“Feel it?” Father said. “He’s giving it back to you. Just as with Wolf. Except with Wolf, it was all anger and affectation.”
The Professor’s mind was now on display. I could feel the intellectual machinery encountering the unprovable, converting it into an idea he could grasp.
“It’s bred in him, I suppose,” he said skeptically, “but I’ve never trusted horses.”
Father stared at him. “Some were born to pull at the traces, of course. But the only question is this: what is the message you are sending him? Your touch is quite tentative, and yet he is encouraged!”
“You are saying that I am communicating my skepticism, but I say I cannot help it.”
“Of course, my friend. We ought to encourage skepticism. But there is a huge difference between skepticism and distrust. Intellectuals hardly ever know the difference, in my experience.”
“Yes, yes,” the Professor murmured in a series of rapid shrugs, as if to deflect the argument like a whirring peach moth. “We always forget the ancient brain.”
My father started as if he had been whipped, then broke into that long, low laugh of his.
“Surely,” he sputtered, “surely you do not place full faith”—he was choking with mirth at this point—“with the poet of the Galapagos?”
The Professor blanched as if from a wound.
“It’s the most convincing explanation we have.”
“Balderdash. Only the latest propaganda which everyone parrots and no one reads. The paraphrase, Herr Doktor, enforced in school by drones. Ah, yes, I can recall it now: the mural of the ape as he gradually draws himself erect, losing a bit of hair at each stage of his receding slump, the illusion of progress. A schoolboy’s fantasy, Doctor. So reassuring. Well, it’s as crude as the cartoons of the Kaiser with blood on his hands. Is that what gets you promoted at university these days?”
The Professor did not reply, and Felix could see that he had unwittingly touched a sore spot. He could flush out an unreflective premise like a good dog tracks a wounded bird, and then, while deciding whether the poor, maimed thing deserves a point, look back over his shoulder apologetically.
“I mean, it’s all well and good to say we got it from our ancestors,” Father continued softly, “but then where did our ancestors get it? How did the crocodile acquire a vagina? Survival is easy enough to explain. But how do you explain the arrival of the fittest, eh? There is simply no reason at all why we should exist as a species!”
“Hold on there,” the Professor stammered, as if to change the subject. “Does he not appear to be crying?”
And it was true: several large globules, shining like crystal, were making their way down Moccus’s golden nose.
“Yes,” Father sighed. “Their only fault. They weep constantly.”
“But why on earth? They appear to be kept perfectly. What a life, I should say!”
“The golden age of the animals was just beginning when there were no carts to pull, my friend. The horse, like the nomad peoples, has suffered terribly at man’s hands. What we have put them through! War was a positive relief. It’s amazing they can stand still even for a moment. Evasion was the only weapon they had, and they were always put in the service of the most reactionary class. The dog, by comparison, got off easy, like the West. Which is why for the dog all Asia remains an enemy. The dog remains dumbfounded that the horse, with his history, can maintain his spirit. The horse evades, the dog denies. This is their armory. And the horse weeps, not for Achilles, but because of what we have done to him.”
The Professor himself now seemed about to burst into tears.
“The horse is now only an icon,” Father went on softly, “standing for the remains of what you call our ‘ancient brain.’ But the dog, you see, stands for what was forever lost. All creation and all behavior can be divided among them.”
“Which is why we chose them to accompany us?” the Professor interrupted.
“Oh, surely you do not believe that canard about our civilizing these poor animals! That we used them to extend our senses, haul our baggage, and brilliantly inspire their trust and devotion? No, sir! They came to us quite willingly, out of the wind and rain, as nations go to any murderer if he is able to restore order for a moment. As for the doggie, did we meet as predators? Hardly, my friend. No, we are scavengers. We met across a rotting corpse which neither of us could kill. We are fellow swarmers, social animals, higher maggots, carcass chasers, keeping up with the migrating herds with the energetic inefficiency of our gait. It’s the scraps our friendship lives off; leftovers, marrowbones, and braincases are what make us loyal. They followed us because our merdes ensured their survival. And now we walk behind them and retrieve their feces with our own hands. I have yet to meet a woman for whom I’d do that.”
“Oh, Councilor,” the Professor wheezed as he bent double, “I never thought I would laugh again,” but Father continued utterly deadpan.
“The horsie, now that’s a different story. He knew we and our golden garbage were their only chance for survival, and indeed, that we had perfected their strategies, for no one runs away any better than man. They came to us because as mammals, they recognized both our promiscuity and the horrible length of time it takes to raise the young. Drama, don’t you see? Also, they liked the way we moved en masse. Entertainment! So they became our dependents, and like anyone who throws himself on your mercy, you will eventually let him down. Do you realize, Doktor, that by the doghaus’s own figures, eighty-five per cent of dogs are resold or given back in their first year? And do you know how many times a horse will change hands in his lifetime, or at what age they are sent to the slaughterhouse for dog food? No, the horse tolerates man because he knows there will always be a greater fool among them who will initially lavish him with love; and the dog tolerates horses because he knows that eventually he will eat them, though not the other way around. They come to us because it is we who decides who eats whom. My Lord, don’t you see? They were the only beings in the world we didn’t hate or fear, the only thing we didn’t immediately feel like killing. And while our vast sentimentality shortens our own lives, it prolongs theirs. Not exactly a Faustian bargain on their part, eh?”
“And which of them do we most resemble?” the Professor queried, now trying to get in the spirit of things.
“Ah, men are more like the horse than anything else. But they sing the lay of the dog.”
“And what might that be?” the Professor sighed like a little boy.
“It goes like this: ‘More life, please. Some mercy, too. Then more life.’”
“Your habit of explaining humans by animal neurosis makes me quite nervous, as you must know by now, Councilor.”
“Think of it this way, Professor: take horses and dogs, take men and women. Origins, values, ends: all different. Think of men and women as horses and dogs who happen to fornicate with one another. Not entirely incompatible or improbable, and looking quite swell when racing together at full stride through a green field. But basically about as much alike as horses and dogs. Now, there I will desist.”
The Professor gave him a sudden, inexplicable, and silent hug. “Wolf is history, my friend,” Felix said evenly. “Believe me, we can do better.”