The Mourning Hounds

The man’s five hounds are restless, they are his wards and tethers. They surround him with ten pleading eyes: Toma, Sophie, Toby, Strelka, and Stas. These days, caring for them is lonelier. They, too, feel a certain lack. They lounge listless across the apartment, wandering to and fro. At night they try to accompany the man to bed, but he refuses them; their company keeps him awake and there isn’t much space on the mattress. So, they disappear into darkness until he wakes. When morning comes, though waking up is difficult, he cannot help but be reenergized by light; he appreciates the hounds’ loyal company anew.

Toma’s milk-and-chocolate fur is softest to the touch, black Sophie’s grey eyes belie startling understanding; plump, straw-colored Toby’s appetite is voracious as of late—hard to refuse; white Strelka’s alert nose prolongs any walk as every trace is sniffed out and investigated, and Stas—wolf-form panda—whose ears perk up like furry antennae at the slightest suspicious sound. So anxious; why? They are a lot to take care of, and sometimes the man wonders whether he’s capable. He’s thankful that his sense of duty is still enough to get him out of bed.

When he rises in response to their collective whine, they pick up on his willingness to take them outside, and so they hop and clack on the ceramic tiles. Their canine excitement is infectious, and the energy in their kind eyes stirs the man to play along. He questions them, uses their favorite words, let’s go for a walk? Gulyat?! as they answer with another hop, more eagerness. They jump, skip, and lead him to the door—Toma and Toby already picking up their respective leads. They know how the ritual goes. The man follows and reaches out as the hounds plunge into his hands; they receive his caresses. He straps a collar onto each neck, loosely, and neglects his sorrow. They are in tune, and life becomes as simple as can be.

Once all five leads are firmly grasped—three in left hand, two in right—they pour out of the apartment into the hushed, dark lobby. A mayhem of claws and the beat of his boots send echoes up and down the stairwell. He feels apologetic, but there’s nothing he can do, and soon they are out in the sunlit street. Out there, they are a synchronized pack beneath blue, cloud, and angel. The man chooses the direction, and the hounds lead down the street.

It’s still early, and much to the man’s relief, the streets are empty. He’s at ease this way, for there’s no need to be ashamed for walking so extravagantly with not one, not two, but five large hounds taking up space. They are all eager, exploratory, and the man is thankful he doesn’t need to restrain them much. He allows them to trot further away from him to their wolfish hearts’ content.

They turn, cross the road, and are suddenly shaded by a row of flowering trees. The brick pavement is littered with their fallen petals, full flowers, some crushed, others yet spared. A breeze, as well as the pack’s movement, sends some flowers rolling. Roll, save yourselves. Strelka is the only one to slow down. She brings her nose low, sniffs at something unseen—chto tam?—and as she looks up at the man, her shiny black nose is adorned by a single yellow petal. They move on and the air that way is suffused with the smell of gentle flowery rot. It is mildly distasteful, but the man doesn’t fault the flowers nor the trees that grieve them. The wind, then, picks up, resulting in more floral casualties, though more importantly, in foliage being set adance. Gently. Lovely. To some unheard music.

Before the pack continues, Stas halts them all. He lingers, ears raised, twitching. The road is silent and allows a faint hiss to reach Stas’s perked up ears. It’s a strange sound, not easily recognized. With a small nudge and scratch between the ears, Stas is torn away from his reconnaissance and the pack moves on. The source of the hiss can soon be seen—it’s a pair of teens tagging a wall. It seems too early for such activities, but the man doesn’t slow to consider it further. He only wonders how the sharp, pleasing smell of fresh spray paint is registered by Strelka’s sensitive nose, and whether it’s offensive.

They reach the path’s end, and before they turn a corner, a few of the hounds relieve themselves. This, too, is easier when the streets are empty. The man feels neither watchful eyes nor any guilt over offending passersby. Around the corner, the street slopes downward. The angle augments the pack’s speed. But before they settle into their new pace, Sophie spots a distant figure. She barks once, twice, and growls before the man urges her to be quiet. Tiho, tiho. He squints to make out the distant figure—approaching or receding? For a moment, he regrets having left his glasses at home, but no matter—he has no need of them in these familiar streets. And yes, unfortunately, it does seem like the figure is on the approach. The man tenses up and holds the hounds firmly, closer. He’s confident in their discipline; but when people show fear, it confuses the hounds. They react, they are sensitive. The figure is now close enough, the man can see it’s another man on a morning stroll, likely around his age. He approaches fast, and the man tries to keep his eyes trained on the road ahead. He mustn’t look down; it would be sad to look down. Why should he and not the other man? He maintains the direction of his gaze, and bizarrely feels the urge to smile, just to smile. It’s so intimate, he thinks, the way we’re walking briskly toward one another on this empty path. I feel like smiling at you.

And then the other man is gone. He moves past them swiftly, the hounds are not disturbed, proving they are well-behaved and deserving of trust. With the unexpected presence behind and out of mind, the man’s thoughts go wandering down avenues of their own. The path becomes slightly narrower, and Toma is forced to walk behind the other hounds. Toma is at the man’s side, and the reminiscing owner absentmindedly glides his fingers through the soft fur. Aided by softness, the mind inevitably turns to aborted tales of love, old friends. In their absence—the inability to hear them speak—he ventriloquizes their remembered mouths, those hazy approximations. Nothing he forces them to say rings true. He cannot know what they think now, and if at all. He’s thankful when Toby gives him reason to halt his self-pitying thoughts. The substantial hound, peckish, has found something to nibble on. The man quickly reprimands the hound, even checking with his fingers to make sure nothing untoward is eaten. But the man isn’t cross. Toby is faultless, the durachok. The man wipes his wet fingers on the inside of his pocket and briefly wonders what to eat once he’s home.

They now turn to walk beside a wide road already growing busy with the morning’s traffic. The man looks to the other side, the houses there, and focuses on a spindly, lone fir. He amuses himself by thinking it akin to some morose Ent in a foreign land, scrutinizing the horizons for the lost Entwives. Closer, the man’s side of the street is lined with different kinds of trees. These have a look of the tropics about them. Their trunks are strange, thick, and round at the midsection, as if pregnant with something verdant. Were they always that way? They glow green with alien contentment—look heavier, near bursting. The man is unnerved and steers the pack toward the first crossing to walk back home on the opposing side. It’s fine to head back now; the hounds relieved themselves, and walking farther would be inconvenient. People are waking up, going to work. Walking farther, through her street—no, too narrow for us. There’s not enough room there. We’d bother people.

On the way back, the man feels that he can no longer afford to pay attention to each hound. He must simply get them home. So he urges, hurries, planning to get them something to eat, and invent an excuse to avoid work, and then. Well, who knows. The street grows cacophonous; they walk by an overflowing garbage bin, and at some point, the street, unexpectedly and simply, pisses itself—sewage spills out of a manhole, reeking and wetting the street. The man can’t tell whether it’s happening out of fear or some missed hilarity. He pauses with his hounds held close, who are growing anxious. The leash handles cut into his palms. Then, the pack carefully walks around the flowing stream as the man looks down to make sure they all avoid stepping into flowing sewage. He winces when he spots a wet, crushed carcass of a large roach, seemingly hurled up from the sewers below. Enough.

The man is almost home, and by the lingering scent of aerosolized spray paint, he recognizes the spot of the earlier teen’s effort to tag the street. The black graffito reads
“כאן אהבתי פעם”. So you did. I did too. Why am I here? Still.

At the apartment building, the hounds behave strangely. They seem to pick up on a presence. They skip, jump, and all at once overpower the man’s grip. His heart sinks as they dash up the black staircase in a whirlwind in an upward avalanche of claws on stairs on stairs and he runs after missing a step stumbling swearing he can sense a scent too it can’t be, cannot be, no, catch them, it’s not—

He reaches his floor breathlessly. It is a dark, silent, yawning space. And she, of course, is not there. He unlocks the door to the apartment, steps inside, and sinks until he is seated in the washed-out grey. And the hounds, oh, the hounds. They gather round him, closer, close, and he embraces them, burying fingers into fur, until it is hair, until it is gold, tight, tighter, until they are part of him and not apart. To numb them. He’s had enough of his senses for today.