The walls bore etchings of fossils found in the local sinkholes — wolves with broken backs, birds with every vertebrae of the wing exposed in a fan — and indeed the locals referred to the front rooms as “Utah,” in honor of the oldest known dog fossil found in North America, and the back room as “Arizona,” because no one knew a single thing about it except that it was pretty.
The front rooms, with their tobacco-colored curtains and sensory simplicity, had harbored every discreet silence, every tragic conversation, and every historical form of rowdiness, insult, and affaire d’honneur. To ask for water with one’s coffee were fighting words. Men were known to take a crust of Black Dog bread on their travels and sniff of it of an evening, should their thoughts take a melancholy turn. But no matter how savage or despairing the serial personal confrontations, if one stepped back to the bar, the general atmosphere invariably seemed comedic, if not exactly gay.
The Brainery, on the other hand, was not only more expensive and exclusive (anyone asking for a reservation was told it had closed for renovations), but devoted to reversing the historical sensation of Utah. Everything up close was comic, but toward the perimeter of the room the sense of loneliness was overwhelming, even though it held some fifty diners. Somehow the space had been acoustically devoted to changing the terms of conversation itself. Sentences curled about one another like smoke. If you paused for reflection, another voice finished or inverted your thought. Across the table, though his lips were moving, you didn’t hear a word your colocutor said, while your own voice came out of nowhere, from the wings, as it were, a stage whisper. As the courses progressed, it seemed one was going blind, the precondition for all real sensuality, until you could make out only the dim outline of your companion’s face. Two silent men with their mouths full might enjoy snatches of conversation not strictly their own. A lady might allow her partner to put his foot where he wished, but she would never ask to share his dessert or offer even a forkful of her zebra-eye salad. Indeed, one was never quite sure what was said, half-said, previously remembered, or later reflected upon. One could manage a seduction or an apology in the Brainery, but never win an argument or make a deal.
The effect of this irony-resistant fugue was calming rather than irruptive. Although most people in the room were unknown to each other, an unforgettable solidarity carried them into the night.
The two men ate conscientiously rather than with fervor, as if to arrive at ultimate conclusions only after complete evidence had been submitted. They ate without gulping, without flinching, without fatigue, drinking a new wine for each dish with perfect sang-froid.
The conversation slowed, though all subjects were permissible, save the events of the morning, and all manner of expression, excepting that of a low mood. The wine had done its work and their brains ceased to be machines for argument-winning, and our talkative species began a conversation galante.
Throwing back his head and showing his Adam’s apple, Felix announced, “We are gorillas.”
“Dangerous gorillas!” the Professor toasted with his knife.
“Dangerous and ill-adapted,” Felix chorused.
“Our back isn’t right, tails in our trousers,” the Professor riposted gleefully. “Below the hips we are a mess, particularly women, and we clank when we walk!”
“We were almost extinct,” Felix assented vigorously, “and we have never forgotten it!”
The Professor suppressed a burp with his napkin and apologized. Felix waved the gaffe away. “It’s the lizard in us that does the breathing.”
And when they finished, there was no fanfare, no flinging of napkins, nothing but a slight settling back in the tenderly green banquettes. There arrived a small cart with various cheeses, ratafias, eau-de-vie, and cigars in an ingeniously ventilated box which exuded the scent of burning creole corpses.
“You will never hear me say a word against hunting again, my friend,” the Professor sighed, “of that you can be sure.”
Father smiled warmly but said only, “The forcemeat lacked half an onion and two sprigs of chervil.” Then he bit into a piece of soft cheese, but only halfway through. Taking the entire piece from his mouth with his fingers, he showed the indentations to his comrade. “This is who we are!”
They were a third of their way through their cheroots when there was an enormous crash of china and a serving girl’s astonished shriek, neither remarkable in the front room of White Wings, Black Dog. But the Professor noted that his host had removed his cigar, slightly elevated his nose, and opened his nostrils. There was further commotion in the outer rooms, as well as a tremendous muffled breathing, and then the Professor, too, his palette cleansed, noticed a delicate acid note in the air: tannins and singed fur. Then a dark flash against the pale yellow and a sound like a snare-drum as Rubato and Nimbus, matted with every seed, vine, and scum of the forest, tails raw, tongues lolling, whiskers twisted, ears bleeding, eyes protuberant, coats disheveled, stormed into the Brainery, and after circling the room and vaulting a wine cart, skidded to a stop before the banquette with a convulsive collective flounce, as if to say, “My God, what a pair of masters, eh!”
“Scoundrels!” Father muttered, though his eyes betrayed his relief.
At first the Professor politely refused the animals’ advances, but after Nimbus placed her lightly webbed paws on his chest and her haggard canine cheek against his own, snapping at his nose like a fly, he began to weep. “It’s just like patients, you see. . they all run away, but mostly they come back.”
Felix remained cool. “And now, friend, you will see the famous horse imitation.”
And sure enough, the dogs’ square faces suddenly grew long and their mouths drooped, red haws exposed. They hung their heads, shivers undulating along their sides, as if a hundredweight of woe were pulling their noses to the ground, like some wreck of a worn-out cab-horse. But just as their noses touched the floor, they stretched their forelegs, lifted their hindquarters, spread out their hindlegs, and yawned deliriously in stark abstraction.
“Well, I suppose the only thing that matters is how you recover from being wrong,” the Professor said, wiping his nose.
Then both dogs leapt into the banquette, where they began to scour themselves as if they were rolling on a lawn.
“Down!” Felix barked. “Down, now!”
Called sharply to account, they flung themselves beneath the table with a sob and a sigh. Then, turning three times, with a crescendo of flappings, snorting, and rattlings, ears slapping beneath their jawbones, they fell at once into a drugged sleep. Soon they began to dream, executing all the motions of running with their paws, while at the same time giving vent to a ventriloquistic barking which sounded as if it came from another world. Felix kicked them softly, and they lay still with twisted eyeballs as though dead. Throughout this spectacle neither guest nor staff showed the slightest discomfort.
“Councilor,” the Professor blurted, “I must have a dog such as this.”
“Breeding stock, quite impossible,” Felix said calmly.
“Then a runt,” he beseeched, “surely you have a runt? One testicle, knock-knees, undershot jaw, drooping tail, too-soft hair? That would do.”