The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe by Andrew O’Hagan Page A

if she was
out walking by herself, following her at a distance, and I got
to know Charlie. Sometimes she would let him ride with her
in the limousine across town.
‘Not tonight, Charlie.’ She meant about the car. But she
looked at him as if he was the right kind of friend, and my
earlier ruminations on the subject began to fade into the cold
night air. ‘Some other time, huh? I mean, some time soon.’ ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I got work tomorrow.’ He was already
walking backwards and stuffing his camera into his pocket
and winking goodbye. Marilyn thought he was the future. I
heard her thinking it as he walked away. The boy was able
to take something for granted about fame and politics, about
their joint power, and Marilyn took it for granted the same
way. The difference was that it gave her a strange feeling in
the pit of her stomach. I was just getting to know my fated
companion but already I loved the quality identified by Carl
Sandburg. ‘There was something democratic about her,’ he
said. But the question of fame and intellect often haunted
her reveries. Driving away from the Copacabana, she waved
to Charlie from the car and said to herself that if anybody had
made her a star it was the people. That’s all. But popularity
has many snares. As we crossed onto Lexington she recalled
that a picture of Rita Hayworth in a pink negligée was pasted
on the bomb they dropped on Hiroshima.
The park on Sutton Place faces the East River. We often
went there in the daytime and watched children playing in a
sandbox. Other dogs would come and Marilyn would sit on
the bench and stare at the water, imagining the lives of the
people on the passing boats. The night of the Copacabana we
went down to the park and she sat there smoking a cigarette.
People can be alone with their dogs, perfectly alone, so long
as the dog knows how to pipe down and simply be vigilant
over their owner’s privacy. On such occasions, Marilyn
would often just stare into space and mention names. Men’s
names. She felt alienated by the thought of how indebted to
men she was, all those men who had given her something
large while meaning to take something away. It always
bothered her that she had been so dependent on the men she admired. She looked into the water and said, ‘Tommy Zahn.’ Turns out he was a lifeguard at the beach in Santa Monica when she was a mousy-haired teenager desperate to be no
ticed.
The Queensboro Bridge was covered in lights that looped
to Welfare Island, and staring at them I saw in my mind the
image of Emma Bovary and her little Italian greyhound,
Djali. * I believe it is well known that Emma would walk
her as far as the wood of beech trees at Banneville, where
our attentive and happy mutt would busy herself yapping at
the yellow butterflies while Emma opened her mind to her.
She opened her mind without reservation. The dog was the
only one to hear her secret. ‘Oh, why, dear God, did I marry
him?’ The essence of dogs often lies in pictures. I thought
of Fragonard’s painting called The Souvenir . Ah, the lonely
spot, the darkling wood, the young lady lost in reverie, and
the small dog looking up at her, eager to understand. Art
makes relatives of us all. Sitting on the bench, Marilyn put
a finger down and stroked my chin. ‘My mother told me life
happened in fifteen phases,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that a strange
number, Snowball? She picked it up from a door-to-door
salesman. Fifteen strides, he said. Fifteen tracos . But maybe
there’s just two phases: before and after.’
In the apartment, she dropped her clothes all the way
down the hall, except the coat, which she dragged to the
living room and laid by the white piano. ‘Here’s yours,
Snowball,’ she said, kissing my nose. I snuggled down into the ermine and sniffed her essence of roses. Marilyn took a bottle of Dom Pérignon from the fridge and went back along the hall, and soon the voice of Mr Sinatra