The Friend

by Sigrid Nunez

The question any novel is really trying to answer is, Is life worth living? Nicholson Baker, “The Art of Fiction No. 212,” The Paris Review

You posted an essay, “How to Be a Flâneur,” on the custom of urban strolling and loitering and its place in literary culture. You caught some flak for questioning whether there could really be such a thing as a flâneuse. You didn’t think it was possible for a woman to wander the streets in the same spirit and manner as a man. A female pedestrian was subject to constant disruptions: stares, comments, catcalls, gropes. A woman was raised to be always on guard: Was this guy walking too close? Was that guy following her? How, then, could she ever relax enough to experience the loss of sense of self, the joy of pure being that was the ideal of true flânerie? You concluded that, for women, the equivalent was probably shopping—specifically, the kind of browsing people do when they’re not looking to buy something. I didn’t think you were wrong about any of this. I’ve known plenty of women who brace themselves whenever they leave the house, even a few who try to avoid leaving the house. Of course, a woman has only to wait until she’s a certain age, when she becomes invisible, and—problem solved.

She is nineteen and a half—still young enough for “and a half” to mean something.

Wife One had a theory. There are two kinds of womanizer, she said. There’s the kind that loves women and the kind that hates them. You were the first kind, she said. She believed that women tended to be more forgiving, more understanding and even protective of your kind. Less likely when wronged to want revenge. Of course, it helps if the man is an artist, she said, or has some other type of noble calling. Or is some kind of outlaw was my thought. That type above all.

Q. What is it that makes a womanizer one type or the other? A. His mother, of course.

They don’t commit suicide. They don’t weep. But they can and do fall to pieces. They can and do have their hearts broken. They can and do lose their minds.

Graffiti on Philosophy Hall: The examined life ain’t worth it either.

In a book I am reading the author talks about word people versus fist people. As if words could not also be fists. Aren’t often fists.

My poems tend to be about the beauty of the world—about nature, mostly. It isn’t very good poetry, I know that, and I have no desire to share it. For me, writing poetry is like prayer, and prayer isn’t something you have to share with other people.

Here is what I learned: Simone Weil was right. Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring.

Consider rereading, how risky it is, especially when the book is one that you loved. Always the chance that it won’t hold up, that you might, for whatever reason, not love it as much. When this happens, and to me it happens all the time (and more and more as I get older), the effect is so disheartening that I now open old favorites warily.

In “How to Be a Flâneur,” you said you did not consider a long walk with a dog genuine flânerie because it was not the same as aimless wandering, and being responsible for a dog prevented a person from falling into abstraction.

Our apartment was in a dicey neighborhood, but so long as Beau was behind it we didn’t always bother to lock the door. I would take him with me to a friend’s place two miles away, stay until one or two in the morning, then walk back home along dark and empty streets. Beau knew about the potential danger, you could see it in his tension, his hypervigilance; he was like a fur soldier; he was cocked, like a soldier’s gun. More than once he terrified the wits out of some guy loitering on a corner, or in a building doorway. (I should say that few people I knew living in that part of town in those years had not been the victim of a mugging, or a burglary, or worse.) There was something undeniably thrilling about Beau’s rumbling barks and growls, the stance he took between me and whatever he saw as a threat (which included any strange man who so much as looked at me), the knowledge that he would defend me—to the death if he had to. It was all part of why I loved him. Also, back then, I liked the way we attracted attention. But things are different now. The city has calmed down, the streets are safe, and I don’t walk around late at night anymore anyway. At one or two in the morning I am asleep. I don’t need protection. I don’t need a badass dog to defend me. I don’t want Apollo ever to feel that he has to bark or growl at anyone. I don’t want him to worry. I don’t want him to be anxious. I want him to feel that we are both perfectly safe, no matter where we go. I don’t want him to...

From the news story she goes into her screed—it too is something she’s shared with me before—about the evils of dog breeding. Mutts are what nature intended, mutts are what should exist. But what’ve we got instead? Idiot collies, neurotic shepherds, murderous Rottweilers, deaf Dalmatians, and Labs so calm you could shoot a gun at them and they wouldn’t suspect danger. Fur vegetables, cripples, morons, sociopaths, dogs with bones too thin or flesh too fat. That’s what you get when you breed dogs for the traits people want them to have. It should be a crime. (I thought this woman was crazy when she told me about pointers that freeze in point posture and then can’t get out, but this grotesquerie turns out to be fact.) I shudder to think what it’ll be like fifty or a hundred years from now, says the woman, looking very dark indeed. But by then, she adds, the whole earth will have been destroyed. And, perhaps consoled by this thought, she takes her mutts and moves on.

I believe the intensity of the pity you feel for an animal has to do with how it evokes pity for yourself. I believe we must all retain, throughout our whole lives, a powerful memory of those early moments of life, a time when we were as much animal as human, the overwhelming feelings of helplessness and vulnerability and mute fear, and the yearning for the protection that our instinct tells us is there, if we could just cry loudly enough. Innocence is something we humans pass through and leave behind, unable to return. But animals live and die in that state, and seeing innocence violated in the form of cruelty to a mere duck can seem like the most barbaric act in the world. I know people who are outraged by this sentiment, calling it cynical, misanthropic, and perverse. But I believe the day when we are no longer capable of feeling it will be a terrible day for every living being, that our downward slide into violence and barbarity will be only that much quicker.

All pet owners go through this. Your pet is sick, obviously sick, but what is it, what’s wrong? It can’t say. The intolerable thought that your dog, who believes you are God, believes you have the power to stop the pain, but for some reason (did he somehow displease you?) refuse to do so. The poet Rilke once reported seeing a dying dog give its mistress a look full of reproach. Later, he gave this experience to the narrator of a novel: He was convinced I could have prevented it. It was now clear that he had always overrated me. And there was no time left to explain it to him. He continued to gaze at me, surprised and solitary, until it was over.

On the fate of the multitude of unwanted dogs, Lucy reflects: They do us the honor of treating us like gods, and we respond by treating them like things.

Cell phones do not belong in fiction, an editor once scolded in the margin of one of my manuscripts, and ever since—more than two decades now—I have wondered at the disconnect between tech-filled life and techless story.

At times it’s as if I truly am in a fairy tale. When people say, What are you going to do when you get evicted, you can’t just sit around waiting for a miracle, I think, But that is what I’m waiting for! I’m in one of those stories where a person is put to a test, one of those fables where someone encounters a stranger—could be human, could be beast—who is in need of help. If the person refuses to help he is dealt a harsh punishment. If the person is kind to the one in need—often a rich, royal, or powerful being in disguise—he reaps a reward, more often than not the love of the being whose exalted identity has now been revealed.

He doesn’t like having his paws touched, though the brat in me keeps trying.

He has grown used to his new home, and to me. Except when I have to be at school, I don’t leave him alone. Apart, he is always on my mind and I am anxious to get back to him. He greets me at the door (has he been by the door the whole time?), but with a drowning look that says it hasn’t been easy, the waiting. (How good is his memory? If very good, as dogs’ memories are said to be, what grief being locked up alone might bring him. And—heart-shredding thought—is it still for you that he waits by the door?)

What do dogs think when they see someone cry? Bred to be comforters, they comfort us. But how puzzling human unhappiness must be to them. We who can fill our dishes any time and with as much food as we like, who can go outside whenever we wish, and run free—we who have no master constantly needing to be pleased, or obeyed—WTF?

There was a time when it would have been clearer to me whether reading Rilke’s letters to a young poet to a dog was a sign of mental unbalance.

Strays is what a writer I recently read calls those who, for one reason or another, and despite whatever they might have wanted earlier in life, never really become a part of life, not in the way most people do. They may have serious relationships, they may have friends, even a sizable circle, they may spend large portions of their time in the company of others. But they never marry and they never have children. On holidays, they join some family or other group. This goes on year after year, until they finally find it in themselves to admit that they’d really rather just stay home. But you must see a lot of people like that, I say to the therapist. Actually, he says, I don’t.

Yes, I talk to Apollo. But not about you. That’s the thing: I don’t have to tell him. (Dogs are the best mourners in the world, as everyone knows. Joy Williams.)

Tempted to put too much faith in the great male mind, remember this: It looked at cats and declared them gods. It looked at women and asked, Are they human? And, once that hard nut had been cracked: But do they have souls?

When people are very young they see animals as equals, even as kin. That humans are different, unique and superior to all other species—this they have to be taught.

The daffodils have been placed in a small crystal vase in a sunny spot on the windowsill where they glow with a neon brightness that (the woman can’t help thinking) makes them look fake. One of the stems has bent, and the flower hangs down as if ashamed, or shy of the spotlight.

“It’s become entrenched, hasn’t it. This idea that what writers do is essentially shameful and that we’re all somehow suspect characters. When I was teaching I noticed that, each year, my students’ opinion of writers seemed to have sunk a little lower. But what does it mean when people who want to be writers see writers in such a negative light? Can you imagine a dance student feeling that way about the New York City Ballet? Or young athletes despising Olympic champions?” “No. But dancers and athletes aren’t seen as privileged, and writers are. To become a professional writer in our society you have to be privileged to begin with, and the feeling is that privileged people shouldn’t be writing anymore—not unless they can find a way not to write about themselves, because that only furthers the agenda of white supremacy and the patriarchy. You scoff, but you can’t deny that writing is an elitist, egotistic activity. You do it to get attention and to advance yourself in the world, you don’t do it to make the world a more just place. Of course there’s going to be some shame attached to it.”

More amazing yet that you can tell apart the countless different scents hitting you at all times from every direction. A power like that makes every dog Wonder Dog. But talk about too much information. A power like that would drive any human being insane.

Thinking back to when you used to wake me in the middle of the night, inhaling every inch of me as I lay on the floor. Searching for data. Who was I and what might I have up my sleeve. You still sniff me all the time, but never with the same kind of investigative fervor.

I think it’s fair to say that, thanks to your superior gift, you can read me better than I can read you. Hormones and pheromones keep you updated. My anxiety about classes starting up again in a week. My open wounds. My hidden fears. My loneliness. My rage. My never-ending grief. You can smell all that.

Not that your sense of smell is what it used to be. Age has surely dulled it, as happens to people too. And look at that nose: once a ripe dripping black plum, now crusty and gray like a used coal.

In the city a short time ago a scary thing happened. It was scorching, the first really bad day of the season, and we were headed for the shade of the park. But before we could get there, and though we hadn’t gone far, you stopped, you buckled and sank to the concrete, clearly distressed. I nearly panicked, thought I was going to lose you right then right there. How kind people were. Someone dashed into a coffee bar and came back with a bowl of cold water, which you drank greedily without getting up. Then a woman passing by stopped, took out an umbrella, and stood holding it open to shield you from the sun; it’s okay if I’m late for work, she said. A man driving by offered us a ride, but I knew you’d have trouble climbing into the backseat, and by then thankfully you’d revived and we were able to walk home. Now every time I walk you my heart is in my throat.

You’ll let me know, won’t you. Remember, I’m only human, I’m nowhere near as sharp as you are. I’ll need a sign when it gets to be too much. I don’t see it as tampering with nature, playing God, or, as some would have it, interfering with a being’s spiritual journey, its passage to the bardo. I see it as a blessing. I want for you what I’d want for myself. And I’ll be there, of course. I’ll be with you on that last journey to the vet.

Hour after hour I have sat on this porch, just thinking. For example, about the therapist—remember him? I’ve been thinking about some things he said. Suicide is contagious. One of the strongest predictors of suicide is knowing a suicide. Of course I knew where he was going. Doctor Obvious. I remember telling him about my dream, the man in the dark coat, in the snow. Was he beckoning—hurry up, hurry hurry—or was he warning me away?

You write a thing down because you’re hoping to get a hold on it. You write about experiences partly to understand what they mean, partly not to lose them to time. To oblivion. But there’s always the danger of the opposite happening. Losing the memory of the experience itself to the memory of writing about it. Like people whose memories of places they’ve traveled to are in fact only memories of the pictures they took there. In the end, writing and photography probably destroy more of the past than they ever preserve of it. So it could happen: by writing about someone lost—or even just talking too much about them—you might be burying them for good.

When did she plant the roses. In full magnificent bloom now, the red and the white. A fragrance to make you go, Aaah. I think how much they must have pleased her, year after year, and made her proud. And it’s not the thought that she must miss them, but that she’s no longer capable of missing them, that makes me sad. What we miss—what we lose and what we mourn—isn’t it this that makes us who, deep down, we truly are. To say nothing of what we wanted in life but never got to have.