Carmen Dog (21 page)

"Bert,” she says, for now she knows the pale young man's name is Bert. “Bert,” she says again, because it's already her favorite name, and she asks him to listen to the poem. It's her first attempt at a more contemporary form:

—

Let the sunflower cast its vote

For rain. The cat for bird and tree.

The spider vote by weaving webs.

The bee by wax. Mouse by cheese.

The fox by being foxy.

Bats in clicks. The universe

By all things universal.

The moon by being in the sky.

The sky by blue. And I look

Into the eyes of someone I love,

And vote by five fingers on each hand!

Two legs! Ten toes!

—

"Well then, who
will
be the first to jump?"

Has John been standing on the wall all this time ready to help anyone who's willing to jump down into the arms of the acrobats? But they are all hanging back. Even with the net and the acrobats, it's a long, dangerous drop.

"Let's sing them down,” Pooch says. “Let's pick a courageous aria. All can join in and even those on the ground can sing and play along with us.” So they sing
Ritorna Vincitor
, and
Gloria all' Eggito
, and even
Why Do the Nations So Furiously Rage Together?
Then Bert does his
Toreador
song, still in his Papageno outfit. (Pooch falls in love with him all over again in that silly, romantic way she had promised herself never to do again. But why not, now that he seems to like her and to be so sweet? Besides it's too late. She is swept off her feet.)

Chloe jumps first because, as she says, she knows how to land. She turns three somersaults on the way down, showing off. The acrobats catch her and flip her over and down from one to another until they drop her safely into the net ... on her feet, of course.

Valdoviccini insists on being second, but just before he jumps he gets Pooch's signature that she will become a member of the opera company and be coached by the best coaches in the city. She signs, this time, simply
Pooch
. From now on she will be her simple self and forget about trying to be Pucci. Though she feels a pang, she knows it is only for the loss of illusions.

Valdoviccini blinks at the name, then smiles and kisses her. She sees he understands. Then he jumps, a fat round ball, arms and legs out straight. Then comes Phillip. Again a graceful performance, utterly without fear. After her, the doctor. Just before he jumps he begins a quote from Marcus Aurelius, which, in order to save time, he finishes on the way down. It is rather muddled, but one can forgive him for not getting it quite right, considering the extenuating circumstances.

"Even if what befalls is unpalatable, receive it gladly, for it makes for the health of the universe.... What happens concerns yourself as a string in the tapestry of primordial causation.... To break off a particle from the continuous concatenation, is to injure the whole...."

It is here that he jumps. He falls stiffly, as though standing at attention, rotating end for end.

"...specific occurrences are ordered in the interests of our destiny,” he says.

The acrobats pass him down in the businesslike way that he clearly prefers.

And now come down, in the arms of Cucumber, two of the newborn piglets, and after them, in the arms of an Academy member, the colt.

Now comes the mother of the four, holding the remaining piglet. Though she is quite large and pinkish and with thinning hair, one can see how she was mistakenly thought to be still completely human.

Then Mary Ann (one never did know whether tending toward duck or swan), squawking and flapping about so erratically it is clear that the acrobats will never be able to catch her. But then, just at the last moment, when a great “Ohhhhhh” of fear has already gone up from the crowd below, suddenly the flapping comes together in a graceful and powerful coordination. She
can
fly! Stretches out her long neck and beats her wings, and now there can be no doubt that she who stumbled over her own big feet, who tripped and staggered and waddled, is, after all, a swan, and air her element. She circles, honking her joy and her farewell, then heads north. She will not be seen again until next fall, and then only passing through.

So one by one they jump until they are all down except Pooch, Bert, John, Rosemary, and Isabel, who adamantly refuses to be lured into jumping even by the invigorating sounds of the music. Finally Pooch coaxes her to the edge with a gentle song instead. Yes, as wolverine she is more sensitive than ever she was before. Pooch is singing Micaela's song, “
Je dis que rien ne m'épouvante.
” Perhaps Isabel remembers some high-school French from long ago, for she looks as if she understands every word.

But now there are big billows of smoke, some even coming up from the roof itself, right here where they stand. Rosemary is suddenly impatient and pushes Isabel over the side. Down she goes, twisting angrily and snapping at the air. She manages to bite the hands of two of the acrobats, and then tears holes in the net with her teeth before she can be chased out of it.

Bert has said that Pooch must go first, then he, then Rosemary, and then John. Pooch sees the logic in it. They kiss. Pooch's first real sexual, loving kiss. The baby, screaming with rage and trying to pull Bert away, grabs the Papageno topknot and bends it so that Bert looks a bit rakish. But below the tilted, drooping crest, Bert's tan eyes look out, concerned and kind as always. He turns to kiss the baby, but of course it pushes him away.

So Pooch stands upon the parapet, and, with refinement and grace, strikes a classical pose rather like an arabesque. She smiles, looking at Bert, and lets herself fall, the baby on her back crowing with delight.

The acrobats, though tired by now and some in pain from the bites on their arms, cannot resist whirling Pooch up again and again, and each time she takes an even more graceful pose than the time before.

But now more smoke than ever. Pooch can't even see the top of the building. Down comes another figure, a dim blob in the smoke. It's not a papageno but the clown, John. Where is Bert? As John drops into the net it tears in several places where Isabel had chewed it. This had not happened when Pooch fell into it because she, even with the baby, is so light. Pooch scrambles back up into the net with the idea of holding it together as well as she can or of breaking Bert's or even Rosemary's fall with her own body. But the circus clowns pull her away. “The baby!” they yell.

"Don't forget the baby!” They know that will stop her, and of course it does.

Can it be, she wonders, that just when life is looking so happy she will lose the best thing about it?

But here he comes now. The acrobats are twirling him around, up and back. How can they do that at a serious moment like this, unless it is to keep him from death for another few seconds? Then one of them swings over to the little platform at the side and a moment later there is Bert, standing beside him, a bit off balance but safe, held tightly in the long arms of one of those gorgeous creatures, orange fur against the bright blue costume.

(Pooch feels a little twinge of jealousy.) The orangutan woman helps Bert to the rope and he slides down it, landing safely, only the worse for a couple of rope burns.

Of course Rosemary, up there with all this smoke, cannot see what has been happening below. Perhaps if she had waited, for the fire engines sound as though they're getting through at last.... But here she comes. She weighs far and away the most of any creature the acrobats have yet had to catch. Even the strongest of them cannot hold her. Down she goes, straight into the torn net and onto the street below almost as if there were nothing there at all to break her fall.

A great
Ohhhhhh
goes up from the crowd and then silence. Rosemary lies, a glistening, broken lump, but not dead. Dying, but not dead. She is trying to say something. Pooch leans near to her. There's blood on her white fur, especially around her face. Just as she begins to get a word or two out, the fire engines do get through. Their racket is tremendous and there's utter chaos as they push away all the creatures and the clowns and insist on taking over in their own way. Rosemary goes on speaking. Even though Pooch has extraordinarily good hearing still, she can make out very little. Yet they are words she will always remember: “Wisdom of the wild things,” and, “You. You, yourself and especially"—Rosemary says it, “Especially not win, or lose all.” Pooch knows what Rosemary stands for, so it hardly matters that she can hear very little. “I will go on fighting,” she tells Rosemary. She is thinking that, besides this good fight for the sake of all creatures, she will write poems about these things, and maybe even an opera. Yes, with Rosemary as the heroine, ending with a dance of fire as this fire right now, though it will have a better ending than all this confusion, firemen pushing everyone away and shouting at them and the sirens hurting her ears. She leans close to tell Rosemary about the opera, but Rosemary's eyes are blank. It's too late.

Now that the firemen are there, the fire is soon put out and the three vice presidents rise up from their pens like three phoenixes. But rescue has come, in a way, too late for them as well. One can see it in their eyes and the way they move. They are still hopelessly enmeshed in motherhood, as before, but now from the opposite point of view. If they continue as vice presidents, their influence on the Academy will be in an entirely different direction. However; Pooch feels that they will not be any less happy than they were before and maybe, with their newfound motherliness and sexuality, they will be even more so.

Pooch is hoping that (if the building survives) the Academy might become a haven for unwed creatures regardless of their backgrounds. Perhaps the members' room might be a room for both male and female regardless of funny noises or odd ways of lounging around. Pooch plans to have a memorial service for the mounted heads and the bear and zebra rugs with their friends and relatives attending, if such can be found. She herself will come to the ceremony to say good-bye even though she had not known any of the creatures personally.

But listen, now, to what those three vice presidents are announcing. They are saying that they will work hard on behalf of all females, and begin by bringing the measuring of time back to what it used to be—to a year of thirteen months and one day. They know that it was changed on purpose against women and adopted even though it is neither reasonable nor scientific. (They are ashamed that men instigated it.)

Also they want that one extra day of the year to be known as All Creatures Day and to be celebrated with music, balloons, kites, ice cream, firecrackers, popcorn, circuses, poems, free rides, art works, dancing, jokes, and all the other wonderful things. Hearing this, Pooch is thinking that, if everyone works hard to achieve it, every day of the year can be made more like this one great day will surely be.

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El maintenant, parlez, mes belles, de l'avenir, donnez-nous des nouvelles ... dites-nous qui nous aimera!

—Carmen

Of course pooch and Bert marry and adopt the baby which, since its mother is in the aquarium and its father clearly unsuitable, is not hard to do. And of course they love it as though it were their own. Later they will have a litter of three: setters and all males, so there will be no hope that they might ever become human and artists in their own right, but Pooch will love them as much as anyone could love another creature, and she will give them every advantage to develop as fully as they possibly can. They will all three have wonderful, strong, vibrant voices, which she will delight in almost as much as she delights in her own. The baby will find them true brothers, and will never be jealous of them, but will delight in running with them in the woods and fields, baying now and then at the moon, and howling when Pooch vocalizes. Though the baby will never learn to sing, it will have a deep, abiding appreciation of music as well as of all arts, influenced by Pooch's example and teachings. It will grow up to write poems as good as or even better than Pooch's. Certainly more modern, strongly influenced by Kenneth Koch as well as Henri Michaux. (Of course it will grow out of biting other creatures except when absolutely warranted.)

Though it will take some time, the doctor will eventually persuade Phillip to marry him. They will have no offspring. Phillip will be sad about that even though she will have her career as a ballet dancer. Instead, she will love Pooch's puppies as though they were her own. And the baby will call her Aunt Phillip.

Chloe and Valdoviccini will have a litter of their own and will give up altogether the apartment in the East Village. Strange to say, Pooch will be sad to see it and all the things in it go, though she knows it's for the best.

Pooch will continue with her psychotherapy, taking up where she left off several months ago with the daisies and such. She will never again allow herself to sleep on a doormat, unless of course it might benefit some other creature for her to do so. The psychologist will understand that a good bit of her personality is hereditary, her ancestors having been bred for generations for just such qualities as she possesses. She is, and will remain, basically, as stated in the official publication of the American Kennel Club: “The mild, sweet disposition characteristic of this breed, along with the beauty, intelligence, and aristocratic appearance it makes in the field and in the home, has endeared it both to sportsmen as well as all lovers of a beautiful, active, and rugged outdoor (companion).” But since she is human by now she'll be harder to live with, though there will be more rewards for doing so.

As she grows older Pooch will sing better than ever, and delight the world with her voice and her grace. Also she will continue, as she promised the dying Rosemary, to fight for the rights of all creatures, yet being careful to “not win.” And she will write her opera, titled simply,
Rosemary: In Memoriam
. The two best arias in it will be “Oh, the Songs of Selves” and “Neither Conqueror nor Conquered; Neither Victory nor Defeat."