Perhaps it was a good idea to get Edgar outdoors more often,
Bob thought. Maybe leaving him inside for so much of the time was
part of the problem. It was probable that, with little else
to occupy it, the Alsatian's mercurial imagination expended
itself in nurturing and elaborating fresh obsessions - and lately
these eccentricities had become most troublesome.
For instance, for some time now Bob had been waking up in the
early hours of the morning to hear a terrible, slow, grinding
noise, as if the bricks and mortar of the very house were moving
against each other. Indeed this was just what was going on. Edgar
had developed a peculiar facial expression, for which no descriptive
word exists, and which, when adopted, seemed able to
exert a physical effect upon solid objects. Bob got out of bed
one night and found Edgar sitting in the hallway, pulling a
strange face. It was sort of a cross between a grimace and a
frown, but neither of these words are really adequate to describe
it. A portion of the wall which the dog was looking at was
trembling, and flakes of plaster were falling off. The
floorboards nearby by were buckling ever so slightly.
"Stop frowning like that!", Bob wailed, "You'll bring the
house down."
"I'm sorry, was I frowning?", Edgar said, snapping out of it.
"Well, sort of", Bob admitted. It wasn't exactly a frown.
The ministry of science had special instruments which
detected the effects of Edgar's facial expressions, and they sent
around a team of artists and scientists, who occupied Bob and
Edgar's house, on and off for a period of several weeks.
"This facial expression is of the utmost importance", said one
of the artists; a wiry, bespectacled young man wearing a dark
blue fedora. "It is of a type which has never been documented
before. We don't even know what to call it." Several important
artists drew pictures of Edgar pulling this face, and tried to
come up with names for it. "This is what Da Vinci was trying for
with the Mona Lisa", said one. "That is absolute nonsense", said
another.
Meanwhile the scientists had made their own breakthrough. "We
believe your dog's facial expression is affecting matter at a
molecular level", said a man from the ministry. "We would like to
make a film of him pulling this face, from a safe distance, using
a telephoto lens, and then attempt to have our scientists
replicate it under laboratory conditions." Years later, this
led to the development of the microwave oven, but that is another
story.
It was a lovely, sunny day; the birds were singing, people
were pushing babies around the park in carriages, and they had
managed to make it all the way there without Edgar becoming
significantly agitated. "Just ignore him", he'd said to Bob,
casting a dismissive glance over his shoulder at a row of shrubs
alongside a terrace house they'd just walked past.
"Who", Bob asked.
"You know who."
"Edgar, we're not being followed by the Israeli Prime
Minister."
But they were.
Bob hoped that Edgar would behave himself in the park, and
not do something strange or alarming. Twice before, when they had
visited, Edgar had insisted on pretending to be a Zeppelin. He
would adopt a rigid-legged stance, his hair would stand up
slightly, his ears point forward alertly, and he would appear to
puff up slightly. He would then rise slowly to an altitude of
around ten feet, and float about the park, to the consternation
of many people. He would insist that he was engaged in a
topographical survey of the North Pole, and that Arthur Koestler
was on board. This explanation satisfied the police the first
time, but on the second occasion they demanded Edgar come down
anyway. "It's not that long since the war", they explained, and
people get alarmed seeing anything German floating about." Bob
explained he wasn't really German. "We don't care", they said.
Fortunately on this occasion Edgar seemed to have forgotten about,
or perhaps he had completed his arctic survey. Instead, he
merely chased things about, barked happily, and behaved very much
like one would expect a German Shepherd to behave. Bob was quite
pleased.
Edgar came up to him, panting; exhausted but obviously more
relaxed and happier than he had been in a good while.
"Would you buy me an ice cream", he asked. "I'm really hot."
Bob agreed, and came back with an ice cream, and offered it to him
to lick.
"No", said Edgar, "I want you to hold it under my tail. That
would cool me down much faster."
Bob looked very alarmed. "Edgar, there is bound to be a law
against this", he fretted.
"No there isn't", said Edgar, after scanning his legal database.
"Well it's still not the done thing", Bob protested. "Isn't
there another way for you to cool down? What about panting?"
"That doesn't work", Edgar said.
"It does. That's why dogs pant; to dissipate bodyheat.
Everyone knows that."
"No, it doesn't!", Edgar insisted. Then, more calmly: "Bob, if
I don't cool down, I don't know what's going to happen." He
looked significantly at a nearby apartment block.
"Oh, God - alright", Bob sighed, but let's at least go behind a bush.
They found a large clump of bushes which were not in plain
sight of any of the paths.
"No!", Edgar whined, a few moments later. "I wanted vanilla!"
Tim Gadd 10/99
