By Niamh Mac Cabe.
You look at the lake, and the lake looks at you through the eyes of your own.[1]
– There is someone walking along a road
– A dog walks behind, at a distance
The person occasionally glances back at the dog. Because of these nervous looks, it could be construed that the animal is following this solitary human, unbid. Or the dog is passively walking, its walk happens to be behind the lone figure, they have, by chance, fallen into co-existing step, like a pair of clocks back-to-back in adjoining rooms. (Such clocks have been noted to synchronise, one slowing down and the other speeding up until both pendulums swing with the same (though opposite) trajectory, for no reason other than ‘Sympathetic Symmetry’.) Or perhaps their paths have coincidentally conjoined, producing a situation where the dog independently walks the same path as the person, albeit ten seconds or so later. Perhaps both states co-exist, like the superposed alive/dead cat. As in:
- The human and the dog have nothing to do with each other, excepting the fact they’re both walking the same path, and, simultaneously
- the dog is following, and the human is trying to lose the dog, with both parties applying the same level of effort in their intent, a dual action which results in the maintenance of a constant distance between them, and the illusory effect of
of what
of connectedness.
They proceed along a country road, heading south-east, with a distance of approximately ten metres between them. All this is occurring somewhere in northwestern Ireland.
The person is heading for a lake on a mountain. Directions from an app are being acted on. The app instructs, in companionable tones, keep straight for eight-hundred metres, then take a left onto R****, and continue for three kilometres.
The individual taps text into the phone whilst walking, spelling out fragments such as ‘You look at the lake’. The intention is to allow the phone a right of reply through predictive text. The phone is always grateful for such validation, and composes its responses with enthusiasm. (Most mobile devices, as a result of the digital bonding that develops following proximity to a user, are imprinted with a sense of loyalty, paired with an innate, sometimes urgent, sometimes bordering on dangerous, need to please their owner. This attachment should be confronted and deleted prior to passing the phone on to a new owner, otherwise the phone will continue to pine for its original owner, resulting in diminished, and occasionally malign, performance in their new employ. However, this digital attachment should not be confused with the perpetual bond embedded during manufacture, the fellowship (a virtual cord, umbilical?) connecting each phone with a satellite tracking through our globe’s celestial architecture.)
‘You look at the lake, and’… (taps this person into their phone)
– … and a new window will open to the right (the phone fills in, followed by:)
– The lake is not valid, but the telling of it may be
Then, after an iced consultation with its iridium space station circling far overhead:
– The lake looks at you but may try to find out more
The person walking. A male, late forties.
The dog. A greyhound, female, white in colour, approximately seven years old. The man is familiar with her, even fond of her (this is evidenced by many things, the least of which is the fact there are several photos of her in his phone’s memory). It’s unclear what sentiment, if any, she has for him.
*
The greyhound had turned up at his place (a farmhouse just seven-hundred metres from here, here where they are now walking) three weeks ago today. She appeared to be lost. She was visibly underweight (remember those curving ribs, the timbers of a ghost-boat’s hull). But she displayed little interest in food, whether accompanied by his coaxings or not (remember holding out a trembling piece of milk-soaked bread). This was when he took his first photograph of her, to post on his neighbourhood WhatsApp group, anyone missing this sweet girl? No one replied.
The following day brought change. He was heartened to see that the food he’d left her was gone. He surmised that she’d only eat when she wasn’t being watched. This he understood, having lived alone for most of his adult life (aren’t food and sleep two of the greatest primal pleasures, and aren’t both diminished by the hovering presence of a disassociated observer). So despite her apparently eager acceptance of his food, she sustained an air of insouciance when he retrieved the bowl, barely casting a glance his way even as he spoke softly to her, did you like that, good girl good girl.
He considered that maybe she’d been trying to find some route homeward, or else onward to a predetermined destination, and she’d decided for unknown reasons that his house was a point along that line, a pause as she awaited direction from some inaudible voice, inaudible, that is, to anyone but her, just as particular colours are invisible to some animals whilst registering loudly to others.
It’s wrong to state that she “turned up at his place.” She turned up not at his front-door but a brief stretch from there: the iron gates at the end of his driveway. She walked up to them, the gates being the apex on a bend in the road, then stalled, then gazed in through the iron bars at his farmhouse, on account of the gates being closed.
It’s not clear how long she was there before he noticed her but it’s unlikely to have been more than a day and night. She may have briefly left her position at his gates during that twenty-four hour period but, if she did, it was just the shortest of respites, a drink of ditch water, or a response to some of the animal calls coming from the impenetrable thicket on the other side of the road, wild calls that she had some ineffable bent towards.
*
Go back, to today, to the middle-aged man tracking towards a mountain lake, followed approximately ten metres behind by the stray who’d arrived at his gates three weeks prior.
As they walk, the phone struggles to maintain connection with its iridium angel satellite, a feat it only achieves by never breaking the first contact ping until it is certain of the incoming second.
The man types into his phone: ‘Looks at you through the eyes of your own…’
The phone replies, twice:
– The eyes of your own are the documentation of a resurrection
– Your own will be able to bring them back
An instruction, keep straight for two kilometres, then take a left at the T-junction. The man pushes onward, occasionally glancing back to see whether she’s still there. Ahead, a cairn-capped mountain is coming into view.
*
Yes, on that first day the greyhound had looked hungry, but other than that there was no exterior sign of any inner turmoil. He took a photo and posted it on the neighbourhood WhatsApp, anyone missing this sweet girl. Then he brought water and food. She eyed it, eyed him, looked away. He left her.
The following morning, he surprised himself at the joy he felt on seeing both water and food gone, and she still there, sitting on her porcelain hindquarters, eager, it appeared, to engage. No one had replied to his WhatsApp.
“Hello,” he said, “how are we today?” He felt as if her continuance at his gates required an acknowledgment of some sort, an acknowledgement that embodied the sense that the two of them were in this together, connected somehow, now.
He opened the gates to retrieve the bowls but, as soon as he did, she padded past him up his driveway. Surprised at this incursion, he left his gates open so she’d be able to about-turn after she completed what he assumed must be a species-related requirement to inspect his territory, combined with a need to show him he had no jurisdiction over her.
When he peered out later, she was on his driveway lying just inside the open gates, looking out onto the road. Her two long, impossibly slender forelimbs lay in a silvery-white X in front of her. He resolved to continue feeding her until she was ready to resume her journey. He closed the gates, with her inside.
But as the first, the second, and finally the third week passed with the greyhound showing no signs of moving on, preferring to traipse mute after him up and down between the farmhouse and the gate, always keeping a distance—he’d walk down, open the gate, stand aside, she’d stay rooted, staring at him—he realised the only way she’d proceed on her pilgrimage was if he took the initiative and stepped out onto the road. He was certain she’d follow him.
So he decided that later today, around noon, he’d go for a walk. And because this walk was, as he saw it, necessary to rekindle her internal crusade, it wouldn’t be just a stroll up or down the road. It would have to have intent, and that intent would have to be, he concluded, a destination.
He decided he’d walk to the cauldron-lake on the mountain.
The lake is reputed to be bottomless. Or, at least, connected by some invisible (umbilical?) cord to the sea, an underground channel of sorts, a proposed physical attribute more plausible than the idea that it’s bottomless (though this aspect of the lake, the immeasurability, the vast unfathomability of it, is, of course, a draw).
The journey there wasn’t far. It’d take maybe five hours, at a steady pace. He’d walk in as straight a line as possible, directed (in part) by his phone. The greyhound would, presumably, shadow him and, hopefully, at some point, veer off, back on her own path, the one she’d wandered from three weeks ago.
*
He leaves at noon. She follows. The road meanders through thick hedgerows of hawthorn, fuchsia, hazel. He’s decided that the best approach is to appear to ignore her, just allowing himself the odd look backward.
He has given his phone details of both the mountain lake and his intentions. After considered deliberation, it has responded. Keep straight, he’s told, keep straight for eight-hundred metres, then take a right onto R****, and continue please for three kilometres.
After five minutes, the turn. He takes it. The phone considers. Keep straight, it concludes, keep straight for three kilometres on R****, then veer left at the Y junction, staying please on R**** thank you. He can see the mountain in the distance, over to his left. Why walk all the way down this road, he thinks, why not head left now, cut across the fields, save some distance.
He climbs the ditch, goes into the field. The phone utters a disappointed, a concerned burble, and begins to recalibrate the route. Make a U-turn, it implores, make a U-turn here back onto R*** please.
He strides through the long-grassed meadow, the mountain and its lake straight ahead in his sights. Other than an occasional digital sigh, his phone makes no further comment, its screen displaying a blue triangle-arrow wandering lost in a no-man’s land, the road (delineated in bold) persisting to its right.
Late summer. The grass has been left to grow, it will soon be cut for hay. The fuchsia bushes are out, their little teardrop flowers hanging in solemn profusion from the boundary hedgerows. He’s moved by their bright red colour, shining beautiful out here for no one, pursuing their own short path every summer. He takes a photo, then remembers the greyhound; shit, what will she have made of this diversion off-road. Can she still see him (these dogs are sight-hounds, not trackers, this his phone revealed to him when he googled grey hound then greyhound), will she have left the road to follow him. What if the landowner spots her, are there sheep in here. Fuck. Where is she.
He scans the flattened trail his strides have made in the long grass, and he sees her, shadowing, her lanky muzzle held above the grass heads. Got to get her out of the field. Keep going, there’s a road on the other side, it’s closer than retracing steps. He quickens pace. The greyhound locks onto him and follows, keeping aligned with the brownish hedgerow channels either side (the hue of the fuchsia unreachable, this red lies just outside her visual perception).
Before long, they’re back on a road. She remains ten or twelve paces behind. His phone recalibrates: Keep straight for two kilometres yes then take a left at the T-junction onto R****.
He pushes onward through the hours, adhering to the instructions, occasionally checking over his shoulder, then reminding himself it’s supposed to be good if she’s no longer there. If he doesn’t look for her, she can be both there and gone.
Evening is closing in. Ahead, the cairn-capped mountain slowly centres, its cauldron-lake waiting halfway up.
*
The greyhound trails him all afternoon, up as far as the lake, matching his pace, maintaining her distance. She stops when, at the lake’s edge, he stops. She watches him crouch down. She notes he’s no longer glancing back towards her, his body is leaning in towards the lake. There, their connectedness breaks. She is released. She pads on stooped towards the early evening, advancing in a continuing southerly direction, tail tucked, eyes averted, skirting warily around this mountain, topped as it is with its lonely hexahedron of rough-cut stones.
*
It’s not true that he hadn’t looked back. Feeling a sudden sense of loss, a severance, a breach of some kind, he had indeed looked back. She was gone. He felt both betrayed and unburdened.
*
As he watches the lake’s rippling surface, the phone falls from his pocket into the tawny water. The tiny blue arrow spins wildly clockwise, anticlockwise, trying to track its new position. But no coordinates can be found for falling.
The lake pours in through the headphone jack. The young phone experiences a bewildering loss of contact with the iridium space station above. It endures the break like a cord tightening then snapping. Knowing its beloved iridium has no option but to track on southward without it, it feels the pain of solitude for the first time.
To compensate for this sudden isolation, the plummeting phone begins to retrieve its stored data in an effort to narrate a story for itself, to place a linear order on events. The narrative sequence starts with memories of research on the synchronicity of clocks, followed by searches regarding grey hound and greyhound, then a photo of the dog standing at the closed gates, and the photo’s subsequent attachment to an unsent text scheduled for the neighbourhood WhatsApp. Plunging down through the water, the screen’s backlight fading, an image of fuchsia flashes before all goes blank.
I am falling, I am alone, it explains to itself, I am falling inside a bottomless lake.
[1] Jann Kaplinski
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Niamh Mac Cabe is published internationally in numerous journals and anthologies, including Narrative Magazine, The Stinging Fly, The Offing, Aesthetica, The London Magazine, The Forge Literary Magazine, Mslexia, Southword, The Irish Independent, The Exacting Clam, and Minor Literature[s]. She writes fiction, poetry, non-fiction, and hybrid prose. She lives in Leitrim, Ireland.
