Cockie

I had heard rumors about Alberto’s new dog long before I met the dog yesterday morning, limping along Viale Matteotti unaccustomed to an obviously new collar and leash—bright purple! I’d heard Alberto had found the puppy at the market in Pissignano Sunday before last, and I’d imagined the kind of creature one would cup in two hands and rub against one’s cheek, a true cucciolo, eight weeks old, say, just leaving its mother, which would explain why Alberto had not brought the dog out for giri around the Rocca. This morning I collided with Alberto as I was taking a sharp right out of my driveway while headed toward the bus to catch the train to get to work. I looked down and found a quite adult looking dog—white with flame-like orange markings, border-collie-ish, but whippet-fragile looking, cowering at Alberto’s feet. The dog looked up at me, it's head half-ducked as though apologizing for itself. “Ti presento, Cockie,” Alberto said with a kind of gallantry. Then to Cockie: “Ecco Cinzia.”

I had not understood why it had taken so many months for Alberto to find a new dog after the death of Brill who had somehow gotten fatally ill after devouring a platter of party meats at Giampy and Brit’s open house at the art gallery. This had in fact happened the day before I left for France in July—on the 4th of July, in fact, not that the party or the dog’s death had anything to do with American Independence Day. As Daniela and I were saying our goodbyes on the morning of my departure, Brill was at Albigini’s on an I.V. drip and Alberto’s call had come in to announce kidney failure. “E’ morto Brill," Daniela’s text message had awakened me with its barely audible tingle as I'd tried to sleep on the overnight train to Paris.

It is so hard to imagine the loss of a dog when your own beloved companion is snuggled up next to you on the bunk in a train’s sleeping car, its eyes shining so trustingly in the light spangled darkness. The death of Brill seemed more than the death of a dog. Certainly from loner-Alberto's point of view, Brill was the boon campanion, the kind of canine spouse late-middle aged men and women both seem to acquire as though reaching beyond the human to the angelic for a more refined kind of union. Brill was the dog that accompanied the Fool in the Tarot Card and Alberto the Fool--a self-proclaimed Barbone/Tramp who refused to put a leash on his free spirit animal and provoked the ire of all Spoletini when the dog shit in people's doorways or allegedly caused cars to crash into stone walls as they swerved to avoid his trickster presence.

Brill had played a special role in my own life while serving as my personal fertility alert system when it was time to mate Desiree. Daniela had claimed he'd be more reliable than the striscia-test at Albigini’s--one sniff from a trustworthy male dog and Desiree would "sposta la coda" (an eerie phenomenon, that tail twisting) and thereby tell us when to rush Desiree to Rome to cast her amid the lascivious scramblings of Wolfgang Amadeo. I'd felt such compunction for using Brill in this way--truly using him!--poor mongrel creature who didn't stand a chance of being anyone's chosen stud.

There is a gallery on Via Fontesecco that features a still unfinished portrait of Brill, looking fox-like and mischievous as he glances up at the viewer from the stone gutter. The artist is known for his capacity to render stone as though under intense magnification, with living, breathing texture --actual pores and almost visible respiratory swellings, hairline cracks like those in the skin of someone's hand. The portrait is all living stone, cobbled street, curb, marciapiedi, monochrome save for Brill as the central watching figure, his eyes painted to surreal perfection, also the black, gray, white bristles in the reddish fur of his muzzle, but otherwise utterly unfinished, a gessoed-swipe of burnt orange against the gray. The portrait had cost an occhio della testa (an eye out of Alberto’s head), and Alberto did not have the means to pay for it, though certainly, after the death of Brill, Spoletini raised enough of the money to ensure the painting get done, though the artist himself, I believe I heard tell, is now somewhere in Sicily.

When first I'd heard Alberto had a new dog, I suspected it would be disorienting to see him with any kind of dog other than the street-smart, elusive Brill. And true enough the pitiful creature I discover collapsed at Alberto's socks-in-sandals feet makes no sense to me. Alberto explains that he hasn't been walking Cockie at the Rocca because of a gimp leg; he shows me the hind leg, much shorter than the other three, curling up a bit, floppy as though missing a joint or piece of bone, something. He tells me that when he first saw the dog in Pissignano, he had been cowering in a cage, one stray among a half-dozen other strays, but Cockie clearly the most downtrodden and in need of a special touch. The poor animal had been terrified of Alberto, of the car-ride back to Spoleto, of the creeking of doors, fall of shadows, clatter of dishes. After just a week, though, Cockie won’t let Alberto out of sight. They sleep together, the dog curled up right against Alberto’s chest, mysteriously attentive to the nocturnal beating of Alberto's heart.

After I bid Alberto and Cockie a buona giornata, I mill around Piazza delle Liberta' a bit while waiting for the bus. I stop by the post-office to pay my Amici di Bassotti Club dues, stop by Bar Canasta for cornetto and cappuccino. The few minutes it takes me to do these things feels like a small eternity. I lose sight of Alberto and Cockie, even in memory. But by the time I find myself standing at the bus-stop, I find also a sight that seems suddenly familiar: Alberto and Cockie crossing the pizza, the dog a few paces behind Alberto, trying to keep up but barely able because of the limp. “You have been waiting for the bus all this time?” Alberto wants to know as though he too were conscious of the trap door in Time I have just fallen into. We chat as though days and days had passed and there was so much to say. Ages have indeed passed, so much Time that the spectacle of Alberto crossing the piazza with his purple-leashed, limping animal is common place, an intrinsic part of the glorious scenery.