Dogs Without Feathers - please read me!

A feather and a dog.

Luisa Valmontín keeps, carefully packed away in her handbag, a single black feather. You would not suspect this on seeing her pass you by. Why would you or anyone else suspect such a thing of anyone, least of all of a good-looking woman like Luisa? Luisa is a woman who looks good in the same way that we are told that apples are good for us even though we find them strangely sour. Here is a woman who has a spring in her step but not even a hint of careless abandon; a woman whose spontaneity is scheduled. As she walks she swings her handbag along with her footsteps, rhythmic, considered.

Here is a woman who, first thing each morning, looks at herself in the mirror and announces: “Go with purpose and you will get where you are going.” Luisa never fails to grin at her own reflection as she recites her morning’s motto. How many people can there be in our fine City living so contentedly as me? Every day Luisa marvels at her own good fortune. As she strides into the metro, marches down the streets, brushes into work she is continually amazed at herself. Passing multitudes of glum downcast faces, invisible people their eyes turned to their own shoes and the pot holes of the pavements; she thinks – I could be like them, any one of them could be me, how lucky I am, simply blessed just to be me. You might be asking yourself, what reason does this woman have to gloat over her own good fortune? The answer is almost none. Luisa is not rich; neither is she poor. She buys few things, she does not own a car, she cannot afford to ride in taxis but neither does she want for food nor clothes, she has no debts and even manages contribute to her saving every month. She has a modest income; she is not really a secretary but almost. She writes letters, answers telephones and does the things that no one else has time or inclination to do. It is not uncommon for her colleagues, behind her back, in the stationary cupboard or whispering at the tea point, to ask each other sneeringly “why is she always so happy? How does she manage to be so nice, all the time?” They don’t understand, but neither does Luisa, she always just chuckles and blames her marvellous countenance on her homespun philosophy of life and (this she would never, ever, mention) on her Black Feather.

Luisa sometimes wonders to herself, as she wanders past a window display with bags and handbags on display, what’s in a bag? Would a feather be kept so sweet in any other bag?

This is one of those fleeting thoughts which she doesn’t really take at all seriously. There is nothing much in the bag and bag means nothing much to her. Luisa will not be buying herself a new bag, and she won’t for this very same reason; she doesn’t care about or for the bag because she never will for any bag, it is after all just a bag. So what could be the reason for spending money on such a thing? The contents worry Luisa Valmontín far more than the packaging. The Black Feather is wrapped in a handkerchief, like the jammy contents of a Swiss roll; a treasure in the middle that will not be allowed to spill out of the sides. She never takes the feather out; she never even removes the apparently innocent looking rolls of cloth from the bag. Sometimes she touches the corners of the handkerchiefs, usually absent-mindedly.

Luisa Valmontín found her feather one afternoon in late March. The weather was already turning quite sour, the heat of summer lingered only as a bitter memory. Luisa had never been a fan of summer in The City and she felt relieved by the autumn breeze that clambered down off the hills. Summer had been hot and dry, as it always was, she found herself longing for and dreaming of the winter rain. That year there would be not winter rains, only a prolonged season of nothing but tepid grey-brown skies hanging low over the city. Luisa never went to the park. She had never been to the park until that afternoon in late March. It was a Sunday, she had nothing much to do besides some ironing what could be done later; she felt it would be nice to stroll among bushes and trees. She had been expecting an almost wintery wind to be sweeping the leaves of the trees. She had imagined her feet crunching and kicking piles of curled up fallen leaves. On arriving in the park she at once remembered what kind of a place it was and how it different it was from her dreams; she wondered why she had come but could not bring herself to turn around and leave. “Now I am here, I will have at least a little walk around” She muttered. The park was not fragrant green but dusty brown. The patches where the grass might have grown were so thirsty that they had long since crusted into a patchwork of hard earth. The air was still and the sun bounced of the soil. As she trod forward the ground beneath her feet threw up spurts of dust. A bunch of kids kicked a ball around in the concrete expanses where there was nothing else. They didn’t even seem to be pretending to play football. Luisa sat down on a bench beside a pond-like patch of water. A few birds straddled around and that was all besides the odd romantic couple. These lovers with their furtive kisses seemed to Luisa to be as much a mystery as the park itself. Why did they come here? Didn’t they have some place, more private, to go to? And then Luisa thought that maybe this very question was the answer; no these romantics did not have any other place to go and the reason for, or maybe the answer to, the park’s existence was in their kisses. It was a private place; there were no other people hanging around with prying unwanted eyes all over them. No one came to the park for anything else. There was nothing to find in the park, for Luisa there was nothing at all. For the besotted fool this place holds the keys to the most precious treasure of all the treasures, a kiss from a lover’s lips. But Luisa had no desire to see these things.

She was leaving the park already when she stumbled across the feather. So bright was its blackness that it shone improbably through the dust. The feather lay in the dirt but the dirt seemed unable to get a grip on the feather. It was clean. Luisa picked it up, she looked at for a motionless second and then blew on the feather. It moved in her breeze but only ever so slightly. I remained perfect. Luisa’s breath did not knock off any dust as there was none on the feather. Completely unruffled she put the treasure into her pocket and headed home.

The house was empty. Luisa wondered why she had returned. Beyond the silence she could hear the sounds of the street, but there did not comfort her. She sat down and looked out of the window, there was nothing to see: a buss passing by below her, a lonesome child kicked a football against the side of a house, a stay dog wagging its aimless tail. Nothing new but these everyday sights; there is always a football getting kicked to pieces in the City, if you did not see it you were looking in the wrong direction, that is all. The stray dog: he is not stray at all, he belongs to us all, to each and every one of us. He eats from our discards; just as that dog you gave a name to does also. He smiles when he sees your face and wags his tails excitedly if you pat him on the head, just as if he were your own pet. You have even given him a name, although you did not think about it twice; you called him Wacho, Stray, Pooch or Dirty-Piece-of-Shit, you might still not noticed it but this dog, all of these dogs, recognise the name you have given them better than you do. The strays of the City know who you are even if you think you don’t know who they are.

That afternoon in March could have been any afternoon, at any time of year, if she had not gone to the park. Once Luisa was home that afternoon was much like this afternoon as she sat waiting for dusk and listens to a dog barking. The scraggy mongrel on the corner turns it head, looking up towards Luisa’s window he pricks up just one ear and barks. He does not start a racket but just lets out three quick sharp yelps. What does it mean? Luisa wonders. Maybe it means nothing at all. That mutt has a sort of gingery pelt, matted and worn from street fights and scratching himself against coarse concrete walls.

“Is there something you want to tell me?” Luisa says to the far away dog in a voice she can hardly hear herself. Yet as the words leave her mouth she sees that the gingery animal has already turned away, his attention captured by a fly buzzing passed his ear. Then the dog bounces, leaps, sees its own tail and hurtles into an unrestrained spin chasing his own tail to wherever it might lead him. The dog barks and almost seems to laugh as he races around and around, riding his very own helter-skelter. “What a life it must be to be a dog.” Luisa says to herself, she smiles, the sound of her smiles creeps out into her words. She reaches into her pocket and removes the treasured feather. She has not forgotten about it, not for a moment, it has been pocking awkwardly against her leg. Somehow the feather still retains it perfect form, as if it could be reattached to duck and then that lucky duck could once again fly away aided by one extra, quite perfect, quite black feather. Luisa has never seen a duck. No one she knew has ever seen a duck. They seem, from what she remembers from books and television, to be capable of sitting in horribly cold water, splashing around and quacking. It is the kind of bird that when made into a cartoon character is the kind of character that all the children laugh at but none of the children want to imitate. “I would rather be a dog that a duck.” Luisa says to herself. This time she can clearly hear her own voice talking, and if anyone else had been in the room they too would have heard her talking to herself. The feather feels waxy between Luisa’s fingers; she imagines how a drop of water would roll off like a pearl.

The telephone rings. Luisa is startled. She answers the phone.
“Have you seen your husband?” Is one of the many things that Luisa’s mother asks her. She doesn’t ask, how is your husband?
“No.” Luisa answers quite plainly. “Not today.” Then her mother talks about a lot of other things, none of them interest Luisa in the least. She has a cousin called Marcelo, she knew that, but she really does not care how unfaithful he is. She has heard it all before, it was the same story the last time. Some poor girl from the next village, she was innocent, he was not; he promises her everything and gives her nothing but children. It is always the same story only the names change.

It is getting dark. The night creeps in from over the mountains, slowly overtaking everything while we were looking in the other direction and thinking about what to have for our dinner. The sun hides first, before setting, just behind the Costal Mountains awaiting and fleeing from the arrival of the night. A dog is barking in the street, it is not the same dog, but it might as well be. It is not even the same street; underneath a recently broken streetlight, where the full moon casts a transparent shadow lies another sort of dog all together. Elegantly abandoned, a pruned poodle looks bewilderedly over its shoulder. Its bark is larger than itself. But Louisa does not bother to look out of the window and does not know how to tell one bark from another; she imagines the ginger stray still running in circles; always the same circles, never reaching the end of its journey. Maybe, she could help it find its way. Luisa remembers her own words of only a few minutes previously. She is holding the feather and in this moment realises that this feather will always remind her of this “I’d rather be a dog than a duck.” She finds some kitchen towel and carefully wraps the feather and puts it back in her pocket. Later this evening the feather will migrate into Luisa’s handbag; where it will find its definite home.

Luisa leaves her house and walks out into the streets of the night. The hours have sped into nothing. The city might be dark if it weren’t so frightfully well illuminated. The daytime grey and brown tinges are replaced by the unearthly orange hue of the streetlamp’s reflections. Luisa walks onwards, followed by her own footsteps. The streets are empty. Anyone who might be watching Luisa’s journey might imagine that she has some direction, that she knew where she is going. She does not know where she will go. She does know why she is going but not where she will end up. Luisa is looking for the gingery dog. She has suddenly become aware that this dog, of all the lonesome mongrels in the City, is her dog. However loving the gaze of the gingery dog he does not really recognise Luisa from any of the hundreds of pitying people of the City who are always ready to give a handsome homeless dog some food to eat and a little affection, a pat on the head and nothing more. They have met of course, Luisa and the gingery dog, only briefly a few years before. Luisa had bumped into her friend Sandra in the street, walking down Huérfanos on a blistering Saturday afternoon in December. Luisa had assumed that the dog walking beside Sandra was Sandra’s dog. The dog sat, attending to the conversation as if he understood, looking at one speaker and then the other as they talked. It was only after they parted, finishing their short conversation that the ginger mongrel started to walk along side someone else, he was now interested in a grey skinned man who looked like he should smell of old bones, maybe that was what the ginger dog was following so intently.

“He’s not my dog.” Sandra explained before Luisa had had a chance to ask about the dog’s odd behaviour. “But I wish he’d come back all the same.” That might have a horribly surprising thing to say but to Luisa it make perfect sense because she was already missing that dog who she had totally ignored while it stood in front of her paying attention to her ever word. That was the way it was: at once and without notice. One moment the ginger dog was there listening, paying attention, like a dear friend and confidant then the next minute the ginger dog was gone, off down a side street following a raggedy man who smelled of old dinners. “Why did he abandon us for that man?” Luisa thought but said nothing. She held back her words not for fear of ridicule but because she knew that Sandra would tell her that the ginger dog had not abandoned them both but her and only her.

Luisa remembers that last encounter with the gingery dog as she trawls through the night. She remembers how the dog’s worn away coat and chewed up tail were only noticeable in retrospect. The gingery dog looked nothing like a pet yet she had thought that it belonged to Sandra. Was it the way that he walked and behaved? It could not even have been that, the demeanour of the gingery dog was not quite domestic; he had been walking side by side with Sandra, he did not follow her.

Luisa wanders the streets. Not knowing in which direction she is heading but knowing she has to find that ginger dog and that, with a little persistence she will find him. Hours pass slowly but relentlessly, she walks ignoring the pains her inadequate shoes give her feet. The sun begins the rise once more in the east. As always it has come full circle. The sun has been hiding in self away from us while traipsing through the night but now it is on the brink of making it daily comeback. The return never ceases to be glorious and triumphant. Just in case you had been worried that the night would never end, when it does, the sun celebrates your relief. Again and again the same thing happens every morning all over the world a thousand times a day. Luisa never ceases to be impressed, startled and just a little bit surprised the see the return of the sun. She feels deeply unsettled by the obvious truth of the matter: we are all going around in endless circles, on a planet chasing itself around the sun. She prefers to believe that it is a mere coincidence that day follows night and night follows day over and over again and she chooses to be surprised.

At last she finds the gingery dog. He is lying, helpless, in the middle of the road. He is quite still but Luisa can see him breathing, heavy desperate breaths, grasping at the air. There is no traffic, not even the whisper of a distant car. She crouches down next to the gingery dog and strokes his back slowly and tenderly. There is blood on the road. The gingery dog has been hit by a car. There is nothing that can be done to help him now. Even if there were some remedy where would she get it, you cannot take a dog into a hospital and Luisa has no idea how to find a vet as she had never had a pet herself. The gingery dog smiles at her.

“I was hoping you could teach me the secret of your happiness.” Luisa says to the gingery dog whispering close to its ear. The city air is dreadfully cold. The dry empty night had sucked out every last drop of heat from the city; now the sun rises to find a frozen city waiting to be baked all over again. The gingery dog is almost as cold as the air. His dog’s breath creeps out off his tongue like fog off the sea. His manages to move his good eye and look upwards at Luisa.

“It is very simple” says the gingery dog. “All you have to do is learn to chase your own tail. If you can do this then you will always be able to find happiness.”

These were the gingery dog’s first and last words.