The old man huddled closer. The canine whimpered and watched him, eyes wide and chin rested upon the bench. He sat beside it, and stroked its neck; it was soft. And warm. Soft fur ruffled between his fingers. Wrapped around its neck was a broad striped collar – a single rusting medallion dangling from it.
“Blaze?” asked the old man, inspecting the medallion closely. “A nice name.”
Blaze blinked, uninterested.
“I had a dog once too,” said the old man, crossing his legs under the dim street lamp that flickered above. “Teddy was his name. A German Shepherd,” he laughed, scratching his neck. “Just like you.”
Blaze whimpered softly at the sound of his name.
“He was, I must confess, rather livelier than you, though,” he chuckled.
Blaze blinked.
“Ah, those days. They were so different, so much better I must say.” The old man looked around despicably. This new street, these tall buildings, all these cars, and bikes – it was like he witnessed a new planet itself.
He glanced worryingly at Blaze. He was a rather burly animal, very much unlike Teddy. And he was undoubtedly quiet. Those eyes lacked luster, that tail didn’t waver, and the entire being was slopped upon the bench, much like a bowl of upturned jelly sloshed across a table.
The old man wondered. Who owned this dog? Was he lost? He certainly possessed a collar, meaning he was no stray. What was he doing here? Did his master ask him to wait? Did his master forget to come back? What kind of master does that?
The old man turned the medallion in his hand. There was no number, no address – only one word – Blaze. The old man assumed it was his name. The dog even answered to it, albeit with unnaturally shallow traces of enthusiasm. Was he sick perhaps? The old man couldn’t tell. He was no doctor. Was loneliness a sickness? Perhaps. Perhaps not.
The old man was lonely. He had always been so, save for Teddy – and when Teddy left him, nothing ever filled the void. It was a long time back though, so long, he feared he might forget. Despite it all, the old man never thought himself to be sick. He was lonely, no doubt, but did that make him sick as well?
Perhaps Blaze was simply waiting for his master, nothing else. Yes, that is most likely. The old man found himself guilty – guilty of jumping to premature conclusions, which he fretted upon. Perhaps the master wasn’t the heartless bastard with a stick, as his mind so swiftly pictured.
“Let me tell you about myself, Blaze, while we wait for your master” he said, patting his neck lightly.
Blaze didn’t whimper this time, but the old man didn’t mind. He asked for ears that would listen, nothing more.
“I fought in France,” he said. “During the First World War. I fought for the British. Ironic, isn’t it?”
Blaze blinked.
“They pilfered us, and looted us, for nearly two hundred years – yet I fought for them.” The old man leaned back, lost in the old days. The old days, which were infinitely better, he always told himself.
“They came to our houses and offered us food and money. My father was a farmer. He soiled and tilled for the King’s factories in Britain. We gave His Majesty our cotton, and he barely saw it fit to put rice on our plates? And yet I fought for him.”
The old man couldn’t help but chuckle at the ways of the world. They were twisted, tighter than a python around the choking deer, yet they encountered little resistance from the ones that were stuck within. The world simply took every man with it, whether he wanted to come or not. There was little choice but to obey, and obey he did, for all his life.
The stoics called it the logos. It was a power, an entity perhaps; similar to a god, but lacking any human traits. These happenings of the world were like a masterful book – the story was fixed and no amount of the reader’s wishes could change the ending, yet every page brought with it a fresh wave of anticipation and awe.
The old man turned to Blaze once more. Is he listening? His eyes were nearly shut. The old man questioned himself. Am I a wasteful storyteller? He never had children, and thus, he never had grandchildren. He had no friends either. Blaze was the only one, as far as he recalled, that listened patiently. The only one who didn’t cut him off mid-sentence. The old man envied his master. How lucky must he be?
“Fine,” he said. “Perhaps the trenches will interest you then, eh?”
Blaze blinked, his seemingly gloomy eyes darted towards him for the first time. The old man smiled.
“Ah, yes,” he said. “The trenches then? They are dark places, I tell you. I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone, though perhaps you’d love them. There were rats all around and they harbored enormous fleas.
“And the toilets!” The old man shuddered at the very thought. “Piss and shit all over. It clogged the drains and the rainwater often washed the muck all over the trench!
“One of the comrades, a good friend of mine, we made sure he always picked the short straw!” He laughed heartily. The old man was a rascal back in the day. “That one had to clear the latrines every time. He probably saw through our little game but lacked the heart to confront us.
“He was a sweet lad though. He had a family in Birmingham and a wife who was due to deliver, right before he took the bullet. It was no pleasant scene, I tell you. He tugged at my collar and made him swear to write to his wife – to tell her of some name he thought for the baby, one I don’t recall.”
Blaze whimpered.
“Yes,” the old man acknowledged. “It was a sad day – though the days weren’t always this way.”
Blaze turned towards the old man.
“They gave us rum!” he chuckled. “It wasn’t the finest of kinds, and trust me, I know fine when I see it. But any rum is better than none, eh? And it wasn’t like we stored barrels of it. I hardly got a pint every day, first thing in the morning. A gallant way to wake to the firing, wouldn’t you agree, eh Blaze?”
Blaze blinked at the call of his name.
“We even had dogs down there! Loads of them, though I’m not certain where they came from. The Germans had them too, though ours were a hundred times more loyal than those bastards!”
The old man halted himself. He talked for too long. “Where is your master?” He looked right, then left, then right once more. The street was empty. “He is coming, isn’t he?” Blaze didn’t move. He blinked, like always. Of course, he would come. Blaze was such an obedient creature. Anyone should consider himself lucky to have him.
So the old man sat there. He sat there with Blaze, and the two of them gazed into the sky – a sky lacking stars.
“The damn pollution!” cursed the old man, searching vaguely for any hint of shimmering stars. “Back in the day, we would lay upon the terrace and attempt to count every star in the sky.” It was a task he never thought he would accomplish – not until today, now that the great human minds saw it fit to make the stars disappear altogether. Now I can count all of them.
“We even formed constellations of our own! New ones every night.”
Blaze blinked.
“I received medals, Blaze,” he said. “From His Majesty himself. The same man whose forefathers stole our prized Kohinoor.
“Where are they, you ask? I don’t know, to be honest. I sold them off once the war was over, and moved to Bombay immediately. I needed the money.”
Blaze whimpered, softer.
“Yes…Bombay! Bombay was always a dream. It was where rich people lived, where money flowed like the latrines in the English trenches! It was the city where a man could fill his purse and his belly, and likewise, we did.
Blaze whimpered.
The old man stroked his mane. Teddy would jump at the old man’s touch. His tail would dart around fervently, once even knocking over the expensive vase the lieutenant gifted him. Yet the old man never despised his companion. He loved him with all his heart. He was the one soul he told everything to. The old man never married, and never had children of his own. And Teddy listened, though not as faithfully as Blaze, but he listened nevertheless – that was all that mattered to the old man.
Dogs are man’s best friends. There was no sentence truer than this. He saw it in the trenches where the joyful canines faithfully carried his letters, and he saw it in Teddy, right till the end, when he waved back at his friend before leaving for France. It was the last time he saw him.
It would put even the great Socrates to shame, for none of the upended philosophy of the bloody Greeks held as much truth as this one statement. This statement was universal, however, these words weren’t the ones that perplexed the old man. What held his thoughts was, in fact, the very opposite.
Is man dog’s best friend? The old man liked to think of it that way, yet every second that passed, he doubted it more and more. Am I the best friend to my best friend? Sadly, he wasn’t privy to the answer. Perhaps it’s best this way. He didn’t want to know.
The old man scratched Blaze’s nape. The canine slept peacefully, probably accustomed to the old man’s presence by now.
Something made the old man pause. He strained his ears. Were they playing tricks on him, or was the whirring of the engine genuine? To his right, two headlamps appeared. It was a car. At this time of the night? The lights shone brighter, forcing the old man to shield his face. The vehicle approached them and halted by the kerb. The old man glanced nervously. Perhaps they didn’t see him. Perhaps they ran out of gas, or perhaps they…perhaps they…
Blaze was unmoved. The glaring lights hardly concerned him. The doors opened and three men got out. Two donned khaki uniforms with glittering badges pinned to their breasts. The third wore plain clothes. A woman was with them – probably in her forties.
The old man stiffened. His hair stood on end. He scooched, ever so slightly, towards Blaze. The police were here. They found him. He had taken every step to avoid detection, but they were here now. He was nothing but a sitting duck.
The woman approached him. She looked at him, eyes wide and searching. The old man hesitated. He dared not look back.
“Father,” she said, gently rubbing his hand. Her fingers were soft, they were warm, but…
Father? The old man had no children. None that he knew of. “Leave me alone!” he shouted. Was he dreaming? If he was, this was the best time to wake up. This was the best time to tell himself that his mind was deceiving him.
“Come,” she said. “We must go.”
The old man looked past her. He looked at the officers in uniform.
“We found him,” said one, a phone pressed against his ear.
“No!” yelled the old man, snatching his hand away. “I will never talk!”
The woman glanced back. The man in shorts and slippers approached and walked past the old man. He crouched in front of the dog – the dog that slept with its eyes closed. He stroked it, scratched it, even partly lifted it, yet the beast was unmoved.
“Call the animal authorities,” the man said. “There’s a dead dog here.”
The dog lay still upon the bench, as if soundly asleep. There wasn’t a flicker of movement, not even when the old man touched him. He was still warm to the touch, and his fur was still soft. The old man frowned. It was a German Shepherd, just like Teddy, but Teddy was long dead.
The old man stroked the beast’s head.
“Hello there,” the old man said. “What’s your name?”
