You were a legend and didn’t even know it. You were immortal. And that afternoon I understood: they must kill you for you to live on.
So they dug down. They sank steel rods into the ground and pushed you out. A difficult birth; you did not want to be born. Who would into such a world? They sent in forceps: a mastiff. He came out dragging you, but before he could kill you they took you away and let you hang, and I began to see that my worst fears were not dark enough: these men had a plan, but death was only a fraction of it; time made up one half and pleasure the other. They took you down and gave you to the jaws of the dog. He received their offering ungraciously, tugging clumsily in his hunger. Your skin was pulled back from your skull. You looked absurd, surprised, as if you were smiling. Absurd was the first thing you would look. There would be others.
The dog was excited, then confused. He could not pull any harder, but they made sure that he did: one pulled you, another his hind legs. Short sharp pulls. Your head came away bloody, dishevelled, fur in your eyes. You looked concussed, stunned. Stunned was the second thing you became. There would be more.
Your eyes were so bright at that moment. They were enormous. I was not sure if I was kneeling or standing or lying down; my own body seemed to have evaporated. We were both merely eyes, mine weeping, yours steely; looking on at the world’s fun; playthings both; whirligigs; spinning, elevated, enthralled; borne high on a rhapsody of pain. They held you by the fur so that your mouth panted, showed small teeth. You looked like you were grinning. You looked mad now. Mad was the third thing you became.
‘Look at this creature!’ they said. And you certainly were a spectacle. They laughed and spat now, having removed their king and vanquished their leader – for you are their leader: you led them, not the other way around. The hounds bayed and jostled, in frantic anticipation. Their saliva descended in strings. The men held you aloft by the scruff, and you hung like a dead thing. You knew you must use only awkward effort each moment called for. You knew already, as I did not quite yet, that it was too late, yet still you played the game; you were a magnificent player – the best; you played your part so beautifully, down to the puny snap at the pole with which they touched the side of your jaw; down to the way your mouth clapped shut as they dropped you – careful to keep their hands out of harm’s way – into a sack. And there you hung for an instant; a man on his way to the gallows. Though there would be no more trial now, that chapter was over; or if there were to be one, I sensed even now, it had barely begun.
The company were overly loud as they rode back through the wood. They were washing their hands with their laughter; without laughter they would honour you even as you were destroyed. I followed, breath rasping, stumbling over bare furrows, blinded by rain and by tears. I, your witness, your watcher, your other. Betrayer. Self.
Did you know me? Even now, in this hour I disowned you? When I stood silent by? I knew you. It was I who watched you from the beginning. You are the one who came out of the woods at the end of the day. You came out of the woods where the thorn trees grew thickly, out of the woods and into my life. They said not to encourage you, but I couldn’t help it. A person can’t look truth in the face and go back again. And you were truer than anything I had ever seen and more alive. So I watched and I courted you. At night when you played with your children, or fought, or made love. Early in the morning and late in the dusk, I saw you saunter leisurely with a bird or rabbit slack-necked in your mouth. Left you scraps from the table when their backs were turned, though I also knew that you slaughtered far more than you could carry away; hens, ducks, geese; night after night. I smelt your stink, heard your rustle, found the hole in the ground where you came and went that looked like an empty socket in a head. I thought you saw me too, because once or twice you stopped and looked back or looked up, and our eyes met, and when they did it was as if we had spoken, though not in any language I knew of. Once we stopped feet apart, surprising each other in the lane. Your expression changed but a whisker. You barely lifted your head, simply slipped sideways into the hedge. Afterwards I thought there must be some residue, evidence, but I came away empty-handed as if waking from a dream, and, as if bereaved, found I could not remember your face.
So here we are. At the end of all things, it seems. They have taken you to the long field, and when I reach it I fall to the ground winded, and though it lurches beneath me like a wave, strangely, I am almost at peace now, in the midst of utter loss; because the loss is utter, because I am in the midst of it. Perhaps I would not be if I were further from the centre, if the loss were one degree less.
They whirl you once in the air and then let you go. And even now, for a moment, my heart leaps in hope and I think they are setting you free, it is over, they were simply teaching you a lesson! It was just a trick, a nightmare – they have caught you and now they will throw you back! I clamber to my knees then stagger forwards, weeping, cheering, ridiculous, as I watch you scarper. But a sound makes me turn. Dogs, pouring over the field after you. There is no reprieve. It is simply round two. They have not forgiven you at all, they hate you more than I knew. And I stand as if halved, split asunder, and watch you. A small thing, moving slowly.
In dreams I have seen you since that time, wearing a diadem of thorns. I have seen you at the foot of a tree, a wolf with a red hide, a man in sheep’s clothing, with a snout and hairs on the backs of his hands, a creature who bids me speak. I, your cowardly apostle, your doubting disciple, your false friend, was silent when it mattered; was with you and was not; went with you to the end of the earth, was there when the field came alive and leaped like a wave. I was there when you ran your last race.
The rain was too heavy to see. I saw. The wind blew sound this way and that. I heard. You were running all out now. I told you, you should. I told you that earlier, but you wouldn’t listen, you would only trot. I am sorry to say you were not a great runner; the dogs were. I didn’t see when they overtook you. I looked away. I understood heart attacks now.
I couldn’t see what the dogs were doing, there were too many. They swarmed, climbed over and under. I guessed you were at the centre. For minutes blackness wiped me out. When I looked again you had escaped. You were so much cleverer – and still had strength left, even now. But numbers prevail; someone spots you. You are recaptured. And finally, they deign to murder you. Piece by little piece.
I learned that day what a slow business it is to die; how tenacious life is even when the creature who possesses it doesn’t want the gift any more. My heart was everywhere now, in my fingers and eyes, in the balls of my feet, beneath the soil, running through streams, through veins of leaves and of trees. My heart took up the skies. A man came with a terrier on a rope. The group broke for a second, and I saw you, huddled, still standing.
Imagine being eaten alive.
The intimacy. Do you form a bond with your consumer? I thought you would be dead many times over, but the dogs took tiny bites. It was as if they were humans; we could eat things just as well as they. They took tiny bites, but there were hundreds. I couldn’t imagine all of those mouths. The hatred in them. The desire.
At some point I fell down, went out like a light. When I came to they were hoisting you up and a dog came too; thrashing and mad-eyed. You were limp now. No more than a piece of rag. I saw then the secret: you were attached to a rope; whenever you were close to quitting they lifted you up. Now they were swinging you by your tail, and the dogs jumped after you clumsily, threshing mid-air. You flew, suspended above that sea of saliva, breath, rain, and teeth. I thought you were dead. But you were not. The man knew you could not last. You jerked to life – still had such power! You had been playing, an excellent sportsman; you didn’t flinch, even in agony. The dogs became delirious. You were let down amongst them.