Trafika Europe 7 - Ukrainian Prayer

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

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