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Near the park exit, Ronel noticed a rapid dog-like movement in the bushes. But after observing it briefly, he saw that the object of his shattered hope was the short, bearded shadow of Schneider. Ronel, who frequented the park only during the day, was surprised to see Schneider there so late at night. His first thought was that some sixth sense had told Schneider that Darko was lost and he'd left his house to join the search, but a familiar whistle punctured that heroic version of things. And right after that whistle came Alma, Schneider's beautiful, limping mistress.
Alma, who was about twenty-five, was one of the most beautiful women Ronel knew, and definitely the lamest. She'd been injured in an unusually stupid car accident, and had used the money she received in settlement to buy a fully renovated penthouse on Michal Street. Alma's extreme encounter with a bad driver and an excellent lawyer (she'd even told Ronel his name once, but since there were no injury suits on his horizon, he quickly forgot it) had undoubtedly shifted the course of her life. People always say they would pass up any amount of money to get their health back, but was that really true? Alma, as far as he could tell from a leash away, always smiled a genuine-looking smile, which Ronel had tried to imitate for business purposes. He had even practiced a few times in front of the mirror before he gave up and opted for an easier one. Hers was a permanent smile that rested on her face, a default smile, not fixed or phony, but one that always reacted to whatever was happening around it — broadening, narrowing, turning surprised or cynical when called for, but always there and always relaxed. It was the relaxation of that smile that made Ronel try to imitate it, recognizing its superiority as a negotiating tool over any other expression. Would she have smiled that way if she were poor and had a platinum-free leg? Or would the smile have been different, less serene? More frightened by an uncertain economic future, by the threat of old age looming over her perfect beauty?
"I didn't know you and Darko came here at night," Alma said, hopping into the shaft of light at the entrance to the park.
"We don't," Ronel groaned desperately, "Darko ran away," he said, but quickly corrected himself, "I mean he got lost." Schneider was looking all around Ronel with the annoying friskiness of a stupid and not particularly sensitive schnauzer.
"He doesn't understand," Alma apologized. "He smells Darko on your clothes and thinks he's here."
"I know, I know," Ronel said nodding and for no reason, burst into tears. "But he's not. He's not here. He could be dead by now. Run over.
She gave her lively schnauzer the sad, loving look beautiful girls save for their ugly girlfriends. |
Or maybe some kids are torturing him in a backyard, putting out cigarettes on him, or maybe the city dog-catchers got him..."
Alma put a comforting hand on his arm, and even though her hand was damp with sweat, there was something pleasant about that dampness, something gentle and alive. "Dog-catchers don't work at night, and Darko's a smart dog. There's no way he was run over. If it were Schneider..." she said, giving her lively schnauzer the kind of sad, loving look beautiful girls always save for their ugly girlfriends, "Then we'd have to worry. But Darko knows how to take care of himself. I can just see him whining outside the entrance to your building. Or on your doormat right now, chewing on a stolen bone."
Even though he could have called Neeva to ask whether Darko had come back, Ronel decided to go home. It was close by, and besides, now that Alma had managed to convince him that Darko might be there, he didn't want Neeva to be the one to tell him the good news. "She and I," he thought, "should have separated a long time ago." Once, he remembered, he'd looked at Neeva when she was sleeping and imagined a horrible scenario in which she died in a terrorist attack. He'd be sorry for cheating on her and he'd cry live on the six o'clock news out of guilt cunningly disguised as pure grief. That thought, he now remembered, had been sad and terrible, but, to his surprise, it also made him feel a kind of relief. As if her being wiped out of his life might open up a space for something else, something with colors and smells and life. But before he could feel guilty again about this sensation of relief, Renana made her entrance into the scenario and now that Neeva was no longer part of it, she moved right in with him, at first to comfort and support him. Then she stayed for no reason at all. Ronel remembered how he'd gone on and on in his imagination, till he reached the point when Renana said to him, "It's me or Darko." He chose Darko and remained alone in his
"He ran way from you and you're not even mad," said the shwarma guy. "That's the way it should be." |
apartment. Without a woman. Without love, except for Darko's, whose existence only intensified the terrible loneliness he called his life. "Terrorism is awful," Ronel had thought that night, "It destroys life in an instant," and he gave Neeva's sleeping forehead a gentle kiss.
Ronel walked past Darko almost without noticing him. He was too busy trying to find a lighted window in his third-floor apartment. Darko was busy too, his filmy glance admiringly following the quick hands of the owner of Tarboosh Shwarma as they cut thin slices of meat from the revolving spit. But when the two friends finally spotted each other, their reunion was filled with lavish face-licking and emotion. "That's some dog," the shwarma guy said as he kneeled in front of Darko, placing a piece of paper with a few greasy slices of meat on the sidewalk like a high priest making a sacrifice to his god. "I want you to know that a lot of dogs come here, and I don't give them anything. But this one..." he said, pointing at Darko, "Tell me, does he happen to be Turkish?"
"What do you mean, Turkish?" Ronel asked, offended.
"Oh nothing," the shwarma guy apologized, "I'm from Izmir, so I thought... When I was a kid, I had a dog just like him, a puppy. But he used to pee in the house, which drove my mother crazy, so she threw him out, like he did it on purpose. But you, you're a good man. He ran away from you and you're not even mad. Believe me, that's how it should be. I don't understand all those tough guys who clobber their dogs with the leash if they stop for a minute to watch the shwarma turn. What are they, Nazis?"
"He didn't run away," Ronel corrected him as he pressed his tired forehead against Darko's sturdy back, "He got lost."
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