Noise (The Dogs), a short story

It's been almost 2 years since I first shared the beginnings of this story. If you've joined the Short Story course that I teach, you saw it being born! I've worked on the story, on and off, during this time. It kept getting more complex, more complicated, until I recently decided to cut it back and make it simple, much closer to what it was in the beginning.

If you'd like to read a translation, you can download a pdf of the story here and let Google Translate translate it for you.

Noise

The walls of this apartment are so thin that through them I can hear my neighbour Alex on the phone barking at whoever's on the other end of the line: customer service representatives from companies who've sold him faulty goods or have failed to give him what he wants. Mostly these conversations are in Spanish, so it's hard to make out what he's saying, but when his frustration mounts, he curses in English, clichéd phrases that begin with “Why the fuck...” He's tall and wiry with curly hair, and lives with his girlfriend, a nurse who's rarely at home but who, unlike him, likes to chat if we pass each other on the stairs. When not on the phone, Alex watches action movies or plays video games, both of which involve much crashing and exploding.

When I moved into this apartment a couple of months ago, I was getting away from other noises. I'd been living in Madrid for a year by then in a ground-floor flat where the sounds were so varied and constant that in the end I was happy to find this piso interior which, although lacking in natural night, is far from the street and because of that, it's sheltered from the cacophony of the city: garbage trucks that dodgem-car through the streets at four in the morning, clubbers chatting on benches beneath your window, glass bottles being hurled into recycling bins so that they smash into pieces, men whistle aimlessly, passersby shout into their phones me oyes? me oyes?

Here in my new piso which is not muy luminoso, I have none of that, although I do have an angry neighbour. And then there are the dogs. Three little white Maltese ones.

Repetitive sounds, air-conditioners that hum, televisions in adjacent rooms, my father chewing his food at dinner or sipping tea afterwards, have all driven me to distraction at various points in my life. Before Madrid, I lived in London for twenty years, an overpopulated city in which I was lucky to find apartments with considerate neighbours. Consideration is fundamental to the English view of themselves, even if my years in England taught me that on the whole and with a quick glance at history, they're not a considerate bunch. As for my father, he's been dead for many years, and although there are things I miss about him, I do not miss his slurping and chomping. Death, of course, is the ultimate silencer, and at moments of extreme distress, my imaginings about the three little dogs get violent. How else does one get rid of a yapping that fills the building's interior patio and shoots up to the fourth-floor. In all the years I've lived in cities, I've never been troubled by the barking of dogs. You'd think a barking dog would be like a crying baby: a thing to be placated and hushed, but this is not the case with these dogs nor is it the case with the dogs of Madrid in general.

It's summer now and everything is open, things and noises bleed into each other. They say the Spanish love the intimacy of the crowd, and I feel it on the street, the way they brush against you, walk into your path, invite close contact. What's indoors spills out and what's outside finds its way in, particularly during these oven-dry months of summer. Nueve meses de invierno y tres meses de infierno and it's true, winters are longer than you'd expect in a place with such an infernal summer. I love the heat, though, the way it slows you down, seeps into your bones, makes you feel that any hotter and you could explode. The baking heat erases everything: the past, desire, anger. It makes you want to lie down and absorb. I know this is not how everyone feels. It's the end of July and temperatures are in the high 30s. In August, the days will get hotter. When I first moved here from London I made the mistake of leaving windows open during the day, expecting cool breezes to waft in, but on my walks in the city, I realised that blinds and windows are closed in the early morning, keeping in the coolness until evening comes and everything can be opened again. Yet even with the blinds and the windows shut, the barking penetrates. When someone enters or leaves the building, the dogs work themselves up into a frenzy and shriek at the perceived danger. It's an onslaught, a gaggle of ex-smokers in a scrum, hoarse voices, damaged, then two of them will stop and one will continue barking: a lone woof, another woof, weaker, followed by an uneasy quiet before a renewed barrage, desperate, hostile, all three screeching in a pile-up of barking, and because I can neither paint nor think while this is going on, I peer down into the patio and watch them fling themselves against the walls, flip over backwards, then return to waddle across the shit-covered surface. At some point they give up, or realise the danger has passed, perhaps thinking that the sudden quiet is of their own making. During these brief stretches of calm, like now, I assume they're eating or have fallen asleep on a threadbare rug between sofa and television. I've never seen them on the street, three dogs on a leash with their owner in charge. They seem demented by whatever it is that compels them to hurl their bodies into the air in a futile attempt to get at neighbours and delivery people. I do not like the dogs, although I know they are not to blame. I'm not a pet person, but I am friendly towards cats and dogs, and when I lived in other cities – Cape Town, then London – I've always looked after the pets of neighbours when they were away on holiday or visiting family. Dogs and cats take to me, as do small children. At my core I'm a gentle and kind person, and the sensitive creatures of the world – pets and babies – recognize this.

I grew up in a fishing village in South Africa, amongst thatched-roof cottages along the seafront and the inlets of the Krom River, a village populated mainly on weekends and in the summer. My parents owned The Resort,the only hotel in Cape St. Francis back then. One afternoon – I must have been twelve or thirteen – I'd been running along the shore and a dog cantered along beside me as if we'd been running together all this time. She followed me over the dunes and across the hotel lawn, passed the pool and into the thatched cottage where we lived, and so became, for the years she was with us, our family dog. We called her Smiley, because she was a dog who smiled, a kind of nervous tick that made her bare her teeth every now and then, the way people do in places like England to show they come in peace, even if that's not entirely true. Smiley was a friendly dog. That smile stays with me, a smile I've come to think of as an English smile, a quick stretch of the mouth to the sides, sometimes baring teeth, sometimes not, then quickly sealing the lips, a smile that could be mistaken for an expression of sympathy as if a tragic event has just occurred and solace must be expressed. There's a note of pity to the smile, aah, bless him, poor thing. This is an exaggeration, of course, but not entirely off the mark.

A year or so after Smiley joined our family, while we were playing on the street in the heat of summer, barefoot and carefree as we were in those years, back when the streets of the village were gravel roads and not yet tarred over, we heard someone call the name of a dog, and our Smiley, or the dog we called Smiley, answered the call, which is how we learnt that before she lived with us, she'd lived with this person who showed up that summer. As a puppy – this is what they told us – Smiley had eaten rat poison and what we called her smile was the result of neurological damage. I don't remember where Smiley's owner came from nor why they didn't take her with them. Perhaps like many of us would in the years to come, they'd left the country and lived abroad, only visiting for the summer from Europe or North America. They would have seen how happy Smiley was with us and we with her. After all, she'd chosen to follow me home and later, when giving birth, of all the places in the house and hotel where she could have had her puppies, she chose the wardrobe in my bedroom. Of all of the people she could have trusted, she chose me. I have no memory of when she left, whether she died while living with us, or disappeared the way she'd turned up out of nowhere.

In the weeks of my father's dying almost twenty years ago, one of my aunts – a woman who believes in angels and crystals, and is more a family friend than a blood relative – told me I needed to protect myself with a shield of light, not to take in all my father's anguish as he fought the cancer that would be his ultimate silencer.

“I don't have a choice,” I said.

“I see that,” she said. “Your soul is the soul of an artist.”

In a strange way, her words have stayed with me and were the first affirmation of what I'd become later in life, what I am now. She talked about my receptivity and how I didn't have the barrier most people have between themselves and the world. I now know why the shrill barking is like broken glass to my skin and why I need quiet to paint. Like other artists who've fought their demons with repetition, I paint dots onto the pages of a large world atlas I've stuck to the walls of my living room. And while I paint red and white dots, I wonder what it would be like to live closer to the dogs, to live in that ground-floor flat with its interior patio. How does their owner tolerate the noise and the shit, because if they're doing it on the patio floor, who can know what's going on inside the apartment, on its rugs and sofas, in the lap of the man who owns them. Last week I'd caught a glimpse of him when his front door was open – he must have come in from the supermarket – and I'd seen piles of magazines in what looked like his living room, the kind of clutter you see in the home of a hoarder. I felt a ripple of compassion that I thought might soften this anger towards the dogs, but then evening came, night, the next morning and volleys of barking as this neighbour or that, a pizza delivery, sushi, burgers, the postman, some dinner guest arriving or leaving. I thought about ways to make it stop, to be like the neighbour from two flights down, between me and the dogs, who occasionally throws a bucket of water into the courtyard and shouts cállense! Or I could poison them, an extreme act I knew I'd never do, but early in the morning while still in bed, I'd imagine the dogs with their matted fur sprawled on the patio tiles framed in clusters of their own shit, tongues frothing, their owner wailing at the carnage before him, arms raised beseechingly to the heavens.

And why stop there? I'd liberate the city from its barking dogs and the plague of their excrement. Everywhere you look, there's a dog. Even if you can't see it, it's there, before or after barking, before or after depositing its shit on the lawn, the pavement, the middle of the road. They gather in parks, people and their dogs, in the late afternoon before dinner. When I'm out on my evening walks, I watch them, I take notes, the way an ethnographer might. Notes on people and their dogs. Before I came to Madrid, I'd not given much thought to people and their dogs. The English and their dogs are an innocuous story, the doting affair they have with their pets, like my ex-neighbour Jayne and her cat, Bowie. Even after ten years of me taking care of the cat while Jayne visited her mother in Cornwall, she'd leave a card with hand-written instructions: 1. Let the bath tap drip because Bowie prefers his water like that, 2. One sachet of rabbit meat so he can lick the gravy, then feed him 50g of dry food first thing in the morning then at dinner time. Jayne created Bowie in her image: finicky and demanding.

In the park by the river yesterday, a dog ran up to me as if me and its owner, in some alternative reality, were together, or me alone, or – and this thought only comes to me now – as if I, too, were a dog. After all, for a toddler or a puppy, we are fellow beings, still uncategorised, unaffiliated. The dog was playful, no distinction between play and the rest of its life. All of its life was play, everything depended on a rubber ball, a ball of string, a string of loving caresses saying “Hola, perrito. Qué guapo!” For a brief moment I thought this might be the answer: a dog of my own. As a single person, I am no stranger to suggestions from friends or family that a dog would be a good idea, and heading home, I picture myself with a dog, a greyhound, sleek and streamlined, for large dogs don't bark as much, don't mind being left alone. And then, closer to home, I brace myself for the barking that will punctuate the evening until the dogs and their owner fall asleep and the place becomes quiet, and I can paint and go deeper into the work until I can't keep my eyes open and must sleep, even if only for a few hours.

While preparing dinner – pasta with tomates and courgettes – I share with my friend Samir in London on Skype, a sample of the barking, this chorus of demented dogs.

“Have you spoken to the owner?” he says.

Samir's a psychologist who specialises in conflict resolution. He works in places like Bosnia and the DRC, organises large gatherings to teach participants about non-violent communication. I tell him the man doesn't look like someone you can reason with. Besides, I say, the neighbours don't seem to mind the barking.

“Then make your own noise,” he says.

“I guess I could play loud music,” I say.

“Let's do it,” he says.

“Now?” I say.

“Now,” he says.

So we try it on Skype, me in my kitchen in Madrid, Samir in his living room in London, randomly selecting from Spotify's “100% Flamenco” playlist, guitar music starting up gently, the two of us swaying, smiling, anticipating the change in rhythm when the voice enters, something about la estrella and the guitar nudging it, egging us on to strut our shoulders, twist our hands to follow the words about la estrella and how it will light the way and we clap along, our clapping like the relampago in the song as we bring our faces closer to the screen and shout olé at each other, mirroring each other's gestures, a mix of flamenco and Bollywood. Then another voice enters the song, he's singing and now she's singing, others cheer dale and clap and a second guitar, so much clapping and we clap, Samir at his end, me here, the voices loud and clear, the estrella that guides, will guide, our heels tapping, moving our shoulders and arms, but mainly we clap, palm against palm, full of joy for the estrella that lights us up from within, glowing as we move and move, but wait – no, don't stop, not yet, the music subsiding while we continue to shine, applauding each other for this moment we have created together.

“You don't need a dog,” Samir says. “Keep painting and making your own noise.”

“A new dawn has broken,” I say.

“Well done for diving in,” he says.

“I miss you,” I say.

“I know, my love,” he says. “I'll see you soon.”

Then at 8 o'clock as I'm eating my dinner, the residents of the building begin to return and with each opening of the entrance door, each climbing of the stairs, the barking starts and it's as if we'd neither sung nor danced, as if I'd never rescued myself with my own noise. The dogs bark. Shrill and relentless. It's like being assaulted, an execution, like being pushed into a corner, my life in danger, like this is the violence itself and the harbinger of worse to come, the attack that will gut us. I can neither fight nor fly but must endure, tied up, no escape, but this can't be true, I am no longer a child, no longer at war, I can fight back, and so I do. I fight back. With Samir's voice in my head, I lean out the window, take a deep breath, and do what feels impossible, what the English would call bonkers – I bark. I stand at the kitchen window and provide the antidote to the thing that disrupts.

I bark.

And I bark.

And I bark.

I'm surprised at the depth of my voice, surprised by the madness of what I've just done, surprised that no one has put their head out a window and shouted: Callate! What most surprises me though is that it works. I bark and the dogs run indoors, and all goes silent, except for the comforting and gentle crackle of croquetas being fried for dinner, the smell of something crisping in hot oil wafting upwards, a wonderful calm smell, the smell of peace being restored to the world.

I'd like to be able to say that the dogs are barking less now, that they're afraid to run out onto the patio and make a noise whenever someone enters the building. I am ready to bark as soon as they open their mouths, ready to remind them I'm louder and will not tolerate the incessant yapping. In the morning when their owner goes out to do his shopping and they bark, I bark. I bark at lunch time when the neighbours come home for lunch, and again at five in the afternoon when they head back to work after a siesta, their footsteps on the stairs rekindling the frenzy of the dogs. I put my head out the kitchen window and I bark: once, twice, and by the third bark they're back inside. They are too small to see where the great bark comes from, too small to twist their heads up and see as high as the fourth floor. So I take my afternoon tea and slice of cake and settle down on the living room floor, which is the coolest place in the house on these summer days. I crumble up the cake so its easier to eat, and in a few seconds its gone. I wash it down with slurps of tea. Then I curl up and close my eyes and let the rumble and bang of Alex's video game wash over me through the walls that are as thin as paper, so thin that it's as if we're in the same room, no walls between us, him absorbed in a game in which he can rescue the world from plagues and villains while I lie curled up on the rug, asleep at his feet.