White Dog Fell from the Sky - By Eleanor Morse Page 0,45

if there was fire in it, but to take one would be to damage the small plant, so he only imagined the flames in those leaves. In three or four days, he would transplant the peppers next to the tomatoes in the garden.

With a watering can, Isaac poured water on the lettuces and spinach, filled the can, and watered each tomato plant, then went down the row of onions. The carrots were just coming up with their feathery leaves, and he watered beside them so he wouldn’t drown the young carrots. He tried to make his mind like the mind of a plant. He went back to the onions and watched as their stems stirred. When they turned one way they were green, another way and they were blue gray. They rustled against one another like the sound of a man walking through long grass.

Late that afternoon the madam asked to talk to him. His heart sank. But instead of talking about the bicycle, she told him that she’d be going on a long trip, probably for two or three weeks. Would he live in the house and watch over things and feed the cats?

He asked whether Itumeleng would not be here, and she said that Itumeleng would be going home with her daughter to see her mother.

“Then I’ll stay in the servant’s quarters?”

“I thought you would stay in my house.”

“I would rather stay in the servant’s quarters.”

“Wherever you stay, I’ll pay you extra while I’m gone.”

“I’ll look after your house with pleasure, mma, but I don’t want extra pay.” It was too good to be true. Before he left for the day, he learned that Itumeleng didn’t want him living in her room. She said that she’d had too many men there already, and it had brought nothing but bad fortune. Isaac laughed. He would stay in the little room near the kitchen in the main house.

She left on a Saturday. That night, White Dog slept just outside the kitchen door. For the first time in Isaac’s life, there was no other breath sighing near him at night. So much stillness, it felt like the space between stars. In Pretoria, there were voices outside, radios, drunks, people arguing, singing, footsteps going by, and inside, whisperings, snorings, murmurings of sleep. Now he felt he might be the last man on Earth. He got out of bed, walked outside, and looked up the large trunk of a syringa tree, into its boughs holding the sliver of a new moon. He imagined that he could hear a low sound coming from the stars and from the great black space around them, a low deep sound: the vast engine of the universe. He had never seen the ocean, but he imagined this sound to be similar to the sound of the sea when it’s rumbling, the great waves gathering and falling.

White Dog did not understand what he was doing out there in the dark. She put her head on one side and looked up to see what he was looking at. He wondered, could she hear what he was hearing? White Dog knew things from the other world, things that most dogs don’t know, but perhaps it all came through her nose. Dogs are one big nose.

He left the door open to the night air to let the heat of the day out. The polished concrete floor at the entryway was cool on his feet. Through the darkness, he felt his way toward the bedroom with his hands and bumped into a wall. When he stopped, he still heard that low, deep hum. He lay in the small bedroom with his eyes open and imagined the thousands and millions of people on Earth who would never be alone the way he was alone tonight. Every sound he heard was large: the wings of a moth, the donkey boiler outside the window groaning as the water inside its tank cooled, the creak of the floor in the living room.

The room where he slept was the same size as the house he’d once shared with his mother and five brothers and sisters. In this house, there were still six more rooms, some of them much larger than this one. A screened veranda ran the length and width of the house on two sides. A small village could sleep here.

In the morning, just after dawn, he heard a sound like a mouse across the floor. He got up and walked in the direction of the noise.