Fifteen Dogs

5. TWO GIFTS

Had there been a hint in Prince’s poetry, a clear hint, that his was a soul on which a god might safely wager? No, not really. There was no clearly compelling reason to be optimistic about a dog that spent its time composing (and remembering) poems in a language unknown to all but a diminishing handful of dogs. In fact, by the time Prince composed his final poems, he was the only being on earth who could have understood them, the language of his pack having vanished almost as suddenly as it had come into being.

Running through the grey-eyed dawn

with last night’s trash in mind,

the brown dog scuttles

through fluted gates

while birds sing on above the world

about a bit of fallen cheese,

the shish kebob he ate

and all the vagaries of plates

that wait for him at home.

And yet, there was something. Prince’s wit, his playfulness, was a curious element within him, a glittering depth. It was this, in the end, that the god of thieves had chosen to protect. Prince’s spirit was a kind of quicksilver. The dog was as liable to die happy as it was to die miserable.

+

Prince was whelped in Ralston, Alberta, a mutt born to mutts born to mutts. It was impossible to say what breeds he had within him. He was medium-haired, russet-coloured with a white patch that covered his chest. There was almost certainly some golden retriever in him, and perhaps a touch of border collie. Not that his breeding mattered to the family that took him in. It certainly didn’t matter to Kim, the youth who fed him, walked him, chased him across the prairie and hunted gophers with him.

Prince’s character was partly innate, but it was also tempered by Kim, who encouraged his playfulness and his intelligence, and by Alberta itself, which, in its way, created him in its image. That is, the land allowed Prince to be a dog in a way that Albertan dogs are. For two years, Ralston was his home and his entire domain. He loved everything about it and about his life: from the way the prairie smelled in summer to the taste of his canned dog food, from the startling crack of a.22 rifle to the prospect of chasing down a wounded rodent, from the smell of Kim’s bedroom to the affection he received from the entire family. In every way, the first two years of Prince’s life were idyllic.

Then came exile. Kim moved from Ralston and took Prince with him. The journey itself was progressively distressing. They left on a cold morning in spring. It was early, but Prince imagined they were going to hunt rabbits and he was thrilled. The atmosphere was strange, though. It was unusually tense, and Prince could feel that Kim’s mother was upset. Still, Kim’s mother was often upset for no reason Prince could see, so he jumped into the car, excitedly sniffing at the air to get a whiff of rodent, ignoring the sound of her weeping and the peculiar stiffness of the family’s demeanour.

Kim, in a shirt that smelled of soap and motor oil, left the window cracked open, so Prince, sneaking the tip of his nose out, could smell the dew-wet ground as the sun burned away the morning. How exhilarating it was! But then, familiar smells gave way to unrecognizable monotony: tar, dust, rock. The world began to look different. The beautiful distances of home become an increasingly oppressive closeness. And it began to seem as if they would never stop to hunt. Kim allowed him out of the car — on a leash — so he could pee in a small patch of lawn somewhere in the middle of a world that smelled of gasoline. They ate, eventually, and slept in the car before setting out again.

From there, the world grew more and more unknown: its sounds, its odours, the look of it as it flew by. All that Prince loved seemed to have vanished, leaving tall buildings, passing cars, an emptiness disguised as plenitude. They had reached the city.

Then, the city — which, in Prince’s first days, was constantly bewildering — took Kim away from him as well. Perhaps, if Prince had had time to learn how to navigate the seemingly endless, linked mazes that made up the new world, he might have found Kim again. But he had not had time and, what’s more, he could not understand how Kim could disappear. They had been wandering in a ravine through which a small river ran. There were trees and birds and, fatefully, squirrels. One moment, he and Kim were walking together, the next Prince was chasing a squirrel that ran up a side of the ravine.

The last he heard of Kim was

— Prince! Stay! Stay!

Kim was using his serious voice. In most circumstances, Prince would have returned to him at once. But the squirrel in question was insolent. It positively wanted biting. And then the trees and water, the smell of a world he thought he recognized: these things filled him with pleasure. Just running as he did, as fast as he could, was an exhilaration he was not certain he would ever feel again. It was all a wonderful game! So he’d run up the side of the ravine, where Kim couldn’t easily follow, and then explored strange streets, going among houses that smelled of onions, paint and cooked flesh.

After a time, he stopped exploring. The game had finished. He began looking for Kim, but a door to one of the houses had opened and a woman had called him in and given him water and biscuits. How long he stayed at this house, he could not have said. He had barked to get out, but she had put him on a leash, taken him out for a walk, and kept him. Days or, perhaps, weeks later, he managed to get away. Naturally, he searched for Kim, but all trace of Kim was gone. Prince had wandered far from the ravine and he was lost in a bewildering maze of streets, bedevilled by sensations that were new and distracting.

The days that followed were grim. Even in Ralston — of which he’d known almost every inch by feel or smell — Prince could not be certain of human kindness. There’d been people around who’d chase him or throw stones. He’d gotten to know the worst of those and avoided them. But here, in this city, he did not know whom to avoid. So, he avoided all of them until hunger or thirst forced him to approach and beg.

Were it not that Prince had lost everything, you might say that he was, from here on, fortunate. After a week scrounging in the streets, overturning garbage cans, eating whatever he happened to find on the ground, he was taken in by a couple who treated him well. They fed him, gave him water, allowed him to stay in their home. He was disinclined to stay with them, whenever he remembered Kim, but at least they did not try to hurt him. They allowed him in or out of their house. So he returned to them.

They weren’t entirely trustworthy, though. It was they who left him overnight in the clinic at King and Shaw.

+

The change affected Prince differently than it did any of the other dogs. Or it affected him more, in a rather specific way. Prince began to think about language, almost from the moment the change occurred. Names and naming seemed extraordinary to him and extraordinarily useful. It was an abstract idea, assigning a sound or a cluster of sounds to a thing. The concept wasn’t foreign, of course. He associated the word treat with biscuits. In fact, this very association may have been at the root of his joy in language.

Whatever influenced his thinking about names and naming, however, he was not one to take anything too seriously. It was not his nature. He was the first creator of puns in the new language, as we’ve seen. But he was also the creator of one-liners and riddles. For instance

— How is a squirrel like a plastic duck?

— They both squeak when you bite them.

or, more metaphysically,

— Why do cats always smell like cats?

— Oh look! A squirrel!

To the casual listener, some aspects of Prince’s jokes will, no doubt, be difficult to appreciate. To begin with, the first of anything is likely to be overwhelming, and these jokes, being the first in the pack’s language, were not so much enjoyed as contemplated and admired. (By all the dogs.) The first one about the squirrel, for instance, seemed to be both true and fanciful, a correlation of things not usually correlated. Then there was the joke’s linguistic mark: the word for ‘squirrel’ was extremely pleasurable to say. (All agreed about this as well.) Finally, there was Prince’s performance. He needed to be heard in order to share the joy he took in language, but none of the other dogs were used to listening to the kinds of things Prince had to say. To hold their attention, Prince’s demeanour, his diction and his delivery all had to be compelling. Although he’d had no previous experience as a raconteur, Prince invented a new manner of storytelling. It was for this that he was loved by those who loved him.

It was also for this new manner that he was hated. Not only did dogs like Atticus dislike Prince’s perversions of their tongue, but neither could they deal with the implications of Prince. Here was a form of status — given through admiration for Prince’s ability to speak and perform — that was so new it was difficult to think how one might combat it. What status was one to give to a dog whom one admired, but whose talents were so different than the traditional canine ones? What influence on the pack should the strange-speaking dog have? Was he dangerous? None of these questions was easily answered and so, in the end, it was fear that turned the conspirators against Prince.

His second exile — so strange and bewildering, coming as it did in the midst of a dream — was almost as devastating as the first. Prince could be forgiven for thinking that no world wanted him and, for some time, he suffered from what might be called depression. He wandered about the city finding ways to keep himself and his language — the language whose unofficial guardian he now was — alive. Yet, once again, despite his exile and bereavement, one could legitimately call Prince ‘fortunate.’ In the absence of home, of Kim and of his pack, there was at least one thing he loved, one thing that would be with him always: his pack’s language.

+

As it happened, Prince’s relationship to the language of his pack so influenced his outlook and personality that, as his time on earth drew to a close, Apollo grew increasingly uncertain about how the dog’s life would end. This uncertainty affected him — god of plague and poetry — more than it did Hermes. Apollo was annoyed that a poet, of all things, might cost him his wager, but he also found it inconvenient not to know if he would win his younger brother’s servitude. If there was one thing he disliked, it was losing to Hermes.

— Listen, he said to his brother, this creature has lived most of its life in exile. It’s been unhappy for years. It can’t have anything but an unhappy death. Why don’t we settle our bet right now. If you like, I’ll forget you doubled the penalty. Let’s say you only owe me a year.

— No, said Hermes.

— You’re sure? I mean, if I were you, I’d jump at the chance.

— If you’re so sure, why don’t we triple the bet? asked Hermes. Let’s make it three years.

— You’re not being serious, answered Apollo. You haven’t been serious from the start. The premise was wrong on the face of it …

— Are you trying to reason with me? asked Hermes.

— There’s no need to be insulting, said Apollo. I’m simply pointing out that you weren’t being serious when you made this about the moment of death. If you asked a human to choose between a wonderful life with a terrible death or a miserable life with a wonderful death, which do you think it would choose? The moment of death is not important.

Hermes smirked.

— You are trying to reason with me, he said. In answer to your question: the young would choose an exciting life; the old a happy death. But none of that matters, since you agreed to the terms.

— You’re right that it doesn’t matter, said Apollo. This dog will die as miserably as the others, and I’ll use you like a goat for a few years.

Apollo was upset, however. And as happens when the gods are angry, he took it out on a mortal. In this case, Prince. Though the dog was in the last months of its life, though Zeus had forbidden his sons from further interfering in the lives of the dogs, Apollo surreptitiously intervened in Prince’s life. Making use of a handful of sand, he sent down afflictions to make the dog — now in its fifteenth year — suffer.

+

Over the years, Prince had explored much of the city, but he knew its middle and south best, preferring, in the end, the stretch of Toronto bounded by Woodbine, Kingston Road, Victoria Park and Lake Ontario. Dividing his time amongst a number of houses and masters, he had come to think of the Beach as home. He knew it intimately and loved some of its pleasures; for instance, going down from Kingston Road into the vegetal secret that was Glen Stewart Park. Then again there was the feel of the lakeshore in winter (the sand stiff) or the smell of it in summer: metal, fish, the oils that humans slathered on themselves.

Prince knew any number of safe paths through his territory: escape routes, shortcuts, diversions. He could — if he had to — sniff his way from Kingston near Main all the way to the bottom of Neville Park, from Kew Beach east and north to where Willow and Balsam meet. Certain streets he knew better than others, of course. Kingston Road, for instance. What a crooked loveliness! The way it meanders among the senses: strange spices, the humid entrances to Glen Stewart Park, fresh bread, unpredictable exhalations from houses, the staid and chemical smell of concrete buildings, the shimmer of streetlights and stoplights and all the illuminations of evening, the humans with their

— Tsk, tsk, tsk … here, boy!

a hand as it travels in the fur of your back as if searching for something, the sweetness of an unlikely perfume. Kingston Road was always familiar yet somehow always strange. Then again, what about Beech or Willow? They were among the avenues he did not know well. He recognized them by their smells and the way their names looked on street signs, but they were little more than ways to the lake, ways that shimmered in his memory: stretches of green and grey, lawns and sidewalk — dubious, hard to recall. But knowing a territory is knowing what is left to know. Beech and Willow were part of what Prince had left to explore, part of the Beach’s great wealth.

Just as importantly, the Beach was where dogs were usually kept on leashes. This was a relief, because although, like Majnoun, Prince had learned to defend himself, he disliked having to subdue other dogs. For one thing, every dog dominated was one fewer to whom he could speak or teach his language. On occasion, he allowed himself to be bitten, but this was no better. Dogs who assumed they could dominate you made the poorest listeners. Then again, as he got older, it was more difficult to deal with those who were aggressive. So, odd though the thought was to him, Prince was grateful for leashes.

Then, too, the Beach was where humans, for the most part, left him alone. They had better things to do, it seemed, like keeping large balls in the air or gliding on shoes with small wheels or plunging themselves into the lake — whose waters reeked (marvellously) of urine, fish and a thousand dirty socks. The most serious problems Prince had with humans came when he was forced to defend himself against a dog that belonged to one of them. Humans could be brutal in defending their dogs and, what’s more, Prince knew there would be difficulties if he bit one of them. So, on the rare occasions when humans attacked him, Prince ran for it, bolting over territory he knew as well as he had ever known territory.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Prince’s most moving poems were about the Beach. ‘The Lake Comes to the Fringe,’ for instance, was composed in 2011, during the summer before his death.

The lake comes to the fringe

while lights go up around the bay.

Somewhere near, cow flesh is singed.

Smoke floats above the walkway.

I’ve eaten green that comes up black,

risen cold from torrid mud.

I’ve licked my paws and tasted blood.

What is this world of busy lies?

Some urban genie feeding food to flies!

With the Beach, in his final years, Prince had found a home again, at last. Cruel and unbiddable, Apollo took it from him.

To begin with, Prince lost his sight. Blindness descended on him over the space of two days, after a gust of wind sent sun-poisoned sand into his eyes and ears. At first, it was as if a grey mist hung over the world. The mist was thin but persistent: a softness, halos around sources of light, things in the distance vanishing as if behind an approaching white curtain. Then, the mist grew thick and close, as if it had turned to fog. Finally, all was grey and Prince could see nothing: no lights, no halos, no cars, no people, no buildings. Only a grey that was grey like grey blinkers over his eyes.

Though his blindness took time to efface the world, it was as traumatic as if it had come between one moment and the next. Prince was under the wooden staircase near the top of Glen Stewart Park when he realized that he could no longer see a thing. That is, he was well away from any of the homes that were ‘his.’ So, now blind, he had to make his way through the Beach to … where, exactly?

Being an old but obviously bright dog, Prince was welcome in a handful of homes where he would be fed, petted and sheltered. The humans in these homes were all kind — none was as overbearing as Randy had been — but Prince had not wanted to be stuck in any particular house, choosing instead an independence that allowed him to explore his territory, to compose his poems in solitude, to encounter the world on his own terms. Also: after a few days, he inevitably grew tired of the behaviour his presence elicited in humans: cooing, fur rubbing, rolling about on the ground with him, smugness, condescension, chirpily rendered orders

— Here, boy! Here, boy!

— Roll over! Roll over!

and fluttering-voiced addresses

— Who’s a good boy, eh? Who’s a good dog?

No matter how much he tried to accept that their behaviour was dictated by their nature, Prince sometimes found human attention so distracting that he couldn’t think straight. For this reason, in summer, he often stayed out, sleeping in whatever makeshift den he could find — bushes, benches, boxes, etc. In winter, it’s true, he was forced to seek shelter, staying here or there for weeks at a time. But even in winter Prince tried to keep a certain distance from humans. Now that he was blind, with whom would he stay? Whose company would he choose, knowing that he might be with them for good?

There were only two homes he seriously considered. One belonged to a woman in a small house, far away from Glen Stewart and so far from the beach that he might not experience his beloved lake often enough. She was kind. She allowed him more freedom than any other human had, content to feed him and let him alone, patting him when she imagined he needed it. The woman smoked, however, the smell of cigarettes almost obliterating all others. And the ‘feel’ of her was sometimes frightening. From time to time, it was as if she longed to kill something. So the woman’s place would not do as a permanent den. That left the house on Neville Park. It was on the edge of his territory, not far from the lake. The humans in it — a woman and three men — were all kindly disposed toward him. Even better: none clung to him or condescended. They put food down when he was there, let him out in the morning, let him back in the evening. The female paid the most attention to him, but he could bear her affection because she was not often demonstrative.

In general, humans were — as far as Prince was concerned — overly emotional and emotionally obvious. You could tell a human was angry from three blocks away, and that’s without the creature growling, lunging or baring its teeth! They were beacons of emotion and it was often disruptive being near them. There were, of course, exceptions. Certain humans were unreadable or unstable. They could change mood in an instant, going from kindness to murderous intent without warning. He was very nearly kicked to death by one such, a man talking to himself on a park bench who called him over in a singsong voice and then kicked him hard in the ribs when he was in range. It was lucky for Prince that people had been around to protect him, but the incident confirmed his belief that humans were all — save Kim — potentially lethal. Naturally, this belief was at the back of his mind when he chose the house on Neville Park. The woman and three men had never been cruel to him, though there was always the chance they could turn.

Grey though the world was, it was still alive with scents: new scents, old scents, scents that were landmarks and others that, in their vividness, threatened to lead him astray. The trees and the beams of the wooden steps and bridges gave off a familiar and comforting smell — principally, dog’s urine. As well, there were plant smells that he knew and could situate: this garden (at the edge of the park) with its flowers and weeds, that one with its vegetables. There was the smell of creek water, mud, dust, small animals, perfume, human sweat and bodies. He could, he felt, make his way to Queen Street, because his sense of smell was almost as acute now as it had been when he was younger. The real difficulty, he thought, would come not with the terrain itself but with the usual hazards: the humans in his way, dogs sniffing at him, and so on. But he fell down the first flight of steps he came to, smacking his head on the landing, his bearings momentarily lost.

How frightening it was to fall directionless into that grey nothing! Prince yelped instinctively. Once he’d recovered from the shock, however, he found that the pain was bearable — he’d known worse — and the fall taught him to be more cautious. Glen Stewart Park, familiar though it was, was hazardous. So he moved more deliberately, sniffing out every smell, listening for any danger, putting one paw cautiously in front of the next, trying to anticipate the flights of steps and the changes of direction the walkway took.

But he fell down the next flight of steps he came to as well. This time the pain was severe. It felt as if he had broken something inside. He yelped, then struggled to stand up. And when he was up on his legs, he was unsure of which direction he was facing, there being no up no down no to nor fro. The only good thing — if you could call it a good thing — was that he’d fallen off the wooden walkway and into the grass beside the spring that ran through the park. He would not have to worry about stairs, so long as he stayed beside the water. If he went in the right direction, he would find one of the roads out of Glen Stewart.

Despite his tendency to introspection, Prince was something of an optimist in hard times. Having a task to perform liberated him from himself. So it was that, now, having to make his way out of the park, he ignored his blindness — or, rather, accepted it — and went on his way as deliberately as he could, unsteady on his feet, his journey distracting him from worry. He made his way to Glen Manor Drive without too much trouble. He knew this stretch of ground (its smell and feel) so well that he scarcely had to think, his body doing the thinking (or remembering) for him. He found the path that rose up from the park to the road and then he followed the road down toward Queen, walking unsteadily on the sidewalk, looking like a drunken creature, until he came to the first corner.

Crossing a street was distressing in the best of circumstances. Glen Manor Drive was not busy — it was seldom busy — but cars always came at you so quickly. He had seen what they did to dogs who did not get out of the way. Their bodies were crushed into the road and left to rot until not even the hungriest things — blackbirds or maggots — would eat them. He preferred to cross at stoplights with humans around to shield him. Here, now, there were no lights and he was on his own and he could not help going slowly. He stood at the edge of the sidewalk for a long time, listening intently, and then, because he had to cross and knew it, he stepped onto the road, sniffing and listening, backing up suddenly on hearing a noise that might have been a car, almost losing his direction, before somehow making it to the distant point across the street, relieved to feel the step up to relative safety. And how wonderful to smell the great red house, its grounds, where he was sometimes fed and petted. He knew exactly where he was! He briefly considered begging at the house but he didn’t want to risk being delayed there. So he went on.

The second corner was more difficult. He had to cross the street, then continue on around a curve where there was no sidewalk. He could see it in his mind. He knew where he was. He could smell Ivan Forrest Gardens before him to one side and the lake in the distance. He sat at the corner to collect himself, to ready himself for the crossing. It was then that he became conscious of humans approaching. No, what he heard was a group of humans bearing down on him: a crowd, it sounded like, coming fast, their soft-soled shoes slapping on the pavement, their breath escaping in collective gusts, and then the smell — sweat, rubber, genitals and dust. The wind brought it all to him like a foretaste of trouble.

What was going on? Was he in their way?

He made himself as unobtrusive as he could, curling his tail beneath him, crouching down. And then they were on him.

— Watch out for the dog!

Someone hit him.

— Christ on a cross! Get out of the way, doggy!

Someone hit him again, perhaps the same someone, stepping on his tail, pushing him aside. Prince yelped, made himself as compact as he could, then listened to the sound of them as they passed: feet slapping the road, dirt grinding on pavement, the soles of their shoes squeaking. Prince had always found these stampedes bewildering. But not knowing where the runners were coming from or how many there were made this instance alarming. At some point, one of the humans reached down to pat him on the head, and that contact, coming out of nowhere as it did, was the most frightening thing of all.

As suddenly as it was upon him, the stampede was gone, the sound of it receding. His heart beat violently and his body shook and it took him a long while — sitting at the intersection of Pine Crescent and Glen Manor — before he could go on without shaking. It occurred to him that it might be better to travel at night, to wait until all one could hear were crickets and the occasional, threatening shush of a passing car. But he pressed on, courageously stepping onto the street and making his way to the other side of Pine Crescent, then down into Ivan Forrest Gardens, where there were trails but no streets and no cars.

For a moment, as he made his way through Ivan Forrest, Prince almost forgot that he could not see. This was the part of his territory he knew best. He could navigate the terrain by the smell of his own urine alone. More: he could almost see the trees and posts where he had left his markings. He still went slowly, of course, the aches and pains of his body slowing him. He listened for humans, sniffed about for a piece of something to eat, stopped to accommodate such dogs as wanted to sniff his anus or genitals. Any fears he’d had that, vulnerable as he was, he might be attacked, were allayed. His fellow dogs could tell at once that he was in distress. They all expressed their sympathy, treating him with a kind of deference after licking his face and smelling his breath.

Prince spent what was left of the day in the gardens, recovering from a journey that would have taken him no time at all had he been younger or, even, sighted. That night, he slept close to a willow. He imagined himself hidden, but he was very nearly in the open, easily seen by all the creatures that walked, flew or crept past him on their way through the gardens.

In the early morning, he shivered himself awake and was almost surprised to discover that he was still blind. His blindness was so new it did not yet seem real. He was fifteen. His old bones — and his recent injuries from falling — made it painful for him to rise from the ground. His teeth chattered. The world was its morning self: quiet, the occasional, distant sound of a vehicle, the rattle and clang of the streetcar when it passed, the raw smell of a new day coming through the dew, mist and cold. He was disoriented and, now, more frightened than he’d been the previous day. He could smell the lake and he made his way toward it, leaving the park behind.

Prince had only one thing in mind: the house with the woman and three men. As it happened, circumstances favoured this part of his journey. There were few people about. Few people and few cars. He crossed Queen Street cautiously, stumbling like he was rabid, listening for cars or streetcars with every step. There were more streets to cross, more cars to listen for, but as he went south, the lake grew ever more present, leading him on to the end of the street where, all at once, the road was gone and he stumbled onto the boardwalk.

Even on his worst days, the lake buoyed his spirits. It was a measure of Prince’s distress, on this morning, that he stopped only to take in the smell of it — licking his nose and moving it back and forth in the direction of the water — before carefully following the boardwalk, all the way to the bottom of Neville Park and up to what would be his last home.

Prince’s first weeks in Neville Park were not unhappy, despite his blindness. He had survived a frightening journey, and the inspiration that came of survival — the exhilaration of having made it — carried him through the days, as he learned to negotiate the house without hurting himself.

He’d chosen his hosts well. The family took him in and they kept him even after discovering that he could no longer see. The woman in particular was kind. She put down food when it was time and took him for the short walks that were all he could manage, the aches and pains of his injuries in Glen Stewart almost crippling him, his deterioration quickening, it seemed, with his decision to settle in one place.

He missed his territory and his independence. In these first weeks, Prince would sometimes forget that he could not go out on his own until, forcing himself up to go to the door, he would bump into a chair or an appliance or a human. But there was compensation. As he accepted the idea that he would never see again, he began to rely on his memory and, in doing so, his memory became sharper (or, at least, more vivid), until he held a picture of the Beach in his imagination that he came to treasure almost as much as he had treasured the real thing.

Nor was death, whose approach he could feel, a source of worry. He thought about it, of course. He wondered when it would come and he mourned his ever-diminishing capacities, missing the things he had once taken for granted: sniffing out the breath of a dog he did not know, for instance, or running because the sheer pleasure of some great thing could not be expressed otherwise, or digging out bits of food half-buried in sand, or biting down on a newfound stick. The death that approached was a source of curiosity more than anything else. His final poems, which are among his most poignant, reflect Prince’s mood.

‘What is the name of he who comes’ is the last poem he composed and it is characteristic of the work done while he was blind.

What is the name of he who comes

with eyes closed and fingers black,

the one who draws the curtains back

when dawn has come?

‘Agha Thanatos’ or just plain ‘Death’?

When will I know which is right?

Prince’s poetry was, indirectly, the cause of his only true regret in the months before his death. As his strength faded, it became unavoidably clear that his work and his language would, with his death, disappear from the face of the earth. In the same way that the world had left him when he’d grown blind, so would his language leave the world. It would be effaced, all of the dogs who spoke it having died out.

To think that so necessary a thing could pass from the world so completely!

Was there nothing he could do to save it? Was there no way to pass it on? As he considered what might be done, Prince began to regret his attitude toward human language. He had avoided foreign languages, so that they would not influence his own. But had he learned another language, he might now have passed on his own. He had been selfish in trying to keep his language pure; better it had been influenced by another tongue than that it disappear altogether.

Though these thoughts brought him a real regret, Prince did not despair. He thought of what he had endured to reach the home he now had and he drew inspiration from what had been, in effect, a victory over blindness. It seemed to him that, frail though he was, it might not be too late, that he was perhaps fated to pass his work on to these people. That is why, in an heroic effort to preserve his language, Prince began to speak his poems to the woman. Whenever he could feel her presence or hear her voice, he would begin reciting.

— Grrr-ee arrr err oh uh ai

Gr-ee yurr ih aw yen grih yoo ayairrr …

No surprise: the woman took the sounds Prince made for the grumblings of an old and frail dog. She would pet him or hug him or scratch him behind the ears whenever he spoke. Prince found this distracting, but he persisted, reciting the same poem over and over, waiting for her to recite it back to him.

The more Prince did this, the more the woman tried to comfort him, because it did sound as if he were complaining about something. For one thing, like most poets, Prince’s way of reciting his work was eccentric. He would sit up, trying to face the woman. Then, staying as still as he could, he would recite the first line, pause, then recite the second line, and so on. This in itself was strange for the woman. It would have been strange for any human who was not a poet.

— Are you okay, Elvis?

she’d ask, but as Prince had no idea what she was saying, he would simply carry on. He carried on until, eventually, it occurred to the woman that he was neither grumbling nor choking, but that he was doing something. In fact, after a week, she thought she recognized a pattern to his growls.

— Elvis isn’t growling, she said to one of her sons. He’s singing or something.

Her son, however, would have none of it.

— Mom, he’s old and his mind’s going, that’s all.

— I suppose you’re right, she said.

But she was not convinced and, one day, as a kind of lark, she repeated Prince’s grumblings back at him. Prince immediately stopped and barked happily. He repeated the passage she had repeated to him. And again, the woman spoke (poorly and with a strange accent, but still …) a few lines of his verse.

— Grrr-ee arrr err oh uh ai

Gr-ee yurr ih aw yen grih yoo ayairrr …

Here was a real breakthrough. Prince was profoundly grateful. It seemed to him that a great boundary had been crossed. But Apollo, ever implacable, was not finished with him. The woman’s version of his verse was the last thing Prince heard on earth. He then became stone deaf. He could not even hear himself, feeling only the vibrations his body produced when he tried to make a sound. This was a devastation. The world and all his versions of the world were taken away from him at once.

Prince was not one to lose hope, but now hope abandoned him. He was alone in endless grey silence, his sense of smell and balance the only acute senses left to him. Now and then, he would be picked up by one of the men and put somewhere. This was the most disconcerting thing of all. Without warning, he would be at someone’s mercy, in someone’s arms. It helped that he could recognize the men by their smell, but it did not help much. Tired, old, deaf and blind, Prince knew his time had come and he tried to meet his fate with as much dignity as he could muster.

He stopped eating and drank little. He retreated into the depths of himself and waited for a death that did not take long. One morning, he was picked up by the woman. He could feel her emotion. They were going somewhere, but Prince was too weak to mind. Outside, he felt the air on his muzzle. The lake came to him, its presence like a long-forgotten dream. It was a consolation. Then they were travelling in a car, a sensation that reminded him of Kim, and that too was consoling. And Prince allowed himself to be consoled, his mood little influenced by the smells of the veterinary clinic, though he knew this — the smell of soap, chemicals, other animals — was almost certainly the end.

One would have said, just before Prince died, that Apollo had won his bet, that none of the dogs had died happy, that they had died as miserably or more so than humans did. Lying quietly on a metal table, too tired to object, Prince was despondent about the loss of his language. But then, as those around him went about the business of killing, one of his last poems returned to him. He heard it in his mind as if someone were reciting it, almost as if it were not his at all. At that exact moment it struck him again how beautiful his language was. Certainly, if he was the last of his pack, it was sad that no creature alive knew it. But how wonderful that he — unexceptional though he had been — had been allowed to know it as deeply as he had. He had not explored all of its depths, but he had seen them. And so it occurred to Prince that he had been given a great gift. More: it was a gift that could not be destroyed. Somewhere, within some other being, his beautiful language existed as a possibility, perhaps as a seed. It would flower again. He was certain of it and the certainty was wonderful.

And so, against all expectations, Prince’s spirits soared.

In a word, he was happy as death came for him at last.

As Prince lay dying, Apollo and Hermes were once again at the Wheat Sheaf Tavern.

Speaking of the dog, Apollo said

— All right. I concede. The creature dies happy. It’s all been very instructive.

— No, no, said Hermes. Two years of servitude, that will be instructive.

— You do remember that you owed me ten, don’t you? This just brings it down a little.

— My luck’s changed, said Hermes. I can feel it.

— You’re right about it being luck, said Apollo.

And he protested, theatrically, that the wager had been unfair. His protests were not serious, however. Yes, it annoyed him that he had been cruel to one of his own, that a poet should be the reason for this loss to his brother, but, really, it was a matter of pure chance who died happy and who did not. Which is why, of course, he and Hermes had bet on the outcome in the first place.

The bartender, a devout young woman, approached, her head bowed, unable to look at the gods directly.

— Is there anything I can get for you? she asked. Anything at all? I would be honoured.

— I like this Labatt’s, said Apollo. Give me another.

— You like it? said Hermes. It’s a waste of perfectly good water.

— Philistine! said Apollo.

The brothers laughed. The bartender went off to get a Blue.

— It would have been different if we’d given cats this so-called intelligence, said Apollo.

— It would have been exactly the same, said Hermes. What we should have done was give a human the intelligence and capacities of a dog.

— I’m tired of this business, answered Apollo. Let’s talk about something else.

For a moment, they talked about Olympian matters, but then Apollo said

— I wonder what would happen if we gave one of these creatures our language?

— Our language? said Hermes. No mortal could learn so many shades of silence.

— I didn’t say teach, said Apollo. I said give.

— You’ve been down here too long, answered Hermes. Let’s go home. Hephaestus owes me some of his winnings.

— You go, said Apollo. I’ll stay a little longer.

+

The sky was a light red as Hermes left the Wheat Sheaf. A car stopped, blasting music so loud that its chassis shivered as it idled at the corner of King and Bathurst, waiting for the lights to change. Inside, the driver was immobile, save for the index finger of his right hand, which tapped the steering wheel in time to the beat.

What was there to say about these creatures, really? He knew almost infinitely more than did the man at the wheel. He knew more about him than the man knew about himself. He knew more about every human, insect and animal the man would ever come in contact with. Beyond knowledge, he also possessed power no mortal could fathom. Had he wished, he could have crushed the car, or the city block on which it stood. Had he wished, he could have broken one of the man’s fingers or torn a single hair from one of his eyebrows. He could have granted the man everything he wanted or taken everything from him. For all the creature’s ‘humanity’ or ‘dignity’ or whatever it was they congratulated themselves on possessing, the man in the car was an almost insignificant aspect of the god’s being.

And yet, a divide existed between them, one that the god could not breach, despite his power, knowledge and subtlety: death. On one side, the immortals. On the other, these beings. He could no more understand what it was to live with death than they could what it was to exist without it. It was this difference that fascinated him and kept him coming back to earth. It was at the heart of the gods’ secret love for mortals. Death was in every fibre of these creatures. It was hidden in their languages and at the root of their civilizations. You could hear it in the sounds they made and see it in the way they moved. It darkened their pleasures and lightened their despair. Being one of those who longed for death, Hermes found the earth and all its mortals fascinating, perhaps even at times worthy of the depths he allowed himself to feel for them. It is this, of course, this ‘feeling’ whose nature surpasses language or human understanding, that kept Hermes — that kept all the gods — from wiping mortals out.

On the one hand, power; on the other, love.

The light changed. The car drove off, and Hermes, imperceptible, rose above the city. To the south, the lake was a light mauve. The clouds above the water were airy and white. Hermes’s thoughts turned to Prince. How odd that such a perceptive creature had imagined the death of a language would mean the death of its poetry. For the immortals, all true poetry existed in an eternal present, eternally new, its language undying. Having once been uttered, Prince’s verse would live forever. At the thought of the dog, Hermes was pleased. And, feeling magnanimous, the god of translators rewarded Prince for his artistry and his unwitting service.

Prince’s soul, which had almost entirely extricated itself from the world, returned briefly to consciousness. He was in a stretch of green and ochre prairie that smelled of Ralston. He was young again, and how thrilling it was to have his senses alert and vivid. It was a late afternoon in summer, somewhere around four o’clock. The sun had just begun to cede its ground to darkness. In the distance were the yards behind the houses on Cawnpore Crescent. He could smell the spore of a gopher, urine, pine gum, dust and the burning flesh of lamb that wafted toward him from god knows where.

Suddenly, he heard a voice that he loved.

— Here, Prince! Here, boy!

It was Kim, the only human whose name he had ever bothered to keep. Prince could see him in the distance, Kim’s silhouette unmistakable for any other. And Prince’s soul was filled with joy. He ran to Kim as he always did: with abandon, bounding over the prairie. This time, though, he ran having caught every nuance in Kim’s voice, understanding him fully.

In his final moment on earth, Prince loved and knew that he was loved in return.

Toronto, 2013

Quincunx 2