Black Flame by Gerelchimeg Blackcrane Page B

other mastiff’s unmoving gaze. He himself regularly fell into such trances, but he would usually stare at the village at the foot of the mountain or at the restaurant glinting in the sunset with all the tour buses lined up outside. After staring like this for a while, some kind of mirage would appear — a summer pasture, the first snowfall of his memory, even the streets of Lhasa at night.
    Every evening around this time, Kelsang would be woken from his thoughts by a clump of mud walloping against him, usually thrown by either the man with the dark cheeks or one of the waiters. Having spent the whole day bumping along Tibet’s terrible roads, the busloads of tourists had eaten their fill, and reinvigorated by the heat of the chilis, were climbing up the hill to take a look at the huge furry monster tied up on the slope.
    Kelsang’s response would send the hushed crowd running, the sound of his clanging chains adding to the terrible noise coming from his throat. Only when they were farther away, where the restaurant owner guaranteed they would be safe, did they look back at Kelsang. This dog wanted nothing more than to chomp them to pieces, and they were too scared to get any closer. The tourists wasted no time snapping photos of the enormous dog as he tore around his pole, jumping up every now and again like one of Don Quixote’s warring windmills. As soon as his paws hit the ground, he was ready to pounce again.
    The man with the dark cheeks stood behind the crowd watching proudly. He was going to get his due. One day the wind would change, and that greedy smile would be stuck on his face. This was how business was done. The tourists would take their photos and videos home and show them to friends and family, spreading the word that in a village not far from Lhasa there was a fine mastiff for sale. Someone was bound to buy the dog for the price he wanted.
    The rusty red mastiff continued to stare out toward the horizon, made fuzzy by the last of the evening sun, out past the endless gravel landscape to where clouds, swollen with rain, dotted the sky.
    Kelsang couldn’t see anything extraordinary.
    By the third day, the other mastiff’s meat had begun to give off a foul smell that put Kelsang off his food. He could only eat half of what he was given. The rusty red mastiff didn’t even look at the meat, the fresh or the rotten. It just lay there, completely still. Occasionally, at night, it would get up and loop around its pole a few times, its chains dangling, before plopping back down on the ground with a thud. By the fifth day, its body was skin and bones, and it couldn’t get up. Kelsang had never imagined that a mastiff could lose weight so quickly.
    One of the waiters came with a bowl of milk, went right up to the rusty red dog and placed it beside it. Kelsang watched as the mastiff looked up and stared into the distance, paying no attention to either the waiter or the milk.
    On the eighth day, as evening drew near, the rusty red mastiff, now as thin as a piece of felt, tottered to its feet. This came as a shock to Kelsang. He smelled the reek of death in the wind. It was the same smell that had come from the dog shot on the streets of Lhasa. Kelsang hadn’t seen a sign of life from the other mastiff all day. In fact, he thought it was already dead.
    The rusty red mastiff hobbled a few steps, making no sound, as if its paws were padded. Then it leaned against the pole, its head weighed down by the chains, and a trickle of urine ran between its legs. It looked around dimly, as if making sure that everything was real, before lifting its head slightly to sniff the air. Capturing its last moments, it looked over at Kelsang.
    And then it died.
    Kelsang’s wailing brought the people from the restaurant, but it was a different sort of wailing from the hopeless sounds he had been making in the past weeks and months.
    Kelsang howled for an hour after they carried away the rusty red