that dog, who had thrown off resignation to the destiny of his kind, but only to show that the wound once inflicted on him had never healed. His silhouette against the light of a Buenos Aires Sunday, in a state of constant agitation, racing and barking, had played the role of a ghost, returning from the dead or, rather, from the pain of living, to demand. . what? Reparation? An apology? A pat? What else could he have wanted? It can’t have been revenge, because he would surely have learned from experience that he was powerless against the unassailable world of humans. He could only express himself; he’d done that, and all it had achieved was to strain his weary old heart. He’d been defeated by the mute, metallic expression of a bus driving away, and a face watching him through the window. How had he recognized me? I must have changed a lot too. His memory of me was obviously vivid; perhaps it had been present in his mind all those years, never fading for a moment. No one really knows how a dog’s mind works. It wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that he’d recognized my smell; there are amazing stories about the olfactory powers of animals. For example, a male butterfly smelling a female miles away, through all the thousands of intervening smells. I was beginning to speculate in a detached, intellectual way. The barking was an echo, varying in pitch, now higher now lower, as if it were coming from another dimension. Suddenly I was jolted from my thoughts by a hunch that I could feel all through my body. I realized that I had been too quick to declare victory. The bus had been speeding up, but now it was slowing down again: it was what the drivers always did when the next stop came into sight. They accelerated, gauging the distance still to go, then lifted their foot, and let the bus glide to the stop. Yes, it was slowing down, pulling over to the sidewalk. I sat up straight and looked out. An old lady and a child were waiting to catch the bus. The barking was getting louder again. Could the dog have kept running? Hadn’t he given up? I didn’t look, but he must have been very close. The bus had already stopped. The child jumped in, but the woman was taking her time; that high step was difficult for a lady of her age. I was silently shouting, Come on, old bag! and anxiously watching her movements. I don’t normally speak or think like that; it was because of the stress I was under, but I got a grip on myself immediately. There was really no need to worry. Maybe the dog would make up some lost ground, but then he would lose it again. In the worst case, he’d come and bark right in front of my window in a very obvious way, and the other passengers would see that I was the one he was chasing. But all I had to do was deny any knowledge of the animal, and no one would contradict me. I gave thanks for words and their superiority over barks. The old woman was lifting her other foot onto the step; she was almost in. A burst of barking deafened me. I looked out to the side. He was coming, quick as a shot, fur flying, loud as ever. His stamina was incredible. Surely he must have had arthritis, at his age, like all old dogs. Maybe he was firing his last rounds. Why keep anything in reserve if he was closing the circle of his fate by venting his resentment, having found me after all those years? At first (this all happened in a crazy shattering of seconds), I didn’t understand what was going on, I only knew it was strange. But then I realized: he hadn’t stopped in front of my window, he’d kept going. What was he doing? Could he be. .? He’d already drawn level with the front door and, agile as an eel, he turned, leaped and dodged. He was getting onto the bus! No, he was on the bus already, and without having to bowl the old lady over — she just felt something brush against her legs — he turned again and, barely slowing down, still barking, ran down the aisle. . Neither the driver nor the passengers had time to react; the cries were rising in their throats but hadn’t yet come out. I should have said to them: Don’t be afraid, it’s not about you, it’s me he’s after. . but I didn’t have time to react either, except to freeze and stiffen with fear. I did have time to see him rushing at me, and I could see nothing else. Close up, face on, he looked different. It was as if when I’d seen him before, through the window, my vision had been filtered by memory or my idea of the harm I’d done to him, but there in the bus, within arm’s reach, I saw him as he really was. He looked young, vigorous, supple: younger than me and more alive (the life had been leaking out of me all those years, like water from a bathtub), his barks resounding inside the bus with undiminished force, his jaws with their dazzling white teeth already closing on my flesh, his shining eyes that had not, for one moment, stopped staring into mine.