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Confession of a Dogcatcher
[1953]
It
is only with hesitation that I admit to a profession which, though it feeds me,
forces me into activities that I cannot always undertake with a clear
conscience: I am an employee of the Dog
Tax Office and wander the fields of our city in order to track down unregistered
pooches. Disguised as an amicable walker,
chubby and short, a cigar of medium price range in my mouth, I walk through
parks and quiet streets, venture conversations with people who walk dogs, make
mental notes of their names, their address, scratch the dog’s neck pretending to
be friendly, knowing that it will soon yield fifty marks.
I
know the registered dogs, smell it almost, feel it when a mutt with a clear
conscience stands at a tree and relieves itself. I am particularly interested in bitches that
are heavy with young, that are looking forward to the auspicious birth of future
taxpayers: I keep tabs on them, make precise mental notes of the date of the
litter and monitor where the puppies are taken, let them grow unsuspectingly up
to that stage where no one dares drown them any longer—and then hand them over
to the law. Maybe I should have elected
a different profession, because I like dogs, and therefore I live in a constant
state of heartache: duty and love battle in my breast, and I confess openly
that sometimes the love wins. There are
dogs that I simply cannot report, to whom I—how do you put it—turn two blind
eyes. A particular meekness fills my
soul now, especially because my own dog is not registered either: a mongrel
whom my wife lovingly feeds, the favorite plaything of my children, who do not
suspect to what an illegal thing they are giving their love.
Life
is really hazardous. Maybe I should have
been more careful; but the fact that I am a keeper of the law to a certain
extent strengthens my belief that I am free to continue breaking it. My work is difficult: I crouch hours on end in
thorny bushes of the suburbs, wait for barking to surge from a halfway house or
barbarous yapping from a barrack where I conjecture a suspicious dog. Or I duck behind fallen walls and ambush a
fox terrier about which I know that it does not have an index card, does not
have an account number. Then I return home
tired and filthy, smoke my cigar at the furnace and scratch the coat of our
Pluto, who wags his tail and reminds me of the paradox of my livelihood.
Therefore
it is understandable that I cherish a long walk with my wife, my children, and
Pluto on Sundays, a walk on which I may, so to speak, only have platonic
interest in dogs, because on Sundays even unregistered dogs are not monitored.
It
is just that I must choose a different route for us to walk in future, because
I have met my supervisor two Sundays in a row already, and he stops every time,
greets my wife and my children, and scratches our Pluto’s coat. But curiously: Pluto does not like him, growls, prepares to
leap, which alarms me in the highest degree, causes me to leave hastily every
time, and is beginning to arouse the suspicion of my supervisor, who, with a
knotted brow, watches the drops of sweat that collect on my brow.
Maybe
I should have registered Pluto, but my income is small—maybe I should have
taken up a different profession, but I am fifty, and at my age one no longer wants
to change the line of work: in any case the hazard of my life is becoming too
permanent, and I would have registered Pluto, had it still been possible. But it is not possible any longer: My wife has reported to my supervisor in a
light conversational tone that we have already owned the animal for three
years, that it has grown up with the family, inseparable from the children—and
similar banter, which makes
it impossible for me to register Pluto now.
In vain do I try to subdue
my inner heartache by doubling my diligence at work: it does not help: I have fallen
into a situation from where, it appears to me, there is no possible way
out. Although one should not muzzle the
ox while he is threshing, I do not know whether my supervisor has a sufficiently
flexible spirit that he would let the Bible prevail. I am doomed, and some will consider me a
cynic, but how could I have not become one, where I deal with dogs all the time
…
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