LUMPI

For Laima

    I wake before the people, because somebody has to tell them the night is over.

    First you hear the fridge. It hums evenly, and at the end it always stumbles, as though it had remembered something unpleasant. Then the smells arrive: the stove gone cold, yesterday’s tea, my blanket, the Boss. From the bedroom his smell comes warm and sleepy, with medicine and old soap in it. The Missus smells different – of dry herbs, of hand cream, and of that sourness people get when they think about bad things for a long time and say nothing.

    I lie and wait until the body agrees to get up.

    Front paws first. Then the back. Then the right hip.

    The hip is grumbling today. Not whining exactly, but plainly not a thing to do anything foolish with. I stretch slowly, until it trembles in my shoulder blades, and listen for what answers.

    ‘Lumpi, you’re not ten any more,’ the Missus says sometimes.

    I don’t know what ten years is. People love counting things you can’t sniff. I know one thing: after those words there is less in the bowl, and they look at me as though I ought to become quieter. So, I pretend to be deaf.

    The Boss sometimes says something else:

    ‘There’s dachshund in you and there’s jagdterrier. You’re not a dog, you’re a rocket.’

    Rockets are fast, presumably. Especially at the launch. I am still fast now. It is only that before jumping up I have to work out which paw will hurt first.

    The kitchen smells of yesterday’s supper, of onion skins under the stove and of cold iron. There is everything in the fridge. I know it for certain: chicken comes from in there, and cheese, sausage, soup, and something else that people call ‘not for you’. People hide the good things in general. They put food into a cold box, shut the door and feel calmer. And I have guarded that box all my life, and nothing comes my way for it.

    The Boss comes in, shuffling.

    He comes in wrongly. He doesn’t stop in the doorway, doesn’t test the air, doesn’t look down. He walks as though the floor were empty. The floor is never empty. I can be on the floor.

    My head I get out of the way in time. My tail I don’t.

    It doesn’t hurt: people can’t tread on you properly unless they set out to do it on purpose. It is offensive all the same. I come up off the floor so fast that the hip answers with a hot flash, and I shout. Briefly, with dignity. Not from pain – from indignation.

    ‘Oh! Lumpi, sorry!’

    He crouches down beside me. He smells of sleep and of remorse; with people, remorse is always faintly sweet. He scratches me behind the ear, in the place I can’t reach myself, and a moment later slips me a piece of cheese.

    Cheese is an argument.

    I forgive him.

    People think a dog lives by food. Not true. A dog lives by order. It is only that if order has been broken and cheese follows, order may be considered restored.

    The Missus comes out later and calls three times:

    ‘Lumpi! Lumpi! Lumpi!’

    I hear the first one. I always hear the first one. After the second I have a choice, to go or not to go, but after the third it is not decent to keep people waiting.

    In the bowl there is dry food. It smells of cardboard, of chicken dust and of the fat they smear over the outside to deceive us. I eat. Not because it is nice, but because hunger is the enemy, and the body, if you believe it, is living out its last hours before death by starvation. The Missus thinks otherwise. People feel hunger badly: they can pick at bits all day long and call it ‘just having something’, and then be surprised that a dog is standing by the stove looking at them mournfully.

    After breakfast the Boss looks for a slipper.

    ‘Lumpi, have you dragged it off again?’

    I look at him with honest eyes.

    Not today. I dragged it off yesterday. The right one, the old one, with a sole that was begging for the cobbler. It smelt of the Boss, of street dust and a little of cheese: not long ago the Boss trod on a cheese rind by the fridge. The sole flapped when he walked, and that was right – a thing should smell and sound, not lie in a corner like something dead.

    The slipper is under the blackcurrant now, right by the fence. I am not obliged to report this. People throw away the things that are needed and call it order. I keep them.

    The Missus opens the door.

    I go out first. If you don’t go out first, the door can shut in your face. People have this habit – of closing doors at exactly the moment you need to go through. They mean no harm by it. They simply don’t understand that a door is a border, and that borders are not closed without reason.

    The morning smells of wet tarmac, of earth, worms, cut grass and coffee from the neighbour’s window. The wind is low. It creeps along the ground and brings the news: somebody’s cat is in season, somebody burnt charcoal on a grill yesterday, somebody has been digging behind his conifers, and a dog with a bad paw came along the lane not long ago. The wind knows before you see.

    I do my round.

    The post by the gate first. Then the corner of the wire netting. Then the concrete bollard, where my smell has soaked in so thickly that not even rain can lift it.

    In the night Rex from the far lane was at the post. He left his mark over somebody else’s, but he didn’t cross the border. I sniff, and I renew my own. Borders don’t hold by barriers. Barriers are for people. Borders hold by smell. If the smell is right, you needn’t bark. If it is wrong, you have to educate.

    Podge is sitting on our fence.

    He sits as though the fence had been put up for him. An enormous cat, ginger-grey, with a white chest and the face of a highwayman. People call him Plutonium, but people are no good at giving proper names to loafers and bandits. I call him Podge, because his belly matters more to him than his conscience.

    He is fat, though the fat is for show. He walks along the top without setting the wire swaying, is gone in a second, and can look me in the eye while licking a paw – the way you look at dust you tolerate out of charity.

    Today he sits and washes.

    I growl.

    Podge blinks slowly.

    That is an insult. A slow blink means roughly: “I see you, but I do not consider it necessary to alter the position of my body.” He knows I won’t jump. Once I would have gone for him without thinking. Once I never asked fences for permission at all. Now the hip reminds me that height is a factor one has sometimes to take into account.

    Podge drops down into the yard.

    Not towards me. Towards the blackcurrant.

    That is cheek.

    I go after him. Not at a run: I have dignity and a plan – go up, growl, and then decide whether biting is required. Podge stops where the lower branches lie on the ground and it is dark beneath them. He doesn’t sit. He flattens himself to the earth, and the tip of his tail begins to twitch in small movements.

    I know that tail.

    That is the smell of hunting.

    Podge strikes a paw into the dark under the branches. Springs back. Hisses. His hackles go up.

    There is a rustling from under the bush.

    Not a mouse.

    Not a rat.

    Dry, heavy, as though something without legs were crawling over old bark. I stop, and into my nose comes a smell that lifts the hair along my back.

    Cold. Not like water – like a stone that has lain a night in the earth. There is old skin in it, dust, the trace of mice and something of iron. I smelt that once, long ago, by the brickwork behind the garages. The Boss said then: ‘Adder.’ The word gave me nothing, but the Boss’s smell went anxious – so the word was important.

    Podge looks at me.

    Cats can look at you as though you owed them something. But Podge wouldn’t go where there is nothing, and he wouldn’t hiss at what can be eaten. So, it isn’t food in there.

    A step forward. The hip aches.

    It is narrow under the bush. Once I would have got in there without thinking: dachshund and jagdterrier is not only low stature, it is also the stubbornness that gets you into any burrow. Now I first work out whether the business is worth my joints.

    The rustling dies away.

    Podge flies up onto the stack of old paving slabs by the fence and sits there like a fluffy monument. I bark. Once, briefly. Not for the people – for the sake of order.

    Podge goes off along the fence with his tail held high, as though it had all gone to his plan. I pretend not to have noticed how he hurried.

    Beyond the fence the Mountain is walking.

    The Mountain is the Alsatian from the next yard. People call her Taiga, and the name suits her: she really does look like a shaggy monster out of the taiga, hidden behind solid boards. I call her the Mountain, because she is huge and blocks the sound with herself.

    The Mountain’s favourite occupation is to go quiet and lie in wait. She can be silent as though she were not there at all. You walk past, sniffing the ground, thinking about something important – and she is already standing at the gap, watching. And only then does she bark.

    Low.

    Loud.

    Straight into your ear.

    I jump every time. Not from fear, from surprise. The Mountain’s tricks are cheap. Real education is when it is clear in advance who is afraid of whom. But she hides in the silence like a flea in fur.

    Today she doesn’t wait for me to come over.

    She is walking along the fence herself. The smell comes through the boards: hot dog, dust, old fur and unease. The Mountain snorts, pushes her nose into the gap at the bottom and barks not at me but towards our blackcurrant.

    If the Mountain smells it too, then it isn’t about the cat.

    I have no imagination. I have a nose. And the nose says that something strange has settled inside the boundaries of the plot.

    I go back to the house. The Boss comes out onto the steps.

    ‘Lumpi, what’s all this barking?’

    I look at him. He doesn’t understand. People understand badly unless you show them. I go to the door and scrape at the threshold with my paw.

    ‘All you want is a walk.’

    I don’t want a walk. I am explaining.

    But people have this peculiarity: until you bring them in your teeth the thing you mean, they think you simply want to eat or walk.

    From the kitchen the Missus says:

    ‘There’ll be a storm this evening. The blackcurrants want picking or it will knock them off.’

    ‘We’ll do it after lunch,’ the Boss answers.

    I turn my head towards the bushes.

    Blackcurrants. Storm. The creeping cold. People don’t feel it, and I feel it: the wind is already changing, there is damp in it, wet iron and distant smoke. The wind brings decisions before the people manage to take them.

    I lie down in the shade by the steps and don’t sleep.

    After lunch the Boss dozes. The Missus busies herself in the kitchen: it smells of dough, of apples and of that sweet fear people have before a storm. The house breathes slowly. The clock ticks, the fridge hums, a fly beats against the glass. The Missus drops a spoon twice. Beyond the fence the Mountain stops walking and lies down.

    Then I hear the cat.

    Podge is not coming along the fence. He is working his way low over the ground, behind the tool shed. That is not how you creep when all you want is to steal.

    I get up. The hip argues first, then agrees. I go along the house, in the shade: shorter, and softer for the paws.

    Podge is sitting on the bottom slab, looking into the bush. He isn’t washing. He isn’t looking at me. He is all gathered up.

    The smell has grown stronger. It isn’t hiding any more. Something warm has mixed into the cold: stone heated through the day, dry leaves, dust.

    Podge strikes the slab with his paw. Briefly. Again.

    From under the branches there is rustling again.

    Podge springs away but doesn’t leave – he climbs higher and works his tail.

    I understand: he wants it to come out. Not necessarily of its own accord.

    Cats like the dangerous part of the work to be done by somebody else. Podge looks down at me, and in his yellow eyes there is no gratitude in advance – only calculation. I don’t like being used. But I like it even less when something that smells of trouble settles on my ground.

    I go up to the branches. Cold comes from underneath. I snort; dust gets into my nose. I scrape at the earth by the edge of the slab and catch a splinter. The pain runs into my shoulder.

    Once I would have turned that slab over. Now I have to think.

    Podge comes lower, almost beside me. He smells of fur, mice, sun and cheek. He gives a short mew. Quietly. Something like: “Well?”

    I growl at him. He doesn’t take offence. He looks into the bush.

    Beyond the fence the Mountain goes off like a bomb.

    Not as usual, not with one blow out of the silence: she barks on and on, hoarsely, with a howl in it, and her alarm comes through the boards. Podge flinches but stays.

    So, she smells it too. So, I haven’t invented it.

    The people still don’t know.

    I run to the house.

    The Missus is pouring food into the bowl – the same cardboard with chicken dust.

    ‘Eat up, Lumpi.’

    I don’t eat. I stand by the door and look at the bushes.

    ‘Now what?’

    She comes over and looks out into the yard. People see badly. They see the wire, the branches, the cat on the slabs. The smell they don’t see.

    ‘Get off, Plutonium!’

    Podge doesn’t even turn his head.

    Then the Missus decides I am ill. She squats down and feels my belly. Her hands are warm and smell of dough and medicine. I lick her wrist. Not out of tenderness. Her smell simply means home: while it is there, one can sleep by the door.

    ‘All right, old girl,’ she says, and lays her palm for a second on the back of my neck.

    I am not an old girl. I simply know when not to spend strength.

    Towards evening the sky darkens.

    The wind comes in gusts, drives dust across the yard, tugs at the branches and throws down the first heavy drops. Thunder rolls somewhere behind the roofs. People begin to move faster: the Missus shuts the windows; the Boss comes out onto the steps with a small bucket.

    ‘I’ll go and pick them.’

    I get up.

    He shuffles across the yard in his old jacket. A slipper on one foot, a garden clog on the other: the right slipper is under the blackcurrant, by the fence. I know it for certain. I put it there myself.

    I walk beside him. Not because I want to help – I want to see where he puts his hands. People are forever putting their hands where a nose should go first.

    At the bush the smell is different now. Hot on top, cold inside. The branches have warmed through the day, but the shade has stayed under them.

    The Boss bends down. He holds the upper branches aside and reaches for the lower clusters – where the berries are bigger and the sun doesn’t get in.

    I see the slipper.

    The half-torn rubber sole sticks out from under the leaves like a dark tongue. It lies where I left it, but it no longer smells only of the Boss. It smells of that same creeping cold. Whether it is in the way or giving cover, I don’t know. I know one thing: the Boss is putting his hand where it smells of disaster.

    I growl.

    ‘Lumpi, out of the way.’

    A step forward. The hip flares.

    The hand goes into the leaves. Something moves beneath it. I hear it not with my ears – with my skin. A dry, short sound.

    I take the slipper in my teeth.

    The rubber is hard, old, with a taste of earth. I pull – it is caught. The pain runs from the hip to the shoulder blade. I pull again.

    ‘Drop it!’

    The Boss takes hold of my collar and pulls me towards him. That is exactly what is needed. He takes a step back. Another.

    The slipper comes free.

    From under the branches a short dark whip strikes out.

    It cracks against the rubber – not against the hand. I fling the slipper aside; the whip goes after it. From above, from the slabs, a ginger shadow drops: Podge strikes with his paw, hisses and flies higher. He is helping himself rather more than me. But he strikes at the same point.

    Beyond the fence the Mountain is barking her head off, as though she had waited for this all her life.

    The Boss loses his balance and sits down on the ground. Drops of rain fall on his jacket.

    Between him and the bush lies the adder.

    She is short and thick, with a dark back and a flat head. She is not looking at me – she is looking at the slipper. The slipper smells of the Boss and of movement. For her that is an enemy too.

    From the house the Missus shouts:

    ‘What is it?!’

    The Boss doesn’t answer at once:

    ‘An adder.’

    He pronounces the word the way people pronounce the name of a thing they know perfectly well but would rather not find behind their own house.

    She doesn’t crawl away. She lifts her head. Her smell stands right up against us: slippery scales, dust, cold, anger. One must not stand close – I know this not with my mind but with my body. Once the body jumped at once. Now it asks first whether there is strength enough.

    Podge strikes the slab with his paw. The slab knocks dully. The adder turns her head towards the sound.

    The Boss crawls back on all fours, gropes over the wet earth with his hand and finds a stick. He doesn’t raise it. He simply holds it out in front of him, the way people hold things when they don’t know what to do.

    I stand between him and the snake.

    Not because I am brave. Because this is my place. People may not understand borders – I understand them. This is my yard. This is my bowl. Here is the Boss, who treads on my tail. Here is the Missus, who calls me an old girl and puts too little meat in it. Here is my smell.

    I growl. Low, from the chest. Not for the snake – for myself. So that the body remembers what it can still do.

    A roll of thunder comes closer.

    The rain grows heavier. The Missus runs out onto the steps with a torch, though it is still light, and the beam trembles over the branches, over the earth, over the dark back. The adder decides that there are too many people and animals and too little bush, and goes away under the slabs with a quick rustling movement.

    For a few seconds nobody moves.

    ‘Good God,’ says the Boss.

    Podge sits up above and licks a paw with the air of one who planned it all. The Mountain barks once more, hoarse and short, as though putting in a full stop.

    I lay the slipper at the Boss’s feet. Not because he asked. It is simply that the thing smells right now: of rain, of danger and of my work.

    The Boss looks at the slipper. Then at me. Then at the slabs.

    ‘What was all that, Lumpi?’ he asks quietly.

    I don’t answer. I keep watch on the gap.

    ‘Did she pull you away?’ says the Missus.

    The Boss says nothing.

    Then he gets up, winces and touches the small of his back. People grow more careful in old age too; they simply don’t like admitting it. He picks the slipper up with two fingers, as though it might bite.

    ‘Right. Let’s go in.’

    I go first. Not because I want to be in charge. It is simply that somebody has to walk in front and watch the ground.

    Indoors it smells of wet Boss, of the Missus’s fright, of risen dough and of the rain from the door that stood open for a minute. The Missus puts a bowl down in front of me. Not dry food. The real thing. A piece of boiled chicken, warm, with the right fat on it and the smell of happiness.

    I sit down on my hind legs and eat slowly. Not out of nobility – after that pull the hip is burning, and standing for long is uncomfortable.

    The Boss sits on a stool and tells how it all was. He has a great many words, and half of them are unnecessary. People always add words where a smell would have been enough.

    ‘I was reaching for the bottom cluster, and there she was… And Lumpi grabbed the slipper… I thought she was messing about… And it turns out she’d smelt it…’

    ‘We’ll cut the bush back tomorrow,’ says the Missus. ‘And the slabs go. It should have been done long ago.’

    The Boss nods. Then he looks at me. I don’t like being looked at as though somebody wanted to find something human in me. I am a dog. I eat chicken. I lie by the door. I know where a strange smell is. That is enough.

    The Missus gives me another piece.

    I take it.

    Podge doesn’t come again – not today, at any rate. Perhaps he is sitting on a windowsill thinking that he arranged the whole thing. Cats can appropriate other creatures’ victories. Podge is no fool: he understood before I did where the adder was sitting, and he didn’t go in where poisoned teeth can sink into your muzzle. I shan’t praise him. A cheeky cat. It is simply that cheeky cats sometimes see more than people do.

    Beyond the fence the Mountain isn’t barking. The rain drums on the boards, and her smell grows steadier. She has done her part: she shouted. Everyone helps in his own way. The Mountain with barking. Podge with cheek. I with nose and teeth. People with their hands, and with the habit of putting them where they shouldn’t.

    Later the storm goes off behind the roofs, and the yard begins to smell of wet leaves, of cooled dust and of that clean thing there is only after a big rain. I go out with the Boss. He is not in a slipper any more – in wellingtons, and he is looking down. That is right, but still not enough: boots are no substitute for a nose.

    We go to the blackcurrant. The torch in his hand trembles and picks out wet leaves, crushed berries, the edge of a slab. The adder is nowhere to be seen. The smell is still there, but it is weakening, spreading away into the rainwater.

    The Boss shines the light under the bush and says nothing. Then he takes a stick and carefully moves the leaves. I stand beside him: if somebody has to stand in front, it is me.

    ‘She’s gone,’ he says to himself.

    He doesn’t know. Perhaps she has gone under the slabs. Perhaps deeper, to the compost. But just now the yard smells of rain and of our own, and not of disaster.

    The Boss picks up the slipper. It is dirty, wet, with the marks of my teeth on it. The Boss holds it and thinks about whether to throw it away. Once he would certainly have thrown it away: people love the word ‘tat’ and the ritual of getting rid of it. But now the slipper doesn’t smell of tat, it smells of what happened.

    The Boss puts it on the bench by the steps. Not in the bin. On the bench.

    At night the house breathes differently. It smells of tea, of wet clothes, of the Missus’s medicines and of that tired human warmth that comes after a fright. The Missus goes to the door twice and checks the latch. The Boss carries a bucket out to the bushes, then changes his mind and carries it back. People make unnecessary movements when they need to convince themselves that everything is under control.

    The place by the threshold I choose myself: from there you can see the kitchen, the yard and the bedroom. I lie down, stretch out my right paw, listen. The hip aches steadily, like an old board after rain. Tomorrow will be worse, the day after perhaps better. That is how it goes. The body doesn’t ask what I want. Sometimes one has to come to terms with it.

    Outside, water drips from the roof. Somewhere far off the Mountain barks once. Not at me – just so that everyone remembers she is there.

    The Boss goes to make tea and stops beside me. I don’t lift my head. He stands and looks, and then he takes a small step to one side so as not to tread on my tail.

    ‘Goodnight, Lumpi.’

    I knock my tail on the floor. Nothing more is needed.

    People may not understand smells, or borders, or other dogs’ letters on posts. They can shut doors in your face, call three times and hide food in a cold box. They can tread in the wrong place. But sometimes they learn.

    I close my eyes. My ears I leave on guard. The house smells of our own – so until morning one can keep watch quietly.

    But you still have to watch where you put your feet.