Read Online The Dog by Kerstin Ekman - Free Book Online

meadowgrass
    and ploughed through the dark green blanket of leaves covering
    the wetlands, now starting to turn brown.
    Everything that happens is inside him. It has already happened.
    Everything that happens is vivid within. He knows.
    It flares up, flashes like a wing in the dark night, settles again.
    It encompasses a lite that has been lived.
    Remembering and forgetting are the same murky depths.
    Something swirls up from the sludge -- he recognises it. It
    settles -- he forgets but knows. He is just the hard mask over
    vivid things remembered, elusive things forgotten.
    He roams. A shape, grey fur and a black mask. White
    patch on the neck. Eye slits. He roams through wisps of
    memory, hovering over the soft brown sludge of oblivion.
    The flutter of a wing, the flick of a sharp claw. He
    crouches. Low to the ground, body taut, he sniffs from
    behind the mask.
    Lake water laps the stones, gently and rhythmically. The
    yellow foam between water and stone contains the memory
    of long, habitual licking, a rhythmic, murmuring memory
    that will soon be effaced.
    The pasture grass is dying back. Thick, rough stalks,
    brown spotted leaves; coarse vegetation prevails. Faded blue
    wolfsbane rustles in the wind near his ear. There's a sickly
    sweet smell of decay from the dampness. The voles move
    slowly in the wet, heavy grass. The dog listens for their
    sounds.
    His ears are alert and warm with blood. The cupped cartilage
    with its fine fur quivers. His hearing shifts from short
    to long distance, from what the wind carries to what is
    drawn into it. Ragged fragments of sound attach to the
    knowledge concealed deep within him.
    Deep inside he has a core. It is his sun.
    Throughout the spring and summer the cranesbill blossoms
    in the pastures, the wolfsbane, the quaking grass and
    the stitchwort flowers have all turned towards their sun. It
    sent water through them, drew up salt and nutrients. Their
    sun warmed them by day, putting them to sleep when it
    set.
    But he carries his sun inside. He moves with it. Even in
    the dark of night it is there and it is what sends him out into
    the marsh and what allows him to keep roaming on frosty
    mornings, finding what he needs.
    Late summer days arrived, bringing calm to the overgrown
    pasture. Many voices were gone. Every night of frost
    made the marsh a deeper yellow and the cloudberries more
    faded. The berries no beaks had found dropped away, into
    the mouldering humus.
    Gusts blew in off the mountains, day after day, clearing
    the air. He felt the bite of the wind as he lay in the sun at the
    top of the rise behind the barn, squinting. The choppy
    waves on the lake were like fangs.
    The voles in the marsh had grown so sluggish it was difficult
    for them to get away. He hunted up there most of the
    time now, in spite of all the noise he made ploughing
    through the meadowsweet. The wind whistled loudly in the
    spruces. He didn't know much about what was happening
    beyond the pasture. He was surrounded by noises that dulled
    his memory. But he avoided the point and the lakeshore.
    There were frostbitten, scent-laden mornings when he
    could hear things far away. Sharp dog barks. Car doors slamming
    and engines revving.
    One morning a rifle shot whined in the distance. He
    didn't understand it any more than he understood the sounds
    of the cars. It shattered the crisp air with its whizz. Again.
    And again. His ears buzzed for a long time.
    By the time the wind had awakened the lake, making
    long, dark waves on the surface, he had forgotten the shots.
    But there were more uneasy days. The sounds from the
    world on the other side of the rapids were sharper, more
    sudden. The dogs over there knew something.
    Beyond his own marsh, in the dense, old forest where the
    wood grouse lived, and around the little bogs and the flat,
    rocky areas, the peace was also disturbed. Moose crossed the
    marshes on their way to higher ground. The pair of yearlings
    went farther and farther afield. He heard loud