Carmen Dog (7 page)

As it happens, it is the doctor who is the quicker. He has her head in a noose on the end of a pole before she can get near him. He bought the noose especially for her, anticipating what he had to deal with and, though he knows by the cut of her jaw that she isn't poisonous, he isn't taking any chances. “Ah ha!” the doctor says, having seen her quick motion toward him. He cattle-prods her into the cage, releases her from the pole, and there she is, in spite of all her resolutions.

But she is determined to fight him any way she can. “Don't bother with a cookie,” she says, her tongue refusing to behave as she wishes it to. She is trying to avoid all
ess
es for the sake of dignity. “I'm on a diet, and anyway I don't play
little
game.” But the doctor turns on the electricity on the side of the cage where she stands. After a few seconds of frantic twirling about, she discovers the turned-off side of the cage.

"Very good,” the doctor says, “just four point four seconds.” But then he reverses the current to the side where she is and she jumps back to the first part of the cage, then back and forth and back and forth, the doctor laughing at her and shouting, “Very good. Very, very good. And now, on the contrary, you
will
play a little game.
My
little game. Why this frantic effort to incorporate all the characteristics of a human being, though I must say you've hardly managed half of them? You should know, and I quote: ‘The whole earth itself is no more than the puniest dot.'”

"Not to me."

Shock.

"Say it. Puny dot, puny dot. How can you understand anything if you don't know that?"

"It'th not."

Shock.

"If you understood the universe, which even itself may be a puny dot and in which the earth may be but a punier one, you would tell me everything you know and let me help to bring things back the way they should be—to this minor planet."

"Not to me it ithn't."

"Is!” The doctor is shouting and changing dials and pushing buttons as fast as he can. He is turning both sides on alternately and Phillip is skipping about from cage right to cage left in a grotesque dance. Ice water from a nozzle on the ceiling sprays on her head. Then the doctor turns on both sides at once. This lasts eight seconds.

"Stop! Stop! It ith a puny dot. I admit it."

Immediately the shocks stop and a chocolate-frosted cupcake pops out from the dispenser at the side.

"Five minutes,” the doctor says, “from the beginning,” and writes that down.

Phillip, in a sudden careless rage, throws the cupcake at him and is satisfied to see chocolate smudges on his white lab coat, but she is again subjected to the dance from side to side and then both sides. No place to go ... but up! Phillip is an excellent climber. Up she goes until she's hanging, mostly from the top bars in a far corner of the cage. The shocks don't reach her there.

At first the doctor pokes at her with the stick he used to bring her in, but it's not long enough. Suddenly he seems very, very calm. “Well, well,” he says, looking at his watch, “I believe it's already time for lunch. I want you to know I'm not at all put out. I am simply asking myself, can the world exist without ignorant and obstructive people such as you? And I answer myself that, of course it can't, so no sense in getting upset."

She's better at hanging on than he thinks, but still it's hard. By the time he comes back half an hour later, Phillip's fingers and toes are so stiff and cramped she can neither hang on any longer nor let go.

"I suppose you're ready to come down?"

A meek “Yeth."

"Try it. I might have had it turned off all along. I'm not an ogre, you know. I only want what's best for all of us, you included. Think how much better you'd feel if you were back in some rain forest or other—or is it the desert? I can arrange for that. Just tell me the information I need to be able to help us all out of this awful mess."

It's true, Phillip has sometimes had vague yearnings toward life in the wild, though she knows very little about it and has never actually been in a forest, having been born in a pet shop.

"So now perhaps we understand each other better and can be of help to each other,” the doctor says, “and I trust that, if and when you get a cupcake, you will eat it. So let us go on to another question. Tell me, who is your leader?"

"A little old lady who liveth in thith area, actually, who always wears navy blue or gray.” Phillip, rubbing her sore fingers, begins a lengthy description of the doctor's wife, as minute as she can make it in order to gain time, but adding several characteristics of a tiger. “Even,” she says, “striped already on the face. You can thee the orange, white, and black. Quite attractive.” (Actually, Phillip is thinking of her own attractive red, black, and yellow.) “But more like a tiger every day and already quite dangerouth. I would stay away from her if I were you. In fact, she'd tear you limb from limb.” Phillip says this last with relish.

"Females are all such liars,” the doctor says. “Lies, that's all I've heard from all of you starting with little number 106 who hardly spoke at all. But then,” and he quotes, “'Nobody is surprised when a fig tree brings forth figs.'” He gives Phillip another forced dance from side to side and soon she is climbing the wall of the cage again in spite of her sore toes and fingers.

"Watch out,” the doctor says, “or I'll leave you here again with the floor turned on full and I won't come back until tomorrow."

Phillip, exhausted from the pain of the shocks and of her cramped hands and feet and of the leaping about, drops back down in a dejected coil that the doctor finds quite seductive, partly because of its submissiveness. The floor is, thank goodness, turned off.

"There are no leaderth that I know of,” she says. “If there are, no one has told me about them. And I don't know how all thith thtarted. I just began to take such pleathure in my own body. It was thtrange. And I began to realize things. Most of all to know I wath alive. Alive! That'th all I thought about at first, even after that time the rocking chair rocked on me and no one seemed to care. And I don't know how all thith came about but it seemed such a privilege. I was ... suddenly so ... joyful!"

Another series of shocks, side to side and side to side, until Phillip climbs the mesh bars again. “Alligatorth,” she shouts. “They have come out of the sewers.” (Little does she realize how right she is. It's true. They
have
come up, though with no plans.) “Alligators all over the place and we have joined them. It'th their fault."

Two cupcakes, two fortune cookies, and three chits pop out. Also a string of large blue beads, and the doctor writes down the one word, alligators, with exclamation point.

"You may go,” he says. “Take your things and go, and I must say you've utterly worn me out, but in the end you did well. I'll be having another discussion with you soon. Very soon."

Later on when she reads her fortunes, one says “Consider practical alternatives,” and the other “You will soon fall in love with a much older man.” From the very beginning, the doctor has been quite taken with her.

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The malice of a good thing is the barb that makes it stick.

—Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Basenji no sooner seems to be making some slight recovery than the doctor comes for her again. His policy is to come for them before they are let out of their cages in the morning in order to avoid mass uprising. It's a good thing, because now that he has come for Basenji there surely would have been a spontaneous mutiny. Though Basenji is utterly limp and passive, all the others (except for Pooch, who lies on her back, arms folded across her chest, feet in the air, face partly covered by one golden ear) are frantic. They bang on the bars and call out, “No, not Basenji!” and, “Take me instead. I'll go. I'll say anything you want me to.” Of course it must be remembered that some of them have had quite a pleasant experience in the laboratory—only a few mild shocks and several treats and trinkets. And some would be only too happy to go, simply to add variety to their days though they, of course, are the ones who have not been treated to the worst of what the doctor can do. Some, as mentioned, have even found the doctor fascinating, his long, sad face quite appealing and handsome if you like that type. And, though they dare not confess it to the others, if their fortunes have mentioned a tall, dark stranger, most (as he intended they should) have taken it to mean the doctor himself, even though he is less black-haired than gray. They are thinking of their own desirability in contrast to his dumpy old wife and they are hoping for a meaningful relationship—almost any kind of relationship, even if it is somewhat sadistic.

There are some, quite a few in fact, who had been beaten by their masters or even their fathers when young, and who nearly swooned with pleasure at the treatment they received in the laboratory as long as it didn't become
too
painful, and who enjoyed being the center of attention in whatever manner and for whatever reason. Their concern for Basenji is nonetheless genuine.

The doctor had brought cattle prod, handcuffs, and muzzle when coming for Basenji, but there is no need. She lies in his arms, eyes shut, face expressionless, serene actually. All are so taken by her ethereal beauty and her youth that they stop their clamoring. The doctor and Basenji seem to form a sort of reverse Pietà, the doctor holding her gently and looking a bit compassionate, and Basenji, one graceful, slender limb dangling and the other, as though in modesty, lying across her just barely budding breasts, which are clearly outlined by the folds of the blue smock as it drapes around her.

Phillip is suddenly very afraid for her. “Fight back,” she yells. “Don't let go. Pleath don't let go.” She is also thinking that Basenji, with one good surprise bite in the right place ... and, in truth, Basenji's mouth is lying against the doctor's jugular vein.
She
is the one who could save them all. “Right now! Bite!” Phillip screams, but it's no use. Basenji, in her present condition, can no more bite than could a wet rag. And she doesn't come back. They wait for her the whole day, wondering about her and wondering what to do for her when she comes, but she never does, not that day and not the next either.

They decide to hold a little nondenominational memorial service for her just in case she is no more. They all feel it is too much to hope for that she has been released or is alive somewhere else in the house. They ask Rosemary for candles and flowers and she, always accommodating when she can be, brings them six white candles and more than enough flowers from her own garden. Her choices make everyone think that she must have had Basenji specifically in mind: white daisies, small purple irises, miniature tulips delicately colored yellow in the centers and pink at the edges. They are telling each other that, had Basenji chosen to be a flower, certainly she would have chosen to be one of these.

Of course they ask Pooch if she will sing. This they want most of all. But she, shaking her head no, and still not speaking, only gives a harsh breathy cough, almost as though that were the only sound she is capable of making. They do not press her, but ask if, instead, she might write a few words or a poem. This she consents to do. Yes, she tells herself, she must rouse herself. She really must. For Basenji's sake, even though, of course, no one knows for sure if she is really dead or not, but chances are, considering the condition she was in, that she is. Yes, and Pooch knows that she herself would be capable of such a death ... just lie down and give up. Perhaps if it wasn't for the baby and for the others whom she might be able to help later on, who knows but that she, too, would ... will....

As to the few words that she must have ready the next day, she remembers some lines from Olaf Stapledon in which the great dog, Sirius himself, thinks, “A poem might be sincere no matter how hastily it had been scribbled,” and she begins work on one. She is thinking, if only she could stop this twitching and trembling and if only her mind didn't dart about as though avoiding ... particularly avoiding thoughts of Basenji and of the laboratory, and if only she didn't feel so drained.

And how she would love to talk to the psychotherapist again. What would he tell her to do to cope with these problems? To cope with her own feelings? Perhaps there is rage underneath all this. How not use it against herself? And what about her beloved master! Has Isabel already taken her place in his heart? If only she knew that she would see him once again, there would be something to look forward to.

But poor Basenji! What trials has she had to bear? Even before all this began, she and Basenji had, the second evening, leaning their heads together against their cage bars, whispered to each other their past histories and all their secrets (though Pooch has no real secrets to tell), so Pooch knows that Basenji, of all creatures, could not possibly have known anything about any conspiracy or any leaders. Pooch probably
should
have known, and therefore in some way deserves the “punishment” she is getting for her ignorance—though actually they all seem ignorant, even Phillip—but what could Basenji have been expected to know? Why, she grew up in a top-floor apartment, never once having ventured down the elevator, let alone out into the street. That is, until that one night. And then so frightened by the honking, the lights, and the rain that she ran and didn't stop until she was completely exhausted and lost. They had been, Basenji had said, about to go on a trip to Europe. That she knew. And somehow (how, even Basenji herself could never figure out) she had slipped out of her brand-new harness and fled. At the time, for her master's pleasure (her master was eleven years old) she had been dressed “
à l'oriental.
” This had almost gotten her into much more trouble in the streets until she had the presence of mind to remove the embroidered slippers and the voluminous red trousers which, in the pouring rain, had become quite draggled. The green satin shirt, without the yellow vest, served as a sort of minidress and did not attract so much attention. She had, she confessed, frequently been involved in sexual play with her young master, but not going “all the way,” so to speak, and so still technically a virgin in spite of all they had known of each other. However, Basenji said, she had known that “all the way” must come soon, and she dreaded it. This was a side of Basenji that only Pooch knew and, of course, would never tell. Whatever poor Basenji's life had been, Pooch knew it was certainly not her fault. The poor thing had just barely reached adolescence and now, to be cut down at first flowering, never to know true love and a true loving sexuality. To Pooch, Basenji would always be the essence of the sweet and the virginal. And how sad that, at this very moment, her owners were probably enjoying Paris while Basenji,
pauvre petite
, would never see it.