SOS! Oh, Iâm sorry. Iâm useless ⦠Iâm really not up to this!â
Delicately, I picked up the little one and took it back to the house, placing it among its brothers and sisters, who didnât stir at all despite this slight, unprecedented ruckus. The mother took no exception. She followed me with her eyes, attentive and benevolent. When everything was back as it should be she looked at me for a long time, her head raised. Then, a little hesitantly, she held out to me her right front paw. I crouched down to her level, face to face. I grasped her tenderly extended paw. She licked my face; then she went towards the entrance to the cardboard house. She turned around once before climbing over the little wall. At last she carefully lay down among the puppies. I said to her, âIâm going back to bed. See you soon, Mélodie.â Her big black eyes, quite round and always a little moist, crinkled shut just as I said this, as if to give me her assent. She was soothed, reassured, calm, so calm in fact that she gave the impression she was greeting the light of dawn, which was filtering in through the fanlight.
It was from this event that seemed to date a certain intensification of the bond of affection by which the two beings, the two animals, one human, the other non-human, were already quite singularly attached to each other.
Having returned to bed I didnât go back to sleep. Again I saw the female dog-wolf howling desperately, the young mother, inexperienced and distraught, who dared not snatchup her lost little deserter to return it to the space of maternal protection. Again I saw all the nerves of her slender body, which she held against me, taut, to shackle me in the close embrace of her two front legs. Again I saw her white paw hovering in the air in search of a sympathetic hand. Again I saw all the confusion and distress she showed faced with her own powerlessness in a situation beyond her control. Again, finally, I saw utter serenity returning to the mother, who, by casting her conspiratorial gaze upon me, would recover her offspring. Plaintive cries, howling jaw, unhealthily panting breath, eyes winking and blinking, ears suddenly pricking up, tail lowered and fearfully tucked between the two back legs, a distinctly perceptible quivering of the whole body: all of these in fact constituted so many signs she made for my benefit with the firm intention of engaging me, reaching me, touching me. Something, I knew, had passed between us when, in the first light of day, on moving away, I caught sight of her body stretched out in a state of complete relaxation and carefree surrender, together with
all
of her puppies, now reunited.
When they left the house a few weeks later to live their life beneath other skies, a new era began for both of us: she wanted to be right next to me as often as she could, as long as there was no one in the family who was suffering physically or mentally. Often she would even end up clinging to my legs or my arms, pressing firmly against me as if she found it unbearable for there to be a gap of a fraction of an inch between our bodies. Her shadow merged with mine. The warmth of her belly warmed my perpetually cold feet. Her deep sighs reverberated in my ears. Her warm breath suffusedmy lungs. Her regular breathing kept time with my heartbeat. We had become inseparable, close, very close, closer than close, to each other.
14
VOMITING
MÃLODIE HAD A number of places of her own in the apartment. In the dining room, right next to the big oval table, she had her bed where she could go to at any time to sleep, to listen to us talking at the table or to have the fur on her paws, her claws and her dew-claws cut. When Michèle said âCome on, weâre going to the hairdresser!â she went, quite naturally, although anxious and trembling a little, and placed herself on her futon, which was stuffed with little bits of wood that smelt good. It was really her home
Delicately, I picked up the little one and took it back to the house, placing it among its brothers and sisters, who didnât stir at all despite this slight, unprecedented ruckus. The mother took no exception. She followed me with her eyes, attentive and benevolent. When everything was back as it should be she looked at me for a long time, her head raised. Then, a little hesitantly, she held out to me her right front paw. I crouched down to her level, face to face. I grasped her tenderly extended paw. She licked my face; then she went towards the entrance to the cardboard house. She turned around once before climbing over the little wall. At last she carefully lay down among the puppies. I said to her, âIâm going back to bed. See you soon, Mélodie.â Her big black eyes, quite round and always a little moist, crinkled shut just as I said this, as if to give me her assent. She was soothed, reassured, calm, so calm in fact that she gave the impression she was greeting the light of dawn, which was filtering in through the fanlight.
It was from this event that seemed to date a certain intensification of the bond of affection by which the two beings, the two animals, one human, the other non-human, were already quite singularly attached to each other.
Having returned to bed I didnât go back to sleep. Again I saw the female dog-wolf howling desperately, the young mother, inexperienced and distraught, who dared not snatchup her lost little deserter to return it to the space of maternal protection. Again I saw all the nerves of her slender body, which she held against me, taut, to shackle me in the close embrace of her two front legs. Again I saw her white paw hovering in the air in search of a sympathetic hand. Again I saw all the confusion and distress she showed faced with her own powerlessness in a situation beyond her control. Again, finally, I saw utter serenity returning to the mother, who, by casting her conspiratorial gaze upon me, would recover her offspring. Plaintive cries, howling jaw, unhealthily panting breath, eyes winking and blinking, ears suddenly pricking up, tail lowered and fearfully tucked between the two back legs, a distinctly perceptible quivering of the whole body: all of these in fact constituted so many signs she made for my benefit with the firm intention of engaging me, reaching me, touching me. Something, I knew, had passed between us when, in the first light of day, on moving away, I caught sight of her body stretched out in a state of complete relaxation and carefree surrender, together with
all
of her puppies, now reunited.
When they left the house a few weeks later to live their life beneath other skies, a new era began for both of us: she wanted to be right next to me as often as she could, as long as there was no one in the family who was suffering physically or mentally. Often she would even end up clinging to my legs or my arms, pressing firmly against me as if she found it unbearable for there to be a gap of a fraction of an inch between our bodies. Her shadow merged with mine. The warmth of her belly warmed my perpetually cold feet. Her deep sighs reverberated in my ears. Her warm breath suffusedmy lungs. Her regular breathing kept time with my heartbeat. We had become inseparable, close, very close, closer than close, to each other.
14
VOMITING
MÃLODIE HAD A number of places of her own in the apartment. In the dining room, right next to the big oval table, she had her bed where she could go to at any time to sleep, to listen to us talking at the table or to have the fur on her paws, her claws and her dew-claws cut. When Michèle said âCome on, weâre going to the hairdresser!â she went, quite naturally, although anxious and trembling a little, and placed herself on her futon, which was stuffed with little bits of wood that smelt good. It was really her home
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