The Dogs of Babel (4 page)

When she stepped forward then, my Lexy, and I turned finally to look at her for the first time that day—she was pulling the dog off me and apologizing, chiding Lorelei in low tones as she maneuvered her into the house and shut her inside—I felt nothing of the rapt nervousness, the deep-bone stage fright, I had felt on all the other first dates of my life. Lexy had kept our plans for the evening deliberately vague, which had left me with some uneasiness, an unfamiliar tilting feeling of not knowing where I might end up, but now as I watched her negotiate all of the everyday hubbub of calming the dog, putting on a jacket, locking the door, I knew that somehow, without even realizing it, I had made the decision to follow her wherever she wanted to take me.

“Hi,” she said, turning to face me and relaxing into a smile. “I’m sorry about Lorelei. She’s really a sweetie, but sometimes it’s hard to tell.”

“Oh, I could tell,” I said.

She looked lovely. She was wearing a kind of silky black T-shirt and a long slim skirt, and she had pulled her hair back from her face. In the week since we had met, it seemed as if I had spent my time doing nothing else but conjuring her image in my mind, but I saw now that I had remembered everything wrong. I saw now that the brown of her eyes was lightened with flecks of amber and that the heart-shape of her face was more round than angular. I saw the complex layering of pale gold and dark honey in her hair and the rose-flush of her skin. I saw now that she was beautiful.

“So,” I said as we walked toward my car, “where are we going?”

“Well,” she said, sounding rather apologetic, “I’m afraid the first thing we have to do is go to a wedding.”

“A wedding.” I did my best to quell rising panic. Socializing with strangers is not something I do well, as anyone I know will tell you.

She went on in a rush. “I know that’s a really weird first-date activity, but they’re clients of mine and I promised I’d put in an appearance. We don’t have to stay long—don’t worry, I’m not going to know anyone there either, and I
promise
we can do something fun afterward.”

“Great,” I said resolutely. “That sounds like fun.”

She laughed. “No, it doesn’t,” she said. “And if you want to back out, I won’t mind. But I guarantee you, it won’t be like any other wedding you’ve ever been to.”

I opened the car door for her. “Well, then,” I said. “What are we waiting for?”

We drove, following a small hand-drawn map that I imagine had been included in the wedding invitation.

“So,” I said. “You said these people are clients of yours. I don’t even know what you do.”

She smiled. “Oh, that will become apparent,” she said. “I think I’ll keep it a secret for a while longer.”

“Am I going to be dressed all right for this thing?” I asked. “It’s not formal, is it?”

“No, not at all. I think it’s going to be kind of New-Agey, actually. They made a big deal on the invitation about this being the day of the vernal equinox—you know, when day and night are equal. They called it ‘the day the sun marries the moon.’” She laughed. “I guess they were looking for something more dramatic than just ‘the day Brittany marries Todd.’”

We were in the country now. It was late afternoon, nearing sunset. Eventually, we turned down a long dirt road that dead-ended at a patch of tall grass and wildflowers. A path had been cut into the growth and marked with garlands of roses on either side.

A woman was standing at the entrance to the path, holding a large basket twined with ribbons. She smiled as we approached her, and she held the basket out toward us.

“Please choose your masks,” she said.

I glanced at Lexy, who was watching me and smiling. “You go first,” she said.

I leaned forward warily and looked into the basket. I think I was expecting something like the Halloween masks I wore as a child, flimsy plastic monster faces and shiny superheroes with no backs to their heads, elastic bands stapled to the sides of the masks to keep them from slipping off your face. Instead, the basket was filled with wonders the likes of which I had never seen. A dozen papier-mâché faces looked up at me with cutout eyes. I saw a frog first, then a zebra. A sunflower with vibrant yellow petals framing its face. A tall golden feather with ghostly features pressed into its wavy barbs. There were three-quarter-length masks with wrinkled brows and outrageously curved noses, and wild-looking jesters decked out in playing cards. A snaky-haired Medusa and a Bacchus crowned with grapes. I felt giddy with the choice.

“Go on,” Lexy said. “What do you want to be today?”

I reached in and pulled out the first one I touched. It was a book, a thick, old-fashioned kind of book with its pages spread open. Eyes, nose, and mouth protruded from the gilded text.

“That’s perfect,” Lexy said. As she bent to rummage in the basket, I examined my mask. Across the two pages, a single phrase was written in a long, sloping hand:
You have taken the finest knight in all my company.
I fixed the mask to my face.

“Oh, good,” I heard Lexy say. “I was hoping this one would still be here.”

I turned toward her. She had covered her own lovely face with the smiling face of a dog. An earnest, familiar face.

“That’s Lorelei,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “It is. So have you figured out what I do for a living?”

“You made all these?” I asked.

“Mm-hmm,” she said. She took my hand. “Let’s go to the wedding.”

We walked down the path until we reached a clearing. There were chairs set up around a center aisle, and each of them was filled with a person wearing a mask. I saw a sea nymph with starfish caught in her hair talking to a man with the head of a bull. I saw an angel with a halo talking on a cell phone. We took our seats, in between a splendid butterfly-woman and a man with an enormous iceberg perched on his head, the
Titanic
broken in two across the top.

Up at the front, a string quartet dressed in formal wear, with silver stars spread across their faces, began to play. We rose and turned to see the sun and the moon walking toward us through the crowd. The bride wore a dress of palest yellow silk with layer upon layer of iridescent gauze catching the light. Her face was a dazzling circle of gold, framed with fiery rays. The groom wore a tuxedo, his face masked with a tall crescent of silver. They were beautiful.

Lexy leaned toward me. “I’m curious to see how they’re going to do the kiss,” she whispered. I reached out for her hand and held it as we watched the sacred joining of sun and moon, silhouetted by the falling dusk.

A
h, but I’ve already let it slip, haven’t I, that our first date lasted a week. It didn’t end there in that perfect sunset moment of the masquerade wedding. There’s more, there’s always more to tell, and I’m already getting caught up in the accumulation of moments that led from the day of that wedding to the day of Lexy’s fall.

But the more I think about Lexy, the more I try to sort it all out, the more I neglect my research. The truth is, now that I’ve arranged for a sabbatical and given myself all the time and space I could possibly need, I’m not sure how to proceed. My desk is piled with books on canine physiology and psychology, papers on language acquisition in apes and in children, studies of “the talking dog as motif” in folklore and literature. I have folders full of notes that I have compiled on famous dogs, ranging from Cerberus to Snoopy. Just yesterday, I spent several hours in the microfilm room of the university library, collecting clippings about the trial of Wendell Hollis and its star witness for the prosecution. The dog who sent Wendell Hollis to jail had been named Dog J by his captor, simply because he was the tenth in a series of alphabetically named dogs that Hollis had purchased from pet stores, picked up at pounds, or snatched off the streets, but after his rescue, the
New York Post
held a contest to rename him. Suggestions ranged from the cheerily naive Lucky to the wrongly gendered and grandiosely silly Harriet Pupman, but the name that stuck was Hero, and even the
Post
’s blaring headline of HERE, HERO! emblazoned above the famous photo of the dog being escorted out of the courthouse by a group of smiling police officers failed to detract from the dignity and the rightness of the name. This story fascinates me more than I can say, for reasons that should be obvious: This is a dog I would like to talk to.

So you can see I have been working; my desk is littered with the reading I have done, the tangents I have been willing to follow. But as I sit here, sifting through the paper, with Lorelei lying at my feet as inscrutable as ever, I realize that I have no idea where to begin.

I suppose the first step in teaching a dog to speak might be to teach her to “speak.” That is, to teach her to bark on command in the parlor trick usually referred to as “speaking.” I get a biscuit and call Lorelei over to me.

“Sit,” I say, and she does.

“Speak.” She just looks at me. “Speak,” I say again. Uncertainly, she lies down.

“Up, up,” I say. She stands.

“Good girl. Now sit.” We’re back to the beginning. She stares at me intently, her nose twitching at the nearness of the biscuit I hold. She sneaks a glance at the treat; hasn’t she already performed several tricks?

“Speak,” I say firmly. Then I start to bark at her. “Rrr, ruff!” I say, staring into her eyes. “Ruff, ruff! Speak! Ruff, ruff!”

Lorelei cocks her head to the side. This is unprecedented behavior on my part. Never before have I gotten down on the floor and barked at her. She waits to see what I’ll do next.

“Speak, girl!” I say, pulling my face closer to hers. Our noses are almost touching. “Grr,” I say, staring into her eyes. “Ruff! Ruff!” I’m nearly shouting. Finally, it works. Lorelei lets out a noise, not quite a bark, not quite a whine. It sounds, more than anything, like an expression of frustration—
When the hell do I get the biscuit?
—but it’s progress.

“Good girl!” I say effusively. I break the biscuit in two and give her half. She settles down to gnaw on it. I wait until she’s finished, then urge her back into a sitting position. I show her the other half of the biscuit. “Speak!” I say. “Ruff, ruff!” This time she gives a full-throated bark, and then another. “Good dog,” I say, “good speak!” I hold out the other piece of biscuit, but she ignores it. She stares into my eyes, her brow furrowed, and continues barking.

“Okay, now, good girl, quiet,” I say. I pull away slowly, sliding back on the carpet, still sitting. “Quiet now!”

Lorelei stands up, drawing herself to her full height. She has to lean down to continue barking in my face.

“Good girl,” I say soothingly. She’s making me nervous. I stand up; my books have told me that in situations like this I need to assert my position as alpha male. “Quiet,” I say more firmly. She looks up at me searchingly and barks again. She’s less aggressive now, but I can’t get her to stop. I reach out and gingerly pat her head. “Do you want a cookie? Nice dog, nice cookie.” Finally, she takes the biscuit. She retreats to a corner of the room, where she drops it on the floor and pretends to bury it, using her nose to draw the folds of the carpet over the biscuit.

“Good girl,” I call from across the room. I sink down on the sofa and watch her concentration as she goes about her task. I pick up my notebook. “Taught Lorelei the command Speak,” I write. “Results inconclusive.” I lean back and close my eyes. Across the room, Lorelei picks up her biscuit and takes it into a different corner to start over again.

I
became a linguist in part because words have failed me all my life. I was born tongue-tied in the most literal sense: the tissue connecting my tongue to the floor of my mouth was short and thick, limiting lingual movement. It’s a common enough condition; the doctor simply snipped the membrane in the delivery room, and I grew to speak like any normal child, with no lingering impediments. But the image stays with me as a kind of metaphor for all my subsequent dealings with language: I was born with a tongue not meant for speaking, and despite all artificial attempts to loosen it, it has stayed stuck in place at every important moment of my life.

But that first day with Lexy, I found I had plenty to say. Waiting in line to congratulate the bride and groom, radiant now in their own faces, for they had taken off their masks to kiss after all, I chatted with the other guests, happily introducing Lexy as the one who had made all the day’s magic possible.

By the time we got through the receiving line, it was as if we were already a couple. As word spread that Lexy was the creator of the masks, a crowd formed around us, encircling us with such admiration and excitement that anyone looking on might have thought that we, and not Brittany and Todd, were the newlyweds. With my hand resting on the small of Lexy’s back, I took on the role of proud partner and promoter, bragging about her work and allowing her to play the humble artist, basking shyly in the praise. Flushed and smiling, she answered questions about technique and inspiration and gave her business card to those who asked for it, art collectors and fairy-tale enthusiasts and people who liked to throw elaborate Halloween parties.

As the crowd around us thinned, Lexy squeezed my arm. “Thanks,” she said. “You’re good at that.”

“Thanks,” I said. “But I should tell you, I’m not usually so suave. It must be the mask.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “You were pretty suave with the square eggs. Those square eggs swept me off my feet.”

“I’ll bet those words have never been spoken before, in all the centuries of human language.”

“Here’s another one: ‘Why don’t you help me get this dog off my face so you can kiss me?’”

“Oh, I’m sure
someone
must’ve used that line before,” I said. “In fact, I believe it appeared in the first draft of the balcony scene from
Romeo and Juliet.
”

But she was already kissing me.