THE PORTUGUESE CHAIN-DOG

I killed the dog. I had to; it kept barking. Being a reasonable man who likes animals, I first tried killing it with kindness, showering down praise and dog-biscuits, but when that failed I resorted to just plain murder. It really was the only way to have peace in my life.
This dog, like the thousands of other dogs chained up all over Portugal, was small, brown and ugly. Long, long ago, a Welsh Corgi and a Dachshund met somewhere on the Iberian peninsula, fell in love and mated. Throughout the centuries, their offspring mated and re-mated to produce today’s Portuguese Chain-dog. It’s pedigree points are: the color is always scruffy-brown, its body is ill-proportioned, being too long for its modest height, and the head should have huge ears, extra points if one flops down. Queen Anne legs are essential, as is a coat that appears to have been created by dragging the animal backwards through a roll of barbed-wire - many times. The perfect Chain-dog should be charmless and devoid of all ability, except for one: it must be capable of barking for hours, without pause or provocation, and such longevity is much sought after among Chain-dog owners.
In most Portuguese towns there are Chain-dog barking competitions which are fiercely contested and some offer tremendous prizes. Practice goes on year-round and country-wide. The very select of the breed - ninety eight percent of them - are also memory-deficient. This ensures that no matter how kind you have been to the animal, the moment it blinks all memory of your kindness is erased, and once more you are a hostile creature to be barked at and about.
In Portugal, the dawn chorus is a dog chorus. The rising sun belongs to the hounds, not the birds, and by government decree, at no time shall there be more than three consecutive barkless minutes anywhere across the land.
That is why I killed the dog outside my house. Its death solved one problem, but created another because it belonged to Senor, my neighbor in the cottage across the yard. He appears to be a man of advanced years, although being from the country he might be only thirty, and looks much as I imagined Benito Mussolini would look today, if only he hadn’t hung around that corner lamp-post too much with his mistress after Italy lost the war. Actually, I could no more guess Senor’s age than speak Portuguese backwards, or forwards for that matter.
The Senor, I have yet to learn his name, growls out Portuguese as though every word is a parade-ground command. On discovering I am American, and therefore genetically incapable of learning a second language, he settled on a military salute as the sole, yet direct means of communication between us. Every morning he appears at his front door (but not too early because the Portuguese are late risers) and his hand flashes up in a crisp salute the instant he sees me. I return it with an American insouciance learned from watching countless John Wayne WWII movies.
Senor then rumbles out some arcane Portuguese greeting, his body erect and head tilted back. Unfortunately his head is inclined so far off vertical that I can see only the underneath of his chin, thin lines where his eyes peer down over his cheeks, and two cavernous nostrils, Stygian-black holes that undoubtedly harbor unknown lands and unusual forms of life.
I will later discover the Senor has only one eye. He is also a kind and generous man with a wonderful dignity that is particularly Portuguese.
Senor is also my landlord’s father and therein lies the problem, me having offed his pedigree Chain-dog. Thank goodness no one saw me do it. I hope.
Other difficulties loom. I live on a farm, along with the Chain-dogs, twin shabby grey cats - or one very fast cat, my Mussolini Senor neighbor with a wife who looks and dresses just like him, and the next problem, a bunch of chickens, what is the collective noun? - herd, flock, franchise? Now I’ve never met a chicken yet that could scare me, not truly scare me, but I have a faithful companion whom it might bother.
Rockat, my Maine coon cat, is a city boy, Los Angeles born and bred. He is a tough, sophisticated California city-cat, which means he’s never seen any bird bigger than a sparrow. He’s caught, tortured and eaten a few of them in his time and it’s possible karma is spinning the big wheel of fortune in his direction. For the time being, we will not know what happens when Rockat meets a bird far bigger than he is, and one that speaks a foreign tongue too, because traumatized by the flight over, Rockat is buried deep in the middle of the bed and comes out only at night. The great Portuguese outdoors with its monster avian life still awaits him.
We, Rockat and I, are in Portugal and both alive, as is Senor’s Chain-dog, who died only in my wishful imagination. For now. But this is a strange and foreign land in which anything might happen. And most surely will.