Dawn of the Dogs

A short story in a long paragraph

When you’re eighteen and in Athens, having emigrated from a zone of indifference, when you luck out into squatting with an older alien from your old country, older meaning twenty-five, which to you is a seven-year gap of experience you yearn to close fast, you can be easily persuaded to go to a bordello, the romantic that you are, fed nineteenth-century poetry in high-school, from which you barely graduated, no, no, you weren’t quite dumb, just unmoved by science and tired of people around you in general, people so drained of resistance they turned to apathy for solace, so you migrated south to escape a perpetual winter, thinking you’ll find comfort, and comfort at this moment means a bordello, and you find yourself strolling through a bazaar district just below the north slope of Acropolis, passing tin-roofed plywood merchandise stands, the same district which in daytime vibrates with other migrants making deals, narrating their plight in tongues you don’t know but sensing what they are saying from their scared eyes and envious glances, the district where migrants converge around men in shiny new shoes, hoping for a shard of attention which might just cover their supper, the district where you yourself have bought a pair of old boots when the Athenian winter had proven too strict for your sandals, and also that torn sleeping bag, which made the last months bearable, and a cartridge camp stove, the single burner on which you learned to make three meals a day out of one egg and a bun, all that frugality borne out of your childish refusal to find proper employment, preferring instead to read books and draw silly pictures all day because nights are too dark, but that’s OK, you’re eighteen, almost nineteen, with no overhead, just plenty of baggage, squatting across the street from the south slope of Acropolis with a compatriot roommate who knows that men need to be men once in a while, and he will gladly pay for your pleasure, of course, just please join him tonight, he doesn’t want to do it alone, and it is that night now, this very moment, in the district of flea market economy, where you follow stray dogs to your first joy house, under a naked red bulb, but the bordello is musky and dim on the inside, with a long corridor without doors, just thick, soiled curtains on each cell of amusement, with a moist warden walking his beat, spinning a keychain around his thick right hand, fingering rosary beads with his left, each curtain revealing the same inmate, with the same grotesque makeup and voluptuous form, shapes you remember from art history lessons, shapes now pungent with piquant oils and grief, a perfume you find fuming inside your brain as you’re walking the gauntlet, your friend’s arm over your shoulder, his mouth spouting comments in a language sounding like yours but becoming increasingly foreign, and the friend laughs all the way out, the next bordello is bound to be better, he knows that for sure, and it’s right there, just a few houses down, predictably lit with another red bulb over its crumbling neoclassical entrance, you notice that detail only because you now want to think about anything but oils and grief, but the inside of this establishment has actual rooms, and the rooms have doors, and the doors are charitably closed, and the warden here seems a little less sticky, but he has more keys on his chain and his prayer beads thickened, and he rattles both constantly as he leads you into an acrid showroom with walls covered in pink, yellow and green fabrics, all smoked out of their color by cigarettes and sweat of bygone summers, and there are two once plushy sofas, and on the sofas spread their wares lingerie inmates, from the generously corpulent to the emaciated, with not a single average size in between, and a thought flashes in your mind that moderately shaped women must be in the domain of the more enterprising wardens, those who cater to the clientele of new-shoe owners, and your friend assures you that those places are out of our reach, then another thought comes and it scares you, because you begin to wonder what you would do if there were a woman in there whom you would actually find irresistible, and you are momentarily grateful that there isn’t, because you feel you might just go for it, we’re all human, aren’t we, and you’re not above it all as much as you’d like to think that you are, so, yes, you feel lucky staring at these ladies with no hint of arousal, and then, suddenly, you start to confabulate their stories, peeking behind their smeared camouflage, proud of your cheap empathy born out of shame, but before you congratulate yourself for forging compassion, your friend yanks you out of the place, both of you stumble into the night which was never to turn sultry, and he picks up his pace without a word, palpably angry, and you follow, and a few dogs follow you briefly before losing interest, a few cats cross your path moments later, but you don’t care if they’re black, because soon the merchant district is behind you, and you breathe in the fading scents of oregano in the affable maze of the Plaka, where everything returns to the norm of clean tourist pleasure, and the whitewashed walls of tavernas and sky-blue shutters of souvenir shops give out a whiff of leisure, but that quickly passes, too, as you remember that you don’t belong here either, your friend keeps walking faster and angrier, and his footsteps, echoing on the stony pathways, begin to sound foreign, everything starts feeling foreign, even the thought of another day at the squat, another egg white breakfast and another egg yolk dinner, with a third of the bun for lunch chased by the juice of wild oranges, you’re feeling the urge to turn away from all that, so you make a left instead of a right, where the echo went, and you shuffle down a long, narrow street, all alone now, guided by nothing but instinct, you cross one street, then another, only to see a familiar red light once again, but this light is a nice, wrought iron lantern, and the building has a coat of fresh paint, which you reach out to touch just as a fancy black limo passes you, pulls up to the door under the lantern, and an older man comes out of the back, he must be the boss, you think, he looks like a boss even at night, then another figure emerges and it’s a boy, maybe fourteen, also dressed well, must be the man’s son, you deduce, watching the older man wrap his arm around this teenage kid and stuff a wad of cash into his hand, then pushing him toward the door with a wide smile and a few words you don’t understand but you know what they mean, and they wave to each other, then the kid’s face flashes under the red light long enough for you to see a grin full of joy, the door opens and he steps in, the proud dad checking his watch and disappearing into the car without driving away, just waiting for the rite of passage to conclude, but you won’t witness that moment, you are already on the other side of the street, now walking briskly, and you notice the sky is brightening a bit in the east, so you follow the glow, pause for a garbage truck to pass by, then cross the street to enter a park which you know well, a park with a temple like all temples in Greece, in ruins, a wild park with trees growing between the overturned stones, you walk aimlessly toward the crumbling portico, perform a colonnade slalom, awakening a dog or two, then step into that big, open space for communal prayers that’s now just a patch of dry weeds and rocks, and by the time you get to its center you realize every wild dog in Athens is now on your tail, dogs of every possible stray lineage, all lean and hungry, with heads hanging low, dragging their tails, and you start feeling nervous, but not for long, as the dogs mean no harm, they’ve been neglected and beaten into collective stupor which you know well, a society of rejected beings who roam nearby streets late at night and return to their temple realm just before dawn, their safe zone you’ve breached at this ungodly hour, an accidental refugee from your immigrant madness, and in a minute or two you are fully surrounded by those creatures, numbering in the hundreds, electing you Lord of the Beasts, which actually feels rather good, feels rather important, but, as a king, you bear no gifts for your subjects, except for your useless presence, no food to share, no treats, no trinkets, so your flock disperses in soft apathy, one by one, and you stand there like a deposed fool, while the rising sun begins to replace your nocturnal outline with three dimensions, prompting you to turn west and find your own shadow emerging from under your feet, then, suddenly, you are certain beyond any doubt that you understand nothing about anything anymore, yet, in that sad truth, unexpectedly, you discover comfort.