Us, we can’t even sense what’s coming tomorrow. We can’t sense other people. Dogs, they can sense death. At most they might not let on. Like these dogs of mine, they’re lying there quietly, maybe they’re asleep even. But we don’t know what they’ve sensed coming. Well, yes, they have a sense of smell. But it’s not just that. Dogs are more than just smell. What else? I don’t know. If I did, I’d know a lot more in general.
But all you need to do is compare what happens when a human is hurting and when a dog is hurting. It’s like it’s two different kinds of hurt. The human at the very least is going to complain, sigh, he’s going to groan; the dog just mopes, or at most he’ll stop eating. With a person, the slightest pain can be seen plain as day; with dogs all you see is fortitude. Or take a look in a dog’s eyes, what’s reflected there? Is it the same thing that’s in our human eyes? You can say he’s looking at the same things we are, but does he see them the same? Have you ever thought about it? A human, depending on what he’s looking at, his eyes get wider or narrower, they flicker or they smile. Dogs, their eyes stay still whatever they’re looking at. Or, what do people look like in the eyes of dogs? How about that? Do we look like we do to ourselves when we look in the mirror, say, or when other people see us, or in our own satisfaction or dissatisfaction, in our own memory, our own hopes and fears and despair? What can dogs be thinking about people? What are those dogs of mine thinking about us right now, as they watch us shelling beans? It’s the first time they’ve seen you here in my house, they must be thinking something. See, they’ve woken up. Well, Rex? Well, Paws? The gentleman and I are sitting here talking.
Or the heart, dogs have hearts after all. You often say about someone that they have a good heart. They say that a person has God in their heart. But when He looks down on it all, would God not rather just go and live in the hearts of dogs? We don’t know, true. But we can guess. Besides, what do we know? We don’t know the most ordinary things. A dog’s hackles will rise and we often don’t know why. He’ll wag his tail and we don’t know why. He’ll whine for no reason, we don’t know why either. See, he couldn’t possibly sense all that he senses through smell alone. He can even sense who’s come here for what purpose.
You might find what I’m going to say surprising, but sometimes I wouldn’t mind being a dog, at least for a short while. Not permanently, just for a while. Maybe then I’d find out for instance if they dream about me. Everyone would like to know if they’re dreamed about. Not you? I’m sure you would really. How do you know no one ever dreams about you? Maybe it’s just that no one ever told you. All I want to know is what my dogs dream about me.
The revolt? Oh, I didn’t finish the story. Well, the power went out and the film broke off. Maybe if it hadn’t happened at exactly that moment. Maybe if it hadn’t been that particular hat. And then there was Mary. You remember what set off the Trojan War. Exactly. First there was a huge groan of disappointment when everything went dark. Luckily, just when it seemed that the darkness was about to explode, one of the teachers who’d been watching the film with us called out:
“Settle down now! We’ll go check, it’s probably just a fuse!”
One after another they scuttled out of the room. They must have reckoned that if they all go check, it’ll for sure turn out to be a fuse. So all the more we’d remain calm. And in fact, considering how packed the room was, you could say we did stay cool. Actually, they must have been furious as well at that moment. Or they wouldn’t all have left. So we kept a lid on it till they came back. We quieted each other. We told each other off. Take it easy! Simmer down! And we waited hopefully for the expected moment when one of the teachers would appear in the doorway with a shout of triumph:
“It was a fuse, boys! Just like we said! It’ll be mended in no time!”
But time went by and no one came. Perhaps if the projectionist hadn’t suddenly spoken, the tension would have been dispelled just through waiting. We might have raised a bit of a ruckus, maybe started singing. But in the silence and darkness his voice sounded like a verdict:
“What are they talking about? How long does it take to fix a fuse? I’m going to rewind the film and put it away. There’s never once been a time when I was showing a film and the power came back on after an outage.”
At that moment, the silence exploded so abruptly you’d have thought the whole hut was about to fall apart. There were whistles, shouts, howls, stamping of feet. First the innocent projectionist was the target, as if his words had been the spark to set the silence on fire. The boys at the back of the room jumped on him, pushed him to the ground, pummeled and kicked him. They smashed the projector. They pulled the film from the cans and draped themselves in it like it was streamers. One of them took out a box of matches and was about to burn the film to make some light. Make some light! Thank goodness we put it out in time. You can imagine what would have happened. Then all the windows in the room got smashed. Whatever anyone had at hand, or rather whatever they grabbed in the darkness, they threw that. Stools, benches, musical instruments. I tried to save the instruments. I begged them, shouted, snatched them from their hands:
“Leave the instruments alone! Leave them alone! What did they ever do to you!”
Some of them came to their senses, but others only seemed to find release with the instruments. They broke them, smashed them up, tossed them out of the windows. They even wanted to throw the grand piano out, but fortunately it wouldn’t fit through the window. One of them got so mad he climbed up and started stomping on the keyboard.
I was at the other end of the room when I heard the crash of feet on the keys. I pushed my way over and grabbed the kid by the legs. He put his hands around my neck and started to throttle me. I couldn’t breathe, but I managed to get him off the piano and onto the floor. We didn’t have anything to hit each other with, since he was holding onto me and I was holding him, so we set about biting each other. We bit till we bled. He was a budding pianist. The music teacher often said he had promise.
Most of the instruments that got thrown out of the window survived in better or worse shape. The ones that remained were generally not so lucky. It was just as well that some were overlooked in the darkness. Especially because rage can darken your sight even more. The next day, if you’d seen the ones that had suffered the most damage it would have broken your heart. But not one teacher showed his face. Though it was precisely because of them that the revolt had gotten so furious.
Have you ever taken part in a revolt? Not even at school? You’ve never rebelled? Against what? It’s not like there’s any shortage of things. Right from childhood. The fact that they force us to eat when we’re not hungry. With the years, there’s one revolt after another you could start. Against school, because who actually wants to go to school? I don’t mean our school. That’s a whole other story. And just in general, against life, because it’s the way it is, not some other way. Against the world, for being like it is instead of the way it should be. Against God because he exists but he’s not there. Not even against yourself ever?
Though a revolt doesn’t have to have a reason. In fact, I’m not sure that any revolt actually begins for the reasons we say it does. Not to mention there are revolts where afterwards, we regret having revolted. Except you can’t go back to the way things were before. What can you do, people will never keep still, they’re always seething, in ferment, and even if they have no reason, they’re always going to revolt. They’re a perpetual reason in themselves. They’re going to rebel till the end of time. If you ask me, the world has a good many revolts still to come.