Animal Activities #56

The Day the Floor learnt to Smile.

It was a cold stone floor, flat and grey, and reminded me of so many things, the rushing steps of people, the silent mass of shadows in the afternoon, the dust hurled down by the wind. But happiness had never been recalled to it--until the day the little brown puppy arrived.

The puppy was little as loaf-bread, and had soft hair and of the warm-earth colour following a shower. Something of an inquiring that elevates the most of the prosaic into a mystery that must be revealed caused a thin line of white to bristle down his face and his eyes to hold something of the wondering. And he was lying, and his paws extended, and I should have sworn I heard his heart beating on the floor, light and fast and hopeful.

Every morning the puppy would peep through the door. He watched the birds quarrelling with the sky the ants with the bits of gold and man with his grave disturbed feet. And he did not even know that the least thing about their interests, but he knew good-natured curiosity. And in situations where the person would be in a bad mood, he would tilt his head. When a person was smiling, his tail responded first before his mind.

One of the things that were not instantly apparent to many was a gift of the puppy: he gave places life. His body would warm the cold stone. Next there was silence, then the laughter entered into the sound of his overstepping his own paws. Even time appears to have been somewhat decreased, when he sat and looked with his mouth half open at some unfamiliar object, with a smile in place of a personal secret.

The rain was threatening the air one afternoon and the world was heavy. The puppy was on the grey floor, with his tongue out, and his eyes bright, and not at all disturbed by the clouds. That evening one realized that large things could not always make a person happy, both large parties. It was even small dog shaped, and sat upon, calling to mind the world how to breathe.

And, as the sun was setting, the puppy fell asleep just beside another dog, who was sleeping, and at length was tired of simply being a creature all the day. It was the only thing that the chilly and unremembering floor had left. Therefore, whenever paws touched stone henceforth, it would recall.

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