Bathing the Lion (17 page)

“Sounds very heroic, but what if Jane had said instead you were a Romanian gypsy street beggar who died of exposure in Bucharest in the terrible winter of 1958?”

Vanessa looked at him and chuckled. “Me? Never happen.”

“Why not?”

She fed him the last bit of her pierogi. “Because I’m
me
, sweetie.”

*   *   *

She tripped and they met.

That’s how Vanessa described meeting Kaspar Benn. It was snowing and the New York streets were icy. She tripped and a big man wearing a very beautiful Chesterfield coat standing directly behind her at the curb caught her by the elbows as she started to fall. They had a little chat there on the sidewalk and she invited him for a cup of cocoa at this cute place she knew nearby. An hour later she invited Kaspar to meet her husband, Dean, who she thought he’d like because both men happened to be in the same business.

Accustomed to Vanessa’s sweet habit of collecting strangers who interested her, Dean dutifully went to lunch to meet the man who’d caught his wife. Kaspar liked Dean Corbin immediately, but then he usually liked most people he met. Kaspar liked being human too. Life on Earth had turned out to be an unexpected delight. In his previous life he’d heard horror stories about coworkers being retired to places, to planets, to unimaginably distant stars and other dimensions that were nightmares from the first moment they were reborn there. But not Kaspar; he lucked out. There was nothing unique about Earth, nothing special about human beings either. If he had to draw a comparison, he’d say life here was like a breakfast of bacon and eggs—simple but delicious and wholly satisfying. In fact as Kaspar grew more human, it became his favorite meal of all—bacon and eggs.

At the time they met, he was working selling men’s accessories at Brooks Brothers in Manhattan. Dean was the U.S. representative for an Italian cloth company. The men had a lot in common. They had things to talk about. They became fast friends.

Dean had saved a good deal of money and had access to more through business connections. The Corbins had talked for years about moving out of New York. Then came the mugging and that decided it. Over drinks one night, Dean asked his friend if he would be interested in opening a men’s store together in a Vermont college town. Kaspar didn’t have money because he spent it as quickly as he made it. But Dean was sure Kaspar Benn would be a perfect partner. He had superb taste in clothes. More important, he genuinely liked people and had a great way with them. Dean had watched him work at Brooks Brothers and always came away smiling. Benn had the innate talent for making customers feel both special and at ease when he was waiting on them. He made their shopping experience pleasant and fun. As a result, people he served frequently bought much more than they had originally intended, and always asked for Kaspar to help whenever they returned to the shop. When Dean made the observation, Kaspar was sorry he could not tell his friend the truth—he was good at his job because he employed exactly the same tactics on Earth he’d used in his former life as a mechanic: ingratiate yourself with the populace, pick your spots carefully, make whoever you’re dealing with believe your decisions were
their
decisions, and once you’ve accomplished the goal, drift away as unobtrusively as a summer cloud. Human beings were so needy in their insecurity. They loved it when you complimented them, purred like just-fed cats when you remembered what they liked or approved of their taste and choices. They liked to be led but didn’t like knowing it.

Kaspar was not averse to leaving New York, although he had thoroughly enjoyed living there. Women were plentiful, the variety of available cuisines and delicious meals endless, but best of all he was rarely bored. Sometimes it felt like whenever he walked out the door he was swept along in some kind of entertaining adventure, or an interesting confrontation that the onetime mechanic appreciated. In many ways after his last life, living as a human being was for Kaspar much like a science fiction story where the character is sent back in time with only his wits and bare hands to cope with the undreamed-of limitations and difficulties of a distant past. When he read H. G. Wells’s novel
The Time Machine
he grinned all the way through the story.

Then Kaspar Benn fell in love. One fall day, an eighty-seven-pound American blue nose pit bull terrier named Slab marched toward him on Thirty-ninth Street. The dog looked like a molasses-colored sumo wrestler on four short muscular legs, with a huge head shaped like a United Parcel Service delivery truck. The hound appeared to be smiling.

Kaspar was a goner. He liked animals but didn’t love them. He was happy to eat them when they were properly prepared. But in all his days as a human being he had never seen a creature like the burly and supremely confident Slab. It really was love at first sight. On the spot he tried to buy the dog from its owner at any price, but no go. However, he did get the name and telephone number of Slab’s breeder in Texas. Shortly afterward Kaspar brought home his new roommate—a formidable-looking eight-month-old steel gray pit bull named D Train. Vanessa said the puppy looked like a creature from the underworld in
Peer Gynt
. Dean said it looked like a Samoan.

Luckily D had an exceedingly sunny temperament. Despite looking fearsome, he pretty much liked the whole world and was delighted to make friends with anyone, two- or four-legged. The only problem was his explosive enthusiasm. If some unsuspecting soul came over to say hello, D Train launched himself at the person, a squat sixty-pound muscular missile of flying fervor and love. Cats or small dogs were no different. Strangers were astonished when the silvery beast catapulted himself like a base jumper off the sidewalk into their chest or onto the back of their panicked pet.

Kaspar dutifully took his young ward to obedience school but it was an entertaining bust. D befriended all the other dogs in his class while never learning to obey even one command.

Kaspar couldn’t blame him though. In his last life, the pit bull had been a zgloz on Ater, a smelly, dreadful planet. Anyone familiar with Ater knew joy came in mighty short supply there. The puppy didn’t know it, but in this new life on Earth he was just showing how happy he was to be away from such a miasma of misery.

At the obedience school Kaspar met an Italian woman who approvingly called D Train
svitato
, which translates as either “screwball” or “unhinged.” But as long as words like “joyfully” or “cheerfully” were used as a modifier—joyfully
svitato
—then Kaspar could live with it and figure out how to manage his cheerful screwball.

Several months later the dog was shot. One night after a party Kaspar took D Train out for a late walk. Both of them enjoyed doing that. Kaspar smoked a leisurely cigar while D could sniff around and investigate anything for as long as he wanted because he sensed the boss was in no hurry. Ten minutes along, the puppy suddenly screeched, staggered, and collapsed where he stood. Blood started gushing down his right rear thigh. Walking a ways in front and lost in thought, it took Kaspar several moments to realize D was no longer moving and his dog had cried out. Turning, he saw the animal lying on its side, blood glistening wetly there, illuminated by a streetlight overhead. The hit leg was twitching, looking like it was trying to run away. D tried to twist his head enough so he could lick the wound. Out of nowhere and for no apparent reason someone had
shot
this dear dog.

Luckily a taxi was passing on the other side of the street and the driver saw the whole thing happen. He jammed on the brakes even though he had a fare in the back. Both driver and passenger jumped out of the car and helped Kaspar move the dog in. Blood was everywhere. D Train moaned, cried out when lifted, and whimpered heartrendingly as they shifted him on the seat. He kept looking up at Kaspar with terrified, imploring eyes as if his friend, his big human God who fed and loved him every day, could stop the searing pain. Kaspar was out of his mind with confusion, frustration, and rage. How could this happen? How could someone do this hideous thing to a
puppy
?

The cab driver knew where an emergency veterinary hospital was on Fifteenth Street, a few minutes away. While racing along, he kept yelling over his shoulder to put a tourniquet on the leg and cut off the blood flow. Hold on, we’re almost there.

The most frightening part of the experience came when the dog grew gradually silent. Lying on the backseat, D Train still occasionally tried to lift his head and lick the wound, but after a while he stopped moving altogether and made no more sounds. Sitting next to him, Kaspar could almost feel the life energy drain from the puppy’s stocky body.

As a mechanic, Kaspar Benn could have healed the dog in seconds. It was maddening now because he’d once had the knowledge to heal anything, but no longer—not here, not in this life. Everything he’d ever known and used as a mechanic was gone except the awareness that once upon another lifetime he could have fixed or healed anything on Earth. If his dog died now, Kaspar knew he would blame himself for being unable to save his small friend.

Fortunately D Train didn’t die. After two operations and a slow recovery due to unexpected complications, he walked with a marked limp, which remained for the rest of his life. Otherwise he remained the same rambunctious sweet-natured fellow. The only other real change was his jumping-for-joy (and anything else) days were over.

But the shooting definitely changed Kaspar. While waiting for D’s initial prognosis at the animal hospital that night, he decided to leave New York for good. He would move to Vermont along with the Corbins and make a new life in the state the couple seemed to like so much. More important, hard as it might be to accomplish, he would do everything in his power to ignore, or with any luck actually
forget
, his previous existence as a mechanic. He would make every effort to become more human. In many ways it would be analogous to moving from teeming Manhattan to the small mountain town. He would strive to make both “moves” work.

Contrary to what he’d originally thought, Kaspar knew now past-life memories did no good if you could not use or apply them here and now. What agony it must be for people afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease. What torment to hold an object in your hand you
know
you know but can no longer name or remember its purpose. Worse, to look at a person some elemental part of your mind recognizes but the rest of you does not. That’s how it felt holding the dog on his lap and watching it suffer. Once he could have healed D Train, but no longer. Better to turn away, turn away from this gorgeous city and a past that was fascinating but useless now and thus best forgotten. He did not know if it was possible, but he would certainly try.

So Kaspar Benn loaded his wounded dog, his beautiful wardrobe, and a few other things into a dubious four-wheel-drive Subaru with 83,000 miles on it he bought for his life in New England. He drove north on the twenty-ninth of May, his birthday, stopping often along the way to eat local delicacies he’d read about on food Web sites. He particularly liked the lobster roll in Noank, Connecticut. While driving and while he ate, memories from his life as a mechanic drifted into his head as they always had in the past. Only now he consciously pushed them away, shoved them really, and if some of these memories were persistent or unwilling to move, he tried hard to ignore or at least not dwell on them.

When he worked at Brooks Brothers, Kaspar was friendly with another salesman there, a transplanted Dutchman named Remco Snoerwang. Remco collected Malaysian parang machetes and Indonesian
golok
knives. He kept every single one of the scary-looking things in his collection razor-sharp. He said sharpening knives and ironing shirts were his ways of relaxing.

One Monday Remco came to work late looking very sad. While he was out of town over the weekend, his apartment had been broken into and his entire knife collection stolen along with some other important possessions. Ironically, the only thing the thieves left behind was the special Japanese sharpening stone for the blades. Kaspar knew what a terrible loss it was because he’d been to Remco’s place and listened while his friend enthusiastically recounted how he’d acquired each knife. He was not married, had no girlfriend, and lived simply in a small studio apartment with one window. His knives were his only treasure but now they were gone.

After commiserating about the loss, Kaspar asked Remco what he was going to do about it. The other man held a large paper shopping bag. He brought it up and put it on the counter between them. Reaching in, he lifted out a colorful yellow, red, and blue box. “It took me a while to start breathing again after I discovered the knives were gone. Then after going to the police station and filling out a report, I sat on a bench and thought about it. I ended up going to the nearest appliance store and buying this: the most cutting-edge, high-tech, expensive steam iron I could find.”

His answer was so peculiar and unanticipated that Kaspar laughed.

Remco laughed too, shook his head, and patted the box. “It cost a small fortune, but it’s the only effective therapy I could think of. I will go home tonight and iron all my shirts to perfection.
That’ll
be my way of moving on.” He slid the box back into the shopping bag. “My father taught me a good lesson about this, Kaspar. He said, buy whatever you want in life so long as you can afford it: a Ferrari, thirty-dollar cigars,
golok
knives … it doesn’t matter what. Enjoy the hell out of them, but never
ever
own anything you can’t walk away from. Like if your house caught fire, no matter how much you love your possessions, you can still walk out the door without feeling the need to go back for any of them. Let it burn. And if it’s gone, it’s gone—the end. Sure you love it and of course you’ll miss it, but never forget
it’s only stuff
. Just walk away.”