Barking Man (15 page)

Alf scalded his mouth on a gulp of tea.

“You two were close when you were children, I know that,” Hazel said. “He used to talk about that a lot.”

“That’s right,” Alf said. “But ever since we got to London he’s been acting like a goddamn microchip.”

“He’s really scared about it all sometimes,” Hazel said. “He’s afraid the whole balloon is going to pop. He says people used to worry when their assets were only on paper, but now they’re not even on
paper
anymore.”

Alf watched the bug walk over the edge of the table out of sight.

“He’s worried about you too, Alf,” she said. “He’s pretty upset about you, in fact.”

“He doesn’t think—”

“No, not that. Thank God, he never even thought of that … He knows you didn’t go to school, though. But he doesn’t know what to do about it.”

The bug reappeared in the vicinity of Alf’s tea mug. He turned the mug around and around and watched the amber liquid swirl.

“He’s worried maybe you’re going nuts,” Hazel said. “He doesn’t know how to handle that either. Alfie, you know he’d do anything for you, but what is it he can do?”

Alf reached over and snapped his finger at the bug, which rebounded from the Delft tile around the kitchen fireplace and fell down into the shadows below.

“He was crying, actually,” Hazel said.

“roorrrfff!” said Alf. “aaaarrhhhhwww
OOOOOORFFOOOOOOOOO
!!!”

“For God’s sake, will you stop that ridiculous barking,” Hazel said, and slammed her palms flat down against the table.

As he retreated further and further into the world of the canine, Alf’s sense of smell became increasingly acute, so that on the final day he was faintly apprehensive of disaster from the moment he got onto the lift. The aroma, at first indefinable, became more vivid and more complex as soon as he had entered the flat. Hanging over everything was the odor of neutralizer and the bright ammoniac smell of the perm fluid. Mingled with this was a whiff of Neddy’s after-shave and, most alarming of all, the smell of Hazel’s tears.

He went down the hall with his hackles rising. Hazel, barely recognizable by sight, sat at the kitchen table, weeping over a small square mirror. The inch or two of hair remaining to her had been strangled into tiny ringlets which resembled scrambled eggs. The balance of her face was wrecked and her features looked heavy and bovine. It appeared that she had been crying for a long time without even trying to wipe her face. Her eyes were ridged with stiff red veins and her tears were pooling on the mirror.

“Well, there’s no need for you to keep grieving so,” Neddy said a little crossly. He had stretched Hazel’s severed hair out on the table and was securing each end of it with a bit of black ribbon. “What if it
is
a little tight? It’ll relax in a day or so, you’ll see if it doesn’t …” He took a cloth tape from his pocket, measured the coil of hair and tucked it away in a leather bag. “And if you
really
decide you don’t fancy it, why, in just a few years you can grow it all back. So brace up, eh? There’s a duck …”

Alf dropped to all fours on the kitchen floor and bounced springily on all of his paws.

“Here now, Hazel, look who’s come,” Neddy said with a nervous titter. Hazel cried intently on, as if she were incapable of hearing.

“It’s your little brother who’s mad,” said Neddy.

“
rrrrrRRRRRR
,” said Alf. He bristled. His lips pulled back from his incisors.

“
Hazel
,” Neddy said. “Your brother’s off his bloody head—”

“
rrrrRRRRR
,” Alf said, and moved a little closer in, his hindquarters taut and trembling. Neddy took a long step backward into a complicated corner of the fireplace and the kitchen walls.

“Here now, Alf,” Neddy said. “Let’s be reasonable, old chum. There’s a good fellow, I mean,
keep away, you! Just you keep off
!” But Alf was no longer able to hear or understand his speech. In fact, he was aware of nothing at all but the vibrating fabric of Neddy’s trouser leg and the odor, texture and taste of the blood and meat inside.

“No,” the hypnotist said thoughtfully. “No, I do not think you can believe that you were justified. Undoubtedly what you did was very wrong. And it is true, as you have heard, that human bites are very dangerous …”

Limp in the deep dark chair, Alf commenced to twitch and whimper.

“However,” the hypnotist went on, “you will remember that it has all been satisfactorily resolved. The gentleman in question has accepted your brother’s settlement. Moreover, he has not been lamed or hurt in any permanent way. It is n
ot
true, and never was, that you have rabies. And so, though naturally you will regret your unwise action, you will feel no permanent guilt. You will forgive yourself for what you did. Indeed, you have already done so.”

Alf twitched again and faintly yipped a time or two.

“And now,” the hypnotist said, “and
now
, you are let off your leash. You have slipped your collar, Alfie, you are free. You are running away from the house and into the barnyard. You feel the soft damp grass of the lawn between your toes, you feel the dust and the little stones of the barnyard. When you have run into the hall of the barn, you pause and sniff—you smell the hay, you smell the grain … and something else too, another odor. Rats, Alfie!
rrrRRRATS
!”

“rirfff!” yelped Alf from the chair. His body tensed and then relaxed.

“You leave the barnyard,” the hypnotist said, “and you go into the field. You are capering among the hog huts, you run past the slow and lazy hogs until you reach that farthest fence. Feel the wire rub hard across your back as you squirm underneath. And now you have come through the screen of trees to reach the little pond. You are very warm from the sunshine and from running, and so you splash into the water, you feel the cool water soaking into your hot fur, and you look up and see how the little white duck you startled is flying far away in the blue sky.

“And now you are lying on the warm soft grass, Alfie, with your eyes closed and all four legs stretched out. Feel how the warm sun dries your fur, feel how the little breeze ruffles it. You doze, you are sleeping very deeply, yes. You dream.

“And now you are running into the forest, deeper and deeper into the trees. You see all the woodland sights, you hear all the woodland sounds, and you are in a very special world of
smells
, Alfie, which only you can understand and navigate. There are many, many smells, Alfie, but one of them is more important than all the rest. What is it, Alfie? What is that you smell? rrr …
rrrrrr
…”

Alf’s mouth came slightly open as he whined; he salivated on the leather of the chair.

“
rrrrrRRRRABBIT
!” said the hypnotist. “You
smell
the
rabbit
! You smell the rabbit
very
near! And now you
see
the rabbit! And now you
chase
the rabbit!”

Alf’s arms and legs began to pump in rhythmic running motions as his neck stretched out and out.

“And now you
catch
the rabbit in your jaws, you
bite
through the fur and skin into the tender flesh and the hot blood, you
crush
the rabbit’s little bones, and you swallow every part of it. And now, Alfie, now that you are satisfied, you rest. Rest now, Alf. You are sleeping very deeply now.

“And now you hear voices, Alfie, voices calling out your name from far away across the fields.
Alfie, Alfie
, they are calling. They are calling you to go home to your house, Alf, and you go. You will obey the calling voices, you are going now. On the back porch of your house you see your family waiting for you—your mother, your father, your elder brother Tom, your sister-in-law Hazel, she is there too. It is they who have been calling you, Alfie, because they need you to come home. They feed you your dinner, Alf, and when you have eaten, they pat your head and they rub your ears the way you love it so. They have prepared a soft mat near the warmth of the kitchen stove, Alf, where you stretch out and rest from your doggy, doggy day. You have no worries, Alf. You have no responsibilities at all … but still, something is missing. What is it, Alf? What is it that you lack?”

Alf shifted, coming more nearly upright in the chair. He trembled a little, but he didn’t bark. His hands settled on his knees and he assumed a posture of attention. The hypnotist leaned a little closer to him.

“
Dogs don’t love
,” the hypnotist whispered. “They haven’t got the capability. They
feel,
yes, but they don’t love.”

“That,” said Alf, “is a debatable point.”

“Perhaps,” the hypnotist said. “Possibly. But in your case … not worth debating, I shouldn’t think.”

Alf whined and pricked his ears, then let them lower.

“Come on, Alf,” the hypnotist said. “Come on, boy. Come on out. Are you coming, now?”

T
ON-TON
D
ETROIT CLIMBED
the steps to the small square castle which housed the Cocteau Museum, paused for a moment to look back at the rows of white boats floating in the harbor and ducked through the stone doorway onto the shelf that ran along the outside of the sea wall. The sounds of the town waking were abruptly cut off behind him and all he could hear now was the slow pull of the sea. The wall, something more than twice his height, seemed to decline very sharply as it ran west to the short round tower of the signal light that was its terminus. No one else was in sight. Ton-Ton Detroit walked about a third of the way down the pier, picking his way among the numerous twists of dog dung littered along the path. When he felt he had come to the right spot he stopped, unslung his bag and quickly peeled off his jeans. Naked now except for a blue undershirt that came just down to his navel, he stepped out onto the rocks of the breakwater and crouched to evacuate his bowels as quickly as seemed reasonable. While he was so occupied a twig-sized figure rounded the signal light and began to grow larger as it approached, towed along by a dog on a leash. Ton-Ton Detroit fired a powerful thought beam in that direction and the twig person obediently turned back and went out of sight on the other side of the wall. Ton-Ton Detroit sighed and got up and walked surely back over the rocks to the shelf, his long toes curling into cracks of the stones to confirm his balance. It was not his favorite part of the day, but business was slow so early in the season, and he had cut his trips to the public toilet by the harbor to one day a week: Friday, when he’d pay the six francs it cost to also take a shower.

Today was Wednesday. It had been a foggy night but the mist was lifting quickly now, and already he could see down the coast as far as the checkpoint at the Italian frontier. Above and beyond the border post, the mountains were still almost invisible, only a blue mass vaguely drifting in a lightening swirl of cloud. Ton-Ton Detroit groped into his bag and unfurled the long gold-striped dashiki, shrugged it over his head and then put on his sandals. He shoved the rolled jeans to the bottom of the bag and began to take out his samples and string them all over himself: the belts, the bone bracelets and bead necklaces, the snakeskin clutch purses and a couple of the headphone radios. As the final touch he fit one of the radios over his ears and raised both antennae as far as they would go. By the time he was ready, the shapes of the mountains had begun to appear more distinctly out of the dissolving cloud, a jagged pale violet line marking the nearest peaks. Ton-Ton Detroit hitched on his bag and walked back toward the small squat castle at the near end of the sea wall, his eye bent on the ocean. It was low tide and the water was nearly flat, shimmering just slightly with tiny pricks of light. With the sun angled across it so low, the sea was bright and colorless as a crinkled sheet of aluminum. The Kamikaze Club boat, on its way to drop scuba divers at various points east along the coast, cut a neat white line across the water. The boat was too far out for Ton-Ton Detroit to hear the engine, and the ocean made only the faintest sucking sound as it dragged at the bottom of the rocks.

He walked down the stairs inside the wall to the harbor parking and stopped at the bottom long enough to light a Gauloise Blonde. Fuming blue smoke, he climbed the short grade up from the parking and came out at the end of the Promenade du Soleil, the long concrete walk which swept along the gentle curve of the coast all the way to Cap Martin. Below, the diehard sunbathers had already begun to spread themselves out on the pebbled beach, though it was very early still. A light easterly breeze brought him a whiff of suntan oil. Ton-Ton Detroit reached up to his right ear and flicked the radio on. It was already tuned to
France Culture
; he couldn’t bear French pop music. Time for the science program. Ton-Ton Detroit’s eyes sank half shut and his mouth softened into a sort of smile. He thumbed the dial so the voices fell to a mellifluous mumble in his ear, blending with his own pitch as he began to move out across the beach: “
Regardez
… Regardez, messieurs, mesdames … C’est pas cher
…

Clayton Powell Simpson, commonly known as Clay, had somehow managed to be dead asleep when the bus pulled into the Gare Routière. Even though the trip from Monaco was short and the road was full of sudden twists and lurches, he didn’t wake up until the driver kicked the sole of his shoe and bent down toward him, jabbering something way too fast for him to make it out.

“Say what?” Clay said, blinking back sleep. “
Comment
?”

“
Fin du chemin
,” the driver said. “
C’est termin
é
.”

Clay had heard that last phrase often enough in restaurants to comprehend that he must have come to the end of the line. He went a few paces away from the bus and stopped to try to slap some of the wrinkles out of his tan poplin suit. Not much of a bus station going here, just the parking lot, a kiosk and a glass-walled information booth. Not even any lockers, which you might take to mean it was just as well he didn’t have his suitcase anymore, if you wanted to look on the bright side. In front of him and on either side, there were hills climbing almost straight up. Some buildings were up there, with roads winding up among them, but it didn’t look like the most promising way to go. He turned around, squinting into the sun, and automatically glanced at the place on his wrist where his watch should have been, but it was still gone. Didn’t matter so much anyhow; there was no place he had to be at any certain time.