To the Quick

He opens the cage door. 'Come,' he says, bends, opens his arms. The dog wags his crippled rear, sniffs his face, licks his cheeks, his lips, his ears. He does nothing to stop it. 'Come.'

Bearing him in his arms like a lamb, he re-enters the surgery. 'I thought you would save him for another week,' says Bev Shaw. 'Are you giving him up?'

'Yes. I am giving him up.'

(Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee)

Whenever I come back after a year of not being there, I cease to exist -- on an earthly level, that is. Everything is everything else, and more, all at once; I dash from one end of the country to the other, tracing the lines of my family's movements around this area (diachronically and synchronically), dropping in on people and places carefully left behind, like the crumbs you leave behind in a forest so you can find your way back. I lose track of days and dates, I become fluid, stretchable like an elastic, I am suddenly shot beyond the farthest reaches of human capacity and am looking in from the outside.

So when I notice him huddled underneath the trunk of our parked car (all the dogs are always masculine in my head and my stories -- an interference from another language, but one that I don't care to correct), he is not just a dog, taking shelter from the stubbornly sweltering May sun. He is a visitor, a sign, a spirit, and I welcome him with good thoughts and a good smile. We are about half way up the Rtanj Mountain, where we always stop at the same motel for refreshments, on the way to my mother's native town further south-east, where centuries ago Romans built settlements at the eastern edges of their crumbling empire (and where one summer my brother and our cousin found a Roman coin, slightly bent, lying in a field of corn). At the Rtanj Motel, we usually have a hefty wedge of filo-pastry cheese pie with crunchy-brown outer layers and thick yogurt served in heavy wooden mugs with nicely curved handles. Someone always orders coffee, served with an icing-sugar-covered rectangle of rubbery Turkish delight, which is always, by some ancient unwritten laws, relegated to me as a treat. Depending on the time of year, we often find one or two swallow's nests built from caked mud and dried straws underneath the supporting beams of the outside terrace where we usually sit, with the swallow couple flitting in and out, worms dangling from their beaks.

This time the nest is empty and quiet, but then there's the unknown little dog underneath the car in the parking lot. I approach him carefully, and crouch down, speaking to him in some language I seem to use only for animals. That's when I notice that something is wrong with him. That vulnerable receptiveness I am temporarily inhabiting in a superhuman largeness created by my visit immediately ruffles up, ears pricked, antennas sent out tentatively, listening. Despite the bright and warm spring day with no wind descending from the mountain in front of us, there is a movement, an undercurrent, a whiff of something troubling, and it makes itself known when I realize the dog is affected by uncontrollable twitching of both legs on the left side. He's wagging his dusty tail and pushing his muzzle towards my outstretched hand, gently approaching my fingertips so I feel his moist breath, but he doesn't actually touch my hand. All the while, though, his left legs are twitching in short jerky motions which he doesn't seem to pay much attention to. Caught on the spot, I am disarmed by this suffering which the animal seems to be taking as its given lot (what else, really?); I search through our leftover food and give him a few pieces of a sandwich -- he eats a little, but leaves most of it. Then it's time to go; for some reason, I try to explain this to him, while he keeps wagging his tail. I run to the washroom at the back where something strange happens: as I am half-crouching above the toilet seat, all of a sudden I realize that I have somehow miscalculated the angle at which I should position myself above the toilet and that I am partly peeing on my pants. The moment I feel one strand of the flow trickling down the inside of my thigh, it is too late and I have to wait until I'm finished to assess the damage. Quite extensive, as it turns out; so much so that I need to change my underwear and my jeans -- awkwardly -- in the back of the car. When I'm done, I'm still a little confused by the accident and begin to wonder distantly if it maybe means something.

When I come back to the parking lot, the dog has left its spot underneath the car and has stationed himself a little to the side, as if he knows we are leaving. By now the day and the landscape have been tainted by that unarticulated something, a menace, a vague foreboding, and I am sensing heaviness in everything. I am not "giving up" this dog by any stretch of imagination -- he would first have to be mine, in order for me to give him up -- but it feels like I am. It feels like this dog is all the innocence and suffering and unrewarded goodness that I was lucky enough to run into, and I am leaving him behind.

Later, when we have arrived at my grandparents' house where my mother is waiting for us, I try to tell her about the dog as we are sitting in the sun-bathed yard, next to my grandparents' small vegetable patch, which they can't keep up on their own any more (just like they can't have chickens or a goat any more, and the shed is now full of cut wood instead). "Don't -- I don't want to know things like that. Please," my mother says in a voice which indicates she means it, and looks away, preventing any possibility of further discussion. Protecting her weak spot for animals, she thus leaves me on my own with the thought of the sick dog and the sinking feeling about that whole day, the feeling which settles in and refuses to leave me during the entire visit. As it soon turns out, this is my last summer with my mother, and in retrospect, the burden of that day marks already the beginning of that end.

Ablutions

With 50 square allergens glued to my back
("We'll get to the bottom of this," said Dr. Pehr,
"Just keep it dry for 48 hours"),
I have no choice but to lean over the bathtub
And detach the shower, to wash my hair.

Then something happens.

When the first cautious stream of water grazes

Against the base of my neck (I'm testing the heat),

Then in stronger rivulets flows down my skull,

Massages my temples as I angle my head

And feel my hair weighing down, heavy and wet,

Something unsnaps inside and lets loose a flood,

A deluge of tingling turbulences

Travelling up and down the spine and time,

To when I used plastic jugs to pour water

(Heated on wood stove) over my head during black-outs,

And further still, to a long yellow plastic tub

With a longitudinal crack near the rim

Where I was immersed and bathed by soft hands,

And then even, across centuries of wells,

Buckets and basins, to those primal dawns

When I was crouching by the cold limpid water,

Waiting for fish; washing my hands in the river.

My Fourth Day in Canada

The first three were special too. I flew into Montreal on a plump British Airways plane -- my first crossing of the Atlantic -- and fancied that I could sense the different "feel" of a non-European continent while still in the air. What vexed me enormously was the impossibility of seeing what it all looked like from up there: I was squeezed in between about 5 people on each side and hopelessly far from any window. The captain announced the commencement of the landing at Montreal's Trudeau airport, I could feel the beginning of the drop in altitude, while the lucky ones in window seats glued their noses to the panes, craned their necks, and opened their eyes wide (or so it seemed to me) at the sight of what later I learned was the broad, lazy rolling of the St-Lawrence river, with white fumes of a big city billowing up here and there. Then things went fast: my friend met me, hosted me for the next three days, making my transition smoother (it's a fine line between exhilaration and alienation when you are in a new place, and the presence of friendly guides can make all the difference), and I felt instantly this was a place I could live in comfortably.The only thing was: I wasn't staying in Montreal. It was really just a stopover on my way to Halifax, in Nova Scotia, on the very eastern edge of the Canadian part of the continent.

That fourth day, though -- the day I travelled from Montreal to Halifax by train, with all my luggage (good for one year, as I believed at the time) and hopes and dreams -- was more than special. It was extreme, eccentric, and unreal, all at the same time. After the seemingly interminable 20-hour train ride through hundreds and hundreds of miles of thin and scraggly pine trees, we finally stopped at the Halifax train station because the train tracks reached the brink of the ocean and there was nowhere further to go. ("Where have I come?" I remember thinking, somewhat bemused; thinking, "I've really gone far this time."). At the station, as agreed months before via email, a senior graduate student from Dalhousie University's English Department -- where I was about to start a master's programme -- was supposed to meet me and help me get to the student residence. Kathy Mac was a short bouncy person, slightly cross-eyed, with straight bangs on a low forehead and a lovely jovial personality. She offered me a wide welcome, and loaded me and my bags into an SUV-type of a car, where the fresh, salty scent of the outside air was replaced by the stale smell of wet dog fur. "It smells of dogs in here," she said apologetically, not for a moment losing her smile. "I'm a hunderfräulein," she added, by way of explanation. "A what?" I asked politely, my flimsy knowledge of linguistics providing only a vague idea of what that word could mean (dog + girl?). "I take care of dogs!" she said in her bubbly way, "I take them for walks, I watch them, I help train them -- in return for board and food. And not just for anyone," she gave me a small side glance of triumph. "For Elisabeth Mann - the youngest daughter of Thomas Mann!"

Of course I knew who Thomas Mann was, although by that point I hadn't actually read any of his books (two flitting memories I didn't mention to Kathy: one, of my aunt's collection of Mann's major novels, in grayish plastic covers, in her Belgrade apartment where during one summer visit I briefly contemplated reading Buddenbrooks but the comfortable laziness of motionless hot days got the better of that idea; and the other, of Dirk Bogarde in the movie adaptation of Death in Venice; funny, when I saw the film, I found Bogarde handsome). But I knew nothing about Mann's personal life, and had no idea he had a daughter who was alive and living in Halifax. Kathy explained Elisabeth Mann used to work at Dalhousie's Ocean Institute, and now lived just outside of the city -- in a small place called Sambro Head -- where she wrote and trained dogs as a hobby.

In a state of a permanent low-excitement buzz -- no doubt, the consequence of the last few days' fireworks of novelty in my life -- I was trying to listen to her carefully, and at the same time pay attention to the streets and houses we were passing by, eager to form the first idea of the city I was going to live in for a year (seven, but I had no way of knowing that then). Trees everywhere and a sunny August afternoon gave me a little boost of hope that I would like Halifax, but this was cut short when we reached the student residence. Part of King's College, a serious-looking gray stone formal building affiliated with Dalhousie University, the dorm was impersonal, prison-like, oppressive. My narrow room was the size of a pantry, with a small bed and a wooden plank along the wall which served as a desk -- both looking sad and naked. One inadequate window. Suddenly the late afternoon inched into an early evening, and everything grew darker. A lump forming in my throat (globus hystericus), I was trying not to think of Cambridge, where two years before I spent a year, which had clearly influenced my expectations. Neatly trimmed lawns (where we played lacrosse and ate strawberries), a pond in the recesses of the wild-flowers garden (where once I let a friend down by refusing to swim in March), big airy rooms with tall windows looking onto an alley of chestnut trees (where occasionally a car would drive up to make deliveries), a concert piano in the common room, next door to the dining-room (where we were served by the personnel wearing white gloves). I hated myself for remembering but couldn't stop remembering in the gathering shadows of the evening in my tiny room. (On some deeper, unarticulated levels of my mind, the memory branched into a light feeling of shame, for being somewhat of a snob at that moment, feeling disappointed by something given to me gratuitously -- I was on a scholarship). I kept reminding myself that I was only going to be there for a week, and then move to a smaller and hopefully more personalized residence house -- but who could tell what that would look like. I suddenly also realized I knew no one here -- not a single person -- other than Kathy whom I'd just met.

Kathy saw all this on my face but made no comment as she was helping me pile up my bags on the side of the bed since there was no real storage room. When we were done, she said, "Listen, it's getting late and you don't know the town -- why don't you come to Sambro Head and have dinner with Elisabeth and me? I'll drive you back afterwards." I was indeed looking for straws, and clutched at this one thankfully.

The ride along the ocean was enchanting. The sky was gradually assuming a deep indigo-blue colour, with pearl-like stars lighting up here and there; the coast-line was craggy, with numerous little bays and coves, whose shapes and lines I made out in the darkness of the air which was met by a different, moving darkness of the water. Never by the ocean before, I sensed its vastness and dormant power; much bulkier and more somber than the shimmering turquoise or azure Adriatic Sea of my childhood summers.

Elisabeth Mann's house was right on the ocean: a typical Maritime, non-brick house, perched on some vast rocks protruding into the water. I don't remember the initial introductions when we entered the house; I do remember that she wasn't much of a talker and that, despite the fact that she was only 20 when she left Germany with her family and had been living for decades in North America, she still had vestiges of the German accent in her English. I also remember her boyish hair-cut. They showed me around the house, whose centerpiece was her study: a room with a full row of floor-to-ceiling windows, overlooking the ocean, where Elisabeth could sit and contemplate marine life that she was so passionate about. But the highlight of that evening, of course, was the spectacle they mounted in my honour, just before dinner.

"And now," said Elisabeth, pointing to the two young English Setters that had been following us through the house, their long ears flapping left and right, "they will perform for you.""Oh, thank you," I said, grateful but at the same time befuddled, "and what is it that they are going to do?" "They will play the piano, of course!" Of course, I thought, but didn't say; who hasn't heard of dog pianists, anyway? The two long-limbed puppies must have gotten wind of what was coming from our looks and our tone of voice so they suddenly became even friskier, as if they couldn't wait to show off their skills, and something of their unbounded excitement spread and enveloped our whole group with a puff of magic that followed us as we descended the stairs. I imagined the distant blare of jovial trumpets and the multicolored rain of improvised confetti and immediately the evening took on a distinct carnivalesque flare.

In a small room on the ground floor, Elisabeth uncovered a keyboard lying low on the ground, with unusually broad keys -- it was made specially for this purpose, I was told. The two puppies took their positions side by side in front of the "piano" and grew almost solemn, waiting for the signal to start. They kept glancing at the bowl, covered with plastic wrap, which Elisabeth held in her hand, but knew they'd have to work hard to get their reward. And so it began, this concert. She sang a note and held it, looking at the dogs with a smile on her face and in her eyes, slightly bent towards them. The puppy on the left looked anxiously at the board, then tentatively touched a white key with a clumsy paw, making only a faint sound; Elisabeth shook her head, still holding the note. Then the puppy seemed to have a sudden rush of illumination and pressed another key with more certainty, getting it right this time. She praised him loudly -- he a bundle of eagerness and energy, hardly keeping his place -- then peeled the plastic off the bowl and gave him a hefty chunk of blood-red raw meat which he devoured in a gulp. This went on for a while, first with one then with the other puppy, and whenever they got it right, they got squares of meat, while Kathy and I applauded and cheered. There was no actual melody they produced -- or none, at least, that I could recognize. But it didn't seem to matter: something was clearly (?) accomplished, something worthy and momentous, at least as far as Elisabeth and the dogs were concerned. When I gave up trying to mentally piece together the isolated and chopped up notes which the black and white paws were producing (with a regular spattering of falsch ones in between), I took it all in with amusement: here I was, sitting down in Elisabeth Mann's house, listening to the doggy concerto on the brink of the Atlantic Ocean, in what felt like another life, galaxies away from Belgrade and the daily preoccupations of a country going to the dogs (no pun intended), where I was only 4 days before.

The concert didn't last long -- the puppies were making more and more falsch notes (perhaps they had had enough of their treats and ceased to be as attentive) -- so we covered the doggy piano and went to the dining-table to have dinner. The mood was sparkly and slightly comic in the wake of the canine spectacle; the dogs, in fact, continued to entertain us -- while we ate and chatted, they were busy chasing their shadows on the wall, eternally enthusiastic.

Later in the car while Kathy was driving me back, I didn't find any traces of the despondency I had felt a few hours before, despite the fact that she would be delivering me into the same prison-like room at the dorm. The world had opened up in the meantime and displayed an unsuspected compartment (with a hunderfräulein, an old lady, and two dogs in it), and it somehow shifted everything else. In the pleasant silence of the ride back, I reviewed the events of the day -- my fourth in Canada -- and figured that it made for a promising start.

E. M.

Summer Love

Nothing has ever come close to the epitome of love and devotion I saw from our third-floor balcony one summer in Bosnia.

Summers were hot in Banja Luka. Or maybe they seemed hot because I was a child and summers were supposed to be hot. But on the hottest days, even the toughest kids from the concrete highrise blocks where we lived stayed away from the mid-afternoon sun hitting mercilessly in vertical rays everything on the ground and bringing scorched grass and softening concrete to the brink of white heat, wavering in a haze just above the ground. On days like those, neighbourhood kids would stay in the deep shade of the entrances to their apartment buildings (the entrances to the highrises, which offered a reasonable, sheltered spot for hanging out, rain or shine, were important identification codes: everyone was from a certain entrance, labelled by street name and number; there were literally dozens of "entrances" in our sprawling "new" neighbourhood, built at the height of the socialist-realist architectural enthusiasm for collective concrete ant hills). Free from school for the eternity of two or three months, the kids switched to some other, "life-as-it-should-always-be" reality, which was full of free time and unencumbered by any schedules, homework, or rules despite the fact that the school building was where it always was, right in the middle of our neighbourhood, visible to everyone all the time. In the summer, though, it turned into an anonymous building, dormant, and negligible, not worthy of anyone's attention, interesting only because of the playgrounds it offered, where interminable soccer matches went on all the time. On the killer hot days, though, even these matches were suspended until the early evening, and if you looked down from your balcony in mid-afternoon, you'd see literally no one and nothing around except the wilting brownish grass in the open areas between the buildings.

That summer, I must have been visiting -- I was already "grown up" and not one of the kids in the neigbourhood any more since I had moved out to study in another city. Once back here, though, I'd slip right into the old familiar groove that growing up in any one place etches unnoticeably in how you move your limbs or breathe in the air when in that place. Surveying the world from that balcony when the direct glare of the sun slid behind to the other side of the apartment building always felt right; objects, trees, even (and particularly) some permanently parked cars were exactly where they should be. The elephantine thick chimney of Incel, the paper factory, was right in front at a certain distance and visible between two zig-zagged rows of more apartment buildings (where surely someone was on a balcony, facing my way); to the right behind the school-building and beyond the green river invisible from here, the slopes of soft, wide-curved hills rose gently, with clusters of red-roofed houses -- western suburbs of Banja Luka. My elbows propped against the handrail (often decorated by the dried-out white droppings of local pigeons, and equally often scrubbed by my mother, who fed the birds at the same time), I took an eyeful of all this, exhaled, and saw them.

They were directly below, on the asphalt footpath going towards and then all around the school building. He was 11, maybe 12; she was about 7 and had a pink bike without training wheels. In her open-toe sandals, she was pedalling cautiously, fully concentrated on the ground in front of her. He was of a small build, one of those lean, sinewy boys who would be a soccer wizard in a couple of years. He was barefoot and was jogging right next to her back wheel, his hand levitating lightly just above the end part of the seat, ready to steady and balance her when she started keeling over to one side. The trouser-legs of his baggy tracksuit rolled up unevenly due to the heat, he was jogging silently on his dusty feet, straightening her up every now and then. They went towards the school yard, then up to the small (and currently deserted) fruit and vegetable market place (where probably even the fat, heavy flies dozed off at the moment), getting smaller and smaller in the distance, then turned and came all the way back on the other side, only to start again. And all the while she sat rigidly upright, sweating from the balancing exercise, and determined to get it with a sweet stubbornness only little girls can have, with him jogging steadfastly, never turning his gaze away from the bike, and never falling behind, his face (which I could only see when they were passing right underneath the balcony) watchful and untired.

They circled and circled, alone in the white heat, safe in their small empire of trust and protection, not bothered by anything. And even when the relative shade of my balcony began to give way to relentless forays of stiflingly hot air, I stayed there, glued to the handrail, following their circular trajectory with almost imperceptible beats I kept with my nodding head. It's not every day you're witness to such a gratuitous, pulsating rhythm of love. And it's not every day you take a mental snapshot that will last you a lifetime.


Settlement "Borik" in Banja Luka, being built in the 1970s