I lived in a rustic life in a small city at the foot of a large volcano, Canlaon, on the Philippines’ fourth-largest island, Negros, the shape of a human foot. My family packed up every two years and moved to a different place in the city until I reached my junior year in high school, when we finally bought a house. In the mornings, in this house, my own bedroom window opened to Mount Canlaon blotting out a large part of the pale blue sky. There were crowing roosters and quacking ducks and barking dogs.
I owned several dogs, three of which I named Hitler, Nixon, and Brezhnev. I had two Hitlers, the first one a favourite pup who died after I unwittingly fed it chocolates. Percy, the main subject of this Memory, came later. She was probably a purebeed of something. Most dogs in the Philippines are mongrel.
The dogs ran free in the backyard, which in part was covered in leaves of sweet potato and at its farthest end was marshy and thick with kangkong. I fed the dogs and was their supreme master. I loved and terrified them, sometimes at the same time.
I was particularly strict during their mealtimes. Once, the second Hitler, a juvenile who would die old, started eating from his bowl before I had given my signal. I chased the dog several times around the house, until finally I had him cornered in a kangkong patch. There, the dog bared his teeth in terror and barked at me aggressively, threatening to bite for the first time. I was shocked. I learned that I should have given Hitler an opportunity to escape, instead of pushing him against the wall. It was an important lesson that served me in other ways in the future.
Percy, glossily brown, short-haired, long-limbed and gentle, was my favourite dog of all time. She was gifted by a friendly doctor in a hospital where my mother worked. Percy had unusually intelligent eyes and was highly sensitive to my gestures and moods.
A mongrel dog, obviously coming from a different neighbourhood, appeared to be smitten with Percy. He would frequently manage to get in through our iron gate, despite our cat Mary. Mary was a fearless bully who would perch by our gate, quiet and still, until she saw any passing dogs, and then she would give chase. Years later, we found Mary’s mangled body in a ditch next to a distant house that had two adult German shepherds.
This is a story about the mongrel that I was told later, because I wasn’t there. One afternoon, the dog again came to visit Percy. With the gate closed and the dog trapped, a neighbour and family friend who was there ran after it with his big machete. The dog was killed, and later cooked and eaten by this neighbour’s friends during one of their drinking sprees. Percy witnessed the killing up close and afterwards suffered from a nervous breakdown.
It took a while for me to finally bring Percy back to normal. She had started shaking whenever I called her name, so I spent more time stroking and reassuring her. Eventually, I seemed to be the only human she could trust.
My father didn’t like my dog very much and complained that Percy ate too much. This was the year the world’s sugar prices got smashed. The Philippines had been one of the world’s top sugar exporters, and our island supplied 80% of all sugar from the Philippines. My father’s small business, which had sold industrial-grade equipment for sugarcane mills, collapsed.
I now come to the final part of my story, after which point I never owned a dog again.
With my father out of a job, it wasn’t long before he suggested that we sell my dog Percy. I didn’t have to agree or disagree; it just was going to happen. Life was hard. Some hungry people roamed the neighbourhood, looking for dogs to catch or buy. I thought I could manage it as long as I didn’t see Percy being taken away.
But when the day came, Percy wouldn’t be budged from inside the house. My father couldn’t drag her out, so he asked me for help. I simply called Percy’s name, and she followed me to a stranger’s motorbike parked outside. Still, Percy wouldn’t get into the wire cage. I stroked my dog’s head and murmured encouraging words while gently pushing her into the enclosure. Percy did not resist. She simply looked at me in puzzlement as the cage was locked. Finally, as she and the bike moved farther away, she continued to look at me, soundlessly, perhaps swinging between trust and panic, as I waved her goodbye.
I think that I, too, died a little that day.