Ian McEwan - Black Dogs by Contents

Author:Contents
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-03-15T22:00:00+00:00

Part Three

Majdanek. Les Salces.

St Maurice de Navacelles 1989

THE FOLLOWING DAY he did not stir from the apartment in Kreuzberg. He lay on a couch in the tiny living room looking morose, preferring the television to conversation. A doctor friend of Günter’s called round to examine the injured leg. It was likely that nothing was broken, but an X-ray in London was recommended. I went out for a stroll in the late morning. The streets had a hung-over look, with beer-cans and smashed bottles underfoot and, round the hot-dog stalls, paper napkins smeared with mustard and tomato ketchup. During the afternoon, while Bernard slept, I read the newspapers and wrote up our conversations of the day before. In the evening he was still untalkative. I went out for another stroll and had a beer in a local Kneipe. The festivities were beginning again, but I had seen enough. I was back in the apartment within an hour, and we were both asleep by half past ten.

Bernard’s flight the next morning to London, and mine to Montpellier via Frankfurt and Paris were only an hour apart. I had arranged for one of Jenny’s brothers to meet the plane at Heathrow. Bernard was livelier. He hobbled across the terminal at Tegel looking well-suited to the walking-stick he had borrowed, using it to hail an airline employee and remind him of the wheelchair that had been ordered. It would be waiting, Bernard was assured, by the departure gate.

As we walked in that direction I said, ‘Bernard, I wanted to ask you something about June’s dogs …’

He interrupted me. ‘For the life and times? I’ll tell you something. You can forget all that nonsense about “face to face with evil”. Religious cant. But, you know, I was the one who told her about Churchill’s black dog. You remember? The name he gave to the depressions he used to get from time to time. I think he pinched the expression from Samuel Johnson. So June’s idea was that if one dog was a personal depression, two dogs were a kind of cultural depression, civilisation’s worst moods. Not bad, really. I’ve often made use of it. It went through my mind at Checkpoint Charlie. It wasn’t his red flag you know. I don’t think they even saw it. You heard what they were shouting?’

‘Ausländer ‘raus.’

‘Foreigners out. The Wall comes down and everybody’s out there dancing in the street, but sooner or later …’

We had arrived at the departure gate. A man in a braided uniform manoeuvred the wheelchair behind Bernard and he lowered himself with a sigh.

I said, ‘But that wasn’t my question. I was looking at my old notes yesterday. The last time I saw June she told me to ask you what the Maire of St Maurice de Navacelles said about those dogs when you had lunch at the café that afternoon …’

‘The Hôtel des Tilleuls? What those dogs had been trained to do? A perfect case in point. The Maire’s story simply wasn’t true. Or at the very least, there was no way of knowing.

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