunlight in a doorway, or waiting attentively on someone who’s soon to return.

  But the dog we meet late on Calle Canal is different. We’re headed back to the hotel when she comes creeping out from behind a parked car, checking us out. I call to her, and she starts, a little suspicious; she’s learned to be careful around people. I squat down with my hand out in front of me, and though she’s evidently scared, she’s also eager, so she comes over, wags her tail tentatively, holding her head tensely so she can rapidly pull away from a kick or a blow aimed in her direction.

  And then I discover that she is delightful.

  She sits carefully in front of me, looks up expectantly. I reach out my hand for her to sniff—she draws back a little, then decides it’s safe, and inspects my knuckles. I scratch the top of her head, between her ears, and she cocks her head and narrows her eyes in evident delight. I bend down closer, taking her in: she’s short-haired, yellow, a mix of who knows what, definitely influenced by retrieverish genes, though she’s smaller than any Lab, and her little ears suggest that ubiquitous, skinny no-breed that street dogs in Mexico seem to evolve or devolve toward, away from the specificity of pure breeds. She’s thin but not emaciated, and young as she is—no gray hairs on that face, a smoothness that suggests youth—she must have already borne a litter of puppies, since her nipples are enlarged and purplish. Where on earth are they now, those babies? She places her delicate head in my two hands, giving me the weight of it, which seems almost nothing at all, the weight, maybe, of an orange. There’s an odd moment of connection between us, which I experience as an intensity, a moment lit by a sort of surprise—is it arrogance to think no one has ever shown her this sort of affection before? It’s as if she’s drinking it in, and at the same time assessing me as a potential companion, a source of rescue or dinner. She is weighing me, as I weigh her small head, and we are finding each other good.

  We walk down the street to the small market to buy her something to eat; she trots along behind, interested. The market’s closed. We turn back toward the hotel; she follows, meanders into traffic, comes back to us. Now we don’t know what to do; we don’t want to encourage her, because we’re going in to bed, and how can we help her? She walks away from us, back into the street, squats to pee, oblivious to the oncoming bus. She pees and pees; the bus comes to a stop, waits, then the driver loses patience and starts to inch forward, and still she doesn’t move, until one of us runs over and calls her out of the street.

  Now we’re back at the hotel steps. Obviously, she can’t come in; there’s a bellman lurking around the entrada, and he seems to be viewing these proceedings dimly. She isn’t about to leave. Paul’s had enough; he thinks there is nothing in the world we can do for her, and he’s tired and wants to go to bed. Not only can I not just walk away, I don’t think she’ll go if I do. I sit down on the steps with her; she lies down beside my feet. What do I think I’m doing? Paul goes in, the hovering bellman glowers, I sit on the tiled steps with this suddenly devoted creature. My mind starts racing: is it possible that I could bring her into the hotel room? And then?

  A group of women hotel guests appear; they greet me—“Oh, look what you’ve found!”—and the dog gets up to inspect them. They’re busy petting her, she’s engaged in sniffing, checking out their bags, hoping they’ve got something edible stowed away, and that’s my opportunity to slip away and head up the labyrinth of stairs—part sheltered, part open to the stars—that leads to our rooftop room.

  As soon as I’m there, I get out to the terrace; I see the bellman shooing the dog away. She crosses the street, sits down, looks back. She trots back to the hotel steps (more hazardous traffic, nearly stopping my heart), and the man shoos her again. Back across the street. She’s looking for me. I go in.

  My mind’s racing; Paul and I start talking about our options. We’re leaving in a day; we don’t know the first thing about importing a dog. I’ve heard stories of long quarantines, stringent health regulations. I have visions of myself trying to get on a plane from Leon to Houston, and then another from Houston back to Newark, attempting to explain to customs officials of two countries about this mutt I’ve picked up on the street. When we entered Mexico, there was a separate tent for people bearing agricultural products; they didn’t even mention animals. Everyone getting off the plane had to walk through an outdoor pavilion in which we were sprayed with a suspicious mist that smelled of some debased, chemical version of orange blossom—what was that stuff? A universal pesticide? We joked, at the time, about how much of our immune systems might remain after that. If we had to be doused in a toxic mist, what would they do with a street dog?

  It seems impossible. I go back out to the balcony, don’t see her anywhere, and then I do: she’s found a stoop,
elevated six feet above the sidewalk, a hundred feet from the hotel door. She’s curled up there, on the concrete, her goldish body visible in the moonlight. She’s made herself round and small. I go back in, my mind still hurrying, flooded with some combination of tenderness and guilt. I say to Paul, feeling my voice choke as I do so, “It’s so unfair. Why should I have everything and she have absolutely nothing at all?”

  Paul says he has to believe that something may happen for her, that someone will take her in, that like the many dogs on the street here, she’ll find a way to manage on her own.

  Maybe he’s right, but there’s her seeming indifference to the particularly scary fact of Mexican traffic, in which the life of one more dog may not count for much. And she’s suddenly a crystallization, for me, of something on the periphery of my vision all week here—how we think nothing of dining in restaurants where our dinner might cost more than some of the people we pass on the way there will see in a month. How easy it is for us to enter the ancient churches and take esthetic delight in those wounded, grieving Cristos, with their alarmingly penetrating glass eyes—which for the faithful are mirrors of their own Calvaries. My pleasure in these sculptures is not purely formal; I love the way they seem to embody the pain of the world, enacting the suffering of God as a mirror and crux of human grief. But still I understand they cannot mean for me in the same direct, unambiguous way they do for their intended audience. I’m cushioned by the accident of birth; I’m norteamericano, white, a college professor who makes his living as a poet, for heaven’s sake, a teacher of poetry. I have a plane ticket home, an old house by the sea, an apartment in the city. And the dog asleep on the concrete stoop beneath my balcony cannot expect even a bowl of water in the morning.