Swiftly the life of the house blossomed. The trickling from the pipes gushed free, cascading noisily into the courtyard. Tiles, plaster, gutter fragments and more glass lurched off the roof. A new growth was sprouting everywhere, sprouting like the naked plumbing, as if these leaden entrails were the worm at the core of a birth, struggling to emerge, thrusting everything else aside. But the house held. It must have blossomed, opened, subsided upon itself. We raced down the stairs to the concrete mass below.
As we picked, hopelessly, at the great fragments, it was impossible to forget how hard it was on the man on the strecher. It seemed, stupidly, that he alone had had no chance.
Three Dogs of Siena
THE Italians love their dogs. And their dogs love the Italians—it is probably to show something of this love that these dogs take such care to reproduce themselves, not in the dull matrix of formal breed, but in most brilliant assortment, in a profusion of wild and unpredictable shape ever a surprise and a joy to their delighted masters. What we would call the ‘mongrels’ of Italy are more than an essay in democratic procreation: they are an unceasing pleasure to the eye of those who love the individual, the purely creative rather than the creatively pure, the fresh. Not only joy but genius distinguishes this variety. Nowhere but on the ancient peninsula famed for its fecundity in noble and inventive works could such hounds occur.
One day three such dogs arrived in the Tuscan town of Siena. ‘Taken for a visit?’ they would have said, ‘And who is taking whom?’ For so full of joy and industry were these fortunate dogs that in everything they preceded their masters, running always forward, smelling out the fresh ground first. Their names—it turned out later—were Enrico, Osvaldo and Fa. They came from Naples, Genoa and Venice. They were owned by three brothers resident in those cities, who now for a period had come to be reunited in Siena, the town of their birth, for the wedding of their younger sister. However, names are poor descriptions for such dogs. They must be studied in all particular, observed in the detail of their spectacular creation. First, Enrico.
Enrico was a dark-brown dog, almost Umbrian—though he came in fact from the yellow Neapolitan quays. Stoutly built and heavy, he was not tall enough for his broad body—though muscular legs supported firmly this solid barrel. The brown hair grew short in tough whorls on his back, but down from his chest and stomach it hung sternly shaggy. His face was his great glory—it was nearly the face of a mandrill Thick-snouted, bristling with what at first seemed disapproval, it proclaimed the thinker, yet a tough thinker, ruminant but muscular for the fight. His eyes were pale liver-coloured, with bluish rims that circled them completely; but very often one could see nothing of his eyes, nor could he himself see quite where he was going, for a heavy shag sprouted from between two ears the shape of small oast-houses and sprang forward in a wave like one great bristling didactic eyebrow. In a curious way this eyebrow seemed to part as it fell on to his snout proper, and to either side it combed away, becoming a beard to drink up Enrico’s strong slavering. At the other end—it was a good way—there occurred the stump of a thick rat-like tail bent backwards and curled up sharply to its bitten spatulate; this revealed perhaps too boldly a bare posterior, hairless again as a mandrill, and not well-looking—but possibly this was not Enrico’s fault; possibly he never knew quite how it looked, it was so far away.
Fa came from Venice, his fur was white as his native Istrian marble. He was a fluffy dog, always laughing. At first sight one took him for a Pomeranian—he had all the powder-puff fur and bright black eyes, ever-pricked ears and slender trotting legs. This at first—but then as in a dream, or in some distorting mirror, one saw that all these pretty characters were strangely exaggerated; the white fur sprouted like a clown’s frill; the little legs spun so thin and delicate that in motion little Fa seemed to travel on wheels; the inquisitive ears rose inches high, like paper squills. But his tail was Fa’s greatest pride—instead of a fur ball this joyful member flowered into a high spreading fan, beautiful but overweighted as the sail of a felucca, and as such particularly helpful with a following wind. However, Fa’s was perhaps mostly an eccentricity of character. His laugh, his perpetual busy trot, his ever-bright eye and his spirited soprano bark singled him out always as the life and soul of any street, a true lover of life. He liked often to walk on three feet. He was so called after the fourth phonetic of the singing scale, having arrived at a similar stage in a litter of eight.
Osvaldo—Osvaldo could claim in his way to be the finest of the three, if one spoke of earthly finery, of the feathers that make the bird. A big dog, by and large Osvaldo had grown to be the shape of a hyena—his front shoulders rose several inches higher than his tapering thin haunches. But such haunches never slinked, Osvaldo was no cur, that slendering was meant for speed. In other ways too he seemed contrived for speed—his long wolf-like nose thrust streamlined forward; his ears grew huge and round, the trumpet ears of a flying-fox; his grey body was covered with tan-coloured spots, so that such a fur had some of the look of feathers, like the feathery pelt of some griffin-beast from a wilder world; and his tail fled away in a long streak—though normally he carried it curled. But his eyes! His eyes were bright yellow, as yellow as a leopard’s! These it must have been that gave him, for all his speed, such a strange impassive expression. Never the glimmer of a laugh, never a message of anger could be sensed from that motionless face. One never knew what he thought. He seemed away with his yellow eyes on the far horizon. Genoa had been his birthplace.
The three had first met in Florence. They had become instant friends. Florence had been selected as a convenient junction for Siena, and a most pleasurable few hours must there have been spent between the platforms and a nearby restaurant. They had then taken an afternoon train for Siena, a train of good wooden carriages, and had arrived after dark. So that on their first night in the hill-town the three dogs had not had the chance to see anything of their new home—though the journey in the fading summer light had offered many pleasing prospects. The dark lines of cypress outside Florence had proved interesting, a pleasant strolling place where many enquiries might be satisfied; all over the low, unexhausting hills these trees had occurred, in competitive groups or singly, like darts thrown at random into the brown earth by a fond divinity. Then, as the earth turned redder and Siena approached, there came the strange perspective of the vines, each planted singly, twisted helter-skelter figures, intertwined and loving, but statuesque, arrested in movement and in no way disquieting to the interested dog. But to Siena itself they arrived enclosed in the dark carriage—it proved quite a drive from the station to the higher town walled on its crest of hill. They had spent the night comfortably enough enclosed in a small yard. The gate had been locked, and nothing of the precincts could be seen.
The next day dawned warm and sunny; the air was filled with fresh smells from the good Tuscan earth. This not only proclaimed the joys of country life, but indicated also that there had been a day or two’s rain recently—so now the weather would be fine. Good weather, then—and a new town to explore. At breakfast there had been one small drawback—the remains of a pasta flavoured with dull tomato sauce instead of the good meat gravy of Bologna. But who knew what the bins and gutters of this place might provide, a town known to be centred in rich, fertile country? At last the gates were opened, and the three friends stood sniffing on the threshold of their new adventure.
But not much time was spent standing still! A second only for three noses to appraise the air, a glance to left and right—and they were racing off. However, as is often the case, that first dash was little more than its explosive gesture—in fact they all ran in different directions, noses to the ground, and instantly circled back to the gateway. It was a ritual—and now fleet Osvaldo, betraying in his yellow eyes nothing of his intentions, took charge and wheeled the party off along the road to the left—uphill. Mandrill-faced Enrico plodded his muscles behind. Little Fa became a brisk third, though sometimes he ran forward and completed a circle
round Enrico. They travelled at a lively trot, searching the sidewalls as they went.
The road led steeply upwards between tall houses of red brick. It was narrow, a kerbless street of a kind they must all have known—the cobbles met with clean precision the dark-red perpendicular of the walls. But for a time—such indeed was the precision of the Sienese mason—one might have thought this the precinct of some well-ordered private mansion. No debris littered the stones, no stones nor brick nor plaster had fallen from those well-kept walls. Nor were there any projections of any kind—no door-steps, doorposts, lamp-posts, trees—nothing that might invite the pause for consideration. Iron torch-brackets occurred frequently, but these had been placed too high for practical purposes; and the graceful architects had moulded those surrounds to their doorways so neatly that nothing obtruded, no pilaster jutted from the fine-fitted frames.
Then shops occurred—and shops could never occur in private passages. But such ordered self-contained shops! What sort of town was this? They grew uneasy. As the industrious file plodded on, they passed not a single bin, no brushed pile of warm refuse. The sober red-bricked mediaeval streets wound narrowly up and down, arched and turreted, with never a buttressed invitation—not grim, but richly grave, precise and cleaned as no town they had ever known. Frowning behind his forward hair, Enrico must have remembered the alleys of Naples, redolent of life and all odour. Osvaldo’s fox-like ears would have trembled to the unheard echo of the bustling Genoese arcades. Small Fa’s great tail fanned blindly for the warm resistance of all those exudations that thickened the air above the green canal by which once he had lived.
But what was it they sought, truly, bowling along at such urgent speed, sometimes on three legs, sometimes cavorting dangerously sideways, frisking and plunging—yet always continuing forward, in what was plainly an agreed single file, with searching nose and rolling wary eye? Certainly it was not, in the main, food. Nor was it another matter that, with such stores as they had retained carefully for this expedition, must have weighed heavily. It was something deeper. It was without doubt the need to find evidence of their own existence.
This they could do only through the help of others. The search for food is automatic. But the urgent cry for testimony is a different affair. A dog alone in a stone street might well wonder whether he existed, the suspicion that he was no dog could breed dangerously among the dry mirrorless stones. What proof was there? To glance down at a paw, to whip round one’s head at a remote, diffident tail? What did that prove? After a moment of illusion, of pleasant relief … nothing. Naturally one’s dog brain attributed to itself paws and tail, fur and flank; but—how be sure that this was no deception? Impossible. Proof must be sought elsewhere: it could be found only in the movements and essences of others, the clash with unfamiliar bodies and with feelings foreign to one’s own intimate brain. These others were at best other dogs, but other creatures would do—cats, men, and in a more distant fashion the rats and small bodies of one’s prey.
Suddenly Osvaldo stopped dead, feathery front legs splayed stiff, his fishlong snout sniffing upwards, yellow eyes peering at the wall above, fox-ears primed for intelligence. Enrico and Fa bowled to a halt and stood quivering. But they never looked up. Instead they gazed from side to side, sometimes glanced anxiously at Osvaldo, but above all pretended not to notice anything extraordinary. Here was etiquette—a pronouncement would come in good time. They stood like dogs that pause suddenly in the middle of a game, panting, abruptly indifferent to each other … yet patently pretending this.
High up on the wall was set a stone tablet. Sculptured in relief, Osvaldo saw the effigy of a large woman-dog with sow-like udders nourishing two naked human children who squatted beneath. He stood peering curiously. What could this mean—were the dogs here magically transformed into humans, was it another feature of this strange town? A glint of unease showed in his yellow eye as, turning his nose rather away in embarrassment, his fixed pupil revealed a thin crescent of the bluish-white. Romulus and Remus, ancient colophon of Siena, sat drinking above, impassive, cherubic, unconcerned with the passing of new wolves.
One has seen dogs pause in question before mirrors; or grow startled at the sight of an unaccustomed object—a parasol, a tall hat. Some bridle at the phantom of blue spectacles, others growl at the movement of a rag flying in the breeze. What in fact do they see—what do they know? Their eyes are never more alert, the finest intelligences are cocked in their ears—a certain uneasiness underlies. Perhaps an instinct, long lost to our human systems, perceives emanations of evil (we know that such instincts exist, as with the polarization in a dog travelling over unknown distances back to a former home). Or perhaps once it has been frightened by something looking the same—though in this case such a selection is queer, it balks at a parasol and disregards a walking-stick, and this only on certain days. Or does a keen appreciation of the angles of light—which again we have lost—describe around the object an abstract image of some unfavourable beast? Certainly the dog that sees himself in mirrors—and only in certain mirrors—behaves as if this might be so. He does not imagine as we do that he sees himself. What more likely he suspects is the presence, the significance, and so the threat of an alien that bears upon his own life. From his mood, his cautious sniffing and startled eye, he shows not outright alarm but suspicion and unease. His attitude is like that of the man, say, who sees written before him the words ‘good and evil’. Suddenly he notices how this is almost exactly ‘God and Devil’. The blood rushes to his head. Letters the same! Meaning the same! He stumbles for the dictionary of etymologies. And then the appalling truth is learned—all four words spring from different roots, it is nothing but coincidence! But this, staring at the words, he cannot really believe. Science has explained it. But for him, staring still uneasily from the sides of his eyes at these words, there is still suspicion; around his thought flutter birds of great significance, for a long time he will remain uneasy. In such a way Osvaldo looked up at Romulus and Remus. He must have known the wolf was not real—but he had his suspicions, he felt not sure.
And if this indeed was the case—what bewilderment Siena held in store for him! What a distracting plethora of porcupines and elephants, giraffes and unicorns and all those others that form the signs of the seventeen Sienese districts, and which everywhere are emblazoned in chivalric colour on the red walls. But, of course, this was not to be—though much worse threatened these unfortunate dogs. For the moment Osvaldo gave one deep growl and then—as they will—suddenly lost all interest. He appeared suddenly to forget what he was doing—and glanced curiously at the street itself, waking from a daydream. Then wheeled and was off at a trot. The others tossed their heads, seemed to jump as excitedly as if this were the first intimation of a walk that they had ever received, and followed. They disappeared round a corner.
*
In a town as small as Siena, we who moved constantly about the marvellous streets of course kept meeting other such industrious walkers. Those three dogs seemed to occur everywhere. More than the little girl with the birdcage who gave out printed fortune slips, more even than the mournful young man with a black eye and his arm in a sling who must have been much knocked about in the recent Palio. The Palio, furious horse-race galloped in mediaeval costume round the Campo of Siena, had been over a week. The crowds had departed, the tempers of the various districts or contrade that competed had cooled—for this animal race was as fiercely contested as it was picturesque; it was no show for tourists, but a traditional trial of strength between the contrade, as alive now as when first, centuries ago, it had grown into being; the jockeys with their round helmets thrashed each other as freely as they thrashed their ponies, bribery and tricks and competitive tempers rose high.
But now the parades, processions and pageantry of the great day were a week over—though there still remained certain ceremony to be completed. Now and again one saw bands of Sienese dressed in mediaeval clothes come drumming up the streets. Contrary to what might
have been expected, this distinctive people dressed up so carried no feeling of the operette: they looked real, conclusively. In their stripes and scalloping they marched against walls of dusky red, dark old true walls—each man’s face was a face seen in a mediaeval painting. The brownish, ochreous faces were unchanged—and in themselves they were as distinctive from other Italian types as, for instance, are the people of Aries from others in South France. A feeling of pride and fine breeding is sensed. And here they lived in a town that was as preserved as their traditions and their own bodies. A town austere but mellow—kinder than Florence, yet as with many such mediaeval cities resonant of the sense of death. Well-preserved in its graven self—and also well-kept from day to day … its clean stone streets contrasted strongly with the streets of other cities. One wondered, again idly, what the three dogs thought about it. And soon, as if we had called them, though the town was really too small to count it a coincidence, they appeared. Suddenly racing down under an arch into the main square, the shell-shaped Campo.
Industrious as ever, they travelled fast. Noses to the ground, heads tossing, tails and behinds wagging separately like the after-bodies of ants or rumba dancers. That was their way of coursing the streets—but here, here suddenly striking into the magnificent open ground of the Campo, they skidded to a halt, stupefied. Enrico and Osvaldo stood sniffing the space like incurrent lions, while small Fa bounced to and fro between them on his stick legs, a small messenger between those larger craft. What—whatever could be going on in such ever-searching minds? Had they seen and stopped stupefied at the sight of the seventy or eighty marble posts that ringed the course of the Campo? Had such sudden generosity in this reserved city overwhelmed them? Had Enrico glanced up for a moment at the blue sky and seen rising, rocketing up against it, the tremendously high campanile? This delicate square tower of dark-red brick, so slender in proportion to its needling height and the vertiginous pale castellations bulging heavily at its far summit—this most beautiful erection of man that seemed ever to be moving upwards, which seemed in fact to be flying, rocketing, spearing itself in vertical flight into the wheeling heavens, this so vertical tower that gave us a glimpse that the world is round—what did it signify to Enrico’s liver-coloured eye, suspicious through the hair-mop? Could his wondering, almost-intelligent mind have registered its proportion, so that it appeared to him as a giant pillar, an exquisition too great for him, but of the right shape and thus innately satisfying? Worldly as he must be, Enrico turned his head down again to the cobbles, the nearer posts of rough stone that ringed the Campo—but there might, there might have been a glimpse of understanding in that second’s attention, a possibility that was borne out by what later we were to see, in the episode that finally unseated these furry ones.
The Stories of William Sansom Page 10
