The Village Dogs
There is a dog for each house in the village. Mostly grey-muzzled veterans of guardianship lying on long chains outside barns or near chicken coups. On hot days they growl low in their throats when I pass, the heat too great to make a scene. But more days come now where the fog hangs on the mountain, whisps trapped in the trees and the air is turning crisp. The snows are coming and the dogs rise to their feet and bark with professional aggression.
I walk through the village to the post box. Cats stalking the fields stop to stare, one paw held above the ground, frozen. I see the burning man. He burns straw, cardboard and rubbish. He is always burning things. I am not surprised by this even though this village of 40 people has a better recycling facility than greater Blanchardstown. That is what people are like. To look at he is a young man getting old, with fresh blue eyes in a balding head. He seems to love his long-horned cows. I saw him stroking their noses one day before crossing the field to burn things.
The cats of the village are scruffy. There are too many of them and I am told the farmers do not have them nuetered, instead finding it easier to drown kittens. The gander gang are up early this morning. A black duck with a scar on his eye is the lieutenant of the group. He waddles at me, the pack at his back. From behind their wooden shelter comes the boss, a big gander who builds up to a loud crescendo. He stops when I sit on the trough to take in the view. Across the lake there are ripples and wind lanes, beyond that the wall of the Alps rise over the Swiss plain like a frozen wave.
There is a man in the village everyone says is an alcoholic. Every time someone mentions him, they tell me he is an alcoholic. “Oh that man is an alcoholic” they say. They tell me that after ever municipal meeting whoever is driving him home has to stop the car so he can be sick. I have never seen him in his cups but his car lights are always left on and he sometimes has the shakes. But he may just not like committee meetings. I don’t. His dog is a mongrel, a big dollop of border collie and something else. He comes at me teeth bared. I don’t like collies much. Funny in the head, like someone on a three day amphetimine binge. Too close to their edge for comfort. I introduce myself to the dog. He stops snarling and begins to pant. “You see, he is smiling” says the neighbour. We talk about the dog. We talk about honey.
The neighbour makes delicious honey. He explains the two types. The brown one comes from bees who have been using forest flowers and the pale one is from the flowers of the meadow. We talk about fishing and he tells me his brother-in-law is a great fisherman and whenever he visits it’s “poissons, poissons poissons!” Then he makes a joke about his sister I don’t understand and he and the dog go to pick raspberries leaving me to the mercies of the gander gang, here, on the balcony of the Jura Mountains, where the fog hangs in the trees.
admin @ October 15, 2008