The Note

In the early morning of the fourth day I started writing the note in my head as I lay in bed. Then I stopped. I thought the owner might be dead and that was why the dog was barking and I stood up and went to the kitchen to make some coffee. I thought about the dead owner and then I started visualizing a younger owner, a neglecting owner jerking off with his headset on while the dog was barking and rage built up in me but then I switched back to the dead owner and I felt guilt and pity. The dog continued to bark. I decided to take a shower before I could take any further action. It was Saturday and it was too early for me to be up. It was light outside and I could hear birds chirping between the pauses that sometimes were as long as a minute or two and every time the barking resumed I thought that this was the last barking spree. The warm water washed over my head and my body and I felt good for the first time this morning.

Perhaps the owner is away for a few days and has someone else feed and walk the dog and they won’t get there that early, I thought, exploring as many possibilities as my exhausted mind could muster. I finished showering and brushed my teeth and then shaved. After shaving I had a cold shower for a minute and let the pores of my skin close and it felt good. As I stepped out of the bathroom, tiredness ambushed me again and I felt alarmed; I still craved sleep but I didn't want to lay down so I poured myself some coffee and went to the kitchen window facing the main entrance and watched as no one came and went. Then I lit the first cigarette of the day. 

I wanted to silence the dog. I wanted to teach the owner a thing or two. Mornings were sacred and most people in the building were working class; up in the morning to rush to work and then back in the evening and it had been four days now. Four distressing days and each day I had thought it would be the last. The torture was bound to stop. We didn’t deserve this. But it went on. After I finished my cigarette I lit another one and poured myself some more coffee and then I sat down and began writing the note:

Dear neighbor, 

For the past four days your dog has been barking in the morning before I go to work. It wakes me up an hour or two before I usually wake up and I am sincerely concerned that something might be wrong. Either with the dog, or you. If there is

The dog started barking again after an unusual long pause and I continued writing on a new line. 

If you don’t shut the fucking dog up I swear I will come down and strangle it with its leash you never use and then I’ll strap it around your thick neck and drag you outside to take you for a walk you miserable piece of shit.

I paused. This was good. I felt anger leave my fingertips and head from the seventh chakra up. I tore out the page and threw the paper in the bin and stood up. There would be no note written today. Why was I torturing myself? I cleaned up the kitchen from last night and put on some clothes and went outside. On my way out I took the stairs and went by the apartment I suspected harbored the damned dog which was the one right below mine. But I could hear nothing and no one was in the corridor and it was empty and silent. I thought about pressing my ear against the door but decided not to, what if someone came along? So I went out unsatisfied and still unknowing who the culprits were or where they lived.

The day welcomed me with no plans pinned to it. I decided to take a walk around the neighborhood. I was out early and the morning started losing its grip and tiredness steered away and I began to feel light again. Happiness, I thought, is at times being emerged in silence or the absence of noise and I remembered Allen Carr comparing smoking to wearing too tight shoes. But why wear tight shoes? Why smoke? Why be in noisy environments? I wanted to quit smoking but I hadn’t finished the book yet and I wasn’t about to. Not during summer and not since my girlfriend broke up with me. She was the one who suggested that I read the book. Her father had read it and quit, her mother supposedly too but I had seen her smoke outside their summer cabin at night when she thought everyone had gone to bed. I hadn’t told my girlfriend about my discovery and instead had used it as a private excuse for postponing my own venture towards healthier living.

And then back the barking pest; someone was doomed to be more upset by it than I was. That was a given. The building was rental and low income. People were going to lose it before I did. In fact, someone had probably done something by now. I baked in the chirping of the birds and the morning sun started to raise its stakes above my head as I went into a coffee shop and ordered coffee to go. I sat down next to the pond close to the house. The ducks were there. A mother was carrying her child across the grass over to the park. The child was kicking excitedly. Then I saw an old woman, perhaps in her 80s come walking with a leashed dog walking next to it. It was a small dog and I didn’t know its name but it seemed calm and composed. They walked like that, in their synchronized speed at about 1 knot. As I was watching them I imagined the dog below me to be the exact opposite of the old ladies dog. This one seemed kind, incapable of barking at that volume and intensity. As I watched them the old lady stopped, picked something out of her handbag and bent slightly down and dropped it on the ground. The dog quickly devoured it and then licked its mouth. I lit another cigarette and as I did the old lady looked my way and shook her head and turned around and walked back the way she came from, accelerating beyond the standard knot.

I felt the customary shame one does when one has upset the elderly. It feels as if one has breached ancient contracts between the generations and even if no rule or law had been broken the shame was intact. I stared down the pond and the ducks. What was I doing with my life? I envied the duck. I envied its stupid but guilt free look. I envied its healthy lifestyle centered around this pond. They were always here except in winter of course when I did not know where they went. If a dog started pestering their lives every morning surely the ducks would mob up and lynch the thing. They would take some sort of savage action in the end. Or flee. They could always find another pond or live at some other place until the dog had cooled down. I lit another more guilt free cigarette and continued watching the ducks and the river with heavy traffic on the other side. Morning started to give in and the sun was now higher up and more intense. I started to feel a sting of hunger and decided to walk back but I took another route, the more scenic one by the river and I thought about a lot of other things and not the dog, not the broken mornings but I let a still sadness flow out of my heart and into my body. It was a beautiful form of sadness and I knew it was from me being tired but I walked with it for some time. When I came to the big park just outside my house I decided that it was time for me to make something to eat so I started heading home.

My building was up on a hill and was the lower one next to the tall and towering brick building; the biggest brick building in town. They were both yellow, the tall and the shorter one and they were both made of brick and I could see the tall one from some distance. The uphill route was good exercise. I pitied the elder who lived in the building. Having to climb that path day in and day out. Now there were other ways than the steep one down from the hill, ways that were more friendly to the elder but they took an awfully long time to descend. Either way, perhaps the hill was made for young people. Healthy people with working knees and hips, enigmatic futures and shining eyes. As I walked the final distance up I lit another cigarette which I knew would last me until the entrance where I would put it out in the big ashtray attached to the facade next to the large black newly installed electric doors. As I closed in on the entrance I could see the back of a slow moving elderly woman (she wore a hat with curly white hair underneath it) and her dog. I put out the cigarette on the ground and hurried to get to the door before her so I could hold it up. As I opened the door and looked back I could see it was the same elderly woman from the park. She initiated a warm smile towards me and as she and her dog made it through the entrance she said:

“Thank you young man, thank you.”

When we were both inside the building we made it to the elevator where we stood waiting. 

“What a wonderful day”, I said.

“Beautiful day? Oh yes, we were in the park, beautiful”, she replied leaning her head forward and I understood she had not recognized me and felt relief. 

The elevator arrived. I held up the door and she got in. She pressed two and I pressed three. As it came to her floor she locked her eyes on me. 

“Young man, one tip from one generation to another, stop smoking, nothing good comes out of it. Come on now Betty, time for food”, she said and got out of the elevator. The dog walked quietly behind her with it´ s head proudly held high. 

“But I…” I begun saying.

"What dear? I am almost deaf, you know, old age, new sorrows, come on then Betty!", and the elevator door closed.

I got off at the next floor and opened the door to my apartment and went inside. It was quiet and the sun was now shining right through the kitchen window with the wind moving the curtains. I opened the fridge and took out some butter and cheese and then I heard it; Betty was barking again.