ALAN FRIEDMAN
no longer - and suddenly the bitch barked. The noise was stunning.
Her head jerked sideways, then shot forward, teeth snapping at her
mistress's hand. The needle fixed itself in the animal's upper palate,
visibly.
The noise - the rapid motion - were instantaneous and repeat–
ed. Terrified squealing
with
terrifying barking - the sounds of two
separate dogs locked teeth to throat - the jaws bared, another lunge at
the needle, and another, and always the teeth closed over the shaft and
the point sank into the half-open palate. Until finally no motion,
no sound, and Madame Dijour could put the point into the dry
snout at will. Poupee remained rigid. There was not even whimpering
now, only the redrimmed watching eyes.
"When the Germans were in Paris during the war," she said,
"my husband cried out."
At the surge of barking, even Bijou the cat had begun to stretch.
She had risen up in her basket on two legs at the sound, then stretched
again. Too pregnant to bother, she curled heavily around, meaning
to retire perhaps. But she came instead, evidently by long-established
habit - many-teated, sagging, and shaking her paws as though wet
- to the foot of Madame Dijour's chair.
" If
he had not cried out,"
she said.
There was no attempt to finish the phrase. She lowered the dog
to the floor.
My pupil's yellowish cheeks were now white, veined over the
jaws and red at the bones, as if she were out in the cold. I had
begun a strange slow rocking in my chair - with what feelings I don't
know - terror? compassion? hatred? - I had ceased to exist, I think,
just as
if
from the very beginning the dog's torment had wiped me
out. I don't remember myself there; I just remember
It:
It
whimper–
ing, It rocking, It mouthless, It freezing, It pushing a needle.
On the floor Poupee lay on her back, quite still, even her eyes
still. Obediently, Bijou's left paw shook with that wet motion again,
then the cat's bored claws came through their sheathes, and sank
with electric viciousness into Poupee's undefended snout. Well trained.
The dog made no sound - in memory I see her staring at me
alone, but probably that's only a trick of memory - eyes without a
plea in them, without a hope, and paws folded rigidly against her
gaunt protruding breastbone. I still see the cat's paw, always the
