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Two Tales
up, and the puppy gratefully
yelped back to him. I poured
some milk into a plastic cover
of something and put it on
the ground so the little guy
could drink it. He couldn’t
even walk very well – he’d
stagger at the slightest wind.
But he lapped up the milk.
Serhiy and I watched him lap
it up and were pleased.
Then it happened. Without
any
reason
whatsoever,
without any sense, in a
way as if it were just for us,
so that Serhiy and I could
understand that the world is
as simple as it seemed to us,
not as straight-lined, not as
Newtonian.
The puppy suddenly, without
stopping to lap up the milk,
slowly (which was even
stranger) began to lift up his
back paws. Like an acrobat.
Earlier I had seen dogs
walking on their back paws
– nothing strange about that
– but to walk on their front
paws, which is hard even for
people to do?.. The puppy
lifted up his paws slowly,
without tearing himself away
from the milk, to a vertical
position, then in the same
way he slowly lowered them
back to the ground. Serhiy
and I watched this miracle in
silence, then looked at each
other. Serhiy asked if I had
seen that. I answered that I
did. We’ve never talked about
that ever since. And the dog,
who remained with us till his
death, never did anything
like that again. Though Serhiy
and I expected he would. We
followed after him – maybe
suddenly he’d begin to speak.
But no. He died quietly and
peacefully in his doghouse,
the way ordinary dogs die on
earth.
To suddenly get a horse’s
tale – would be something