A Dog’s Luck Read online

  A Dog’s Luck

  Liora Barash Morgenstern

  All rights reserved. Copyright © 2016 Liora Barash Morgenstern

  Reproduction in any manner, in whole or in part, in English or in other languages, or otherwise without written permission of the publisher is prohibited.

  Translated from Hebrew by Daniella Zmir

  First printed in Hebrew on September 2014 as “Mazal Shel Kelev”

  Contact: [email protected]

  With love and longing

  To my sister, Miki

  Of blessed memory

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  “The episode…

  What happened, happened…

  The episode…

  What happened, happened…”

  Echoes within me time after time.

  The echoes replay.

  And become louder.

  Blending together.

  Doing with me as they wish.

  And the silence is burdensome.

  They will not let go.

  Condensing.

  Collapsing.

  Refracting into endless traces.

  Voices and silences hang their gaze upon me.

  Pleading for expression.

  The dust of past generations ascends.

  Billowing.

  Blinding.

  The knot in the stomach tightens.

  And the passion, too, grows.

  It is now clear to me: every performance is intrinsically singular, true to insight, state of mind and temperament—of the listener as well—at a particular point in time.

  I turn my back to the keyboard, the keys I frequently play.

  In my mind’s eye I stand on a podium.

  At the front of the stage.

  The spotlight is on me.

  In my right hand: the pen, my conductor’s baton, designed for final flourishes, to maintain continuity, rhythm and precision of expression.

  With my left—the hand of emotion—I start turning the pages of my life.

  The rustle is familiar.

  Perhaps bestowing confidence, perhaps unsettling.

  Like performers, who, as if knowing from the very beginning where they are headed, I also want to create a field of inspiration that arouses attention: to weave warps of voices into the wefts of silences in accordance to the length of their breaths. To instill content in the tempo, inner logic in emotion, or the other way around. To separate the primary theme from the secondary, and from one intermezzo or another. To follow the development of every elusive and subtle melody. To trace the interplay between figure and background—where either one is brought out by the other, or is suppressed by it. To allude to motifs before they appear and develop them from themes that will fade, only to reemerge with greater force. Wishing for music that will play by itself. For that one time when not even the trace of a foreign cell remains in the texture. And when the last chord dies out, somehow the echoes, too, will be void of existence…

  I straighten my shoulders.

  And drop them.

  Sway my head from side to side.

  Loosen my arms.

  Look deeply.

  Far.

  And slowly slowly I begin to attune.

  Hesitating how I will open:

  Tempo.

  Dynamics.

  Scale.

  Attentiveness emanates from every corner.

  This is it:

  This is the moment to raise the baton.

  I purse my lips.

  Lift my hands.

  Slightly bend my elbows to refine the gestures.

  Breathe in deeply.

  Slowly breathe out.

  Move forwards and backwards through space and time.

  Hear the tone.

  Give the signal.

  And…

  The still voice of silence.

  The intensity of the attentiveness carries me back to Grandpa Danny, Mom’s father, who died shortly before I turned nine. As long as he was in good health, the radio on his nightstand clattered non-stop:

  “Between you and me… this is the most loyal of my acquaintances.”

  Once, after I nagged him to turn it off, or at least to change stations, he adjusted his heavy-framed glasses.

  Directed an earnest gaze.

  Cleared his throat.

  Cleared his throat again.

  And only when I promised to keep his words to myself, he lowered his voice, even though there was no one but us in the house:

  “Before bed he bids me… ‘Good night.’

  When I open my eyes he greets me… ‘Good morning.’

  With him…—loneliness is kept at arm’s length…”

  The distance of place and time emphasizes intonations that weren’t there when he went out of his way to endear me to classical music, which did not speak to me at the time.

  Today, when I recognize a few measures of the music Grandpa loved—Verdi’s Requiem, Mahler’s Third Symphony, and especially Chopin’s nocturnes, “which allow us to get to know him with much greater intimacy,” he would accentuate softly—I listen with one ear for Grandpa.

  Sue, my most cherished dog, shuffles in with her head hanging low and her tail folded. The straw mat crackles as she slouches at the foot of the bed. Even in her old age—she knows when to keep clear.

  She looks at me.

  Rolls her eyes.

  And closes them.

  I stare out the window overlooking the lawn in the backyard and the orchard on the left, which begins next to the kitchen and stretches out to the end of the grounds.

  The screensaver reflects in the glass panel.

  Flickers.

  Winks.

  The static hum of the computer seduces and intimidates.

  I want to drop the pen.

  To shift the spotlight.

  To step off the podium.

  And the desire.

  The passion.

  Or God-knows-what—

  Will not let go.

  Chapter 1

  My mind wanders to Grandpa’s apartment, which for years has been rented out, “Until maybe one day you’d like to live there,” as Mom suggested years ago. And here I am, in my childhood home, in a village in the Sharon, Israel’s northern part of the coastal plain, with a knot in my stomach, passion and echoing fragments of voices and silences that won’t let go.

  I rise from my executive chair, Mom’s gift for the PhD I’m writing, to her pride and to the dismay of my father, who burrows through the newspapers and “Can’t find any classified ads for philosophers… not to mention an expert on the metaphor…”

  I walk over to the French window.

  Throw it open.

  Twilight intrudes.

  The early fall breeze is refreshing.

  Josh is barking in the yard, the youngest pup of Sue and Champion, my eldest dog who passed away at a ripe old age.

  For him—I don’t go out. Even in his later years—toward him I feel differently than toward his parents—all three, Groenendael Belgian Shepherds: average height, with long, smooth black fur, brown at the tips in Sue and Josh, and without that pure white furry medallion at the center of his chest, which granted his father a unique elegance. A rather pointed face. Intelligent almond eyes, brownish-black. Perked triangular ears. And my heart goes out to his father, Ron Yovel, as his name appears on the registry, and whom I called On as a toddler. And ever since, the name Ron-On has stuck.

  Ron, whose achievements eventually earned him the nickname Champion, was about a year old when I was born. From the very first day, as Mom and Dad have often told me, he took me under his protection: when I cried he wo
uldn’t let go of the hems of my parents’ clothes until they came to me. When I was sick he never left my side. Only when he resumed his daily routine did my parents know I had regained my strength.

  He was mischievous. Loyal. Devoted. And yet, jealous. Inconsiderate. Aggressive. Domineering. Even as an epileptic old-timer, hard of seeing and hearing, who bumped into the walls he knew so well, who wasn’t always in control of his bowels and who emanated unpleasant smells, he excelled in exploiting every scrap of weakness to preserve his status. Thus, until his last day he remained an omnipotent and incontestable ruler.

  What is that silence?

  Josh has stopped barking.

  The rustle of fall leaves crunching underneath his paws evokes the memory of the clucking of Levana the chicken and her flock. Robert the rooster, who was my childhood alarm clock. The snoring of Champion, who, at Robert’s call, even in the winter, would stick his cold, moist nose under the blanket. Lick my feet and my face, and with scratching nails, race to the gate to fetch the newspaper. Place it on my father’s chair and rush to squeeze himself under the table, eagerly awaiting my treats.

  Once the meal was over, Champion would also embark on his daily toil: guarding me. When we tried to stop him, he would dig, crawl under the hedge, and more than once, report to his watch covered with blood.

  As long as I was little, I did not mind him accompanying me almost everywhere. On the contrary.

  Over time, what had once filled me with a sense of security became a nuisance.

  An invasion of privacy.

  Dominance.

  Tyranny.

  I became truly haunted only when I realized that except for Adi, my best friend from childhood (who’s as crazy about dogs as I am), I was facing a problem: he was happy to see my friends as though they had come to play with him, and he would jump on them the way he leaped at us.

  Tears—made no impression on him.

  And even less—what I wanted.

  Only one thing mattered to him:

  What he wanted.

  Or else, he would take revenge.

  To the prickly pear bush that grew wild to the left of the gate, yielding its purple, sweet and succulent fruit every summer—he was unable to cause any damage. Nor to the bird of paradise with its sharp beak, which still blazes in front of the house. Nor to the olive and pomegranate groves, with the gray-trunked fig at the front, a thick shade tree whose notched leaves are turning white, and of which Grandpa Danny used to recite:

  “About such groves it is said: ‘every tree in it is pleasing to the eye and to the stomach.’”

  Champion bullied the bushes: injuring the roots of the pale jasmine, the yellow white broom, the Chinese honeysuckle turning its petals from white to flushing pink and the Spanish flag, entwining in the hedgerow. Uprooted seasonal flowers. Vandalized the vegetable patch. And especially the herb garden, the apple of Mom’s eye, which to this day she tends with her green thumb.

  I was about seven at the time. Night after night I racked my brain over how to break free of my shadow without him taking revenge on the garden.

  “…Two of each living creature entered the ark with Noah.” The verse Grandpa often uttered flickered in my mind one night: that Ron-On would have a friend, and not be dependent on my favors or on those of my friends.

  Once it flickered, it wouldn’t let go.

  And each time it made more sense to me.

  Eventually I raised the suggestion at the dinner table, around which our conversations were always held.

  Dad listened with a blank expression.

  “Another dog is another child, not to mention the damage to the garden,” he ruled.

  “That’s on the one hand… On the other hand, perhaps the two would keep each other company and let the garden be,” Mom said and winked at me, and her face twisted in a funny way, as it always happens when she winks.

  The first round of conversations was thus concluded by Mom and Dad’s assurance that they would discuss the issue and get back to me.

  Much more—I could not have expected.

  The next rounds were virtual.

  Weeks passed until that Saturday morning, when Mom announced they had decided to consult an expert:

  “Yael from Safed.”

  “Head of the Belgian Sheepdog Breeders Association of Israel,” Dad emphasized with an air of importance.

  With a floating smile she told me they had spoken to her on the phone.

  And were favorably impressed.

  And she was expecting us.

  We embarked on our journey with Ron-On sitting tall and proud next to me in the back seat, looking out the half-open window. When I asked how she could be of help, Mom mentioned that after Ron-On’s being raised as an “only child,” what his reaction might be to sharing the attention, or, for instance, what would be more advisable choosing male or fe…

  “Haste makes waste,” Dad interrupted her. “For now we’re only at the stage of gathering data, which is intended to minimize the damage of rash decisions.”

  After treating us to mints, which she keeps in her purse at all times, Mom wiped the beads of sweat above her upper lip. “If that were the case,” she said and laughed, “we could have spared ourselves the dubious pleasure of rambling along the roads in a heat wave.” My mood soared and slumped according to the level of hope, corresponding to what was directly stated and what I read between the lines.

  The way to the Sea of Galilee was longer than ever: we passed by beaches that even back then had begun to expand, “Because of the drought and the subsequent drop in the water level,” Dad explained. We arrived in Rosh Pina, one of the first Jewish settlements in the Upper Galilee, as Mom told me. We climbed the slope of Mt. Canaan to the outskirts of the ancient town of Safed, which greeted us kindly with its chill. When we curved along the alleyways, even Ron-On’s breaths were less flat and frequent.

  Suddenly he burst into barks.

  Thrashed against the window.

  Scratched.

  Tried to leap.

  Even Dad struggled to restrain him.

  At the edge of one of the diverging alleys, four Ron-On lookalikes paced the fence.

  He barked.

  And the quartet replied in chorus.

  “Quiet!” An authoritative tone, which hushed him as well, was accompanied by measured thuds of clogs growing louder and louder on the cement path.

  “Yael,” the pleasant-mannered woman introduced herself with an energetic voice, as the iron gate screeched against its rusting hinge.

  “You’re Ellie,” she determined.

  “And you’re Ron-On,” she said and patted his head through the half-open window.

  The minute she opened the door,

  He immediately leaped out.

  Covered her with licks.

  And broke into a run toward the fence.

  “Stay!” she commanded him.

  He stopped in his tracks.

  Shook himself.

  As if beside himself.

  “Come!” she instructed him.

  His head hanging low, he retraced his steps.

  “Sit!” she ordered him.

  Growling in protest, he obeyed.

  “You can leave the collar in the car.” Without taking her eyes off him, she half-instructed Mom, who was lingering in the car, half-reprimanded her.

  Mussing his shiny fur, she admired:

  “Aren’t you a beauty!”

  “Stand!” she commanded.

  Reached out.

  Groped his private parts.

  “No undescended testicles,” she muttered to herself.

  Parted his lips. Examined his gums.

  “One hundred percent purebred,” she determined. “So how come you aren’t members of the association?”

  “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Yovel,” she said and shook Mom’s hand with a small smile.

  “My name is Tali,” Mom set the tone, and thanked Yael for making herself available to meet us on such short notice
.

  “Ido, nice to meet you too,” Dad said and extended his hand.

  “The dogs are trained. Right, Yael?”

  “Me, they obey,” she challenged me.

  “Heel!”

  Ron-On stuck to my left side.

  And the four aligned to his left.

  “Ellie, what can I say, you’re a real Shepherds’ shepherd,” Yael complimented me.

  Hidden at the end of the path was a small house built of black basalt, ivy intertwining along its walls. Ancient olive and walnut trees shaded the yard. And tall boughs of cypress whispered murmurs.

  Mom’s gaze wandered:

  “Groomed dogs, sturdy trees, persistent climber plants. And what about a vegetable patch…?” she asked while wiping the soles of her shoes against the iron lattice doormat.

  “With your permission, Tali, we can discuss that later. First—water for Ron. He must be dehydrated from the journey. And what about you?” she asked somewhat perfunctorily.

  The visit went smoothly, mostly thanks to the hosting dogs, who were accustomed to eating and drinking in company.

  Yael, who had taken notice of Ron’s desire to lead, spoke at length about the females, who are usually more good-natured. And about males, who are usually more handsome (“not inevitably, in order to find favor with the females”). And especially about Belgian Shepherds, “Purebreds…”

  I, who always took pride in him, never thought about how the compliments were shared between him and his breed.