The wisdom of Blue’s silence

Now is a time of mysteries. Last week, God the sniper. This week, the conjoined dogs. Can anyone fathom these things? Answers on a postcard please (remember postcards?) to PO Box 666, The Endtimes. I was watching Trump on television. I’m not sure why. Trump is like a public hanging: hideous but hard to look away from.

He was holding a press conference in front of 300 journalists, pretty well all of whom were his moral and intellectual superiors. Yet he was the king. As a species we get no better at power.

Trump would point at a journalist, the journalist would pose a question and Trump would fail to answer it. His replies were emotive noise, bereft of thought and meaning, as significant as the snores and farts of my old dog.

Blue, who lay stretched at my feet as if shot, knows nothing of Trump.

It’s a wise innocence.

Suddenly Blue woke.

In an instant he went from corpse to sentry, his ears cocked, his body taut, the whole of him focused on something I could not detect. Then with a squeal of excitement he was up off the carpet, out through the dog door and away into the night.

There were several possible explanations, all of them emergencies: a possum on the roof, a dog on the deck or a hint of a suspicion of the presence of a cat within five miles. I stayed on the sofa. Trump was still burbling.

I don’t think he thinks that anyone believes him. I think he speaks to reassure himself. He is so desperate for praise that he praises himself. He is so conscious of his failures that he projects them onto others. If Trump has an achievement it is that he has somehow rebuffed the world with brazen incoherence. But it can’t last. Earlier that day his former legal thug had called him a conman and a cheat. And no-one was surprised.

I could hear Blue whimpering with excitement. It had to be a visiting dog. We get a lot of them, dogs whose owners’ idea of going for a walk is opening the back door. Some become regulars.

Often I’d find a black and white dog curled up in there with him ...

During the earthquakes I would leave car and garage open for Blue to take refuge. Often I’d find a black and white dog curled up in there with him, the pair of them trembling. And for a while a vast St Bernard used to lumber up and stick his head and mane through the dog door and survey the living room, unable to go further.

I got up to see what was happening and discovered not one dog but two – a sloppy-tongued mongrel and a whitish terrier. But, and here lies the mystery, the collar of one was yoked to the collar of the other by a leash a metre long. Why? What possible purpose could it serve? What was someone trying to achieve? I scratched my head then and I’m scratching it now, and still I come up with nothing.

When the mongrel saw me it tried to take off but the terrier tried to come towards me. The leash pulled them both up short. The dogs seemed puzzled but undistressed, like Siamese twins trying to get the hang of things. The mongrel was larger than the terrier and eventually prevailed. There was a brief confusion when they went either side of a lamp standard, then they headed back down the drive together into the warm night.

Trump was still burbling. ‘‘Blue,’’ I said to the dog, ‘‘the older I get, the less I understand.’’

And Blue, who is a wise dog, said nothing.