❧ Alice Munro, ‹Deep-Holes›. In «Too Much Happiness», 2009
Dogs and cats are among the most beloved pets. Cats are undoubtedly adorable, but dogs, people say, are more loyal, as they love their owner unconditionally and foolishly, even if the owner beats it or lets it starve, as we sometimes learn in the news.
I have this friend Yanjun, who now lives alone, and she wants to have a dog as a company. She had a tense relationship with her parents, and she recalled that, this year on her birthday, “my mother wished me a happier life I should have enjoyed in my prime years”. She was moved. And later she regretted having been moved.
It reminds me of ‹Deep-Holes›, a short story by Alice Munro. There were this son Kent, the father Alex a geologist, and the mother Sally. As the family went with Alex to the wilderness to collect stone specimens, Kent fell into a cave, and the father helped him out. The kid broke his legs, recovered, and remained slightly but permanently injured. For once, Alex said that he saved Kent not due to love, but to familial duty, indicating that they weren’t close.
When he was in college, Kent disappeared and stopped contact. Years passed, and Alex died. One day, Sally saw on TV that Kent volunteered as a firefighter. She met him, and it turned out he was living a Bohemian lifestyle, together with a community of the homeless, who volunteered to help local people. Kent told her of his anguish, that he derived no joy in helping people, but merely felt so obliged.
The question which plagued the short story is why Kent left his parents and desired such a life. I got it when I reread it after months. Because Kent remained feeling indebted to Alex’s favor. The parents are the world of the baby, while the baby is but a negligible bit of the parents. It is terrifying to have been born, if we must suffer such an unequal situation.
Or Alex may be God, and Kent be Christ. It is more distressing than fortunate to be saved by Christ, because we ought to “take his yoke upon him and learn from him”, as Christ resolved to be crucified. And what a grave responsibility.
Thus I’m afraid to have a dog. I hug it, I imagine, and it will have the amorous look on my face, yearning and innocent, like I’m some immaculate deity. But I’m not. I’m sinned. It isn’t that I won’t tend it properly. No, I would walk it well, feed it well, “out of duty”, but what if I don’t love it, and what if it continues to turn back and gaze at me?
We can do nothing but continue the stifling daily life, by having mercy on those not loved, and being enslaved by those who don’t love. I won’t be a father nor a Christian, I gather, but will remain alone, and will not keep a dog.
❧ October 27, 2020