INSTALLMENT VII

CONNECTIONS

CHAPTER 25

My plans to retrieve the Object of My Devotion by fetching him myself from the ends of the earth were postponed, at least for a day. I had squandered an evening catting about the dunes, and the morning after my encounter with the band of savage hunters I lay exhausted at the House of the Begetters. Just before dawn, Lilly’s Mother dragged me from sleep and safety. I did what I had to quickly, and on the street, refusing to climb the wooden bridge where the catty spies encamped, insisting, instead on retreating to the tiled chamber. There, nestled in a basket of dirty clothes, I pondered fresh schemes to compel the Object of My Devotion to return to my care.

I fell asleep, so dead to the world, that I woke startled, an hour before noon when Lilly’s grandfather prodded me out the back door to relieve myself in secret before receiving my Argentine guests. I confess I had forgotten about them completely. Yet, there they were, sitting on our porch under the striped canopy of yesterday. Princess was with them. I could smell her within yards, blooming like a rose.

The entourage of the Rat Terrier Princess sat upright on folding chairs. Come from some pious ceremony that Sunday morning, the Argentine males had knotted silk leashes around their necks, the ladies of their party waved paper fans against the heat. On the ledge of the porch a pitcher of ice tea stood sweating on a silver tray alongside tall glasses and a plate of little cakes. Now that I had arrived, affairs commenced.

To begin with, it was stated this occasion was a preamble, to see if Princess and I shared mutual interests. If these could be established much would follow, with more contact when a contract was agreed to, writ, and signed. While these formalities were being observed Princess and I were observing each other. She was eager to amble.

Unfortunately, the imposition of human proprieties kept us from what was more appropriately bestial. There should have been a corner we could go to by ourselves. If there had to be others, let them howl, not clink their spoons. With both packs ringing the porch, sitting on the edge of their chairs, waiting, for something, I knew not what, I grew bashful and scurried to hide beneath a chair. Lilly’s grandfather laughed and blocked my way. No one thought to bring us water, or to put the radio on the Spanish station. Even so I drew near to this Princess.

CHAPTER 26

Her people looked on with pride, and my people looked away, as Princess smelled beneath my tail and I beneath hers. All was lovely. Her exalted ears, her extended toes, her exquisite high belly, were echoes of my own. A woman in her party pointed out that in Princess the inheritance of a Manchester Terrier formed a mark on her back called a chocolate saddle.

Princess all the while was undulating her saddle, and licking me in places only I had placed a tongue before. I would have enjoyed these attentions further had we been alone, though Princess paid no heed to what was said and done around her and invited me to do the same. I was glad Baby Lilly wasn’t there to watch us; it would have set a very bad example for Lilly to see us ignore the elders.

Yet even so, I liked this impudence, for it offered the possibility that Princess would accept my offer to run away together to Patagonia. We would live at first, I thought, for convenience sake, at the home of her family. There we would whelp Spit, Speck, Spurt and their sisters, all the while garnering information from the Argentines as to the swiftest route to rendezvous with the Object of my Devotion in Tierra del Fuego. Accompanied by a pack of my own I would be given more respect and might gain the co-operation of the feral cats who roamed the coast perhaps as far south as the Object of My Devotion.

Inspired by my plan, I stood ready to begin matters, inspecting Princess’s chocolate saddle from above, when I felt an itch behind my ear. I raised my front right paw and scratched. I felt another itch, more of a little bite, under the pit of my left haunch. I scratched. I felt another itch and now a nip on my right flank. I sent my teeth to investigate.

As I fell to biting and scratching myself, Princess waited quizzically, wondering why I was ignoring her and her itch. The Argentines rose from their seats, planting their ice tea glasses down with a smack, swallowing the little sweet cakes in gulps, declaring with an oath “las pulgas!” I recognized my plight, and also the word from the Spanish radio advertisements. My adventure of the night before had proven the old adage true: lie down with cats, rise up with fleas, in the language of the conquistadors, las pulgas.

As a pair of the little bloodsuckers hopped off my hide to ride Princess’s saddle, she was yanked out from under me. Lilly’s grandfather went to seize me but was warned by his mate, through clenched teeth, not to touch my fur without rubber gloves. Before gloves could be fetched from the kitchen the Argentines, bidding us adios, had begun to scratch themselves nervously as they hastened away with Princess unrequited.

CHAPTER 27

Following the departure of the Argentines ten minutes after their arrival, I lay quarantined within the tiled chamber scratching my fleas and stretching my ears to catch the intriguing furious whispers on the other side of the door.

The Begetters were busy concocting a scheme much better than any of my own. That little gilded airplane waiting to be polished on the porch turned out to be a totem of their craft and their connections. Lilly’s grandfather was Head of Customs, at home and at the airport near his home. He had colleagues world-wide. Pulling strings woven through the thirty-nine years of distinguished service inscribed on the marble base of the gilded airplane, the Begetters put their plan into action.

Whispers over, now they barked, and I knew to whom. I had witnessed for myself the stomach-churning receiver of such calls. Results were predictable. My affairs with Princess could be postponed, entreaties to wildcats left unspoken, treks to Patagonia abandoned, all I need do was scratch my butt and the Begetters, who when all was said and done, had their uses, would vigorously ensure the Object of My Devotion’s return.

The Begetters howled their mandates so loudly and clearly they could be heard through the closed door and to the southernmost tip of South America. The Object of My Devotion, if he wished to see me alive, was ordered to depart from the Straits of Magellan at one forty-five that same afternoon. He was to return home to me – or else. This else was kept vague, but this much was certain, his elders were people of principle; they had no interest in half-measures. They would not hear of my being put into some halfway hotel, nor would they permit the Object of My Devotion to seek intercession from Lily’s mother or his brother, her mate. Today’s ticket was waiting for him at the Punta Arenas airport. Whatever other plans he had had were already cancelled.

The clock chimed noon. The seasons are reversed so far south: July is winter, but the hours are the same, and it was also noon at the inn where the Object of My Devotion had arrived in Punta Arenas late the previous afternoon in the middle of a snowstorm. Most of the shops were closed on Saturday night and all of them were closed on Sunday. He had had no chance to visit the notable Museum of the History of Patagonia, nor to see much more of the town than the curious monument to Yugoslavian Immigration. Despite his woolen coat he had caught a cold.

Out-foxed, he gave way. I thrilled to the cry of the pack triumphant. Equally thrilling, I at last understood what planes, trains, and taxi-cabs were – and what they could do in twenty hours.

CHAPTER 28

I know now, because he spoke often of it later, that on his way to the airport outside Punta Arenas the Object of My Devotion stopped to rub a toe on the bronze Indian squatting beneath a statue of Magellan. Legend has it those who rub this bronze toe return someday, somehow, to rub it again.

At the same time Lilly’s mother was in the tiled chamber rubbing me with some sulphurous liquid. My skin tingled, but my fleas fled, and I was dried very professionally with a towel. My travelling bag, soaked in the same solution, lost its coconut stench.

By the time the nylon bag drip-dried, the Object of My Devotion had been propelled from Punta Arenas to the city of Puerto Montt. From Puerto double-T Montt, he was flown to Santiago where Chilean customs officials suspicious of a New Yorker day-tripping to Patagonia searched his every pocket, fold, and orifice almost as thoroughly as Lilly’s grandmother searched mine, after she washed the floor she had washed the day before, rubbed flea-powder into the rugs and boiled the clothes I had unwittingly infested. The Object of My Devotion was deported from Chile at 9:30 that night, just as I, following a closely supervised walk with Lilly’s grandfather, was detained in the tiled chamber alongside my case.

There was much to do in my case, and I fell busy, rubbing myself all over it, drooling, considered relieving myself, decided better of it, mourned my mother once again, found as if by a miracle some hairs of the past.

Eight o’clock Monday morning Andes Airlines Flight 4664 landed the Object of My Devotion at the desk of his father who, in an official capacity, and wearing a uniform, stamped the customs declaration thunderously before loading his son into a taxi.

At just that time Lilly’s Father was boarding a train with me in my bag as a pleasant diversion for the ladies painting eyebrows on their foreheads as we rattled towards Manhattan. From the train station Lilly’s Father treated me to a cab. We pulled up in front of home where I was released from my case to see the taxi from the airport disgorging the Object of My Devotion. I leaped onto his chest and clawed him. Lilly’s father laughed, the passersby and the turbaned cabbies, too, beholding the Object of My Devotion, wearing a wool coat in the sweltering July heat, marveled that one so outlandish should be so lucky as to have returned from the ends of the earth to such a welcome from such a dog as I, Spot.

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