Is space a number of protrusions, elements of perception that appear then disappear when we pass them? I started a book a few years back on the notion of memory and space, until a dog and a cat entered the villa and threw everyone’s timing off.
People in the villa lived according to what might be termed human time. We’re used to spatial realities expressed as measurements of human-oriented duration. So, when the cat and the dog appeared everything changed. Ruiz, for example, had to wake up earlier than he was used to to see to the dog’s needs. And for Erasmus, things were no better. The cat would eat everything in its bowl, thus requiring Erasmus to fill it. This action took about thirty seconds and so at the end of the day when Erasmus counted up his human seconds, he found himself thirty seconds short, which he blamed on the cat.
As for the dog, Ruiz, who found that he could understand their language with minimal effort, tied a rope to the dog’s neck and took the animal for a walk in the morning and in the evening. Ruiz learned that the dog was telling him that he needed a walk when he found the morning paper had been turned into seaweed and he found shreds of it in the dining room and kitchen. But, the day after the first two walks, the paper turned up in the kitchen whole, smelling of ink and paper and not like brine or dead fish. This activity, however, took up to an hour: thirty minutes in the morning and thirty minutes in the evening.
But Ruiz found advantages. On the second morning dog walk, he discovered a breakfast spot that looked over the rocks and the sea. He was served at the table by a woman named Alba. She brought Ruiz eggs. One one side the plate she put the eggs. On the other side of the plate she put a watery hot sauce. She even brought a plate of egg whites for the dog, who ate the egg whites, licked the plate, and then watched the morning waves crash against the black rocks below the cafe.
Ruiz asked Alba, “I didn’t ask for hot sauce: but I love hot sauce on my eggs: how did you know?”
Alba said, “Men who walk dogs early in the morning like hot sauce with their eggs. Everyone knows this.”
On the way home, Ruiz encountered bushes he’d never seen before. He even wondered what they were called, especially the ones floated over by great red butterflies. The dog walked quietly beside him. The dog often turned its head to collect the movement of birds into his memory. The colors of several of the villa houses were a more vivid blue and white in the rising sun. Orange and purple flowers spilled out of window baskets. Ruiz breathed in an intense smell of water, water from hoses and cans. From somewhere he heard bells he’d never heard before because he’d typically sleep later into the morning.
At home, he untied the dog. The dog went to a corner and curled himself up, becoming taciturn shade under a cold lamp. Ruiz went into the kitchen and looked out a window and across the way he saw Erasmus seated at a table outside his own kitchen. He had coffee. He had the paper folded onto the table top. A cat was stretched across the paper. Erasmus was stroking the cat and seemed engrossed by the animal’s ears.
Ruiz thought about how everything had changed; how everything had slowed a bit, moving one slot out the typical motions of things. He felt the urge to call out to Erasmus, to ask him about that cat, but he didn’t know how loud he should make his voice. The volume of his voice might be too high or too low for tenor and feel of the morning. So he left Erasmus to his cat, dressed for work, made for the illuminated tunnel into the city, and envisioned mornings to come and the taste of eggs and hot sauce. Maybe tomorrow he would ask for toast.
