The Friend

by Sigrid Nunez

  Page after page on the torments of her sexual frustration. Ackerley shares her pain, it breaks his heart. Season after season they suffer together. Still he won’t have her spayed. His descriptions of this part of Tulip’s existence are so harrowing that I wanted to scream: How can you not tamper with her?

  Much as you admired the work, I recall, you were repulsed by the life. A life in which a person’s most significant relationship is with a dog—what could be sadder, you said. But, to me, it seemed that Ackerley had experienced to the fullest the kind of mutual unconditional love that everyone craves but most people never know. (How many have found their Tulip? asks Auden.) A fifteen-year marriage, the happiest years of his life, Ackerley said. And when the agonies of her last illness forced him to have her destroyed: I would have immolated myself as a suttee. Instead he carried on. He wrote, he drank. Six slow dark years. He drank and drank, and died.

  • • •

  Man and dog. Did it really all begin, as animal experts think, with nursing mothers taking orphaned wolf cubs to their breasts to suckle along with their babies? And doesn’t this fit nicely with the myth of the twin founders of Rome? Romulus and Remus, abandoned at birth, warmed and suckled by a she-wolf.

  • • •

  A pause here to wonder why we call a womanizer a wolf. Given that the wolf is known for being a loyal, monogamous mate and devoted parent.

  • • •

  I like that the Aborigines say dogs make people human. Also (though I can’t remember who said it): The thing that keeps me from becoming a complete misanthrope is seeing how much dogs love men.

  • • •

  Oversensitive to smells in general and squeamish about the human body, Ackerley was not put off by any scent of Tulip’s, not even from her anal glands, and saw prettiness even in the way she took a shit.

  He writes less about her excretory habits than about her sex life. But that’s still quite a lot. And it’s the details. . . .

  “Liquids and Solids” that chapter is called.

  Though I always walk Apollo on a leash, I worry, just as Ackerley did, that a dog doing its business in the street—especially a big dog—could get hit by a car. Unfortunately, Apollo often squats a dangerous distance from the curb. I cannot, like Ackerley, solve the problem by letting Apollo use the sidewalk, even if, unlike Ackerley, I am always diligent in cleaning up the mess. My solution, whenever Apollo positions himself far enough from the curb to be in harm’s way, is to position myself between him and oncoming traffic. It’s true that now I’ve only put myself in harm’s way, but I figure, I hope not too innocently, that a driver will take greater care to avoid hitting a human being. Manhattan drivers are not a patient lot. Many an inconvenienced one has cursed me. But there are others, I know, who would’ve slowed down anyway, as so many pedestrians do, to stare.

  In “How to Be a Flâneur,” you said you did not consider a long walk with a dog genuine flânerie because it was not the same as aimless wandering, and being responsible for a dog prevented a person from falling into abstraction. These days I spend so much time walking Apollo I can’t imagine going out just to walk by myself. What prevents me from falling into abstraction, though, or doing much thinking at all, is the way he draws attention. I don’t welcome strangers’ attention at any time, but although Apollo shows no sign of being bothered by the lack of privacy when he takes a shit I find these moments especially trying. Worst of all is being watched while I’m cleaning up after him, which seems to give a certain type of person a charge. People comment on the size of his turds as if I were not standing right there with pail and shovel (in themselves the cause of much glee, though I was actually quite pleased with myself for coming up with the idea of using a child’s sand pail, lined with a plastic bag, and a small garden trowel).

  I feel sorry for you, someone says (grinning). Or: I love dogs but I could never do what you’re doing.

  A few people have chided me for having such a dog at all: Big dogs don’t belong in the city!

  I think it’s cruel, said one woman. Keeping a dog that size cooped up in an apartment.

  Oh, but we’re just down for the day, I sang back at her. We fly home to the mansion tomorrow.

  (Yes, of course, there are also nice people, above all other dog owners, any number of people who either mind their own business or say nice, friendly, intelligent things. But we all know niceness is never as interesting to write, or read, about.)

  Liquids: When I see the gallons pouring out I’m grateful that he doesn’t lift his leg like most male dogs; instead of a hubcap he might drench a window.

  Solids: enough said.

  And there’s something between liquids and solids, the curse of large breeds. I have to mop his face several times a day. I call it swabbing the decks.

  • • •

  Rather than take him to his old vet, which would’ve meant finding a way to transport him to Brooklyn, I find one within walking distance of home. He is good with Apollo, but I am wary of him, the sort of man who speaks to women as if they are idiots and to older women as if they are deaf idiots.

  When I tell him that Apollo never plays with other dogs, not even at the dog park, he says, Well, he’s not so young anymore, is he. I’m sure you don’t run and jump around the way you used to, either.

  He shrugs when he hears the whole story. People throw pets out all the time, he says. It’s the dogs who’d die for the owners, not vice versa. (Obviously he has not read Ackerley.) Doesn’t the divorce rate tell us just how much the loyalty of a human being is worth? he says in a tone I find disquieting.

  Someone once told me that many vets tend to be irritable because their profession exposes them to a particularly wide swath of human silliness—much of it, no doubt, in the form of anthropomorphism. I remember one who rolled his eyes when I said that my cat purred all the time so he must be happy. Purring is just a noise they make, it does not mean they’re happy, he snapped.

  This one tells me bluntly that although Apollo is in pretty good shape for his age he won’t be long-lived. And given his arthritis, he says, believe me he wouldn’t want to be. Whatever you do, don’t let him gain weight.

  He shakes his head at the botched ear job and points out what else makes him a less-than-perfect specimen of the breed: chest and shoulders too broad in relation to hindquarters; neck not quite pure white, and not quite the right distribution of black patches elsewhere on the body; eyes a little too close; jaws a little too wide; legs on the thick side. Powerfully built but stocky overall, lacking true elegance.

  He has no trouble believing that the dog is in mourning for his previous owner and that his emotions have been exacerbated by too many changes in his environment. (How would you feel? he asks roughly, as if this were a thought I would never have arrived at by myself.) I tell him about the howling, and about the awful new symptom that seems to have replaced it: Now and then Apollo is seized by a kind of fit. He looks all around as if befuddled. Then, tail clamped between legs, he crouches as close to the floor as possible without actually lying down. It’s as if he’s trying to make himself as small as he can. Then the shakes begin. For periods that last from a few minutes to as long as half an hour, he cowers and shivers uncontrollably.

  Anyone would say he thinks something terrible is about to happen to him, I tell the vet, keeping to myself that these attacks are so disturbing to watch that they sometimes bring me to tears.

  There are drugs to treat canine anxiety and depression, but this vet is no fan of them. It can take weeks for a drug to become effective, he says, and often it turns out not to be effective at all.

  Let’s leave that as a last resort, he says. For now, don’t ever leave him alone too long, and be sure you talk to him. Exercise him as much as possible. You might also try massage, if he’ll let you. Just don’t expect him to change into Mr. Happy Dog. He may never recover, no matter what you do. And you’ll
never know why. It’s not just that you don’t know his history. People think dogs are simple, and we like to believe we know what goes on in their heads. But in fact we’re finding out that dogs are a lot more mysterious and complicated than we ever thought, and unless they develop our language we’ll never know them at all. Which goes for any animal, of course.

  He’s a good dog, but I have to warn you, he says. You’re a little lady, he must outweigh you by eighty pounds. (This was flattering.) The way to deal with these large powerful breeds is to keep them from knowing the truth, which is that you can’t really make them do anything they don’t want to do.

  As if Apollo doesn’t already know that. More than once when we’ve been out walking he’s decided we’ve walked enough. He stops and sits or lies down on the ground, and nothing I do can get him up again. I’m less angry with him than with the people who stop to watch and sometimes laugh. Once, a man, thinking to help, stood some distance away, patting his leg and whistling. Like rolling thunder came the response, new to my ears, and so menacing that the man and several other people nearby quickly crossed the street.

  Whoever trained him made him understand that humans are the alphas, the vet says, and you don’t want him to start thinking otherwise. You don’t want him getting it into his head that he’s the alpha. When he leans against you, the way Danes do, stand your ground, don’t let him knock you over. Get him to lie on his back, spend a little time rubbing his chest. And for God’s sake, get yourself back on the bed and him on the floor. You train a dog by keeping him down.

  My expression when I hear this clearly exasperates him.

  He’s a good dog, he repeats, quite loudly this time. Don’t turn him into a bad one. A bad dog can easily turn into a dangerous one.

  By the time he finishes examining Apollo and lecturing me, I like Grumpy Vet better. Though not so much his parting remark: Remember, the last thing you want is for him to start thinking you’re his bitch.

  • • •

  Now that I have Apollo I often think of Beau, the Dane-shepherd cross that belonged to the boyfriend I lived with when I was in my early twenties. Still a puppy when I first met him, he grew up to be almost but not quite as tall as a Dane and with many of a Dane’s traits but with a shepherd’s nerves and aggression. Big, unneutered, and very dominant, he hit the street like someone looking for a fight (and often, alas, finding one). Our apartment was in a dicey neighborhood, but so long as Beau was behind it we didn’t always bother to lock the door. I would take him with me to a friend’s place two miles away, stay until one or two in the morning, then walk back home along dark and empty streets. Beau knew about the potential danger, you could see it in his tension, his hypervigilance; he was like a fur soldier; he was cocked, like a soldier’s gun. More than once he terrified the wits out of some guy loitering on a corner, or in a building doorway. (I should say that few people I knew living in that part of town in those years had not been the victim of a mugging, or a burglary, or worse.) There was something undeniably thrilling about Beau’s rumbling barks and growls, the stance he took between me and whatever he saw as a threat (which included any strange man who so much as looked at me), the knowledge that he would defend me—to the death if he had to. It was all part of why I loved him.

  Also, back then, I liked the way we attracted attention.

  But things are different now. The city has calmed down, the streets are safe, and I don’t walk around late at night anymore anyway. At one or two in the morning I am asleep. I don’t need protection. I don’t need a badass dog to defend me. I don’t want Apollo ever to feel that he has to bark or growl at anyone. I don’t want him to worry. I don’t want him to be anxious. I want him to feel that we are both perfectly safe, no matter where we go. I don’t want him to be my bodyguard. I don’t want him to be my gun. I want him to chill. I want him to be Mr. Happy Dog.

  • • •

  He missed you, the woman who lives in the apartment above mine says.

  Coming home from school, I ran into her at the elevator.

  Meaning: Apollo is howling again.

  • • •

  He has to forget you. He has to forget you and fall in love with me. That’s what has to happen.

  PART FIVE

  “Did you read about the Tibetan mastiffs?”

  I had indeed read the article in the Times, and I say so, but the woman’s need to vent is too great: she tells the story anyway.

  Only a few years ago, in China, the Tibetan mastiff was a status symbol, a luxury item priced at the equivalent of an average of $200,000 with some puppies said to sell for more than a million. As the mania peaked, more and more dogs were produced by grasping breeders. Then the mania died. Worth too little, eating too much, the huge and sometimes hard to control dogs were no longer wanted. What came next: Mass abandonment. Dogs packed into transport trucks, where they suffered horribly and many died. The slaughterhouse.

  Truly, not a story I needed to hear twice.

  The woman is someone we often meet when she’s out walking her own two dogs, gentle mutts, mother and daughter. From the news story she goes into her screed—it too is something she’s shared with me before—about the evils of dog breeding. Mutts are what nature intended, mutts are what should exist. But what’ve we got instead? Idiot collies, neurotic shepherds, murderous Rottweilers, deaf Dalmatians, and Labs so calm you could shoot a gun at them and they wouldn’t suspect danger. Fur vegetables, cripples, morons, sociopaths, dogs with bones too thin or flesh too fat. That’s what you get when you breed dogs for the traits people want them to have. It should be a crime. (I thought this woman was crazy when she told me about pointers that freeze in point posture and then can’t get out, but this grotesquerie turns out to be fact.)

  I shudder to think what it’ll be like fifty or a hundred years from now, says the woman, looking very dark indeed. But by then, she adds, the whole earth will have been destroyed. And, perhaps consoled by this thought, she takes her mutts and moves on.

  I am left thinking about the mastiffs. Besides their great bulk and a mane that makes them look part lion, they are known for being fiercely protective and loyal to their masters. So what does a dog bred for those traits feel when its master lets it be herded onto one of those transport trucks? Does a dog understand betrayal? I think probably not. I think the main thing on the mastiff’s mind, all the way to the slaughterhouse, is Who will protect Master now?

  A digression. About animal suffering, what do we really know? There is evidence that dogs and other animals have a higher tolerance for pain than humans do. But their true capacity for suffering—like the true measure of their intelligence—must remain a mystery.

  Ackerley believed that being so emotionally involved with people and trying forever to please them made a dog’s life chronically anxious and stressed. But did they get headaches? he wondered, not even that much about them being known.

  Another question: Why do people often find animal suffering harder to accept than the suffering of other human beings?

  Take Robert Graves, writing about the Somme: The number of dead horses and mules shocked me; human corpses were all very well, but it seemed wrong for animals to be dragged into the war like this.

  Why, of all the terrible memories of his ordeal as a POW in Japan during World War Two, was Olympic athlete and US Army airman Louis Zamperini most haunted by the memory of a guard torturing a duck?

  Of course, in each of these cases the suffering was caused by human behavior, in the case of the duck an act of pure sadism. But aren’t animals always at our mercy, and doesn’t the pity we feel for them have to do with our understanding that the animal itself has no way of knowing the reason for its pain (a fact that makes some people insist that animals must suffer even worse than humans do). I believe the intensity of the pity you feel for an animal has to do with how it evokes pity for yourself. I believe we must all retain, throughout our whol
e lives, a powerful memory of those early moments of life, a time when we were as much animal as human, the overwhelming feelings of helplessness and vulnerability and mute fear, and the yearning for the protection that our instinct tells us is there, if we could just cry loudly enough. Innocence is something we humans pass through and leave behind, unable to return. But animals live and die in that state, and seeing innocence violated in the form of cruelty to a mere duck can seem like the most barbaric act in the world. I know people who are outraged by this sentiment, calling it cynical, misanthropic, and perverse. But I believe the day when we are no longer capable of feeling it will be a terrible day for every living being, that our downward slide into violence and barbarity will be only that much quicker.

  • • •

  When people ask me why I stopped having cats I don’t always give the true answer, which has to do with how the ones I did have died. Suffered and died.

  All pet owners go through this. Your pet is sick, obviously sick, but what is it, what’s wrong? It can’t say.

  The intolerable thought that your dog, who believes you are God, believes you have the power to stop the pain, but for some reason (did he somehow displease you?) refuse to do so.

  The poet Rilke once reported seeing a dying dog give its mistress a look full of reproach. Later, he gave this experience to the narrator of a novel: He was convinced I could have prevented it. It was now clear that he had always overrated me. And there was no time left to explain it to him. He continued to gaze at me, surprised and solitary, until it was over.

  The suspicion that your cat, proud independent stoic that she is, is hiding just how bad things really are.