Of Dogs and Walls by Yuko Tsushima

Author:Yuko Tsushima [Tsushima, Yuko]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241339794
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2017-12-05T00:00:00+00:00

Ah, that reminds me. I have to tell my five-year-old about the Dragon Palace – to tell him that, somewhere in the deep, the original of that underwater castle he’s so proud of surely exists. There, as colourful fish tickle the tips of their noses, the folk we long to see again sleep the sleep in which a hundred days are a hundred years.

Of Dogs and Walls

In a town whose name escapes me, I came across a small park with a freestanding wall in one corner. Brick, I seem to remember, or maybe concrete. I paused before it, expecting some sort of inscription, and saw instead an oddly shaped hole in the middle. It wasn’t immediately obvious what the shape was, but then it came to me: it was a human form. A figure in mid-stride, one arm swung forward, the other back. There was something tongue-in-cheek about it that set one giggling while puzzling over what it was doing there.

I later remarked on the curious sight to a friend and asked, ‘What do you suppose it was?’

‘From what I’ve heard,’ she said at once, ‘it’s an artist’s rendering of this fictional character, the Walker-through-Walls. Why did he walk through walls? Can’t help you there, I’m afraid. You’ll have to read the story. “Le passe-muraille”, I believe it’s called.’

This made me think instantly of Perry, who belonged to my mother years ago. If you ask me, he slipped through a wall, too, when he entered my mother’s life. I wouldn’t put it past him.

Without mentioning it, her mother – on her own now that she herself had left home – had acquired a dog. This was Perry. She claimed he had just turned up in the yard, clearly a stray, and so she’d decided to keep him. But there was no hole in the wall. Unlike those old wooden fences that had gaps everywhere, the wall of precast concrete around the house was utterly impervious. Her mother wasn’t in the habit of leaving the gate open, either; that would be unsafe. And there was no way the dog could have slipped under a gate set so close to the ground. All of which meant that it was nigh on impossible for a stray simply to have turned up on the property. Ownerless dogs roaming the neighbourhood were a thing of the past, anyway. Could her mother have brought him back from somewhere? Still, how could she have come by a fully grown animal like that, and where?

By the time the daughter noticed, the dog named Perry was making himself at home, cool as you please, in the old kennel that had housed the dogs before him. The tin bowls he ate and drank from, and even his collar and chain, had been theirs.

‘Perry – as in Commodore Perry, of the Black Ships?’

Her mother nodded without enthusiasm. ‘What of it?’ said her look. She wasn’t one to bother much over naming a pet, though she did seem to be convinced for

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