Fifteen Dogs

2. MAJNOUN AND BENJY

When Majnoun awakened, he was in a house that smelled of peanut butter and fried liver. He lay in a wicker basket lined with a thick, orange blanket that smelled of something sweet, soapy and human. He tried to move but found he could not. It was too painful and, as well, moving was awkward. His abdomen was shaved and he was bound with white bandages that smelled of oil and pine and something indefinable. His face itched but there was a plastic cone around his head: the narrow end of the cone was cut so that the aperture fit around his neck, the wide end projecting out like a megaphone. Even if he’d wanted to scratch his face, he could not have done so. All four of his legs were shaven and bandaged. He raised his head, the better to see where he was, but he was nowhere: a whitish room with windows that looked out on a sky that was blue and bright.

During his attack — which he suddenly recalled with a vividness that was painful — he had assumed that the darkness he was falling into would be endless. He had given some thought to death in the time he’d been free and he had assumed that his death had come. This whitish room seemed to be proof he was still alive and, unexpectedly, he was disappointed. What was the point of living on after what he’d been through?

Wishing to know where he was, Majnoun raised his head higher. He tried to call out, but his voice was low and faint and it was painful to bark. Still, he barked as carefully as he could.

Behind him there came the thud of steps.

— He’s awake, a voice spoke.

And the face of a human male eclipsed the room.

— How you feeling? the man asked.

The face of a human female jostled the man’s face out of Majnoun’s field of vision.

— You’re so lucky! Aren’t you lucky! Who’s the lucky boy, eh? Who’s the lucky boy?

— I don’t think he’ll be able to get up for quite a while, said the man. I wonder if he’s hungry.

Hungry was a word Majnoun knew well. Using his own language, he clicked, whined and weakly barked out the words that meant he was indeed hungry.

— I know you’re in pain, boy. Try not to get excited, the woman said.

Then, to the man

— I think he’s too weak to eat.

— You might be right, said the man, but let’s see.

The man left the room and returned with a plate of white rice and chopped chicken livers. He put the plate down in front of Majnoun (it smelled divine!), unclasped the plastic cone, and watched as Majnoun gingerly moved closer to the plate and — without sitting up — took in a mouthful of food with a sidewise swipe of his tongue.

— I guess I was wrong, said the woman. He is hungry.

— Why don’t you name him?

— You think we should keep him?

— Why not? Once he gets better he can keep you company during the day.

— Okay. Why don’t we call him Lord Jim?

— You want to name him after the world’s most boring book?

— If I wanted to do that, I’d call him Golden Bowl.

Listening to the noise the humans made, Majnoun was reminded of how unpredictably consequential their sounds were. When he’d lived with his family, the humans would make any number of sounds, none of which had anything at all to do with him. Then, from out of the fog of inconsequential noise, something meaningful would come: his name would be called, for instance, and a bowl of food that he had left for later would be taken up or a doorbell would sound, someone would shout, and he, clearly the only one who cared about these sporadic invasions of their territory, would have to bark at the intruder or jump up on it to make certain it was submissive and no threat to any of them.

As he ate his rice and chicken livers, Majnoun paid attention to the humans, ready to eat faster if they reached down for the plate.

— What a good eater! said the woman. What a good dog!

Then, exhausted, Majnoun lay back in the wicker basket. He allowed the man to rub him with foul-smelling goo and refasten the cone. He was asleep by the time they left him alone.

+

It was six months before Majnoun could stand up for more than a few minutes at a time. Even then, he could not use the back leg whose tendons had been most damaged. For a long time, he was essentially three-legged. Also, it was humiliating to be unable to shit and piss outside. The humans made it even worse by putting underpants on him. They changed him regularly, but not always as quickly as he would have liked.

In the months it took him to recover, he had little to do but lie in his bed and think about life: his life, life in general. It pained him to do this, because his thoughts inevitably returned to the night of his betrayal. He had been betrayed by the dog with the crumpled face. He had spoken his mind and heart, struggling to express himself out of a sense of fraternity. In return, the crumpled-face dog had been among those who’d tried to kill him. And yet, it sometimes seemed to Majnoun that the others had been right to attack him. He had drifted so far from his instincts, it was not clear — even to himself — that he deserved to live as a dog.

For months, the only thing that distracted him from these sometimes painful thoughts were the humans. They fascinated and frustrated him in equal measure. What, if he were called to give an account of humans, would he say about them? Where would he begin? How to define their smells, for instance? Complex: foods and sweat interrupted by unplaceable odours. They generally smelled of unusual things, but the human smell he liked best was when they were mating. It was sharp and true and comforting, so that on some nights, after they’d moved his basket into their bedroom, he slept more peacefully, the smell of their copulating acting as a kind of tranquilizer.

Then, too, he gradually learned more about their language, moving beyond its rudiments. To begin with, he took in the subtleties of tone. For instance, one would speak to the other in a rising voice and then you could feel the expectation until the one who’d been addressed spoke back. The tone seemed to matter more than the words themselves. And it was always a little odd when they used the rising tone with him, as if waiting for a rejoinder, as if they expected him to understand.

— Are you hungry, Jim?

— Want to go outside, Jim?

— Is Jimmy cold? Are you cold, Lord Jim?

In fact, Majnoun’s fascination with tone of voice is what led to his first serious contretemps with the woman. He spent most of his time with the woman. She seemed the more interested in his company, moving his basket from the bedroom to a room with a large desk. She’d spend hours at the desk, getting up only to stretch or to speak to him or to bring a cup from the kitchen. One day, she rose from the desk, stretched, wandered to his basket, scratched his head and said

— Are you hungry, Jim? Would you like a treat?

Majnoun thought about it, then said

— Yes.

Though the sound yes was difficult for him to produce, he had been practising it for himself, along with the sound no and any number of other significant words. He had also practised nodding, to indicate assent, and shaking his head from left to right to indicate dissent. When the woman asked if he wanted a treat, he was not certain which was more effective: the nod of assent or the spoken ‘yes.’ For a few moments after saying ‘yes,’ he was still not certain, because the woman was immobile, staring at him. Confused by her reaction, Majnoun looked her in the eyes, nodded and then said again

— Yes.

The woman began breathing quickly, then fell to the floor. She did not move for several minutes. Unsure what was expected of him — he had never encountered this sudden human immobility — Majnoun lowered his head, licked the fur on his paw and waited to see what would happen. After a while, the woman stirred, mumbling to herself. Then she got up. Perhaps, thought Majnoun, she’s unsure if she understood me right. He looked up at her, nodded and said

— Treat.

This time, she cried out and ran from the room in terror. It occurred to Majnoun that what he had taken for straightforward — the rising tone, the appropriate response — was a more complicated transaction than he’d surmised. Certainly, when the man had said the word yes or the word treat, the woman had not run from him. Perhaps, he thought, there was some subtle, accompanying sound that he’d missed: a click of the tongue, a whine, a small growl. He could not recall having heard the man make such sounds. At most, the man put an arm around her shoulder when speaking. Perhaps, then, he ought to have touched her before saying ‘yes’?

Next time, thought Majnoun, I’ll touch her shoulder if she leans down.

What followed was so unpleasant, however, that there was to be no ‘next time’ for a very long time indeed. The consequences of his having spoken were clear: the woman was now frightened of him. She would not enter any room he happened to be in. Then the man took Majnoun to a place where he was left overnight. The following day, Majnoun was prodded, poked, given needles, fed food that did not taste proper and kept for observation in a cage beside other dogs who grew aggressive at the smell of him. This was humanity, this unpredictability, this cruel behaviour and bullying. The worst of it was, in his weakened state, he could not open the door to his cage. He had no choice but to attend his fate.

The whole business provided a good, if unexpected, lesson. He would almost certainly have tried to communicate with cats or squirrels, mice or birds, if he could make out their language. He might have tried to communicate with any species. From that moment on, however, he resolved to hide his knowledge of human language from humans themselves. It was evident that, for whatever reason, humans could not stand to be spoken to by dogs.

On the third day, the woman returned for him herself.

Just as Majnoun was settling into sleep, the other dogs having grown tired of threatening him, the door to the room opened and the woman was led in by one of the men who’d held him down so that a man in white could take some of his blood. The man opened the door to his cage and, not without trepidation, Majnoun followed the woman out.

Once on the street, it occurred to Majnoun that he ought to run for it. The evening was inviting. It was late spring. The sun had not quite set. A reddish strand lay over the buildings in the distance. But, of course, Majnoun was still hampered by his injuries, by the pain he experienced when running. He could not have run for long and he would only have exhausted himself or, worse, got himself lost in territory he did not know. So he climbed into the back seat of the car.

Rather than go to the driver’s seat, the woman climbed in the back with him.

— I’m sorry I sent you to that place, she said, but you frightened me. Do you understand?

Resigned to whatever would come, but firm in his resolve not to speak human words, Majnoun nodded.

— What are you? she asked. Are you a dog?

A surprisingly difficult question to answer. He did not feel very much like a dog. He felt adrift between species. But he knew what she meant by the word, so again he nodded.

— You have to understand, she said, that dogs never speak to people. It’s never happened, as far as I know. I thought you were possessed. That’s why I was frightened. What’s your name?

This Majnoun would not say, not only because ‘Majnoun,’ the name his master had given him, was difficult for him to pronounce, not only because he would not speak, but also because it seemed to him that he no longer had a true name. He stared at the woman, then shook his head.

— My name is Nira, she said. Do you mind if I call you Jim?

An impossible question. Majnoun was unsure what Nira wanted to know. Did he accept the name ‘Jim’? Yes, why not? Did he feel displeasure at the thought that she would use the name ‘Jim’ when referring to him? No, he did not. He stared at her and then, guessing at the appropriate signal, nodded his head.

— You’re never going to speak to me again, are you? Nira asked.

Another difficult question. He did not intend to use human words, but as far as he was concerned he was speaking to her. This time, he did not answer. He turned to look out the window at the lamplit park on the other side of the street.

— Never mind, said Nira. It’s my fault. You don’t have to speak if you don’t want to.

In all the time they spent together before Majnoun spoke again, Nira never asked him to speak. In fact, she grew to admire his wordlessness. Majnoun rarely barked. He could see no point in using a language he knew Nira did not understand. He communicated all of his needs and most of his thoughts with a nod or a shake of the head. And as they grew closer, Nira needed even less from him. She learned to read his expression, the disposition of his body, the tilt of his head.

At that moment, however, the two sitting in the back of the Honda Civic, it was not obvious that they would develop anything like ‘understanding’ or ‘friendship.’ Nira was still frightened of Majnoun. Yes, he was obviously hobbled, unable to walk for long without stopping and lying down, and his limitations called forth her pity. It’s why they’d taken him in, after finding him clinging to life in High Park. But the thought that an intelligent being was in their home, that she had let this creature into her bedroom, into the very heart of her private life … the thought was as humiliating as it was frightening. It took her a long time to overcome these feelings. Majnoun never again slept in her bedroom, for instance, and she ever after felt embarrassed whenever she came upon him licking his genitals.

What helped bind the two was the quality of Majnoun’s silence. It was sophisticated, the kind of silence that invited response. Nira spoke to him, at first, about trivial things: work, home renovations, the minor annoyances of living with her husband, Miguel. Gradually, she began to open up about deeper matters: her thoughts about life and death, her feelings about other humans, her concerns for her own well-being — she had survived a bout of cancer and was, at times, helplessly afraid of its return.

Though Majnoun was neither smarter nor quicker than she was, Nira gave him credit for a wisdom she supposed must come from his unique vantage on the world. But it did not always occur to her that Majnoun’s vantage also limited his ability to imagine or understand her concerns. For instance, when she complained that her husband was terribly untidy, that he had the disgusting habit of cutting his toenails and biting the clippings, Majnoun looked at her, utterly perplexed. It seemed to him that Miguel was right to groom himself this way. Did she wish to bite Miguel’s clippings herself, he wondered.

On another occasion, while he lay in his wicker basket, she asked

— Do you believe in God?

Majnoun had never heard the word before. He’d tilted his head, as if to ask her to repeat the question. And she did her best to explain the concept behind the word. As Majnoun took it, the word seemed to refer to a ‘master of all masters.’ Did he believe in such a being? The thought had never occurred to him, but he supposed such a being was possible. So, when she asked the question again, he nodded to say ‘yes.’ This was not the answer she wanted.

— How can you believe such a ridiculous thing? she asked. I suppose you believe God is a dog?

Majnoun believed no such thing. He believed only that the ‘god’ Nira had described was possible, the same way that he believed a bitch perpetually in heat was possible. A ‘master of all masters’ was an idea, but it was one that did not concern him, so he could not understand Nira’s contempt. They had similar misunderstandings when they spoke of ‘government’ (a group of masters deciding how a pack should behave) and ‘religion’ (a group of masters deciding how a pack should behave toward a master of masters). The more Nira spoke of these things, the more difficult it was for Majnoun to believe that any group of masters — especially human ones — could act in concert, whatever the purpose or end. So that both ‘government’ and ‘religion’ began to seem like very bad ideas.

Perhaps the most frustrating moment — for both of them — came when Nira asked if he had ever loved another dog. As with god, Majnoun had no idea what the word love meant. Nira did her best over several days to give him a sense of the word’s meaning, but Majnoun found her definitions contradictory, frustrating and vague. The word corresponded to no emotion he could recognize, but her ideas were intriguing enough to keep him attentive. For her part, Nira was convinced that any animal as sensitive as Majnoun must have felt love.

— The feeling you had for your mother, she said, that’s one of the meanings of love.

But if Majnoun had ever known his mother, it had been too brief an acquaintance to stimulate any specific emotion. Nor were there likelier candidates for Majnoun’s love. His master? His master had been a master, and one was loyal to masters out of habit, fear, or necessity. Certainly, Majnoun had enjoyed his time as a pup. He was grateful for his master. At the thought of him, Majnoun recalled moments of sheer pleasure chasing a ball thrown in a patchy field, inexpressible joy. But where his master was concerned, Majnoun’s emotions were more complex and much darker than ‘love,’ encompassing as they did feelings of resentment and dislike. No, if he had to choose a human word, Majnoun would have chosen loyalty to express what he felt for his master. (For this reason, despite feeling nameless, he’d have preferred Nira call him Majnoun, the name his master had given him.)

For other dogs he’d felt no emotion as complex as loyalty, let alone the emotion Nira was trying to describe. As far as Majnoun was concerned, his relationship to other dogs had been, for the most part, uncomplicated. There were dogs one could dominate and dogs one could not. As other dogs could bite you or mount you when you didn’t want it, it was best to keep one’s feelings clear and easily communicable.

After a while, Majnoun became convinced that when Nira spoke about ‘love,’ she was talking about something that was and would always be beyond him. When, one day, she said

— Miguel is my mate. I love him

Majnoun was too bored by the question to be interested. To get Nira to stop asking about ‘love,’ he nodded his head ‘yes’ when next she asked if he understood. Both of them knew, however, that he was lying. (As it happened, Majnoun was a poor liar, accompanying as he did his lies with unusual enthusiasm.) And it was a sore point between them.

By the time Nira and Majnoun came to this contretemps about ‘love,’ eight months had passed and already a thousand intimacies tied them together. She knew what he liked to eat. He knew not to disturb her when she was doing her work. He helped her clean the house as best he could, learning where things went and putting them in their place when he could. She made certain the chew toys he liked best were in good nick, buying new ones whenever the old were too mangled to be enjoyed. In other words, by their eighth month together, Nira and Majnoun were friends.

Also, after eight months, Majnoun could walk without too much pain and even, if he had to, run for short bursts. His worst leg’s tendons had healed sufficiently, though he avoided putting all his weight on them. His bandages had long gone and aside from his right ear — the top of which had been chewed clean off by Max — he looked more or less like a normal poodle.

Miguel suggested that Majnoun and Nira should take longer walks together, now that Majnoun was better. He suggested they walk in High Park, but this suggestion was, of course, awkward. Although Nira did not hide Majnoun’s sensitivity from her husband, and although he often witnessed the two of them in their version of causerie, Miguel did not believe Majnoun could communicate with Nira or she with him, not in any profound way. He assumed, rather, that Majnoun understood a handful of words, but that, beyond these words, the dog simply nodded or shook his head more or less at random. When Nira had first informed him — terrified — that the dog had spoken to her, he had laughed. He couldn’t help himself. This dog-and-human communication business was, to his mind, an aspect of Nira’s ‘granola and Wiccan’ tendencies, the same tendencies that had led her to read Mary Daly, to experiment with lesbianism and to speak of the sacredness of her poum-poum. Certainly the dog was bright, but not bright in the human sense, not possessed of great memory or the capacity for speech. So, Miguel did not for an instant consider the emotional complications of High Park.

Some of High Park’s complications were trivial; some had psychological weight. On the trivial end: Nira did not know what to do about leashes. There were whole areas of the park where dogs were not allowed to walk about unleashed. She thought it degrading to parade Majnoun about as if he were, well, a dog. Majnoun himself had no opinion on the matter. It did not humiliate him to wear a collar, but he clearly saw the disadvantage of being restrained when aggressive dogs came at him. So they agreed he would have a leash attached to a green leather collar by thin threads. At his slightest jump, the threads would break and Majnoun could stand his ground to defend himself.

(Inherent in the question of leashes was, of course, the question of power. Nira was uncomfortable with power or even with the appearance of it. One day, she asked Majnoun if he would put her on a leash, their positions being reversed. He had answered ‘no,’ and this had made Nira feel even more uncomfortable. But Majnoun had, in fact, misunderstood her question. If she had said

— Masters have agreed that their submissives must be bound to them with leashes and collars. If you were a master, would you keep me on a leash?

Majnoun would, without hesitation, have answered ‘yes.’ If she had been his submissive, he would naturally have treated her according to the custom. Order in a pack is maintained through convention, and it made no sense, as far as Majnoun was concerned, to overturn conventions that worked. But he had understood her question on a more practical level. He had thought of how awkward it would be for him to hold a leash in his mouth while Nira walked about on her hands and knees. Understanding the question as he had, the only possible answer had been the ‘no’ he’d given.)

Another trivial complication had to do with humans. The humans who came to the park were a varied lot: all stations, races and genders. Inevitably, as Majnoun was striking in his bearing, someone asked Nira if they could touch him or give him treats — the desiccated biscuits, most of which Majnoun found bland and sweet. Nira assumed that Majnoun would not mind the displays of affection. So, she was surprised to discover that, au contraire, Majnoun was highly selective in whom he allowed to touch him. Nira would say

— No, he doesn’t bite

or

— Sure. I don’t think he minds being petted.

And the first few times, he stood still for it. Then, as if for no reason, he decided he’d had enough. An older woman approached and asked if she could pet him and he shook his head ‘no.’ He moved away at her approach and would not let himself be touched.

— I’m sorry, said Nira.

When the woman had gone on her way, she said to Majnoun

— I didn’t know you objected. Don’t you like to be touched?

Majnoun shook his head, and that, you’d have thought, was that. Except that it wasn’t. From then on, Majnoun decided for himself whom he would allow to touch him, nodding when he was prepared to be touched, shaking his head when he was not.

When Nira was asked

— May I pet your dog?

she answered

— You’ll have to ask him yourself.

Questioned, Majnoun would either nod ‘yes,’ to the delight of the stranger who would then ask

— How did you teach him to do that?

or Majnoun would shake his head ‘no,’ which was also delightful to strangers and provoked the same question:

— How did you teach him to do that?

Either way, Nira’s answer to the question was a shrug of the shoulders.

It being impossible for her to detect any pattern to Majnoun’s yeses or nos, she assumed his choices were random. They were not, though his criteria were just beyond Nira’s ken. First, Majnoun did not like to be touched by humans who smelled unpleasantly. It was, in human terms, like being asked to shake the hand of someone with shit on his fingers. Second, and more subtly, was the question of station. Versed as he was in the finer aspects of dominance, he recognized at once when someone — for instance, the older woman whose touch was the first he refused — behaved as if they dominated Nira. It was in the old woman’s tone, energy and disposition. As Majnoun found it inadmissible that any creature outside his pack (his pack being himself, Miguel and Nira) was of higher status than Nira, he refused to be touched by those who, however inadvertently or unconsciously, belittled her.

In the end, however, High Park’s most significant complication was in what it evoked for Majnoun. It was the place where he had almost died. So, naturally, before they went together, Nira had asked if he wished to return to High Park. The name ‘High Park’ had meant nothing to him, but she made certain he knew it was the place where she and Miguel had found him more dead than alive. She worried that it would be unpleasant for him to recall his trauma, but Majnoun had wanted to return. So they had gone together, and he, to his own surprise, had suffered horribly. The memory of being done almost to death was humiliating. It was also frightening. Nira made a point of avoiding the place where she and Miguel had found him, but that made no difference. Majnoun knew the park well — its smells, its grasses, its hills, its fountains, its roads, its zoo, its restaurants and garbage bins — and it cut him to walk in what had been his territory.

And yet, despite the evident distress it caused him, Majnoun needed High Park.

One day, wishing to spare him the pain, Nira had taken him to Trinity-Bellwoods. Majnoun had looked around and then walked back to the car on his own, waiting for Nira to take him where he wished to go. What he could not communicate was his need to find his former pack or the remnants of it. For reasons he did not himself understand, it was unbearable to think that he might be the last of his kind. The feeling was beyond loneliness. It was desolation. When he was in High Park, Majnoun was both wary and hopeful that he would meet his former den mates.

The one Majnoun met at last, Benjy, was not the dog you’d have thought would survive Atticus’s reign. But Benjy was resourceful and dishonest in ways Majnoun did not fathom. The dog lied whenever it suited him. He was ingratiating, two-faced, self-interested and, crucially, sensitive. He could read a situation quickly and quickly tell which side of any conflict it was best to be on. He had flaws but his instincts were acute, almost infallible.

That the two met again was pure chance. Majnoun did not like to walk along the road reserved for humans and their dogs. On this road — a depression or narrow valley between modest hills — dogs ran about unleashed. If they were at all aggressive, the dogs would run straight at Majnoun, attacking without warning. Majnoun defended himself very well, however. He was merciless when attacked, having learned a lesson from Atticus, Max, Frick and Frack. In a number of cases he had seriously hurt the attacking dog. He had, for instance, bitten clean through the throat of a Rottweiler, sitting still until it jumped at him, then ruthlessly attacking the dog’s underside. The Rottweiler’s owner, furious, had run to protect his animal, but by then the Rottweiler was in shock and copiously bleeding. Majnoun, vigilant and wary, had sat beside Nira as the humans shouted at each other.

In a way, Majnoun’s attackers were useful. He was not afraid of the dogs who went for him, and his self-confidence grew at each victory. Still, he did not like to hurt other dogs, so he and Nira avoided the off-leash area. One would have thought that the other members of Majnoun’s pack would have avoided it as well, the attention of humans or dogs being unwanted. Yet Benjy and Majnoun found each other again near the first of the small bridges over the freshet that ran beside the off-leash road.

How Majnoun got there is easy enough: he was distracted by Nira’s talk about the government in some faraway place. It was winter — more than a year after Majnoun had been rescued — and the smell of the world was less sharp, masked by snowfall. So Majnoun (and Nira) wandered into the area without realizing where they were. Benjy, on the other hand, was there out of desperation. He was fleeing, as best he could with his short legs, the attentions of an aggressive Dalmatian.

Benjy saw Majnoun first and cried out in their shared language.

— Black dog! Black dog, help me!

Majnoun looked up to see Benjy half-running, half-tumbling down the hillside.

Immediately, instinctively, Majnoun went to the beagle’s aid. To Nira’s dismay, Majnoun put himself between the Dalmatian and the beagle, barking and growling as if he were ferocious and unhinged. The Dalmatian thought about challenging Majnoun, but it was now faced with something beyond its comprehension: two dogs that did not feel like dogs, two manifestly alien versions of the canine. With surprising grace, the dog fled back up the hill whence it had come.

— Jim, said Nira, what are you doing?

Majnoun ignored her. He waited for Benjy to recover from his run, then said

— You are the small dog with long ears from our pack.

— Yes, said Benjy. I am that dog. I tell you, black dog, I’ve been mounted more often than a bitch in heat since those days.

Then, changing the subject, Benjy said

— Have you found a new master? This one does not seem cruel. Does it beat you?

— No, said Majnoun. She is a human I live with and she does not beat me.

— Then you’ve had good fortune since you left us. I wish you and the dog who spoke strangely had taken me with you.

— I was bitten and left for dead, said Majnoun. I did not choose exile.

— Just what I thought, said Benjy. The others dogs believed you and the strange dog had gone away, but I did not believe it. Why would the black dog leave his den mates, I asked.

— Where are the others? asked Majnoun.

— That would take a lot of words, said Benjy, and I am hungry.

Benjy looked over at Nira. Without warning, he barked happily and rolled over in the snow.

— What are you doing? asked Majnoun.

— It is a thing humans like, said Benjy. Don’t you do it? It is a very good way to get food.

— Where are the others? Majnoun repeated.

Again, Benjy barked happily and rolled over in the snow.

— Stop that, said Majnoun. She does not understand your …

Nira did seem to understand, however. She had, with a kind of fascination, been watching the two. She was hearing what she thought of as Majnoun’s real language for the first time: clacks, low growls, rough barks, sighs and yawns. It was incomprehensible. The only part that made sense to her was Benjy’s playful barking and his rolling over in the snow. So, interrupting Majnoun, she said

— Your friend is hungry, isn’t he? Why don’t we bring him home with us for a while? I didn’t bring anything with me to eat, but there’s more than enough at home.

Despite himself, Majnoun was annoyed. But, to Benjy, he said

— She says there is food where we live.

— You understand human language? asked Benjy. I would like you to teach me. If you teach me, I’ll tell you everything you want to know about our pack.

— You’ll tell me what I want to know or I’ll bite your face, said Majnoun.

But Majnoun was a poor liar in both of his languages, and Benjy was not troubled. Benjy, who was a good liar, had seen Majnoun’s body after Atticus, Max and the brothers had finished with it, and having seen Majnoun ‘dead,’ he was not frightened of him. He assumed that if Atticus and his co-conspirators had got the better of Majnoun, he could almost certainly outsmart Majnoun as well. Why should he respect a dog who was demonstrably inferior to Atticus?

He went home with Nira and Majnoun, blithely.

No sooner did Nira put down a bowl of rice and chicken livers than the beagle was on it, eating as if afraid Majnoun would take some. He had not had anything proper to eat in days. He’d had no luck begging from humans along Bloor Street. So he’d returned to High Park, searching for scraps beneath the snowfall and, even, hunting for the mice and rats that scampered around the restaurant near the dog park.

Winter was not a good season for a dog without a master. Alone, Benjy spent most of his time going from house to house looking for someone to take him in, doing the things humans — mysteriously, incomprehensibly — liked dogs to do. He rolled over, pretended to be dead, sat up, stood on his hind legs (which was difficult for him), begged for food and, on occasion, howled in imitation of human song. When one thought about it, a dog had to take it on faith that humans possessed intelligence. They were expert makers of dens and food, however, and those were the things Benjy wanted from them. Clearly, he could get them more efficiently if he learned human language.

— You know, said Benjy after he’d finished eating and drinking, I always thought you were the most clever dog. I am certain that’s why the pack leader wanted to kill you.

— The grey dog with the cascading face? asked Majnoun.

The two were in the living room, on their own. Nira, feeling as if she were intruding on Majnoun’s privacy, left them alone for a time. The living room had a brightly coloured throw rug — crimson, light straw and gold — on its floor. It had an armchair and a sofa, a false fireplace and windows that looked onto the street, windows Majnoun could look out of, if he sat on the sofa.

Benjy ignored Majnoun’s question.

— It does not surprise me, he said, that you have learned to speak with humans. I would be your submissive, if you would teach me a little of what you know.

Majnoun was looking out the window at the passing world: cars, pedestrians, other dogs and the cats whose appearance always made him growl. He knew it was senseless to dislike the poor, weak creatures, but he could not help himself and often found — to his own dismay — that it was difficult to suppress the desire to bark at the sight of felines. As Benjy said ‘teach me,’ a cat passed near enough to the house to provoke a growl. Thinking Majnoun’s growl was meant for him, Benjy said

— I am an innocent dog. I have not done you any wrong.

Getting down from the sofa, the window proving too much of a distraction, Majnoun said

— I will teach you human words if you tell me where the others are.

— The others, said Benjy, are dead. I thought I was the last of our pack.

+

Although there was no real need for Benjy to hide what had happened to the pack, he was wary of saying too much. For one thing, he had been responsible for the pack’s demise and he was not sure how Majnoun would react if he knew. So, in his retelling, Benjy left out any detail that might incriminate him, while adding little flourishes here and there to make himself look better than he had been. These flourishes and silences did not misrepresent the character of Atticus’s reign, however. Benjy, essentially, told the truth.

He had been awake for the killing of Athena. He had seen Frick make off with her body and had watched as Frack roused Bella and led her away. It didn’t take much thought to guess Bella’s fate. What took thought was the decision their deaths forced on him: should he stay or leave? If Frick and Frack were willing to kill so wantonly, why wouldn’t they kill him? He would be little more trouble to them than Athena had been. On the other hand, exile was a frightening idea. What would life be without the bigger dogs around to defend him? His only course would be to find a master and, humans being dangerous, this was not something he wanted to do.

The other thing that was clear on the night of Athena’s murder was who the conspirators were. Frick, Frack, Max and Atticus had been furtive from early on, at times keeping to themselves. So, when Frick and then Frack had gone off, Benjy had turned to where Max was lying. He had turned and waited. He waited until the strange disappearance of Prince and then observed the stealthy commotion as the brothers and Max searched the den. When the conspirators had left the den, Benjy had followed, going to a tree a distance away from the coppice. He hid in a place that was far enough from the den to afford him some safety but close enough so that he could observe the comings and goings. It was from here that he heard the terrifying fracas that signalled the attack on Majnoun.

Now, the mystery deepened for him. The conspirators had gone after Majnoun, Bella, Athena and Prince. Where was the logic? What connected the four who had been disposed of? More importantly, as far as Benjy was concerned, where did he fit in the scheme of things? Was there something that tied him to the victims, or was he connected to the conspirators?

Once the conspirators had returned to the coppice, Benjy sought out the body of Majnoun, saw that the dog was to all appearances dead, and peed on what he took to be the corpse, marking it so that others might be wary of him, if they connected his scent with this violence. After that, still uncertain about what he should do, but convinced he could flee if he had to, Benjy returned to the coppice where, to his surprise, all the dogs were asleep. Warily, he went to his place and stayed there until morning.

In the morning, a new order came with the sunlight. The dogs woke early, two of them — that is, Bobbie and Dougie — confused by a difference they could not understand.

— Where is the big bitch? asked Bobbie.

Atticus yawned before he snapped his jaws together. Then, he barked while Frick and Frack nosed Bobbie, Dougie and Benjy toward him.

— These are the last words I’ll speak in this useless tongue, said Atticus. The dogs who have not wanted to stay with us have gone into exile. The big bitch has died. Humans have taken her body away. I am now the leader of this pack. Does any dog object?

— You will make a wonderful leader, said Benjy.

— Whether I am wonderful or not, I will lead. Those who wish can choose exile. Those who stay will live properly, like dogs. We don’t need words for doors or trees. We don’t need to talk about time or hills or stars. We did not talk about those things before, and our ancestors did well without this language. From now on, anyone who speaks anything but the old tongue will be punished. We will hunt. We will defend our territory. The rest does not concern us.

— I cannot stop the words that go on inside me, said Bobbie.

— No one can stop that, said Atticus. Keep them inside.

— And if we speak by mistake? asked Dougie.

— You will be punished, said Atticus.

Who knows why, in these circumstances, a dog would speak up. Benjy was too busy taking it all in. How, he wondered, would they be punished for speaking? How was Atticus to stop them from speaking with each other when they were alone? And why the injunction in the first place? Their language gave them an advantage over other dogs. Still, thought Benjy, might does what might will do, whether it was humans beating you for pissing or Atticus insisting that dogs should not speak. It was best to let those in power do what they wished while finding some advantage in it for oneself.

Evidently, the orange bitch did not see things his way.

— I choose exile, said Bobbie.

— We will help you leave, answered Atticus.

As if it had been worked out in advance, the conspirators attacked the orange bitch at once. They were ruthless and, as the Duck Toller was smaller than any of the four, they did immediate, severe damage. Desperate because she understood they meant to kill her, Bobbie cried out in distress. The sound was terrifying. She managed to run from the den, but the four pursued her, biting at her legs as she ran. They chased her beyond the pond where, weakened, she fell. There, they bit her until her body stopped moving and her blood ran onto the grass.

(While recounting this moment to Majnoun, Benjy was as solemn as could be, as if relating an injustice. The truth was, though, that he had felt admiration for the conspirators. Some part of him admired the four dogs still. They had been swift and clear, and one had to admit that clarity, however terrifying it might be, was at least admirable. It was perhaps even beautiful. He could only aspire to it. It was an ideal that, realistically speaking, a dog of his size and stature could never attain, clarity being an expression of power.)

The murder of the orange bitch was a signal event. After that, it was clear to all that Atticus was serious and that the conspirators wanted what Atticus wanted. It was also clear that the conspirators were a different kind of creature. The attack itself had been ruthless, swift and canine. Admirable, as Benjy thought. But what had preceded it, the offer of exile: why propose such a thing if it were not meant? The orange bitch had taken them at their word and they had murdered her. Why? Benjy could not see the advantage. The bitch had been no threat at all. To him, the decision to kill her had been perverse. And, in the end, it was this perversity that proved the conspirators’ strangeness.

As far as Benjy was concerned, Atticus, being unpredictable, was a danger to them all.

On top of that, with the death of Bobbie, it was clear that he and Dougie were now of lowest status. They were meant, it seemed, to scavenge and to be submissive. This was not necessarily a bad thing. Submissiveness was worth the trouble if one’s submission were rewarded by something valuable: protection, say. It remained to be seen, however, what good would come from Atticus’s reign.

(How quickly the dead pass from mind. Though they had been pack mates, neither Benjy nor Majnoun remembered much about Bobbie, save that her fur had been orange and shaggy and that she had smelled of pine even before they found the coppice. She had once defended Benjy from a mutt that attacked without warning but Benjy did not remember this. At her death, Bobbie imagined she was sinking in deep water, the sensation bringing her back to a moment as a pup when she had nearly drowned. She died in great distress, unconsoled.)

The first days of Atticus’s rule were exceedingly peculiar. Dougie was bitten hard when he inadvertently spoke in the new tongue. Thereafter, Dougie and Benjy were careful never to use words when the others were around. They barked. But this was disorienting. They were forced to imitate what they remembered of their old language. They were, in effect, dogs imitating dogs. This would have been less troubling if the imitation had been done for humans. Most humans cannot tell a benign growl from a growl that prefigures attack. Atticus, however, having demanded that the pack return to the old ways, now constantly judged how Benjy and Dougie were performing ‘as dogs.’ This made everything stranger still. Benjy and Dougie were dogs forced to perform a version of dogness convincing enough to please other dogs who had, to an extent, forgotten what dogness was. Were any of them actually barking or growling in the old way? Neither Benjy nor Dougie ever knew. Nor, of course, could they ask. They would have been bitten — or worse — if they had. Far from becoming more doglike, Benjy could feel himself becoming less so: more self-conscious, more thoughtful, more dependent on a language that he kept to himself. The safest thing was to imitate Atticus as best as one could.

In the beginning, Benjy and Dougie were protected when they went scavenging. One or two of the conspirators always went with them, attacking the occasional dog who stood up to them, watching as the smaller dogs got into places the bigger ones could not. At least for Benjy, it was a relief to discover that there was some purpose to his presence in the pack. He and Dougie were adroit finders of things humans had rejected. During their winter in High Park, the two were especially useful. It was rare for the larger dogs to be admitted to a human home, but Dougie and Benjy could sometimes charm their way in and steal useful things: discarded cushions, pieces of foam, old clothes, a moth-eaten blanket left in a yard, anything to make the coppice more hospitable.

After a while, the conspirators, either through laziness or unconcern, allowed the small dogs to go off on their own so that, as might have been expected, the relationship between Benjy and Dougie evolved into a friendship. At first, Benjy could not stand the schnauzer. The thing he felt most like doing, when he and Dougie were together, was to mount him. Not because he wanted to fuck Dougie. No, the desire to dominate when he himself was dominated was strong and instinctive and belonged to the unquellable depths of himself. At the same time, it was obvious that Dougie also wanted to mount him. None of this was personal. He wished Dougie no ill, and Dougie almost certainly wished him none. Each simply wanted to get on top of the other. And yet it was personal, too. At times, they fought bitterly over who had the right to mount whom. Their disagreements did not, however, affect the others. All of the others, including Rosie, mounted Benjy and Dougie as a matter of course. And both of them bore this because they had to.

Though the coppice was as hospitable as the dogs could make it, the winter in High Park was just short of disaster. The trees and bushes were adequate windbreaks, but the cold was so often unbearable the small dogs were forced to consider escape. One January night, Benjy wondered if he were going to die, so violent were his shivers, so loud the clacking of his teeth. The following morning, he and Dougie set out early, on their own. The other dogs were all asleep. Atticus, Max, the brothers and Rosie lay together on blankets in a warm congregation from which both Benjy and Dougie had been unceremoniously excluded.

On the January morning of their escape, the snow was almost impassable. The familiar world of smells and sounds and landmarks was lost beneath the snowfall. It seemed to the two as if some strange being had taken everything they knew, leaving only whiteness and the indistinct profile of a world they had once known. When they were far enough from the den, Dougie said

— I’m cold. I thought I was going to die.

— Me too, Benjy said. The others do not think about us.

— I believe you, said Dougie. I tried to sleep next to them and the leader bit me. It isn’t right for dogs not to care about dogs.

— They don’t want us, now that the ground isn’t what it was. They would let us die.

— I believe you, said Dougie. What can we do?

— I am going to find a human to let me in. Why don’t we see if there are humans who will take us both?

— Should we tell the others we are going?

— No, answered Benjy. I do not know what would happen.

— I believe you, said Dougie. The leader is strange. It is difficult to know when he will bite, and he bites hard. It will be better if we go on our own.

This decision brought them immediate good fortune. Making their way out of the park by Wendigo Pond, Dougie and Benjy trudged through the snow along Ellis Park Road. There, they were seen and hailed by an old woman.

— Here, doggies! Here, doggies!

Both recognized the tone but they were wary. For as many kindnesses as they’d had from perky summoners, there had been bewildering cruelties: stones thrown, beatings with sticks. They were desperate, however. They were cold and hungry. So they made their way toward her. A good choice, as it happened, because the woman had recently lost two of her six cats and her innate sympathy for all animals was heightened. When they entered her kitchen, she set down two bowls of cat food. And though the food smelled like fish and cinders, it was good.

That winter, Dougie and Benjy had shelter. They were well-fed and they were let out into a yard whenever they liked. The woman and her cats, however, were a kind of trial they endured together. To take the cats first: yes, Benjy and Dougie felt an antipathy toward the creatures. As far as Benjy was concerned, no reasonable being could feel otherwise. He was prepared to live in peace, but the cats that slunk about the old woman’s home were more pernicious than the usual felines: hissing constantly, arching their backs as if making themselves bigger could intimidate, jumping up and down with their claws out. They would not live in peace.

In other circumstances, Benjy and Dougie would have ganged up on the pink-tongued hysterics and broken their necks for them. It was clear from the old woman’s behaviour, however, that she actually valued the cats. She cleaned up their feces (which, as it happened, tasted very good), groomed them, purred at them or with them as if she were an oversized moggie herself. It was easy to see that if they hurt any of her furry charges she would throw them out. So, when the cats were most annoying — mincing about like legislators — he and Dougie permitted themselves only the quietest of growls, intimate warnings that the cats resolutely ignored.

The woman herself was a more complicated irritant. She was human. So, she could be manipulated in a number of ways the small dogs had mastered. When they were hungry, they rolled onto their backs for her or stood up on their hind legs, a thing she seemed to particularly enjoy. She was inexplicably delighted by certain things but just as inexplicably horrified by others. She petted them and made high-pitched sounds when they jumped into the bed beside her or licked her face, but she would lower her voice and squirt them with water if she caught them licking their own or each other’s genitals. She would offer them food whenever they turned on the television for her, but she could not stand to see them eat the cats’ droppings.

Her unpredictable likes and dislikes were not the worst of her. The worst of her was her clinginess. The two had encountered this particular fetish before, of course. Both knew what it was like to have a human hold you for too long: the suffocation, the back-cracking struggle to get away. But the woman seemed to have some need to crush them. She held them tight no matter how they squirmed.

One day, Dougie asked

— Do you think she could kill us when she squeezes?

Benjy found it troubling that he could not answer one way or the other. He had no idea if the old lady was a hazard, no way of knowing. And it seemed unwise to depend on the restraint of a being one did not know. On top of that, there was the feeling that accompanied the crush. It was as if the woman were trying to instill something in them or to communicate a thought. Gradually, over the last of winter and the beginning of spring, she became unbearable. By the first warm days, Benjy and Dougie found themselves again dreaming of escape; this, despite the food and shelter the woman provided.

Dougie first spoke of his desire to leave, on an evening when the world smelled again of things expunged by winter: muck, greenery, rotten food and shit. He and Benjy were in the woman’s yard, lying on the warm patio stones. Dougie had had enough of the old woman and of the cats who polluted her den.

— This is not where I want to be, he said.

— Where will you go if you leave? asked Benjy.

— I want to go where we were, he answered. These creatures are making me unhappy and the human will break me, I’m certain of it.

— It would be dangerous to go back, said Benjy.

— The leader is a true dog, said Dougie. He will teach us how to be true dogs again.

— Going back is an idea that is not good, but I do not want to stay here on my own.

— Then come with me. The world is warm. We can live with our pack, as we were meant to.

Dougie had apparently forgotten the abuse and the humiliations they had suffered. He’d forgotten how frightened they’d been, had forgotten how violent and unpredictable the pack could be. Benjy shared his longing for the company of their pack, but he could not see any profit in a return. He saw only danger and, ever practical, he thought first of what was good for him. As clingy as the old woman was, there had to be alternatives to returning to the coppice.

— Why not find another human? he asked.

— No, Dougie answered. Why change one master for another?

— Their homes are different, said Benjy. They smell different. I believe they are different. We may find one who has none of these ugly creatures with them.

— We are from the same pack, said Dougie. I know what you are saying, but my thinking is not like yours. We have a home elsewhere. I want to go back. We can look for another place, if the pack is still strange.

Dougie would not be dissuaded. He no longer wished to live with this human or these cats. His spirit would not allow it. A few days after their talk, he precipitated their ouster from the old woman’s house. His behaviour would have terrible consequences, it’s true, but Benjy would not blame his friend for the events that followed their ouster. He could not. In fact, by the time he told all this to Majnoun, he’d convinced himself that Dougie had been considerate when he’d got them both thrown out of the house. ‘Considerate,’ in that his actions forced Benjy to reconsider where and how he wanted to live, forcing on him the unexpected dignity of a choice.

First, however, the ouster: Benjy had always been an excellent hunter. He could sniff out rats, knew how to kill them and, from time to time, enjoyed eating them. They were not his preferred meal, so he did not kill them unless he was hungry. Dougie, on the other hand, was a masterful hunter and enjoyed killing rats and mice for the sport. It was, simply, Dougie’s way, and Benjy thought nothing of it. That is, he thought nothing of it until Dougie cornered and killed one of the woman’s cats.

It happened in a moment that left Benjy feeling profoundly ambivalent. They had been lying together, he and Dougie, in the kitchen, when one of the cats came in and went for its bowl of water. Without warning, Dougie struck. (How fast he was, and how wonderful!) The cat, its reflexes almost as impressive as Dougie’s, tried to jump out of Dougie’s way, jumping straight up and screeching for its life. To no avail. It was trapped in a narrow vee where the side of a cupboard met a wall. It tried to jump a second time, but it had no chance. Anticipating its desperate movements, avoiding its claws, Dougie darted in, bit the cat’s neck and shook it as if it were a plush toy until it stopped wriggling and hung limply in his mouth.

What pleasure it must have given Dougie to do this, thought Benjy. (He judged Dougie’s pleasure from the pleasure the spectacle had given him.) The sound alone had been arousing: the screeches that were the cat’s last pleas, the struggle of the thing in Dougie’s mouth as he knocked it against the wall and sunk his teeth in deeper, breaking it almost in two, it seemed, as he shook its corpse. Benjy felt a deep satisfaction at the creature’s demise. Dougie had killed one of the haughtiest of the cats, one that hissed and arched its back when either of the dogs was close to its prized possessions: a pink ball of wool, a wicker basket lined with a pink blanket. They had often entertained each other with talk of how they would, someday, bite it to death. That day had come and it was good.

If Benjy had killed the creature, he would have left its body in the kitchen and retired to some other part of the house. He would not have hidden, exactly, but he would not have wanted to be associated with its death. Dougie, however, took the corpse upstairs to the human’s bedroom, the cat’s head knocking against the struts of the bannister. Benjy did not follow him up. He waited in the living room and listened. He did not have to wait for long, nor did he have to listen intently. He heard Dougie’s nails on the hardwood. There was a momentary silence and then the woman began to wail. A further moment passed and, as the woman cried, evidently upset about the cat, Dougie descended the stairs, unhurried, almost thoughtfully.

— What happened? asked Benjy.

— I do not know, answered Dougie. I put the creature down beside her and then she began to make noise.

— Was she displeased?

— No, said Dougie, she seemed frightened.

— Maybe she thought you might do the same thing to her.

— I felt the same, said Dougie. So, I left the creature for her.

— That was wise, said Benjy.

For a long while, the two of them sat in the living room, listening to the sounds of the woman, waiting for her to call them.

(Here, Majnoun interrupted Benjy’s account.

— That was not a good thing for the bearded dog to do, he said. Humans protect the creatures. They call them ‘cats.’

As Majnoun could not precisely pronounce the word, it came out like the ch in the Scottish word loch followed by a t. It was the sound of something caught in the throat.

— It is a good name for them, said Benjy.)

But the woman did not call them. She descended the stairs carrying the dead cat in her arms as if it were her child, holding its body to her chest.

— What have you done? she said to them. What have you done?

Despite himself, Benjy found the sight exciting. It was so oddly incongruous. And for the first time in his life, a feeling within him was so powerful it forced the low sounds of pure joy from him. In other words, he laughed. Dougie laughed as well, the two of them helplessly releasing the emotion within, as if some container inside them had broken and its contents flooded out. Benjy had released tension before but in very different circumstances and in very different ways. He had, for instance, barked happily when, as a pup, he’d rolled in the green and humid grass of his master’s front lawn. This laughter was strange, however. It was not provoked by his senses but by something almost as powerful: his intellect.

If laughter was strange for the dogs, the sight (or rather the sound) of it was clearly disturbing to the woman. She stood still at the entrance to the living room, listening to them, the dead cat in her arms. And seeing her there holding the dead cat as if it were precious, Benjy and Dougie were further amused. They could not stop laughing, their low growls like some strange fit. Clutching the dead cat to her chest, the woman got down on her knees, bowed her head, and put her hands together as if she were begging. She did not speak to them, though she was clearly speaking to someone.

After a long while, during which she fervently said whatever it was she had to say, the woman rose, opened the door to her home and moved out of the way.

If it had been up to Benjy, they would have stayed. He could feel the woman’s terror and he was certain they could exploit it. (It did trouble him that she was speaking to the unseen.) But Dougie, though he was as struck by the woman’s reactions as Benjy, wanted only to get out of the house. He bounded out the door without looking back. So, Benjy followed.

From the moment they left the woman’s house, Benjy had premonitions of disaster. They were not far from the den, and he knew the way as well as Dougie, but he followed some distance behind. Coming up to the coppice, Dougie moved even quicker, happy as he entered what had been their home. There was silence and, moments later, a burst of growls and barking as Dougie ran out again. He was pursued by Atticus and the brothers. The three sounded different — not feral, not domesticated, not like dogs. Benjy was immediately afraid and, bad luck for him, when Dougie ran from the den he ran straight at him, speaking his last words in his first tongue. That is, in his final moments, Dougie unmistakably spoke the universal language of dogs.

— I submit, he yelped. I submit! I submit!

as if he were being done by unknown dogs who, for some reason, could not understand him at all.

Recalling his friend’s death, Benjy stopped speaking. Overwhelmed by emotion, he lay down and dropped his head on a crimson patch of carpet.

He and Majnoun were quiet for a long while. Aware of the silence, Nira entered and asked Majnoun if he or his friend wanted anything to eat or drink. At Nira’s entrance, Benjy jumped up and began to walk in front of her, back and forth, looking up and barking until Majnoun told him to stop.

In answer to Nira’s question, Majnoun shook his head ‘no.’ So, after turning on the light in the room, Nira again left the dogs alone.

— I’m amazed, said Benjy, that this human treats you so well. You do nothing for it. Do you walk on your hind legs now and then? You must do something.

— I do nothing like that, answered Majnoun.

— This does not sound like the usual master, said Benjy. A master who wants nothing is not a master. And if this is not a master, it will bring you pain. You will suffer one day. It is always better to know with whom you are dealing, don’t you agree?

— I understand your thinking, said Majnoun, but this human is not a master. I do not know what Nira is, but I am not afraid.

– ‘Nira’? said Benjy. You can speak its name? That is very strange.

— Tell me what happened after the dog was killed, said Majnoun. Why would they kill him if he submitted?

— I think, said Benjy, that they could not help themselves.

+

Benjy watched as the three dogs bit at Dougie’s legs, belly and neck. Dougie struggled to the end, attempting to get away. He was outnumbered, however, by dogs who were single-minded in their attack. Dougie was as spirited and valiant as a dog could be under the circumstances, getting a few bites in himself, but his valour served no purpose, it seemed to Benjy, other than to prolong his suffering.

While Atticus, Frick and Frack were occupied with killing, Benjy backed away from the scene, his tail tucked between his legs. He would have run, but just as he turned to flee, Rosie was on him, bounding out of the den. Catching him by surprise, she had her teeth firmly in his neck before he knew what to do. He peed in submission and went as limp as a pup, but she held on and growled, forcing him to be present at Dougie’s death.

(Benjy could not express what he’d felt on watching his friend being killed. Every fibre of him had felt hatred for the three who killed Dougie. He hated them still, as he recounted Dougie’s death, but he hid his emotions from Majnoun, thinking them a sign of weakness.)

Once Dougie stopped moving, the three dogs — Atticus and the brothers — stood around his remains, as if waiting for him to get up. Atticus even nudged Dougie’s head, pushing him, as if to make certain he was dead or as if hoping he were still alive. For a moment, the killers seemed puzzled by what they’d done. You’d have said they’d come upon Dougie’s body, not that they had reduced it to what it was: an unmoving clump from which Dougie’s spirit had fled. Their bewilderment — if that is what it was — was brief. Seeing that Dougie’s body no longer moved, Atticus and the brothers turned to Benjy.

As they came at him, Benjy assumed his life was through. He made himself as small and unthreatening as he could. But, for some reason, Atticus and the brothers were no longer interested in violence. Atticus looked at Benjy, growled and returned to the coppice. The others followed, leaving Dougie’s body to rot where humans would find it.

Were it not for Rosie, Benjy would have fled as soon as the three turned away. But Rosie growled to remind him she was there and nudged him forward as if he had been one of her pups. So, against his will, Benjy returned to life with his own kind or, more accurately, with those he assumed were his own kind. As he quickly came to understand, the pack had changed. They were now almost as mysterious to Benjy as humans were. He felt the same instinctive fear for Atticus as other dogs must have felt for the twelve of them when they had first fled from their cages.

One thing for certain: he no longer belonged in the coppice.

Atticus, the brothers and Rosie still refused to use the new words. But neither did they communicate in the old way — or, at least, what Benjy remembered the old way to be. There were still growls, lowered eyes and exposed necks. But along with that there were strange movements of the head, there was a kind of muzzle-pointing that had nothing to do with indicating direction, there was a stuttered bark that sounded to Benjy like human imitations of barking. Their movements and sounds were now unselfconsciously produced but they were even further away from the canine. The pack had grown very peculiar indeed: an imitation of an imitation of dogs. All that had formerly been natural was now strange. All had been turned to ritual.

Take the business of mounting, for instance.

— I could not move, said Benjy, without one of them biting my neck and fucking me.

In times gone by, mounting had always been an instinctive matter, no more worth thinking about than breathing was. Nor had it always been about status. At times one had an erection, because it was such pleasure to meet other dogs. The lines that separated happiness from fucking and fucking from dominance were fairly clear.

By the time Benjy returned to the pack, however, Atticus and the others mounted him, it seemed, in order to prove that there was order and hierarchy. That is, to prove it to themselves. And for the first time in his life, it occurred to Benjy that being mounted was a humiliation. He understood why the others did it and he would certainly have mounted any dog weaker than himself, but this new feeling, this shame, changed him. He began to think about it.

For instance, it occurred to him one day while Frick was atop him that if the point were to demonstrate that one had the power to mount another, the point did not need to be made over and over. The point being made once or twice, it became obvious or redundant, a mere reflex to which smaller dogs like himself were forced to submit. He submitted without resistance, accepting his place in the echelon. After all, he believed with all his soul that the social order was the most important thing. And yet …

There came a moment with Rosie, one in which he began to see himself and the pack differently. He and the German shepherd were apart from the others, alone in the coppice. Though Benjy thought of his second stay in the coppice as a long one, it lasted not much more than two months. During that time, there was little communication with Atticus or the brothers. They would not speak to him. He and Rosie, however, sometimes found themselves alone together. One afternoon, she surprised him by using the old (new) tongue.

— You should not try to run away, she said. They will hurt you if you do.

Once he’d recovered from the surprise of being addressed in their old language — and decided to risk speaking back — Benjy asked why dogs should hurt one who wished to be free.

Rather than answer, Rosie told him what had happened to Max. When Benjy and Dougie had fled, the others — Rosie included — began to mount Max. It was only natural, she said, as all of them were superior to the dog. And this was fine, for a while. But then, the dog got it into his head that he should mount one of them. None let him, and what had been balance turned into an unpleasant battle for leadership. It was a battle that escalated until, one winter afternoon, the brothers had had enough. They attacked Max together, leaving him half-dead by the side of the pond. They left it for the leader to finish the dog off, and the leader, naturally, had no choice. It was he who bit through the dog’s neck and left him to die.

As far as Rosie was concerned, Max had been to blame for the trouble that led to his death. In killing him, the dogs had behaved according to nature. They had been true dogs: blameless and faithful to the canine. It was up to every dog to follow the right road, to know his place. It was up to Benjy to do so now.

— Do you see? she asked.

He had answered that he did see, but, in fact, he saw more than she did. If he had, previously, wondered why he and Dougie had been kept around, he now had a very good idea: the others needed him, weak and lowly though he was, to maintain their echelon. This thought, which he shared with no one, instilled in him a sense of his own power. He, Benjy, was in his way as necessary as the leader, for if there is a top there must necessarily be a bottom. Why, then, should he alone be mounted? Wasn’t it reasonable to think that from time to time the leader should allow himself to be mounted by the lowest — that is, Benjy? The heights depend on the depths. This revolutionary thought, new as it was to him, was disturbing. It was a paradox that Benjy could neither shake nor resolve, and it set him — unconsciously, at first — against his pack mates.

Two months into his time with the others in the coppice, Benjy too began to lose his sense of the canine. He could not piss or sit still without wondering if he were doing it right. The selfconsciousness was disorienting, its effect very like listening to the strange-speaking dog:

How the sky moves above the world!

How the ground’s fur is changed.

All to distract the dog with bones,

buried or dug. He will wander unsatisfied.

So, although Benjy was unsure about many things, he was certain that he wanted no part of Atticus’s pack. He had to get away. The thing was, he knew escape would be difficult. He had become a part of the pack’s rituals, their necessary underdog. As a result, they kept a close watch on him, protecting him from strange dogs, yes, but ready to pounce if he made the slightest misstep. In the end, it was only through good fortune — good fortune for him, good fortune guided by spite — that Benjy managed to escape. That is, he found a garden of death.

Gardens of death are difficult to speak of. For dogs, they exist only on the edge of awareness. They are the places — sometimes literally gardens — where humans leave poison for animals to eat. For obvious reasons, few living dogs know about them. To begin with, those who discover them seldom live to learn from their discovery. And then, they rarely die within the gardens. Poisoned dogs tend to die well away from the places where they’ve been poisoned. So, their dead bodies do not serve as warnings to others.

In his life, Benjy — an extremely cautious dog — had, to his knowledge, known but two gardens of death. The first had been three houses away from his master’s home. It was a vegetable garden from which there inevitably came enticing smells, smells both mineral and fleshy. All one had to do to enter the garden was to use a dugout that went under the yard’s metal fence. Any number of dogs entered and ate. The breath and arses of the ones who did smelled of rust and rubbing alcohol. The smaller ones died soon after their breath took on the smell. The larger ones either died or became very sick. Benjy had free run of the neighbourhood and he had gone into the garden a number of times. There, buried a little way under the ground, you could find cow’s meat, pieces of cooked chicken or even sugary breads. It had been tempting to dig the good things up and eat them, but, as well as being naturally suspicious, Benjy was well-fed. He had dug up a bone or two on which there was still much meat, but he’d resisted eating what smelled like mineral flesh. He had, instead, contented himself with sniffing at the dogs, cats and dying raccoons who had not.

Just as the pattern had imposed itself on his memory, just as he’d linked the garden with suffering and death, the ground had ceased to bring those things. The garden was trampled, meats were no longer buried there, and the animals who entered did not grow sick, did not die.

It had all been so odd, so fascinating, that Benjy never forgot either the place or its association with pain and death. And then, on one of his forays to the houses beside the park, he caught the smell of rust and rubbing alcohol on the breath of an agonizing dog whose body writhed in the tall weeds along Parkside Drive. A few evenings later, along Ellis Park Road, he, with Frick and Frack behind him, had passed a house from which came the same strange tang: alcohol and rust. Benjy barked, calling the brothers away from the house to a provocative scent at the base of a willow tree. (The dogs who used the park seemed all to piss vanilla, honey, alfalfa, clover and something not quite definable but entrancing nevertheless.) He was not certain there was a garden of death behind the house, but if there was, he wanted all of Atticus’s pack — as he now thought of them — to eat there at once.

It was disturbing to imagine the death of his fellows. His pack would die out: a desolating thought, despite his hatred for the others. Then again, he had no idea what effect the garden of death would have. It was possible that Atticus’s pack would merely be incapacitated, allowing him to flee the coppice. In either case, Benjy could see no other route to freedom. All he had to do was lead those who’d killed Dougie to the proper place. The garden itself would do the rest.

The following morning, as they all set out from their den, Benjy drifted toward Ellis Park Road. That is, he made a show of sniffing tree trunks that led in the direction of Ellis Park Road. As if the gods themselves approved of Benjy’s intentions, on this summer morning the trees along the way were redolent of fascinating urine. The pack moved inexorably in the direction of the house that had hinted of death.

Benjy worried, as they approached the house on Ellis Park, that the garden would bring neither death nor incapacity, that it would bring mere discomfort. If so, he might well be punished, if they blamed him for their foray into the garden. The campaign called for subtlety. He had to lead while making it seem as if he were following. So, he did not strike off in the direction of the house. As they approached the place, he sniffed at the air and barked in a way that might have meant any number of things: ‘I am hungry’ or ‘I have seen a small creature’ or ‘I am one of you and happy to be so.’

Atticus growled. But Frack and Frick had by then sniffed something out for themselves. They headed toward the back of the house, and the others followed. There they found what was indeed a garden. The smell of ‘greening’ predominated, but it was undercut by enticing counter-currents: cow’s flesh, yeast, sugar. The garden was not immediately accessible. It was enclosed by green chain-mesh fencing. There was, however, a door with a latch that Frack easily opened. In no time, the pack was among the lush flowers, vegetables and half-buried goods.

The dogs — all except Benjy — were quietly ecstatic. Along the fence, away from the vegetation, there were pieces of meat and bread. In a far corner, there were chicken breasts and, even, rotting fish! The dogs — all except Benjy — ate their fill. Benjy ate air. He bit at furrows in the ground and made a show of eating, his tail raised and wriggling, until the others had finished. Satisfied, the pack left the garden and made their way back to High Park, wandering about until the sunlight faded and they returned to the coppice.

The first night in their den was so uneventful, Benjy might have said the place they’d discovered had not been a garden of death at all. No one died. All slept soundly and, in fact, returned to the garden the following day and the day after that. (There seemed to be an endless setting of meats, fish and bread.) On the third visit, Benjy’s will was tested. Hungry, unconvinced the place was dangerous, he was tempted to eat the meats on the ground. But he ate nothing, choosing instead to bear the pangs a while longer. As they were walking back through the park, scavenging for scavenging’s sake, however, Benjy noticed that Frick and Frack were walking in a strange way: wobbling, as if they were about to lose their balance. More than that: the dogs — all save Benjy — had begun to bleed from their muzzles.

That night in the coppice, Benjy was kept awake — and terrified — by the yelps of pain (which he imitated), by the weak thrashing about of his agonizing pack mates (which he aped), by the humid breathing of Frick, Frack and Rosie. When the sun came up, he allowed himself to sniff at the bodies, to take in the death he had brought them. Though Frick, Frack and Rosie were not quite dead, their bodies lay nearly motionless in the coppice. They could neither rise nor communicate. Wary and cautious, Benjy did not abandon them until the following day, when he was certain they were dead.

Atticus, it seemed, had gone off somewhere. Perhaps he had seen death coming and wished to face it on his own. Whatever the case, Benjy never saw the pack leader again. Judging from the agony of the others, however, he was certain the dog was dead.

Of this massacre, Majnoun heard only the sketchiest details. Benjy told it as if some strange sickness or other — one that had spared Benjy himself — had almost completely undone what had once been a strong pack. Just think, said Benjy solemnly: of the dogs who had been in cages on the night of the change, there now remained only two or, perhaps, three alive. Two or three dogs who knew what he and Majnoun knew. For some time, they were quiet.

— I was sorry to see so much death, Benjy said at last.

— Yes, said Majnoun, so much death would make one unhappy.

— Is there water to drink? asked Benjy.

+

Majnoun was too astute not to notice and mistrust the vagueness in Benjy’s account of their pack’s final days. But his mistrust was part of the mixed emotions he felt for Benjy. Along with a vague antipathy, there was fraternity. Benjy was the last, or nearly so, of his pack. Majnoun felt a sense of responsibility. As the stronger of the two, he perhaps naturally felt this, but part of him would also have preferred Benjy be elsewhere. He felt apprehensive about something or other, but before deciding what to do with Benjy there was the matter of teaching him human language, as he’d promised.

This proved more difficult than Majnoun had imagined. He himself had begun with a vocabulary of some hundred or so human words. He had then patiently acquired more. He had thought of simply teaching Benjy a vocabulary of essential words and phrases (food, water, walk, don’t touch me, …) and then telling him about context and nuance. This was, in fact, how their own original, canine language worked: universally understood woofs whose shades of meaning were conveyed by posture, tone or situation. But how was he to teach Benjy that, for humans, certain sounds both did and did not mean what they were supposed to mean? For instance, Majnoun could not imagine a word more fundamental than food or the words related to it: eat, hungry, starving. He could not easily think of a word about which it was more crucial to be clear. Yet, one evening he and Nira had been in the kitchen together. He had been on the floor, head on his paws, listening as Nira read to him from a newspaper. Miguel came in shirtless from the bedroom and asked

— Are you hungry?

— I could eat, Nira answered.

— What could you eat? asked Miguel.

— What do you have in mind? asked Nira.

— I have sustenance in mind. What did you think I had in mind?

— Well, said Nira, if it’s only sustenance you want … I was thinking I had just the food for you, if you don’t mind going south.

— I see, said Miguel. In that case, we should retire to consider the menu.

And instead of eating, they had gone to the bedroom, closed the door behind them and, as far as Majnoun could tell from the sounds and odours, they had mated. This had puzzled him for some time. Not because Nira and Miguel had mated, but because they seemed to have conflated two very important things: eating and mating. This struck Majnoun as preposterous. Better if Miguel had come in speaking of some trivial thing (like cleaning the floors) and that had meant he wanted to mate. It would have been just as bewildering, but not, somehow, as significant. He began Benjy’s lessons in human language with a warning.

— Listen, small dog, he said. Humans do not always mean what is meant by the sounds they make. You must be careful.

— I am sure it is as you say, said Benjy

though Benjy was not at all concerned about the nuances of human language. He wanted only to learn it, seeing how well Majnoun had done for himself. That is, Majnoun’s situation was enviable, and Benjy assumed this was down to Majnoun’s command of the human tongue.

Benjy was further distracted from the hard truth of Majnoun’s warning by the fact that both he and Majnoun had known strange moments with their own language. Prince’s way of speaking, for instance:

We bound into the prairie

through ages of Winter grass,

taking the path Ina took.

Her name long gone,

though her roads linger.

The ground will not forget.

or

Longing to be sprayed (the green snake

writhing in his master’s hand),

back and forth into that stream –

jump, rinse: coat slick with soap.

In a word, Benjy was confident that Prince’s poetry had prepared him for the complications of human speech.

The months during which Majnoun taught Benjy to speak ‘human’ (that is, English) were a struggle for all involved. Majnoun taught as any reasonable being might. He made what he knew were significant sounds, so that Benjy could recognize and then produce them for himself. This method was tricky because Majnoun would not speak in Nira’s presence. Benjy and Majnoun did their Berlitzing at the far end of the garden, where they could be heard by passersby, though they could not be seen. As sharp as Benjy was — and he was very sharp when driven by self-interest — there were nuances of the language that could not be mastered without interaction with a native speaker. He, like Majnoun himself, tended to mispronounce important words. Food, for instance, came out as

— Ooot

while water was

— Owta.

The sounds might have been recognizable in context, but acquiring ‘context’ was difficult. Majnoun did not want him to speak to Nira. In fact, Majnoun had forbidden him from speaking to her. But Benjy was convinced that Nira — who’d taught Majnoun the language — was the one to teach him. So he went around Majnoun, speaking to Nira when Majnoun was asleep or in another room or out relieving himself.

From the beginning, he could pronounce Nira’s name well enough that there was never a doubt he was speaking to her. To Nira, it was disconcerting and frightening whenever Benjy, anxious that Majnoun should not know what he was up to, ‘whispered’ her name.

— Near-a, he’d say

and then he would try a word out. For instance:

— Owta.

— Water? Nira would ask

and Benjy would repeat the word, imitating her and adding

— Pease

which was as close as he ever got to please. He would then observe her as she filled the bowl or, more often than not, say

— There’s water in the bowl.

At which, Benjy would answer

— Hank ooo

and she would correct him, punctiliousness overcoming the almost unbearable strangeness of being spoken to by a beagle.

Benjy’s approach was mildly successful but only until the afternoon he spoke Nira’s name and then said, quite clearly

— Mow neigh.

He’d meant to speak the word money, a word Majnoun had been unable to explain precisely. The word had something to do with what Majnoun had called ‘this for that,’ a word that was mysterious and yet palpably important, perhaps the most important. It was also mixed up, somehow, with the thin, round, copper-tangy disks that peppered the streets of the city.

— What? Nira asked.

— Monet, pease.

For a strange moment, Nira was certain the beagle was referring to the French impressionist. The possibility that Benjy knew the history of art was frightening because it was so far beyond belief. But his actual demand was just as intimidating.

— You want money? she asked.

Benjy said

— Yes

and nodded.

— No, said Nira. No, no. I don’t have any to give you. Go away.

Not knowing why Nira was upset, Benjy retired from the kitchen, worried that he’d done something wrong. As, indeed, he had. Nira spoke to Majnoun about his ‘friend’ and, once the dogs were alone, Majnoun attacked Benjy, biting him hard, hurting him until the beagle cried out and went limp in surrender. Majnoun showed himself to be weak, however. He released Benjy without making him bleed. More than that: he warned the dog that worse would happen if he ever spoke to Nira again.

Benjy slunk away with his tail between his legs. In deference to the bigger dog, he did not show himself for a while, hiding behind a couch. He was not afraid of Majnoun. The fact that Majnoun had warned him at all was sufficient proof to Benjy that Majnoun was not dangerous. Majnoun even went on teaching him English! More: in cutting him off from Nira, Majnoun unwittingly forced Benjy to take another (perhaps even better) path to English: Miguel. Miguel was bigger and more threatening than Nira, no doubt more powerful. And an expert speaker of the language. Why should he not speak to Miguel?

There were a few things to consider, of course. How would Miguel respond to his approach? Would he be as upset as Nira? Also, should he tell Majnoun what he was up to? The dog might not be dangerous, but he was overly sensitive and it would be difficult to keep his conversations with Miguel secret from Majnoun.

In the end, Benjy decided to go at it directly. He approached Miguel on an evening when Miguel had finished supper and was alone in the bedroom, reading. Majnoun and Nira were in Nira’s room. (Majnoun: eyes closed, legs tucked under him, head resting on the hardwood floor.) Benjy entered the bedroom and sat by the side of the bed until Miguel noticed him. Once he had Miguel’s attention, Benjy began with innocent words.

— Want water, he said.

— What? said Miguel. Did you just ask for water?

— Yes, answered Benjy.

Miguel was genuinely pleased.

— You can speak? he asked.

— Little, answered Benjy.

(‘Ihdle’ is how it came out, but it was easily understood.)

— That’s fantastic, said Miguel. Did Nira teach you that? Say something else.

As he could not quite catch the sense of ‘something else,’ Benjy sat still, looking expectantly up at Miguel. Miguel was disappointed.

— She must have taught you more than that, he said. Can you say your name?

— Name Benjy, said Benjy, speaking his own secret name for the first time in his life.

Despite his hesitation in voicing something so private as his secret name — secret because other dogs could not speak it, though it was an intimate sound — his voice was clear, high-pitched and only slightly tremulous.

— Now that’s what I’m talking about! said Miguel. Did she teach you any other tricks? Roll over, Benjy. Roll over, boy.

It was puzzling to be asked to ‘roll over’ after initiating a conversation about water, but these tricks — ‘roll over,’ ‘stand up,’ ‘play dead,’ ‘beg,’ ‘whisper,’ ‘sing’ — were what he did best. They required nothing of him. He held Miguel’s gaze a moment and then he rolled over.

As Miguel did not believe the dog could actually speak, he found these tricks more pleasing and more impressive than the dog’s request for water. Lifting Benjy into his arms, scratching the fur on the dog’s neck and behind its ears, Miguel carried him to Nira’s room.

— How did you do this? he asked. It must have taken hours.

— How did I do what?

— How’d you teach the dog to say its name?

— What name?

— Stop pretending like you don’t know, said Miguel. Benjy’s great. He’s a real dog, not like Jim, who lies around the place all day. This one can do things. You should be proud.

— You heard him speak? Nira asked. I didn’t teach him. Jim must have.

— Right, said Miguel, because of course Jim can speak.

Miguel was immediately offended by what he took for a coyness on his wife’s part. Why shouldn’t she tell him how she’d gone about getting Benjy to say his name when asked?

— Fine, said Miguel. I’ll teach him something myself.

Which, over the space of a week, he proceeded to do. I’ll teach him something unusual, thought Miguel, something more difficult than his name and a handful of words. He decided to teach the dog the first pages of Vanity Fair, one of Nira’s favourite novels. Thackeray’s was the kind of writing that sent English majors everywhere into paroxysms. Though Thackeray’s sentences were sometimes long and twisty –

While the present century was in its teens, and on one sunshiny morning in June, there drove up to the great iron gate of Miss Pinkerton’s academy for young ladies, on Chiswick Mall, a large family coach, with two fat horses in blazing harness, driven by a fat coachman in a three-cornered hat and wig, at the rate of four miles an hour.

— Miguel found his task remarkably straightforward.

Once Benjy understood that he was meant to repeat (in correct order) the sounds Miguel wished him to repeat, Benjy repeated them. Convinced that the beagle was little more than a good (admittedly unusual) parrot, Miguel was pleased with himself, proud of his heretofore hidden talent as an animal trainer. Every so often, he did find it strange that a beagle should, with increasing finesse, speak of three-cornered hats, fat horses and the iron gates of Miss Pinkerton’s academy. But he got used to the strangeness by imagining the look on Nira’s face the moment his dog (which is what Benjy quickly became) spoke the first page or so of Vanity Fair.

That moment never came, however.

The dynamic in the house had changed. After the ‘money’ incident, it wasn’t so much that Nira disliked Benjy as that she found the dog disingenuous. Whereas she was unintimidated by Majnoun’s silences, she began to find those moments when Benjy sat up and looked at her disconcerting. It got so she could not work when the beagle was in a room with her. So, Benjy was banished (the door closed against him), made to spend most of the day either alone or alone with Majnoun, until Miguel came home.

Miguel, for his part, began to treat Majnoun with an amused but palpable scorn. He let it be known, now and then, that he was sceptical of Nira’s claims for Majnoun’s intelligence. His scepticism was usually followed by his asking Benjy to ‘roll over’ or ‘play dead,’ as if Benjy’s execution of those tricks made his superior intelligence obvious. Of course, Nira would not humiliate Majnoun in that way. She refused to ask Majnoun, for whom she had the greatest respect, to roll around on the carpet in order to prove that he possessed an intelligence she knew very well he did possess.

Majnoun, who tolerated Benjy’s closeness to Miguel, understood the implications of Miguel’s scorn, but he could not understand the scorn itself. For one thing, he would not have guessed that ‘intelligence’ could be a source of status. It seemed to him that what humans called ‘intelligence’ (knowing the accepted names for things, performing feats that required a certain mental dexterity) was in every way inferior to the knowing he remembered from his previous life as a dog, the life before he was sideswiped by ‘thinking.’ When it became clear that Miguel gave Benjy higher status because the beagle ‘rolled over’ and ‘played dead,’ Majnoun was astounded.

No, he was more and other than astounded. Majnoun understood the implications of Miguel’s behaviour better, perhaps, than Miguel did. It was clear that Benjy was angling for status, that he wanted the position Nira had. That thought was intolerable to Majnoun, intolerable on its own but also because it brought back memories of what he’d suffered. And yet, what was he to do? He had warned Benjy. The right thing, now, was to bite the little dog to death. No doubt about it. But could he actually do such a thing? It would mean annihilating a part of himself, taking a final turn away from what had been his life: pack, canidity, coppice.

Benjy, for his part, was pleased at having mastered the skills Miguel admired, and he began to allow Miguel’s scorn for Majnoun to influence his own behaviour. For instance, when Majnoun was teaching him language, Benjy would say the word Majnoun wished him to learn, repeat it and then ask to move on to the next word. He knew, now that he was spending time with Miguel, that Majnoun did not have a proper accent, that words as Majnoun said them were not easily understood by humans. In the case of the word evening, in fact, Benjy allowed himself to correct Majnoun’s pronunciation. He corrected Majnoun respectfully but he corrected him as if he, not Majnoun, were the one who knew human language best. By the time he had memorized — without understanding it — the first page of Vanity Fair, Benjy had tentatively begun to practise the geometry of dominance: putting his head (lightly) on Majnoun’s back as they lay down together, preceding Majnoun to the food dishes and sniffing at the contents in Majnoun’s bowl before eating what was in his own, walking before Majnoun whenever he could. Benjy did not realize he was doing this. He was not conscious of it, but Majnoun was.

One afternoon, when Nira had opened the back door for them so they could get a bit of air, Majnoun attacked the smaller dog as ruthlessly as he could. They were in the middle of the yard when Majnoun bit down on the back of Benjy’s neck. He’d meant to catch the beagle’s throat in his jaws, but at the last moment Benjy had moved his head. Benjy cried out and he knew at once that he had made a mistake: Majnoun was not the dog he’d assumed he was.

There was snow on the ground. It was wet and slippery. The snow saved Benjy’s life. Majnoun slipped as he tried to pick the smaller dog up in his jaws — in order to dash the beagle against a cement step. As Majnoun slipped, Benjy wriggled free and cried out

— Nira!

but Majnoun was on him immediately.

There was a gap in the backyard fence, a gap that would (perhaps!) accommodate his body. Benjy ran for it and threw himself in. There was not quite enough space. Much of him went through, but it slowed him down enough that Majnoun managed to bite him again, drawing more blood. Majnoun could not get a proper grip, however. With every muscle in him, Benjy pulled himself through the gap and ran for his life. He did not look back. There was no need. It was clear to both of them that Majnoun wanted only to kill him.

Reason, in so far as it had any place at all, was superfluous.

Some ten minutes after she had opened the door for them, Nira returned to see if the dogs wanted back in. The snow in the yard was, in places, as if frothed up. There were patches of greenish dark earth where the dogs had struggled or stumbled. Not far from where Majnoun stood looking at her, there were also specks of blood on the snow.

— Where’s Benjy? Nira asked.

Majnoun shook his head.

— He ran away? she asked.

Majnoun nodded.

— Do you want to come in?

Without answering, Majnoun went in the back door, his wet fur brushing against Nira’s pants as he did. She would very much have liked to know that Benjy was all right, but it felt wrong to question Majnoun at that moment. That night, she told Miguel the little she knew of Benjy’s disappearance. Over the following weeks it never did feel right to ask Majnoun what had happened. And, in the end, they never spoke of the dog again.