by Tod Davies.
Some years back, a woman I know told me a story. She had been invited by friends of a famous author of the day to join them at the writer’s country house. Of course she went. She had always admired his work.
“But he wouldn’t talk to anyone,” she said. “All he was interested in was this mangy old black dog.” She brooded on this mystery for a moment. There was a momentary brightening. “The dog seemed to like me, so for a split second he looked at me with a little interest.” But then the famous author went back to communing with the dog. He ignored the company for the rest of the weekend.
She couldn’t understand it. “Here is a guy who wins awards. Who knows everyone. Who can go to whatever parties he wants. And all he wants to do is hang out with a mangy old dog.”
I thought about that story for years. I still think about it, even more now, during the present worldwide Emergency that makes the world of celebrity, awards, and parties farther away then ever. As if I’m looking at it through the wrong end of a telescope. As if that glittering world is on a huge tanker, covered with containers holding cheap goods from a far off land, disappearing away from me over the horizon.
Then I wake in the night, and hear my dogs, and my husband, breathing, quiet and at peace. Safe for the moment from the epochal changes happening outside. And I think about that author, how he must have longed for real companionship instead of the weekend visits of people who didn’t know him, who chattered to an imitation of his real self, a cardboard cutout animated by the New Yorker and the Paris Review. How lonely he must have felt. How lucky he must have felt to have his dog, who loved him as he was. Who longed to understand him in his innermost heart, as all dogs long to understand those they love.
I think about the time in my life when I worked with many of the celebrated. I remember once I was on a location scout with a famous actor and his wife. I wandered off to use a toilet, only to return to find them, terrified, surrounded by people circling them as if they were an exhibit in a zoo. “Don’t ever do that again,” my friend the actor hissed. His wife clung to him nervously. “Don’t ever leave me alone in a public place. I have to keep moving, otherwise it’s dangerous.”
Dangerous. It is dangerous. I remember the rock and roll star, the one you could argue was the most famous of all. I remember how terrified he was, as if he stood behind a screen and couldn’t see what was projected in front, what everyone responded to as if it were him. I was the only woman in the room when I saw this, and I saw how he leaned on my energy to support him, as he must have leaned on the energies of many women before. And I saw that no one else saw what I saw. Nervous slips of the tongue on his part were greeted as brilliant irony. Near crippling stage fright was seen as a secret joke on the conventional. Poor man, I thought. Poor, poor man. But there was no one else I could tell of what I saw.
I wondered if he had a dog.
My own husband was famous for a part of his life. We used to have a joke that the only thing fame was good for was making it impossible to have a drink together in an English pub without being interrupted by a guy who was sure my husband would rather be drinking with him than with me.
We were at an event in San Francisco once, and one such guy elbowed me out of the way so he could get talking to my husband. Amused, I wandered over to a friend, who asked if I knew the guy. “No,” I said. “But there’s one like him at every screening.” My friend stared at them for a moment and then said, “Yoko Ono.” We both had a good laugh over that one.
When I first met my husband, many years before we fell in love, he claimed to dislike dogs. Then when we did finally fall in love, as doubtless we had been meant to do all along, he visited me in the mountains. He laughs about it now. “I thought the dogs would sleep outside,” he says, remembering how stunned he was that they came and went as they pleased. They weren’t allowed on the bed, though. Not then. But a few dogs later, we had Pearl, his dog, who stubbornly insisted that she share our bed. Gray followed. After that, dogs slept on the bed, no matter how many contortions it took on the part of people. It always makes us laugh. They look so happy in the morning to see us. No matter if the news is bad, or the night brought bad dreams, they are there. Happy. Wanting to know what is in our innermost hearts. Also wanting to know when breakfast will be served, of course. Another good thing about a dog is their four feet are always planted firmly on the ground. We have a lot to learn from that. A lot to pack in during the short time we’re together.
In our small town, we have a neighbor, Devin, who has an old, black dog. Her name is Keno. She was abandoned for being too old and scrawny and mangy. Our local sheriff rescued her and looked about for a suitable dog retirement home. That was how Devin came to adopt her when his own old dog died. Devin is in his 80s and lives by himself. He told me that he felt akin to Keno.
For the first couple of years when we walked by their house, Keno would bark at us and our dogs. Out of control and frantic. We would wave and call her by name. Slowly she realized she was home and not in danger of being abandoned again. Slowly she became a glossy, plump, happy old dog. Now when we see her, she shudders with delight, her tail wagging nonstop, as she tries to drag Devin over to greet Strider and to get pets from us both. Devin looks the best he has in the time we’ve known him. They go together.
So I understand that famous author who only wanted to hang out with his mangy old black dog. An old dog doesn’t have much more time. Neither do we. You want to get the good of it. You comfort the dog and yourself while you can. And that is the peace of dog that passes all understanding.