The Dog (3 page)

was like a smooth bluish film extending into the distance,

farther than he could see. His paws took him running. Out

on the smooth surface his body grew light. He fell into a

rapid, rhythmic stride and, after a while, a sprint. He was

running for no reason, towards nothing. The moonlight and

the cold and the speed made his body sing. There was no

limit, no forest, no shore. On its own his body ran in loops,

making a long, flat figure of eight on the bright surface. He

didn't stop. His pace slowed by itself; the loops became

smaller. Finally he was back at a lope, which was when he

felt the pain in his paws. He stopped and licked them. There

was a salty taste he didn't recognise. The saltiness left a powerful

scent in the snow.

The speed and the running of a moment ago were forgotten.

He crossed the ice, following the sharp scent of fox.

Sometimes there was another smell, dense, heavy and

oppressive. It awakened memories but he had nothing to

attach them to. He circled the holes drilled in the ice, sniffing

around, pawing at the crust. He found wads of snuff and

orange peel. His nose poked at them just as his memory did.

When they were in his mouth he snorted, and the strong,

nasty smell made him drop them again. Eventually he found

a little burbot by a hole. It was frozen stiff but when his teeth

sank into its back he tasted fish. He gobbled it up without

even spitting out the head, licking his paws thoroughly afterwards.

He

wanted to get back to shore but his own tracks went

in so many different directions he was unable to follow them.

They just led in circles on the ice. After a while he looked

up, then headed straight for the rocks at the shoreline.

Halfway there he thought he saw something crouching,

lurking among the boulders, watching him. He turned off in

a different direction. Once he was a bit farther away the

lurking body disappeared, became a rock among the other

rocks.

The moon was setting as he made his way back to the

wooded area above the marsh. It was dark among the spruces

and the snow wouldn't support his weight. Time after time

he sank through until he finally curled up by a root, licking

the salty tang of blood from his paws. The woods were just

coming to life as he fell asleep. At dawn one bird after

another warbled tentatively in the dense, moist air. But he

was sleeping.

The meltwater made the forest hum. It gurgled under the

snow. His paws sank into the slush. His belly was wet most of the time, and as soon as he had pulled himself up on a

stump or found shelter by a fallen tree he would lick himself

until his belly and paws were dry. The singing of the birds

and the dripping of the water filled his ears. The bright light

from above caught in his eyes and made him drowsy.

Sometimes he tried lying on his side and sleeping in the sun,

but he couldn't. The wetness always overtook him.

He was hungry. That night, after running on the ice, he

had looked for his food spot at the edge of the marsh, but

hadn't found it. By morning, after he had slept fitfully against

a rock or the trunk of a spruce tree, the clear memory of the

food spot had faded. Now all that was left was apprehension

and hunger. He was nothing but an aching belly and plodding

paws in the slushy snow. He had to lift his legs high to

make any progress at all. The woods were full of clear scents

and voices but he couldn't catch things that moved. He

found frozen lingonberries in the melting snow by tree

stumps.

In his sleep during the long, light mornings when the

surge swelled in the forest, a sound reached him that he'd

never heard before. It was a burbling like the murmur of

rising water. He raised his head and listened, but fell asleep

again when the waves of sound receded. One morning

when he awakened the sound was so close he could discern

voices in the murmuring. He stood up and started walking

cautiously, his legs stiff with cold. There were rays of sunlight

between the trunks of the spruces on the slope. He avoided

it because of the glare. The gurgling song was now very

close by. He could hear individual voices rising and falling.

One disappeared and another bubbled up, rang in his ears for

a long time and vanished into the murmuring. In front of

him was a little tarn, glimmering white with untouched

snow.

Now the sun had risen above the spruce-covered slope.

The surface of the tarn blinded him. But he could still see

dark shadows moving down by the shore. When he started

running he could hear a bird take flight and at once the rippling

song went silent. For quite a while he nosed around on

the ice, following the fresh scent. The only thing he found

was a feather, a black curved feather from the tail fan of a

large black grouse cock.

He roamed and he slept. In the early morning he was

awakened again by the same song filling the forest. This time

he crept more stealthily, keeping his belly to the snow when

he paused to listen. It was murky and grey under the spruces.

But he saw two round shadowy bodies pull apart, dancing

towards each other and away again at the edge of the marsh.

It was as if they had arisen from the very murmur of

voices and become solid and black. They were running with

outspread wings, dragging their tails. He could hear them

burble and gurgle. A bit farther away he could see more of them. The whole area was alive and moving, full of circling

black bodies. The song rose and fell with their movements

against the snow. He lay near them until the sun was in his

eyes and the glare off their white tail feathers was blinding.

He pounced, but only half-heartedly. The grouse cocks flew

up. Heavy bodies with noisily flapping wings went off in so

many directions his eyes couldn't follow a single one. He

never saw the hens. They had scurried off into the reeds. He

only heard their terrified cackling. As soon as the grouse had

flown off he started scratching his ear.

Slushy water and sour lingonberries. Feathers in the moss,

straggly, odourless. Nothing but water in his aching stomach,

wet paws in the marsh. Push on, push on, slow and soggy.

Chew on feathers, suck on bones. Water dripping on nose,

stinging eyes and aching belly. Traipse and trudge. Crouch

with belly to the snow. Push on with nose to the ground.

Odourless water. Meltwater. Hungerwater.

The moon creeps up on the forest. The night is not silent.

It purls and ripples, it twitters and rusdes. Up, keep going across

the patchy ground. Body uneasy, forest uneasy. Patches of

moonlight and snow, patches of shadow and dark marshland.

Sharp branches, paws and claws. Crouching stumps with

furry backs and ears. Sleeping boulders. Fall asleep on damp

lichen, frozen stiff and dizzy. Spots before the eyes. Hunger

pangs and dull fear. Sleep it off. Sleep in the sun. Suck the

warm teats. Doze off. Suck. Suck the warmth.

He came to a spot he recognised. It wasn't just one of the

countless places where he caught a whiff of the restless phantom

that was everywhere, his own scent. The silhouette of

the grey building was familiar. He walked up to it, discovering

the smell of his own urine on the wood of the door.

The barn door had rotted off its hinges and stood leaning

against the entrance, forming an opening that was wider

towards the bottom. He sniffed at it for a long time before he

dared wriggle through. An unfamiliar smell, sharp and concentrated,

bewildered him. Once inside he could see almost

nothing. When he sniffed at the rough floorboards the dust

made him sneeze. Something was hanging on the wall and he

started chewing. It was stiff but his saliva softened it and the

taste filled his mouth. He pulled off a piece and swallowed it,

but that only made his bellyache worse. When he knocked

over a rusty bucket he panicked at the clatter, dropped the

halter, ran to the entrance and wriggled out.

A short distance away the fear let up. He lay by a spruce,

staring at the building. It was still familiar, beating like his

own heart, a sickening pounding that pitched him between

terror and reassurance. At dusk the building seemed larger.

In the constant murmur of water all around him he heard

things that weren't there: people's voices. His memory singled

out strands in the weave of sounds that could have been

voices. But they weren't. The murmuring continued but no

one emerged from the ramshackle building. He withdrew,

dejected, curling up against a windfallen tree with its dry,

compressed mass of soil and roots rising towards the sky.

At dawn the crows awakened him. They were circling

above the marsh, telling him the same thing they told each

other: food! With a couple of bounds he was there and they

immediately flew up. Now he was the one who frightened

them. He stood over the food on long legs, tugging at the

rotting, shaggy flank.

Everything here was familiar. He was back at his marsh.

The moose carcass was still there, though all that was left was

a decomposing hide over some ribs and a few scattered

bones. He didn't find much nourishment but plenty of unfamiliar

scents, trails that went in circles, and droppings. He

marked the tree trunks with a few drops here and there and

then lay down on the slope, gnawing greedily at a thighbone

that still had a few sinews. His mouth was bleeding. His incisors

were loose and the gums tender where new teeth were

breaking through. His permanent front teeth had already

come in.

At first hunger is a spur, making legs grow long and forcing

nose to the ground. Then it becomes a whip, lashing out at

sensitive ears with sounds, striking through a deep sleep. It

releases scents that soon are lost. It gnaws and torments

from deep inside an aching cavity. The body, with matted

fur, legs that dash, claws that tear and scrape, is merely the

shape hunger assumes. There's nothing else inside. Only

hunger.

The porous snow melted away. The marsh water rose. The

top layer of ice on the lake was gone. His paws sank into

grey slush and he had to retreat to the rocky shore. One

night a storm blew in, awakening him from the numbness of

hunger. He tried to curl up again and sleep but was too

exposed. His ears were pressed back by the wailing wind. He

had to go and find a spot in the woods under a spruce. There

he lay, listening as the howling in the air snapped off

branches. At dawn the wind was still strong, and fallen twigs

and needles covered the snow under the trees. All smells had

vanished from the world.

In the morning he faced the wind, angling down to the

lake. Standing in the trees along the shore he was suddenly

afraid. Massive grey shapes rose up and broke on the rocks.

The churning waves boomed as they pounded against ice

and stones. He didn't recognise this roiling, crashing lake

with its black water and chunks of ice, and he retreated into

the forest.

Keep going, keep going.

That was the day he found a dead vole. Its belly was

swollen and it had yellow, protruding teeth. He turned it

over with his paw and nudged it with his nose. The

distended skin ruptured and a mess of liquid poured out. He

left it at the foot of a spruce, covering it with leaves and needles.

He roamed on, but for shorter and shorter stretches.

Hunger ruled him in a different way than before. It made

him dizzy and dazed. He longed for sleep, and if it hadn't

been for the moisture, the clammy, dripping water that

always soaked through the fur on his belly, he'd have slept for

eternity.

If you found warm eggs among tufts of grass you would look

around for birds. But if no one had told you where eggs

came from you would crack them open and eat them, and

when you were full you'd puzzle it out. You would look at

the sun and the shiny yolks inside the shells you'd crushed

and suppose the sun had laid them like roe in the grass and

was now warming them until they were ripe.

The dog found them but didn't wonder where they came

from, though he soon realised they had something to do

with the sharp cries of the birds. He ate with his muzzle

pressed into the grass, lapping the viscous whites with his

tongue, slowly and thoroughly licking up the yolks, licking

every blade of grass.

The last patch of snow on the marsh had vanished. In the

forest there were scruffy drifts with hard, almost transparent

crystals. The spruces had dropped their seeds and needles on

them; the wind had brought down lichen and twigs.

The marsh was suffused with water. It flooded, forming

two streams that ran down to the lake, murmuring and

singing among the stones. In the forest and on the marsh, at

the shore where birch and alder appeared in the opening

beyond the blanket of spruce, on the point down towards the