The Dogs of Vivo by Sven Axelrad. (Photo: Pan Macmillan South Africa) The Dogs of Vivo centres on three ambitious but struggling twenty-something artists. Together, they spend their nights at a rundown bar, discussing books, music and their dreams of making it big. But things are about to change for these three friends with the arrival of a well dressed and enigmatic stranger. Here is an excerpt.
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We begin on the street outside Vivo’s coolest bookstore. If we cup both hands, lean in and peer into the glass window, we will see the first of three very important people around whom this story revolves – a young man named Arturo seated behind a cash register, surrounded by wall-to-wall books. If we look a little longer, we’ll also see a dog curled up asleep in the corner.
The owners of the bookstore consider Arturo a perfectly adequate employee. When asked, he makes thoughtful recommendations and almost always compliments the buyer’s good taste, unless they’ve landed on some terrible but popular book. When this happens, which it often does, he politely says nothing. Some customers love his diffidence, but others find him aloof as he sits reading behind the cash register. As far as the owners are concerned, Arturo is a harmless dreamer, trustworthy and, most importantly, available. While they’re out of town, it’s Arturo’s job to lock the store at night and to look after their dog, whose name is also Arturo.
Arturo (the man) is currently trying to read, but every so often his eyes flick to the clock on the wall. Finally, at five minutes to nine, he dog-ears the page (top-right corner down for placeholding, bottom-right corner up for interesting quotes), touches his index and middle fingers to his lips and transfers this kiss to the small effigy of Doc Holiday that sits atop the register. What follows is the short, almost holy, ritual of closing a bookstore for the night. Arturo begins by washing his coffee mug in the small sink in the back, drying it and placing it on the Poetry shelf like a decoration. Next, he grabs the broom, a generic thing ubiquitous on the streets of Vivo. The informal broom market, much like the flower market, is so saturated in Vivo that the only way to differentiate oneself is with a unique sales pitch. In this way, our broom sellers could be said to dabble in theatre, which I suppose we all do, whether in the pursuit of love, ego or commerce. The bookstore already has a broom, but Arturo couldn’t help buying another when earlier today a bedraggled man poked his head in the front door, showed him a broom identical to all the others and with a winning smile said, “Sweep, sweep, motherf****r?”
He slides the Marías book into one front pocket and a pack of cigarettes into the other, dims the lights and locks the front door quietly, as if the books are sleeping – a silliness because Arturo knows as well as we do that books never sleep.
New broom in hand, Arturo sweep-sweeps the wooden floors while explaining to Arturo the dog how he feels about the Javier Marías book he was just reading: equal parts astounding and wanky (his words, not mine). Using a dustpan, he collects the dirt common to life everywhere and empties it into a small bin before replacing the broom, checking the clock and fetching the dog’s leash from a hook on the wall. Arturo apologises as he clips one end to the dog’s collar, saying something unnecessary like, we can’t have you running off now. The dog forgives this small indignity as dogs forgive most things. Arturo glances around the store to make sure all is relatively in order before placing his laptop in a tote bag and shrugging on his well-worn blue jacket, a cherished gift from his uncle. The jacket is technically a chore coat, genuine vintage, worn rough and mended countless times, the Adolphe Lafont label faded by sweat and time. He slides the Marías book into one front pocket and a pack of cigarettes into the other, dims the lights and locks the front door quietly, as if the books are sleeping – a silliness because Arturo knows as well as we do that books never sleep. Once the holy ritual is complete, the two Arturos step into the street.
It’s a typical Thursday night in Vivo. In every town there’s that one street inclined towards revelry, Pink Street, Bourbon Street, Khao San Road. In Vivo, the Calle de los Borrachos is crowded, the bars overflowing into the cobbled streets where people talk and smoke and generally enjoy themselves, or at least give the impression of enjoying themselves, which often amounts to the same thing. As the street runs alongside the river, it goes without saying that some inebriated soul will stumble and topple into its cool waters during the night, hopefully noticed and greeted by laughter and applause, but occasionally not. A body has recently washed up along the riverbank: a young man, not so different to our young man, but one who has not piqued the interest of a narrator and so will go unreported. No matter, we all die and end up in the Treasury eventually. It is here that we will finally meet God, the great black dog who guards the place – but that’s another story for another time.
Arturo, hair unruly as a poet’s, eyes bruised from lack of sleep, walks lazily through these streets as if he has nowhere to be (which, from the way he was watching the clock earlier, I suspect isn’t true). With his ruffled French coat and tired eyes, he looks like an intellectual/alcoholic, which is to say he looks like a novelist. In the not-so-distant past, at twenty-two, Arturo would be considered a fully grown man, but in modernity we see a child who can legally make any mistake he wants, be it with alcohol, marriage, cigarettes or sex. Arturo dreams of making the biggest mistake of all. He wants to become a novelist. In truth, the making of such mistakes is, and has always been, the quickest route to adulthood. Adults, it seems, are nothing more than children with scars.
The streets of Vivo are not only full of people tonight, but dogs too, their immediate world a forest of legs and alluring smells. The owners of these legs think they give none of their secrets away, but to the dogs of Vivo, our hidden desires, medical issues and bad habits are easily scented. Don’t worry, our dogs are naturally discreet animals. If Arturo the dog is embarrassed to be seen on a leash by his contemporaries, he doesn’t show it. He’s on a leash, yes, but in line with the dignity of Vivano dogs, he could be said to be walking himself.
Both Arturos are currently and pleasantly lost in their own thoughts. It just so happens that we are privy to these thoughts, but we won’t intrude just yet. There are no hard-and-fast rules when it comes to narration, not really. Think of the start of a story as a first date: information should be shared responsibly. We may very well undress these two later (narratively speaking), but for now the rules of common courtesy are in play. Hold on, common courtesy will have to wait. Our young man has just stepped into The Mean Monsoon. DM
The Dogs of Vivo is published by Pan Macmillan South Africa. It is available to purchase on the DM Shop.