Fantastic Metropolis

I stood and watched as the dogs, our dogs, swept down the hill into battle, a thrilling sight however many times one has seen it. Their own, emerging from runnels and arroyos, appeared instantly to meet ours, as if somehow materialized from the ground itself. Soon the field was a mass of leaping, tumbling, snapping, tearing bodies. Some of the dogs went straight for the throat; others struck at haunches or flanks to maim and disable, to bring their opponents down quickly, then moved on. Wave after wave drove down from the trees, off the horizon cradled atop this hill. Rank after rank rose from the low ground to meet them. The dogs went about their work in absolute silence.

Eventually, as always it must be, it was over. Their general stood now on the hill across from mine. As I walked down into the valley, as I lifted my eyes, he lowered his. We nodded to one another.

Unlike the dogs, we, the people of my village, did not go silently about our business, but called out encouragement and direction to one another over their bodies, spoke quietly, commented, even laughed from time to time, as we cleared the field. Men hoisted the bodies chest-high and laid them out on carts and litters; women followed, scooping up severed limbs and entrails in wooden shovels; small children pulled travoises or carried water about to workers. The clearing took, as always it does, many hours, at the end of which we were in equal parts exhausted, exhilarated.

In the village, afterwards, there was feasting. Fresh meat grilled on skewers over slow fires of cypress and fig, fresh meat stewed with turnips and a variety of other roots in clay pots over those same fires, fresh meat chopped with purple and green peppers, wrapped in palm leaves and buried in the coals. Savory smoke rolled everywhere, eyes and mouths watered. Bal strummed the single string of his banjer as Ariana improvised songs celebrating our triumph, celebrating, too, each of the dogs that had given its life for us. At one point Bal, taken up with the song, strummed so fiercely that the string broke. As he set about preparing another, this being a process that required some time, Ariana continued a capella her praise of the dogs, of their courage and devotion: praise of the flesh that, having so ably and expertly defended us, now enriched us.

Later along still, when feasting and songs were over and only dregs of sweet-potato wine remained asludge in the bellies of the barrels, three young women sat crosslegged outside my tent, speaking in low whispers among themselves. Twelve to fourteen summers they had seen, perhaps a dozen such great wars. Baskets of fruit ripe like themselves sat beside these women, other baskets filled with stones polished round and smooth by the river, sacred mud still clinging to them. Taking a bite from each of the fruits, I set them in a line before the woman I’d chosen and circled her with stones. The others departed to return to their families, their parents, brothers; to await the next deliverance.

Her name, she told me, was Chai. Because she came from another village, it was a name I had not heard before, the turning, almost before one heard it, into an on her lips. She smiled then took in her breath quickly when I entered and broke her, and afterwards, in her sleep, spoke quietly to herself or perhaps to some dream companion, drawing up her knees like a child.

A short night it was, and the whole of it I lay there alongside Chai, my wife. Outside, the moon shone and rippled like a pool of white water. Towards dawn a plaintive wind blew up from the lowlands. In their corrals, in their sleep, the new dogs moaned and tossed restlessly about, hungry for glory.

James Sallis is the author of Ghost of a Flea and Time’s Hammers.