WILD POODLES

Tales of young people raised by animals have a long history. The child in question is almost always an orphan or unwanted outcast, usually feral, who, when discovered and introduced back into civilization, endures the dual hardships of protracted misunderstanding—given his lack of language and proper manners—and the horrified loathing of citizens who cannot bear to see some long buried, primitive element of their own psyches reflected back at them. Sometimes these children evolve into heroic figures like Romulus and Remus (suckled by a she-wolf before going on to found Rome) or saintly martyrs like Kaspar Hauser (locked away in a German horse stable) who, by innocently confronting us with our entrenched notions of acceptable behavior, teach us to be “more human.” Hence the appeal of such tales to the romantically inclined. More often, however, our appetite for exotic foundlings has been exploited by P. T. Barnum and his ilk, who exhibit some unfortunate misfit under a fraudulent name—“Hans Pigboy” or “Ape Sister of Tarzan”—and rake in the profit. We need these figures, it seems, and often for the most unsavory reasons.

In what follows, I hope to distinguish my own story from its distant, more glamorous cousins.

My name—like so much else about me—is unimportant, and although I will here be relating the events of my earliest years, I myself am no longer young. For forty-four years I taught literature at an academy here in the Southeastern Provinces—or perhaps I should say tried to teach, for the sullen indifference of my students to the sublimity of Ovid and Dante, while hardly original, was relentless. I am now retired and much given to idle reminiscences.

I sit, today, on a patio overlooking a pasture—a double irony, given that this pasture both resembles my natal swale and reminds me that, here in the present, these abominable geezer barracks are where I have, at long last, been “put out to.” Worse still, I am constantly being approached by moon-faced attendants in white uniforms, all of whom have been trained to wear blank, vaguely cherubic expressions, speak in hushed tones as though one were a slightly dim-witted child, and ask roundabout questions concerning the state of one’s bowels. I am often tempted to reply that matters would be much more agreeable if the cafeteria could expand its menu beyond the usual flavorless paste—but I’ve found that such remarks only arouse suspicion of mental imbalance and therefore more rigorous “monitoring.”

Happily, I have one ally in my campaign of mute resistance. It was she who spurred me to this silly exercise, and it will be she alone—unless the staff, in a fever of oversolicitous meddling, discovers my notebook—who reads the final product. (Hello, Agnes.) Though united in subterfuge—our cunning effort to undermine, thwart, sabotage, frustrate, hamstring, and otherwise impede the designs of the subliterate bureaucrats who run our lives—we are, Agnes and I, true polar opposites. I enjoy needling her about her atheism; she casts waggish aspersions on my penchant for daydreaming. We met here at the Facility, but it is true that we resemble an elderly married couple—only without the accumulated decades of bitterness and boredom, the erosion of individuality, or the intolerable absence of privacy. We do, however, relish tormenting the staff with glancing suggestions that we might be indulging in geezer lust.

It will come as no surprise that I have never been married myself. I was altogether too clumsy a swain. I had my share of dalliances, but these were sporadic and always short-lived. Under whatever illusions the adventure began, as soon as the woman discerned my true nature—bookish, distracted, deeply impatient with small talk—she invariably began the slow drift toward the exit. But I am not disappointed. In fact, when, in my late forties, the opportunities to repeat this absurd drama dwindled nearly to zero, I rejoiced. Like a man driven mad by the vulgarity and clichés who smashes his television with a sledgehammer then adjourns to the library, I felt liberated.

But I promised an account of my youth, and I will give one. For if, as they say, our end is in our beginning, I will soon be embarking on a most unusual journey.

* * *

There are, though few would believe it, still some pockets of this vast nation where the visionary intellects who brought us the strip mall, the suburb, and the fast food chain have yet to conquer. But long ago, when I was a mere tot, these enclaves were more numerous, and I was fortunate enough to have been cast into one. Nobody knows how I got there. Suffice it to say that I was subsequently reared by the creatures who inhabited this idyllic sanctuary, and the memory of my happiness there has sweetened all of my later days.

I called my adopted family “creatures,” and for good reason. There is no way to break the news gently—I was raised by a pack of wild poodles.

The undomesticated poodle is an animal far different from the dolled-up victims of human stupidity one normally encounters. Poodles are, in fact, a noble breed with a highly developed tribal instinct. They feel love and loyalty, mourn their dead, and take pride in the history of their ancestors; of these, my own personal favorite—though fictional and encountered only after I’d been away for many years—is the poodle in Goethe’s Faust, transformed by black magic into Mephistopheles. Faust’s reaction is priceless: “So that’s what lay hidden in the poodle—a metaphysical professor!”

Of course, real poodles have no spoken language but communicate instead by means of intuitive cathexis. Poodle consciousness is pictorial, and its vocabulary consists of an elaborate system of visual cues and representations. The most curious feature of my adult life has been that I absorbed this language in infancy and have retained it ever since. In short, I “speak Poodle.” As a result, I’ve always lived—or, more accurately, thought—in a double world containing both the normative linguistic landscape of my own species and the wholly private dream speech of my first family. Over time, this has produced a feeling of profound displacement. On the rare occasions when I’ve encountered a poodle as an adult, I have tried to “make contact,” hoping, I suppose, to relieve my plangent loneliness. But one consequence of domestication seems to be the loss of the native faculty. This “lobotomization” fills me with such grief that I’ve learned, with regret, to avoid my captured brethren.

We lived, as I’ve said, on a rolling plain far from what passes for civilization. Within the central—and largest—hill, a labyrinth of tunnels and chambers served as a kind of underground fortress containing sleeping quarters, storage rooms, meeting halls, and the like. At any given time, our pack consisted of roughly five thousand members—so you can imagine the size and complexity of this subterranean network. Still, we conducted most of our lives above ground, as befits poodles or any other canine. Whenever possible—barring thunderstorm, blizzard, or the presence of wolves—we spent our days foraging, frolicking, and, yes, even procreating out in the great wide open.

Nor did we neglect the more solemn aspects of cultural life. We had our Congress of Elders, which met in secret every month to review the state of our pack and, when necessary, to issue or repeal a law, to mete out justice or mercy, to award higher rank to those deemed worthy—or to demote any who had failed in their duties. Likewise, once a week at dusk, our whole pack circled together atop the central hill for Religious Ceremonies. Under the guidance of the High Priest, we asked the Great Poodle Spirit for solace and wisdom.

Finally—and, to me, most important—there was Genevieve. Her official title was “Singer,” though that word fails to describe what she really did—especially since she made little actual noise. At the conclusion of each Ceremony, Genevieve would take her place at the center of the circle and convey a series of mental images that produced in us the equivalent emotional experience of hearing a beautiful song. These images simultaneously told a story, offered observations about life, and appealed to our highest aesthetic and moral sensibilities. Such was the power of Genevieve’s poetic gift that afterward we could do little but slip away to our sleeping quarters to enjoy a night of vivid, exalted dreams.

Though I was only a child—and keenly but perhaps not yet fully aware of my (human) difference—I was in love with her.

I’m sure she knew this and understood that it was natural, a schoolboy crush. And like the wise, responsible teacher she was, she molded my fervent ardency into part of my education.

I still remember my last lesson. We sat facing each other in the grass—I cross-legged, she arched regally back on her haunches. I must have been about twelve years old. Though we spoke, as always, without speaking, our “conversation” might be summarized as follows:

—You are not, as you know, a true Poodle.

—Yes. But my heart breaks with the knowledge.

—It mustn’t. You are human. To try to be otherwise will only do you harm.

—But I know nothing else. How am I to be human when I’ve never met another of my kind?

—The time is approaching when you will do so.

—What do you mean?

—We do not know how or why you arrived here. There were many who wanted to cast you out, who feared that you might learn our ways only, in the end, to betray us. But the Great Poodle Spirit spoke of you, spoke on your behalf. And so here you are.

—Spoke of me? I don’t believe it.

—There is so much still you cannot understand. You must be patient.

—But when will I meet a human?

—Soon. The Spirit has spoken of this, as well.

—I’m afraid. I don’t know what to expect.

—None of us can know. We know only that it will happen.

That moment arrived too quickly. I will not dwell on the experience—which involved a helicopter, soldiers with rifles, and six poodles slain—nor on the years that followed. No, it was not a seamless transition. But I recognized early on that I was not so different from the other struggling adolescents who were now my most frequent companions—though learning to speak was quite difficult—and so nursed no feelings of special aggrievement.

Nor have I done so as an adult. My experience has not made me “unique” in the way one might expect. Indeed, I am all too ordinary.

But still I am haunted by Genevieve’s “songs” and the world that produced them—of which no trace now remains.

Is it any wonder, then, Agnes, that sometimes, when the moon is full, I am gripped by a profound longing, an aboriginal itch, to throw off my human trappings, kneel at the top of a lonely hill—and howl?