Carmen Dog

by Carol Emshwiller

  She knows something, I'm sure of it. Her behavior so belies her reputation.

  —

  Now the doctor stops writing and leans back to look out the window. He is thinking of number 108—that beauty 108. A strange kind of beauty she is, too. He has discovered that she was not even on the list of those to come here and he wonders why Rosemary didn't mention this. Thinks maybe he should reprimand her, just to let her know he noticed. Though, on the other hand, it is rather nice to have 108 and her sinuous, suggestive behavior, even though her reasons for it are clear and she'll not be getting any special favors out of him.

  * * * *

  It is the doctor himself who returns Basenji (106) to the dayroom and dumps her on the old couch (which is now covered with the same sterilized blue nylon as their smocks). He would have hired an assistant for such menial jobs as this, but he doesn't want any of his findings to leak out to anybody even remotely connected to the opposite sex, so he's doing all the work alone except for the help of his wife, whom he's sure will remain loyal if only out of her dependency on him. She seldom goes out except for groceries and has few friends, her best one now, luckily, dead. Also probably a good thing, in some ways, that her hips hurt her when she walks and that her hands are quite out of shape with arthritis. More so than ever, and recently he's noticed she's been looking quite thick in the neck. He'll get her some calcium and some cod liver oil capsules for the osteoporosis. Perhaps he should see to it that she drinks more milk. No doubt she will appreciate that small attention. Help to keep her loyal. But if she wanted to get even for some inadvertent slights on his part, she certainly could do great damage.

  * * * *

  They all crowd around Basenji when the doctor leaves. She is utterly silent now, and will not or cannot answer any of their questions. When their names were changed to numbers and all the frills removed, that was a bitter realization to them all, and now Basenji's condition makes them realize that, grateful as they are to be alive, they have much to be concerned about still—perhaps even including their lives. And yet many of them were quite taken with the doctor and still are, even after this. They talk about him constantly: How tall! How thin! What secrets do the dark eyes hold? (One must remember that he is, after all, the only male around. Some even find his cruelty an attractive mystery and think perhaps they can change him through their love or their good example.)

  Basenji seems to have quite given up. “Sing for her, Pooch,” they say. (Suddenly they are calling her Pooch again. They have tried to remember to call her Isabel, but that name is so equated in their minds with someone nasty and quite the opposite of Pooch that they have found it hard to stick to it. And anyway, they do not have a strong feeling that Pooch needs to be Isabel.) And Pooch does sing. Just soft, simple lullabies, and the three or four best singers join in in harmony. (They had been practicing quite a bit just for the fun of it.) But it is hard to tell if Basenji even hears them or not.

  That night, as they are being locked up, Pooch requests that Basenji be allowed to share her cage and Rosemary agrees. All night long Pooch holds, by turns and at the same time, both the baby and the trembling, unresponsive Basenji, who is also hardly more than a child. Pooch feels herself to be older sister to them both.

  —

  May 21: Questioned number 107 for five hours, both the subtle questions and direct questions about leaders, also word associations, but it took her no longer to respond to knife, motherhood, gun, leader, plot, widower than it did to kitchen, glove, fairy tale. She did hesitate on flower and doormat. I wonder why. Must check into. But not one decent reply to anything. Had no opportunity to use the rewards in the dispenser. After the first hours, violent, diffuse struggling, all four limbs and head with micturation (must confess had forgotten to allow her to go to the bathroom either before or during) and, as with the first subject, number 107 became more and more silent as the session went on so that, by the end, she appeared to have lost her voice altogether. Am all the more convinced that this subject is on the way up and is capable of both violence and leadership, in spite of her mild demeanor. Why else this stoicism?

  Was exhausted after session and carried on the late afternoon researches outside where observed one female in grocery store gobbling up produce as fast as she could and then crawling out on all fours so as not to be seen at the checkout counter. Are there no depths to which these creatures will not stoop! Am reminded of Marcus Aurelius, who said, “How comes it that souls of no proficiency or learning are able to confound the adept and the sage?"

  * * * *

  And now, leaning back and looking out the window, he is wondering what would be the best scheme that involves using that baby; what would be most profitable to his researches?

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  Chapter 5: Daunted

  May your crimes make you as happy as your cruelties have made me suffer.

  —Marquis de Sade

  Pooch and Basenji curl up again together in the same cage, and Phillip, though she has always said she hates children and has never willingly held the baby if anyone else was available to do so, has now taken it in with her for the night. Many of the others wanted to, but Phillip insisted and finally won out as Pooch's oldest and dearest friend (even though oldest only by the proximity of her cage both here and at the pound). Actually, for all Phillip's talk of hating the baby and for all her ignoring it, the baby has always been quite taken with her, sometimes clinging to her legs in its efforts to stand up and, since Phillip loves to sit on the floor, the baby is always squinching itself over to her (it can't as yet really crawl) and curling up in her lap. Phillip never pushes it away, though she also never acknowledges its presence. Perhaps it is her bright colors and smooth, dry skin that lure the baby, but also perhaps the baby, on some level, understands Phillip better even than she understands herself. Now, however, Phillip hugs the baby to her and pats at it distractedly, making soft, sibilant nonsense sounds, hardly aware she is doing so.

  Pooch now clings to Basenji as much for herself as for the younger creature. Neither of them makes a sound. It is the others who are restless and sighing. Arista stares beyond her bars with blinking half-closed eyes, flexing her fingers. Dodo looks fierce and yet, now and then, utters a squeaky “Oh.” Doris and Myna flutter aimlessly about their cages, feathers flying out beyond the bars. Myna's are drab, but Doris's are a brilliant green.

  Mary Ann laughs a strange, nervous laugh and clumps about her four-by-eight cage on partially webbed feet. Whether she is tending toward duck or swan it's too early to tell. Now and again someone lets out a squawk or a whoop of some sort. Phillip leans, weaving her head back and forth over the baby. She has always looked rather dangerous and now she looks more so than ever. There are whisperings of plans for escape. None feasible. They wonder about whether Rosemary can be trusted or not or whether they have any choice but to trust her and does she or doesn't she seem changed lately, and, if changing, isn't she more likely to be on their side? Most are wishing that they could ask Pooch to sing and they think that, for their sake, she would probably rouse herself to do it, but even the most degenerated among them knows better than to mention it, except for Mary Ann, whom they keep shushing and who keeps answering with yet another quack of “I forgot, I forgot."

  * * * *

  The next day others enter the laboratory one by one, but each returns on her own two or four feet. Some are quite stuffed with cupcakes and fortune cookies. Some have been patted on the head and tickled under the chin or even given little kisses on the cheek. Clearly the doctor is using every means at his disposal. Many have eaten their fortunes, especially those who have forgotten how to read, but others have the little slips of paper tucked in the pockets of their sterilized blue smocks. Many of the fortunes read more like warnings, though not all:

  —

  Continue on your present course and you will never be an intellectual.

  You will figure prominently in the nightmares of others.

  You will ne
ver marry a prince. To be a duck is to marry a duck.

  Beware of changes that do not foster motherhood.

  —

  And so forth.

  None of the others return from the laboratory in anywhere near as bad shape as Pooch and Basenji. Some, in fact, even return with secret little smiles on their faces and, besides the fortunes, they have little gifts such as earrings, multicolored beads, and perfume, all from the five and ten. Some even have key rings with their number in gold paint on green or blue plastic. It almost suggests that the keys to the cages or to the laboratory itself might be the next reward. Some have a few red, white, or blue chits, but they can't figure out what to do with them except play checkers or tiddledywinks, which they do.

  Through all this coming and going and through all the arguments as to whether the gifts should be accepted at all or, once accepted, used, and whether one should return with a smile on one's face, or whether one should be allowed to return with a smile, Pooch and Basenji have been absolutely silent. Pooch has been up and about in a kind of fit of dusting and sweeping, though flinching at the slightest touch or loud noise. She has cared for Basenji by herself, fed her and washed her (rather vigorously), but neither of them has uttered a sound, not even a whimper. Once or twice the baby has reached for Pooch, but after a good look at her it pulls away shouting its one word, “No."

  Phillip has kept quiet through all this also, sitting in a lotus position and rocking back and forth, tongue flicking in and out between her teeth more than ever. She has not yet had her turn in the laboratory, but she is determined that, when the time comes, she will not be like the others, so easily daunted or so easily pleased. She will protest in no uncertain terms the treatment of all of them and especially the treatment of Basenji and Pooch. She resolves that, if need be, she will fight back, will grab hold and squeeze, will bite. She is thinking how wonderful if only she really were what she imitates so colorfully ... how wonderful if she did have a bite that was deadly. But now, in her present form, she hasn't much more strength than an ordinary woman and the doctor is a tall, not at all fat, but large-boned man. She will have to be quick about it and get a good grip first. She also resolves that, if killing is necessary, she will not be turned away from it by any moral or tender feelings she has picked up from Pooch. Perhaps she can save them all.

  As it happens, it is the doctor who is the quicker. He has her head in a noose on the end of a pole before she can get near him. He bought the noose especially for her, anticipating what he had to deal with and, though he knows by the cut of her jaw that she isn't poisonous, he isn't taking any chances. “Ah ha!” the doctor says, having seen her quick motion toward him. He cattle-prods her into the cage, releases her from the pole, and there she is, in spite of all her resolutions.

  But she is determined to fight him any way she can. “Don't bother with a cookie,” she says, her tongue refusing to behave as she wishes it to. She is trying to avoid all esses for the sake of dignity. “I'm on a diet, and anyway I don't play little game.” But the doctor turns on the electricity on the side of the cage where she stands. After a few seconds of frantic twirling about, she discovers the turned-off side of the cage.

  "Very good,” the doctor says, “just four point four seconds.” But then he reverses the current to the side where she is and she jumps back to the first part of the cage, then back and forth and back and forth, the doctor laughing at her and shouting, “Very good. Very, very good. And now, on the contrary, you will play a little game. My little game. Why this frantic effort to incorporate all the characteristics of a human being, though I must say you've hardly managed half of them? You should know, and I quote: ‘The whole earth itself is no more than the puniest dot.’”

  "Not to me."

  Shock.

  "Say it. Puny dot, puny dot. How can you understand anything if you don't know that?"

  "It'th not."

  Shock.

  "If you understood the universe, which even itself may be a puny dot and in which the earth may be but a punier one, you would tell me everything you know and let me help to bring things back the way they should be—to this minor planet."

  "Not to me it ithn't."

  "Is!” The doctor is shouting and changing dials and pushing buttons as fast as he can. He is turning both sides on alternately and Phillip is skipping about from cage right to cage left in a grotesque dance. Ice water from a nozzle on the ceiling sprays on her head. Then the doctor turns on both sides at once. This lasts eight seconds.

  "Stop! Stop! It ith a puny dot. I admit it."

  Immediately the shocks stop and a chocolate-frosted cupcake pops out from the dispenser at the side.

  "Five minutes,” the doctor says, “from the beginning,” and writes that down.

  Phillip, in a sudden careless rage, throws the cupcake at him and is satisfied to see chocolate smudges on his white lab coat, but she is again subjected to the dance from side to side and then both sides. No place to go ... but up! Phillip is an excellent climber. Up she goes until she's hanging, mostly from the top bars in a far corner of the cage. The shocks don't reach her there.

  At first the doctor pokes at her with the stick he used to bring her in, but it's not long enough. Suddenly he seems very, very calm. “Well, well,” he says, looking at his watch, “I believe it's already time for lunch. I want you to know I'm not at all put out. I am simply asking myself, can the world exist without ignorant and obstructive people such as you? And I answer myself that, of course it can't, so no sense in getting upset."

  She's better at hanging on than he thinks, but still it's hard. By the time he comes back half an hour later, Phillip's fingers and toes are so stiff and cramped she can neither hang on any longer nor let go.

  "I suppose you're ready to come down?"

  A meek “Yeth."

  "Try it. I might have had it turned off all along. I'm not an ogre, you know. I only want what's best for all of us, you included. Think how much better you'd feel if you were back in some rain forest or other—or is it the desert? I can arrange for that. Just tell me the information I need to be able to help us all out of this awful mess."

  It's true, Phillip has sometimes had vague yearnings toward life in the wild, though she knows very little about it and has never actually been in a forest, having been born in a pet shop.

  "So now perhaps we understand each other better and can be of help to each other,” the doctor says, “and I trust that, if and when you get a cupcake, you will eat it. So let us go on to another question. Tell me, who is your leader?"

  "A little old lady who liveth in thith area, actually, who always wears navy blue or gray.” Phillip, rubbing her sore fingers, begins a lengthy description of the doctor's wife, as minute as she can make it in order to gain time, but adding several characteristics of a tiger. “Even,” she says, “striped already on the face. You can thee the orange, white, and black. Quite attractive.” (Actually, Phillip is thinking of her own attractive red, black, and yellow.) “But more like a tiger every day and already quite dangerouth. I would stay away from her if I were you. In fact, she'd tear you limb from limb.” Phillip says this last with relish.

  "Females are all such liars,” the doctor says. “Lies, that's all I've heard from all of you starting with little number 106 who hardly spoke at all. But then,” and he quotes, “'Nobody is surprised when a fig tree brings forth figs.'” He gives Phillip another forced dance from side to side and soon she is climbing the wall of the cage again in spite of her sore toes and fingers.

  "Watch out,” the doctor says, “or I'll leave you here again with the floor turned on full and I won't come back until tomorrow."

  Phillip, exhausted from the pain of the shocks and of her cramped hands and feet and of the leaping about, drops back down in a dejected coil that the doctor finds quite seductive, partly because of its submissiveness. The floor is, thank goodness, turned off.

  "There are no leaderth that I know of,” she says. “If there are, no one has
told me about them. And I don't know how all thith thtarted. I just began to take such pleathure in my own body. It was thtrange. And I began to realize things. Most of all to know I wath alive. Alive! That'th all I thought about at first, even after that time the rocking chair rocked on me and no one seemed to care. And I don't know how all thith came about but it seemed such a privilege. I was ... suddenly so ... joyful!"

  Another series of shocks, side to side and side to side, until Phillip climbs the mesh bars again. “Alligatorth,” she shouts. “They have come out of the sewers.” (Little does she realize how right she is. It's true. They have come up, though with no plans.) “Alligators all over the place and we have joined them. It'th their fault."

  Two cupcakes, two fortune cookies, and three chits pop out. Also a string of large blue beads, and the doctor writes down the one word, alligators, with exclamation point.

  "You may go,” he says. “Take your things and go, and I must say you've utterly worn me out, but in the end you did well. I'll be having another discussion with you soon. Very soon."

  Later on when she reads her fortunes, one says “Consider practical alternatives,” and the other “You will soon fall in love with a much older man.” From the very beginning, the doctor has been quite taken with her.

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  Chapter 6: A Sorrowful Leave-Taking

  The malice of a good thing is the barb that makes it stick.

  —Richard Brinsley Sheridan

  Basenji no sooner seems to be making some slight recovery than the doctor comes for her again. His policy is to come for them before they are let out of their cages in the morning in order to avoid mass uprising. It's a good thing, because now that he has come for Basenji there surely would have been a spontaneous mutiny. Though Basenji is utterly limp and passive, all the others (except for Pooch, who lies on her back, arms folded across her chest, feet in the air, face partly covered by one golden ear) are frantic. They bang on the bars and call out, “No, not Basenji!” and, “Take me instead. I'll go. I'll say anything you want me to.” Of course it must be remembered that some of them have had quite a pleasant experience in the laboratory—only a few mild shocks and several treats and trinkets. And some would be only too happy to go, simply to add variety to their days though they, of course, are the ones who have not been treated to the worst of what the doctor can do. Some, as mentioned, have even found the doctor fascinating, his long, sad face quite appealing and handsome if you like that type. And, though they dare not confess it to the others, if their fortunes have mentioned a tall, dark stranger, most (as he intended they should) have taken it to mean the doctor himself, even though he is less black-haired than gray. They are thinking of their own desirability in contrast to his dumpy old wife and they are hoping for a meaningful relationship—almost any kind of relationship, even if it is somewhat sadistic.