Goya'S Dog by Damian Tarnopolsky Page A

once.”
    â€œWhat happened?” Janusz asked.
    â€œWe run giddily up the three steps. Storm into the church like Roundheads. The white faces and black ties swivel. Evie giggles, smoothes her dress down; I check my fly. Probably they can smell the alcohol and our eyes have to adjust. The baby starts off crying.”
    He reflected.
    â€œOf course, the odd aspect of all this is that I return to this place just a few years later and see all these hateful people again, the same church, same gardens, the same reverend father, Malcolm, the mummy and the daddy. But what a different tone.
    â€œWe sit, we try to sit up straight, you know, suppress our breathing. She holds my hand because in spite of all she loves babies. They’re at the naming bit and they want to call it Mucie or Passy or something equally hideous and we can’t hold it anymore, we can’t help laughing. Then Evie says she ought to participate, like the second at a duel.Wasn’t she asked to participate? She hisses at me, half loses her balance getting out of the pew and my arm shoots out but she catches herself, clack. Evie walks up to the front, clack, clack, clack. I like that. Baby’s still crying. I stood up too, I was waiting to see what she’d do, for not the only time, I’ll tell you that.”
    He stopped, thirsty. Whenever he’d told it in the past, it had been to ridicule her family. Playing for laughs, telling about the cow strident in their paths on the race to the church. Now it was coming out all wrong. In the train on the way back he’d drawn her face: biting her lip, not meeting his eyes. Rain again, the rain running sideways down the window.
    â€œThen—” said Janusz.
    Dacres pulled back to stand up.
    â€œNothing,” he said. “Nothing happened. Nothing at all. They turned their backs. This looked choreographed. She’d come down to humiliate them and they turned their backs to her, all of a piece, together. Three black backs and two white, making a wall. She stood looking for a way in, and I wanted to run and hold her up. She took a step left and right, there was no way in. Horrible. The priest looked down at the floor. It seemed that whatshername, the wife, was trying to physically shield the baby from any Evie influence. It was like a dance.”
    Now there was silence.
    â€œAs long as nobody burns down the church,” said Janusz.
    â€œOutside in the gardens, Bosie and Malcolm accosted me. Told me to bloody watch myself. I nodded seriously, very seriously. I was wondering where Evie was, in case she’d left and I’d have to find my way to the train station. Bosie and Malcolm with the same square heads, Bosie pale, and Malcolm all jaw, and bits of Evie in their hatred, the passionate expression.”
    Were they listening? He was trailing off.
    Leo was away at the end of the counter, whistling.
    Is any of this right? Dacres wondered.
    Janusz’s eyes were blank.
    â€œWhat am I saying, now,” said Dacres.
    Suddenly, weeks had passed. He was dawdling outside the art gallery. There was nothing inside worth seeing—he knew that without having to look—but he liked the streetcar ride, the change of neighbourhood, the Chinese laundry, the absence of Slavs. He’d thought of asking if they were hiring curators, or cleaners, but hadn’t summoned up the courage. Still, it was a place he knew. How strange it was not to be able to point one’s arm around the city and say, Ten years ago I bought an antique Flemish clock on this street; I first exhibited watercolours over there when that hotel was Trestle’s Art; I deflowered Hattie Whitcomb in the private rooms above the Flask, just around the corner.
    He imagined what this city block would look like through a bomb sight. He wondered if even a tank cruising down the street would wake the burghers from their slumber. He half-wanted to go to a film, for the narcotic effect, but not enough to pay