Ten years later Dad brought a puppy to the house, black and less than a month old. We’ll call him Nero, said Grandma. For the first few weeks Nero stayed in the house with us, until Schulz, the super, built him a wooden kennel in the yard. By the time he’d grown up Nero had a split personality: one minute he was a guard dog on a chain in the yard, the next he was a household pet sprawled out on our living-room floor. He was a good dog and a stupid one. Though he liked everyone he’d still bark his head off; he even liked cats, but they didn’t like him. The only thing Nero hated was the hedgehog that lived in our garden. He’d go wild when the hedgehog trundled the yard at night, pricking his snout on its quills, his muzzle frothing. Grandma used to say myohmy, my dummy dear, and he’d yelp and whine at a world where there were hedgehogs and a dog couldn’t live without constant stress. That’s what my mother so wisely observed.
The three of us felt pretty guilty the days and nights we left Nero in his kennel, down in the yard. We were actually fine with it when he slept up with us, but for some reason it was unacceptable he switch from being a guard dog to a household pet. I don’t know why we didn’t want him as a pet, but I fear we gave him a kennel and chain because we thought he was dumb, that it was beneath us to live with an idiot. Or maybe we thought we’d be less tied to Nero if he was farther away. I don’t know what it was all about, why we banished him from our daily lives.
Grandma passed away in early June, out in front of his kennel Nero howled the whole night long. At dawn I went down to the yard, it was a full moon, everything lit up. I sat down to give him a hug; faithful, four-legged Nero. My grandma was dead, but I couldn’t howl like him; it was as if the dog was sadder than me. Though he lived on a chain, he’d lost something I could never be conscious of, something I obviously didn’t even have, so my loss could never be like his. I took him in my arms, trying to make the sadness mutual, to take on a little of his grief, a little of his goodness, so that I too might be ennobled by this late-night grief and for a moment enter a better heaven, a dog’s heaven, where there’s no place for people, because such a heaven doesn’t have anything to do with God but with friends who die in dogs’ eyes.
Six months later, on the coldest day of the year, worried about Nero I hurried home from university. He was still in his kennel because I hadn’t let him in to warm himself by the coal stove. No one had looked after the animals or plants since Grandma died.
Nero wasn’t out in front of his kennel. He wasn’t inside either, nor was his chain. I found him dead, hanging over the neighbor’s fence. He was stiff, eyes half open. I lifted him up, a cold, furry object. I tried to close his eyes, but it didn’t work. They stayed open. I saw the empty and vacant eyes of death, nothing there, nothing of the world or hope; everything that had once lived there gone, never to return. This is what the eyes of all the dead look like. I didn’t ever need to see them again, because every man or woman who had ever lived and now lived no more had Nero’s eyes.
It took me three hours to dig a grave in the frozen earth and bury my dog along with his chain. Why with his chain, like he was a galley slave! said Mom. She wasn’t wrong actually. Nero really was our slave; he appeared at the wrong time, to people who didn’t deserve him and who he couldn’t save. Sometimes there really is no hope for us until we’ve strangled the very last thing we have left, that which will haunt us more than any horror or suffering to come.
If you can see it’s a car, tell me
That there in the picture, that’s a toy box, but when I want it to, it stops being a toy box and turns into a car. I wake up early when all the others are still asleep, wrap a sandwich in a checkered napkin, and write a letter, even though they haven’t taught me to write yet. The letter’s for them, but they don’t have to read it. I’m leaving one because it’s the thing to do, because everyone who suddenly goes off somewhere leaves a letter behind. I write how I’ve had enough of them, that I’m never coming back and that I’m going to a place where there aren’t any other people, and I’m going to stay there forever, and be rich, with a real car and a real train, a real pistol and real cowboys and Indians, and Partisans and Germans, who I’ll play war against and beat whenever I want, and when something needs rescuing, like when Sava Kovačević saved the high command or when Chief Big Bear sent smoke signals to the world so that stars might fall to the earth, but the Gold River would never fall to the white man. I’m going because they tricked me again, I don’t know how, but they tricked me, just like they do every time they know I don’t want to go somewhere, and I’m going to cling to the table leg with all my might and scream my head off, and no one’s going be able to tear me loose, because I know that wherever they’re taking me something’s going to hurt like hell, or something else is going happen to make me sorry I ever let go of that table leg. I leave the letter behind for them and on top of it the big key to the cellar. That’s my key and they can give it to whoever comes to take my place.
I sit down in the box, there’s not much room with all the toys, but I’ll manage because I’m big and by myself. I turn the car on and drive off. Brrmmm, brmmm, mmmmmmm, I drive far away, and my lips vibrate and go dry. I can’t even lick my lips because then the brrmmm, brmmm, mmmmmmmmm will stop and the car too, and then they might catch up with me and take me home or turn the car back into a box. Once I’m off and driving I don’t stop until lunchtime when Grandma comes to get me and says c’mon you little moppet, you’ll wreck your throat screeching away in that box. Then my car vanishes, and all the kilometers I’ve driven too, France, Germany, and America vanish, all the countries I’ve traveled, the cowboys and Indians vanish, and so does Sava Kovačević and the high command and the Sutjeska canyon, which smells of darkness, menthol candies, and explosives. I’m back in the yard from which I set off into the world, in the toy box I turned into a car, a car that vanishes the moment someone who can’t see it comes along, like Grandma or Mom, because for them a box is always just a box, and nothing ever turns into something else.
What’ve you been doing? Mom gives me that look moms give their little boys when they’re a bit peculiar but aren’t allowed to know they’re a bit peculiar. Maybe the look’s got a different name, I don’t know what it is, but I know when I answer I’ve got to really be smart to make it go away. I was playing driving. . That’s nice, and how does playing driving work?. . You just sit in the car and drive. . And what’s this?. . It’s a letter, I left it for you so you wouldn’t get worried. . And what does it say? She was looking at the wavy inked lines that looked like the ocean or a doctor’s scribble. How can you ask me that, you’re the one who knows how to read, not me. You should know what it says. . It looks to me like it doesn’t say anything, there aren’t any words. . There aren’t any words because I was playing. When I’m playing nothing’s for real, because I don’t have a real car and I don’t know how to write. . Why don’t you play with other children?. . Because they don’t know how to play driving.
Mom gives Grandma a dirty look and I know that tonight, when they think I’m asleep, they’re going to spend hours whispering and stinking up the cellar with cigarettes, arguing about whose fault it is and why I spend every morning in a cardboard box, snorting and spluttering like — ohmygodsorry — a dimwit. I’m not exactly sure what the word means, but I figure it’s really bad to be a dimwit because I’ve noticed they only say it when they have that look reserved for little boys who are a bit peculiar.